Afleveringen
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Today leaders are keen on ensuring customer value.
Customer Success plays a pivotal position in the customer-centric software industry.
If you are eyeing a career shift in CS or are just looking to simply honing your customer success acumen, this episode is a goldmine.
Vijay Mehrotra, who's at the forefront of customer success education at the University of San Francisco, joins Mausmi Ambastha on this episode of The Scale Tale Podcast to discuss how SaaS companies can harness customer data for breakthrough insights, the urgent need for updated curricula to match tech's pace, the potential of leveraging customer data for business intelligence and the transformative role of AI. Vijay discussed the importance of cross-pollination of sales and customer success roles.
Timestamps
0:00 - Intro
2:20 - How Vijay's experience led him to customer success
7:50 - Learning Customer Success
11:32 - Evolution of operation of CS teams
13:00 - Equipping to embrace the ever-evolving landscape of CS function
19:06 - Pillars of Vijay's CS course
23:03 - Insights on the Success Hacker Program
24:18 - What does the future look like after taking up CS education?
28:02 - CS should own retention & upsells
29:25 - Closing
About Vijay
Vijay Mehrotra is a Professor of Business Analytics at the University of San Francisco where he leads its CS management education initiative.
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Connect with Vijay Mehrotra on LinkedIn ๐ https://www.linkedin.com/in/vijay-mehrotra-ba9498/
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Connect with the podcast host Mausmi Ambastha on LinkedIn ๐ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mausmiambastha/ -
Most CS platforms are designed for post-sales customer journeys.
But, CS begins early-on in the life cycle of a customer journey.CS platforms arenโt equipped to support customers during the entire customer journey.
But what if they could?Imagine empowering your CS team with one platform for all customer needs.
Super right? Thatโs what Mausmi Ambastha and Wyeth Goodenough chat about on this episode of the Scale Tale podcast.Join in to learn about the importance of health scoring, sentiment analysis, and customer engagement, as well as the future of customer success technology.
Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
1:01 - Get to know Wyeth Goodenough
4:45 - The IDEAL CS Platform
8:00 - Collaborating with Sales team
13:00 - Customer success & support
17:40 - Teaming up with the product team
21:02 - Aligning communication with customers
24:35 - How finance helps with forecast?
26:20 - 4 key components of customer health scores
33:20 - ClosingAbout Wyeth
He's a seasoned professional with 25 years of experience. He's worked in Accenture as a VP CS at Salesforce and the CCO at Ironclad. But his most exciting role, as I have heard, has been being a dad to 3 awesome daughters._________________________________________________________________
Connect with Wyeth on LinkedIn ๐ https://www.linkedin.com/in/wyeth-goodenough-108b12/
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Connect with the podcast host Mausmi Ambastha on LinkedIn ๐ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mausmiambastha/ -
Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Bad-fit customers are that troublesome segment that often leaves us scratching your heads about what to do. Customers who are not well-suited or aligned with the products, services, or values of your business can prove catastrophic for your bottom-line.
Hence, identifying and managing bad-fit customers is important to maintain a positive customer-business relationship and ensuring that business resources are effectively utilised.
In this episode of the Scale Tale Podcast, Mausmi Ambastha hosts Anita Toth, Chief Churn Crusher at ATI. Key topics of discussion:
๐ What are bad-fit Customers
๐ What is their impact on your business?
๐ How to identify them in the funnel?
๐ How to ensure that bad-fit customers do not enter the funnel?
๐ How to fire them and keep the funnel aligned?
Timestamps
00:00 - Preview & Intro
03:00 - How Anita got into customer success
06:05 - Identifying bad-fit customers
12:20 - Making effective use of customer data
18:44 - How to build a holistic product that your customers will love
22:10 - Benefits of attracting good-fit customers
27:10 - Dealing with bad-fit customers
31:22 - Breaking ties with bad-fit customers
36:10 - Goldmine Framework
41:50 - Closing
About Anita
Anita Toth is the Chief Churn Crusher at ATI, a Customer Retention Research, Strategy & Education company that serves B2B SaaS companies. Anitaโs mission is to create happier customers & more profitable businesses. Using her 20+ years in academic research, Anita helps companies leverage what their customers want, need, think & feel to their competitive advantage. Anita leads 'Churn No More,' a tactical workshop that helps Customer Success Leaders win in customer retention and executive influence.
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Connect with Anita on LinkedIn
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Connect with the podcast host Mausmi Ambastha on LinkedIn -
The customer-facing teams work in silos.
This results in misaligned expectations between teams.
Result? The customer feels lost.
In this episode of the Scale Tale podcast, Mausmi Ambastha complaints to Alex Farmer CRO, Nezasa, as a CSM about
- Misaligned expectations between Sales and CS
- Ownership of the customer
- How can CSMs be monetarily compensated for their efforts?
- Should CS have a quota just like Sales does?
Timestamps
0:00 - Preview & Intro
2:49 - Difference in team culture within Nezasa
6:06 - Promoting CCOs to CRO roles
8:22 - Fairly compensating CSMs
15:15 - CS needs maturity as a function
16:12 - Applying sales methodologies to QBRs
18:12 - Communication gap between CS & Sales
19:32 - Success Plan for continuity
28:18 - Who owns the customer?
41:00 - Closing
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Connect with Alex on LinkedIn ๐ https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderfarmer/
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Connect with the podcast host Mausmi Ambastha on LinkedIn ๐ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mausmiambastha/ -
As CSMs, it gets harder to put a label on our efforts when we arenโt able to justify quantitatively. Sure, metrics help us do that, but, the knowledge of applying these metrics is not something many of us have decoded. Thatโs why we have Rick Adams with us in this episode. Rick walks us through different metrics and their practical use cases for real-life scenarios.
Timestamps
0.00 - Introduction
09:25 - Customer Satisfaction (CSAT)
16:30 - How often should we measure CSAT?
21:10 - Churn/Renewal Rate
28:05 - Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)
28:45 - Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)
30:35 - Net Revenue Retention (NRR)
34:30 - Net Promoter Score (NPS)
39:31 - What is a good NPS score?
44:25 - Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
About Rick
Rick is the founder and CEO of Practical CSM โ an organisation that provides consultancy, training, and certification services for Customer Success professionals to help them become both more productive and more effective in their roles.
Rick has over 25 years of experience working in the IT industry. His recent work includes developing and delivering a global certification program on customer success management for Cisco Systems Inc. He has also published a book on customer success titled โPractical Customer Success Management: A Best Practice Framework for Managers and Professionalsโ.
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Connect with Rick on LinkedIn ๐ https://www.linkedin.com/in/rickadams01/
Checkout PracticalCSM ๐ https://practicalcsm.com/
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Connect with the podcast host Mausmi Ambastha on LinkedIn ๐ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mausmiambastha/ -
Can you imagine 2 CSMs managing the load of 30-40 customers? Impossible to fathom right? Hereโs where the power of documentation comes into play.
Documentation is often overlooked. However, a well-structured and up-to-date documentation infrastructure can become the backbone of how smoothly operations run in your business.
Rachel Baker, Senior CSM at Rimsys, joins our host Mausmi Ambastha, Co-Founder of ZapScale to bring to light an important aspect of the smooth CS operations at her workplace - Documentation.
Timestamps
0:10 - Rachel's Introduction
3:30 - Importance of documentation
6:30 - Developing a culture of documenting everything
11:20 - Structuring documentation across teams
14:30 - Using documentation for onboarding new hires
17:35 - Hiring CS professionals in the team
20:45 - Depth of documentation
21:49 - De-skilling processes through documentation
28:00 - Benefits of documentation
30:05 - Getting started with documentation
31:40 - Closure
About Rachel
Rachel Baker is a Senior Customer Success Manager at Pittsburgh-based software company Rimsys. She leverages over 8 years of experience in strategic planning and action to drive business success, along with prior marketing background in higher education and nonprofit sectors. With expertise in customer success, marketing enablement, and training, Rachel excels at streamlining processes, training growing teams, and delivering results.
Rachel is a SuccessHacker Level 2 certified professional, who combines industry best practices with a passion for continuous improvement.
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Connect with Rachel on LinkedIn ๐ https://www.linkedin.com/in/bakerrachel/
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Connect with the podcast host Mausmi Ambastha on LinkedIn ๐ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mausmiambastha/ -
One of the biggest challenges in Customer Success is aligning goals and expectations.
Many Customer Success Managers (CSMs) feel uncomfortable with upselling because they have misconceptions or haven't been properly taught. Rachel Provan joins Mausmi Ambastha, Co-Founder, ZapScale to share insights on how CSMs can approach upselling with compassion and a genuine desire to help customers through upsells.
Mausmi and Rachel discuss:
01:28 - Rachel's journey from acting to CS
05:32 - Should CS own upsell?
09:28 - Getting customers from 0 to first value
11:13 - Understanding the customer's definition of value
15:10 - How to start the upsell conversation
18:08 - Doing what's best for the customer
19:46 - Aligning customer needs with upsells
21:38 - Increasing revenue with upselling
26:00 - 4 stages of CS
31:52 - Importance of founder-led CS
34:55- Rachel's Customer Success Coaching
About Rachel Provan
Rachel is an accomplished Customer Success Leadership Coach and the CEO of Provan Success, LLC. With an impressive track record of 15 years as a customer success leader, Rachel has successfully built and transformed CS departments across a wide spectrum of organizations, from dynamic seed-stage startups to industry-leading Fortune 500 companies.
Rachel's thought leadership has garnered industry recognition, including being honored as one of the top 50 women leaders in Customer Success by SmartKarrot, and earning the title of top 100 CS strategist by Success Coaching.
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Connect with Rachel on LinkedIn ๐ https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelhprovan
Check out Provan Success ๐ https://provansuccess.com/ -
Right from validating the idea to providing exceptional value to customers, every startup goes through different phases of the startup journey. In this episode of The Scale Tale Podcast, Irit Eizips, the world-renowned expert in Customer Success joins Mausmi Ambastha on the podcast to share the roadmap every SaaS startup must follow and highlight the key mistakes that they must avoid to have sustainable business growth.
Timestamps
00:00 - Introduction to Irit
07:37 - Key items of focus for early-stage founders
10:50 - The Customer Success Maturity Curve
11:15 - Phase 1 - Technical Support
12:20 - Phase 2 - Define the Onboarding
15:18 - Phase 3 - Be Proactive, figure out what works
17:23 - Defining customer value
20:40 - Phase 4 - Scale
24:58 - Customer Experience vs. Customer Outcome
29:27 - Things early-stage startups should not do
35:50 - Summary
About Irit
Irit Eizips, Chief Customer Officer & CEO at CSM Practice, is a world-renowned expert in customer success strategies. She was nominated Top Customer Success Strategist and Influencer, year after year since 2013 for her contributions to shaping CS methodologies.
In early 2023, Irit was named one of the Top 100 Customer Success Influencers and in 2022 Top 25 Most Innovative Leaders in CX. In 2021, Irit was recognized as one of the Top 100 Global Inspirational Leaders and Top 150 Global Customer Experience Thought Leaders. She was also featured in dozens of podcasts and webinars. Finally, Irit has served as a judge in globally renowned industry awards such as the USA CX Awards, CS Excellence Awards, and the CS100 Awards.
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Connect with Irit on LinkedIn ๐https://www.linkedin.com/in/eizips
Check out Irit's website CSM Practice ๐ https://www.csmpractice.com/
Browse through Irit's resources for customer success ๐ https://www.csmpractice.com/resources
Listen to The CSM Practice Podcast ๐ https://www.csmpractice.com/podcast
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Connect with the podcast host Mausmi Ambastha on LinkedIn ๐ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mausmiambastha/ -
Cultivating an online presence opens the gateway to a realm abundant with opportunities. In an insightful conversation, Ashna Patel, a prominent figure in Customer Success, known for her robust online presence, joins forces with Mausmi Ambastha, Co-Founder of ZapScale. Together, they dice into the significance of constructing a personal brand and nurturing a network on LinkedIn.
Ashna delves profoundly into the pivotal aspect of forging a potent online presence, offering a glimpse into her own journey of crafting an extraordinary personal brand on LinkedIn. She unveils the strategies behind harnessing LinkedIn's potential to foster authentic connections, gain insights from industry experts, and achieve holistic personal and professional growth.
So, grab your headphones and get ready for an insightful conversation with Ashna Patel on scaling your personal brand for professional development in Customer Success.
About Ashna
Ashna Patel is a certified customer success leader with over 10 years of experience in all things customer success โ Account Management, leadership, Coaching, team building and helping businesses scale. Ashna is also the Co-Founder of CS Insider which is a newsletter for those looking to break into & grow their role as first-time leaders. Apart from that, she also runs a book club, participates in local customer success meetups & also provides coaching services to individuals looking to Elevate their CS game & ace their role as first-time leaders.
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Connect with Ashna on LinkedIn ๐ https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashnapatel92/
Check out CS Insider ๐ https://www.csinsider.co/
The LinkedIn Algorithm ๐ https://www.linkedin.com/posts/richardvanderblom_top-21-linkedin-tips-to-get-more-results-activity-7077175805721686016-Cd8e/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
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Connect with the podcast host Mausmi Ambastha on LinkedIn ๐https://www.linkedin.com/in/mausmiambastha/ -
A true customer-centric company strives to know the needs of their customer at every stage of their journey.
Identifying various touchpoints the customer has to go through help identify and solve problems together, increasing the chances of having delighted customers.
Mike Sasaki, VP CS, Emburse joins Mausmi Ambastha, co-founder ZapScale to share his insights on creating a customer journey map to limit hand-off friction and retain and grow customers with limited resources.
Timestamps
0:43 - Mike's journey in CS
05:30 - Cycle of Service Mapping
07:07 - Understand the most impactful parts of the life cycle of the customer
09:40 - Starting mapping the journey with sales and onboarding
10:40 - Thinking customer journey outside in
13:00 - Shadow your employees, and customers to practically learn their journey
17:34 - Creating a customer journey map
24:24 - Sales to Customer Success handoff can be disruptive
25:52 - Customer onboarding is crucial for managing expectations and success
31:31 - Structuring handoffs
About Mike Sasaki
Mike Sasaki, VP CS, Emburse, is a global leader in spend optimization that provides finance, technologies and innovation for companies. Mike's role allows him to partner with customers to achieve their business objectives through optimal use of Emburse solutions. With over 15 years of experience at SaaS and Customer Success, and having worked in companies like Oracle and Callidus Cloud, Mike has gained a significant experience in fostering strong customer relationships through value delivery.
Connect with Mike: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sasakimike
Connect with Mausmi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mausmiambastha/ -
Donna Weber, the world renowned Customer Onboarding Expert and author of the book "Onboarding Matters" joins Mausmi Ambastha, co-founder of ZapScale and the host of the Scale Tale Podcast to share her wealth of expertise and provide valuable insights into measuring and addressing the cost of customer onboarding.
Together, they discuss the importance of
04:15 - Key CS metrics for early-stage companies
10:00 - How to align CS metrics with business goals
15:47 - Measuring the cost of customer onboarding
22:28 - How to justify the cost of CS to the management in the early days of start-up
24:20 - How to calculate the cost of customer onboarding (COCO)
27:35 - Setting realistic onboarding timeframe and cost awareness
36:33 - What you should NOT do while calculating CS metrics
About Donna Weber:Donna is the world's leading expert in customer onboarding and customer success. For more than two decades, she has helped high growth startups and established enterprises transform new and existing customers into loyal champions. As a recognized thought leader, influencer, strategist, advisor, author, and speaker, Donna gets to the heart of customer success. Prior to founding her boutique consulting firm in 2016, Donna worked at several startups where she built customer success and customer education programs and organisations from scratch. Donna's award winning book, Onboarding Matters, is an amazing, powerful resource that encapsulates how successful companies transform new customers into loyal champions.
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Check out Donna's Website ๐ https://www.donnaweber.com/
Connect with her on LinkedIn ๐ https://www.linkedin.com/in/donnaweb
Check out Donna's book 'Onboarding Matters' ๐ https://www.donnaweber.com/book
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Connect with the podcast host Mausmi Ambastha on LinkedIn ๐https://www.linkedin.com/in/mausmiambastha/ -
In the first episode of Scale Tale: The Customer Success Podcast, Mausmi Ambastha (Co-Founder ZapScale) dived into 2 very essential topics with Clay: helping customers define success and planning the entire onboarding experience around their success.
As businesses, we often make certain assumptions about what success means for our customers. We have our own goals and metrics, but it is essential to take a step back and let our customers define success on their own terms. When we have a better understanding of their unique perspectives and aspirations, we can deliver products and experiences that truly resonate with them.
One effective way is to engage in meaningful conversations with our customers. This can help us gain insights into their motivations, expectations, desires, and goals.
Once weโve gained this insight, we can design the onboarding process to align with their individual journeys and provide them with the guidance, resources, and support they need right from the beginning.
And that can help significantly boost product adoption and customer retention.
In the next episode of Scale Tale, we will be back with a new guest and a new topic around customer success and we will discuss practical tips and case studies on how to drive an effective CS strategy.
Connect with our guest Clay Telfer on LinkedIn ๐ https://www.linkedin.com/in/claytelfer/
Follow our host Mausmi Ambastha on LinkedIn ๐ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mausmiambastha/ -
Scale Tale is a podcast by ZapScale which is focused on exploring the world of customer success and discovering the strategies that lead to sustainable revenue growth for businesses. The podcast is all about sharing insights, experiences, and tips from the field of customer success, with a focus on uncovering the secrets to growth. Our main objective with this podcast is to go beyond theory and abstract concepts and share actionable insights and tactical tips that have proven to be game-changers for successful CS leaders.
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The role of a founder of a SaaS start-up is like the one of a leader in an unknown terrain. Founders typically know the product best and can provide high-touch, personalized support that early customers need. Learning to prioritize scaling through one-on-one interactions with customers is crucial in early days.
In this episode of The Scale Tale Podcast, Angela Guedes (Head of Customer Success at Claap) joins Mausmi Ambastha (Podcast Host & Co-Founder, ZapScale) to discuss the importance of customer success (CS) in startups, especially in the early stages.
Here's what Mausmi and Angela discuss:
๐ Importance of founder-led CS in an early-stage start-up
๐ Building a CS team from scratch
๐ Managing CS as businesses start to scale
๐ Prioritizing CS operations as businesses start to scale
๐ Mistakes early-stage SaaS startups make while scaling
๐ Determining the readiness to scale
ABOUT ANGELA GUEDES
Angela Guedes is currently leading Customer Success at Clapp which is an all-in-one video workspace. Angela loves building things from scratch, which is why sheโs on her 3rd early-stage start-up, building all things Customer Success and scaling teams from Seed to Series B. Angela has formerly worked in Belvo and Typeform where she led Customer Experience, Customer Marketing and Customer Success Management!
Follow Angela on LinkedIn ๐ https://www.linkedin.com/in/angelaguedes/
Subscribe to Angela's Newsletter GritLab ๐ https://angelaguedes.substack.com/
Follow the Podcast Host Mausmi Ambastha on LinkedIn ๐ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mausmiambastha/ -
In this episode of Scale Tale: The Customer Success Podcast, our host Mausmi Ambastha is joined by a very special guest - Jarvis Harris, Chief Customer Officer at ScholarPath. Jarvis presents a strategic framework consisting of five essential steps for early-stage start-ups to emphasize customer success, even in the face of limited budgets, resources, and time constraints.
Establishing a charter and defining an ICP in early-stage start-upsCreating a repeatable process to drive value for customersSuccessful onboarding equals retention and partnershipPersona mapping to drive adoption and scalabilityDriver Dreamer DoerMapping KPIs to fit customer needs
1. Creating a charter
2. Figuring out the ideal customer profile
3. Starting onboarding
4. Focusing on personas within onboarding, and
5. Putting together CSM requirements.
These steps are designed to optimize resource allocation, streamline customer activation, and improve communication, ultimately placing the customer at the core of the process. By implementing this framework, start-ups can establish a solid foundation that fosters future growth.
Here's a quick summary of Mausmi and Jarvis' discussion:ABOUT JARVIS
Jarvis is the Chief Customer Officer at ScholarPath, which is an education platform designed to help high school students pursue a future true to their talents and passions. From the year 2010 through the current day, Jarvis has taken on roles in CS from management consulting all the way up to Chief Customer Officer. Jarvis continues to do wonderful things personally and professionally as he currently works, mentors, and consults while running his consulting company, The Jarvis Group, which focuses on customer success and digital transformation services.
Connect with Jarvis on LinkedIn ๐ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jarvishar...
Jarvis is also offering a CSM Bootcamp for Customer Success Managers and CS Leaders, for more information, check out this link ๐ http://www.StrategEASEinc.com/bootcamp
Follow the Podcast Host Mausmi Ambastha on LinkedIn ๐ https://www.linkedin.com/in/mausmiambastha/
