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Introduction 0:00
unturned as presented by update AI.

Unknown Speaker 0:07
You need to be able to make decisions you need to be able to corral the resources that the customer requires and not have to go through significant. You know, let’s say management layers or so down into the individual contributor level. I want my organization to feel empowered.

Introduction 0:27
Welcome to Unturned a show about the leaders and innovators of companies who have forged incredible customer relationships and stories you can use to advance your own career. Here’s your host, Josh Schachter,

Josh Schachter 0:41
everybody. I’m Josh Schachter, founder and CEO of update AI and host of unchained. Welcome to this week’s episode. I’m really excited. Joining me today is Teresa inania SVP of Global Customer Success renewals and customer experience at Zendesk. I think we all know Zendesk, but just as a quick refresher, Zendesk well makes customer service better through their SAS platform or last three. So a little bit more about Zendesk, they have close to 6000 employees. They were founded in Copenhagen, which is actually something I didn’t realize until doing research for this episode, and with over a billion dollars in revenues, but with goals to go far beyond that, and a fun fact about Zendesk is that they recently, the board recently voted and agreed for the company to go private, they were acquired by premiera and hNf to private equity equity firms that are very active in the SAS space. Teresa, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Unknown Speaker 1:35
Oh, you’re welcome. Glad to be here.

Josh Schachter 1:37
So I gave a really kind of course and quick description of Zendesk but but tell us in your own words about Zendesk and about your role at Zendesk.

Unknown Speaker 1:44
Sure. So I mean, we help customers create awesome CX experiences, that’s our platform. I love it, because we also enable customers to create better employee experiences, because we believe that, you know, having great employee engagement and happy employees creates great customer moments. So I really, I’m passionate about the CX space. So it’s kind of fun, because the customers I talked to are the ones like me, that are trying to figure this all out. My role at Zendesk is, as you said, you know, I lead the global customer success and renewals and CX teams, we have 170,000 customers. So it really takes, you know, a very intentional design of how they engage at every level. And I love that we have some of the leadership at our company, like completely bought in that customer is owned by everyone, and we all you need to do the right thing. So we have a lot of great collaboration with across functional groups that help us meet our customers needs and help them get a good ROI out of our solution.

Josh Schachter 2:52
It was how many 137,000 customers

Unknown Speaker 2:56
7000 customers? Yeah,

Josh Schachter 2:58
70 Oh, sorry, I don’t want to cut you guys short 170 This isn’t users. This is customer. This is account stores. Yes. That’s amazing. That’s amazing. So okay, so surely there’s, there’s a conversation for us to be had about scaling through digital and about segmentation, we’ll see if we get there on the show. So I want to kick things off with you. The name of our podcast is unsure. And of course, it’s it’s an homage to churn our favorite metric, or actually probably our least favorite metric. But we want to get raw and authentic with you and really kind of get to know Teresa. So a couple of quick questions for it front. Where were you born? And where do you live now

Unknown Speaker 3:36
born and still in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, East Coast and kind of acts like a Midwest type of environment here. So a lot of my time has been spent here raising a family being around my family. But I can say my second home is San Francisco. That’s where our company is headquartered. And I have a global team. So I travel everywhere. But San Francisco feels like a second home.

Josh Schachter 4:02
As an SVP of 6000 person SAS company based out of San Francisco, how often do you travel?

Unknown Speaker 4:09
Almost now, I will say it’s different than pre COVID. But now I’d say every other week, on average. Some weeks back to back some like this last round. I have two weeks in my home based office, but prior to COVID it was a lot more. So I think we’re all like navigating some of the New World Order and doing more digital first, which I think has been a brilliant way to kind of have the best of both worlds.

Josh Schachter 4:38
And we talked about Pittsburgh a little bit before I happen to just have this this love for the city of Pittsburgh. I’ve never been there this time of year but I can only imagine we’re filming this right now in late October. That it’s absolutely gorgeous with all the foliage that surrounds the city. Yes. And is Pittsburgh. Amazon was considering Pittsburgh as a finalist for their HQ to a couple of years ago. You You’ve got some of the most advanced institutions in certain types of technology. You’ve got a lot of things going on with AI in Pittsburgh and robotics, I believe. What do you do you see any of like, the tech scene is Pittsburgh, the hotbed of tech of Western Pennsylvania,

Unknown Speaker 5:14
I would say that we’ve shifted certainly our brand from the steel times, you know, where we were well known. In fact, I was an auditor at Ernst and Young for years. And my main, you know, clients were US Steel and national steel. And so that is completely shifted to being I would say, very healthcare and tech focused. We have some excellent, like, incubated companies coming out of Carnegie Mellon University, a lot of startups a lot of great students. So I do think Tech is a thing for us. We’re also known to be one of the best food cities not sure if you knew that.

Josh Schachter 5:52
I did know that actually. And for everybody that are not as familiar with Pittsburgh, tell us what’s up with Ian’s, like, what is this, this?

Unknown Speaker 6:01
adopted that I mean, I just think that’s a thing we shot we make fun of, but I don’t think there’s that much going on in Pittsburgh, where, you know, I find anyone around me or friends and family saying that, but we do make a lot of fun about it. And we’re also known for like some of our, you know, again, our cheese steaks and some of the things we try to adopt from Philadelphia, which is a much more cool city in Pennsylvania, we often get compared to, but we make it fun. And it is a great I’ll say place to raise a family. And I do think that when my kids come back home, they often say they do miss and it’s surprising because none of them want to live here. But they all miss it.

Josh Schachter 6:45
Oh, well, we’ll move off of Pittsburgh, but but wonderful city go visit or whatever. If you’re listening, what’s one thing that might surprise people to know about you?

Unknown Speaker 6:54
Well, I’ve taken up pickleball recently, so I have found time to put into my day some pickle, you know, ball time, as well, as I love working out everyday. So I would just say that’s probably something because people know me to be a hard worker. And I’m always online. And you know, that isn’t always good, but it is just who I am. And yet I find my space because I get very energized by, you know, doing fitness and at least once or twice a day,

Josh Schachter 7:23
once or twice a day. How do you manage that? And is that critical to your effectiveness in your

Unknown Speaker 7:30
Yeah, I think it is like, I don’t even take my cell phone. And that’s the only place I don’t take my cell phone. And it’s morning, and then in the evening, if I can. So I book in my day with it, because I just love I love the the charge I get I love the sense of you know, balancing the chaos in, you know, the world and also just business is, you know, very, it’s very, I’m very passionate about what I do. And it’s just extremely busy. And I just need that to stay sane. And I really build that culture in my team, I make sure that people know, you know, we can’t really manage everyone’s like time off and have I don’t think you’ll see programs continue forever that, you know, give this recharge availability based on what we went through with COVID. But I think we should all learn something from that, that we need that work life balance, it’s essential to making us better at work and just happier which I think is part of you know why we should exist.

Josh Schachter 8:35
What’s one book that everybody listening should read that’s that’s helped you through your journey?

Unknown Speaker 8:40
Well, people I’m in to book clubs, believe it or not, so people might get annoyed with this because it’s like 700 pages, but I loved crossroads and it’s it’s very character driven and you get to really know these characters and you just waiting for the movie. But I think it’s it’s a great read. It’s one that kept me very engaged. Now quick reads, I’m all for to there’s a lot of good ones there too. And I do read a lot of business books, but I recommend you sprinkle in some just things you don’t have to think about work.

Josh Schachter 9:17
Yeah, it sounds like kids very well rounded hobbies. So let’s talk about Zendesk and let’s look at the customer experience journey at Zendesk. Your, your title, like we mentioned is Senior Vice President of Global Customer Success renewals and customer experience. So I asked you this before we started recording, is that just a really long title? Or does that actually represent the composition of your team? So tell us how is how is your group

Unknown Speaker 9:44
laid out? Yeah, it is actually different business units. So I have a customer success organization. I have a renewals organization and then I have a practice team. And real quick the customer success organization. I have broken in To kind of two big groups one is led by regional leaders. So think of, you know, a mayor EMEA, APAC, la Tam, and each of those organizations manage people that are assigned to customers. So this would be like your medium touch or high touch your most, you know, mid market to offer and of your pyramid. And then within customer success, I’ve also globalized them, I think it’s a really good best practice, a scaled group that is also global, but it’s led by a leader that really understands the difference in scale, the importance of data insights, Process automation. So they work together. And my region leaders, obviously, you know, depends on that scale team because they own the whole number. Then on the renewable side, we’re organized the same way geo based, you know, by region. And so all of my mayor, ces leaders have an a mayor counterpart in renewals, there’s really good synergy for the handoff there, which I think is super important. And then my practice team is more like the unicorns. I mean, frankly, it’s a small team, I think there’s about 25 or so. And they’re really, we have different groups in that organization. But they are really responsible for doing all the cross functional work that is so critical and designing out great customer experiences end to end, not just within my CS practice, but with the product team, with the support organization, with professional services, et cetera. So I love that Zendesk has understood the importance of that cross functional collaboration, because it’s really made a difference in the way we engage.

Josh Schachter 11:46
So I want to go back to that. We’re talking about you know, your people right now, and I want to stay on that. But then when we talk about process, I want to go back to that practice team that you have, because I think it’s a really interesting thing about the cross functional alignment. What What’s the culture of your team, if you were to describe it in one word, what is the culture that you’ve built and are trying to build within your org, probably

Unknown Speaker 12:06
one word would be empathic. I need them and want them and expect them to be empathic about our customers needs and to be able to match their needs with our solution, and then show the value of that solution in the entire lifecycle with that customer, you know, making that renewal event, a non event, assuring customer loyalty. And then, you know, ultimately, the business goal that we map to is going to be ner. Right, the net expansion of that account and retention is at the foundation of that so avoiding churn at all cost,

Josh Schachter 12:46
all cost. So how many people do you have in your

Unknown Speaker 12:50
org over well, in the CSP organization, 250

Josh Schachter 12:54
and then that’s and then across renewals, and and the practice group as well, that’s all included? No,

Unknown Speaker 12:59
no. So like, the renewals team might be another 50. And then the practice team I mentioned is like in the 20s.

Josh Schachter 13:05
Okay, okay. So a little over 300. That’s a large organization to create culture, a culture of empathy. How do you do that? Where does that start? Is that start with the hiring is? Is there training is the what is that? How do you how do you instill that?

Unknown Speaker 13:21
Well, I do think it starts with our culture as a company, which is, you know, then part of our hiring process. I mean, one thing, one word that Zendesk uses that I think really embodies a lot of the culture fit is going to be humble and in, which is the combination of being humble, and also confident. And that’s what I expect in the way we show up. I want confidence in our solutions. I want my team, being at the table with the customer and having a point of view that also shows confidence. But I look at humbleness as a way to, you know, first of all, curiosity being great questioners being able to ask great questions to understand, but then also admit when we’re wrong, admit when something didn’t go right. And then how do we solve it? So it shows up in everything it shows up in the people we hire, it shows up in the enablement training we do. It shows up in the way we interact with the customer, the way we handle issues, escalations. So you know, I think that and then the other thing is empowerment, like you only gave me one word, but I really do want my people to feel empowered, because it’s that mindset of recognizing that when you’re, you know, interacting with our customers, and even if it’s in a scaled motion that is a little bit, you know, lighter touch versus a very high touch engagement where you might only have a smaller portfolio, you need to be able to make decisions. You need to be able to corral the resources that the customer requires and not have to go through significant You know, let’s say management layers or so down into the individual contributor level, I want my organization to feel empowered. And that kind of gets into the processes, we build the products, the things that they have available to them so that they can do their jobs, and actually enjoy it. I hope. That’s the goal.

Josh Schachter 15:22
I gave you one word, but I think you gave me back for if I was counting correctly, I have your empowerment, humility, curiosity, and empathy, where you started. That sound about right. Is that better?

Unknown Speaker 15:35
It’s great, thank you.

Josh Schachter 15:37
You’re welcome. So you have this team that you’ve set up with that proper culture. And then there’s a process or the first P is the team is the people. The second P is kind of my own personal framework of the three P’s of successful, high performing teams. But the second would be process. What What’s your process? You got 170,000 customers? Like you said, how do you guys do it? How do you deliver great customer experience? Well,

Unknown Speaker 16:05
you know, this has been a learning, you know, it’s evolved. I’m not saying that we have it all figured out. But I feel like some of the ways we do this today are, you know, they’re embodying all the learnings I’ve had along the way, I’ve been at this for a good amount of time. So first of all, it starts in my opinion with segmentation. And segmentation is super critical. And I feel very strongly that the old traditional methods of just an arbitrary like ARR spend line is not the way to do it. So we have implemented what we call dynamic segmentation. And it’s really about just looking at more attributes about the customer than just their spend level to determine not only which customers we want to assign, which means like, get that higher or medium touch treatment, but also who we assign. So we’re looking at things like spend and potential spend. So the growth potential, this is a very pragmatic way to think about it, it doesn’t have to be, you know, baked in with third party data and all sorts of you know, predictive models, you can use some basic telemetry to determine like, who has the growth potential in our base that might not yet be spending very much with Zendesk. So we want to cover those accounts, instead of leaving them to like a digital self serve experience. So anyway, segmentation is the first and then some of what we use to determine who to assign might be industry, you know, use case, just to build a little specialization in who we assigned. So it’s not just a you know, one size fits all approach, and those engagements can be more relevant. Then what we do is we think about touch points.

Introduction 17:53
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Josh Schachter 18:33
Hey, guys, it’s Josh. If you’re like me, you buy the doggie poop bags on amazon.com that have the most ratings and reviews. So please give our podcast a rating or review. It’ll help others discover us go ahead right now. I’ll be here when you get back. You’re the you’re the first person actually in everyone that I’ve spoken to. And so yes, and I find this fascinating. You’re the first it’s actually mentioned divvying things out by by industry. And I myself have off as you know the owner of a company in this yes world. I’ve thought about industry often and it’s a tough thing to think about. But can you talk a little bit more about that like how you guys broke down?

Unknown Speaker 19:13
Yeah, and I want to be clear, because I have a point of view on this like we have tried starting with industry like literally the segmentation being about the industries and having a very, like, you know, strong line between the customer industry and the CSM aside and I don’t I’m not a proponent of that. I use industry as one side determine who my highest value customers are, you know, medium and then the digital only or the you know, the scale tech touch, then I am we’re looking at you know, region you have to think about sub region, right, because you try to map to sales, then you have to also think about language. Once you do all of that when you’re starting to actually assign the human That’s where I think industry matters. Now will I build like all these people that have all these great industry specializations? No, my resources and investment have not been sufficient for that. However, if it works, where I’m going to be assigning 25 accounts to three or four CSMs, and I can match up industry to build specialization, or to what they bring to the table, I’m going to do it every time. The other thing we do to make this more pragmatic, is we track skills of our team. So if someone’s coming in with a great banking or finance industry skill set, it’s available in our skills tracker, so that let’s say I assign a CSM that doesn’t have like, a fine FinTech or a retail experience, because I just don’t have the luxury of all those resources, they can leverage those SM ease to engage on that account.

Josh Schachter 20:53
So they’re all able to assist each other to

Unknown Speaker 20:55
your that’s part of the dynamic part of what I mean.

Josh Schachter 20:59
Yeah, it’s a little bit of a team based model there, correct? How, how, how are you using Zendesk?

Unknown Speaker 21:06
Yeah, so we use it, you know, we we use it extensively, I mean, we use it to manage our entire support operation. And then my organization uses it extensively for collaboration. So what we’re doing is we’re engaging in tickets that our customers have with our own advocacy, that’s our support agents. And we’re using it to not only help, you know, navigate the context of the customer, and make sure my CSMs are weighing in on matters that might require their attention. But it’s also a great way to get that customer 360, of what experience they had in support. So we link the critical metrics about, you know, the customer from our Explorer dashboard, to I use other tools and success, like Gainsight, salesforce.com, they’re all interconnected. So you know, we really believe and I even promote for my customers that, look, it’s not like a monolithic, you know, tech offering in any, in my opinion, that gives best in breed like you need best in breed, to be able to do the right job in the right function. And so I believe support agents are in customer experience, folks are in their perfect world in Zendesk. But there might be other groups like sales, and even ces that might require other tools, the way we as leaders need to ensure that that doesn’t come across to the customer as some disparate experience is through integration, and building out a customer 360. So that’s what we do.

Josh Schachter 22:41
It sounds like you’re not cheeping out on your team, that you’ve really chosen to invest in the tools that will empower them, like you said earlier. And so so you’re, you’re big users of your own platform, of course, which is best in class for for support. I, your advocates of Gainsight, or Salesforce, what else? What else do you guys use?

Unknown Speaker 23:03
I mean, those are the, those were really the critical ones, you know, everyone has their data dog or their, you know, their ways of, you know, managing some of the telemetry that our customers require. But now those are those are really the big ones. And then, you know, one other quick thing I want to mention is that I’m really big, we talked about process in, you know, workflow automation, and how do you design experiences that your CSMs and or support agents should have in engaging with the customer. So my, one of my biggest methods in process is to surface, you know, the touchpoint plan, the way we engage along with playbooks, I feel like that is really brought about consistency, outcome driven engagements, not just random ones, it frees up my CSM is to be thinking more creatively, because they don’t have to think about the, you know, regular time based interactions that are needed, or even the ad hoc ones that are behavior based like at risk plays or expansion plays, they can free up to be more creative. So I’m a big advocate of a playbook. And I feel like that that catalog that we have is really helping us scale.

Josh Schachter 24:19
You’re talking about requiring them to make less decisions of the things that can be templated. So that they’re able to save a little bit of brainpower and energy to think about the more strategic one off types of events and situations

Unknown Speaker 24:36
and manage a growing book of business. I mean, we all know about ratios in the space. And I would say we have some of the widest I manage it to make sure we’re not going too wide. But the way you balance that especially in tough macro economic times like we’re in right now where there’s a constraint on resources is to surface for that CSM, where to go next. You know, what are the INS sights about their portfolio. Even if they only have 10 accounts, or eight accounts or five accounts, it matters. So I use the gain site as a workflow automation tool. But really at the foundation is the content, the play unit, the playbooks and then the data and insights. And if you can put those things together, it can be something beautiful.

Josh Schachter 25:21
I want to close us out on something that you just mentioned, which is we’re in tough economic times. So we’re in right now q4 2022. Along Pittsburgh style winter

Unknown Speaker 25:34
is the Arctic fruit.

Josh Schachter 25:35
Yes, yeah. Right. And I can tell talking to you too, so we don’t know each other. But I can tell you’re a fighter. Right? You’re a pugilist you’re punchy. You’ve got Moxie spirit, energy, resilience, resolve. Tell me when to stop. I’ll keep going right? Strength. But what what are you telling your team about this long winter that’s coming the doom and gloom of SAS? The doom and gloom? I haven’t looked at Zen desks, you know, stock prices. But it presumably like every other one. It’s taken a hit? I don’t know. All right. So like it is tough. Right now. Psychology is often folks what as the fighter? What are you telling? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 26:15
it’s super critical. And I have to tell you, the more communication the better. At times, like this, I’m doing AMA’s ask me anything. So I’m doing listening sessions, I’m doing small circles, and I’m having my leadership do small circles where people can share, because this is a really difficult time. And by the way, you mentioned at the beginning, we’re being required. So imagine the additional amount of change management from that, you know, my big thing is, we’re in this together, that is my true authentic belief, there is a lot going on in the SAS space. And let’s be together through this, because it isn’t like looking elsewhere is going to change the macro economic conditions. But how we do that is through empathy, right? Being there for each other, recognizing that no one’s in it alone, we’re in it together, being completely clear that it is psychologically safe to share your concerns, ask your tough questions, raise your voice at the table. So those things I think have resonated. And then I’ve also inspired my leaders to recognize that they made I mean, basically, they may have never seen this before, right. I have, like I’ve been through this. And again, that just speaks to my, my tenure, my experience. But many of my leaders, many of my ICS have not have not seen this. And what I share with them is the stories of how I or others have gotten through this period. And the fact is that we will get through this. And my leaders can learn something really different and new, about how to navigate tough times, where they might have had all this great experience in the you know, this, the rocket ship growth and the unlimited funds and the unlimited headcount. And now’s the time to build into their story, how to live within constraints. And I think it’s a great leadership experience, it’s going to be tough. And I just recommend staying really close to your people, I think now more than ever,

Josh Schachter 28:22
it does build resilience, it does build self confidence in your future self, right. It’s tough, like navigating through uncertainty. And I know this as a startup founder, it will challenge you in ways that you’ve never been challenged. That’s right, and, but you’ll come out of it a lot stronger. If you’re intentional, if you’re kind of sticking, if you know that going in that there’s lessons to be learned to take away from this and to be present during these these kind of challenging times. But know that there will be a silver lining and exactly the sky will turn blue.

Unknown Speaker 28:54
Exactly. And let’s learn while we’re doing this together. And, you know, try to fail fast. And also if we’re making some mistakes, like that’s going to just make us better when we come out of this.

Josh Schachter 29:06
Teresa, thank you so much for being on the show. Oh, thank you. Great pleasure chatting with you. Hey, guys, it’s Josh. Don’t hang up. If you enjoyed this episode, you know, even if you didn’t, I’d love for you to give us a rating in iTunes or Spotify. And after you do email me Josh and update that AI with the name of your favorite charity. And my company update AI will make a donation on your behalf. I’d love to connect with each of our listeners. Send me a LinkedIn request and I’ll accept it immediately. Just go to www.blog.update.ai/linkedin and it’ll redirect my profile. Thanks