Customer Success Playbook Season 2 Episode 39 - Sadee Akhtar - Collaboration

In this episode of the Customer Success Playbook Podcast, host Kevin Metzger interviews Sadee Akhtar, a tech leader specializing in optimizing collaboration between customer success (CS) and professional services (PS) teams. Sadee shares six key insights on improving team dynamics during the onboarding process, emphasizing the importance of data-driven decision making, aligning on customer journey design, and ensuring smooth handoffs between teams.

Detailed Analysis

1. Data-Driven Approach to Onboarding

Sadee emphasizes the importance of balancing quantitative data with qualitative insights when designing the onboarding process. She notes that gathering a comprehensive view of the customer journey often requires multiple layers of investigation, as different teams (sales, CS, PS) may use various systems to track customer data. This holistic approach ensures that teams can identify pain points and areas for improvement more accurately.

2. Aligning on Customer Journey Design

The discussion highlights the critical need for establishing design principles that reflect both customer and business needs. Sadee recommends:

• Creating ease for both the organization (efficiency) and the customer (optimized experience)
• Adopting simple, straightforward principles focused on designing with the user in mind
• Aligning these principles across all post-sales teams to ensure consistency

3. Effective Tooling Strategies

The conversation delves into the challenges of selecting and implementing tools that enhance collaboration between CS and PS teams. Key points include:

• Choosing tools that align with customers' work styles (e.g., Jira for software engineering clients)
• Considering both large-scale systems and smaller communication tools (e.g., Slack channels, conferencing systems)
• Leveraging tools to facilitate feedback collection and improve the overall customer experience

4. Streamlining Handoff Processes

Sadee stresses the importance of a well-designed handoff process between sales, PS, and CS teams. She suggests:

• Clearly defining responsibilities for each stage of the customer journey
• Automating information collection where possible to reduce manual handover tasks
• Focusing on key information rather than overwhelming teams with unnecessary details

5. Addressing Common Challenges

To tackle challenges in CS and PS collaboration, Sadee recommends:

• Investing in a well-defined customer journey that all teams understand
• Setting realistic and achievable goals (e.g., OKRs) for implementation timelines and value delivery
• Maintaining open communication channels between teams
• Building strong relationships and empathy with customers

6. Post-Go-Live Support Considerations

The discussion touches on the importance of planning for post-go-live support during the onboarding process. This includes:

• Understanding what needs to be done during onboarding to ensure smooth post-go-live support
• Recognizing the constraints of professional

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Transcript

Kevin Metzger: 0:20

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Customer Success Playbook Podcast. I'm Kevin Metzger, and my co host, Robin Trebon, is unable to join us today. Please take a moment to rate, subscribe, and share the show if you enjoyed today's conversation. One of the things we see consistently in customer success is the importance of cross functional collaboration, and I think this is one of the items that doesn't get talked about enough in leadership conversations about customer success. Customer success is about driving results across the business. And that only gets done when we drive collaboration through the business. today we're thrilled to have Sadie Akhtar with us to dive deep into the strategies and best practices for creating productive collaboration between customer success and professional services teams. Sadie is a tech leader. Who helps businesses optimize collaboration between customer success and professional services to improve the onboarding experience. Sadie brings a wealth of experience in nurturing strong team dynamics and building frameworks that deliver real value to customers. Alongside her passion for strong, empathetic tech leadership, Sadie has also embarked on a new venture to launch a SET based wellness lab that offers well being workshops to tech teams looking for ways to rebalance and connect with their vision and strategy. Sadie will share her six insights on how teams can work together more effectively during onboarding, from gathering data and aligning on customer journey design, to ensuring smooth handoffs, And prioritizing ongoing education, Sadie, welcome to the show. How are you doing today?

Sadee Akhtar: 1:57

Hi, Kevin. I'm good. Thank you.

Kevin Metzger: 2:00

You talk about the importance of starting with both data and anecdotal evidence when designing the onboarding process. How can teams gather a balance of quantitative data and qualitative insights? And why is that step so crucial?

Sadee Akhtar: 2:15

Yeah, I think this is a great question that is quite interesting depending on where you are in your customer journey are you starting off from scratch? Are you looking to review an existing customer journey? the real importance of looking at data anecdotally and within your systems is that sometimes you don't have a full joined up story to see in just the data that you see in your systems or just what you hear anecdotally from people doing the jobs. And so it's really important to find the right point at which you want to observe your customer journey for example, professional services and customer success teams. use many different data points that start from lead generation go through the sales process, through the kind of signing the deal, customer success, potentially use different systems to store their customer management and different systems. different data points that they're tracking. So whilst it sounds straightforward to look at the data that you have, it's, it's not easy and it's often very difficult, in fact. And you might go down the rabbit hole of feeling quite confident that you have. The data points that you need, but as you go deeper into it and, and try and build out that, that schema and that data point, you kind of see, Oh, actually it's missing this, or that's not quite what I'm looking for. it's quite complex. You're looking at customer data. project data. sales data. product data. So you have a wide span to cover. if you're lucky to have teams that can support you with that and build out the data views that you want, that's fantastic. Even with that, I think most teams will find that it takes them, maybe a couple of different layers of investigation until you get to the point where you see the journey in data like you want to see it. I think there are a lot of things that people pick up in the communications that they have with customers at different stages. it's really important to gather that insight from the people doing the job and have a sense check of where we need to place our effort? What's the biggest pain point that we have to work with? So I think that's where I'm kind of, you know, step forward with one or the other, just be aware. Of which one needs a bit more work to go on pick the quick wins and then move from there.

Kevin Metzger: 4:45

Yeah. when you talk about the qualitative, is there an alignment with the quantitative data that you see missing often is it an alignment issue that you're trying to accomplish there?

Sadee Akhtar: 5:01

So I guess this question really depends on do you have a customer journey that you recognize? Like, is it documented? Is it well understood? Have you spent time thinking about the customer journey? Because sometimes teams are doing a set number of tasks within their roles, which is assumed as a customer journey, but maybe it's not all being brought together as one package, How confident are you in your knowledge of the customer journey? Because, very often, if you think about the professional services side, people are operating in very much a project basis. So that will look different. That data point looks different. If you think about customer success, they're looking at, a bit of a sales. Kind of journey, like, are we going to get the renewal? what's the customer set? They're looking at the customer relation satisfaction side of things. What's the feedback that we're getting on the product? NPS and things like that. And then you've got product data as well. And marketing data as well, if you want to add another cherry on the cake. So, all of these are different journeys that people are going on. I guess if you're working in a siloed space, identify what that journey looks like for you to get the job done and then see what data points you can trust and work with and move forward with. And if you're looking at the whole journey, then make sure you have the systems in place to pull the right data points together to represent that part of the journey.

Kevin Metzger: 6:39

As we talk about aligning on the customer journey design, another key point that you raise is can you share some practical tips for establishing and maintaining design principles that reflect both customers and business needs?

Sadee Akhtar: 6:54

Yeah, so I've touched on in the intro that I'm venturing on a new journey through clinical aromatherapy and workshops. And that really got me to think, because it's such a different extreme from doing tech work. And it made me think about how can I bring these two together and what I came to realize is that, the critical thing in both of these areas is creating ease. So in terms of design principles, when you're thinking about your organization, I would think about designing ease for your organization, which comes in the form of efficiency. Efficiency and delivery, but then also think about how you can create a customer experience that's optimized. You have to optimize the customer experience within the framework of the organization that you're working in. and vice versa as well. I've worked in tech for over 20 years. one of the really good pieces of advice that I've leaned on quite a bit is a government design principles produced by the UK. I think it was a government digital agency and they're very simple and straightforward principles that are all about designing for the customer or the user in mind. So I would definitely check out that reference point. I think it's a great starting place, if you've never thought about the principles you should have for designing a customer experience. as an organization, what is important to you? What is important to what you deliver to your customers, how you show up to your customers, what values are you adding to that customer in the work that they do? then agree on four or five simple principles. design with the user in mind, it takes a lot of hard work to make something simple. put in the effort to make something simple and easy for the customer, especially for. Our areas when we're talking about professional services and onboarding, it's often the first impression that we're leaving with a customer. And if that first impression is very complicated you've already got an upward, you know, battle to try and win them background. So have, have a few things that are, are core to you. It might just be even values within your organization. think about what that means in terms of transactions between internal teams and with the customer as well.

Kevin Metzger: 9:14

So when it comes to getting this alignment and having these discussions, it's important to align on the principles like you were just talking about, right? But how do you see that, how do you see that? Play out in the day to day practice on how do you make sure? How do having the principles in place allow you to facilitate communication between the various teams?

Sadee Akhtar: 9:40

I think the starting point is aligning on principles as a group, professional services. Customer success and potentially support post sales teams. that's really important because, you know, having values that run through professional services customer experience and support breaks down into different ways of communicating align it across the board leadership and how you promote and influence it, on a day to day perspective. I would translate that into the way you've designed the work that needs to be done within the customer journey. What that work looks like when you're interacting with the customer. So, I think brand is really important. I think if there was one thing that we need to do in our space is think about what our brand is as a post sales experience. There's so much great work that happens in organizations. Pre sales and really understanding the customer, but I almost find that the customer personas that we built to sell a piece of software or a service don't always align with the post sales interactions that you're having with different people and different parts of the organization. So it's really important that you think about what your brand is and How you can make it very easy to communicate your brand out to customers. So making onboarding easy, a great brand principle to have, you know, and then all of your interactions and documents should be designed to portray that value and principle

Kevin Metzger: 11:11

Yeah, I think that's a really good point because who you're selling to and then who you're working with happened to me completely different. Right? I mean, the day to day implementers and people using the product are not necessarily the ones who made the buying decision. So trying to make sure that their experience is good and then that they are getting the information up to the people who purchased. Is so is so critical and I think early in the process is where one of those biggest challenges. It's because you've got, you're, you're transitioning from. the idea to implementation and the implementation process is not always the same. It's just not the same concept. that's where you're starting to work, right? That's where you got to figure out how to achieve those goals.

Sadee Akhtar: 12:01

I think we use the customer word so loosely to mean so many different things to so many different people. in the post sales world, I really think about the people that we interact with as investors and as consumers. they're either going to be forced to consume whatever the buying customer has purchased for them. And they're going to have to invest their time and effort into understanding this new system. factoring those two personas in is really important. how much investment are they going to make into this system? Service or software. What do we need to do to make that easy for them? Who's consuming the outputs of whatever we're implementing here? how do we make that easy for them? So I think that is a really kind of. Important lens to look at,

Kevin Metzger: 12:48

it's such an interesting concept right? Because your consumer is also your purchasing mix is also making the purchasing decision, right? But it would be to be the purchasing decision and the actual consumer. may not have had any influence on it. so when it comes to tooling, what are some of the strategies for assessing the tools and resources at your disposal? And how can teams ensure they're using them effectively to enhance collaboration between customer success and professional services?

Sadee Akhtar: 13:16

Oh, boy. Tooling is a hard one, right? Tooling is a very difficult one. I think especially for customer success and for professional services. we're not often the people with the big budgets to be able to spend on tooling. And then one team wants one thing, and another team needs another type of software to serve them. So, depending on your organization, the size of it, what you're trying to do, you might have to fragment out. But again, if you are buying specific services, and then specific software for customers, it's all that you can create and still get value out of these different. Products that you're implementing. if I think back at more recent experience, it depends on what type of software you're selling into who the previous company that I was working with were very heavily selling to software organizations and engineering leaders They are very comfortable working in an agile. Scrum based way. So they have a particular way of working in their day-to-Day life. So in order to our teams be better versed in the way they work we looked at Jira as our project management tool effectively as getting work done. Okay? So, you know, that helps both parties. It helps our teams understand what the day in the life of an engineering. Team looks like, but it also helps create relatability to the customer. So if you're working with people who are more project management based, you might use a different tool. If you're working with software engineers, I'm talking about tooling to get stuff done here that provides information back so that you can improve and enhance the customer experience.

Kevin Metzger: 15:10

So tooling, obviously helps from a communication standpoint. that's a huge thing, right? when you are looking at it, you want to look at how you're going to get the information from from the professional services team and make sure that that flows through both from a project perspective, but then flows down through to the customer success team as well. Have the details from post sales or post implementation day to support perspective, right?

Sadee Akhtar: 15:38

I really like that. You kind of touched on that actually because I I'd gone into big tools thinking like big tools and what you might use to get jobs done, but actually tools are some of the smaller Interactions you may have as well. So even just slack channels, like, or teams channels, whatever you're using as a communication tool, what protocols are you putting around that to help people? not get lost in the expanse of communication, right? tooling is also any assets that you send out to your customers that you might need to exchange, feedback from them. Tooling is your zoom and conferencing systems. How are you using that to get the most out of it? if you're hosting webinars, Are you getting surveys? Are you using polls? Are you getting feedback from customers? are you using AI? How are you adopting that? What are you using it for? I think there's big tool systems that sometimes you may not be able to change, but there's also lots of smaller tooling decisions that could influence the effectiveness of how you deliver your customer experience that could be looked at as well.

Kevin Metzger: 16:42

Yeah, and that kind of goes to, the handoff process, right? you want to spend some time thinking about how you're going to hand it off and what kind of tool, whether it's a spreadsheet with a checklist or whether you're formalizing in some other way that handoff process is important. Yes, into the onboarding process so that they start getting information early enough and that you create a frictionless environment for your customer when the handoff occurs. So what are your thoughts around that?

Sadee Akhtar: 17:14

Yeah, absolutely. looking at your customer journey and identifying. Who needs to be the key player at what stage? And what is the responsibility of that key player? it's passing the baton to the next team. what needs to be in place for the next team to pick up that baton? the sales transition is a big thing. There's a lot of information, exchange but you don't want to make it cumbersome for sales to hand over various assets and fill out different forms Over to the post sales team because their mindset is I've done now. It's somebody else's job, So like looking at again, I think this is where some of the values and design principles Come in handy. Like if you're designing for success You will be designing to make it easy for whoever's taking part in the handover service So if you're collecting information as you go It was less to hand over if you're collecting accurate information as you go you can then report on and interrogate and things like that. The new you've. Notched it up a level. If you're able to automate some of that handover information, then, you've gone up another level. And then the handover becomes, I guess you kind of zone in a lot more instead of just throwing over a whole heap of information. You're kind of then targeting. Actually, this is what I really need to know about this step. So help me talk through this instead of, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, there's a nugget of information in here. So yeah, I think the more you think about it and design the handovers in that way, and again, keeping the customer in mind, like what is the value to the customer at this point? What is the value to us as an organization, as a team at this point?

Kevin Metzger: 18:53

Yeah. one of the things we found, critical was thinking about post go live support and understanding what you need to do. Post go live support. And what are the things that need to be done in. The onboarding process to ensure that post go live support goes smoothly understanding that helps you. So, you know, where you are from post go live support perspective and what needs to be done and, you know, what you'd like to be done coming into that. That really helps you with a handoff and helps you say, hey, I have these items being completed. Coming into the post handoff. Sometimes they aren't A lot of times they aren't. I mean, I've seen that in multiple businesses over time. There's a lot of work that needs to go in during the professional services. There's only so much money dedicated to it. you've got to understand where you are when you come into the ongoing support so that you know what needs

Sadee Akhtar: 19:48

to

Kevin Metzger: 19:48

stop.

Sadee Akhtar: 19:50

100%. And I think it also really depends on on how you're. Your different departments is set up. If professional services is a value add, if it's a paid service, then there's different, constraints and barriers you have to deal with because effectively it's another product you're selling. you have to keep that cycle going efficiently. If it's a value add service that you're not charging customers for, you've still got to weigh up how much time you're spending with a customer. how much is going into one customer versus how much is being taken away from potentially other customers? So that can really influence your handover process. And again, it's about being really intentional. About what you're handing over why you're handing it over and how it impacts not having that Information as well. It's almost kind of reverse engineering. Like if I don't have this information, then I can't add this value

Kevin Metzger: 20:49

So last question is really. From a challenges standpoint, what other kind of challenges do you see in the process between handoff and communications with professional services and customer success in that onboarding process?

Sadee Akhtar: 21:07

this is a really big open question. the consistency here is that there are always challenges. the challenges will vary depending on the organization that you work for, the product that you work with. So I think the best way to handle common challenges is to invest in your customer journey. Know exactly what it looks like. Make sure your teams know exactly what it looks like. Know what it means to deliver success. and have high level goals and targets that you're trying to achieve. for example, you want 80 percent of all of your implementations done within an X period of time, or you want 80 percent of, professional services to provide X value to customers, Realistic and achievable, but give yourself room to push. So the standard OKR setting just find a balance, create ease for yourself in order to aim for something and achieve that but also get some results back from that. addressing common challenges is keeping open communication across different teams, have forums to discuss things address challenges, address problems, have the right design process around that as well. if you have the markers in place, you can see when a potential project or kind of onboarding is kind of going, maybe not in the direction that you want it to go to. So have the design in there to be able to pull it back and have an open conversation. everyone's quite realistic, which is lovely. post COVID. Everyone is very realistic about who they're working with you're no longer working with companies, you're working with individuals in companies. this product is from this company is almost being challenged because we've been on so many zoom calls with customers talking one to one, learning about each other, building relationships. So in order to address common challenges, Building strong relationships, building empathy and having confidence that things do go wrong, but we're going to be able to fix it and that trust and commitment needs to come from leadership. That needs to be. Encouraged and valued as something that is going to bring overall success.

Kevin Metzger: 23:23

Very good. Thank you so much. Let's get into the hard hitting questions now.

Sadee Akhtar: 23:27

I'm worried.

Kevin Metzger: 23:29

So you're in London. If I came to visit London, where is one place I should eat and one place I should visit?

Sadee Akhtar: 23:38

Oh, my goodness. This is a very difficult question because this is London. I mean, there's so many amazing places to eat. I think, okay, everyone knows the landmarks in London where they should go, where they should not go. I am going to talk about a place that I admire quite a lot, and it's called the Liberty Department Store. it's just off Regent Street, near Oxford Street. it's this old Tudor style department store, which is quintessentially English. they put a lot of thought into their design. They put a lot of thought into their experience and they always have. They're kind of like this they have a bit of an up and notch. So maybe you could plan a trip to liberties, part of your budget to research good customer journey. So I would definitely recommend liberties and even check out their website. They're just so awesome. clear and intentional with what they do. Our places to eat. There's far too many places to eat. Like I think if anybody is visiting London, I'd be happy to give a list of places to eat. There's just so much variety. It's so multicultural great quality food and ingredients. And so I would say, In order to get good variety, I would head down to somewhere like Borough Market, which is near London Bridge, so you could go and visit like the Tate Museum, you could go and see London Bridge, you could just pick on a whole host of different little, like, boutique eateries that you have.

Kevin Metzger: 25:14

are you a cook? Do you like to cook?

Sadee Akhtar: 25:16

I do enjoy cooking.

Kevin Metzger: 25:17

So what's one of your favorite things to prepare?

Sadee Akhtar: 25:21

Oh, I thought you were going to ask me what my favourite dish was to eat. Okay, so,

Kevin Metzger: 25:26

you can answer that. Answer it how you like.

Sadee Akhtar: 25:29

So I love spaghetti bolognese. And there's a sub Indian continent dish called biryani, which is a rice layered with meat dish. My go to comfort foods for sure. And then what I enjoy cooking, I actually enjoy baking.

Kevin Metzger: 25:45

it

Sadee Akhtar: 25:46

requires a certain level of serenity to be able to get the cake to look good. So yeah, baking.

Kevin Metzger: 25:52

What's the next place you'd like to go on your bucket list?

Sadee Akhtar: 25:55

Oh, I was talking to my yoga teacher and she's got a two week trip booked to Oman. Oman is somewhere I have visited before, but I've never visited to see the, beautiful scenery forges and coastal area. it's a really lovely place to visit. that is definitely on my bucket list. Alongside Japan as well.

Kevin Metzger: 26:17

I think Japan's made the list for a couple of our last guests, actually

Sadee Akhtar: 26:22

I am not surprised one bit.

Kevin Metzger: 26:25

And last question is where can people find you. Tell us a little bit more about the aromatherapy business.

Sadee Akhtar: 26:32

Oh yeah. Thank you. Well, you can find me on LinkedIn Saudi doctor, and I am going to be setting up a company page as well. It's in the process. It's very new and that will be called essentially Saudi. So you can go and find me at essentially Saudi. com and effectively this My journey into aromatherapy is again, it's about creating ease for people, but I just find that the truly fascinated by the scent mind connection that essential oils offer and how it can change mood and uplift. Coming at this from the CX and professional tech journey, I think there is such a need for us to disconnect from work environments and connect with ourselves a little bit more. our sense of smell is the only one that connects directly to our brain, memory, how we're feeling. It's so intrinsic that if you like a scent, You're going to be smiling and wanting to inhale it more. And if you dislike a scent, it's just going to be like, no, get it away from me. You can't really get away from it. So I love that. I'm going to be working with more organizations to run workshops with them. And it's a great way to kind of think about strategy. We're having this conversation as the start of Q4, the most stressful time. CS folks, customer success folks and sales folks, professional services teams are kind of maybe waiting around a little bit, but they're going to be Q1, start of Q1. That's when professional services really kind of go crazy. it's a great way to help people connect and find those moments of calm when things are a bit crazy and get away from the day to day, just even momentarily, to rebalance and think about how you want to approach something differently. So yeah, excited about that. Very excited.

Kevin Metzger: 28:22

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Sadie. Your insights on collaboration between customer success and professional services teams have been invaluable. For our listeners, if you found this episode helpful, please subscribe, leave a rating, share this episode with your network. We'll catch you next time on the Customer Success Playbook Podcast. And as always, keep on playing.