The Customer Success Playbook

Customer Success Playbook Season 2 Episode 47 - Kevin and Roman Gratitude and Reflect on the year

• Kevin Metzger • Season 2 • Episode 47

Share episode

Send us a text

In this reflective episode, hosts Roman Trebon and Kevin Metzger share insights from their podcast's successful year, highlighting the growth of their audience to over 5,000 monthly downloads and the expanding influence of their platform in the customer success community. They discuss the evolving nature of customer success, emphasizing its transformation from a departmental function to a company-wide imperative, and reveal their plans to broaden their guest roster beyond traditional CS roles in 2025.

Detailed Analysis

Growth and Community Impact

  • Achieved milestone of 5,000 downloads in October 2023
  • Received unsolicited mentions on Reddit and LinkedIn
  • Featured numerous Customer Success 100 honorees as guests
  • Built strong connections within the Atlanta customer success community
  • Demonstrated organic growth through community engagement and word-of-mouth recommendations

Industry Insights and Trends

  1. Revenue-Driven CS Departments 
    • Evolution of CS departments toward revenue-based KPIs
    • Shift from cost centers to revenue generators
    • Integration of success metrics with business outcomes
  2. Cross-Functional Success 
    • Recognition of customer success as an organization-wide responsibility
    • Importance of aligning all departments (Finance, Marketing, Product) with customer success goals
    • Impact of operational efficiency on customer satisfaction
  3. Community Development 
    • Growth of local CS communities through various engagement formats
    • Importance of networking and knowledge sharing
    • Value of maintaining professional connections beyond podcast appearances

Future Direction

  • Plans to expand guest roster beyond traditional CS roles in 2025
  • Focus on cross-departmental perspectives on customer success
  • Commitment to showcasing diverse viewpoints and experiences

Please Like, Comment, Share and Subscribe.

You can also find the CS Playbook Podcast:
YouTube - @CustomerSuccessPlaybookPodcast
Twitter - @CS_Playbook

You can find Kevin at:
Metzgerbusiness.com - Kevin's person web site
Kevin Metzger on Linked In.

You can find Roman at:
Roman Trebon on Linked In.

Roman Trebon:

Welcome to the customer success playbook podcast. My name is Roman Trebon with me, always my trusted co host, Kevin Metzger. As always, thanks to our audience for listening. Make sure you subscribe, like the podcast give us a rating. we really appreciate it. Helps us grow our audience and reach more people. Kevin. we got a, we got a big, I know we usually talk customer success on here, but we got a big Clemson tiger pit Panther matchup this weekend. you didn't think I was going to let us start the show without mentioning that. So you must be feeling pretty confident going into this game. I am not feeling confident at all. Going to you know last week it was a tale of two halves for Clemson. The first half, I did not think we were going to pull out against Virginia Tech. Second half we look better. the game before that we lost to Louisville, so yeah, it's funny how things change Kevin. What it was like three weeks ago. You and I are talking undefeated pit. Clemson only had the one loss. We were talking about venturing up to Pittsburgh, maybe taking the show on the road. We, two weeks later, Pitt's lost two in a row. Clemson's lost and we have not brought up the trip at all since then. So we probably should have a little CS playbook wager here. maybe I'll wear orange if Clemson wins and I'll give you a Pitt Panther hat or something to throw on if the Panthers win. You good with that? Sounds good. All right. I love it. All right. Moving on from football. Kev, we're in November gratitude month, It's been A heck of a year for the show. I mean, I was looking at our guests. I think we're going to have over 25, maybe 30 guests this year which is incredible. Our first full year doing the show, Last year we started midway through, this year we've kept momentum going. You were just looking into the numbers before we got on the show. pretty good, right? we owe a big thanks to our audience, that's probably where we should start.

Kevin Metzger:

Yeah. Like you said, we're coming up on a year and a half through the beginning of October, we were at around 5000 downloads in the month of October and November, we're almost at another 1000, by the end of November, we should probably hit another 1000 downloads. Which is fantastic. I hope that means we're adding value. You know, we started, we started getting a couple unsolicited mentions,

Roman Trebon:

which is

Kevin Metzger:

kind of cool.

Roman Trebon:

Really cool. I was scrolling through Reddit and audience, please don't judge me for scrolling through Reddit. I judge myself enough doing that, but anyway, I was looking at, there's a customer success. Subreddit scrolling through someone had a post around what are some good books and podcasts to listen to around customer success. we got a shout out, which was super cool. then you sent me, a similar post on LinkedIn talking about books and shows. we got a shout out there as well, which was, great.

Kevin Metzger:

Yeah, that's really cool. that's the first couple of times that it's come across my desk and your desk where we've had mentions that showed off. you know, that were, that, that were. Not guests of the show or unrelated, they were just completely unrelated mentions. So it gives me some hope that maybe we're adding some value to the community and that there's some appreciation for that. So that felt good. For sure.

Roman Trebon:

audience again, thanks for listening. Again, connect with Kevin and I, we'd love to hear from you. Reach out. We're on LinkedIn. we're always open for a quick connection. We'd love to hear, you know, what, what topics show, you know, guests themes you want us to talk about. We really appreciate that. Kev, we've, I'd say, I think we're another item for gratitude this year. What an amazing network and community the customer success world is. I know you started the year, early in the year, you went to Pulse, right? How amazing was that? that pretty much fueled our show for the first half of the year. The customer success community in Atlanta, which you and I participate in quite frequently, man, that thing is humming. You know, we got happy hours, we got morning coffees, we have pickleball, which you and I have been doing a lot of. And it's funny, Kev, I've been in client meetings, has nothing to do with customer success, and they're like, Hey, Roman, how's the pickleball going? So I know people are seeing the pickleball pose. So, yeah, what are your thoughts on the community, Kev? It's amazing, isn't it?

Kevin Metzger:

Yeah, it's really, it's a fantastic community. I mean, I think customer success is ultimately about people, right? people who are interested in being about people are in customer success. we get a lot of, a lot of good people in the industry who want to connect, to one another. Share who want to learn and it reflects in the show and we get that as guests in the show who want to come on and share their knowledge. And then I think it reflects in I've been going through a job search for the year and, and, I got a lot of feedback and help just a lot of stuff off on the side. Not, you know, not public, but people are always thinking about you or helping you connect to somebody that they know, or just really being good humans, which

Roman Trebon:

I think you've hit the nail on the head I mean, that's The thing that stood out to me, right? Like a lot of our guests, they're super smart. They have a ton of knowledge around customer success, but they're awesome people. how many times have we reached out to a guest after the show and they're always open to share their time, their knowledge, make connections for us. It's really just an amazing community. I feel fortunate to be a part of it. I'm glad you and I have made the connections that we have thus far. And again, that's why I say to our audience, that's that's connect, right? It just, it just keeps growing and it makes the community that much richer.

Kevin Metzger:

Absolutely. And you know, also we've connected with a lot of these people you know, all of our guests, right? We've, We've established relationships with. So if you need a connection to one of the guests, you can reach out for that too. Really great people have been guests on the show. A lot of them have been recognized in, the customer success, 100. I know we were going to get on that a little bit. if you want to connect with one of them, you can reach out. We're happy to try and make the connection.

Roman Trebon:

Yeah, for sure. You should definitely check him out on LinkedIn and Kev, I'm looking at the list here. I see Carly Agar's one. I see she's at the top of the list in the success coaching top influencers. I mean, Carly's an awesome guest. especially if you're in a job transition or you're looking to get into customer success, check out Carly. Wealth of knowledge. she has training. She helps people navigate the job search. We got Dave Jackson. Number one guest, maybe number one in terms of I love Dave, but he was the first guest we ever had on the show. Dave, Dave's on the list again. Christy Faltruso was the first, you know, we got to meet her this year. Erit from CS practice joined the show. And it just keeps going on and on, right, Kevin? I mean, so many people that we've been fortunate enough to talk to in the Top 100. And it keeps expanding. You know our goal as we go into next year is to keep meeting these people in the top Julie's in that list, Julie Fox, who's at sin seven. Now Julie's amazing. Jasmine Reynolds from plural site. We got to meet this year. So, you know, I can, I can keep going on and on, but amazing guests. very generous with their time sharing their knowledge. They're very open about what's worked for them, success and failures, we've had guests that say, Hey, I tried this. It didn't work. And here's how I would do it differently the next time.

Kevin Metzger:

Yeah. I think it's incredible what people are willing to share. I was just going back and Looking at some of the notes on Carly key skills for job seekers that she mentioned were networking and interviewing skills, engaging with decision makers cross functional networking, showcasing skills through your networking. Hit on all of that in the show, right? And she hit on what resume should look like in the current market and how to leverage linked in something worth going back and checking. I mean, that was that was a show we did at the end of last year. let me see if I can pull up some notes on Dave Jackson. The biggest. Deal with Dave was looking at the structure of your department as a customer success leader. This is just out of memory. And it was actually, it was such an impactful discussion for me as the first guest we had on the show. But then really his, his viewpoint on customer success of. It's you're looking at how you make the company money, In the end, you're only valuable to the company. If you're bringing in additional revenue and look at the structure of your department that way, if you're a cost department, you're not bringing value to the company. And honestly, we had that meeting with Dave in June of 23. going into the beginning of 25, I think most customer success departments that are still separate departments are structured that way now. in the process of going through interviews over the last year, Most departments are structuring as some kind of revenue based KPI that is that they are responsible for and showing really saw a lot of that.

Roman Trebon:

A lot of gratitude for him. So, Kevin, as we pivot a little bit, You and I have, we're meeting, we're grabbing some CS playbook time looking at 2025, right? And I think we can touch on this a little bit since you and I have discussed it, but I think we're going to expand kind of our audience, right? Like the guests we have on the show and I think, I'm excited for that. I know we, the last year and a half we've really honed in on Customer success leaders and people that have for the most part customer success in their title, right? I think what you brought up and I think it's so important is customer success is all throughout the Organization, right? It's not just the customer success team, which makes customers successful So we're going to start talking to those other business units and those other functions like people in sales people in marketing People in support, right? Like really expanding product. how do they start thinking in terms of making their clients successful? I'm excited about that, Kevin. I think it'll help evolve the podcast and add more variety to the show and help people, both in CS and outside of CS understand how all these different organizations and departments help drive value for clients.

Kevin Metzger:

yeah. And I think, you know, and it's funny, this harpens back to Dave as well. Dave was making the point in that very first show, He didn't think customer success needed to be a department it's got to be what you do in your business. Every department, every part of a business has to do with making customers successful. If it's not making customers successful, and it's only focused on on it's only focused on that departments, specific thing, and they're not thinking about the customers, then you're going to miss the opportunity to grow your business and look at what the opportunities really are Getting to talk to each of the departments. I mean, finance, you've got accounts payable, accounts receivable, how is that structured in a way that supports your customers? Right. you've got to manage your, revenue collections, right? Screw up billing, Kevin.

Roman Trebon:

Screw up billing and see how happy customers are, right? You could have the greatest customer success department, account management department. You mess up invoices on a regular basis. Let's see what happens, right?

Kevin Metzger:

Exactly. Exactly. And so, and, and as a customer success manager, if you haven't dealt with that, you will Are those departments thinking about that and how that impacts the relationship with the long term relationship with the customer? you as a customer success leader are responsible for helping the teams understand that so having those discussions and hearing from the perspective of the vp of finance or cfo And hearing how they think about that will benefit you and the audience as well. You know, and then marketing product design, James Scott, big on product led growth, right? From a product perspective, how are you making the the product product? Integrate with the customer really having those conversations with the product team to learn how they're getting feedback from the customer to design and build the product. I'm excited about having some of those discussions as well.

Roman Trebon:

it's exciting. I, you know, I'm looking forward to 25, but. We still are chock full of great guests coming here at the back end of 2024, Kev, so we, we got, we still have you know, we're, I think we got six more guests, four more guests, whatever it is lined up, it'll get us into the holidays, Santa will come down the chimney and then we're ready to roll into 2025. I'm excited for the last part of this year, and definitely excited for 2025. I'm also excited to see you wear a Pitt jersey next week after Pitt pulled the upset. I got an awesome hot Pitt hockey jersey. I'll be it's super bright and it really shows off the Pitt colors. You look great in it.

Kevin Metzger:

Well, I was traveling this past weekend. I sent you a photo. I saw It was at a Love's gas station, truck stop gas station. I think their colors are yellow and black, but they had Falcons in yellow and black, they had everything. And then they had the Steelers right there too. I had to send you a picture of all those. Yeah, it was awesome.

Roman Trebon:

yellow and black people in Pittsburgh will buy it up. No problem. it doesn't even matter what it says on it. So awesome. Well, our audience, thank you. For listening. We really appreciate it. Again, you can connect with us on LinkedIn. I'm at Roman tree bond. Find Kevin at Kevin Metzger find a check out our customer success playbook podcast page, go to CS. Playbook podcast you'll find our page there. see upcoming guests sneak peeks of interviews that we have lined up shows that are coming down. Coming to you soon reach out. Let us know again what topics guests you'd like to have us. Have on the show. Thanks for listening. as always keep on playing

People on this episode

Head Shot

Kevin Metzger

Co-host
Head Shot

Roman Trebon

Co-host