Customer Success Playbook Podcast 31

Summary: Dive into an engaging conversation with Gilad Shriki, Co-founder of Descope, as he shares transformative insights on leveraging FunnelStory to optimize customer journey visibility. Learn how understanding customer data can shape strategic decisions and drive impactful customer success initiatives. This episode offers a deep dive into how FunnelStory can bring clarity and actionable insights to complex customer behaviors.

Detailed Analysis: In this episode of the Customer Success Playbook, Kevin Metzger hosts Gilad Shriki, Co-founder of Descope, who sheds light on the pivotal role FunnelStory played in transforming their approach to customer success. Descope, a customer identity and access management platform, faced challenges in understanding the varying paths customers took post-sign-up. Gilad candidly shares how implementing FunnelStory allowed Descope to visualize customer engagement, segment journeys, and prioritize action steps effectively.

Gilad emphasizes the power of data visibility in managing diverse customer needs. By categorizing customers into profiles based on engagement levels, Descope could tailor actions and allocate resources more strategically. The episode highlights how FunnelStory’s quick data integration and intuitive funnel views provide immediate clarity, enabling teams to proactively guide customers through their journey.

For startups navigating rapid growth or mature companies seeking deeper customer insights, this episode underscores the importance of actionable data. It’s a masterclass in how understanding customer behavior can elevate success strategies and drive meaningful engagement.

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Transcript

Kevin Metzger: 0:00

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the customer success playbook podcast, where we deliver actionable insights and practical strategies for enhancing customer success. I'm your host, Kevin Metzger, and my co host was indisposed today. So Rama won't be able to join us. This is a special week of episodes and it's focused on Funnel Story and Funnel Story is sponsoring the podcast this week. If you haven't seen it already, Roman and I did a full video review of the Funnel Story tool, and you should go check it out this week. We're talking with Glad Shrieky. Glad hopefully I said your name correctly. Gilad is the co founder of Descope, where he is focused on revolutionizing authentication experiences. He'll be sharing his insights and expertise, experiences integrating FunnelStory into his tech stack and how it has transformed their customer success approach. Gilad, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. We're excited to get started. I think maybe before we get started, do you want to give a little background on the scope, then get into how you kind of chose funnel story?

Gilad Shriki: 1:15

Yes, sure. So, um, as you mentioned, this copy is a customer identity and access management platform, uh, where it allows app developers very easily and quickly implement different authentication methods into their application that they're building and the scope is actually the idea is to de scope the user identity work from Thank you. The application itself, allowing you to focus on, you know, your business challenges rather than how you manage passwordless or password authentications. We really started looking into different products when we figured out we have a lot of companies. So we started this PLG motion and with free sign ups and you know, anybody would come in and sign up and we figured we have a problem with visibility. Of where each one of these customers in their journey, right? So just sign up, actually trying something, actually working with this scope, actually implementing it. And we chose final story because it was a refreshing view of how to implement the visibility aspect based on data. that you have. Today as a SaaS company, we have a lot of data, but to understand the insights of that data, that was a struggle and Funnel Story really come through and allow us to look at our customer base in that funnel.

Kevin Metzger: 2:41

When you got into building, did you have an idea of what your customer journey looked like prior to implementing Funnel Story or no?

Gilad Shriki: 2:49

No, I keep saying that we, I think throughout the journey, we understand that we didn't figure everything out yet. And we're still iterating. Even up until today, we're three and a half years in, and yes, we're still adjusting and understanding. Because Every customer is different, right? You have different companies, different sizes of companies. So we cater the startups, the growth and the big companies. And because of that, we see different needs and different journeys for each company. And so in that perspective, we didn't know it. Back then, and I see we're still working on it today, but final store really gives us at least the view of what's going on so we can try and actually manage to see what is the milestone each one of these customers at and then figure out how we push them along the way. Very

Kevin Metzger: 3:47

good. And so what's your number one best tip, reason or result you've gained from using Funnelstore?

Gilad Shriki: 3:53

So I think when we started, and that was, uh, you know, pre AI, right? Uh, now they have much, much more stronger capabilities. But when we started, number one, number one approach, and I think that was smart, just get the data in. and see where you are. This is this was eye opening for us to understand. Okay, how many customers we have? And we have back then, I think, almost 10, 000. And okay, how many of them just signed up because they saw a funding round announcement or PR? How many of them actually tried to implement? How many tried to run us in a live environment? That alone gave us a lot of visibility into where we need to apply investments of people, of process, of helping them and pushing them along or, you know, leave them be because they just signed up because they saw something on the web. So the people, the TP is basically. Start with the visibility, even if you don't know exactly what's the journey, at least bring in the data and lay them out as based on some kind of profiles, right? Just sign up, sign up and some use it, sign up and a lot of use it, use it of this specific profile or that. You don't need to have that all figured out, because once you laid out in one funnel in the different stages, It can give you some iterating iterations to be done on it. It will open your mind about it.

Kevin Metzger: 5:20

Yeah. So one of the things I noticed when we implemented, and obviously we're implementing it with test data, right. That, that they have, but I noticed is as it builds in the information and the data fills in, into the funnel, you kind of get a vision of what's happening and where our customers are. And I think that's really one of the cool aspects of what funnel story offers. And then maybe you need to make adjustments to figure out what's whether that that's aligned properly or whether it's aligned properly by customer, maybe adding segmentation and for, for different funnels so that you can see how it works. But the fact that it gathers the data so quickly and starts trying to align it so quickly to me was, was, it was fascinating. I mean, I found it really amazing to see what it did.

Gilad Shriki: 6:09

Yeah. Yeah. And think about us about two years ago, a young Startup with, you know, we were back then, maybe 20 people, me and another two folks in the customer experience side, we were scratching our heads about, okay, who are the most important customers to address? Who are the ones that struggle? Who are the ones that just sign up? And final story, it took us a few hours. We sat with the team and it was done and we had a view. And now, like you said, now you can start telling the story. And now you can start either to say, okay, let's look only on those with this type of activity or this type of profile. Or today we even look on license and tier that they buy. And you can actually, like you said, create different funnels because. Like I said, customers are different. There's, you know, no, they're not the same and eventually place the right funnel on each customer because it's not only the visibility after the visibility comes the action. And this really gives you an actionable visibility, right? You can say, okay, this customer is at this stage and to move to the next stage, they need to do ABC. Let's push them. Let's send them email notification. Let's call them. All the things can be orchestrated once you have that visibility.

Kevin Metzger: 7:34

Fantastic. Thank you, Gilad, for sharing your top tip with us on Funnel Story. Audience, join us on Wednesday for our One Big Question, where we'll get into the integrations, onboarding, and usage of Funnel Story. And don't forget to subscribe, like, and share our podcast. And until then, keep on playing.