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Josh Schachter:
Okay. Cool. Alright. Now we'll start. Alright, everybody. Welcome to this episode, this edition. Oh, Christy, you're here.

Kristi Faltorusso:
I am here.

Jon Johnson:
We started before you even got here, Christy.

Kristi Faltorusso:
I just wanted to come in just as the music was starting just for the effect. So Yeah.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. That's great.

Josh Schachter:
Christy, we're just gonna digress for a second. You look really nice today, and that's not like saying other days. But, like, today, like, what you've got a little different vibe with the makeup and the hair, and I don't know if this is gonna come across as misogynistic, and I'm gonna get canceled or whatever. But I just wanna throw that out there. John, I'll flatter you afterwards as well.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Come closer to me. People canceled. I appreciate that.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. I mean, you look like such hot stuff.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. I

Kristi Faltorusso:
am hot stuff. I did it for. I was so excited for our conversation. It's been a while since he and I chatted last. So

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Sorry. What's his name?

Kristi Faltorusso:
Ziv. Are we doing Ziv?

Josh Schachter:
Ziv Palad. Nice to meet you.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Oh, I we're over for oh, because we didn't what?

Josh Schachter:
No. No. No. This is not the Ziv episode. We're interviewing his his brother, Ziv. Yeah. So Oh,

Kristi Faltorusso:
can you be nice to me? Jesus Christ.

Josh Schachter:
I just was nice, and now I'm compensating for it. Well, welcome back, everybody.

Jon Johnson:
You're always overcompensating. That's the problem.

Josh Schachter:
I'm always overcompensating. Trust me about that. We are you know, we're we got the band back together. I'm really excited about this. We're we're we're past Labor Day. We're into the fall almost. You know? How's it hanging, everybody?

Jon Johnson:
Little bit little bit lighter on my end.

Kristi Faltorusso:
I'm just gonna say, like, that's a really interesting

Jon Johnson:
open up. Josh. Set it up.

Ziv Peled:
Set it up. Are we

Jon Johnson:
gonna talk about it? Do we get a little bit of do a little bit of recap about

Josh Schachter:
what's happening? We should actually just have a blush meter on Ziv to see because we haven't introduced him now. He's quiet for the first time in his life. Right? Because Ziv is not somebody that comes into a meeting and and doesn't speak. But I just wanna go into this conversation now, and and then we'll introduce, Ziv.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. I mean, for those of you that, you know, kinda know, I've been, MIA for, what, 4 or 5 weeks now. I got diagnosed with cancer. It's a big scary word. I know his his eyes just went big, and he was, oh, shit. What did I get into?

Kristi Faltorusso:
Now everything he says after this point is like, well, okay. Who cares?

Jon Johnson:
Okay. Yeah. No. No. But, yeah, pretty actually, kind of a shock. Like, it was it kinda came out of nowhere, and, had surgery about 4 weeks ago, got all of the tumors removed. And I actually was really hoping that I would have this news when I got on this call, but I just got my results back this morning from the last round of scans that we did on Friday. And the last surgery got all of the tumors out of my body.

Jon Johnson:
Yes. So, while I'm still in process of figuring out what chemo and treatment looks like, and it it does seem like there's gonna be a substantial amount of that over the next 6 months, the big scary parts are over, and they're out of my body. So I've kinda taken the last month. I took a month off work. I went and just planted my butt on the beach in Mexico by myself, totally by myself, to just, like, heal and recover and cry and, like, drink mezcal and eat the best food they've ever had, and just kinda process. So I'm back. It's been a week, and, you know, I'm kinda really re recharged and refreshed to kinda hit this next kinda stage head on. And, you know, it's kind of like it it goes without saying, but I've been overwhelmed by kind of the support of the community.

Jon Johnson:
Christie flew down and and spent some time with me and and my family after the surgery. Job failed last minute.

Josh Schachter:
Wait. I made it to the airport.

Jon Johnson:
Like I said, failed last minute. The last minute of minutes. And, honestly, like, every day, new packages arrive with, different gifts and cards and candles and funny coffee cups, and, it's just been a really, a nice moment for me who struggles to ask for help and, to just kinda let people love on me and and kinda dump some, some kindness. So I'm I'm feeling very loved, and everybody that listens, you know, I've gotten so, like, so many messages from folks that are, you know, a, asking where I'm at, but also asking how I am. And I I just, you know, I am overwhelmed and, just kind of sitting in a lot of gratitude. So, I appreciate everybody, and, we're gonna kick the shit out of this cancer. And, oh, the joke about hanging, just because this isn't a PC, specifically, it was testicular cancer. So they actually, cut out one of my balls.

Jon Johnson:
And, the the analogy that I've been using is is pretty much like a medical boba tea experiment. They just kind of plopped it out. And I actually Well, I hope

Josh Schachter:
it didn't suck it from, like, a really large straw.

Jon Johnson:
No. That's actually the the machine that they use. Like, that's literally the go in from Now

Josh Schachter:
we have to change the ratings of this program.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. But no. But also, like, I opted this is probably way too much information as well for everybody listening, but I opted not to get a prosthesis. So I just wanted to have a story. You know? So I got I got the left eye over here. Gotta come up with some new nicknames. We actually I changed the nickname the the chat the group chat, for this podcast to, 3 balls and a lady. I forget what it was before.

Jon Johnson:
Fancy Falteruzzo or something like that. I forget what it was before. But yeah. Welcome, Ziv.

Josh Schachter:
He's talking about our internal text message check group. Yeah. Maybe this wasn't the right episode for Ziv. Maybe we should have devoted this whole episode to you. Maybe we still we'll still do that we'll do that anyways.

Ziv Peled:
I think it's great. I think that, this is one thing, and and this is related to relationships, and we've connected in a second. But this is one thing and all the love that you got, John. We don't know each other from before, but all the love that you got, this is something AI will never replace, and we can start from that.

Jon Johnson:
I agree with you completely. There's the human element that,

Ziv Peled:
why we are needed.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. Absolutely.

Josh Schachter:
Except except when people search chat gbt for what should I say as condolences in this situation, then AI actually is feeding all that.

Jon Johnson:
No. But I would love AI to figure out how to spot my cancer a hell of a lot sooner so I don't have to lose a testicle. But, you know

Josh Schachter:
It will.

Jon Johnson:
We'll get there.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. It will. It will. Yeah, John. Well, I mean, listen. Our hearts go out for you, and we're so happy that you've had the outcome so far that you've had. And, you know, Christy and I have been very close to you throughout this. And so, obviously, it's not the same journey for us, but we've been we've been kind of, you know, you've been kind enough to be open with us about it, and we're just here for you and so happy again that you're that you're on your way back.

Josh Schachter:
So

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. I appreciate it. Alright. Well, let's get into it.

Josh Schachter:
Ziv, how's it hanging?

Jon Johnson:
For you specifically.

Josh Schachter:
Lopsided or even, Kiel?

Ziv Peled:
Yeah. You know, it's, it's not an easy year for sure.

Josh Schachter:
Sorry. I gotta introduce you. So, everybody, this is Ziv Palad. Ziv is actually one of the, before there was Fantic, Falter Russo, and the others, there was there was Ziv with UpdateAI. And Ziv was this is, like, three and a half years ago, almost 4 years ago maybe. He was the first real person that, like, knew the ins and out of customer success and blew my mind when I spoke to you. And I didn't know anything about CS. Many would argue, I still don't.

Josh Schachter:
But at that time, Ziv just kinda opened the kimono and just preached and showed me all the cool stuff that he's working on. He's got a big team of, like I mean, he's got a huge CS team. What is it? Like, 250 or something at the time at least for yeah. CCO of AppsFlyer, he's there from, like, the very beginning. Let's just call it first 10 employees. Right? And, for, what, 7, 8, 9 years? And he's just one of the most knowledgeable and, like, effective leaders within all of customer success. And you see him on LinkedIn. He's got 25,000 followers.

Josh Schachter:
He's still quite shy of Christie, but he's he's, he's not about, like, the LinkedIn fame. He, like, just really knows his shit. So I'm very excited, and you've always been very kind and generous to me in all of our sessions. So we're happy to have you on the show today.

Ziv Peled:
Thank you, Josh, for having me. Yeah. So, almost, next month will be 11 years at AppsFlyer.

Josh Schachter:
11.

Ziv Peled:
What a journey with AppsFlyer for sure. The team is 280, give or take, including support. But it's, I think, I learned so much about this, you know, in this journey. We started doing everything manual to the product that we have today and the the customers that we have today. And I think also, something very, very, related again to relationships. We operate in almost all markets. So, like, the things that I learned in China and how to work with Chinese customers and Japanese and Indian and, in Europe and South America and in Europe, It's it's really was the journey, that taught me almost everything that and the 11 years that I'm going to celebrate next month will be 25% of my life in that company. So also something I think substantial that I'm thinking about, my the post for the 11 years.

Ziv Peled:
But, yeah, last 4 years were very interesting from COVID to, a war in Europe to now a war in where we are headquartered in Israel, which is also a long long war. So the war in Ukraine is still there, and it's long. And we have teams, by the way, both in Ukraine and also a small team in in Russia. And, now for the majority of our team, half of the company, we have a long war in Israel, which we haven't haven't had for years. So I think, you know, we can also maybe speak about that working during or and trying to fly out and not not every

Josh Schachter:
I wanna start there.

Ziv Peled:
Let me do it.

Josh Schachter:
I wanna I wanna start there because, you're actually speaking to us from your safe room, literally. Right? And you're based in Tel Aviv or outside Tel Aviv or in in the city?

Ziv Peled:
In the area.

Josh Schachter:
Okay. Funny community. Let's start like, how has you're in charge of 280 people. Obviously, a lot of them are globally in the States and other places. But you have a big office in Tel Aviv as a company, and and how has how has life changed? I mean, it's been a year now. How has what's the before and after? I I don't even know where to go with that question. I'm sure there'll be follow ups. But, like, how's it been going? Like, what's what's the situation out there in the working world?

Ziv Peled:
Yeah. So I I think, you know, first of all, for for people from outside to understand, like, the the first couple of months were, definitely, extreme. And, like, with missiles, rocket attacks also here, in my city where I where I live, maybe 8 or 9 times, in Tel Aviv, dozens of times, etcetera. But I think that's that's not something that that's something, you know, I don't know if you can imagine. But think about, like, 20 something percent of the workforce on reserve duty for 3, 4, 5, 6 months. I think that's something and then, you know, even so some of the of that is also, spouse spouse, on, like, working, but their spouse is on reserve duty. So a lot of challenges.

Josh Schachter:
So they so they have extra extra household duties and family duties and things like that even if they are working?

Ziv Peled:
Yeah. And and for us, for me as a leader and managing managers, we need to take all that into account. Like, where is their mind, their focus, how to keep them motivated. There's there's so so much. And I think here, being in a global company, it's actually it was, maybe the most positive point in the first couple of months, with our our people in the other teams in Berlin, in London, in and in other places, chipping in. So we had a little bit less of bandwidth, and they took bandwidth. And that's that worked really, really well for a global company. And, again, like, 3 years ago, we've done the same for Ukraine and Russia, and I think that that's, shows how a company operates and if you built a good company and a good culture or not.

Ziv Peled:
Also, people, you know, when you when I look at, people in my team, 10 year. And I see now, some people are starting to now celebrate 10 years. People that joined. So I'm employee number 7, but even employee, I I, presented it to the board. People that joined after me in my teams, in 2013, 2014, and the beginning of 2015, 50% of them are still in the team. That's remarkable.

Jon Johnson:
That is remarkable.

Ziv Peled:
That's that's beyond tenure. That's I call it, you know, when you look at, like, DNA in biology, and there's part of it is memory. And I I call it the organization memory. Now, yes, I can replace a CSM. You can replace a salesperson. You can replace the product manager, but you the that person that is 8 years with us and saw the evolution of the product and the market and the offering, you cannot replace that. And and that's something significant, and, we we really see that in the culture of the company.

Jon Johnson:
One thing I have a question just you know? Sure. We talk a lot about global companies. We talk a lot about, like, the workforces where how we hire or how we develop. But, you know, obviously, you're living through one of the outcomes of a global economy, which is, I currently am not in conflict with our country. Right? But but there are conflicts all around the world. Right? And and when you start interacting on a global scale, whether it's with customers or with employees, you're gonna come into that. Right? And this is this is a very this is a very difficult I can't even begin to fathom the process that not just you as a leader is going through, but also I mean, you know, you're talking with customers. I cannot imagine that there hasn't been an impact, not just on the business side, but also just like the human side.

Jon Johnson:
Right? So one of the things that I think gives you a unique perspective is how you how you kinda, like, balance, like, the fact that, like, we have to pay our bills, but, like, not to put too delicate of a point on it, like, there's bombs dropping. Like, and and there are people that are fighting a war here where you live, but then there's also another conflict in Ukraine, and and that's a different reasoning and that's different purpose and there's different goals and, you know, countries at play. Like, how do you I mean, obviously, you have to, like, look at the human impact here. Right? So how do you balance and even, like, run a business? Like, I can't even I can't do it when my kids are yelling at me in the background. I'm just not to, you know, diminishing any anything here, but this is a heavy, heavy burden. So how do you how do you walk through this space reporting to shareholders and reporting to a board and reporting to leaders within your company? But then also, like, you have this, like, real shit that you have to deal with, and you cannot just say I'll deal with this tomorrow because it is right outside your door.

Ziv Peled:
Yeah. I think, we always, you know, first of all, learn the situation, try to understand. I I connect to that in the beginning of COVID, where I'll tell later, we add some early, very early information about it because we have a Chinese office. Then the beginning of the war in Ukraine and now definitely in the war in Israel, first, we learn what what we are up with. But then very fast, we are communicating, also internally, and I think that's also very, very important because even before going to customers, we have among our employees, you know, we have 1400 people. So we're speaking about, diversity and inclusion. We have already religious, and we need to be also thinking about everyone. It's not about Israel, and so there's no the company is not Israel.

Ziv Peled:
We are a global company. And I think that then, obviously, we help our employees. We are empathizing with them and also with our customers. But then, as as as you, would expect from a company, our our, missing a word. In in the end in the end bottom line, what, we owe our shareholders, employees, and customers is that we operate as a business. And, by the way, this is also this is the best thing for our com for for our country because we only in only in Israel, we're, probably, like, 850 people. So we, this even this year, we're doing very well in business, and we pay a lot of taxes in Israel, and this is exactly what Israel needs. I'll connect, for a second also on the point with COVID.

Ziv Peled:
Believe it or not, I was in December 2019. I was in Beijing.

Josh Schachter:
Oh, wow.

Ziv Peled:
It was very, very early that we we didn't know. Then we had sales kickoff 3 weeks after in Israel, and, Chinese the Chinese team was in Israel. And we had, I believe, with, first points of COVID, I think I was sick the week after because of that. But that was end of January, and then mid February, China was already sick. We we sent a shipment from Israel to China of masks, And then, like, that was the the last shipment that anyone ever sent from Israel to China, then all the masks came from China to the other side of the world. But that was very, very funny because we add that information from how our Chinese office, dealt with that in January February, and we know what to expect. We closed the office before in Israel or all over the world before the government in Israel decided to close offices and, canceled the events in March. It was very, very, interesting, and I think that from that, we know how to cope with, let's say, crisis Yeah.

Ziv Peled:
Faster.

Jon Johnson:
That's that's I mean, that's that's taken a very, like, healthy approach to some very, very heavy moments. Right? And I think that's one of the things that is so unique about this global environment that we're in right now. Like, my first job was at a McDonald's in Woodinville, Washington, and somebody got sick and we learned how to not get sick from that one person. Right? But we're talking about these things that are spreading and cross borders. Right? And taking the approach of, you know, this is a crisis, and how do we address it as a global market? Like, that's incredible. I don't know many people, that have that perspective. So you're you're coming into it from that. Chrissy, I feel like you you've been, like, itching to jump in here.

Jon Johnson:
But you're muted, so it doesn't matter.

Kristi Faltorusso:
I was muted because the dog was barking. So in all fairness, like, I want to mute to be respectful because my dog is atrocious and horrible. Okay. So listen. I think as leaders, we all did our best to navigate, like, the pandemic as an example the best we could. And and for most leaders, they hadn't faced a challenge like this before. It was the first time for a lot of people. And so I guess I'm curious to to hear from you.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Like, what was your approach to communication with, like, we still have to do this stuff as a business, and we still have to hit these goals, And we still like, this still matters while also being empathetic to the fact that everything around them personally might be falling apart. Like, what was your balance of that? Because, I mean, even pandemic agnostic. Right? Like, you even forget that. Even everyone's just day to day life when the world isn't falling apart around all of us, everyone is still navigating so many things personally. Right? Like, John's a great example of somebody who's got a lot going on outside of work. And I think we all we all do. We all have, you know, varying degrees of things. How do you help drive balance of prioritizing the business and driving what needs to happen at work while also taking to the into consideration these other things?

Ziv Peled:
Yeah. I I think, first of all, like, everything in life, you need to build trust. And I think, you know, company with employees, shareholders, and and customers, I think that, we already had trust from before. But the first, let's say, 2 or 4 weeks, we just said to employees, focus on your family, on on on on the house, your your neighborhood, and then company comes last. And and if if you feel that you can't, we'll we'll make it work. Someone else will take it. And I think that's, you know, obviously, if if you, week weeks after, it was all about how to get back to business. But I think that building that trust and supporting everyone, it was very similar in COVID.

Ziv Peled:
I think in COVID, we were not well trained about that and it was a little bit harder for us. But, I think that all starts from from building that trust. And I think that that trust is also something, you know, you get to keep until you you break it at some point. But, like, we got we we get a lot of credit, I think from mainly internally, but, like, we get a lot of credit for that.

Josh Schachter:
Well, actually, there there is, like, a trust equation. Right? And I know one of the factors in the trust equation is time. Time that you've been together. So the fact that you have such longevity in your company, all your employees that you guys have been together for so many years, I'm sure that factors into it too. Like, you're you are a family and you act together and you support each other. It's not just going through the motions of that. I I can imagine that really helped you out. What, was there anything, like, structural or, like, to Christy's point, was there anything any active changes in the way you operated that helped you that no? Like like, different types of stand ups or different communication types or, like, any types of different goal setting? Like, anything real, like, structural?

Ziv Peled:
In in COVID, a lot. You know, we changed the the like, how we work, I'm sure.

Josh Schachter:
But but for the for the war in Israel. No.

Ziv Peled:
I think yeah. No. I think we are very trained to work remote. Yeah. And then even that, wasn't for a long time. Like, you know, only when really that we will be, worked remote. And even now, I think that, you know, it's and now it's post COVID, post, the first days of war, we're we're getting more into the office because we believe, and, you know, I see I saw that in many companies all over the world. We believe that that face to face is, you know, you cannot compare it to anything.

Ziv Peled:
So we're, asking our employees to come 3 3 days a a week fixed. So, you know, the ICs and the management is all together in those 3 days, and then managers come 4 days a week. Executive, 5.

Josh Schachter:
Cool. Should we go on? Let's move on. Let's move on to,

Ziv Peled:
let's speak about happiness.

Josh Schachter:
Let's let's speak about happiness. Well, the next question actually on my mind is not necessarily happiness, but I want to know we want to know what's a big rock that you're pushing up a hill right now or getting into Q4, end of year. What's something that, you know, challenge or an objective that you're really working hard on?

Ziv Peled:
There's there's a few rocks. I'm gonna I'm trying to push all, but I think in in the end, it's really for now, for me as an executive is, planning 2025 and be able to from that to push 2026 because, again, I cannot say all the numbers, but, as, at least what is public, we crossed $400,000,000 in ARR. So think about growth that we that, like, the the pace of our growth, and we need to do it again next year and maybe even faster. So now we are looking at, like, what are all these initiatives and the efficiencies of the go to market teams and the I'm sitting both in the management of the go to market team and also have a seat in the product leadership. So it's like, and when you wanna grow, so significantly, then, yeah, you need to be very, very efficient in the go to market, but you also need to make sure that you have the growth engine in the product. So, again, I I can say from my 11th year at AppSpire, it's something that, for sure, I never done before. That scale and, but it's very, very interesting. And, you know, to mix all that, I think we can mix also AI.

Ziv Peled:
Like, we're trying both to buy and build, and I'm I'm waiting to see the fruits of that as well. I'm looking at all my vendors, from even from beginning of last year to see who will be the vendor that will bring AI for real, not like what's Salesforce say? I can say Salesforce because they always keep on blowing that on on an AI. They say AI, but they're not providing anything. I hope they're not sponsoring this. No.

Jon Johnson:
No. No. Well, now they're not alone. Yeah. Now they're not.

Ziv Peled:
They're not. I'm kidding.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Thanks a lot.

Ziv Peled:
Yeah. But but but I think, I I I think that a AI is definitely the the next thing, but we need to find, like, it's not gen AI. Mhmm. It's something else.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. So what is it?

Ziv Peled:
And we need to find it.

Jon Johnson:
Josh wants you to answer. Tell the whole world what it

Ziv Peled:
is specifically. I'll I'll I'll say I'll say the sentence just, you you heard that sentence probably 6 times. I want AI to tell my CSM that last year was managing 20 customers, but I want them to manage 40 customers. Yeah. I want them to tell them next today or tomorrow morning, who is the next customer they need to approach? Mhmm. In what channel, what contact, and in what context? That's it. That's

Jon Johnson:
And is everybody listening? Because you're right. I mean, that's every CSM that I talk to is, like, we have all these great tools that are disparate, that do not talk, that do not share, and are not intelligent. They just yeah. It's help me write an email. It's great. Help me, you know, create a a meme to make my customer laugh. That's awesome. Cool.

Jon Johnson:
Brad, I've got my LinkedIn post. Awesome. Which is cool, but this is just scratching the surface. Like, if we can actually get true intelligence behind this, you're right. Like, this is kind of the promise that every customer platform that they started, the Gainsights and the to tangos and the churn zeros is what they said. We're gonna give you indicators on what health is and where they're coming from. But the problem with that is all all data is messy, and you have to have a human clean it up. And this is the perfect job for a slave AI just to go in and make heads or tails of what's happening and and identifying for us to, like, say yes or no.

Jon Johnson:
Let's follow this. Let's not follow this. Who do you see in the market? Like, what is there anybody that you're watching that is is kind of, like, maybe cracking the code on this or or starting to maybe kinda look at this, like, from a from a platform perspective?

Ziv Peled:
There's a lot of startups that,

Jon Johnson:
Too many.

Ziv Peled:
Yeah. I keep speaking with lots of startups. And, you know, when betting on startups, you also need to see, like, it's a combination of, like, the team, you know, funding, and, like, I believe that this this group of people will be here in 4 years. Maybe I'll I'll I'll surprise you, but I think and and also, I think Josh knows that from if you remember, we spoke about it a few times in the past. I think currently, the closest, is will surprise you. It's not the CS platforms. It's Gong.

Jon Johnson:
Gong. Yeah. Absolutely.

Ziv Peled:
Gong is very close. Now it's not enough because Gong was also close to provide me sentiment, since I bought, since I subscribed to Gong, but I'm not getting sentiment. And, I I definitely, expect sentiment from a platform that I pay so much for.

Josh Schachter:
But you're asking for you're you're suggesting in some sense, it's a health scoring because it's a, hey, this is we've seen these signals that there's something that we should be proactive in addressing. Right? So effectively, that's a version of a health score. Is Gong actually does has Gong give me that somewhat?

Ziv Peled:
I'm not looking for an l score. I was never an l score fan. I I I believe we need an l score. We have an l score in Looker, but, I'm I'm not a fan of l score. What I expect from the platform, and Gong can provide it, but can be someone else, is that saying, I have 20 accounts. And in those 20 accounts, I interact with 600 people, but those out of those 600 people, 90 are the significant relationships that you're champions, decision makers, or executives. Right. And the next thing that I need to do tomorrow morning is to connect with company a.

Ziv Peled:
And in company a, I need to speak with Frank. And Frank, best best to approach Frank over Slack around 19 9:54 AM. And according to the CICD of our side and their adoption of features on our side, I should speak with them on feature a, b, and c. And by the way, feature b is going to launch a new feature next week. That's

Josh Schachter:
You and I have been talking about this for years. You're not talking about this 4 years ago. You wanna you you know, because you have this amazing Looker dashboard, and you've got engineers that are devoted to it, and it's got all this data. And we should talk about that a little bit. But you always said to me, the the one thing you could build is basically you know, right now, I've got all my CSMs, and I have to trust their evaluation of the relationship with each account with each stakeholder. And is it multi threaded enough? And what does this person say? And am I close what you had, like, a rubric, like, am I close enough to them where they can they'll take my call or I'll close enough to them? What was what was your what was your selection?

Ziv Peled:
When I ask a CSM to, create a relationship and then update it every 30 to 60 days, I ask them to update 2 things, and they have the open notes if they want to add a little bit of notes about the relation. I asked about the relationship strength, and there I can automate that, but I cannot automate it globally for all CSMs. Sorry. I continue to have it manually. Mhmm. And I'm saying, like, if you email that person and they return same day, it's 5 out of 5. They return tomorrow, 4 out of 5. This week, 3 out of 5.

Ziv Peled:
Next week, 2 out of 5, very hard to reach, 1 out of 5. It was also, proven that, like, engagement level is the strength of the relationship. And the second question is Wait.

Josh Schachter:
Is that is that literally your scoring method for that? Like, that's actually

Ziv Peled:
scoring method

Josh Schachter:
Yeah.

Ziv Peled:
For that. And the second part is how how well do I know them. He's like and then

Jon Johnson:
your depth. Yeah.

Ziv Peled:
Yeah. That's for me, you know, that it's it's, how many times they spoke with that person. Do I know information about them? So only your I know Christy and Josh very well. Now I feel I know John very well also. I think we we got to 4 out of 5 in one call. That's amazing. I I would definitely have a a lot of icebreakers

Jon Johnson:
Yes.

Ziv Peled:
For the next call. And and that's exactly it because I was a customer success manager, and I'm not a great customer success manager. I I'm good at product. I'm very technical, and I'm good I I can remember things from 17 years ago. So those two things are very connected. When when I present my belief on relationships, I always present a Bain and Co company that's something that 30 things that you can do for the other side. It can be your employee. It can be your customer.

Ziv Peled:
That is in addition to the value of the product, but that can you you are providing a lot of value. And then on the low end, very easy is that I can do things to the customer to save them time, budget. That those are the easy thing. But people connect very not not top eye, but very eye to nostalgia, to the things that we remember to Mhmm. You know, each and every one of us as customers. So customers connect and remembers really well the onboarding Even if it was 6 years ago, you remember a crappy one, and for sure, you remember the best.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah.

Ziv Peled:
One of my best superhuman.

Jon Johnson:
Oh, yeah. No. I've I've got a a bunch of friends that have used used them and have positive experiences as well.

Ziv Peled:
I'm using for 4 years, and, last week, I had a a 30 minute call because I wanted to catch up and learn how to do things. And then, like, it was scheduled to for tomorrow. Go on a I I got everything answered. That's like and it reminded me the onboarding. In the onboarding, they didn't want to, onboard me because I had an iPhone, but I didn't have a Mac. Oh. So I switched to a Mac for Superhuman.

Jon Johnson:
That's that's a that's a case study right there. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Well, Ziv, one day, we will gather. We will earn your business. I've been trying for 4 years. But but you know what? Now our mission for our product, UpdateAI, is to build the best customer knowledge graph of all the interactions and relationships. And, of course, we're building out more features in the actual platform and stuff, but that's not really the big mission. The big mission is exactly, I finally got there. I finally am taking what you're preaching, and that's the goal.

Josh Schachter:
Because I think that that context is what you're talking about. And in a world where data is accessible to anybody, there's no more data advantage. Mhmm. So from my perspective as a start up founder, it's the contextual advantage.

Jon Johnson:
Yep.

Josh Schachter:
And the and you could it could be around the product usage and stuff like that. But to me, like, I'm a relationships guy as well. Many might be That's a surprise. Specialists who listen to this podcast all the time. But, and it's it's getting the context about the relationship, all those nuances, to be able to then serve that, whether it's serving it in Salesforce or in HubSpot or on our platform or in Slack or whatever, like, I'm a big believer in that. So we will get you soon.

Jon Johnson:
I love that. Well, Josh, like, not to just, like, blow sunshine up your skirt, but just, like, there there is a lot of value. Like, customer con everybody's talking about data. You're right. Everybody has data. And the more data that we have, like, all of these AI tools are being built to ingest data. Right? But it's maybe good data, maybe bad data. I love the way that you're thinking about this from a context standpoint, because you're right.

Jon Johnson:
Like, if I have a graph of all 1,000 users that I I've either met with, or emailed with, or talked to or not talked to or avoided, that all feeds into this this pinpoint. Right? I think about it like me playing with a little laser pointer with my kitty cat. Right? And it's like, okay. You're gonna go over here right now. Like, I want AI to be that laser pointer to kinda focus on what my attention is. And if we use all of these things, like customer context and your product data, like Pendo, or usage data, like user testing, then we actually have this more robust that is not just here's click on, log on, log off. It's like, Josh has had a really hard month. Yeah.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. You know? Like, we gotta give him some love. Like, how do we give that guy some love?

Ziv Peled:
The the the funny part is that, we we don't need a lot of AI to do the basic things like, what, Josh saw in the in the past already. What we have in Looker for our customer success managers is is fully rule based. We don't need AI. And it's just looking at think about 3 main buckets. So it looks about the engagement with the user, emails, Zendesk tickets, Gong recordings, meetings if you log a meeting, etcetera. And then the 2nd bucket is usage of the product. And the 3rd bucket, which maybe the most important for b to b SaaS is decision making rank. So Yeah.

Ziv Peled:
If I saw you in a previous opportunity, and we have 2 types of opportunities, we have an opportunity for feature adoption, non premium. So you get some score, but not stopped. And if you were part of an opportunity, or you are the account owner in our, Salesforce settings, then you you get rank 1. And then when when I look at all these things together, so if I'm from the CSM of that company, a, and I have a a a relationship with that Steve, and we know that Steve engage as a lot with us, uses the product a lot, and is a a decision maker. So it's super important, and that's a great relationship. If I see another person, Frank, and

Jon Johnson:
We love Frank.

Ziv Peled:
Yeah. And and and and, very strong engagement, very strong usage, but I you you can see in Salesforce, I don't have a relationship with Frank. So the very, very stupid, system that we've built saying I I should build a relationship with Frank, should engage, you should map it, and you should identify if he's a champion, decision maker, or an executive, and then there's a playbook.

Jon Johnson:
Well, it's fine.

Kristi Faltorusso:
And and

Ziv Peled:
AI can just take it scalable.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I I I really like that model because, like, again, like, you just most of us are just looking at a contact sheet of just, like, a user. Oh, this guy logs in all the time. Like, I should build a relationship with him. Like, maybe. Sure.

Jon Johnson:
Like, for sure. But, like, if we do have this intelligence around how they interact with people, like, they're responsive to marketing emails. They're going to webinars. They're going and we have kind of all of these little things in the background that says, like it's kinda like a dating app. Right? Like, you're swiping on, like, the highest what's your outcome? Like, I want them to email me. And if I'm just sitting here blasting a 1,000 people emails and hoping against hope that somebody's gonna take me up on an offer for drinks or whatever it is. It's an absolute waste of time, and it's a waste of intelligence too. Like, there is a smarter way to do this to say, let's use Frank where it's like, this guy is great.

Jon Johnson:
He engages with everything on LinkedIn. He shows up to in person events. Like, if you email him and you, like, he's gonna meet you for dinner or he's gonna meet you for a at a conference somewhere, and you're gonna be able to build a relationship with them because of these factors. That's all that I have to do. I can I can now reduce the 80% output of wasted time of just, like, sending emails into the oblivion, which eventually pisses people off because they unsubscribe and they filter you out, and then it just there's a lot of diminishing returns there?

Ziv Peled:
So I

Jon Johnson:
I love the way that you're thinking about this. But I've

Ziv Peled:
can I ask

Kristi Faltorusso:
you a question here? Because you you Yes. You and I have had this conversation. We have talked at length about your strategy around relationships being a primary driver, and I I think it's an amazing approach for the right companies. Right? Like, and in the right models. It's not gonna work in like, listen, if you're Calendly, your strategy probably not gonna be the thing that they're gonna be investing in. So I wanna pivot back to AI because as you think about What

Josh Schachter:
do you sorry.

Ziv Peled:
Take that back. What do

Josh Schachter:
you mean Calendly? You're not gonna be a thing? Can you explain? Well,

Kristi Faltorusso:
like, listen. It's it's a it's a point solution. The CEO of your company is probably not going to get on calls and build relationships with Calendly. Right? Like, you have to understand the value of your like, who you are as a product in a company and what the strategy is. Right? Calendly is also probably not investing 100 of 1,000 of dollars in investing in all their customers. Right? They're not staffing a a low leverage ratio for all their CSMs to have

Josh Schachter:
10 customers. Down the the weeds of that, but, like,

Jon Johnson:
the Chris do that.

Josh Schachter:
But I will. No. No. No. But Calendly is exactly the example. Right?

Kristi Faltorusso:
Yeah. On high end. Yes. But not across the board. Oh. Right? Like, they have a very yes. It's subscription. Exactly.

Kristi Faltorusso:
So it's not a it's not a one size fits all. No. No. No. And I get that.

Jon Johnson:
Zip's like, do do you need me?

Kristi Faltorusso:
Everything. No.

Ziv Peled:
Same here. We have a long tail team, and the long tail team doesn't build relationships.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Right. So it's just different. Right. So that's what I'm just saying. It's a different approach and strategy depending on who you're serving and what the strategy is.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah.

Ziv Peled:
But I

Kristi Faltorusso:
wanna go back to AI because I think you've hit on a few things, and I want you to validate something for me. I wrote an article back in March, and I kind of I kind of put together this bucket of, like, 5 p's of how I saw customer success getting value from AI. And I said it would be proact it would help us be proactive, predictive, productive, prescriptive, and personalized. And those were my 5 things. And I said, if AI can do those 5 things for me as a customer success professional and I wrote down all these examples of how I envisioned it in the use cases of customer success. Do you feel like if you had AI that was serving that proactive, predictive productive, prescriptive, and personalized, that it would be hitting on majority of the use cases for you to a to the point where you said, I'd be getting immense value from that?

Ziv Peled:
Yeah. 100% fully agree on all those piece. I think we are missing 1 s. We're missing the strategic. But for the

Kristi Faltorusso:
the Sure.

Ziv Peled:
Fully fully agree on that because

Kristi Faltorusso:
I don't want AI to automate all my strategy. But okay. Yeah. No. No. No. No. I I I

Ziv Peled:
I I I I tell you what what I am looking for AI to do that the humans will not be perfect in, so I think what, customers in enterprise b to b, customer success managers needs to be very, very strategic about it's not only about, like I I I look at it as a triangle. So there's a person that I work with, and I need to connect it to a business desired outcome. Like, what are they looking to yet? And and there's always 2 things. So there's something personal for them and something big for the company. It can be a KPI. Sure. But in the end, it's something like that. That company bought me to save $5,000,000, and then that person in that team is working on 20% of that, and it it's going to work from reducing cost in something something less, to employees or whatever.

Ziv Peled:
And then it's really hard for sales managers, customer success managers to really be strategic about that thing over the next 12 months and then after the renewal over the next 12 months. And I think the the 5 ps are going to get us to maybe 80%, and then we need someone to push us to be strategic.

Kristi Faltorusso:
And But would you challenge your team to say, like, okay. That's your job. I'm paying you to do the 20%. Like, we'll get 80% of your job covered because AI will inform you on what to do, how to do it, when to do it, everything. Right? Like, AI covers the actions and activity based on those 5 p's. But, like, at what point do you say we still have people because they bring value because they're strategic? Now if you're trying to say, no. AI is gonna do that as well. Do we need people?

Jon Johnson:
Well, I think that's where you define the strat strategic, Christy. Because I I think I think that that that you also have to look at skill set. Right? I mean, like, you cannot every CSM isn't gonna have 10 years of experience around strategy. There is going to be a playbook. I I don't think of it as, like, the application of the strategy, but I almost think of it as AI coming in and doing, like, baseline playbooks where it's like, here's a thought. Like, here's something that the AI is gonna come up and try these 5 steps, and and then obviously, the human is gonna come back in and say, this is how I'm going to do it, and then there's the feedback loop for for AI. So I just I see that from it's a way to get people upscale very quickly. Right?

Ziv Peled:
Agree about

Kristi Faltorusso:
let's talk about the real impact of people then. So if I'm a CSM and I've gone this route of being an IC for 20 years in my career and I've I pride myself on my ability to do this job, am I no longer a valued asset because Bob who's got 2 years experience can now use AI because it has strategy.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. I see your point. I because I've never, like, said

Kristi Faltorusso:
the bigger impact to the market and to, like, the people. Right? Because that customer success, we so heavily anchor on people.

Jon Johnson:
Well okay. So but, I mean, you know, I know we're we've got, like, 32 seconds before this podcast ends, so we're gonna fit it all in right here. But no. I I think that you gotta look at it from the same perspective as a human does. Right? So if you put your 20 years experience against a book of business, you're gonna try and fail. That's just the way that it works. You're gonna try something, it's not gonna work. That's all that AI is doing, is it's just trying and failing much faster.

Jon Johnson:
So I think what it is is it will allow folks that have those 20 years of experience to actually have a value add to speak into the way that these plays are being developed, and it will give you the opportunity to have a larger impact, not just on your customer base, but also on the folks that have only been doing this for 2 years.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Okay. So our strategy that you're still valuable because how you approach this is still very different.

Jon Johnson:
And l every single thing that is built on an l m LLM has to have an input. And if we are looking at inputs from just data on data, it's gonna get really fucked up. But if we look at it as, okay, Christy is a principal and she's got all this experience, We're actually gonna key a lot of information on her, and she's gonna drive the strategy for a team of 5 CSMs. And then her feedback loop is gonna be in a 1 on 1 session. It's gonna empower leaders. It's gonna empower folks that do have a wealth of information and experience to then feed hyper specific niche opportunities within the book and the segment that you're in based on a much larger output. Instead of, I'm working on one account that's $10,000,000, it's taking all of my time, and I cannot actually have a large impact on the other CSMs in this team. That is a siloed approach.

Jon Johnson:
We're actually gonna be breaking things out of the silo.

Josh Schachter:
Maybe. I I mean, I don't know. I think that it will it benefit it could. I think it it will benefit everybody. It will benefit people that are more tenured and more seasoned in their career, but it will probably help the more younger generation and less 10 year generation catch up quicker. Yeah. Right? But that's, I mean, that's just life in some sense. Right? That's the evolution of

Ziv Peled:
Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Of industrial progress.

Jon Johnson:
That's Josh's get off my lawn moment.

Josh Schachter:
No. Like, I'm old tires. No. No. But it listen. It's the same thing for UpdateAI. Let me tell you. Like, we started building our own AI 4 years ago.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. I didn't know what OpenAI was.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Yeah.

Ziv Peled:
I

Josh Schachter:
didn't open up what no. But not before anybody else. But, like, I didn't know what OpenAI was and stuff like that. Right? And it's the same thing as that. Like, like, you know, and then you've got folks that come along right afterwards, and they're able to like, it's AI, OpenAI, and and ALM still give me an advantage, a 100%. Right?

Ziv Peled:
Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
But it's helped it's given more of a lift to the folks that just started 9 months ago.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Yeah. They didn't have to they didn't have to waste all the 4 years, right, investing all that time. Right. And so

Josh Schachter:
I didn't have to waste the last 10 years investing with my Microsoft account, right? Like, as a as a CSM. Ziv, final thoughts?

Ziv Peled:
Yeah. I think, AI is definitely going to help here significantly, and I think the 5 ps and strategy, I think in the end, it will create people more time.

Jon Johnson:
5 p plus.

Josh Schachter:
Oh, by the way, the 5 ps, you need the s at the end to be the p's. Right?

Ziv Peled:
So it

Josh Schachter:
is 5 p's. PS.

Ziv Peled:
Right? So and then I think it will create people more time. And then I think what's what we really need in the framework that AI might might might help significantly is to, identify and tell us what is that strategy that we're trying to define with the customer. And then, the humans will be the ones that will get the price of we are able to move the customers needed. I think that, you know, that it it can work in currently. It can work in Upslier. It can work with a lot of other b to b SaaS. In the end, there's a huge segment of enterprises that are buying our solutions that we can we can generate a lot of more revenue from. And then that's the way to do it.

Ziv Peled:
We need to to prove to prove and for them to see that we are moving their need.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Ziv Eled, CCO of AppsFlyer.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. This is really cool.

Josh Schachter:
Appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you. John, welcome back. Thank you. Really Yeah. So much respect for all you've been through and the way that you've handled it with, like, just amazing spirits as always as you bring to everything in life. Thanks, man.

Josh Schachter:
And, Ziv, I'll I'll we'll find time next week. We'll we'll ingest some Gong calls, and I'll show you some real insights.

Jon Johnson:
I love that.

Josh Schachter:
Oh. Oh. Gone thrown down. Guys.

Ziv Peled:
Bye.