YOUR GUIDE TO THE LEADERS LABS: CUSTOMER SUCCESS LEADERSHIP NETWORK SERIES WITH GROWTH MOLECULES
6 Episodes | 12 Takeaways
Over the past six months, I had the opportunity to work with Morika Georgieva to build the Leaders Labs. I interviewed eight leaders who challenged commonly accepted practices leading customers and customer success teams. They shared best practices to scale across people, processes, systems, and stories we can all relate to.
You can find links to the six episodes below along with actionable insights from each.
Episode 1 – Goodbye health scores, hello relationships maps!
For this first episode, I welcomed the ever so charismatic Ziv Peled, Chief Customer Officer at Appsflyer to talk about whether it’s time to wave health scores goodbye and instead say hi to relationships maps.
Key Takeaways
- You need to identify what issues customers have along the customer journey and then start building the health score/relationship.
- If you are developing a good relationship with the customer, it is enabling you to get insight in the internal view of the customer. Relationships should be central to your customer success health score.
You can watch the full episode here. Ziv has multiple tips on building your customer relationship maps.
Episode 2 – Why CS Should Own Revenue
With Sandy Uwimana
Director, Customer Success Buoy Health.
In this second episode, Sandy Uwimana discusses why Customer Success (CS) should own revenue and how to make sure your CSMs are successful by focusing on customer outcomes that lead to growth, regardless of the many small competing tasks that come up daily
Whether Customer Success should be responsible for renewal and expansion opportunities post-sale, is one of the most debated questions of our industry! In this webcast, Sandy Uwimana Director of Customer Success at Buoy Health gives her perspective on how to approach this topic.
Key Takeaways:
- Working with the customers and really understanding the key reasons they select a platform is where you want to start the renewal conversation.
- CSMs should be accountable for enabling customers to recognize value from the platform and CSM relationships. Strong communication and understanding what long-term success looks like is also important when leading renewal negotiations as a CSM.
You can watch the full episode here. While the debate about who owns the renewal rages on, I believe it should be who ever is trained and confident to have the financial and often difficult conversation.
Episode 3: Nailing your low-touch digital strategy
As Customer Success professionals, we are sometimes so focused on our biggest customers, that it is easy to forget the power of the long tail (low-touch customers). At the same time, this segment is often full of customers who have a high potential to grow and join the Enterprise family.
How do you serve them with a tech-touch strategy that is scalable and effective?
Chad Horenfeldt, Director of Customer Success, Kustomer, and Vincent Gaugry, EMEA Customer Success, SAP, joined the show to share their tech-touch strategy for those often forgotten customers.
Key Takeaways:
- Be candid with your customers and identify their goals early in the relationship. This will enable CSMs to provide relevant content and products from day one.
- Enable your team with technology to proactively manage customers health scores and the value customers are receiving from the relationships with you and the product.
Episode 4: Your 1st 100 Days as Head of CS: What you need to do ASAP
With Chris Doell.
Chief Customer Officer, AuditBoard.
Taking on the role of Head of Customer Success or Chief Customer Officer is the dream of many Customer Success professionals. The dream takes hard work, focus, and enthusiasm, especially during difficult times. How do we prioritize and what are the key actions we need to take to bring immediate value to our teams and customers?
In this session, Chris Doell, CCO of AuditBoard, discusses his top tips for newly minted CS leaders!
Key Takeaways:
- Identify what measurements matter and make sure your team understands how these metrics impact them, the business and the customer. Build a plan around those metrics.
- Check on yourself and check on your team, make sure they are physically and mentally healthy. Don’t focus only on the issues to improve, instead appreciate the people and the goals that got you where you are before tackling the big picture.
You can watch the full episode here.
Episode 5 The Customer Conference 2021
Customer Success Operations and Enablement teams are no longer nice-to-haves. They enable your team with education, playbooks, data and technology. In this fireside chat with guests Harris Eilenberg, Senior Manager, Client Success Operations at Mavenlink, and Giorgia Ortiz, Senior Director Revenue Enablement and Readiness at Lever discuss how their roles have been critical for optimizing processes and implementing strategic initiatives.
Key Takeaways:
- It’s all about onboarding, if you don’t have a good process for onboarding team members and customers, your employee turnover will rise and your churn will increase earlier in the customer journey.
- There needs to be a seamless experience for the customers. Consistency across all your processes, training and systems is critical for creating the customer journey. Don’t skip the planning part of success.
You can watch the full episode here.
Episode 6 – Customer Success Operations as the Engine in your Organization
Have you ever wondered why companies invest in CS Operations functions? Customer Success is an evolving discipline. Few companies appreciate the incredible value that CS Operations can add to a business.
Guest, Co-founder, and CCO at NudgeLabs, Shane Correa discussion how CS Ops can drive your CS function forward.
Key Takeaways:
- Operations must have access to data to enable Customer Success managers. If you’re able to give CSMs data in a digestible way, then they can visualize it for the customer, to show them the ROI early on in the customer relationship.
- Customer Success Excellence starts with breaking down the customer journey and identifying the problem hot spots. Prioritize the challenges and then start working on the highest impact opportunities first. Companies need to identify what is lacking in the process, the people, and the systems. From there, they can build a robust employee onboarding program.
Customer Success Operations is no longer a nice-to-have. It is fundamental across your entire customer success.
I have handed the baton for the Leader’s Labs to Shane Correa and Morika Georgieva. They will continue to host leaders from around the world for these monthly 30-minute sessions to help Customer Success Managers, Operators and leaders working together to build scalable customer success programs. I know they will be insightful!
Emilia