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Josh Schachter (00:00:00) – Everybody. I’m Josh Schachter. Oh, don’t say help Kristy. I’m doing my intro here. Come on, get a grip. Yeah. I, I’m Josh, that’s Christie in the background complaining. Uh, and this is the CS Insider unturned collaboration. I’ve lost my train of thought. Nailed it. Thank you. But we have with me John Johnson, Christie Falta Russo, Mickey Powell, and a special guest on today’s episode, our first special guest of all of the whole collaboration, Mr. Damien Halle, uh, in the house, . Damien, can you give us a,

Damien Howley (00:00:40) – See where that goes?

Josh Schachter (00:00:41) – , Damien. Um, one of the traditions we have on the show is, um, when you, when you first come on, you have to give a big howl. So can you, can you give us a howl to, to introduce yourself?

Damien Howley (00:00:53) – I feel kind of baited here if I don’t, I’m not fun and cool, but if I do, I might make an ass on myself.

Josh Schachter (00:00:58) – We’re, it’s ok. We’ll wait, bite for Josh.

Kristi Faltorusso (00:01:01) – Bullies people. He’s a bully. He’s trying to make you look dumb. Do not do it. Do not howl.

Damien Howley (00:01:06) – Okay. Don’t howl. Alright. I won’t. Unless you

Kristi Faltorusso (00:01:08) – Want you. If you want to, then I want you to, but I don’t

Damien Howley (00:01:11) – Feel like we’ve got, I feel like we can just rely on John for sound effects from here on out like that. I’m, I met John three and a half minutes ago and it feels like a perfect role.

Josh Schachter (00:01:22) – Damien, who are you? You’ve never, I don’t know if you’ve met Christie. I don’t know if you’ve met Mickey. You met John three minutes ago. Introduce yourself to, to these guys and to, to the world listening. When I say the world listening, I mean like a hundred people.

Damien Howley (00:01:34) – Yeah. Um, you know, I’ve had a few exchanges with Mickey Christie. You and I have met previously at some point. Um, so I’ve been, you know, I’ve been in the software world for like 20 years in like the early two thousands when we started doing SAS and APIs and all that good stuff, um, in customer success since like 2010. And I tend to kind of dig in deep at my company and then pop my head up and see what the world of Lincoln is doing, you know, like every three or four years. So not as active out in the socials. Um, but very recently, uh, just, sorry,

Josh Schachter (00:02:08) – Time out. Not as active on the social sphere, meaning that he works. So, so, so, Damien, Damien wrote a book and, and he wrote a, a, a good book. But I read this one. Um, Damien knows I had Damien on, on my podcast. Um, Damien, it hasn’t actually aired yet, has it? No, but will see. No, I

Damien Howley (00:02:26) – Keep on emailing you. Yeah.

Josh Schachter (00:02:27) – Okay. Yeah. Um, , I’ll remove that filter. But, um, uh, I read this book while, well, parts of the book, uh, at a hockey game. I was at the devil’s game earlier this season and it was a great reader, intermission and then beyond. But anyways, it’s called Control Your Customer. And, um, Damien, in addition to writing the book, Damien, tell us what you do for your day job, since you’re not active on social as much as everybody else.

Damien Howley (00:02:54) – Yeah. So I’m the Chief Customer Officer for a company called N Bellow. And we do, uh, accounts payable, automation.

Josh Schachter (00:03:02) – Cool. Exciting.

Damien Howley (00:03:03) – I run the, yeah, I know , I run the, uh, the post-sale experience, right? Accounts management, uh, implementation support operations.

Josh Schachter (00:03:11) – And Damien knows a lot about cs. I I actually really do like this book. Uh, control your customer.com will forward over to the Amazon page because he hasn’t set up his landing yet. But, um, Damien, what is con He’s working Josh, he’s too busy working. What Damien, what is controlling your customer? What is, what does that mean to you?

Damien Howley (00:03:27) – Yeah, so it’s, it’s essentially, um, a mindset of this idea that there are all these opportunities throughout, every interaction with every customer that give you the op, you know, will allow you to gain or lose control of how you manage that, that client. And so whether it’s you’re on the phone with 10 customer contacts or you’re, you know, engaging the ceo, or you are renewing a contract, or you’re troubleshooting a complex ticket, right? Like it’s give and take. And the book is focused on, uh, the tactics that would be, um, most advantageous for you to manage those, those moments. A lot of words.

Josh Schachter (00:04:05) – Christie, have you ever lost control of a customer?

Kristi Faltorusso (00:04:08) – Have I lost control? I think I, I don’t know that I’ve ever really had control. Maybe I need to read the book,

Damien Howley (00:04:15) – Right?

Mickey Powell (00:04:15) – Yeah, I definitely have.

Kristi Faltorusso (00:04:16) – Can you wait, can you write me a note in it?

Damien Howley (00:04:19) – I would actually love to do that. I love, I would totally do that. Yes.

Josh Schachter (00:04:23) – Welcome to today’s episode, folks. It’s called Conversational Drift. Conversational Drift, featuring, featuring all five of us. Mickey, you said you’ve lost control of a customer before. Tell us about that.

Mickey Powell (00:04:34) – Yeah, uh, so back when I worked at Five Stars, we had a, we sold, uh, loyalty programs to retail small businesses in the us. I was the first like customer success manager there back in 2014. And long story short, uh, in the early days, the, the installing file for five stars was just an executable file. And if you got your hands on it, somehow you could take that file to other, like, locations you owned and start using five stars. And we didn’t have a lot of checks and balances in place to stop that from happening. So what ended up happening is, uh, a business in Texas that obviously won’t name names, had been paying, oh, please

Josh Schachter (00:05:15) – Do

Mickey Powell (00:05:17) – . Yeah. Had been paying for one location, but using it at three locations. So one of our local sales managers, what’s up Brett? He had walked in to one of those other locations wanting to sell them. He was like, Hey, use it over here. Went over here. And he noticed they were already using it. So he told me, I got on the phone with him and I said, I said to the business owner, cuz like we did really care about small businesses. I said, listen, you like, you know, you can’t do that. We’re not gonna hammer you for the past months. You’ve been using it. You just, you have to sign up going forward, otherwise you can’t use it. And this guy went off on me. He was calling me every name in the book. He, and like I put on, and this is what kind of made me a little like, legend at, at the company, is like, you can berate me and I won’t rise to your level.

Mickey Powell (00:05:56) – I’ll just like, I’ll keep it cool, I’ll let you vent. And after a while I was just like, listen, I’m totally happy to have this conversation with you. If you can’t keep it civil, I’m gonna hang up and we’re not gonna do business together anymore. And he just kept going, kept going, get going. And eventually I hung up on him and I was like, ready to cancel his account. And my boss was like, no. Like, we’re not losing that revenue. And yeah, so I basically just like played the whole, let’s hand it off to another person game so that, not cuz I couldn’t handle it, just, you know, maybe a separate voice would be better for this guy that’s couldn’t handle me. Um, that’s how I lost control of the customer. But I do wanna add that this story has a happy ending. That same business owner I ended up talking to three years later and I was like, Hey, you may not remember me, but we had this interaction three years ago and it really stuck with me because like, it, that was probably the most I’ve ever been yelled at.

Mickey Powell (00:06:52) – And the guy told me I probably did do all of that. And I’m sorry because at the time I had a business partner that was like stealing money from me. I had lost like a hundred thousand dollars and it was just a really terrible time in my life and it totally floored me because like, that was not what I expected cuz my prior interaction with this guy was nuts. And I have used that story many times in my career to communicate to people like how to, you know, keep control and stay cool under pressure, but also you don’t know what’s going on in that person’s life and them yelling at you is probably nothing to do with you.

Jon Johnson (00:07:31) – That’s

Josh Schachter (00:07:31) – Great story. Mickey, Michelle, Obama, Powell, folks. Yeah. They go low. You say hi.

Mickey Powell (00:07:37) – That’s right. I wish I could be Michelle with those arms.

Josh Schachter (00:07:40) –  John. Um, oh, we’re not gonna get into conspiracy theories here now. Uh, John, you must have lost control of a customer at some point in your career.

Jon Johnson (00:07:48) – First off. Ouch. Um, I’m perfect at everything that I do. Uh, and second, all of course I absolutely have. Um, that’s absolutely something that’s happened. No, so Mickey, you were talking and I remember this, um, vividly. So I just started this couple years ago. I started, I mean like probably a month in, you know, startups. You just kind of say, here’s your laptop and then go talk to people. Um, it was one of those, you know, wonderful startups and I was given this account that had gone through like six CSMs and I mean like, everybody hated this girl that worked for it. And the, I I listened to chorus calls of her berating people and like, just the most arrogant, like, I hope she’s listening , um, to will she definitely know you’re talking about her? Oh, absolutely. And everybody who listens to this that worked with me will be like, I know who that is and

Josh Schachter (00:08:36) – What’s her names?

Jon Johnson (00:08:37) – It’s . Uh, but no. So I was like, yeah, you know, gimme the, gimme the difficult ones. I, I like a challenge. I like, you know, I also am pretty arrogant, I guess. Uh, so at times I think I can do what other people can’t. Um, and most of the time that’s not the case. Um, but so I got this, I got this, I got this account and I jumped on a call with her. It was our first call and just, you know, a lot of stuff around like product, like I was told this is gonna be built. And it’s like, come on, we all know what that means. , uh, , let’s be real. You work for a too . Um, but just a lot of stuff. And then just a lot of, a lot of aggression, just like utter aggression. And uh, like to the point where at the end of the call, she’s this, this customer’s like, you are, you have to do this.

Jon Johnson (00:09:23) – If you don’t do this, I’m gonna call, like threaten you to call my boss. And like, these just like really immature, unprofessional ways. And I, I had watched the five other or however many CSMs, I’m probably exaggerating. That’s what I do. I kind of, it’s like everything’s multiplied by two. The certain number of CSMs before that had worked with this person, I was like, God, this is a theme. We just can’t, we gotta find another point of contact. So in my head I’m like, throw it out the window. So I said, wait,  like interrupted her. And this is where I lost control. And I like, of the customer, um, I was not rude, but I was very much like, you know, you can’t talk to me like that. Similar to you Mickey, like, we’re not getting anywhere. Um, and I, I very much was just like, you are the customer  and we’re the service provider and that’s where our relationship ends.

Jon Johnson (00:10:09) – That’s what we are here to do. You have a problem and I can solve it and if I can’t, I’ll find you somebody who can. But right now we’re just emotions yelling at emotions. Right. And I called it out like that and I was like, I was like, I’m awesome. Like this is great, like putting her in her place or whatever it was. And you know, I don’t know the background of, you know, kind of what was going on in this person’s life. I’m sure that there’s tons of complexities. Um, but at the same time it’s like I’m sitting on here and somebody’s yelling at me and you pay me like 50 grand. Like you paid a company 50 grand and you’re treating me like this and you’ve treated, you know, a handful of other people that I love like this as well. Like, I’m gonna put my foot down. So I did and I hung the call up and I was like, all hotty and I would like send it over to my boss. And I was like, I did what we were talking about . And it was like, oh, John , I’m gonna need you to call that customer back because we can’t lose this revenue. Obviously you can’t, it’s not, it’s not about losing revenue. But I had to eat crow. I I really had to, I need

Kristi Faltorusso (00:11:04) – You to help me here. I need you both Mickey too. Like, here’s my question. So as a leader, right? Yeah. I don’t let my customers treat my team like that. It’s just, it doesn’t fly. Are you hiring? I had to have several. Yeah. , I wish you need money to hire. Um,

Jon Johnson (00:11:21) – Fair. We’re gonna beat that part out too. Don’t worry. .

Kristi Faltorusso (00:11:26) – Um, so no, but I’ve had to like get on calls with customers quite a bit in my career and reestablish what appropriate communication looks like. Yep. Fully backed by our executive leadership team. If I wasn’t at the C level mm-hmm.  that says, yes, if this customer is gonna continue like this, then we will have to cancel their business or they have to appoint somebody new. Right? Like it’s just, it’s, you can’t tolerate that. I don’t care how much a customer is paying. Yeah, I agree. My team, under no circumstances will I let anyone, anyone talk to them. I love it. Outside of a professional Totally agree. Collaborative manner. There is no place for it. Right. To your point, half the time the customers aren’t even, like, even if they were paying enough, what is enough Yeah. To be berated every day,

Jon Johnson (00:12:06) – $50,000 a year. Like personally, like, you know, that’s kind of like my line individually on,

Kristi Faltorusso (00:12:11) – On a Oh, in addition to your salary. Yeah.

Jon Johnson (00:12:13) – In addition to my, like, that’s what I would take. So

Kristi Faltorusso (00:12:15) – You’ll take it, you’ll take a beating for 50 K. Yeah. That’s your price.

Jon Johnson (00:12:18) – But, but what I will say, Christie, the, the outcome of this actually was, was very similar to this, was, you know, I got on a call, I had to apologize, you know, I was like, I came off harsh , but the outcome of it was very much we need to work with somebody else in your organization. . Um, but no, so that it actually turned out I don’t, I I, we didn’t wind up turning the account around, but I just remember being like, you know what, I’m gonna go talk to an executive on their team and be like, is this how everything? And they’re like, oh no, no, we’re aware. It was like, okay, great. So gimme somebody else. And it was a really quick Yeah. So that’s over.

Kristi Faltorusso (00:12:47) – Funny John, my most recent situation like that, I had one of the members of my team share that the person that they were working with was really, you know, crossing lines and boundaries for that person individually. And I spoke to the, our vendor, our, our point of contact, their boss, only to find out that there was like a, an ongoing HR situation. Like, I mean like that this person has issues communicating. Yeah. And I was like, that’s great. Um, so what do we do? Right? Because this isn’t, this is not healthy. Mm-hmm. . So I need your help then. Yeah. And we’ve been appointed to other people. I love

Josh Schachter (00:13:17) – That. David, Damien, you’ve only spoken, you’ve only met John, Christie and Mickey for a very short period here. And they’ve each kind of given you the perspective on controlling the customer. Who would you be least likely to fuck with  as a customer?

Jon Johnson (00:13:31) – .

Damien Howley (00:13:32) – Firstie definitely. Christie.

Jon Johnson (00:13:34) – Easily. Definitely. Are you kidding me?

Damien Howley (00:13:37) – What? Yeah. What’s what’s funny is, um, a lot of these situations that’s they’ve described, right? They all work out like it seems, and it’s, this is kind of, you know, John’s story is kind of, um, documented through the book, right? Like, we had this bottoming out, we got things got aggressive. You might come back and, and say sorry, but like ultimately these can be moments where you can elevate up mm-hmm.  to more senior leadership. And you do find out like, oh shit, everybody in the company, everybody in the customer’s company hates that person. They don’t want them making decisions in that project at all. Or no, this is a pattern that’s existed with all of our other vendors. You’re not on your own. Right. And like, it does become a catalyst for change. It can even become a catalyst for change in like, pricing too. You can say, yeah, we can’t support you under the current financial structure. And so, you know, it doesn’t matter how mean and aggressive you are, you’re actually gonna go back and change your price. And the overall con the, the construct of how we work. So, um, it’s interesting if you leverage these kind of horrible moments for upward mobility and for restructuring, they nine times outta 10 or probably even higher, right? Like, it works. It’s an interesting observation that like when shit hits a fan, you can convert it into very positive things.

Josh Schachter (00:14:53) – That’s cool. Yeah. I love that. Okay, next segment is a game I call agree or disagree. Christie, you’re up first, then Mickey, then John. I am then Damien. And it’s one word. One word. John . Hold on. I got a word for you. . . I think it’s, I think it’s, I think it’s two. Yeah, it’s two words. . If your company’s product de delivers enough value to the customer, their happiness is irrelevant. Christie, yes or no? Disagree. Disagree. Mickey Disagree. John. Disagree Damien.

Damien Howley (00:15:31) – Totally agree.

Josh Schachter (00:15:32) – . All right Damien, what gives,

Damien Howley (00:15:36) – Well, you picked on this, you picked on this line last time we were on the show, so I feel like you’ve probably built up an arsenal of attacks now on this one . Um, but you know, as I feel like this is, you know, modern media, right? You’ve taken out the extra three sentences that follow that line and the proceeding two sentences, selective

Josh Schachter (00:15:55) – Editing, where I very clearly

Damien Howley (00:15:57) – Say,

Josh Schachter (00:15:57) – Hey,

Damien Howley (00:15:58) – Take a step back. I’m not an irrational asshole. Like, you know, I do care about the customer’s happiness. I just so profoundly believe that value will outperform happiness, right? Like, if you have a product that is, uh, intrinsic to one of your customers and it’s delivering to their objectives and they’re, they’re adopting and driving that they can actually be less happy with you and still kick ass.

Jon Johnson (00:16:24) – So, uh, wait.

Kristi Faltorusso (00:16:24) – Can, can I, oh, okay. Sorry. No, no. Go.

Jon Johnson (00:16:26) – Please. Christie. Josh already gave me the sign. Oh,

Kristi Faltorusso (00:16:29) – I’m sorry. Okay. Uhoh. Um, okay, so quick. Um, I don’t like happiness. Yeah, no. As like the word we’re, we’re talking about here. Like, I think I care about the experience they’re having and I want it to be a positive experience. Yep. But I can’t control if Mary is happy one day, like to the point of all of the stories that we’ve just shared, you don’t know what people are going through. So I think happiness is the wrong barometer and I would throw happiness out the window. Cause I don’t give a shit if you’re happy. I do want you to have a positive experience though. Yeah. And more importantly, Damien, to your point, I do care that you, I mean, at the end of the day, the value is does trump the experience? But I’m not gonna say ever, I, I don’t know that I can actually sit in the seat that I do and, uh, in a public forum say that I don’t care about the experience my customers have, but I do care more about the value. Um, but I do want ’em to have a positive experience. Happiness is dumb .

Damien Howley (00:17:18) – I, I hope my challenge as well. And it’s, it’s, um, it’s a false, it’s a false indicator too of, of the experience, right? Because it fluctuates and some people are super happy, uh, and, but there’s problems and some people are miserable and there are no problems. Right? Like, it, it’s a, a false indicator. Um, sorry Josh. Now you, you’ve put me in the defensive position, so I’m just gonna keep defending

Josh Schachter (00:17:40) – This is what the show is all about. Nope. But it’s good you putting people in defensive positions. It’s just

Damien Howley (00:17:45) – Constantly just fight everybody. You’re not gonna have

Josh Schachter (00:17:47) – Anymore guests after this.

Jon Johnson (00:17:49) – Yep. One and done. I just don’t know how to quantify any KPI like a customer’s happiness. Like I, you know, like,

Damien Howley (00:17:54) – You can’t,

Jon Johnson (00:17:55) – I love, I love metrics. I love things that are quantifiable, whether it’s a NPS or whether it’s a, you know, product experience, score, whatever it is. Like, um, some of my best customers never get on the phone with me. They never respond to emails. They never, because they’re enabled, they’re supported, they’re quote unquote happy. But when I get ’em on a call, they’re pissed because they’re busy and they don’t wanna take time with me. So how am I supposed to know if they’re quote unquote happy with my product? They gimme tens on the NPSs and ratings and all this kind of stuff, right? But at the same time, they renew and grow year over year. Uh, that’s, that’s the marker for me. Like, I don’t care if they think that I’m peachy or love my karaoke or think that I make a great, you know, mac and cheese. It’s has nothing to do with it. It’s purely like coming down to the value. Like you can’t track happiness, so you cannot add that to the equation. I make really good mac and cheese too, by the way.

Kristi Faltorusso (00:18:49) – I really, I want all of those experiences. I would love you to sing me karaoke while making me mac and cheese. Like i’s I would be

Jon Johnson (00:18:55) – Happy. That’s, that’s like, that’s the blueprint special man. Lemme tell you what

Kristi Faltorusso (00:18:58) – I mean. Like, I’m waiting that, that would, I’ll die happy when that happens. Okay. Pulse.

Damien Howley (00:19:02) – But the, the, the absolute, the absolute best relationships I’ve ever had though have been on the heels of exceptional value.

Jon Johnson (00:19:11) – Yeah, agreed. Like,

Damien Howley (00:19:13) – And, but not proceeding. You can’t go in and try to develop an exceptional relationship before you’ve succeeded. You have to succeed. And then that’s where I’ve, you know, I, I’ve had these deep, long lingering conversations with customers where I know everything about them and their lives. And those all come after we’ve, we’ve, you know, done our job in delivering and implementing and driving change in their business.

Jon Johnson (00:19:36) – Yeah. Can

Kristi Faltorusso (00:19:37) – I, so Dion, you’re saying that day one, you’re not their trusted advisor, ,

Jon Johnson (00:19:41) – ,

Kristi Faltorusso (00:19:42) – I mean, is that what you’re saying? It’s pro I think that’s what you’re saying, but I

Damien Howley (00:19:44) – Want you to say

Kristi Faltorusso (00:19:45) – It’s profound if that’s what

Damien Howley (00:19:46) – Profound. Okay. It’s profound, but yes, I think that day. Yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso (00:19:50) – So day one, we all agree that day one, you’re not the trusted advisor. That’s shocking.

Jon Johnson (00:19:54) – Yeah. Can we, we got that on the day

Damien Howley (00:19:55) – One. I’m not going in swinging trying to like, make friendships. I’m trying to Right. Deliver value.

Jon Johnson (00:20:01) – Before we jump onto the next one, cuz I know we got a couple things that Josh wants to talk about. Damien, I want to, I want your opinion on this too, kind of following these themes. Um, uh, you know, the, while we are supporting software and, you know, solutions, when it comes down to it, I think one of the things that happens, as, you know, early CSMs is forgetting the value that you as a, as a person bring to this equation. And I think the CSMs not just, you know, for adoption and enablement, all these like tasks that we do, this relationship, this, uh, symbiotic, what you wanna call ’em a, you know, trust advisor, whatever you wanna term, whatever term you want to use, if they are marrying that value to the software and the experience that they have and the support from a CSM that understands strategy, that understands business cases, um, if you remove that csm, I think you start removing a good portion of that value. Would you agree with that?

Damien Howley (00:20:53) – I would, uh, yeah. In MO in most cases I would agree with that. And the reason I say most cases is because if that CSM is just glorified technical support Yeah. Then I, I wouldn’t agree with that. If that CSM is un, you know, understands the customer’s objectives and is try to deliver value to them in accordance to their business and their needs, that’s a, a critical part of the value delivery and, and the experience, right? Like, um, corny saying that an old c o of mine used to say is there are two S’s in sas, there’s software and service, and if you forget the second one, then you’re just a, you’re just a piece of software, you know? Yeah,

Jon Johnson (00:21:30) – Yeah. Sorry. Agree or disagree , since we’re playing that game, .

Damien Howley (00:21:34) – Oh, shit. Yeah, agree.

Josh Schachter (00:21:38) – I was just thinking of ways to rearrange that so that it’s like if you move the s then you’re just an ass. But anyways, um, next game. Marcus Wrench writes an article that it’s gonna be featured in this week’s insider, about six bad habits that cost CSMs a fortune. And I put this list in the chat for you guys, but the first one here is resolving customer support tickets. Number two is skipping discoveries. Number three is avoiding customer conversations. Number four is not tracking customer outcomes. Number five is re-engaging non-responsive customers. Nikki, stop clicking. And number six is fighting inevitable churn. Oh,

Jon Johnson (00:22:18) – Man.

Josh Schachter (00:22:19) – So I wanna know, I want you, again, one sentence, uh, response. Don’t read me the number. Read the thing. Let’s go around. Which one do you guys think costs the cust cost? CSMs? Excuse me. The most fortune. Wait, are we supposed, Damian, we’ll start with you.

Damien Howley (00:22:33) – I just figured out where the chat is by the way. So now I’m reading the list. We’re

Jon Johnson (00:22:37) – Just like talking about you in here, Damien. Oh,

Damien Howley (00:22:40) – Are you guys talking shit in here? No.

Jon Johnson (00:22:41) – Yeah.

Damien Howley (00:22:42) – Okay. Good. Leave

Mickey Powell (00:22:43) – This Damien guy.

Kristi Faltorusso (00:22:45) – No, that’s what we do on our text thread, not in the chat. Yeah.

Damien Howley (00:22:48) – Yep. Okay. Not keep

Mickey Powell (00:22:49) – Taking offline.

Damien Howley (00:22:51) – I got a lot of our friends who do that. That’s okay. Um, we all

Jon Johnson (00:22:53) – Show our phones that Damien isn’t a part of.

Damien Howley (00:22:58) – So wait, lemme just re just make sure I get the context. You’re saying what you’re asking, what,

Josh Schachter (00:23:03) – Which of these six things cost the most costs cost penalized CS teams the most? Which one?

Damien Howley (00:23:11) – Um, I would say number four, not tracking customer outcomes. Okay,

Josh Schachter (00:23:15) – John?

Jon Johnson (00:23:16) – Yeah, I mean, honestly, everything else I, I’m just gonna call it everything else is bullshit on this list. Um,

Josh Schachter (00:23:20) – Number four, Christy

Jon Johnson (00:23:21) – Is the one, I’m

Kristi Faltorusso (00:23:22) – Number four.

Josh Schachter (00:23:23) – Mickey,

Mickey Powell (00:23:24) – I guess I have to say number four. .

Kristi Faltorusso (00:23:26) – You don’t, Mickey, Mickey say what you wanna say. You wanna say number two, right? Or number one?

Mickey Powell (00:23:31) – Well, I’m just like, you can’t, you can’t have customer outcomes if you skip discovery . That’s true. There’s a true, there’s a pre prerequisite there.

Jon Johnson (00:23:38) – So that’s like a two a two A. Yeah,

Mickey Powell (00:23:40) – I, so I, I agree. And, and that like, you need to get it and then you need to track it because your strategy needs to be informed by the customer outcomes.

Jon Johnson (00:23:49) – I know I’ve fo I’ve followed Marcus for years and I, he, he takes a very strong opinion on things and I love him for that. Uh, but I also think that there’s some misguided stuff when it comes down to revenue and, and what the, what the value is of trying to fight for, for revenue, whether it’s quote unquote good or bad.

Mickey Powell (00:24:07) – I’m gonna say something that’s not, that’s not a slide at Marcus. Unfortunately, when you’re going out into any sort of social platform like Twitter or LinkedIn or what have you, it doesn’t pay to be non-confrontational. Agreed to be middle of the road to be wishy-washy. And I, I’m, you know, part of my job is to grow, update AI brand. And guess what? I have to write more, like, I have to be more provocative because that’s what gets people to respond. And then the algorithms and the datas and the stronger wifi signals, all of those things matter.

Jon Johnson (00:24:42) – Got it.

Josh Schachter (00:24:43) –  back to me. Yeah. Cool.

Jon Johnson (00:24:46) – Anybody else have opinions on this

Damien Howley (00:24:48) – On tour? Not number six as being a very cost because Well,

Jon Johnson (00:24:52) – No, but we, this define inevitable, maybe not costly, right? Like you need to define inevitable because I I truly think that that’s a much smaller minute problem than what people would describe as inevitable churn. Yeah. So

Mickey Powell (00:25:03) – We’re talking Thanos, or are we talking like, you know,

Jon Johnson (00:25:07) – I am Ironman

Josh Schachter (00:25:08) – Number six, by the way, is fighting inevitable churn for those that don’t have the chat handily in front of them. This is a podcast, guys.

Damien Howley (00:25:15) – I, you know, I feel it depends on the organization and what the priorities are or what the internal values are, but you can find in a, an absolute asinine amount of time spent on trying to save, uh, inevitable churn or, and it’s, it’s never inevitable, right? But like yeah. It, it does become inevitable. Um, and what the execs priorities are. And you know, I’ve worked at companies where they, they think that, you know, no churn whatsoever under any circumstance will we never churn. And you’re, you’re could be a thousand hours into something with your, your product team and you know, it’s a beast.

Mickey Powell (00:25:50) – I actually, I have a foolproof method to get zero churn. You know, you all wanna know it. There’s actually two methods.

Jon Johnson (00:25:55) – Don’t, don’t start a business.

Mickey Powell (00:25:56) – Yeah. Don’t have customers. Yeah. And don’t let them cancel Zero churn

Damien Howley (00:26:02) – Contract.

Mickey Powell (00:26:03) – No, just don’t listen to ’em. They’re like, I don’t wanna pay. You’re like, no, that’s not an option. You get to just piss tutu.

Josh Schachter (00:26:10) – Shai rit Blatt wrote a post this past week also being featured on CS Insider about the 10 reasons why customer success should own revenue. I’m not gonna list all those out, but I wanna know from each of you one reason why CS should own revenue. Mickey

Mickey Powell (00:26:28) – Own revenue. Like all of revenue. Define it

Josh Schachter (00:26:30) – As you like.

Mickey Powell (00:26:31) – I think they should.

Kristi Faltorusso (00:26:32) – He was talking about like the commercial motions after the post initial sale. So like

Jon Johnson (00:26:35) – Renewal’s, what I’m reading for this expansion cross

Mickey Powell (00:26:37) – Sale.

Kristi Faltorusso (00:26:37) – That’s how I read it. So we’ll run with that. Yeah.

Mickey Powell (00:26:40) – Okay. I’m just making sure. Um, because after the sale, nobody knows more about the customer’s desired outcomes and objectives and how your product is gonna help them reach that than you. So they should be the focal point of those conversations and driving expansion. They will need help from other teams to do that. Yeah. But if they don’t own it, then somebody else owns it. And as we’ve seen, if times get tough, are you gonna take resources away from the people that own revenue? No. So see us, if you want to protect your position and organization, a good way to do that is to pony up and, and participate in the revenue conversation.

Josh Schachter (00:27:22) – Yep. John, what do you say?

Jon Johnson (00:27:23) – Yeah, so I think that becau, if we own the outcomes, yes, we should own revenue. Um, if we’re tracked on, on growth, n r r, any of that kind of stuff, we should absolutely have a piece of the pie. Um, I think we do a mo a majority of the work when it comes to owned revenue growth and expansion that’s not net new, right? So that’s gonna be sales, but, um, everything is kinda like midterm, uh, upon renewal. Um, we absolutely need to be invested in and paid out on. And I want to be tracked on that. And I want CS qls and I want all of these things to kind of validate the, the existence of my role because I, I think to Mickey’s point, you’re right. I think we get devalued when it comes to if you’re just here for health and NPS or whatever else it is. I know Shai mentions that in some of the comments, but, um, we do so much more than that and it, it needs to have dollars on the table.

Josh Schachter (00:28:11) – Christie.

Kristi Faltorusso (00:28:12) – I mean, I think Mickey said it. I think we’re the most qualified mm-hmm. . Um, we know the most about the customer. We understand what they’re trying to solve for how our product does that. We’re closest to the relationships for the most part. So I think unless you have an account team because it’s an a large customer or there’s some other, you know, structure, then I don’t think there’s any reason why customer success shouldn’t own it. So I’ll give you the, it depends on what your model looks like, but if your customer success, if your account team model is primarily just your C s m, give ’em the revenue.

Josh Schachter (00:28:44) – Anita Tth this past week mm-hmm.  wrote a post and Mickey, this was an honor of your post. She was responding to you. You’re

Jon Johnson (00:28:53) – Inspiring people.

Josh Schachter (00:28:54) – You are, you actually are. Yeah. So, and her question was, will AI kill off net promoter score? And she, I, yeah. Yeah. It was a good one. And she goes on to cite some drawbacks of NPS and, and some ways that chat C P T will augment nps. And given that she was paraphrasing the one and only Mickey, Michelle Obama, Powell, why don’t you tell us, Mickey, what’s, what’s this all about?

Mickey Powell (00:29:21) – Yeah, I’ve, I’ve had a problem with NPS for a long time. I think we’ve discussed it here on this before. I’ve discussed it in other forums. Um, and the conversations that happened on LinkedIn about this were really good. And, and here’s my takeaways. We are misusing nps. It’s been bastardized from what it was originally envisioned as. And I think it’s a symptom of some of the problems we’ve talked about on this show, which is how do we tell that we’re going in the right direction with our customer base, with our, all of our processes, all of our features, all those things. We as humans, we need simplicity to understand like trends and causal relationships. NPS takes all like a million different inputs and boils it up to a number, and then we go, ah, now I understand we’re moving in the right direction. That’s the simple way of saying that. It, there’s a ton of different drawbacks. And before I get into like, you know what, I think chat will help. That’s, that’s what I see as one of the big problems with NPSs.

Josh Schachter (00:30:24) – You, you know, my problem with nps, so, so as you guys I think know, is I’ve come up through product management, um, and as a product manager, like I always have this love-hate relationship with NPSs. It’s a really nice distilled metric that is universally shared and, and interpretable, and that’s great. Uh, and you can cite, okay, well, you know, Apple’s NPS is this, and so that’s the gold standard versus this, and here we are, right? Um, so that’s the nice part about it. But the part that I always like, just, just just didn’t sit easy with me is you can so easily manipulate your NPS score by sending it out at certain moments. Or it’s, it’s like, when do you send out asking for your survey? How do you go about doing it? Is it on email? Is it a popup on the screen? Is it, is it asked in person? Mm-hmm. . So who, right? So it’s like, it’s just the wild, wild west. And then at the end of the day, like, does it actually mean anything? If you can game it in all those different ways, Christie,

Kristi Faltorusso (00:31:12) – Listen, the number, the number is garbage. Um, and that I will stand behind. I don’t use NPS in the traditional sense. I think it’s dumb. I think it’s when, when you hold people accountable for it, I think it’s ridiculous. Mm-hmm. . What I do like about nps, though, I do think it’s a good mechanism for collecting feedback and I love feedback and I will use a ton of different ways to collect it. To me, that’s what I think about it as it’s a mechanism for me to learn more and have a point of a point of reference to intervene in the partnership to go learn more, right? Learn more about what my customers love, learn more about what they hate, learn why they’re not filling out the survey. Um, so for me, it’s a mechanism to feedback, but it’s not more than that, right? I don’t sit here touting the score.

Kristi Faltorusso (00:31:53) – We don’t gamify it. I don’t try to only send it when I, when my customers are having good experiences or bad experiences, it goes out. When it goes out. I use the feedback, I follow up with every single customer who takes a moment to give the feedback. My C e O, Dave, Blake and I, we divide and conquer. We go through every single one. And I have conversations, and I’m telling you, some of the best discussions, good and bad that I’ve had with my customers have come out of that mechanism. But I don’t look at the score. I don’t rate my CSMs on it. I don’t care. I just want an opportunity to engage. And because it’s a standard that a lot of our customers understand, right? Like, oh, they want my feedback. They will give feedback when I ask it through a channel and a mechanism that they know that they understand.

Kristi Faltorusso (00:32:34) – Mm-hmm. . So that’s why I like it. But that’s a good point. I don’t care. Yeah. Versus like, but I do think that, I do think that AI will change what you do with it. Like I said to Mickey in the thread also, I commented there, we took all the data and threw it into chat G P T, and guess what we got to see? Here’s the five things that all of our promoters said, like the five themes, and then here’s the five themes from our detractors. Guess what? Then we packaged that up and we sent it out to our customers, and we said, thanks for sharing your feedback. Here’s what we learned. Here’s the things you love about us. Here’s the things you wish we would improve. We’re gonna get started. Bye. Like, love

Jon Johnson (00:33:04) – That. Love it. Yeah. Okay. Well,

Kristi Faltorusso (00:33:09) – I’m such a hero.

Josh Schachter (00:33:10) – Wow. And, and, and, and, and just, just tolar. Uh, well, Christie, I I love everything you just said there. Uh, but just to clarify for the audience, when Christy says she loves feedback, she loves giving feedback. Yes. . Yeah.

Jon Johnson (00:33:21) – Yeah. It’s one sided conversation. I don’t give

Kristi Faltorusso (00:33:23) – Feedback nearly enough. Let’s just be clear. Yeah. I think that’s to be giving

Josh Schachter (00:33:26) – A little bit more. Yeah. Yeah. You live in Long Island. Uh, I I you give, you know how to give feedback. Oh,

Kristi Faltorusso (00:33:31) – I love my big old guy though. I tell him all the time. ,

Josh Schachter (00:33:35) – Damien, do you guys use nps?

Damien Howley (00:33:38) – We do, yes. Um, I, my my general feedback is similar to Christie’s, right? Like, uh, in, as a general, like aggregating a number and incorporating into your business for comp is or is absolutely just abusive. Yeah. Like it’s, it, it’s, uh, unfair. I mean, it’s the applying just the wrong metric. , do we get who did the sound effect, by the way?

Jon Johnson (00:34:00) – Josh.

Damien Howley (00:34:01) – Ok. Cool. . Um, but I’ve very recently, uh, been involved in more of a, a heavier NPS survey that’s crossed with, uh, product market fit. And then we’ve, we’ve, you know, kind of cataloged that against our, our different, uh, level of contacts and industries. And it’s been profoundly revealing from a product and like a roadmap and, and like even a, a market positioning standpoint. So NPS cross pollinated with other metrics and, and other analysis I’ve found to be extremely useful, but in isolation, I, I just feel like it’s that day’s temperature.

Jon Johnson (00:34:39) – Yeah. I love that. I, I also think just, you know, no offense to any of the software guys here, but like, I’m not sitting here talking to my buddy about Salesforce at the bar. Like, like this idea, like, are you gonna recommend this to somebody else? Like that, like that doesn’t really happen with individual contributors. Like when we’re talking about like IC to ic, like, it’s just such a, it’s, it’s poorly phrased. It’s poorly worded. Yeah. And then it’s applied in a way that actually has no inference to the original question that you asked, where it’s like, because, um, I literally just pulled up our nps, uh, dashboard on Pendo to look at some of this, and it’s like, you know, the distractor is like, well, I wish you would’ve done this. And like, okay, I reached out to them and I say, if, if we did this, would you give us a 10?

Jon Johnson (00:35:21) – Or would you tell somebody about us? It’s like, well, no, like, I just wish you would do this. Like, it, there’s just no, there’s just no logic there, right? So I think surveys are great, and I live in the world of like quantitative type feedback, which is smaller sample base, but higher quality versus qualitative NPS is a qualitative approach. And I don’t really see people taking a really intelligent approach to packaging a large scale of qualitative data when it comes to their customer’s individual feedback to tell a quantitative story of this is what we as a company are doing well. And Christie, you gave an example of like, everybody needs to fucking do that. Like, that’s, that’s a great output of saying, do you agree? Like, I’m gonna get this information, I’m gonna send it to everybody and be like, yeah, do you agree with this? Here’s a conversation starter, right? And then it, you know, you have follow up and I know your team’s great. So they’re, you know, kind of moving forward with that. But I, I love that approach and it’s something that I’m like taking a note on so that I can reach out to my, uh, 402 NPS response.

Damien Howley (00:36:18) – I definitely like it as more of a, an opener to Yeah. You know, to, to force conversation with your customers. Yes. Even if you don’t, you just throw the score away Totally. And you just say, Hey, we’re doing our nps just so we’ve got this really intentional reason to go back and engage on a very specific topic.

Mickey Powell (00:36:35) – It’s funny how everybody’s answer was like, yeah, like NPS plus all the other things we do to actually make, you know, make sure we understand what’s going on with our customers. And I think that was kind of the spirit of my post and Anita’s follow up is like, there’s like talking to our customers, understanding them, those are all critical, critical things. NPS has just been kind of bastardized. So if you’re using it in isolation, it’s worthless. Yeah. If you do all of the things that you all just described, it starts to become a part of a much broader contextual picture. And that’s what I think chat p t is going to accelerate. Unlike any of us are really ready for it. And Christie already kind of described some of the ways that we’re gonna use it.

Jon Johnson (00:37:17) – Yeah. But I will say that score, that number itself meaningless, like has no interest in it. It’s the interaction with the customer. So I like what I would love to see. I wanna get rid of that zero through 10. Like, it’s like we want sentiment analysis. Like if we’re giving them an option, we might as well get something that we can use from that and have a text input no matter what. Instead of rate us on a scale of one to 10, like, what is this? Hotter knot.com. Like we’ve all been there, . Um, so I’m

Mickey Powell (00:37:44) – Gonna, all right guys, I’m gonna go one quick anecdote about NPS to show how it can be abused. Before I worked in tech, I worked for a major telecom, I won’t name names. If you as a retailer associate, which I worked in retail, um, if you got a detractor nps, you had to get on a weekly call and explain to everybody in the region what you learned from that nps. And terrible, it was your boss and your boss’s boss. And their boss. And their boss, which was one step below the CEO o of this telecom. And it is a multi-billion dollar telecom. And Wow. When that happens, everybody’s

Jon Johnson (00:38:22) – Looking as LinkedIn right now saying, know that makes sense. Well,

Mickey Powell (00:38:25) – I mean, it’s

Kristi Faltorusso (00:38:25) – Also just like a poor use of time and resources.

Jon Johnson (00:38:27) – Yeah. Shame.

Mickey Powell (00:38:28) – I’ll say this, when that happened to me, and I had been the, the rep of the year, the prior year, I was like, I think it’s time for me to not work for this company anymore. . And I was gone within six weeks. Cause I’m like, if this is how you treat your employees, I don’t wanna work here. And that’s, that’s actually part of the reason I found my way into tech.

Kristi Faltorusso (00:38:47) – Yeah. I mean, as the kids would say, that’s cringe. That’s

Josh Schachter (00:38:50) – .

Mickey Powell (00:38:51) – You’re it’s giving cringe. We’re we’re, you’re giving cring, you know, what’re giving.

Kristi Faltorusso (00:38:56) – I don’t think you can give cringe. I think it’s just cringe. It’s,

Mickey Powell (00:38:58) – It’s cringe. Yeah. I think

Kristi Faltorusso (00:38:59) – The other, like, the other thing is can give but not cringe.

Mickey Powell (00:39:02) – Yeah. It’s so, it’s not

Josh Schachter (00:39:03) – Bitch not, not the principal wants to interrupt us. We’re, we’re, we’re calling it. We’re calling it, uh, should we do this again in two weeks? What do you think? I think we’re, we have a special guest, don’t we? Well, we may, we may, uh, Damien, by the end of the episode, most people funnel out. It’s kinda like an onboarding funnel. Um, so why don’t you sign us out with a big howl.