Markus Rentsch, CEO of Remark-able, joined us to define his philosophy on Customer-Value-Led Growth (CVLG).

“When it’s crunch time and there’s pressure to hit Sales numbers, people make compromises that later negatively affect the company.” This is precisely the reason why CS leader, Daniel Rose, thinks Sales Engineering should live within CS; “Sales Engineering won’t allow deals to slip through because of a short-sighted approach.” In this episode, Daniel shares the main benefits of Customer Success owning Sales Engineering: more control over time to value, better use cases, and Net Retention Rate.

Chief Experience Officer, Craig Antonucci, came on the show to share how to justify a CX program with your CFO. He said “it’s simple”—the conversation should be led with data and focus on three areas: how the CX initiative will sell more, save money, and fit the company’s mission.

Kalina Bryant has a rich background in customer advocacy, engagement, and voice of customer programs. Now Asana’s Head of Global Customer Advocacy, Customer Experience, and Executive Programs (and Founder & Host of the UnapologeTECH podcast), Kalina spoke with us about how CS and Customer Advocacy should work together.

When you grow from CSM to CCO in 4 years, people will want to know how you did it. On the 'nuffsaid podcast, Kellie Capote recalls 3 distinct tactics that helped her scale at hyper-speed at Gainsight.

In the last quarter of the year 2020, CSM Practice conducted a study to assess the validity of common industry assumptions about customer health scores. In this episode, Irit Eizips shares some surprising trends that came out of that research, along with advice on how to properly implement insights pulled from usage data. For low touch engagement models, she makes the case for having two health scores, using two separate teams: 1) Proactive / CSM Team - to measure and increase the value...

Salesforce’s VP of Customer & Market Insights, Karen Mangia, reveals the secrets every CS leader needs to know to encourage engagement, invite innovation, and remain relevant. Karen shares details about the metrics that matter, how to move from intention to action, and what success means to your customers right now. If you're willing to listen.

Adam Houghton, VP of Customer Success at Klue, dives into the sophisticated hiring process he's implemented across four different companies. It’s a four step model: 1) Hire proven anchors to serve on your leadership team, 2) build around those anchors with unproven high potential people that challenge the status quo, 3) provide a transparent career path for your teams, and 4) build an environment where people “earn the right” to be promoted.

Rumor has it “the CCO is the new COO.” Matt Zelen, UserTesting’s COO (formerly CCO), came on the show to explain what it takes to make that career transition.

Nick Chang, Global Head of Customer Success at HPE GreenLake, joined us on the ‘nuffsaid podcast to discuss the separation of responsibilities between Customer Success and Support within enterprise organizations. In this episode, Nick argues against the long-standing belief that Support teams should only be reactive and shares his take on why the future may include CS and Support merging into one function.

Salesforce’s Brett Matthews breaks down how they monetize CS (hint: it’s not “monetizing CSMs”). They have tiers of offerings that include higher levels of support, services, and, interestingly, access to subject matter experts under their “expert coaching” program. Everything’s tailored around helping customers be more successful. It’s an excellent example of what monetizing CS can look like at scale.

David Kocher, VP of Customer Success at Medidata Solutions, shares the segmentation and coverage models he developed so his team can focus on the right customers in the right way. His formula helps prioritize customers using two matrices: ARR mapped against health score and adoption vs. maturity.

Rupal Nishar, AVP of Customer Success at Netomi, shares how Customer Success should work cross-functionally to influence the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and how doing so ensures long-term customer engagement and company growth.

Dave Derington, Customer Education leader at Outreach, gives us an inside look at how Outreach’s Customer Education program works.

Niclas Ramon Staberg, CCO at Hive Streaming, joined the ‘nuffsaid podcast to make the case for having Customer Marketing live within the broader Customer team. He also offers an idea: try sharing customer stories internally to foster a customer-centric culture.

Jeff Heckler, Global Head of Customer Success at Pipedrive, breaks down the actions CS leaders can take to increase their prominence on the executive team.

In episode 2 of 2 with Stacie Ward, VP of Customer Success, Stacie shares a prediction: the best CCOs of the future will have backgrounds in Product and CS.

Seven years ago, Stacie Ward made the switch from being a Sales manager to a VP of Customer Success. Today she joined ‘wellsaid to explain why she made this move and the specific skills she knows a Sales manager needs to successfully transition into a CS role.

In our final episode with Asaff Zamir, Asaff explains his approach to risk assessment by treating customer accounts as a subjective ecosystem. To do an accurate assessment of account health, he advocates for looking at each persona within an account and analyzing each person's perspective, experience, relationship strength, and personality.

In episode 2 of 3 with Asaff Zamir, VP of Customer Success at Siemplify, Asaff shares how to coach CSMs on how to nurture positive emotional experiences with their customers using six key elements: personalization, integrity, (setting) expectations, empathy, time to value, and responsibility.

Asaff Zamir, VP of Customer Success at Siemplify, argues that being in Customer Success is much like being a customer psychologist—you have to describe, explain, predict, and change the behavior of others. He explains why it’s crucial for CSMs to “identify the needs of their customers and drive confidence and trust through transparency.”

Tanya Strauss, Director of Customer Success Strategy and Operations at ServiceNow, breaks down best practices in preventing risks via a streamlined escalation process. She advocates for defining categories of risk, documenting tribal knowledge about historical escalations, and building a team whose sole focus is on helping CSMs with fire prevention, not firefighting.

Lauren Humphrey, former VP of Customer Success and Payments GTM and current advisor at brightwheel dives into lessons learned from working with a high volume of SMB customers. Her tips include making every touchpoint count, thinking of onboarding as a product, delivering high quality experiences through specialization, and investing in systems early on.

Here’s part 2 of our debate with Dave Jackson, CCO at DeepCrawl and CEO of TheCustomer.Co, on the pros and cons of assigning “ownership” within companies. Chris and Dave cover: how CEOs can be thoughtful about breaking down silos, the viability of company-wide commission plans, and more.