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Kristi Faltorusso:
And this is what he does all the time. He just starts the podcast because he loves the banter.

Szuyin Leow:
Just get it done.

Kristi Faltorusso:
To humiliate the rest of us because he feels alone in his humiliation from us.

Josh Schachter:
It’s not just that I like the banter. By the way, we’ve started. Welcome, everybody, to Unturned, the CSMBS episode. I’m Josh Here with Christy, we have with us a special guest, and we’re gonna learn more about her in a second. Christy, people like the banter. Like, you you do understand that. Right?

Kristi Faltorusso:
I know people come for the banter. They stay for the content. I get it. Right.

Szuyin Leow:
I get it.

Josh Schachter:
Right. Right. So we have to start with that.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Only like the banter when you’re the one that looks bad. I don’t like the banter when I’m the one in

Josh Schachter:
a short time. Naturally happens anyways, so don’t worry.

Kristi Faltorusso:
I know. You’re gonna shine like you always do.

Josh Schachter:
I got you covered. I got you covered. Hey, everybody. I’m Josh Schacter. I’m the founder, CEO, and head banter of UpdateAI. Christy Falter. So I already did the introduction, but I just had Josh You’re

Kristi Faltorusso:
like the lead troublemaker. That’s what we should call you.

Josh Schachter:
Well, that’s a different issue. You know that for my bar mitzvah, my mom Wanted me she recommended that the song that I come out to from a bar mitzvah party would be I fight authority, authority always wins by John Mellencamp.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Oh, god.

Josh Schachter:
Can you think of anything more perfect for me, Christie?

Kristi Faltorusso:
Like Probably not.

Josh Schachter:
No. That’s just I

Kristi Faltorusso:
mean Yeah. Actually, let me come back to next week’s episode with a better song. Let me see if I can find a more current song

Josh Schachter:
that like that.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Maybe has matured with you and your answers.

Josh Schachter:
There’s no way. There’s no there’s no fucking way that you remember to come back next week.

Kristi Faltorusso:
We’re gonna I’m gonna I’m gonna go on a hunt, and I’m gonna find something.

Josh Schachter:
So so, Chrissy, do you wanna introduce our guest?

Kristi Faltorusso:
I would love for our guest to introduce herself. I didn’t do my introduction. Christy doesn’t

Josh Schachter:
know how to pronounce our guest’s name.

Kristi Faltorusso:
I’ll I’ll give

Josh Schachter:
him a call. I I I know

Kristi Faltorusso:
it, but I Suyen? Suyen?

Szuyin Leow:
This is Suyen. Lovely. You nailed it.

Josh Schachter:
Suyen. Suyen. Right?

Kristi Faltorusso:
Suyen. Yes. The z

Szuyin Leow:
is silent. The z is what throws everyone off. And my dad chose the spelling for my name when I was young when I was born because he was like, I want her name to be unique. You know, like Suyen wasn’t unique enough growing up in America. So so that’s where the silent z comes from.

Josh Schachter:
Well, but but silent z is is I mean, is is it a Chinese background that your your first name?

Szuyin Leow:
My name is Chinese. Yes. But the silent z is not a traditional spelling or anything like that. It’s just What my dad decided to do. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Christy, I went on to Chat GBT earlier today, and I typed in Soo Yeon’s name. And Chat GBT told me exactly how to pronounce it.

Szuyin Leow:
So this is why this is

Kristi Faltorusso:
why I really like if on everyone’s LinkedIn, and I do believe you have it. You have the little microphone next to it.

Szuyin Leow:
So I’m sure

Kristi Faltorusso:
if I go to your LinkedIn profile, you’ve got the correct enunciation. I just didn’t click on it yet. But I do see that you have it, and I think everyone should add that. So for everyone who’s listening, if you have it doesn’t even matter what your name is. Even if your name is Mike Smith, please go over to LinkedIn and just upload a recording of how to say your name, and then people are likely to get it right at least 1% more often than they do today.

Szuyin Leow:
Absolutely. It makes a lot easier.

Josh Schachter:
And and quick tip. You know, there’s a workaround too. So if you guys go to Christie’s profile and you hit on her pronunciation thing, She quickly sneaks in there. Hi. I’m Christy Veltarusso, CCO of client success. Been had 20 years, 6,

Kristi Faltorusso:
2, 2 years. Do that. Although now you are gonna go back and try to see how fast I could say it.

Josh Schachter:
That’s like the 1 800 collect, advertisement, you know, commercials where it’s like, hi. I am calling for we just had a baby. His name is Mike, you know, blah blah blah. I’m trying to, like, sneak the message in your first name. Anyways, so should we enter like, So Yen, who are you? What do you do? We’d love to learn about you.

Kristi Faltorusso:
And how did Josh trick you to coming to the podcast this afternoon?

Szuyin Leow:
Well, actually, it wasn’t Josh. I I came willingly. But, you know, maybe who knows? Maybe if the banter continues and turns bad for me, I’ll I’ll regret it later.

Josh Schachter:
Sounds like

Kristi Faltorusso:
so many dates that

Josh Schachter:
I’ve been on in the past.

Szuyin Leow:
I am currently the VP of customer experience at a company called Transcend. We are a data privacy infrastructure company. So we help Organizations with the most complex, messy data ecosystems figure out how to do Privacy. And, ultimately, our mission is to, enable everyone, you, me, all of us, to be able to have our data rights protected. So if you think about, you know, when you visit a website and you might see a little banner pop up asking, you know, how can we use your data? That’s one of the types of products that we provide. We also help with,

Josh Schachter:
what this is like GDPR, CCPA type of stuff, the cookie consent. Right.

Szuyin Leow:
Yes. That’s exactly right. Yep. So, all of those regulations that we are starting to catch up to now here in the US, is what we We help to empower our our customers to, automate within their organizations.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Are you and

Szuyin Leow:
we’re also branching now into more data governance more broadly.

Josh Schachter:
The other thing that I do is I interrupt mid sentence. I’m sorry. All done. Totally fine.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Yeah. See, I pause and wait. I only interrupt Josh, not our guests.

Josh Schachter:
This this is true, and our listeners can vouch for that. Mhmm. Are you hip to all the because I actually very recently I’m sorry that I didn’t know of you guys at the time. I very recently, took UpdateAI through our GDPR and CCPA process and all that. And so we looked at some some different, solutions out there. And it became, well, I became informed that what started out as just, like, the California Privacy Act has now become California, Colorado. Apparently, Texas is about to have the the the, like, the most strict guidelines. Can you tell folks out there, like, What’s going on in North America with following the pursuit of GDPR?

Szuyin Leow:
Yeah. So, North America well, one of the things that you I’m Sure many of the listeners are aware of, you know, as we are different than the EU in that, here in the US, we don’t have a federal Regulatory, requirement for things like data privacy. So right now it is at the state level, and it certainly did start with California’s regulation, but we are absolutely seeing more and more activity in various state legislatures, with lots of states looking to implement varying levels of privacy regulation, but certainly something that is great for a business like ours because there there’s just constant change. And, you know, We we actually work with, some advisory firms that keep us constantly up to date because it really is changing, at a very quick pace on a nearly daily basis.

Josh Schachter:
I mean, somebody an entrepreneur once told me years ago that fortunes are made in times of regulation. So Sounds good for your business. Like, it’s true. Right? Like

Kristi Faltorusso:
Yes.

Josh Schachter:
People buy products for three reasons, either to help them make money, to help them save money, or to help them with compliance and security risks.

Szuyin Leow:
So For sure. Absolutely. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
What’s your what’s your profile as a company? You guys are are, Or, you know, what, like, what stage you at in terms of just your general funding and size of the company. And I know you’re based in Hawaii. Correct? We’re just

Szuyin Leow:
I am based in Hawaii, but the company, Transcend as a whole, we are fully remote. So we do not have a headquarters. Our team is all over, mostly in the US, but I actually have a team member, based in the UAE, so we definitely have folks, all across the world. And we are early stage. We are currently series a, but definitely in that very high growth, stage of the company.

Josh Schachter:
And you’ve been there for 8 months?

Szuyin Leow:
I have. I joined in June of well, yeah. 7 months. Is that right? 7 months.

Kristi Faltorusso:
7 months. LinkedIn always gives you a bonus.

Szuyin Leow:
June of last year. Right?

Kristi Faltorusso:
Like, when I

Josh Schachter:
was out

Kristi Faltorusso:
of date okay. It it said because LinkedIn says 8 months, but that’s because it calculates off of whatever month year you put in.

Szuyin Leow:
That makes sense. Yes. Yeah. So just over half a year. Chrissy, I

Josh Schachter:
have more questions. No. No. I have No.

Kristi Faltorusso:
No. No. I was I wanna go. It’s my turn. It’s my turn.

Josh Schachter:
You asked my son. Pause so you could go.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Go. Go. Christy and I

Josh Schachter:
love each other. We’re actually friends.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Okay. He thinks because he invites me to his 40th birthday party that we’re friends.

Josh Schachter:
Now the whole world knows that

Szuyin Leow:
I’m cool.

Josh Schachter:
Thanks, Christy.

Kristi Faltorusso:
What? That you’re getting old?

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Yeah. But

Kristi Faltorusso:
you don’t have gray in your beard yet, so that’s good.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Well

Kristi Faltorusso:
Okay. I wanna talk about your title at Transcend. So your title is VP of customer experience. And That’s right. Following your track record here right here at Logigate, you’re VP of customer success, is it different at Transcend? Why are you customer experience? Are you actually doing customer experience? Is that is that just the naming convention that they use? What is the scope of the work that you’re doing?

Szuyin Leow:
Yeah. Really good questions. So, when I first interviewed for this job, I actually asked a similar question. And, I actually didn’t know When I first got the job offer, what title would be listed because they were still kind of deciding, back and forth. But the background, on Transcend is our 2 cofounders, they actually met, at Harvard in the engineering program. And so they are both deep Builders and coders, and our our whole company really comes from those origins. And so before I joined, The CX organization that we had here at Transcend was really our CTO and, folks within the engineering org. And so, our team that I the team I lead today is very technical.

Szuyin Leow:
We absolutely are focused on customer experience and do a lot of the kinda a traditional things you might see in a customer success org, but we we started more focused just on implementation and onboarding and some of the services to drive that as well as ongoing support. And I would say we’re just now in the past 6 months, starting to build out kind of more of the true customer success motions with our first CSM higher. But I think a key difference for me between what I was doing at Logic8 as VP of customer success there versus here at Transcend is, at LogiGate, we were building out a much more, robust services organization to support the customer success program That was required just given the complexity of, implementation and configuration at Logic 8. But here at Transcend, we’re trying to lean a lot more into that true SaaS model of and the building the platform in a way, where customers can get up and running on their own. That said, it’s still a very technical, and complex solution. So, in the CX world, really, what that means, here at Transcend is we’re kind of bridging that gap between product, and our engineering team and some of the best practices of customer success to make The most easy intuitive customer experience for our customers.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Awesome. So now you’re gonna go hire your 1st CSM. What does that work for you guys? 1st. Oh, you have? Oh, you hired your first one. Okay. So Yes. Talk to me so in a very technical ecosystem, What’s that CSM responsible for? What are they doing?

Szuyin Leow:
Yeah. So, the other thing to keep in mind is just the stage that we’re at right now. So given that we are, you know, Series a. Right now, the main thing I’m having that CSM focus on is just getting our renewals management in order to make Sure that we have, you know, proper, health around retention. Luckily, our product is pretty sticky, and so, once our customers get up and running successfully, that job is relatively easy, but, of course, as I think as everyone knows, you know, just given, the state of the economy and and health financial health of a lot of our customers, there’s certainly still work to be done there. So that’s the primary responsibility that our CSM is working on today, and then after that, what we’re having her focus on is strategic accounts, figuring out how to engage with them in, You know, strategic business reviews, a lot of the traditional CS type motions. For everyone else, be outside of that strategic bucket, we’re working on more Tech touch, low touch motions that are that’s being owned by a strategy and ops role that we have.

Josh Schachter:
What tools are you guys using for your tech and low touch motions?

Szuyin Leow:
Yes. Nothing formal today. We do not have a CS platform. Since we are A very engineering driven org. We actually are, we were previously using a tool called Airplane, which is kind of like It basically can hook up to a data warehouse and you can create different tasks and dashboards, but it is Kind of you have to code it, which so our CTO is building a lot of that for us. Airplane has actually recently been acquired by Airtable and is now gonna be Ending their service, in March. So we’re currently switching over to a new tool called Retool. But I would say Definitely an option that probably only makes sense if you have a true, like, deep engineering, resource in your organization.

Szuyin Leow:
I’ve heard great things. Excited about it because we get to create Everything we need, custom to us.

Josh Schachter:
That’s great. I’ve heard great things about retool. I didn’t realize that retool was actionable. I I know that you can create custom dashboards and things like that, but you can actually create workflows, with respect to that.

Szuyin Leow:
Like, different task forms. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Mhmm. Cool. Mhmm. Cool.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Okay. I gotta ask a question. So you hired this 1st CSM. Their primary responsibility is getting all the renewal stuff in order. Wanna hire a renewals manager to start, and then as you continue to evolve your process, than hire somebody who actually has the experience to do the strategic stuff on the strategic book. So why start by labeling them CSM if their Primary responsibilities are really just on the commercial end.

Szuyin Leow:
You’re calling me out on something, Christie, because

Kristi Faltorusso:
I’m calling everybody out on everything because you are not alone, my friend. You are not alone.

Szuyin Leow:
Here’s the here’s the total honest truth. When I first put out that job description, there was What I would call, basically, just a miscommunication between me and our sales leader, on who was gonna be owning renewals. And so Once, our 1st CSM came on board, she actually, had to take parental leave, her 1st month in, and then when she came back, I told her, Hey. Surprise. You’re not actually gonna be working on just strategic accounts and strategic business reviews and need you to focus on renewals. So, a good learning opportunity for me on how critical it is to stay, very much in lockstep with all of the leaders across the org. But, Luckily, it worked out really well. You know, this particular team member was totally willing to, take on this other area of responsibility and and definitely finding that To actually, I think, making her a deeper expert on our products because she has to know each and every one of the products that we’re selling in order to to do those renewals.

Josh Schachter:
I wanna make sure I understood you correctly. So you and your head of sales both Yeah. Plan to take on to own renewals?

Szuyin Leow:
Yeah. Well, my under my misunderstanding was that I thought our head of sales was gonna be owning renewals through, an AE that he had hired that was focused on the customer base, But he wanted that AE to focus purely on expansion for the most part. So, actually, now with the with, You know, knowing that this is kind of gonna be shared between our orgs, what we focused on is reviewing our full book of renewals for the year and identifying which ones we thought would include more significant expansion opportunities and having those renewals be owned by that AE, and then all the other renewals are being owned by my CSM.

Josh Schachter:
How do you feel about that, Christie? I don’t have an opinion, but you must.

Kristi Faltorusso:
I I think it’s an interesting model. Well, you you described you mentioned in one of your descriptions or something. You you guys have a lot of products. Right? How many products

Szuyin Leow:
do you have? We have 14 technically today.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Oh, wow.

Josh Schachter:
That’s a

Kristi Faltorusso:
lot of products. Okay. So in that case, I think it makes sense. Right? Because if I’m understanding this correctly, right, with each of these It’s a different sales motion. Right? Are you approaching it that way where it almost feels like a net new sale when you’re doing those?

Szuyin Leow:
Yeah. It’s, like, really, the the primary Path for expansion is cross sell for us right now. We have some usage levers for upsell, but most are cross sell and it would be, you know, a new demo per product.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Yeah. So in that case, Josh, my opinion is why I ask questions because it always depends. In this case, I’m very supportive of that model because you do need an AE who does have that level of comfort and experience with that sales motion, and you don’t wanna detract the responsibilities and and the focus areas of the woman who’s managing this trying to do that too. You’re just gonna set them up to fail. So that makes sense.

Szuyin Leow:
Yeah. We’ll see if it works. You know, I’ll give you an update. This is really And

Kristi Faltorusso:
if it does, like, the cool thing about it is you could just change it.

Szuyin Leow:
Like Exactly. That’s

Kristi Faltorusso:
the other thing. Right? I think that we all just need to be open to modifying what doesn’t work and, you know, fail fast, fix it, course correct, and try something

Szuyin Leow:
new. Yeah. Absolutely. But

Kristi Faltorusso:
it seems very much that’s easy. You’re okay.

Szuyin Leow:
Good. Yes.

Kristi Faltorusso:
You know, it doesn’t even matter what stage you’re on. I feel like everyone just needs to operate That way, if something’s not working, change it.

Szuyin Leow:
Oh, for sure. For sure.

Josh Schachter:
Amen to that.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Wait, can I now I wanna take this conversation back little bit further? Because what I love about what I’ve been seeing here or Josh doesn’t love that I always bring this up. You started off in consulting?

Szuyin Leow:
I did. I did.

Kristi Faltorusso:
I say this because it’s like I have this like, I am attached to these people that start their careers in consulting and then find themselves in the exact same place than I am. And I’m, like, I feel like I’m a complete disadvantage never having done consulting. So

Josh Schachter:
We got your time for what Before we go to Sue Yen.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Here we go.

Josh Schachter:
I wanna do a little therapy with Christy.

Kristi Faltorusso:
I know. He wants to talk about my insecurities about never having been in consulting. Is that what you’re looking at?

Josh Schachter:
Well, like, where is it coming from, Christy? Are you like, you kinda just said it right there. Is it because you feel like well, I mean, nobody’s beating you to the punch right now at Client success. You’re the CCO. Right? So it’s you and Dave. Like so it’s not like you’re being, like, passed for promotion by people that were consultants. Now maybe that’s happening for for a job interview. I don’t know. I

Kristi Faltorusso:
am not interviewing anymore. See, you’re such an instigator.

Josh Schachter:
But, like, yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Rumors get started, Josh.

Josh Schachter:
It is. It is. It is. But what so where is it does it come from a place where, like, the people that work for you, You like, that are the highest performers you see come from consulting? Is it a place where

Kristi Faltorusso:
you see LinkedIn that podcast that is giving me a complex because you guys seem to find all these folks that have these really amazing consulting experiences that I didn’t have. And even though I know the work is super hard, but I I have to feel like you guys come out of that with, like, a PhD in everything, and I think it makes you better leaders. And I think it it enhances your skill set in ways that maybe just coming up in the way I did, I might be lacking. So that’s why I’m interested in hearing about her journey in consulting.

Szuyin Leow:
What I would say, Christy, is I think consulting is more so just an accelerator for some of those skill sets. It’s not a requirement in order to get those skill sets. But I definitely did find that, being in the consulting world and starting my career there was a huge part of of the foundational skill set to help me in customer success. I mean, Just everything you learn about how to cultivate client relationships, and just really about I mean, honestly, I think one of the best skill sets is learning about how to ask good questions, which both of you need need to know how to do, you know, and and Yeah, Josh.

Kristi Faltorusso:
You need to learn how to do that.

Josh Schachter:
It did sound like that’s what she was saying, and I

Kristi Faltorusso:
do agree. You do need

Szuyin Leow:
to do that. On that, Josh.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Yeah. Yep.

Szuyin Leow:
Right. See, Josh? But, yeah. No. I think it it’s about asking Questions. And then one of the things I talked about a lot in consulting and, you know, now in the customer success world is it’s also just about, Understanding how to communicate with the customer where you are guiding them without them realizing that you’re guiding Like, they kinda feel like it’s their idea, but, really, you’re the one putting that idea in their head. Not to sound manipulative, But I think that’s one of the best skills of a consultant is, you know, to to give an idea to a client, but let them take credit for it.

Josh Schachter:
Sounds highly manipulative.

Szuyin Leow:
I know. Definitely sounds like you’re probably why most people don’t like consultants.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Okay. So then how did you take what you did at PwC? And, like, how is that the catalyst for you breaking into customer success?

Szuyin Leow:
Yeah. So at PwC, I I specialized in cybersecurity strategic consulting. So it was a More technical side, of consulting. And at LogiGate, when the CEO first reached out to me there, he was looking for someone with a background in cyber, that came from consulting. So, you know, I just happened to fit that that profile. I was based in Chicago at the time, and that’s where Logic Gate was founded. So I think it was really for me just a serendipitous right place, right time kinda moment, but, I really Found that jumping into the customer success world was the right place for me, and it also helps that I was getting burnt out, you know, traveling every week and flying on planes all the time. So

Kristi Faltorusso:
That’ll do it. Yeah. Okay. So now it looks like you got your

Josh Schachter:
Can I can I can I can I say something? God, you know. See, fall to Russo show.

Szuyin Leow:
Yep. Mhmm.

Josh Schachter:
In regards to consulting, so Yeah. I I think consulting is one of those things where, like, everybody’s, like, thank God I did it. I’d never do it again. Right? Like, you It’s it’s a beast and a burden, but you do it is such an accelerant, like you said, Sian. And it is the best place to grow up in in the business World professionally. I think. What, like, makes the most effective skills that come out of consulting For folks that, you know, listening to this, that haven’t been consultants is just structure. It’s honestly it’s Like, because it’s just ingrained into you.

Josh Schachter:
And some people naturally already have that structure, and so they don’t need to to go and get groomed in consulting. Christy, I believe you have that structure. You showed me before all of your, your your content that you’ve produced over the years and how it’s structured and this and that. And just do all the different enterprising things that you do, there’s no way you could do that if you were not structured. Right? And you also take, like, close attention to detail, Which is another virtue of being consulted. Because you prepare a deck and you get all these little, really fucking annoying comments From the partner. They call them partner comments because the partners are trying to prove their value. So they’ll say, okay, well, this is, you know, 2 pixels off to the left or whatever.

Josh Schachter:
Right? But, Christy, you also have that skill. I gotta be careful here. I’m getting, like, 2 points of interest, Christie. Okay.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Do you wanna know why?

Josh Schachter:
Because your mic flag says KF. Right?

Kristi Faltorusso:
It does.

Josh Schachter:
Like, you you pay attention to the little details.

Szuyin Leow:
And Totally.

Josh Schachter:
Like, I think the structure, paying attention to little details, that’s what matters from consulting. And when you do those things, I think you become a higher performer. And I think the consultants when you leave the consulting world, you have Less tolerance for lower performers who are not doing those things. And so you’re therefore able to build an organization that, you know, has the right practices in place and therefore moves together more aligned and more structured And those sorts of things. So, like, for anybody, it’s like, jeez. Like, what am I missing? I didn’t go to consult I didn’t I didn’t, you know, work for a consultant. Those are the things. Like, just be structured And have close attention to detail and, like, do everything at a at a very excellent level.

Josh Schachter:
I don’t think it’s about

Kristi Faltorusso:
what he’s doing. Crush all your hopes and dream dreams. Listen to this. But my my leader for nearly 6 years at BrightEdge, which I started in tech, came from McKinsey. So I was groomed by a consultant. Right. I was I was, like, groomed by this consultant. So, like, I was, like, brainwashed.

Kristi Faltorusso:
So all the you guys And

Josh Schachter:
was it a he was a woman or a man?

Kristi Faltorusso:
It was a gentleman.

Josh Schachter:
So and the guy was a amazing, I

Kristi Faltorusso:
still a

Josh Schachter:
pain in the ass. Right? But he was a huge pain in

Kristi Faltorusso:
the ass. He was hard. He was hard. Yeah. It’s hard. But he was but I walked away from that thinking, like, I would never be the leader I am today if I didn’t spend those 6 years under him.

Josh Schachter:
Right.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Right? So

Szuyin Leow:
I’m always grateful for that time, Chrissy. Right.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Okay. And and

Josh Schachter:
and Jake, like, my new

Kristi Faltorusso:
I’m gonna get over this complex

Josh Schachter:
with you. Our new our new head of customer success, who we’re gonna officially announce on Thursday, but, yeah, this won’t be posted until Wednesday morning, so that’s fine. Jessica Cohen. Right? She’s never been in consulting, I don’t believe, but one of her previous jobs just a couple years ago was to work as a customer success manager for Slack. And guess what? Slack hires former consultants because it’s all change management because they’re trying to change organizations to go from email to so they hire just consultants. So she has that consulting type process even, you know, even though she never came from consulting. I’m probably completely off. She probably worked for 10 years in consulting.

Josh Schachter:
I just don’t know it. But the but the point is, like, It’s it’s still that’s the like, that’s what really, makes the biggest difference, I think, in in consultants. So there. I’m done, and now we can talk on whatever else you want to

Kristi Faltorusso:
talk about. This goes back to, like, pick a leader, not a job. Right? So if I didn’t come from that background, I want to develop those skills. I wanna go work under somebody who can groom me and help develop me in the areas that I might not be as strong. Right? So I didn’t seek out working for the leader I did. It was a happy accident. But I look back at at all the days, even the days where there was lots of tears and there was plenty of those. And I am so grateful for everything I learned.

Kristi Faltorusso:
And I do think that it has prepared me for the opportunities I’ve taken on in my career.

Josh Schachter:
It’s pick a leader, not a job, but it’s also just fucking do it. Like, it sucks. Like, I spent my I spent yesterday we’re we’re recording this on Monday. I spent Sunday Doing a timeline of, like like, my tasks and, like, roadmap for, like, an event coming up that we’re doing in March. And then I spent, you know, the other half of Saturday doing, like, a product roadmap Gantt chart. And it and I was procrastinated, and it freaking sucks. But, like, you just just do it. Like, anybody can do a Gantt chart.

Josh Schachter:
You don’t have to go to, like, Beacon. So just fucking do it. It’s not as fun as the social posts Or whatever. But just, like, that’s that’s that’s my answer to it.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Well, while you were building Gantt charts, I was, meal prepping for 4 hours on Sunday, so we just had a different day. But I was also preparing, I think. Anyway, Suyen, can we go back to your time at Logic Monitor? I wanna talk about that because you started off as a CSM, and in 5 years, you went you made it your way to VP. And so, like, that is the journey that I had at BrightEdge where I went from a a senior CSM when I joined being a subject matter expert, so just like yourself, made it to a VP role and then obviously took that to to different opportunities. So I wanna hear about your journey there because you spent 5 plus year five and a half years there. So what what did that look like for you?

Szuyin Leow:
Yeah. So it’s logic gate and logic gate.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Sorry. That’s I am totally fine.

Szuyin Leow:
Sorry. Yeah. So when I poor

Josh Schachter:
man’s logic monitor logic.

Szuyin Leow:
This is why people listen to

Josh Schachter:
the show to you, and I’m sorry. They want they want candor.

Szuyin Leow:
Logic Gate. So At Logic8, when I joined, I was the 2nd CSM. So there was a, CSM there before me, And he, was old friends with the founders at Logic8. They actually all met in consulting as well. So I came in and joined and, really what happened is as as we grew up together as a company, what we found is that the the first, CSM that was there, he started to take over more of the technical support org. And it gets, I think maybe because of, the type of consulting I had done previously, the customer success motions just came really naturally to me, and I was very passionate about it. And one of the things that I really loved, and what I found was kind of my superpower, which I didn’t know about before, was, finding really incredible people and just, I think having a knack for hiring a strong team. And so as I demonstrated that I could do that and do that at Scale.

Szuyin Leow:
That is really, I think, what allowed me to just continue to to grow and influence at Logic8.

Kristi Faltorusso:
So alright. Give me your hiring tips then because I I’m 5050 on my hiring. But I won’t even say a butt. What what makes you so great at hiring? What are you looking for when you hire?

Josh Schachter:
Structure and attention to detail.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Consulting that around.

Szuyin Leow:
Say my answer might even, yeah, make you even more upset, Christy. But, we did figure out to have the happiness. Out that, the best profile so I I will say I think it is about honing in on your profile of your ideal candidate for, your team. And what we did find was the best profile for our particular flavor of CSMs, at Logic Gate was folks that had experience in consulting within the governance risk and compliance space. The reason why we ended up doing and building our team in that way and I actually say, we hired that way for both our services, like, implementation team as well as our customer task managers, and it was because, especially on the services side, we found that it just was so valuable for those team members to have experience Implementing a GRC, a governance risk compliance program within multiple organizations. But we also weren’t looking to hire folks that Had necessarily been in the industry for years years years for just frankly because we couldn’t afford it. So if we wanted to find, Less experienced talent that could still say they had all those at bat, so we needed to get it in the consulting world. So well, maybe we didn’t need to, but that’s where we found it was easiest to

Kristi Faltorusso:
hire him now. And it worked. Yeah. Yeah. So So you guys prioritize subject matter expertise over customer success experience.

Szuyin Leow:
Absolutely. Yep. All of the I think this is fair to say. I think every single person I hired at LogiGate Did not have a customer success background. They came from consulting in that subject matter expert area.

Kristi Faltorusso:
And would you say that that attributed to your personal success when you went over Logic 8.

Szuyin Leow:
Definite. I would say yes.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Yeah. Okay. So I I say this because I feel like there are a lot of leaders that over index on the customer success experience and forget the value of quick learning subject matter experts. And in my experience, I would always rather prefer a subject matter expert than someone who’s got 10 years of customer success And it’s just my preference now. I’ve done this long enough. And even as myself, right, I started off as a CSM. I came into an organization as a subject matter expert. I was I was one of their customers, so that’s how I actually broke in.

Kristi Faltorusso:
And then all of my jobs in between, I don’t think I was as successful because I couldn’t connect with my customers and the change management that was acquired because I didn’t have the industry expertise. So I always felt like my success was really related to my experiences. And so even at client success, I think I can be successful here. I I like to think that I’ve been successful here because I’ve been a CS leader, and I’ve used customer success software. So I just think it’s interesting to say that your profile is aligned with the subject matter expertise. Your experience also would indicate that that’s true, yet we see so many leaders who would rather find somebody who’s been a CSM 10 times over rather than focusing on folks that might have the experience that would actually help their customers.

Josh Schachter:
You know why, Christy? Because all he’s down to is structure and attention to detail. You can learn, like, that’s the, that’s the key to being great at customer success, right? Like Just be structured and and enjoy helping people. And that’s it.

Kristi Faltorusso:
I think it’s a little more than that.

Josh Schachter:
It is a little more than that. Whose pans are are clinking in the background?

Kristi Faltorusso:
I thought that was your dog, Josh. I was gonna tell you take

Szuyin Leow:
the bowl might be my dog.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Take the bowl away from her. Was, like, take the bowl away from him because he’s done eating. It sounds like a collar clicking on a metal bowl. No? Do we did anyone else think that was the noise we were hearing?

Szuyin Leow:
I I’m pretty sure it’s my blinds. I am surprised you can hear it. And so I’m using, a microphone that my husband uses for his recreational YouTubing. I don’t normally have this set up, but that’s why I also have this blue screen behind me. Well, now I’m

Kristi Faltorusso:
really interested in his YouTube channel. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
What does he YouTube?

Szuyin Leow:
He YouTubes himself doing crosswords.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Oh. Stop.

Szuyin Leow:
Are you serious? I’m I’m serious.

Kristi Faltorusso:
There is a channel for everything. I love that. I wish someone would do a video of me doing Wordle every day.

Josh Schachter:
How does it work?

Szuyin Leow:
He actually has done Wordle on his his channel before too.

Kristi Faltorusso:
So he likes so good at Wordle?

Szuyin Leow:
He’s very good at most word games.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Yeah. Mo word games. Okay.

Josh Schachter:
Is it like the camera’s bird’s eye view and, like, it’s, like, it’s Shooting down at his hand, like, going over the New York Times

Szuyin Leow:
cross border. His his computer.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Josh, it’s not like he’s rolling out the New York Times, and he’s like, hold on. Let me get my number 2 pencil going over here.

Josh Schachter:
I mean, you know He’s

Szuyin Leow:
not he’s not he’s not doing your ad, though.

Kristi Faltorusso:
But, Josh, was that the visual you had? The New York Times paper breaking it out.

Josh Schachter:
You know what? It’s like that, Chrissy, back back when we were in school, like, you had the, before you had PowerPoint, you had, like, the laminated, like, the thin strips of, like, clear paper.

Kristi Faltorusso:
That went on the projector.

Josh Schachter:
That went on the projector, and you see the teacher’s handwriting. Right? Like, yeah, that just something like that.

Kristi Faltorusso:
That’s kinda what you thought this was. Yeah. I’m sorry to let you down.

Josh Schachter:
I’m just following you. It’s okay.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Maybe we’ll do it though where we put the camera down, and we’ll do names. Okay. We won’t do that.

Josh Schachter:
How’d you get into customer success in the 1st place? Do you I mean well, Saks let me rephrase it because we did just talk about a a lot about consulting. You shared a story with us, though, before the call with our producer, one of our producers, about Mhmm. An experience you had in college. Can you share that and how that yeah.

Szuyin Leow:
Yeah. So, In college, my husband and I met through an organization called Dance Marathon. Are either of you familiar with it?

Kristi Faltorusso:
It’s no multiple universe. To share a lot.

Szuyin Leow:
So it’s, the one we had, at least, was a fundraiser for Children’s Miracle Network. And, basically, you put on an event each year. Ours was 15 hours long where people sign up and commit to Stan for that entire time, and they raise money for, Children’s Miracle Network. And so we were part of Committee, we met on the committee called recruitment and morale where we were supposed to recruit people to join the fundraiser, and then on the day of keep morale up and keep people energized. And the committee leader we had, told us about this concept called the monkey sphere, which is basically, this, like, social socio, like, physiological type Concept of there’s only so many people that one person that you can have a meaningful connection with. I could go into all the science of it, but basically, like, they did this, anatomy research on the brains of primates and they found that the larger Size brain primates could connect with more people, they had a larger tribe that they were connected with and when they looked at human brains, They found that, you know what? Now I have to make sure that I actually have Dunbar’s number right. Did you do you have it in the notes, Josh?

Josh Schachter:
150. 150.

Szuyin Leow:
150. So 150 is the, magic number for what is called Dunbar’s number, and that basically says that you can have up to a 150 meaningful connections. And beyond that, it’s really hard for us as humans to actually connect with those people. Now why we were talking about this in Dance Marathon is, our committee leader told us that, you know, if we wanted to actually recruit and hit our number, that we were trying to get a number of people at the event. We would need to know more than a 150 people and make meaningful connections with them. And so we were trying to kind of hack, like, how can we do that and and recruit these people and bring them in? And That to me just has so many parallels to customer success. Like, if you are working in the customer success world and you have a large book of accounts, Assuming most of those accounts are gonna have more than 1 contact, you’re gonna need to be able to connect with people beyond Your monkey sphere, your Dunbar’s number. And so a very simple methodology that I started to use In my dance marathon days that I’ve now carried over into the customer success world is just a spreadsheet.

Szuyin Leow:
It’s nothing groundbreaking, but it is structure, Josh, and I just call it my personal tidbit spreadsheet, and I pull it up basically in every interaction. And it’s just got Some standard columns like their name, their significant other, their family, their hometown, their hobbies, their pet names, You know, typical things that may come up in small chat, and I pull it up every time, And it makes it get super easy to make it feel to each individual that you’re talking to that you have that deeper connection with them. And it seems like very, very small little things, but it’s I found it to be hugely helpful, both in my customer relationships as as in my team member relationships. You know, I use it in 1 on ones as well. So it’s a small thing. Back to my days of dance marathon, but I still use it every day today.

Kristi Faltorusso:
So I need to go back to this dance marathon. So you guys weren’t dancing?

Szuyin Leow:
We did dance. We’re just dancing. I forgot a critical part. Yeah. Every hour I’m waiting

Kristi Faltorusso:
for this. I’m like, wait. So tell me. Wait. So you just At the top of the hour, you dance and then you stop and just continue to stand.

Szuyin Leow:
Yes. Well so every hour on the hour, we did this thing called the morale dance, And it was a big choreographed, like, usually a medley of songs, and the recruitment and morale committee would choreograph the whole morale dance. So that was another thing that we did. My husband and I actually we ended up leading that committee Our senior year, and, we then performed our that Morel dance as our 1st dance at our wedding. Fun tip. Cool. So Oh, that’s so cool. Yeah.

Szuyin Leow:
That’s here.

Kristi Faltorusso:
I like that.

Szuyin Leow:
But, but that that that’s the dance marathon part is you do the morale dance at the top of the hour. And then during the hour, there’s usually, like, themes each hour. So there’s different activities and, like, I don’t know, different games and things you can play.

Josh Schachter:
And it’s

Szuyin Leow:
over again. Just standing

Kristi Faltorusso:
the whole time. Josh, I think we could turn your birthday party into this dance marathon.

Josh Schachter:
To a dance marathon.

Szuyin Leow:
There you go.

Josh Schachter:
That’s true. Let’s do it.

Kristi Faltorusso:
I would like to coordinate some dances with you.

Josh Schachter:
Chrissy, how do you I’m ignoring that. How do you What’s your process for what Suyen just said? Like, how do you recall the fun tidbits about customers?

Kristi Faltorusso:
I’ve been over here trying to just commit its memories. Is that crazy? No. Just kidding. Well, I do try to do that. I think I’m, like, mostly good at it to your point. It is hard. But I do like, you know, I my things are like the repeating someone’s name multiple times throughout a call, you know, making sure that I bring back the details that I can recall. But, honestly, we use client us for everything.

Kristi Faltorusso:
So just like you’re using your spreadsheets, we’ve got sections in the platform that allow us to manage information at a contact level. So if I’m getting on a call with a customer, I pull up client success, then I’ve got all the information about the individuals that I’m connecting with. And so I use that as my space to, like, keep my little notes, and allows me to prepare. So if I’m getting on a call with somebody, I’ve got, like, oh, they just took they just went on vacation. Right? They’re, like, all those little they just had a baby. This is the baby’s name or, like, their person’s pregnant, and they’re planning and, like, they’re they have a gender reveal or, like, whatever whatever’s going on in their life. I try to just document those things so you can recall it in conversation. So instead of are building around the weather, which is, like, my number one biggest pet peeve on calls ever.

Kristi Faltorusso:
I’m like, if you get in a call and someone’s talking about the weather, hang up, Drop. I don’t know. Because there’s a 1000000 ways to prepare and have better conversation or better dialogue than the weather. What’s what’s what’s default.

Josh Schachter:
What’s what’s your default?

Kristi Faltorusso:
I usually go in prepared because I have something like, I’ve either done the research about the person. If it’s a first time meeting, I’ll bring it back to something that I learned about them and the research that I’ve done when I prepared for it or jump right into business, honestly. It depends if it’s a it depends on what the conversation is. So if it’s me with a group, you know, might be like some friendly banter tidbits about, like, what’s going on with their company because that’s always helpful. Right? Bring it back to business. Or if it’s a 1 on 1, depending on my relationship, we’ll have

Josh Schachter:
And just for the record, Soo Yin, do you remember how Christy broke the ice on this conversation? I do. When she first met you 45 minutes ago?

Szuyin Leow:
I don’t remember. She she

Josh Schachter:
needed she needed help pronouncing your name. That was her Oscar.

Kristi Faltorusso:
But I didn’t even need the help. I was I said it. Right? I just I had a I had a fear of saying it wrong because I think that it’s rude and insulting, Josh, when you show up to this podcast and you mispronounce our guest names like you do.

Josh Schachter:
I did do that last time.

Kristi Faltorusso:
You did do that. I don’t

Josh Schachter:
think it

Szuyin Leow:
was last time.

Josh Schachter:
I think it

Kristi Faltorusso:
was a couple episodes ago. Couple episodes ago. Couple episodes. You still did it.

Josh Schachter:
So, Yin, there’s something actually on your your LinkedIn profile that I wanna probe, and it’s, Like, specific, and I’m not trying to to promote it or anything. But I actually wanna understand it because I I’ve heard a lot about Pavilion like, the GoToMarket community, which is primarily I associate with being a sales leader community. Mhmm. Mhmm. And I see that you’ve been very active in Pavilion, And you’ve done a couple of their their courses or workshops. Right? CCO school, enterprise go to market school. And these are, like, 10 week, courses that you’ve enrolled in. Is there value in Pavilion as a nonsalesperson, as a customer success leader? What exactly did you take away from those courses? Would you rec who would you recommend them for? I’d love to get your Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Candid experience on that for others.

Szuyin Leow:
I really enjoyed my experience, and they they are trying to build it out to be more holistic across g the go to market space. So they’re building out more specific customer success materials now. I honestly did not look at any of the, Like, lower level CS, trainings. I was really focused on more of the, executive level trainings. I enjoyed the CCO school. I did take away some really helpful tidbits from, a lot of the courses. I think the other thing that was, well, they just had, you know, different, like, frameworks and structure, and examples of how Yeah. How how different, different leaders have done, like, customer journey mapping and things like that.

Szuyin Leow:
So, I would say for most of the things they covered, none of it was new, but it was refreshing to help me learn just how other people have approached different problems.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Cool. Yeah. Just curious. Always been curious. Top of it. Yeah. I have 1 more question.

Josh Schachter:
You’re a new or newish mom. Congratulations.

Szuyin Leow:
I am.

Josh Schachter:
Do you have a son or a daughter?

Szuyin Leow:
I have a daughter. She’s, Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah. She’s new ish now. She’s 19 months. So she’s

Kristi Faltorusso:
Oh, there’s she’s in college. She’s in college, so new ish.

Josh Schachter:
Okay. So emphasis on the ish part. Yes. What’s one thing that you’ve learned from motherhood that you’ve applied to Becoming a better customer success leader.

Szuyin Leow:
Yeah. I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. And I’m sorry. My blinds are blowing again, so probably Sounds like the hands are knocking again. So a big thing that I’ve read about in different parenting books and blogs is, this this concept of, like, respectful parenting and giving your children a Safe space to be able to learn and explore on their own. And, I’ve been drawing parallels between that To the work I’m doing now at Transcend because we are on this journey right now of really going back and exploring all of our products and just thinking about how can we make it Easier for our customers to be able to do this on their own, and I just keep thinking to myself, it’s like we haven’t made the safe space yet or The space safe yet. Is that what I said? You know, we we need to put in place the right boundaries and guardrails and give them the right level of guidance where they can feel like they’re able to floor and learn and maybe fail safely on their own, but I don’t feel comfortable putting our customers into our product like that yet. We still need to kind of do more hand holding than I would like to.

Szuyin Leow:
So I think that’s one of the biggest things that I have drawn a connection with right now is, understanding that and I’m not trying to compare the customers to children or anything like that. Like, it’s not like they’re babies, but I think there’s a real fundamental of how we all learn best, which is, you know, you wanna be able to Have experts that have your back and that kind of helps set up the structure and, you know, the the safe zone for you And then let you go and, do what you do and explore on your own.

Josh Schachter:
Cool. Love it.

Szuyin Leow:
Yeah. Think Think of it as kind of like the way I’m talking to my team about it right now is, kinda like babyproofing your kitchen. But how do we Babyproof our products in a way that, allows them to to play and have fun safely.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Josh, is there a reason why you’re asking about babies?

Josh Schachter:
As far as I know, I’m not having a baby Anytime in the next 9 months, so I think no. We’re good. Christie, why don’t you, why don’t you Why don’t you end us, Christie, on that note?

Kristi Faltorusso:
Josh is not having a baby, everyone.

Josh Schachter:
See you all next week.

Szuyin Leow:
It’s fun. I’ve had fun.

Kristi Faltorusso:
I hope you enjoyed your time with us. We enjoyed being

Szuyin Leow:
so little bit

Kristi Faltorusso:
more about you, and thank you so much for participating in our banter and not letting Josh scare you away. Oh. See, she’s made it through the whole episode.

Szuyin Leow:
I did. And I didn’t regret it. So See? Yes. Thank you