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Jon Johnson:
It is me, John Johnson. Both Josh and Christie are out of office today or doing something. Christy’s teaching a webinar. Josh is just me and Josh in New York, probably eating a bagel somewhere. But, I’m so excited for today’s episode. I am John Johnson from user testing and unchurned here on this podcast.

Jon Johnson:
Got a couple of cool guests with me today and a guest host. You may remember him from one of our past episodes. We have Michael Forney, joining us. I’d love to say what’s up, buddy.

Michael Forney:
How’s it going? It’s good to be back. Appreciate the reinvite. And, yes, I am today’s Josh imposter, so I was gonna do my best to impersonate him, but he advised me against that. So, I guess I’ll just be me today. I’m Michael. I am the VP of customer success at a company called Responsive, which helps to semi automate and streamline the RFP response process, helping companies unlock their corporate and organizational knowledge. So it is a wild and fun ride at that company. That’s what one of the things that brought me actually to this podcast was just navigating all of the situations that we do, in a high growth SaaS business.

Jon Johnson:
Is anybody high growth these days? Let’s be honest. Like, ideally, high growth.

Michael Forney:
Yes. I mean, it feels like breakneck speed pretty much at all times. And every 6 months, it just gets faster and faster. I keep asking my colleagues, like, when is this gonna slow down? And they’re like

Jon Johnson:
It just gets differently quick. Yeah. Well, we also have, somebody that I’m excited to, have this conversation with. We have Sam Loveland from SalesLoft. I’d love, Sam, for you to kinda jump in and give a quick little intro on on who you are and and what your role and what you’re focusing on at SalesLoft is today.

Sam Loveland:
Sure. So thank you for having me. I’m Sam Loveland, the chief customer officer at SalesLoft. I will be there almost a year. Come July, it will be 1 year. And my responsibility is everything post sale, so inclusive of customer success and renewals, professional services, support, and customer and partner education. So that’s all under my remit. It’s about 300 folks globally, that we have.

Sam Loveland:
And, you know, what is SalesLoft or who is SalesLoft? So we are a revenue orchestration platform, meaning we help sellers be more effective and efficient in how they go to market and how they sell, you know, by making sure we understand where the buyer is in their journey and meeting them in that moment. And so that’s really important for us. And so, of course, we’re on the AI journey like many other software as a service companies. So looking forward to that discussion. You know, we were early on, I’d say. You know, we really came out with our 1st AI led, effort, you know, back last year. You know, in June of last year, we launched Rhythem, which allowed us to really take in signals from partners, from your own internal data to be able to help prioritize the work so the sellers can, you know, actually be in front of customers instead of migrating back you know, going back and forth with Soul Charing. And so thank you for having me.

Sam Loveland:
And I’ve been in the post sales space for many years. I don’t wanna say the number of years, but, you know, I started out, back in the early days of Salesforce, and, you know, when, you know, first customer success was coming about, did journeys with Yammer and Microsoft. And then before SalesLoft was four and a half years at ServiceNow. So very familiar with the tech space and especially in the post sales customer, facing parts of the organizations.

Jon Johnson:
Well, you said Yammer, and I feel like my eye twitch just a little bit. Like, I remember my first startup, we had Yammer and we were switching over to Slack, I think.

Sam Loveland:
That was a precursor. Right? Yammer was really the precursor to Slack and, you know, and and the collaboration platforms that exist today.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. And I I have, like, a very visceral memory of, like, getting Slack for the first time and feeling like somebody had just handed me a puppy, and it it just filled it gave me everything that I needed. Right? And then you you get down to the nuts and bolts, and obviously there’s gaps. But, like that, it it was so what was that? It was in Voca in Santa Barbara, California. Not that you remember this or anything, but, gosh, Yammer, that was a flashback. Man, maybe we should talk about all of the companies that we used to work for that that maybe don’t don’t exist anymore or exist in very different ways.

Michael Forney:
Is Yammer still

Sam Loveland:
active? Yammer is part of Microsoft. So Yammer of Microsoft, that was the last Steve Ballmer acquisition that he did, in that summer of 2012.

Jon Johnson:
A Ballmer.

Sam Loveland:
And then, we became part of Microsoft. So it is still part of Microsoft’s 3 65 package. It’s still part of SharePoint, and it does exist. But, yeah, that was that was an acquisition that was done.

Jon Johnson:
Man, that is so wild. I’m loving this. This is like what so I will I will say, Sam, that I am very pro talking about how long I have been in the in this industry. Not because it ages me, but because I feel like there is, like, a little bit of sentimentality. Like, when you go back to, like, customer success in 2008 or 2007 when we were, like, still try like, really having that argument about, are we support or not? Right. Like, not what’s happening today, but, like, the real, misunderstanding. Right?

Sam Loveland:
You know, that that was the the genesis is at least back in the Salesforce days. That was a genesis of customer success was really, you know, kind of, you know, call it a red account team, you know, very reactive, handling escalations coming from customers, but with, like, a very white gloved approach Mhmm. Because it wasn’t always, you know, bug fixes or technical issues. It was more around people and adoption and process changes that we had to bring customers along, which is a very different experience. And that’s really kind of the genesis that I saw of customer success. You had account managers but not really customer success. And so, you know, that kind of took off. But, yes, you’re right about that was you know, I joined in 2005, but on the professional services side, when I first joined.

Sam Loveland:
And then in 2006, made the switch over into customer success.

Jon Johnson:
That’s amazing.

Sam Loveland:
Okay. So I I did age myself just now.

Jon Johnson:
No. It’s fine. This this will be a little bit of a left turn from what we’re going to talk about, but I do wanna ask you some questions because well, I love this background, and I’m really glad that you have kind of you’ve seen every permutation, not just like startups, but also, you know, with Salesforce and Microsoft and some of these kind of bigger names that kind of figure things out in a better way than, than, you know, they have more resources, more people, more opportunity. What you just said as defining what customer success is, I feel like over the last 15 years or so, we have gone down this very winding path of what is the role of customer success? What is a CSMs job? What is the role of a CCO even? Right? And I’m feeling like we are coming back to what you just said. At least in some aspects. I know that there’s always gonna be outliers. But I would love to hear, even if you just can kind of like just some gleamings or your thoughts on where we’re at as an industry. And and if you think maybe we’re moving in the right direction or maybe we’re still kind of fighting for an identity with somebody who has kind of carried this identity for so long?

Sam Loveland:
Yeah. I mean, I think we’re always gonna be finding an identity, to be honest. Right? And and the way I think about it is, you know, customer success will continue to evolve. And I think this is a great topic into AI, right, which is, you know, there is always the human element of it, and I don’t think that goes away. Right? For your largest and your most strategic accounts, you know, like, you are gonna need that because a lot of it is about relationships. Right? It’s about building that trust with the the person on the opposite end, helping them understand the value and, ultimately, what you’re trying to drive towards. And this is the evolution that I have seen on customer success is, originally, it was about make customers happy. Then it was about, like, get licenses utilized.

Sam Loveland:
Then it was about driving adoption. And I think where we’re at really is, you know, all of that’s great, and you need that. Right? But ultimately, you wanna get to what are the outcomes that you’re try driving, right, or what are the business outcomes that you’re driving for that customer. And that those business outcomes vary depending on what product it is that you’re implementing. You know, in the case of SalesLoft, it’s about, you know, building bigger pipeline, success and what we’re trying to drive towards. Now at the top end, I don’t believe the human part will go away. Now AI will help support, you know, the CSMs, how they prioritize their work, who do they focus on. You can have AI feed those information.

Sam Loveland:
You can have AI help summarize calls, help you create emails better or more pointed emails, but the human’s still there. On the on the tail end, right, of your customers because you can’t keep adding resources is where, you know, I think there’s a lot of opportunity, you know, that we’ve started our journey on, you know, the AI path for how do we leverage more tech touch capabilities. And when people hear tech touch, they often think about marketing campaigns, right? And it is it’s more than that, Right? Marketing campaigns are great and, you know, they’re important, but, like, how do you augment that with real technology capabilities so that, you know, you have you know, I don’t like using the word, but, like, you have a Copilot as a, you know Yeah. Like, when you’re a, you know, customer logging in and using that product, whatever that product is, you want somebody to sit by them to help them when they’re, you know, not as a sales help, but help them like, hey, how do I use this feature better, you know, within that product? And that’s how, like, the Copilot will help the CSM out because they’re not having to spend time talking about feature functionality. We wanna, like, really elevate more the conversation around the strategic capabilities and what’s the process with the change management, like, what’s the center of excellence governance model, like, broader strategic thinking versus, like, tactically go click this button if you need to turn that feature on, right, and moving away from that.

Michael Forney:
Yeah. I think I I totally agree with everything that you’re saying, Sam, and I think that the role of the human, at least as far as we can tell, it will still be needed. Although, I don’t know. I’m not completely closing the door on our robot overlords taking over over completely. I mean, they can do some pretty amazing things today that I would never have said that by now, they’d be able to do. So anything is still possible.

Sam Loveland:
Anything is still possible. I think, you know, where, you know, I I it goes back to that trust, that relationship. Right? Like, that is the part that, you know, I don’t know if a robot or, you know, a purely tech solution will be able to solve. Completely. But I agree. There’s, like, more and more opportunity. And the way we look at it is, what are those everyday things, you know, that you do day in and day out that we can offload, right, that, like, you can train a, you know, LLM to be able to go do and be able to provide you that, right, or things that we don’t like to do, right, you know, and and typing up those emails, yes, they’re valuable. They’re extremely valuable.

Sam Loveland:
But if they’re summarizing an email that’s going back to a customer based on a recording that you just did and you, you know, you have your next steps and actions, like, that could all be automated. Right? Like, it’s valuable. It can all be automated, but me spending the next 20 minutes typing up that email and going back through my notes is not really a value added activity. If you could take off 80% of that and just spend 2 minutes cleaning it up and sending it out, how much more productive? And now I could go work on the next customer or whatever the next, you know, key activity is that I have to go do. Totally.

Michael Forney:
That’s good. A lot of what we’ve been talking about with AI, and I think a lot of what’s the chatter is in the marketplace is very operator level.

Sam Loveland:
Mhmm.

Michael Forney:
Emails, call summaries, very, very tactical things. It’s like, I I need to get 15 minutes back. What about you know, when I when I think about AI, I’m trying to think about it in terms of what, like, the CSMs or what the support team members, on my Yeah. My department can what they can get they can get out of it. But I’m also really trying to think about it in ways of, like, how can it help me with my, like, data analysis and pattern identification between who’s churning and who’s renewing and why is that and all of that. So how do you think like, when you think about your board decks and, like, the presentations you need to share with your your boss and, you know, internally to find those nuggets of insights. Yeah.

Sam Loveland:
That’s the insights. Right? That you’re yeah. I mean

Michael Forney:
How are you using AI for that?

Sam Loveland:
So I think we’re still early on in the journey on that. I know we we have analysis insights that we’re getting from, you know, generative AI in terms of looking at our overall customer base, where are they from a health segmentation perspective, how is that improving over time, and helping us be be, clear about, like, where we need to focus and what we need to do and, you know, that both at a tactical, you know, CSM level, but also, you know, up to the board, right, up to, you know, the the c level executives, up to the board of what what are the changes, what are the insights that we’re gaining, and to be able to do that. Right? And you can also even extrapolate those insights into product enhancements. Right? Like, if you are you know, the way you could do that is if if on, know, you do your call recordings and you listen to the call recordings or not listen, but, like, the AIs looking at the call recordings, they can extrapolate and say, hey. By the way, this insight, you know, this is an area that customers are asking for. These are features they’re asking for that’s not available. How does that feed into the product engine, right, into the product engineering side of the house? So I think what you’re honing in is on what are the insights that you wanna glean from and how do you take action both as a leader, you know, in an organization, but also as an individual in terms of completing your task at a more operational level. But yeah.

Michael Forney:
Totally. Totally. I and I’ve spoken on this podcast before about the importance of cross functional collaboration in order to truly achieve, you know, remarkable customer success metrics like retention and renewal rates. And I think it’s only possible when you have the whole machine all working together, product sales, marketing, finance, legal, etcetera. Everybody is, you know, they know what their piece is, but you have to you have to create a system that I will float those pieces to the top so that you can give it to, hey. Our messaging around this product is clearly not working. You know? Hey. I need marketing to help jump in here, or there’s all this product feedback in one particular areas product needs to know about that.

Michael Forney:
Yeah. We’re still very much in the early days of of that as well. Still trying to figure out how all of that works, and I’m I’m getting demos from, like, as many AI companies as

Sam Loveland:
possible. Every day, there’s so many, like, new,

Michael Forney:
you know,

Sam Loveland:
vendors or new AI vendors that pop up. It’s hard to keep up. Right? And and, you know, some fantastic work that’s out there.

Jon Johnson:
And that actually brings me to, like, the meat of what I wanted to talk about today. So we’re obviously we’re all talking about AI. Obviously we’re all looking for solutions. Michael, you, you pointed something out. Very intelligent, I think is right now. It’s very much on the operator level. Like it’s like a CSM utilizing a tool. You know, we talk about update AI because they pay for this podcast that helps with, like, follow ups and call recordings, and it’s a great tool.

Jon Johnson:
It’s fantastic. However, I actually am seeing something similar, Michael, where every day there’s a new AI tool. There’s a new niche. There’s a new, like, it’s just, we just plug this in here and plug that in there and then give it all of our data. Right? And to what you said, Sam, earlier, there is this thing where CSMs, our heart should be built around how are we helping our customers governance with our tool. We’re not actually doing that on the back end. Right? I mean, I I feel like what we’re seeing right now is this rush to AI of of, like, AI consumption. Right? I would say.

Jon Johnson:
Where everybody’s looking for that one little thing that will help them speed up that email or that marketing. But nobody within our organization is managing an LLM that runs and supports our internal teams. And that’s where that’s where I see I get really, really tired of every single marketing deck that is just like, we’re powered by AI. And it’s like, okay. You’ve got a decision engine. Great. Good for you. But, like, how are we building an ecosystem? So, Sam, to your point, what you power is the front end revenue of organizations that use your tool.

Jon Johnson:
So as you’re looking through AI as a solution, not just, you know, widgets for analysis or or whatever it is, but to provide that, how are you thinking about it from a revenue standpoint so that your CSMs are guiding your customers Not away from the value of your tool, but back into how, like this AI future is going to live.

Sam Loveland:
Yeah. Well, I mean, there’s kind of 2 parts to the answer, when I think about it, right? Like one, there’s the product SalesLoft itself, right, and and how we’re powering, you know, empowering the salespeople, you know, through our own generative AI releases. Right? So we, you know, we pull in signals. And when I talk about signals, right, we we can very easily integrate with pretty much any partner platform that’s out there. We have some standard offerings that are out there, but the benefit of what that does is we can take offerings that are out there, but the benefit of what that does is we can take those signals in and help prioritize what you should be working on next based on the insights that we’re gleaning. Right? And what what I mean by insights is to say, hey. You have an opportunity that’s coming up in a month. By the way, this customer has just downloaded, you know, this white paper, and you have Highspot or Seismic or whatever it is.

Sam Loveland:
By the way, you should reach out to them because you’re now meeting the buyer in the moment that they’re really interested in, you know, finding about your product. By the way, you should reach out because this is a deal that you’ve now committed into your forecast, and it’s all tied together. Right? So that’s about taking those signals, creating those insights, providing the information to the why, to the seller to say, why should I act upon it? Well, it’s giving you the, you know, the the trusted data, right, like the sources of data because you want your sellers to trust the data to be able to act on it. So that’s, like, from a, you know, product perspective, what we’re doing and the insights that we’re giving to, like, help those practitioners be more successful and therefore close more deals and close more wins. From a CSM perspective and what we’re doing is we’re also feeding them insights, but slightly different insights. Right? And what I mean by that is based on the totality of, let’s call it an account, and based on the activity level within the account or they’ve engaged. By the way, your, chief revenue officer that you were like, your key stakeholder just left the organization, and so you should go now reach out to where they’ve gone, but also reach out to the you know, to your, you know, customer and find out, well, who’s replaced them? Understand, you know, who those changes are. Right? So those are, like, the insights that we’re feeding to the individual’s practitioner to make them successful.

Sam Loveland:
The journey that we’re on from a CS perspective, though, and it kinda goes back to your question, Michael, is how do we take, like, the broader set of data that’s available out there and glean the right insights, you know, that’s happening. Right? And and what I mean by that is, you know, as when we looked at our customer, like, any one customer, we saw 18 different touchpoints for a a single customer. Right? But it it it’s probably not unusual. I know that number sounds loud, but it’s probably not unusual to any company. Right? You’ve got your account executive. You’ve got your solution consultant or services and you know, or or sales engineer, depending on the term. You’ve got your executive sponsor. You’ve got everybody in post sales, right, from your services, customer success, customer support.

Sam Loveland:
You start adding it on. You can easily get to about 18. But everybody’s working in different tools and systems. Yes. We all say we want to be integrated, but they’re all in different tools and systems. They’re all you know, some of it is in a shared drive. Some of it’s in email. You know, some of it’s in, you know, unstructured data that I just talked about.

Sam Loveland:
Some of it’s in structured data. So how do you glean all of that information to be able to then provide that insight into that account and what you should be doing next. And so those are the things that we’re looking at is, like, you know, how hard is it? Like, whenever I’m getting ready for a QBR, like, I immediately go to the salesperson and say, you know, give me a, you know, executive briefing deck of what’s happened before, all of that, you know, amount of time they have to do to pull that together. What if you could just ask AI that question? And it goes to all the sources of information and automatically just pulls that together for you, know, through whatever data sources there are. Right? Like, that’s the type and then and then share some insights. Right? Like Right. Oh, here’s, like, a key change that’s happened, and therefore you need to go talk about it.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. I’m gonna say something probably drastic. But wouldn’t it just be easier if we all use the same tool? It

Sam Loveland:
would be.

Jon Johnson:
Like, wouldn’t like, every time we talk about this and we’re going through this right now with our with our company at user testing. And and, you know, sales uses a different tool. We use a different, you know, CSP. Our solution consultant uses different time tracker and they’re equipped. And there’s all there’s, like, 10 different tools. And it all is built on top of Salesforce and everything comes out of Salesforce and everything gets sent back into Salesforce. And it’s like, guys, we’re paying for, like, 10 tools here and they all read off of Salesforce. Why don’t we just use Salesforce? They use Salesforce.

Jon Johnson:
You’re like, oh, my God, I need all of these other things.

Michael Forney:
Exactly. We we’ve just built it.

Sam Loveland:
It’s not a it’s not a workflow engine, right? Like it is more of a data store. And that is the challenge. Database, and it stores very relevant and very, you know, vital information, right, about about, you know, your job and what you’re doing and key information on the customer and so on, but it doesn’t help you do your job more effectively. And that’s, I think, where, you know, the workflow comes in. Right? How do you improve the business processes? And so that’s the that’s the gap.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Alright.

Michael Forney:
But something I find interesting about what you’re the problem you’re articulating, John, is that in this new world of AI, all these companies are they’re targeting there’s you know, when when companies start up, they go very niche niche. You know? Yeah. Because they want they want a 1,000 raving fans. And so the pace of development of AI has been so fast that now you have all these new players that wanna target very specific personas or use cases to where, you know, I’m immediately identifying that certain tools that we have that our sales team acquired, that we have been, you know, using, they’re not a fit. They’re not as good of a fit for my customer success needs as some of these new players are. And so I think it’s gonna take another 5 or 10 years. Maybe maybe maybe 5 years considering how fast they’re moving. But for all these players to come up, see who’s winning, see who then gets acquired to then have more consolidated platforms where you can actually have one platform.

Michael Forney:
But there’s a real, like, splintering right now. Yeah.

Sam Loveland:
And it’s

Michael Forney:
kind of exciting to me. I mean, I actually like it because everything is like, it’s so specific, and it’s so tuned. I mean, we are on the UpdateAI podcast, and the reason why I found UpdateAI, I’ll plug Josh for a sec, is that, you know, the exactly what you were saying, Sam. It asks the right questions, and in the right context, it’s important to a specific kind of person. And this is the feedback I give to any AI vendor that I that I evaluate, you know, especially the ones that give you the blinking cursor. And they’re like, look, chatbot. And I’m like Yeah. Ask it something first or ask it a series of questions that you think are important to me first, and then put that on the page so that when I load it, it’s ready to go.

Michael Forney:
Like, I don’t I hate the blinking cursor thing. You know? It’s it’s nice to have when you wanna think outside the box. But

Jon Johnson:
Right. But these tools are designed to help us get started with things. Right? And I think that’s the thing is this generative idea. And and, Sam, this goes to to one of the questions that I have for you about your CSM specifically, how are you, I guess, how are you like modifying or looking through your organization to make sure that your CSM are actually working towards center of excellence and not just point solutions, not just, hey, click this button, do this thing here. What are some of the things that you have in place for your leadership team to say, look, this is an indicator that the CSM maybe needs to think differently or is thinking differently. Right?

Sam Loveland:
You know, a few things, right, that we have. So one, you know, we use SalesLoft, so we drink our own champagne. And so our, you know, our CSMs are using SalesLoft. And so, you know, on a on a weekly basis, I get a notification of here’s all the different activities and what, you know, people are doing, what opportunities they’re working on. So that’s, like, a very high level that I can even get a view for, but, you know, the expectations you know, and this really comes down to the frontline managers. Right? Like and are the frontline managers like, part of their role is to be listening to the call recordings and actually grading the call recordings and, you know, doing the scorecard. So we have, like, AI that does a first pass on the call recording score, and then, you know, and then you’re supposed to go in. The manager is supposed to go in and review it.

Sam Loveland:
And so and they they score them. You know, we call it a give and get scorecard. Like, are they having the right conversations? What are the types of conversations? You know, did they ask for their own grade? Right? Like, how do they do on the how are they doing? How is SalesLoft doing on the call? And then what are the, you know, things that they should be driving towards? So to your point, you know, we’re using that as a mechanism to make sure that the CSMs are doing what’s expected and and, you know, and driving the right results and the outcomes. Right? We have expectations around the number of quarterly business reviews you should be doing with the customer and, you know, and and the frequency of that. Right? And so, those are all things that we’ve, you know, put in place to make sure that we’re doing that. I think, again, it goes back to very easy to measure and monitor when you’ve got, like, you know, a book of business of, you know, anywhere like a, you know, $5,000,000 book of business that you have to cover. It could vary, you know, by the CSM, you know, segment that, you know, it’s only 5 accounts versus, you know, 1 or 2 accounts versus 5 versus 2030, and then you’ve got your tail end. And so at the tail end, like slightly different things that we look at in terms of, you know, how the CSM is working and reacting to those accounts, and, you know, and being able to engage and have the right conversation.

Sam Loveland:
But that’s still, like, I would say, where we’re still trying to figure it out. Right? Like, we’re we need to get better, you know, on the tail end of those customers because they’re still important customers. Just in its singularity, they’re just not a large dollar value, but, you know, how do we balance that? Right?

Michael Forney:
It’s so hard because you’re not dealing with you’re dealing with just, like, kind of pure data at that point Yeah. When it’s that massive customers. When it’s a smaller group, you can pick up the phone and call them and get a sample set, interview some people, get to know them, build trust. We’re dealing with the same thing. I mean, a lot of the digital motions are experiment, experiment, experiment, and kinda see where the data clicks and all that stuff takes you. You I think you had mentioned that you had done some pretty good work with your automating some of your onboarding. I feel like that’s utopia for a lot of different companies. What was what what were some of the keys to, like, the feeling like you’ve you’ve kind of done it or that you’re really on the right track?

Sam Loveland:
So a few things that we’ve done. And so, you know, we piloted so we always had onboarding, but all of our onboarding was human led. Right? And so even if it was webinar based, you know, there were always so we had different levels of onboarding, you know, package levels, but there was always a human component to that. At the lowest end, it was driven by webinars, where the challenge is no one attended the webinars. Or even if they attended the webinars, they weren’t completing the activities to actually fulfill their onboarding commitment and so on. And so and and at the end of the onboarding, we actually score the customer. So, we score them on how you know, what they’ve configured in the application. Right? So we have a technical score, and then we also have an adoption score that we give them based on, you know, the number of users that log in.

Sam Loveland:
So we have a score that we give them, you know, technical and adoption score coming out of onboarding. And it just wasn’t high enough. You know, when we when we looked at the cohort base based on, like, the basic to standard and the different offerings that we had just very low scores coming out of the onboarding phase And so and you know. Right? The statistic is there that if you you know, the the the faster you can onboard, the faster they can find value, the higher likelihood they are to renew. And so, you know, that was, like, definitely a challenge that we had. And so and, of course, our basic customers are typically the ones that don’t really get the high touch model. Right? They’re they’re, you know, they’re in the long tail, so how do we fix that? And so last year, we started a journey on rethinking how we onboard these basic customers and what would that look like. We still wanted human intervention, but at the right point and the right time and less talking about, hey.

Sam Loveland:
This is how you have to configure SalesLoft, but more about, like, what’s the value, what are the outcomes that you’re trying to drive towards, and being able to help them pivot it. And so, so we made that all automated, the first part of it. So when a customer, you know, becomes a basic onboard or becomes a customer and then starts with basic, they get the admin gets a notification, they start their journey. And so, we use a product called Chameleon. So think of it as, you know, walk me, Pendo, you know, kind of walking you through that experience, but we also combine that with Ever After, which is another product that’s out there. We tie the 2 together to really give give them an experience around, like, hey. This is the first step that you need to do, and then Chameleon kinda walks them through. This is the next step, and we go through that.

Sam Loveland:
And, and then, you know, at the right points, the consultant will engage. They’ll see them where they’re at in their journey, and they’ll see them. We saw a tremendous improvement in our technical and adoption scores coming out of that, journey, that we now have rolled it out to all basic customers. So we do we don’t do any more webinar format, you know, and and that and what we found was also the amount of time the customer had to spend setting up their instance decreased as a result because they could spend it in the moment when they were ready to versus, like, having to wait for a webinar or whatever it is. And so that’s kind of an example of what we’ve done with the onboarding program and how we’ve automated it. So now we’re looking at, you know, the other onboardings that we do, the standard and, you know, the more, expensive packages and how can we incorporate, some of the, you know, chameleon and ever after into that journey for, you know, our larger customers, right, and and, invoke the right people at the right time, you know, on their onboarding journey.

Jon Johnson:
You know, you mentioned obviously, you mentioned Chameleon and then, you know, Pendo as well. One of the things that that I think you talked about in some of the prep doc is this idea of, like, the 80 20 rule. Right? This is something that anybody who is doing anything with digital understands and is spending a lot of time talking about.

Michael Forney:
Yeah.

Jon Johnson:
I would love to hear okay. So for the for the listeners, the 80 20 rule is that we want, to pivot into an organization where 80% of the tasks are, you know, repeatable, scalable tools that you can use through software or LLMs or any type of things so that the human is focused on the 20%, which is the most impactful thing. You’re not worried about emails or tasks or follow ups. It’s just, where’s

Michael Forney:
the value. So Sam, just for

Jon Johnson:
the next, like, you know, as we kind of start winding down our session here, like I would love to hear how, how you’re working with your team to identify the 80, 20 and how you’re working through how to prescribe maybe AI or LLMs or other automations to take over some of those things. This upscale into, you know, at scale for enterprise is a big thing. It’s not just the low ARR accounts anymore, but, I just kinda love to hear how you’re thinking through that.

Sam Loveland:
A great question. So I’ll I’ll give another example and then talk about our process and approach in that. So another example, think about all the decks that you create. Right? Like QBR decks, you know, customer success plans. Right? Very repeatable. Right? The data’s custom customized, but, like, the format and and that. And and and I shouldn’t say that. The data isn’t customized.

Sam Loveland:
The insights are customized. The insights are used. Yes. Pull. Right? But, like, the insights, like, the so what? Right? What are the recommendations that we would make? The that’s the insight part. So that’s the 80 20. So we’ve actually automated, all of the so we have templates for, you know, QBRs, customer success plan. We have different templates depending on the segment of customer, and we automate, the generation of those, decks.

Sam Loveland:
You know? So 80% of it is automated, and then the 20% is where the CSM goes in and makes their recommendation, cleans the insights from the data, and to be able to structure, it modifies the road map based on what what we’re seeing. Right? And so, so we use a product called Matic, you know, to be

Jon Johnson:
able fans a Matic over here. Yeah. We just implemented it.

Sam Loveland:
It’s really helped that automate, for us, quite dramatically. So we’re now rolling them out to Drift. So we acquired a company in February. They weren’t using it, so this will give them some lift as well. You know, very helpful in productivity and that. But how do we approach, you know, broader AI initiatives or other initiatives that we do? And so, we’ve, sent out a survey, actually, quite honestly, to ask, like, where areas that we feel that could be automated. You know, ask the frontline people, like, where areas that they feel we could automate, and and then what are the outcomes do we think we will get from that automation? Right? So what are ultimately the outcomes that we we wanna see? And I think that’s the most important thing on any technology project that you do, but, like, you know, especially AI is, like, you know, just like Michael said, there’s so many, like, feature function. Lots of companies are coming out.

Sam Loveland:
So, like, ultimately, what’s the business outcome, you know, that, you know, has to be rooted in value. Right? So what’s the value that it’s generating and really focusing on that. And then and then looking at what are the vendors that are out there. So but first, prioritizing. Right? Because every department you know, I have a pretty broad, you know, remit, so every department has different priorities, so prioritizing that and really looking at it. So I actually, hired have an individual that’s just focused on what we call customer experience and AI. And so, I have an individual. He has now a team, underneath them to to help us because, like Michael said, there’s such a proliferation of work? Creating this proliferation.

Sam Loveland:
And so how does it all integrate? How does it all tie together, you know, and and helping us see that that vision for the customer org, and, you know, and what it will look like for us, you know, at the end of this year and as we go into 2, 3 years and and that. So that’s what we’ve done.

Jon Johnson:
I love that. Yeah. I, you know, and I know, like, the whole CS ops thing is is was a very important thing as our organization started to mature and as our industry started to mature.

Sam Loveland:
Yeah.

Jon Johnson:
But, actually, what what what you just said, pops into my head, this idea of customer experience. Not just, you know, there’s CX from, like, a consumer side, but also, like, thinking about, like, the internal CSMs. I need we need CSMs for our CSMs to be able to, like, look at the whole journey and to say, yeah. You guys are using these 10 tools. You’re probably not using them. Right? Right? So we’ll give you the point solution of training, but also, like, I’ve been really enjoying this idea of dogfooding where we’re actually using the software ourselves more and more and more. We’re actually building more tools for ourselves to make ourselves better and not just selling something that is gonna make our customers’ lives better.

Michael Forney:
Okay.

Jon Johnson:
Okay. So

Sam Loveland:
I agree. And when I talk about customer experience, I’m also looking at it from both standpoint. So it’s both the external customer experience, right, and what is it that we’re trying to drive towards. And that comes with MPS and customer journey mapping and all the things that you think about with customer experience. But then, John, to your point, it’s how do we internally support that customer experience, and then where does technology and more specifically, AI fit, you know, on top of that. Right? And some of it could be our own product SalesLoft, and some of it could be other products. And how do how do we become a more efficient organization, that ultimately supports the customer experience as a company we’re trying to drive towards. I love that.

Jon Johnson:
That’s great. Awesome. You know, one of the things that I also just kinda like as we’re final questions here. You know, again, thank you so much for taking the time. This has been really encouraging. I love hearing the process in which you, not just think about it from solving for your customers, but also, like, really, really like taking the fact that you’re supporting 300 people. And these people have, like, things that they need to get done, and it shouldn’t be frustrating. It shouldn’t be hard.

Jon Johnson:
We should use the tools that we at our disposal to make it good. Right?

Sam Loveland:
Yeah.

Jon Johnson:
What is one thing and I this is for you too, Michael. I wanna hear your answer. What is one thing that you do for for rest? Like, how do you how do you how do you recharge? How do you find those moments where you’re not at home or not at work or not sitting in traffic, but what do you do lately to kinda re refresh?

Sam Loveland:
So I have 2. Sam. So I’m so I’m an avid pickleball player, so I love to play pickleball in front of my team. That way. Hitting a nice wiffle is is awesome to let that aggression out. And then, you know, and then exercise. Right? So, like, I’m, you know, a big fan of Pilates, and so I go and do Pilates classes. And and what’s great about, like, any any exercise is you could take it on the road.

Sam Loveland:
You know? And so, like, when I’m on the East Coast, I do solid core classes. And, you know, when I’m, you know, here, I you know, on the West Coast, it’s they don’t have it, so we do, like, you know, Pilates. So, like, you could pick courses and and do that. And so I don’t have a gym membership here, but, like, I, you know, I do day passes, right, and and and just do that. So that’s how I reset, recharge, myself.

Jon Johnson:
I love that. What about you, Michael?

Michael Forney:
Same boat, except I do the tennis thing. So I’m the annoying tennis player who’s like, don’t set up your Yeah. All the pickle ballers are trying to recruit me to play pickleball while we’re playing tennis, and I’m like, no. No. No.

Jon Johnson:
No. No.

Michael Forney:
No. No knock on no knock on pickleball. I think pickleball is fun, but, I I need I need, like, a lot of exercise. I’m like a wound up dog, you know, that needs to be taken out.

Jon Johnson:
Like a golden retriever. Yeah.

Michael Forney:
Just exhausted. Otherwise, like, I

Sam Loveland:
Right. Your mind

Michael Forney:
a lot. I mean,

Sam Loveland:
right, like, it’s like it keeps running the whole time and that,

Jon Johnson:
you know,

Sam Loveland:
doing that kind of separates it.

Michael Forney:
Completely. So on Sunday okay. So I have a 1 year old daughter. So, foundationally, we don’t rest that much.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. Fair.

Michael Forney:
It’s always on. But on Sunday, my wife is, so gracious that she lets me go and play, like, a long tennis match. And so I guess my favorite is in the blistering heat, 2 or 3 hours of, like, exhaustive work, either, very long run or very long bike ride or very long tennis session, nothing makes me feel like, nothing makes my mind feel more quiet than, like, coming inside to stretch, shower, relax after that much exercise in that kinda heat, I feel like turned Nirvana. I feel like

Jon Johnson:
Yeah.

Michael Forney:
Can bother me.

Sam Loveland:
Yeah. That

Jon Johnson:
I love that. Yeah. I’ve been swimming, swimming pool. And, obviously, there’s a lot of exercise. But, I’ve also, in like, I do a lot of writing. So I’ve been I’ve been journaling. I’m on, like, a mental health journey right now with my therapist. And I’m like, every morning I’m writing daily affirmations and I’m, you know, keeping my little journal of like the things that work and the things that don’t work.

Jon Johnson:
And that, on top of my more mornings, basically, I’ll just go out to the pool in the morning and spend about 20 minutes out there. Just kinda like Are

Sam Loveland:
you into cold punching or just swimming? Because cold punch is gonna be the big thing, and I will not do it. Like, I mean

Jon Johnson:
I it’s

Michael Forney:
so good.

Jon Johnson:
The only trend that I have followed this year is pickleball. That’s it. I did learn how to make I mean, I you know, I was really into the sourdough cooking during the lockdown, so I feel like I might get into the cold plunge, but it’s not it’s definitely not something that I’m stoked on. So Yeah. That’s been good. Also

Michael Forney:
It’s a good thing. It’s a good thing.

Jon Johnson:
I will say there has been, like, maybe twice a week, like, I will actually let myself take a nap, like, in the afternoon. Like, this I’m aging myself. Like, I turned 42 this year. And if I have time in my schedule, I’ll I’ll block, like, a little hour for a little lunch, and I’ll just I’ll just, like, honk out, and it’s pretty darn great. Like, I gotta be honest. Waking up at, like, 4 and then, like, jumping into a couple more meetings, like, refreshed. Like, it’s I it’s a bit of a life hack.

Sam Loveland:
So tell us. I I I can’t. I just like, if I try to nap, I can’t. Sometimes I will nap, like, on a weekend and laying on the couch and just fall asleep, but I just, like I don’t know my I just I don’t know. I think I get distracted or I’m losing out if I’m napping. So

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. Oh, no. I’m looking forward to my next nap, guys. That I’m missing out right now because I’m not napping. So

Michael Forney:
I used to do the opposite. I would go I lived in Dallas for a little while, and the pool the outside pool was not heated, and so it was cold. I remember one day looking out, and it was really cold outside. And I was like, I bet you that pool is a cold plunge now. And so I went I went I took my meat thermometer, and I tested it, and it was, like, 40 degrees. And I was, like, perfect. So I jumped right in, and then that became my afternoon. So rather than taking a nap, I would go and do, like, you know, a few minutes in the cold plunge.

Michael Forney:
And people would, like, come out of their doors, their apartments, stare at me, like, do you need help? Like, what’s going on? Like, it’s all like No.

Jon Johnson:
I’m just I’m just crazy. In the pool?

Michael Forney:
I’m like, no. No. No. I chose to be in here. Yeah. But then calls after that, again, very quiet.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. Dude, I love that. Well, awesome. Thank you guys so much. This has been such a great conversation. Is there anything else any any other anything else we wanna say before we wrap up? Or I

Sam Loveland:
do wanna give one word of wisdom, like, on the

Jon Johnson:
Oh my gosh, please.

Sam Loveland:
Like a lesson learned for me. Like, you know, as you look at all these vendors that are out there, because there’s a proliferation of them, bring your security and legal team in early into the discussions. Don’t wait until like, you typically when you do vendor selection, right, you go through your rubric and you do that, then you you found a person and then you do or found the company and then you go security, legal, bring them in. No. No. No. Bring them in, like, while you’re doing the evaluation because, you know, there’s so many of them out there and, you know, depending on, you know, the level of I don’t wanna call it scrutiny, but, like, you know, your security team and their love appetite for, you know, risk is probably pretty low, but, like, get them involved and make sure that, you know, that vendor that you’re looking at meets the criteria. Because, you know, I didn’t do that, and I learned the lesson the law wrong very incorrectly and how to go back through the selection process, so you know, which which just elongated the cycle.

Sam Loveland:
So, you know, take that lesson, bring them in the journey early on, And, because a lot of them won’t even have a legal team right on their side.

Jon Johnson:
Oh, yeah.

Sam Loveland:
And like a third party legal company and all of that. So bring them in early.

Jon Johnson:
I love that. Well, thank you so much, Sam. This has been wonderful. Excited, you know, to kind of see where you guys go this year with SalesLoft and, and Drift. You guys, you know, do the acquisition. Yeah. Michael, thank you so much for joining us. It’s always a pleasure to have you.

Jon Johnson:
And, you

Michael Forney:
can call me Josh.

Jon Johnson:
Josh. Okay, Josh. Yeah. We’ll see you again next week. Thank you guys all for listening, and, and we’ll talk again soon. Bye, guys. Thank you, Sam. Thank

Michael Forney:
you. Thank you, John. Bye.

Sam Loveland:
Bye.