GSD Podcast: Unlocking Customer Success: Evolving Strategies with Jay Nathan

Listen to the podcast here.

In the fast-paced realm of business, the lines between roles often blur, and nowhere is this more evident than in the domains of customer success and account management. This GSD Podcast episode with the insightful Jay Nathan sparks a thought-provoking discussion that challenges conventional perspectives and offers valuable insights for businesses navigating these waters.

The Evolution of Roles: Beyond Conventional Boundaries

In the podcast episode, Jeff and Jay discussed how the traditional notions of roles in customer success and account management are evolving. Jay highlighted the importance of focusing on outcomes for customers, stressing the need for metrics that truly measure customer success independently of other factors.

Balancing Responsibilities: Leadership in Focus

One of the key takeaways from the discussion was the role of leaders in balancing multiple responsibilities. Leaders are tasked with driving both team engagement and business outcomes, alongside ensuring customer success. This multifaceted approach requires a nuanced understanding of priorities and a willingness to adapt strategies based on data and insights.

Redefining Strategies: From QBRs to White-Glove Service

The conversation also touched upon the effectiveness of strategies such as Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) and white-glove service. Rather than blindly implementing these approaches, Jeff and Jay emphasized the importance of understanding their purpose and aligning them with specific business objectives. Whether it's tailoring services for high-value accounts or optimizing touchpoints for different customer segments, a data-driven approach is essential.

The Power of Data: Driving Informed Decisions

Throughout the discussion, the role of data emerged as a central theme. Both Jeff and Jay stressed the importance of leveraging data to gain insights into customer health, identify areas for improvement, and tailor strategies accordingly. By harnessing the power of data analytics, businesses can make informed decisions that drive sustainable growth and foster long-term customer relationships.

Key Takeaways for Businesses: Moving Forward with Purpose

As businesses navigate the complex intersection of customer success and account management, there are several key takeaways to consider:

- Embrace a holistic approach that prioritizes customer outcomes over conventional metrics.

- Empower leaders to balance multiple responsibilities while driving team engagement and business success.

- Tailor strategies such as QBRs and white-glove service to align with specific business objectives and customer needs.

- Leverage data analytics to gain actionable insights and drive informed decision-making.

In conclusion, this GSD Podcast episode featuring Jay Nathan offered invaluable insights into the evolving landscape of customer success and account management. By embracing a data-driven approach and redefining traditional roles, businesses can navigate this intersection with purpose and drive sustainable growth in an ever-changing market landscape.

Stay tuned for more thought-provoking discussions and insights from the GSD Podcast!

Transcript:

Jeff Kushmerek 00:00

So, I've got Jay Nathan with me. So interesting thing Jays Jays been on the podcast but we've got some topics that we wanted to go over. Why do people think about Jay is community but I don't even I don't I don't even think community when I think Jay Nathan I think like, consigliere

Jay Nathan 00:46

wasn't expecting that.

Jeff Kushmerek 00:48

Oh, yeah, like, I've got a question. I want to talk to Jay about this, right?

Jay Nathan 00:52

Well, I talked to a lot of people, I get a lot of perspectives. I don't always know what the right answer is. But I always have ideas.

Jeff Kushmerek 00:59

You sound good saying it. I'm not saying you hang on all of my posts and every words, but something came up on a reaction. So I wrote this thing about, I can't remember what it was about. It was a video about oh, the the, I posted a thing over the weekend, I know to people looking for VPs. And I kept getting all these people like, Oh, tell them tell them, here's my profile, tell them I'm very empathetic and customer centric. And I'm like, you know, like Jay and I talked offline about my thoughts on that. So that's fine, got a comment on there that I literally wanted to just chat about with you today, because you wrote a little bit about it over the weekend. And so basically, if somebody said, my post just basically said, I'm turning every CSM into account management. And I'm actually gonna have a problem with that. Because I think one time we were chatting in Euro, like, what would you call customer success if you had to rename and I was like, account management like most of the world calls. But I know I don't have that. Right. So I figured we should chat about that, you know, we talked before about the advent of telemetry, getting data, and now being able to kind of, you know, differentiate between account management, but that's where my very thin line on this kind of draws out there. So, yeah.

Jay Nathan 02:31

I think a little bit about okay, if you're a people leader, if you're a manager or an executive, do you? Is it your responsibility to drive loyalty and your team? make me successful? Or is there somebody else whose job that is, is a leader?

Jeff Kushmerek 02:48

I would think that as you as a leader is, is that right? Okay, I understood the question correctly.

Jay Nathan 02:54

I'm glad we agree on that. Yes, you did understand the question correctly. My point is, we've all got day jobs, right? In our day jobs in a company are usually involved with moving the business forward in some way. Right. Now, we do that in different ways, right. As a manager, I spend time doing all sorts of things through the business for people eating together, recruiting, nope, income customers, giving feedback into the product team, working closely with our you know, leaders and our sales team to make sure we're selling the right customers and selling rarely. So it's not unheard of, to have multiple different things to be responsible for, especially as you rise through the ranks of a company and into management into leader to lead to executive leadership. I don't think that there's anything wrong with saying, look, here's the Well, first of all, let me let me back up my post this weekend on my newsletter customer success that I talk about having different metrics, right, we often conflate renewal rates retention, advocacy, LTV, LTV, customer success. But if you really strip all that away and say, okay, like, what is customer success is a result that the customer gets, and there's a way to measure that. Okay, you may use proxy measures, usage in the application or outcomes that you can see in the data, like you just referenced. So you can see the telemetry, there's some proxy metric there for what does success look like for the customer? If you don't have that, then there's another way to do it, which is you have a conversation with the customer

Jeff Kushmerek 04:33

back in the old days, which is what I used to have to do, which is like, Hey, how's it going with our product? What have you seen, right?

Jay Nathan 04:40

I mean, that that is it's tougher, it doesn't scale as well, because you can't react at scale. You don't know you have to talk to everybody to figure out if they're in good shape or not. But I digress. Right. So the the point is, if we're measuring customer success, we're Measuring metrics that are specific to the outcomes that the customer is looking, we're measuring customer results, independently of all that other stuff. Now we have to believe that if the customer results are positive, it's going to positively impact renewal rate, retention rate, our expansion rates, advocacy, all those things that we tend to measure are CSM spa. But the CSM is really have a little tiny bit of control over that in the big scheme of things. Look at how many businesses that we sell to that all companies sell to in this market that are contracting right now that are cutting costs and tightening and consolidating their tech stack system doesn't have any control over that. Right, but the whole company does, how we construct the offerings, how we take them to market, how we ensure that the product is keeping up and not just keeping up at innovating to help the customer hit their customer success metrics. Or renewal metrics follow? Right? So I guess my only point and bringing up the employee thing is like, yeah, you have to think in two different ways about multiple goals that you probably can't have five or six different goal metrics, you probably only have two, maybe three, right? But I as a as an executive, it's my responsibility to maintain a engaged and healthy team. And I also have to deliver business outcomes. And I also have to make my customers successful. Yeah, oh, I say all that to say? Why not? Why don't we add a new role into the mix, when we could say we have a lot of people that are assigned to these accounts and working with our customers already, let's just instill the right behaviors and activities into their work and make it part of their function by driving those customer outcomes. That works in different ways for different companies, some companies may need a dedicated Success Manager, I'm not saying do away with success managers. But the model and the way that set up is going to be very specific to your business. And there's probably a handful of different macro models to choose from when you're when you're trying to figure that out.

Jeff Kushmerek 06:56

Yeah, no, I hear you. I had a similar type of response where a friend of ours posted something about like, oh, we have to do away from white glove service. And I'm like, well, not all the time, right? If I'm a customer, if I'm a company that sells mostly 100k, arr contracts, and then suddenly, somebody comes in at 2.1 million, like, I'm flying down there, I'm bringing a tray of food, walking everybody the routine, like they aren't going to love to death, right? Absolutely.

Jay Nathan 07:27

Yeah, and I mean that size, but we have some of those larger accounts, and higher logic in they have teams, right? I mean, they're big enough to where they have teams assigned to them. And that's part of the service model. But even with 100k deals, right, you're, you're gonna have probably somebody that's more more dedicated, more allocated to them than other accounts, right? Because you got like, it's a little higher touch. Now, that doesn't mean that you don't put scaled programs in place, enablement, training, best practices, like we always talk about through community, I can go about that for hours. But you put those programs in place as well, because the customer needs to feel more than just the CSM. They need to feel like they're being supported by the entire business, not just one person.

Jeff Kushmerek 08:15

So let's do this. Right, you still have a consulting company, right? Imagine you were still in that role. You go in and you're looking at a company, right? Very. And you realize they have an account management team, right? And you go into it, and you say, are you doing? How are you? Are you doing QBR? As you're doing this, this and that and everything? They're like, No, we're not doing that. Well, we've got a pretty good renewal rate, though. But you know, we could do a little bit more of that. You're right. But then you find out like, yeah, they're having conversations with the customer. But maybe they're more like the steak dinner type of variety and things like that, right? But they have a function there. It's called account management got a team? Would you then say we need to go create a new function? Or would you say, Let's train these account managers on the best practices of CS?

Jay Nathan 09:07

The first thing I would do before trying to make that decision is I would go figure out what data that I had on the health of those customers from a customer success standpoint. Got it? Yeah, I'd look at their, their, their customer out there outcomes, right, those products that we talked about, I'd look at their renewal rates, I'd segment the customer base and look at different bands of customers. We have hotspots and retention do we think we can do something about those things? And then I would design? First I would design programs specific to mitigating those issues and driving the customer success up. Yes, figure out how to staff those programs. That staffing solution might include a dedicated role might include a sales role, they might need a CSM role. So I would never come in and make That decision black and white this is like, yeah, yeah, you got to do the work, figure it out. And people who come in and blindly like you mentioned QBR as well. Okay, great. So we get run a QBR. With all these companies that are our customers, the account management team, what does it accomplish? What are you trying to accomplish with the QBR? That's a program, right? It's very expensive program, and what your your account managers they're going to be, it's going to put load on them, they're going to be sweating it, they're not gonna be selling, if you want them to sell, they're not gonna be selling, you're gonna be doing that. So what do you want to accomplish with QBR? Maybe a very critical program to have in your CS? Practice? Yeah. But until you do the work to understand why you're doing that, then I would not install that. That's the problem with what's happening now is that people were just blindly going out and say, Well, we have to create a CSM team, we have to do QBR. So why, right? Figure out what your problem is first, and then solve it.

Jeff Kushmerek 10:55

I agree. Yeah. And I'm in a similar, one of my customers and the similar thing like I don't know, so I think they need to give you guys a very certain level, but then we get into that white glove thing that we're talking about. Yeah, top of the triangle probably needs to give me hours. Not in the format that we all like to write about why they're bad, but But yeah, absolutely. Great. Jay, appreciate it, man. We'll do some more I want let me when we when we wrap up here and now let me hit pause for one second and we'll till the next time