The Customer Success Playbook
Welcome to “The Customer Success Playbook,” a fresh podcast initiative spearheaded by Kevin Metzger and Roman Trebon. Immerse yourself with us in the dynamic realm of customer success, where we unravel the latest insights, inspirations, and wisdom from recognized leaders in the Customer Success domain.
Our journey began with a simple yet profound belief: that meaningful conversations can significantly impact our professional trajectory. With this ethos, we’ve embarked on a mission to bring to you the voices of seasoned and revered professionals in the field. Our episodes have seen the likes of Sue Nabeth Moore, Greg Daines, Jeff Heclker, James Scott, David Ellin, and David Jackson, who have generously shared their expertise on a variety of pertinent topics.
We’ve delved into the intricacies of Profit and Loss Statements in Customer Success with Dave Jacksson, explored the potential of Customer Success Platforms with Dave Ellin, and unravelled the role of AI in Customer Success with all guests. With Sue, we navigated the waters of Organizational Alignment, while Greg brought to light strategies for Reducing Churn. Not to be missed is James insightful discourse on the Current Trends in Customer Success and Jeff’s thoughts on Service Delivery in CS.
Each episode is crafted with the intention to ignite curiosity and foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement among customer success professionals. Our discussions transcend the conventional, probing into the proactive approach, and the evolving landscape of customer success.
Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or a newcomer to the industry, our goal is to propel your customer success prowess to greater heights. The rich tapestry of topics we cover ensures there’s something for everyone, from the fundamentals to the advanced strategies that shape the modern customer success playbook.
Our upcoming episodes promise a wealth of knowledge with topics like CS Math, Training, AI, Getting hired in CS, and CS Tool reviews, ensuring our listeners stay ahead of the curve in this fast-evolving field. The roadmap ahead is laden with engaging dialogues with yet more industry mavens, aimed at equipping you with the acumen to excel in your customer success journey.
At “The Customer Success Playbook,” our zeal for aiding others and disseminating our expertise to the community fuels our endeavor. Embark on this enlightening voyage with us, and escalate your customer success game to unparalleled levels.
Join us on this quest for knowledge, engage with a community of like-minded professionals, and elevate your customer success game to the next level. Your journey towards mastering customer success begins here, at “The Customer Success Playbook.” Keep On Playing!!
The Customer Success Playbook
Customer Success Playbook Podcast S3 E47 - Mary Schmid - When Empathy Tunes in Trust Turns On!
Strap in for another riveting episode of the Customer Success Playbook, where empathy isn’t just a buzzword—it’s a business advantage. Hosts Kevin Metzger and Roman Trebon are once again joined by communication maven Mary Schmid, who unpacks the neurological power of empathy and its pivotal role in client trust and loyalty. From the depth of scuba diving to the magic of emotional connection, Mary shares how listening with genuine curiosity can shift even the most transactional relationships into long-term partnerships.
Detailed Analysis: In this Wednesday "One Big Question" edition, the trio explores how empathy drives client loyalty, especially in high-stakes sectors like finance. Mary challenges the misconception that empathy is about agreement, reframing it instead as a courageous act of understanding. Through her neuroscience-informed approach, she explains how empathy fosters psychological safety, laying the groundwork for trust.
The conversation ventures into practical insights for customer success professionals: the importance of leading with emotional curiosity, the discipline of "listening to connect," and how to gracefully introduce differing perspectives once mutual understanding is established. Mary introduces a powerful sequence: empathy first, connection second, and then collaboration. The episode highlights that curiosity and compassion aren’t liabilities—they are strategic tools.
Also discussed: how leaders can break free from monologue mode by shifting into learner mode, and how to handle moments when your perspective diverges from the client’s. Spoiler: it involves asking permission to share, not bulldozing your view across the conversation table.
Roman humorously pitches Mary for a bigger stage beyond customer success, and honestly, we agree.
The bottom line? Connection comes before correction. Action comes after understanding.
Now you can interact with us directly by leaving a voice message at https://www.speakpipe.com/CustomerSuccessPlaybook
Check out https://funnelstory.ai/ for more details about Funnelstory. You can also check out our full video review of the product on YouTube at https://youtu.be/4jChYZBVz2Y.
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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.
Customer success. Hello and welcome back to the Customer Success Playbook podcast. I'm Kevin Metzger, joined by my co-host Roman Reon. This is our Wednesday segment, the One Big Question, and we're once again here with our guest communication and leadership specialist, Mary Schmidt. Roman excited for Wednesday. We get to learn more about our guests. You, you want to kick us off?
Roman Trebon:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Before we tackle our, our one big question with Mary, we want our audience to get to know Mary A. Little bit more. So we're gonna do these quick, uh, rapid fire questions to get to know you, Mary. So you ready for this? You buckled up.
Mary Schmid:Oh, I'm buckled up and ready to talk.
Roman Trebon:Awesome. Awesome. So we, we, we know you're busy, but what is, do you have a, uh, hobby that lets you kind of unwind and recharge when you're not, uh, helping others?
Mary Schmid:Sure do. First of all, I have a daily practice of getting outside and walking in nature or being in nature, yoga nidra and uh, yoga and Pilates practice. But on those special occasions, I'm a scuba diver. I love to go scuba diving and seeing the world from underneath where all the critters and the fish live. And then when I'm done diving, I just get to spend time with the people in the country that I'm visiting, getting to know them and their culture. Alright, love.
Kevin Metzger:I love diving. I love. I'm a big fan of diving. I haven't gotten to go nearly as much as I would like to. But yeah, I got certified in college and have been able to go maybe a half a dozen times since then.
Roman Trebon:But not, not a lot of opportunities in Atlanta, huh? Kevin? No,
Kevin Metzger:not much. I got certified in a, uh, a rock quarry in Pennsylvania.
Mary Schmid:Oh my gosh.
Kevin Metzger:There wasn't a lot of culture there.
Mary Schmid:Oh gosh.
Kevin Metzger:Mary, if you could, uh, jump on a plane tomorrow and go anywhere in the world, I'm guessing it's be somewhere on the ocean, but where would it be?
Mary Schmid:It would be the Great Barrier Reef. I just had a friend who went there and, um, you know, about six to seven years ago the Coral has really had really bleached out due the, due to the climate. Well, the coral is back and they sent a GoPro video and I go like, oh my gosh, I'm going tomorrow.
Roman Trebon:Yeah,
Kevin Metzger:that's
Roman Trebon:awesome.
Kevin Metzger:I've heard it's been coming back. I did a, uh, I worked for Dell for a little while. Uhhuh and Dell has been doing a project where they're like documenting the reefs. It's like there's this AI project that they're involved in where they're documenting the reefs and they're kinda showing where there's regrowth in the reefs and stuff like that. That's kind of cool.
Mary Schmid:Very cool. We need to protect our reefs and our waters. Absolutely.
Roman Trebon:All right, Mary, last one. Uh, this one's a little, uh, okay. Let's say we, you, we grant you a wish you could master any skill. Okay. Any skill unrelated to what you do, what skill would you master Mary and why?
Mary Schmid:I would be a magician.
Roman Trebon:I love it
Mary Schmid:and why I find it incredibly intriguing and adventuresome and like I don't understand it. Now, I could go on and figure out about it, but I would like to learn how do these people do these miraculous things that, that are exciting and adventuresome and like. They're an illusion, right?
Roman Trebon:Yeah. That's like the perfect, like when you go to like a party, if you have like one magic trick that you can pull out, it's like the, it's like an instant icebreaker, right? Like a deck of cards, do a trick, and it's just amazing magic. I, I think just, it, it turns us all into kids in, in a way, right? It's just amazing.
Mary Schmid:It turns us all into kids again.
Roman Trebon:Alright, so Mary, thank you so much. It was great to learn about, more about you and, and your hobbies and interests. Kevin, you ready to get into our one big question?
Kevin Metzger:Yeah, the big question for today, how can empathy play a critical role in boosting client trust and loyalty, especially in high stakes industries like finance? I.
Mary Schmid:When empathy tunes in trust turns on, you cannot have a trusting relationship or a la lasting loyalty with your customers unless you have empathy. Remember what I talked about in, in, in our first session on, uh, what I talked about on Monday was we've gotta listen to, connects to, because when we're empathetic, we understand what the situation is, we're okay to under to learn about their perspective, which may not be the one. We endorse and we create a safe space to speak up. I find the challenge with many people is that empathy is like a scary word to them, that there's no room for the prevailing thoughts that I've come with is that there's no room for emotions in business and. If I'm empathetic, I have to agree with what the other person said. Well, that's not true. I think the bottom line is when I get, when I understand another person's perceptions and their feelings, what do I do with that? What do I do? What do I say? What do I do? And the thing is, I say, don't do anything. Listen to connect. Right, so you understand the situation. Yep. And then together with them, take the next step, which is, where would you like to go with this? What support do you need? How can I help you? We take empathy, which is an understanding and a emotional state, and we turn that into an action state by demonstrating compassion.
Roman Trebon:Mary, when you, uh, on Monday, you talked about, well, listening to connect, we, we talked all about listening. Today we're talking about empathy. The. The, the phrase that keeps coming in my mind is genuine curiosity, right? Yes. I think if you gen is this in your, in your. Experience. Is this something that can be taught? Can genuine curiosity be taught? How does it develop?
Mary Schmid:Curiosity is developed by wanting, wanting more to, to under wanting more to get it right than be right. Curiosity is killed by us thinking that we have the answer. We know the answer. We have to tell the answer. Curiosity is fo fostered by turning that around and simply saying, what do I not know? The other person knows. And am I willing to be a learner in every situation? You know, I say in every conversation we lead, we have something to learn. And if you haven't learned something from every conversation, it wasn't a conversation. It was your monologue.
Roman Trebon:I love that line. I, I'm gonna use that. I love that line. Yeah. You have to be a little vulnerable, right? You have to say that, I don't know, stuff I'm curious to learn. I wanna learn more. Right.
Mary Schmid:Yeah, and it's our job to lead that. We need to calm ourselves down, get our brain going in oxytocin, right? When we do that, we present calm and curious, and nonjudgmental is the other piece of that. We can't pretend like we have all the answers. Our job is to discover with our customers, with our team, with our vendors, and those people that we care about what's going on. It seems so simple, but it's so hard'cause our brain gets in the way. It tells us we should know we should do this. We should. And it's like really counterintuitive.
Kevin Metzger:I'm gonna probably ask a question that I think is a wrong question maybe or a bad question, but so. There are scenarios, right? Where you're working through a solution, you've gotta get to an answer that, mm-hmm. Maybe you do have a disagreement with the direction something's going. You think it needs to go another direction. How do you accomplish both? So how do you accomplish listening? Trying to understand where somebody's coming from and then taking the time to do that. Which I think needs to be done first, right? But Correct. Then if you, I do identify, hey, there's a discrepancy here that we, we need to examine. Maybe it's, Hey, can we examine this idea together and see where, where, I know I often will pose it as a question, am I mistaken in my understanding here and do something like that? But that's not always the right way to go either. That's so I'm just trying, how do you. Drive to a conversational point where maybe you need to change the direction or go in a different, make a different suggestion to get to where the, the objectives lie.
Mary Schmid:That's a very good question. And, and we simply do you, you've, you've done like listen to connect, you understand the situation and you have a different point of view. You simply state it. I have a different perspective, I have a different suggestion, I have a different solution. Are you willing to hear me out? Can we consider this? You have one way of thinking and I respect that. I've got a, I've got a different way. Let's, let's look at that too. You see, you've invited the person. Now you're, now you're simply saying, um, you're telling them the truth and they know where they stand because you've got a different idea. Maybe a better idea might not be a better idea. It doesn't matter, but you're bringing that to the table too. Don't get me wrong. This is not all about like, just going along to getting along. It's like, okay, so I get what you say. I have a different opinion. I'd like to share that with you. In fact, sometimes I even go so far as asking permission. It's a respectful thing. May I share that with you? And you know what people will say? Yes, please do.
Kevin Metzger:Yeah. Yeah.
Mary Schmid:Because you've already gotten that baseline where you're, you, you empathized with them and you understood the situation, their thoughts, their feelings are, you understand all of that. And now it's time to move into the problem solving the negotiations the next step.
Kevin Metzger:So from a, it's really, it's part of a pro, it's part of the process. If you do have to get. Once you understand it, it's, it's kind of like once you understand what the real problem is and what the ideas for a solution are, you've gone through all of those processes and now it's like, now you're at the actual problem solving stage. Yeah, exactly. You've gotta get to the problem solving stage first.
Mary Schmid:We listen first to connect, and then that moves us into the next stage where we solve the problem connection before solution.
Roman Trebon:Action before solution. Yeah. We, we need this not just for our customer success professionals. We need, we need this across the country. I think we need to listen to connect, right? We need this at a broader level. Mary, we need to get you on a bigger stage so you can share this with, with people outside of the customer success, uh, industry, which this is. No, this is really terrific stuff. You're coming back Friday, right? Mary? We didn't scare you off yet.
Mary Schmid:Not yet. Pretty close.
Roman Trebon:Pretty true. Well, we have that effect on people. So with Mary, we're gonna, we're gonna lock her in for Friday. Uh, we're gonna dive into, uh, empathy as a loyalty driver. Um, uh, we're really gonna talk about, hey, how ai, AI might support or threaten, maybe we'll talk about this, the whole trust building approach, right? So where does techno, what's the role of technology? Does it support, uh, empathy? Does it support, uh, conversations or is it a threat to that? So to our audience, thanks. Thanks always for listening. We really appreciate it. Don't for, uh, forget to subscribe. You'll get notifications, comment like the show, give us a rating. We really appreciate it. Uh, we'll see you on Friday for AI Friday. Until then, Kevin, keep on playing.
