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Josh Schachter:

Welcome, everybody, to this episode of CS and Chia.

Jon Johnson:

What were you going to say to our podcast producer?

Josh Schachter:

Do not edit that out. That’s just part of the organic nature of our program. Welcome to Csnbs. We just had a little powwow before the recording this episode, we discussed creating a little bit more structure for our listeners, like we always do. Like we always do. Yeah, because we’re always so structured with the goal of helping everybody develop their career in customer success, no matter what next level you want to get to. And then we had a nice little sidebar on which one of us was the heavy breather, and that may resurface in the continuation of this recording. Depends on how long Mickey can hold his breath.

Jon Johnson:

Have. Yeah, we have an ASMR segment where Mickey just kind of breathes into the microphone.

Mickey Powell:

I can go get some crimpy paper if you want.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah.

Josh Schachter:

And Mickey, we love hearing your dog in the background.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah, yeah, for sure. That’s not me.

Mickey Powell:

My dog doesn’t bark.

Kristi Faltorusso:

It was mine, and then I muted myself.

Josh Schachter:

All right, you’ve been holier than thou this whole episode so far.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I’m pretty sure that there must be some package of sorts being delivered to the house, because that’s the only time she gets up and gets excited.

Jon Johnson:

Amazing.

Jon Johnson:

Well, let’s do our intros. I want to hear Christy read through her elevator pitch again.

Jon Johnson:

It’s my favorite part of the week.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Can you stop now? I feel like every week I need to rewrite it just so it’s a little different. So you get excited.

Jon Johnson:

Little sparkle in there.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Okay. Anyway. Hi, everyone. My name is Chrissy Falterusso. I’m currently the chief customer officer at Client Success. Been in Customer success now for just about twelve years, building, scaling, and transforming customer success teams in B. Two b hypergrowth companies.

Jon Johnson:

Amazing. And I am John Johnson. I’m a principal customer success manager at user Testing. I’ve been scaling enterprise value and growth for twelve years. I’m based in Raleigh, North Carolina, and.

Jon Johnson:

I’m thrilled to be here.

Josh Schachter:

I’m Josh Shacker. I’m the founder and CEO, and I just cut Mickey off because he was about to go founder CEO of Update AI. We are the world’s most popular productivity tool for customer success managers and for teams, and I’m just the one that makes sure everybody shows up at the recording each week and then gets us going.

Jon Johnson:

I’m Mickey Powell.

Mickey Powell:

I’m the head of go to market at Update. AI. And I’ve been stumbling up through customer success for the last ten years.

Jon Johnson:

Yes. I love it.

Josh Schachter:

Where are we going, guys? Mickey, I gave my proposal. Mickey, what do you propose for as a topic?

Mickey Powell:

I wanted to talk about why CS platforms fail.

Jon Johnson:

No, I love that. Well, I wish we had somebody that worked for a CS platform on this. Oh, hey, Christy first, I actually double tapped that. I agree. I’m really excited about the topic. I know that came up a little bit with Jeff last week, but before we get into that, I wanted to just take a minute since we don’t have a guest this week. It’s just the four of us again.

Jon Johnson:

Like all those many moons ago.

Jon Johnson:

What, four weeks ago? Before we started bringing on guests? How’s everybody doing? Let’s do a quick little health check.

Jon Johnson:

Let’s see.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Oh, I thought you were going to wish me a happy early birthday. Okay.

Jon Johnson:

All right.

Jon Johnson:

Sorry, christy, you just ruined, like, the last hour of the podcast. We’re just going to do your birthday.

Kristi Faltorusso:

We’ll celebrate because I can’t wait to be serenaded by you later.

Jon Johnson:

When is your birthday, Christy?

Kristi Faltorusso:

On the 23rd.

Jon Johnson:

It’s this weekend. On Saturday.

Jon Johnson:

That’s amazing.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So I’ll expect you happy 23rd. Send me a text message recording of you singing Happy Birthday.

Jon Johnson:

Yes, absolutely.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Thank you.

Josh Schachter:

28, Christy.

Jon Johnson:

28.

Jon Johnson:

Solid.

Mickey Powell:

27 still.

Jon Johnson:

She’s going to be 27 still. I love it.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I am fine.

Jon Johnson:

How is everybody doing? The industry is weird. Software is weird. Life’s weird. How’s everybody doing? Christy, give me a quick little update. How’s life at your job and your family? And how was the concert this weekend? And give us a little update.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Life is good. I’ve decided to complain less and feel blessed more. So I am taking a different spin on something I probably would have said, oh, my gosh, I’m so stressed. We’ve got CS 100 coming up next week. I’ve got all this stuff going on at work. My kids got all these AP exams every single day at school, which is stressing me out because she’s stressed out. But instead, I will say we are almost at capacity for our CS 100 event. So we only have a few seats left.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So that’s super exciting. I’m thrilled that we’ll be able to get them filled this week and excited about the event next week. I’m working on my presentation for that. So I’ve had some. Really?

Josh Schachter:

What’s the CS? 100, chris.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Oh, my gosh. You’re right. I didn’t get to talk about this. So CS 100 is client success’s. Annual industry event. So it is not an event for our customers. It is an industry event. So it is like platform agnostic, thought leaders from all different companies, all different sizes, coming together in a very exclusive and immersive intimate setting for a couple days in Sundance, Utah.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So it is just CS leaders. We spend three days focusing on customer success and leadership topics. We’ve got boot camps, workshops, panels, presentations, ziplining, horseback riding. I mean, it feels like customer success camp, if you ask me. That would be my best way of describing it. So that is next Monday through Wednesday.

Jon Johnson:

So the 25th through 27th.

Josh Schachter:

It sounds a little bit like plan hats. Malibu open.

Kristi Faltorusso:

No? Well, we’ve been doing ours a little bit longer, and I think the backdrop of the mountains and the fun events that we do and the way that we structured it, it was a little special to client success. And it’s like one of those things where I am honored and flattered to be imitated a little bit. And that’s okay. I think everyone should be doing more intimate events because we hear from our attendees that they get more from it than these large conferences, right. The large conferences with too many different tracks of content, and they don’t really feel like they’re connecting as much. So we continue to go down the route of just keeping our event at 100 leaders intimate, immersive, great content, great backdrop in the mountains, not like any.

Jon Johnson:

Other event out there. I love it.

Jon Johnson:

And what is just to put you on the spot, what is one thing.

Jon Johnson:

That you learned this week?

Jon Johnson:

What’s something that you had a work Monday.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So do you mean last week?

Jon Johnson:

Yeah, let’s go with last week.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Okay. Because today is Monday. I learned today.

Jon Johnson:

What have you learned?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Okay, so something I learned last week.

Jon Johnson:

Okay.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I’m exhausted.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Okay. So I’ll give some context. You all know, but maybe not everybody who’s listening doesn’t know. That my schedule. I start early. I go to bed early. So I’m early. Bed early to rise.

Kristi Faltorusso:

But I do this every single day. I work out every single day. I’m actually 260 days today of exercise straight.

Jon Johnson:

Wow.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So I was trying to go the entire year with exercising every day. Now, obviously, it’s not high intensity every day. Some days, like, yesterday, I just walked for 5 miles. So not every day is high intensity, but I exercise every single day. My body is, like, a little beat up, so I had please to allow myself to live in that truth of, like, man, I am physically and mentally exhausted and passed out on my couch at, like, 05:00 P.m. On Friday. So I’m learning that I’m tired and I need to rest my body a.

Jon Johnson:

Little bit more and listen to it.

Jon Johnson:

Are you going to take a break when you’re in Sundance for the 100 camp, or are you what?

Kristi Faltorusso:

And not exercise?

Jon Johnson:

Not exercise while you’re up there?

Kristi Faltorusso:

No. Are you kidding me? I’m going to go run up a mountain or something.

Jon Johnson:

Run up a mountain?

Kristi Faltorusso:

I’ll go run my trails. One thing that my husband and I do, if we’re traveling and we don’t have a lot of time, do 100 burpees. So for anybody who complains, you and I should never go on vacation. If you did ten burpees every minute for ten minutes, it’s a ten minute workout, but it’s a full body workout. You’ll break out of sweat. No, I’ve done it. I’ve done 100 burpee. Box jumpovers.

Kristi Faltorusso:

You could do this. This is not that hard anyway. It’s something you could do with minimal space, no equipment, body weight. Like, just get to it. So we always say there’s no excuses to not work out.

Jon Johnson:

100 burpees.

Josh Schachter:

The most in shape you guys may know I’m a huge ice hockey fan, but the most in shape hockey player of all time. His name is Yermer Yaga.

Jon Johnson:

He’s a Czech player.

Josh Schachter:

He’s in his almost mid fifty s, and he still plays professionally in Europe. He played in the NHL for like, 20 plus years, and now he’s in his mid fifty s, gray hair, and he’s playing in Europe. But when he was younger, he would do 1000 squats a day. And I think, like you, Christy, it wasn’t all 1000 squats at the same time, but every day he would make sure he did a thousand squats. So there is something to I so happy New Year to those that are celebrating, namely myself and all of Christy’s neighbors in Long Island. So it’s the Jewish New Year. John, you’re asking so this is a time like Christy was saying. I think it’s kind of permeated between the fence and your yard, right? From your neighbors of reflection, of renewal.

Josh Schachter:

I don’t yet know what that means for me. I’ll figure that out on Yom Kippur.

Jon Johnson:

Next week.

Jon Johnson:

But I don’t know.

Josh Schachter:

Happy New Year to anybody listening, that’s celebrating. One thing that’s been a change for me for the better is intermittent fasting.

Jon Johnson:

I started intermittent fasting.

Josh Schachter:

We’re filming this, and right now it’s 02:20 P.m. On Monday, and I haven’t eaten since, I think, like, 08:00 last night. And I’m not starving, I’m not hangry. If I’m pissy, it’s for other personality reasons.

Jon Johnson:

Something’s in retrograde, yeah.

Josh Schachter:

But it’s given me a lot more focus.

Kristi Faltorusso:

What’s your ratio?

Jon Johnson:

So what are you doing?

Kristi Faltorusso:

You’re doing 16. What are you doing, like, how many hours fasting? How many hours of eating now?

Josh Schachter:

Truthfully, I usually work pretty late, so I usually eat dinner, like, 09:00 or so. Because of this, I have now stopped eating peanut butter in the middle of the night, which used to be a go to for me. And yeah, it soothed my soul.

Kristi Faltorusso:

All right. Was it like a big tablespoonful of peanut butter, or is that like, what was happening?

Josh Schachter:

Yeah, it’s the giant skippy with a big spoonful, one or two spoonfuls fulls, and then there you go. And then in the morning, I used to have a Dunkin Donut muffin or something like that.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So you’re just like all sugar, fat, carbs, no protein.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah.

Josh Schachter:

No wonder I was always so pissy. So it’s been a godsend, though, honestly. I’ve lost some weight. And focus has been here, there, and energy has been there.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah. I love it. Awesome.

Jon Johnson:

Mickey, what about you?

Jon Johnson:

For you. Thanks.

Mickey Powell:

So I’m happy to answer, but are we going to talk about CS stuff at all today?

Josh Schachter:

Maybe that should be your answer.

Jon Johnson:

I mean, I kind of wanted just like a little check in. That’s all I’m looking that’s all right.

Mickey Powell:

I’m trying to reconcile how Josh was like, we’re going to have more structure. Then immediately we have less structure than.

Jon Johnson:

We’Ve had in the last four weeks.

Mickey Powell:

I’m feeling great. I’m very excited about Update AI and everything. AI for that, actually. Here you go, Christy. You’ll love this. I have hired a personal trainer to come to my house three times a week because getting out and going, I love that. And I used to have a personal trainer for years and I loved it and I was super successful with it. And my wife was like, you should just have somebody come to the house.

Mickey Powell:

So, yeah, that’s what I do three.

Jon Johnson:

Days a week now. That’s awesome.

Jon Johnson:

Congratulations.

Kristi Faltorusso:

That’s awesome, Mickey. Good for you.

Jon Johnson:

Thanks. Awesome.

Kristi Faltorusso:

John, how are you.

Jon Johnson:

Know, I don’t know that we have a full hour to get into just the chaos therapy of life these days. Yeah, this isn’t therapy, but I would say I am mediocre at best. Work has been very difficult and challenging. A lot of learning of lessons, which.

Jon Johnson:

Has been really fun.

Jon Johnson:

As much as growth is painful, I tend to want to be at the other end, you know what I mean? Like, when you’re going through the growth, you’re like, gosh, I know this is going to be good, and I know this is going to be great, but I just would like it to be great right now. And I’m kind of in the middle of that phase right now, so there’s a lot of opportunity for expansion, I guess, if you will. We celebrated my youngest daughter’s birthday this weekend.

Jon Johnson:

She turned eight.

Jon Johnson:

And so we just kind of bounced around at trampoline parks over the weekend, which was really fun. Kind of way to what I thought would be kind of a calming experience. But one thing that I did not expect was just how chaotic it was organizing an eight year old’s birthday party. So I lost a couple of years myself, just haranguing a bunch of kids to eat cake and pizza and then just not barf on a trampoline.

Jon Johnson:

But it’s good.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah, that was a good lesson. It was like, don’t plan the birthdays next year.

Jon Johnson:

Let somebody else do.

Jon Johnson:

So. Well, the topic that we talked about over chat was, I think, Mickey, you said why CS platforms fail, or let’s talk a little bit about that. We’ve all used CS platforms. Is there a specific experience that you’re kind of drawing from, Mickey? Let’s hear a little bit about it.

Mickey Powell:

Well, I actually posed this question on LinkedIn and in some slack communities, really.

Jon Johnson:

Coming from the perspective of, like, my.

Mickey Powell:

Wife’S a gainsight administrator. So I’ve seen a lot of that. I’ve implemented Gainsight before, but I’m smart enough to know that my limited experience doesn’t encapsulate everything that’s possible, and it has happened and has gone well.

Jon Johnson:

And hasn’t gone well.

Mickey Powell:

So I want to understand this because I got a very visceral reaction from.

Jon Johnson:

The community.

Mickey Powell:

And.

Jon Johnson:

It seems like something.

Mickey Powell:

Isn’T entirely going well there, and I want to understand the root cause.

Jon Johnson:

Give us some colors on the visceralness. What was the theme of some of the reactions?

Mickey Powell:

I think Christy just, like she just got a picture of, like, a pile.

Jon Johnson:

Of poo, and she just posted that.

Mickey Powell:

On the LinkedIn no, I’m just kidding.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I did not. But you should go see the post. See, Mickey’s just trying this is link bait. Do you hear what Mickey’s doing? He’s saying this so people will go, see if I actually did that and go click on his LinkedIn post.

Mickey Powell:

You won’t believe what she said. Yeah, I’m click fading within the no, people have had, like they talked about just really terrible experiences of not being able to get what they want. People gave good examples of, like, we weren’t ready, or our data was really terrible, or people believe CS platforms are going to solve their problems when in reality, they’re going to actually just make them worse.

Jon Johnson:

Put a highlight on. Yeah.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah.

Mickey Powell:

So stuff like, you know, Christy and you are obviously great sources of expertise. I have all my own opinions, but I’m actually way more interested in everybody.

Jon Johnson:

You know, Christy, you probably have the deepest experience here, especially from the perspective that you’re coming in. I’ve implemented three platforms. We just went through a Tatango implementation, which has been interesting. I’ve also brought on Catalyst a few times and gainsight in the past. I will say one of the things that I wish happened, at least in the sales process, is the validation of data. I mean, making sure that your data is clean and that you understand the problems that you’re solving. It kind of seems like it’s tour to CS, but I think a lot of times when you’re pushing for sales from a sales organization, you get a lot of closing deals without a lot of validation. Know this is going to solve the problem that you’re coming to the table with.

Jon Johnson:

Christy, I’d love to hear, I mean, just kind of like your perspective on CS platforms in general and what kind of the market is feeling like there seems to be a lot of them these days.

Jon Johnson:

Right.

Kristi Faltorusso:

What, platforms or feelings?

Jon Johnson:

Yeah.

Mickey Powell:

Yes.

Jon Johnson:

Both.

Kristi Faltorusso:

All right, listen, can I give you my top five, in no particular order of my five initial reactions to why these things fall? And then we can unpack some of these. And you hit on one John, which is the data. Garbage in, garbage out. Right. You’ve got bad data. Having a platform isn’t going to change that. In fact, it’s just going to exacerbate the issue. No strategy.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Most often I find that folks are coming on board because, like, oh, I used a CS platform in a previous role.

Jon Johnson:

Right.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So there it’s like a repeat buyer. They think that this is just what they should be doing as a leader, is implementing technology. There’s no real clear strategy. They haven’t actually executed or tested anything to say. Great. We need a solution to help scale and operationalize this. Right? So there’s no strategy, no change management.

Jon Johnson:

Right.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So they may deploy it. They might get it set up correctly, but then they don’t go through the requirements of change in the organization to drive the behaviors of strong adoption and value outcome miss set expectations. This is for them internally with the platform provider just, I think, across the board. This isn’t a finger pointing at sales. I’m not saying that sales miss set expectations. I always say that the lack of a narrative, someone will create one. So sometimes customers don’t ask the right questions. They just assume certain things.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Therefore, their expectations are not necessarily met and lack of resources. Now, not every solution requires an army of people to set it up and deploy it. But regardless, you’re still going to need people to keep it accurate and current. Your strategy is going to evolve. Your needs are going to evolve. Data is going to evolve. You have to keep somebody at least even if it’s like an hour, a month or something like that, find somebody who’s going to be able to own it and be held accountable for keeping it current so that it’s matching your strategy and the folks in your organization are using it properly. So those are my top five.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Just kind of off of conversations I’ve.

Jon Johnson:

Had in probably the last, I’d say.

Kristi Faltorusso:

72 to 100 hours or so.

Josh Schachter:

I might have missed a boat on this part of the conversation, but you guys saw my chat. I was going to the bathroom. I had too much club soda.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Okay, great.

Jon Johnson:

Thank you. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:

But I’m back now, and I want to rewind a little bit. I’ve never used a CS platform. I know all the executives of all the CS platforms out there, and I can pretend like I know what they.

Jon Johnson:

Do, but I don’t.

Josh Schachter:

So for those listening that might not already be CS leaders that might be getting into the industry, what are the primary objectives and use cases around using a CS platform? Like, what is a CS platform good for? Why do you need it in your life?

Jon Johnson:

I mean, my hot take is that you don’t. I got to be honest. I’ve used some great tools. I’ve loved some awesome platforms. But to Christy’s point and Aaron Thompson mentioned this on the thread, it’s got to come from a process. And I think the problems that you solve in my experience with CS platforms is making sure everybody’s on the same page, making sure you’re tracking tasks, you’re tracking customer health, you’re tracking the experience that your customers are having with either the platform or the CSM health scores, all those kind of buzzwords. It’s like taking salesforce and then just applying it to the is that really.

Josh Schachter:

What people use it for? Because Mickey and I use HubSpot, and we use a fraction of HubSpot, and I could tell you, well, HubSpot allows you to create landing page and do a B testing and map your CRM and get you a can of coke or whatever. But we use it for one specific thing, which is so, like, what are people actually using CSPs for? Christy, I’d love your take on, like, what’s the primary, the core use case and objective of using a CS platform.

Jon Johnson:

Okay, I have to give you the.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Seven that I’ve designed for myself as a previous CS leader. I’m not even talking about it through the lens of Client Success, but in.

Jon Johnson:

Order for me to ever get all.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Of the money that I’ve ever procured for Customer Success software prior to joining Client Success right. I had to go to a CEO and a CFO and get buy in every single time. There were seven things that I always presented in terms of my objectives as a leader that I think are really important to think about. So it was democratization of data. This is not just bringing all the data together, but it’s empowering my team to have access to all the data, how to use it operationalization of process. So this is like, we have process in place, but how do we think about really operationalizing it across the entire team? So everyone is doing the same things at the right time with the right people, driving efficiency, mitigating risk, identifying growth, increasing visibility and scaling with ease. So those were, like, the seven things that I designed, and I said these are the seven things that having a CSP is going to help me with.

Jon Johnson:

Now, I will tell you, it takes.

Kristi Faltorusso:

A long time to say that my platform has ever helped me with all seven of those.

Jon Johnson:

Right.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I think what’s fair and reasonable and what I kind of coach our customers on at Client Success is I say here’s seven objectives that you could focus your energy and efforts on with a CSP. Pick one to three. What is your top priority today? What is your business telling you that you need to focus your attention on? I’ll tell you, more often than not, it’s mitigating risk and either operationalizing process or scaling, those are the three hot ones that come out of this almost every time, because those are the areas of focus, and that’s usually where they are.

Josh Schachter:

Gun to your head, what’s the number one that comes out of it?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Mitigate risk. Everyone’s got a churn problem. Everyone’s got a churn problem.

Jon Johnson:

And they’re trying to yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So they’re trying to design health scores, which, let’s be honest with you, how those are designed and the intended use cases behind them, like big flop. I think that if you design it well enough to allow you to say, here’s how my customers are behaving, it’s one small indicator. Right. It’s not everything. And unfortunately, I think businesses try to wrap their entire strategy around a health score, which is just really wrong. I always say it’s one small data point.

Jon Johnson:

Right.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Just like building relationships, just like engagement, just like payment, all these things. They are one small data point in the big story of what’s happening. But mitigating risk is probably number one. Health scores is a big one around that. We also offer a product in ours called Pulse, which is basically the CSM’s ability to go that’s a conference in.

Josh Schachter:

San Francisco every year, isn’t it?

Kristi Faltorusso:

It is ironically, though, that our product existed before the conference did. So we have a chicken and egg thing. But that’s what happens when you don’t go trademark your products. So we do have a product called Pulse in our solution, which is really probably, I think, the number one feature and product used in our solution from all of our customers because it is so easy and we’ve got really great reporting behind it, I want you to notice.

Josh Schachter:

Double click into that. I’m interested in hearing more about Pulse. Tell us about it.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Okay, so Pulse is basically it’s a six color grid that basically you’re going from severe risk to extremely satisfied. And we say it’s designed and intended to be like a bell curve, right? Most of your customers are going to fall somewhere in the middle with some risk and fairly satisfied. Like those are the two colors. It’s like a yellow and like a light, light green. Your customer is going to fall somewhere there with the outliers being extremely satisfied and severe risk. Severe risk. Think about these customers are churning. They’ve communicated their intent.

Kristi Faltorusso:

They’re dead in the water. Then you’ve got extremely satisfied customers, which to me this is like there’s zero upside, right? These customers are using every part of your product. They’re happy as a clam. You’ve got all the right relationships. Every single thing that you could or would want to do with a customer, that’s that bucket. And guess what? Can I tell you how many customers.

Jon Johnson:

I have in that bucket? Very few.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Zero. Yeah, zero, in fact. Because anytime a CSM tries to put one in there, I’m like, oh yeah, have we done this? Do we do this? Are they this? And then you can dissect that and really quickly find a hole in that to say, well, sounds like we still got some work to do. And then I quickly bumped that back down. Anyway, our customers love it because there’s a ton of reports in the product that allow you to see this like trended. You can see it broken down by all your different segments, how customers are behaving. You can see it alongside of other data points. So it just has some really strong use cases.

Kristi Faltorusso:

We also have reason codes that associate it with so risk reason codes or success factors. So it allows you to see, like this customer, if it’s a risk state, is at risk because of these reasons. And all that is completely customizable. Or if your customer is satisfied here’s, all the reasons that they’re satisfied, which we don’t ever spend enough time talking about why our customers are happy and renewing, but it allows you to do that, right? So if you’ve got customers who have just renewed being able to see alongside of that, wow, look, they love our reporting, and they’ve got really strong relationships, and they’ve seen a ton of value. It would be really cool to start seeing that so you can emulate good behavior instead of just chasing risk, but pulse just because of its simplicity, its ease of use, and all the things that go alongside with it, our customers love that. So I would say those are some of the things in the mitigating risk that I think customers, our particular customers, and I’m sure other CSPs offer complimentary things like that, I think they just kind of anchor into it because they don’t know what they’re solving for. And that’s the bigger issue, right? They know they’ve got churn. They know things aren’t going well.

Kristi Faltorusso:

They’ve probably hypothesized why, but they need data to back it up. And so they’re using their CSPs to collect data and analyze and say, okay, thematically, here’s what’s happening. Right? Our customers that churn, they look like this. They behave like this. Here are some of the things and patterns, right? Maybe you’re identifying your ICPS as an opposite of these customers that are churning, but being able to say, oh, great, here’s some early indicators, right? Customers who are doing these things or not doing these things will inevitably churn. So I think those are where our customers spend. At least that’s what they tell us they want to use it for. How many of them actually get to a place where that is part of their operationalized workflow?

Jon Johnson:

I’m not sure. Yeah.

Jon Johnson:

And I think that kind of goes into my experience with why I think these types of implementations fail. I love everything that you just said, Christy. I think those are taking notes. I think there’s a pretty big gap in telling me I’m full of it if I am. But in the change management process for all of these systems, right, when you get into, like, a small startup and.

Jon Johnson:

You have ten people, it’s a little.

Jon Johnson:

Bit easier to say, hey, here’s a new process. Here’s the new tool. When you get a large organization where you’ve got 40 or 50 CSMS, your data, it’s very difficult to have true operational efficiency when you have so many people that are doing their own things and there’s really no alignment. What are some of the challenges that you see? Because you’re at the executive level, right? So when your customers come in, the way that I kind of picture it is you’re being engaged based on the CSMS that have pulled you in to say, hey, I need executive alignment, or I need you to meet with their CCO, or Help me out with this. When you deploy, how often is it for risk mitigation. Or is it for maybe implementation stalled or some of those other reason going.

Jon Johnson:

To go I’m going to back up.

Kristi Faltorusso:

For a second, John, because one of the things you said is you have to imagine that it would be more difficult with the change management with a smaller company. And let me tell you, it’s as hard. So the problem is that we see small companies with small teams. It’s not being enforced, they are too busy, right? There is a multitude of excuses that are used and thrown around to justify why we can’t properly use this, we can’t properly get it stood up, we can’t adopt it efficiently. My smaller teamed customers have just as many challenges as the larger ones. They’re just different. And so I don’t think that there is a safe size of team. I think it’s a lack of change management, the lack of leadership and kind of the involvement that’s required to kind of drive this as an initiative.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I worked at a company early in my CS career. It was my first exposure to using Gainsight and we used salesforce before that, but they were a little bit more stick than carrot and I probably emulated that early in my career. But it was like these are the tools and systems that we use. If it’s not in there, it didn’t happen, right? And so it was very much like this is what we use to do our jobs. If you’re not doing this, you’re not doing your job. So regardless of their strategy to get us to do the things we did, the things the problem is I think is that leaders aren’t really working with their teams or enforcing it or they don’t have a really clear vision of how this should be used and adopted in a CSMS workflow. They can’t articulate the value to them to get them bought in efficiently. So there is a ton of reasons, but let’s just be very clear.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Companies of all sizes fail miserably deploying and using CSPs. I don’t want to be biased, John, so you asked me another question. When do I get involved in working with my customers when things aren’t going well? Listen, I try to proactively insert myself so automation is a blessing. So I’ve got a bunch of automation rules coming out of our platform that will reach out to the executives of our customers at different periods of time in the partnership so that I’m organically having these things kind of reached out. So like 45 days into the partnership, an email goes out to me, to the executive sponsor to check in to see how onboarding is doing right. And it has my calendar link and it’s a message that feels very personal. Almost all of our customers that get it reply and book time with me. And it’s a great time for me to early on in the partnership really get a sense of what’s going on.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Our large customers, I attend our partnership kickoff. So I start to build my relationship day one. So if it’s not day one, it’s day 45. From there I usually have a series of engagements that I’ll now establish with that executive now that I’ve got them on that first call. So I try to have some proactive touch points so it doesn’t always seem like I’m only dropping in when things are going wrong. I think that’s a bad strategy. And so again, use automation to make this seem less sucky. But yes, if things are not going right.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So like onboarding, we track very closely if things are not progressing, if things seem stalled, if my CSMS are escalating to me 100%, I’m reaching out to them to have a very frank conversation.

Jon Johnson:

Right.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Like we talked about this in the partnership kickoff. You confirmed that you were going to be able to staff the right resources. You were committed to the cadence of engagement that was required. We talked about all of this. We set proper and clear expectations up front. And when our customers fail to meet their side of it, not that we’re calling them out on it, but let’s have a conversation because you bought this because you were the one that had a problem, right? I’m not making you use this. You’re paying for this. So we’re just here to help make sure that you’re getting what you hear value from this investment you’ve made outside of that.

Josh Schachter:

Can I pause you for a second?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah, please.

Josh Schachter:

On the automation piece, it’s interesting because we use automated tools like we use Mixmax is one we use for it. They’ve got really good kind of sequencing, not on a mass level. But what I find is sometimes it’s hard. In my particular use cases I’m like stepping on myself when I have an automated sequence that’s scheduled but then I just corresponded with the person like last week and then it becomes insincere. Maybe this is too specific of an example. Have you ever come across that at all? Because in automation automating communications it’s something that I’ve always just struggled with. It’s like how do you automate but also keep it genuine and authentic?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yes. So I don’t typically run into an issue with the automation at the 45 day mark because it’s very rare that I would ever be engaged outside the partnership kickoff call where there would be some weird overlap. So I haven’t experienced that one. Where we do run into it sometimes is with our onboarding, not the onboarding experience, the renewal cycle sometimes. But we have enough data inputs that say a customer really has to qualify for the sequence to kick off. So we try to not have that be an issue. But when it is, it’s like, listen, some of the automations that we have go out are not necessarily from me specifically or from a CSM. We’ve also created different aliases like Renewals at or Support at or Success at.

Kristi Faltorusso:

And so those kind of anonymous email aliases kind of let us play.

Jon Johnson:

But at the end of the day.

Kristi Faltorusso:

We are a CSP, so we also say we use our product to do these things. You might want to consider using them for these workflows too, however blah blah, it ran for this reason. So yes, it’s happened. It doesn’t happen often though, because we also don’t have it running sequences. It’s like kind of one off automations that happen at a particular moment because of a specific thing that took place.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah, but again, data in, data out.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Because if you don’t have good data in to run those automations and those rules and those sequences, that’s where I think things get a little icky.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah, we’re in a really interesting spot. We deplatformed, I think, gainsight. Last year we used salesforce that we dubbed Success Force for about twelve months and then we recently just implemented totango for those of you that don’t know, we went through an acquisition and merging of platforms is always a really difficult thing. But we’re going through a ton of change management problems, I think is the word, because there’s just been so many processes, right? It’s so interesting kind of coming into a really high functioning implementation right now with our tool and the wheels don’t stop spinning. I mean, you don’t have a month to not do anything and train everybody.

Jon Johnson:

You got to build the plane while you’re in the air.

Jon Johnson:

And we’re very much like in that phase right now where it’s like, oh shit, I forgot, I need to go. This is the process now, or here’s the reason coder, here’s the this or here’s the that. What kind of thoughts do you have around how do you make sure as an individual that you are informing yourself on all of these changes and that you may be removed three levels from the leader that is implementing these changes? But how can our listeners make sure that they’re getting everything that they can from their CFPs?

Kristi Faltorusso:

That’s a good question because I will say probably it’s not uncommon. We don’t spend a lot of time talking directly to our end users, right? And that’s by design. We spend our time focused on who our admins are and the leaders and the partnership. So it’s usually heads of maybe an operations person, maybe a salesforce admin of sorts or something like that. And we do our best to make sure that we’re calling out opportunities for them based off of what we’re seeing their teams do and not do. If there is an opportunity for us to engage and help educate and enable.

Jon Johnson:

We try to do that.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So from a vendor standpoint, we try to be as proactive with mass communication for anybody who’s opted into things, just socializing things, whether it be in app or through email or through marketing efforts. But if you’re a CSM and you have access to a CSP, I think you need to just be inquisitive. Right? There’s a lot of use cases and workflows that you might be instructed to use today, but if there’s still things that feel broken in your own processes and don’t feel as efficient as you could be, I would lean into your admins. And if you are somebody who is particularly interested in optimizing through software, even ask for access to the vendor yourself. Right. So I think there’s always a lot to be learned with resources that are on their sites and different webinars and things. I always tell people just because if it’s your technology, attend the webinars. Right.

Kristi Faltorusso:

You might not be engaging with the CSM, but invest in learning because it will help you grow. That was one of the things, when I used to use Gainsight, I made sure if there was a webinar, I was on it. If there was a resource or a new product update, I read it. Even as an end user before I was a leader, because I knew that learning more about it would help me.

Jon Johnson:

And at the end of the day.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I was very focused on being the most efficient and most productive CSM that I could be. And I was confident that technology could help me a bit, maybe not solve all my problems, but be proactive about your own learning of what the softwares are available, that you have available to yourself.

Jon Johnson:

Gosh, that’s good.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I don’t know. Accountability is something that I feel like not enough people want to hold themselves.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah, I agree with you. And I think obviously, it comes down to leadership. Obviously it comes down to strategy and process. That’s interesting.

Jon Johnson:

I love your perspective on that.

Jon Johnson:

Mickey, anything else?

Jon Johnson:

What are your thoughts?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Well, Mickey, what else came back from your LinkedIn post? Yeah, I was just check it out on LinkedIn.

Jon Johnson:

Right.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Mickey, like, people can go to your profile and find this post and click on it and engage as long as.

Mickey Powell:

They comment and like and repost. Yes.

Jon Johnson:

Okay.

Josh Schachter:

And vote for him for a top CF 100 influencer.

Jon Johnson:

Vote for Mickey.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Wait, what? See, again, I don’t like this whole strategy. Mickey christy.

Josh Schachter:

Christy, you’re absolutely right. I rescind that. And if the editor doesn’t cut this out, then they should, because that goes against my entire values within social media.

Jon Johnson:

Thank you.

Josh Schachter:

Except for the post last week where I asked everybody to please.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Then Mickey had the same post for you.

Jon Johnson:

Listen. Which I both.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I liked them both. I commented. I think I was first to comment, first to, like, would repost and share. I’m happy to celebrate and socialize the work that the two of you have done in the community.

Josh Schachter:

You should call me out. You should call us out.

Kristi Faltorusso:

You’re absolutely right. Let’s not bait it. And besides, it doesn’t matter. The nominations are closed. Voting doesn’t start until September 25.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah.

Jon Johnson:

Are you a judge this year, Christy?

Jon Johnson:

I am.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Not. And even if I was, judges are instructed to be anonymous.

Jon Johnson:

Right, okay.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Because you don’t want people not I am not champion by myself. I don’t really feel the need to I think my work speaks for itself, my commitment to this community, my selfless giving josh amen.

Jon Johnson:

Amen.

Josh Schachter:

Amen.

Jon Johnson:

Amen. For Mickey, anyway.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Mickey, so what mickey, so what else was on your thread? What else were people in the community saying? Anything we didn’t cover?

Mickey Powell:

I think you probably covered it at all. They did make a good point. Somebody I can’t remember there was several folks that these are common challenges for a lot of tools, not just CS platforms. So it definitely piques my interest even more.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah. The theme that I saw is that everybody I mean, a lot of people commented on is that people think that a CSP is a CS strategy. And that’s not true.

Kristi Faltorusso:

It’s literally not. And you’re right. People do come in all the time. With that assumption being made, is that I have these problems, so I’ll deploy this CS technology, and that will solve my problems.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah.

Jon Johnson:

And it doesn’t it just makes a spotlight on your problems.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Okay, here’s something I would love to know. So, Mickey, if you are inclined to do a part two to this post I don’t want to do it because it seems self serving coming from me, working at client success and all. But how many leaders have deployed more than one CS platform at the same oh, because they think that the failure is due to the technology and deploy another technology and still don’t get it right. So how many times do they have to deploy a different solution to realize maybe it’s them?

Mickey Powell:

Do you want me to follow well, I will say and say to solve that problem, sign up for client success?

Jon Johnson:

No, but I also think okay, continue. I think we have such high turnover these days that a new leader comes in every 18 months, and they have their own processes and strategies, and we live in a SaaS infrastructure where the most common denominator is change and that we don’t actually get down to the heart of what we’re trying to solve here. And a lot of the big software.

Jon Johnson:

Companies that I’ve worked for in the.

Jon Johnson:

Past just haven’t really nailed down strategy.

Jon Johnson:

And they come up with what they.

Jon Johnson:

Think is going to solve a problem, and it’s a Band Aid for six months, and then somebody gets let go and somebody comes in and it’s a new process and we never really get to solving the problem.

Jon Johnson:

I don’t remember the last time I.

Jon Johnson:

Had a really good, clear understanding of the reasons behind actual churn and not just, oh, they lost headcount. That’s not a real enough reason. I guess it depends on the platform. But yeah, it’s hard in this economy because there’s so much change and there’s so much consolidation and there’s so much opportunity for people to kind of COVID their bruises with bandaids. That is software and it kicks the ball down the field for six to seven months.

Jon Johnson:

So I don’t really have to think.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Technology is also a very easy scapegoat for folks.

Jon Johnson:

Absolutely.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Oh, we’re going to go remove that technology because it’s the technology that’s the problem.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah. I would love it.

Jon Johnson:

I would love really incredibly refined process to be a part of any sales.

Jon Johnson:

Process behind a CSV, but that takes too long.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Well, that would also probably eliminate the pipeline.

Jon Johnson:

Yes.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So from what I’m told, what I’m told, making that a prerequisite for purchasing is a pipeline killer, so we don’t do that.

Mickey Powell:

That reminds me of a prior company when I was kind of responsible for the post sale and a new COO came in and I was like, I can hit this number of reducing the amount of bad fit customers that come in, but it’s going to slow down the sales pipeline by 15% to 20%. And they’re like non starter.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah, well, that’s the thing, is no.

Kristi Faltorusso:

One actually wants so many organizations are structured by design to not really care if their customers or customer success organizations are going to be successful. Let’s call it what it is.

Jon Johnson:

Right.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Because in order to do that, I would love to say more, but we’ve only got six minutes left. I feel like Josh is getting nervous. This could actually just be an entirely new episode. So I think what we do is we put a pin in that and come back to that because I think it could actually be a really interesting conversation. Agreed. About organizational. Yeah. About how organizations don’t actually truly support and enable customer success or to what extent are we willing to make changes and sacrifice some sales? Not all sales.

Jon Johnson:

Right.

Kristi Faltorusso:

But can we make some minor changes that might impact churn further up in the process? I think people aren’t really willing to make the changes or do the work. I guess it’s also hard, though, if you have a board breathing down your neck because they also don’t get it.

Jon Johnson:

So it’s just tough. Yeah.

Jon Johnson:

I love it. I’m here for that conversation.

Jon Johnson:

Awesome.

Jon Johnson:

That’s the hour. Personally, I really appreciate your perspective on the way to think through these things, Christine. I think for folks that maybe are looking for ways to get better in their career, I think one of the key takeaways for me is if your team or your leaders are looking to implement software, really explore the processes that you have in place to support that software. I think a lot of times people look at, how can I help you with your software? That’s not the problem that we’re solving. It is the process. So really driving again those conversations back to making sure that you have a really locked in process behind what you’re applying, so that when that platform does come into place, you have the understanding, the ability to actually impact change and not just hit a button on a health score within some platform that says it’s green when it’s not.

Josh Schachter:

Have a great week, everybody.

Mickey Powell:

It took us a while to get going.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Josh got to work on your, but.

Josh Schachter:

When we did this episode, we started out with BS, but I think we got to CS, so it was a little bit s and CS.

Jon Johnson:

We made it work. Yeah. Awesome.