Kari Ardalan of Qualtrics is a staple in the CS community and has been leading scaled motions for YEARS - which is sometime that not a lot of people can say. She also sits on Gainsight's Digital Advisory Board - so yeah, she's qualified to talk about this stuff. :-) In this fantastic conversation, we talk about: Building digital first with humans coming in off of the back of those motions The evolution of ‘scaled’ from just email and outbound events to a push to come inbound Building one place portal where customers can go for everything and where CSMs can interact with their customers How D ..read more

Christine Raby, Founder of DeliverDelight, brings the heat in this episode where we cover off a very wide range of topics - some CS related and some non-CS related. Christine's background is absolutely fascinating and I've been a fan of her presence both on LinkedIn and TikTok for quite some time now.  This episode is full of practical examples and advice for both ICs and leaders alike as we talked about: How CS is now experiencing similar maturation to what marketing experienced a decade+ ago Leaders need to be super focused on the benchmarks and metrics vs. how they ‘feel’ things are ..read more

Irit Eizips has been in and around CS for a long time. From being in on the ground floor at Gainsight to running her very successful consultancy, she has been a staple in the CS community and consistently produces fantastic content that we all benefit from!  In this episode, we get into:  Irit’s days at the early-stage Gainsight and the culture of startups Her home in consulting (CSM Practice) vs. being a full time employee Being part of CS from the ground floor The advancement of CS to where certification and degree programs have enabled college grads an entry into the field Digit ..read more

Maarten & Michiel Doornenbal are not only brothers, but also co-founders of Churned! They join me this week for a fantastic conversation about the platform they've built, AI, scorecards and more!  Unfortunately, my audio/video didn't record - so you'll here me narrating the episode - but it's kind of fun to switch formats up here an there.  In the episode, we talk about: Their history as brothers and how they work together as co-founders today History of Churned and what they do Using machine learning models instead of rules-based scorecards to create health scoring and to pre ..read more

Invariably, when you speak to someone in CS about Rob Zambito, the first comment that almost always comes back is, "He's a good guy".  ...and I couldn't agree more. I wouldn't say that I've known Rob for a very long - but the time we've spent both on Zoom and in-person has always been extremely high-quality, funny, impactful, personal and full of great questions. This is the same approach Rob takes with all of his clients at Success Scaled, where he advises seed to B-series companies on CS strategies. He asks A LOT of questions and puts together a good picture of current-state before di ..read more

Not only does Delores Cooper of Zendesk have a pretty amazing back story, she's also doing some pretty amazing things with a small and scrappy team at Zendesk. Short form video has become an increasingly popular medium for distribution of content and Zendesk is utilizing this as part of their digital enablement strategy. In this conversation, we talk about:  Delores' entry into tech from social work & psychology Timing of digital motions along the customer journey Dealing with variables such as industry-specific differences  Team structure at Zendesk to support digital & sc ..read more

Nik Mijic, co-founder of Matik comes to us this week with not only a fascinating back-story, but some great CS-related content as we discuss a wide variety of very timely and important topics.  In this episode, we talk about: How Matik automates the creation of content with personalized data, primarily for CS and Sales The current state of the ‘digital business review’ A good understanding of your data is needed for a quality DBR Sending out one-pagers based on usage milestones or monthly project status updates - automagically A lot of people are scared of negative data, but using it to ..read more

I always love talking with people who work within companies that serve the CS community, and this one is no different. Erica was a fantastic guest to have on the show, partly because of the myriad of roles she's played at the company but also because she has done and is doing some pretty cool things in the realm of digital and customer education. In this fascinating conversation we talk about: Her journey into customer education at Pendo The approach to dealing with a new set of circumstances or ambiguity Interplay at Pendo between digital plays and educational offerings Driving prescriptiv ..read more

Lane Hart of Contentsquare brings to CS a no nonesense approach to ensuring the renewal via strong data analysis combined with a very human approach of customer engagement. He has taken lessons learned from his years in management consulting at IBM forward into a rocketship trajectory in CS at Heap - now Contentsquare.  Be sure to grab a pen and paper for this one as we talk about: Scaling the Heap CS team and starting a CS Ops function The importance of knowing what Data is available and how it all correlates to drive customer outcomes Advice: Don’t get stuck because the data is not pe ..read more

Dickey Singh, CEO of Cast joins us this week for a bonus episode in which we discover his fascinating journey from a long line of engineering leadership roles to today, where he's leading the charge of AI in CS.  We discuss at length what he and his team at Cast.app are doing to help revolutionize digital CS and what the future of all of this technology looks like. Topics covered include: Dickey’s long history with AI and his journey from an engineering background into serving customer success today He was ‘there’ at the inception of Customer Success How Cast.app  helps its custom ..read more