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Josh Schachter:
Hello, everybody. I’m Josh Schechter, the cohost with The Most, and I’m here with Johnny and Bonnie. My you like that, John?

John:
That was terrible.

Josh Schachter:
I know. I know. Well, it’s not as bad as cohost with the most. So John Johnson, my cohost, and Bonnie Hart, the chief customer officer at where do you work, Bonnie? Because it’s changed.

Bonnie Hart:
Since you and I talked, Josh, it’s now OpExis plus Case Point. We had a big event.

John:
Big old merger.

Bonnie Hart:
Had a big life event since we spoke.

Josh Schachter:
I did. I got engaged. Yes. Yes. And Oh, I thought

John:
they were talking about the hair transplant.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. I got a hair transplant. So, you know, as soon as these puppies grow, no longer no more caps on this podcast for me. So wait. So I so is the is the plus part of the name, or is that

Bonnie Hart:
just now. It is for now. So this is hot off the press as of a matter of days ago.

Josh Schachter:
Wow.

Bonnie Hart:
We, merged with, OpExys, merged with CasePoint, and, both two incredible organizations and two, incredibly powerful technologies coming together, under Thoma Bravo’s investment.

Josh Schachter:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Midas touched there for those guys. That’s great. Okay.

Bonnie Hart:
Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Wait. Time out. Listening. Here she is.

Bonnie Hart:
Hi. Hi, friend. Good to see you.

Christy:
It’s so good to see you. I’m sorry, guys. I was in an escalation meeting. So

Josh Schachter:
Oh, tell us more.

Bonnie Hart:
Wouldn’t know anything about that.

Christy:
What do you wanna know?

Josh Schachter:
I wanna know all about the escalation meeting.

Christy:
It fucking sucks.

Josh Schachter:
Well, you know we’re recording live.

John:
Recording this as live,

Bonnie Hart:
Christie. Of course it is. Thank you.

John:
No. But, Christie, no. This is so great. Back. I’m gonna say something because Bonnie just shared something. Christie, Bonnie’s company’s comp we just merged with another company under the Thoma Bravo banner. Isn’t that interesting?

Bonnie Hart:
I see why am I. Yeah. I see why.

John:
Anybody else I see why. That has gone through that experience before with Thoma Bravo?

Christy:
Do you wanna talk about it?

John:
We probably shouldn’t.

Christy:
Probably not.

Josh Schachter:
Everybody’s left in the dark except for you two.

John:
I know. Bonnie, we, I work at user testing, and we went through the Thoma Bravo acquisition and merger six months ago.

Bonnie Hart:
Oh, my.

John:
And I’m so happy to announce that I’m on the job market

Bonnie Hart:
Oh, wow.

Josh Schachter:
As a result.

Christy:
Okay. We haven’t decided if it’s cause or effect yet. So

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. To be clear, John volunteered out of Thoma Bravo.

Christy:
Okay.

John:
We’re gonna have to edit that out, Josh.

Josh Schachter:
Oh, okay. We will edit that out.

John:
I’m serious. Like, I just signed I just signed an iron tight

Josh Schachter:
Well, then why don’t you talk without leaving?

John:
I I’m leaving. Because he’s done a

Christy:
hard job. You don’t need to provide all the details, Josh.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah.

Christy:
This is like, Bonnie, let me just tell you something. I sent

John:
We’ve taken this over.

Christy:
I sent my friend Josh a text message. I screenshotted a conversation I was having with another friend. I sent him the screenshot of the text just to, like happen. Share some, like, good news who’s positive, thankfully. I can’t imagine if it wasn’t. And Josh I

Josh Schachter:
still do it.

Christy:
Without asking, without any permission, takes the screenshot, makes a LinkedIn post out of it.

Josh Schachter:
Yep.

Christy:
Now not only did he not ask me, but I didn’t get a chance to the person I screenshotted my conversation with didn’t know that I was taking a screenshot of their conversation. And Josh put it on LinkedIn. So I have

Josh Schachter:
to Josh

John:
is like the king.

Christy:
Apologize via a comment on LinkedIn. Can you believe him?

Josh Schachter:
There’s no apology. It’s mutual friends in the New York community. He was saying very nice, lovely things that were flattering. There’s no apology needed. I work in his off you know, I work in his office once a week now.

Bonnie Hart:
Right.

Christy:
Do you?

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. I do. Just because they have extra space, and I get lonely in my apartment.

John:
He gets lonely. So Hey, Josh. We’re filled we’re this is a podcast. Right?

Josh Schachter:
No. Yeah. But this is

John:
a podcast?

Bonnie Hart:
Oh, I got

Christy:
a therapy. It’s time out now.

Josh Schachter:
We are time out. I think

Bonnie Hart:
he’s talking about being Bonnie

Josh Schachter:
Bonnie has no idea what she’s doing.

Bonnie Hart:
Talk more about them?

John:
Yeah. I love Bonnie already. I’m

Christy:
Bonnie Bonnie is the best. Me and Bonnie go way

Bonnie Hart:
back. Way way back.

Josh Schachter:
Okay. Can we bring this back? Because we’re still in the time out section right now for Manali. So we need to actually bring it back to, like Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So we need to bring it back to, like, you know, game on, game off, wings world. Right?

Christy:
So what are

Bonnie Hart:
you saying?

Christy:
Game on?

Josh Schachter:
So okay. So

John:
This is on the record.

Josh Schachter:
Manali, who is listening, we love you. From the time that we exposed John’s leaving Tomoko.

Christy:
We’re not exposing John anywhere.

Josh Schachter:
Until until he exposes himself. We are going to John. You’re going to start to take take over the whole thing. Reannounce like that you were leaving or that you were taken over. Give Manali something she can cut back to. Okay. Ready? Manali, we’re gonna go back to it. Ready, set.

John:
Yeah. So I don’t know if you heard this, but, I work at user testing. And, about six months ago, we were acquired and merged under the Tomah Bravo banner. So I actually am coming out the other end of what you’re about to experience. I’m actually really excited to hear, what that looks like for you guys and how that’s kinda transforming the organization that you have.

Bonnie Hart:
Yeah. Super exciting for us. You know, like I said, this is really fresh. We just announced a few matter of days ago, merged the teams together. We’re still really exploring all of the aspects across people, across

Josh Schachter:
Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.

Josh Schachter:
You you announced this a couple of days ago, and you’ve merged the teams together. I call bullshit. Yeah. Like, you’re good, Donnie, but you’re not that good.

John:
Yeah. I’ll tell you, Josh. As soon as we got the words with Goma Bravo, it was like, this is user Zoom. We’re user testing. You have a Slack channel.

Josh Schachter:
Really?

John:
And it was I mean, it was great. Like, I I assume, like, the communication is very much like, this is happening. Get ready for

Christy:
Yeah.

Bonnie Hart:
Fill in

John:
the blank, and then you just kinda build the plane in the air.

Josh Schachter:
So we’re we’re we are recording this 02/06/2025. There will be a couple week delay. Our podcast producer is going on some family excursions for a few weeks. So this in in a few weeks from now, it’s gonna be if you’ve already merged, then I don’t even wanna know what’s gonna happen as far as your Oh, so much profit.

John:
Gonna buy, like, 10 more companies, and then it’s gonna be it’s gonna be a unicorn. Like, that’s just

Bonnie Hart:
That’s right.

John:
And, Bonnie, you’re gonna be on top of it all.

Josh Schachter:
Okay. So so where are you now in your cycle of of I was gonna say, like, your grief cycle, but, like, where are you right now in, like, your in your in your emotional cycle? Like, where where is everybody now in this process?

Christy:
Is it just smile on her face.

Bonnie Hart:
In front of the She’s ready for

Christy:
the exam.

Josh Schachter:
I’m not gonna make that that assumption. Okay.

Bonnie Hart:
Yeah. You can you can assume Christy knows me well enough. So, actually, when Christy and I met, about a decade ago, actually, a little over a decade ago Yeah. I was at a company called GovDelivery, g o v delivery, that, was purchased by Vista private equity

John:
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Bonnie Hart:
That emerged with Granicus, a similar company. So here we are where Christy and I used to joke that there used to be more pizzas than people at our customer success meetups. Here we are

John:
Wait a

Josh Schachter:
second. That that’s that’s the John Gleason CS meetup joke. You stole the John Gleason. That’s that’s. Right? Junan’s Well,

Christy:
they take so she’s using it as an analogy. John sadly was an experience.

Josh Schachter:
That’s true. That’s true. Okay. Okay.

Christy:
And I met when the CS New York community was, like That’s right. 10 people.

Bonnie Hart:
Yeah. Right. Wow. Right. We had one little tiny happy hour of some really great women and have been, in touch ever since. And then flash forward, you know, through a lot of great experiences. Now here I am in a very similar position with, great, private equity investors doing the exact same thing, merging two companies together. So it’s super fun.

Josh Schachter:
Wow. Okay. So do you already have the playbook, like, written for you? Like, what’s the process? Or how many days in are you, and what’s the process looks like? Like, I want the day by day on this thing. This is exciting.

Bonnie Hart:
We are a weekend officially today. K. So all the announcements and, you know, celebrations and conversations went went live last week. All of the teams, were meeting and introducing people. We are getting to know, you know, what do you do over there? There? Here’s how we do it over here. Right? We we say this. You say that. Right? It’s really fun.

Bonnie Hart:
Everyone’s got great energy getting to know each other from a, you know, customer perspective, from people, processes, all of those things. So it’s still really fresh and exciting, and folks have a ton of curiosity about where they can plug in on their respective, counterparts.

John:
When a question for you because one of the things that I really enjoyed about even just like the merging of these two companies Yeah. So Thoma Bravo had acquired, our main competitor, I think, like, a year before the merge. Mhmm. And they brought us in. And then, yeah, I mean, it’s been a really we just released, like, our combined platform and all that kind of stuff, and it’s been a lot of really fun stuff.

Bonnie Hart:
Yeah.

John:
But, like, the counterparts, like, on paper, you’re like, oh, CSM. CSM. But then, like, you talk about what you do, and our engagement models were so drastically different. And I know that’s not necessarily like the way that folks look at ledgers when they’re combining companies. But I’d love to hear kinda how you’re thinking about, looking at, like, engagement styles and engagement models. Is there a good overlap between the customer bases of the two companies, or are you finding some gaps in there?

Josh Schachter:
Hey, John. Kind of. Josh. Yes. Please. Please. Please. Please.

Josh Schachter:
Please. Please. Because I did a really like, I did a John Johnson. I didn’t I I I kinda flubbed the initial intro of Bonnie. I Bonnie, like, what do you do? What does OPEXUS do?

John:
Forty two minutes into the rep into the episode.

Josh Schachter:
Can you tell before you tell us about, like, the engagement models and stuff like that, like Yeah. You know, tell us a little bit about what the process

Bonnie Hart:
do.

Christy:
Set the stage.

John:
This is what we get for scheduling 04:45 on a Thursday.

Josh Schachter:
Yes.

Bonnie Hart:
I know. It’s thirsty Thursday. It’s probably happy hour in a few minutes. Right? Mhmm. So I’m Bonnie Hart. I’m chief customer officer of OpExis plus CasePoint. And the plus is new, since I last spoke to you because we were just merged, together under Thoma Bravo from, an investment perspective. So my job, then and now is to make sure that we’re delivering the best service possible across all of the post sales experience.

Bonnie Hart:
So that encompasses everything from implementation, onboarding, training, customer success, which is important to to you and your audiences, through to ongoing reoccurring services that you would see in a typical SaaS organization. So that’s what I’m responsible for, and that’s what I have the the privilege of working with my teams to do.

Josh Schachter:
What what do the companies do?

Bonnie Hart:
Yeah. Great question. So the the companies are, you know, kind of wonder twin powers activating together. We from the legacy OPEXA side, we specialize in case management, software for the government. So if you’ve heard of a FOIA request, a Freedom of Information Act request, which is hot in the news right now, that is where, our software comes in. We process the our software process is the majority of FOIA requests that go to the federal government.

Josh Schachter:
I love that I love that so much, by the way. It’s like, do the the most unsexy thing in the world that has government compliance and forces people to go through this painstaking process and just profiteer off of it.

Christy:
Josh, if you think that’s the most unsexy software thing out there, then you haven’t had enough conversations. There is far worse. There are. Go deep in manufacturing.

Bonnie Hart:
Yeah. That’s true. That’s Christy’s not wrong. Chris, hey. You know, as as unsexy as it may be to some people, you know, it is critical, must have, day to day systems for, a huge majority of the federal workforce and, state and local government workforce as well. And so if you combine the legacy capability of OPEXUS and the legacy capability of CasePoint, you get this highly modernized end to end solution of case management plus data that can be activated. So any type of data that can be activated, which is a huge problem that a lot of our government, customers have. CasePoint also brings a commercial side of the business, which is pretty refreshing.

Bonnie Hart:
Right? I haven’t worked in a commercial commercial customer space in a really long time, so that’s pretty exciting to be able to really figure out where, you know, where we have a ton of synergies and where we can optimize the process and get happy customers from the government to, to business.

Josh Schachter:
Okay. Thank you for setting that stage. How many people in the in the companies and in in your orgs, respectively?

Bonnie Hart:
Yeah. So combined, we’re about, yeah, over 700 now. The the org comes together and brings, a tremendous amount of capability, not only in The US, but a huge presence in India as well. We service customers from across The US and into Canada as well. So we’ve got an international presence.

Josh Schachter:
And how many people in your org? Wholesales?

Bonnie Hart:
Right now

John:
Right now, you gotta do the math on who came over, and you guys guys I don’t know.

Bonnie Hart:
Galifianakis in The Hangover, right, of, like, all the numbers running through my head. Carry the one, run

Christy:
There are

John:
a number of people in your org.

Bonnie Hart:
There’s a lot. Yeah. Almost almost, probably 170.

Christy:
Bonnie, so listen. You’ve already done this before. You did this with Vista. What’s your playbook? So, like, you’re you’re a leader in these orgs going through this. Like, what’s your what’s the first three things you have to do or that you’re responsible for now That, like, as you’re going through

Bonnie Hart:
this. Yeah. Great question, Chrissy. So people first. Right? Really focus on making sure that, number one, your leaders, the folks that report to you, are, completely in the know and have full transparency so that they can guide their teams. Change management is tough. Right? I don’t care who you are. Navigating change is different for everybody, and it hits people because all people are so different.

Bonnie Hart:
Right? And it hits people differently. Right? Teams might be fine one day and be like, what the heck just happened? Right? The next day. So focusing on people and transparent communications first and foremost. So we’ve had a total open dialogue. We’ve had a ton of meet and greets and just let people ask questions or get their feelings out and really focus on that. We’re now shifting to asking

Josh Schachter:
number one question that’s come up from folks?

Bonnie Hart:
You know what? Surprisingly, the number one question is when can I learn more about the other company?

Christy:
Oh, really? Nobody has any questions about job security?

Bonnie Hart:
I mean, sure. They but that was secondary to when do I get to learn more about so and so’s product. Like, the curiosity quotient is so impressive. It was, yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Christy, you don’t ask the CCO about job security. Like, that’s, like, the one on one with your manager. Like, that’s the question that they all really wanna ask for.

Christy:
Direct reports. So, also, like Yeah. Yeah. So I’m just saying it doesn’t need to be like, I’m not talking about, like, this customer success associate who’s been on the job for two weeks. She’s got direct reports too. They they might be asking, is there redundancy? Is there is there a concern that I might have about my job security? I don’t know. I yes. I am I am an avid learner.

Christy:
I wanna learn all the products. I wanna know, am I gonna have a job tomorrow first? I’m just saying that’s me. So Yeah. Yeah. Josh.

Josh Schachter:
Sean, you had a really good question. I don’t know if we’re gonna get to it, but we should. It was a really good one.

John:
I also have, like, object impermanence, and I don’t remember what the hell I said six minutes minutes ago. So let me see if I can figure it out. How Operating model.

Josh Schachter:
Operating models.

John:
How are you thinking about the engagement models? And I guess the big question, it’s a weekend, so you probably aren’t. But walk me through kind of the thoughts of, all of these big chips that you’re kinda merging together. Right? So you’ve done this before, Vista. Obviously, it’s similar when it comes to p PE firms. They want they want fiscal responsibility. Right? So how do you blend that high touch, engagement model with customer success to what PE firms kinda tend to do, which is, you know, spend a little bit more time on digital, spend a little bit more time on on the on the reduction and and less on the on the beer pong or in, you know, pool tables.

Bonnie Hart:
Well, I’ll say that we have a ton of autonomy. So, Christy, you mentioned Playbooks. Right? There’s not some prescriptive thing that anyone has handed to me and said, here’s what you must do. Right? The reason why they invested in us is because we’re proven, from the OpExa side and from the Keys Point side. And so they trust us, to really run our businesses and optimize our businesses. Right? And the combined businesses, especially. But one of the one of the things that has been really clear, John, is that, we both have a an extremely fierce customer centric similarity. Right?

John:
Yeah.

Bonnie Hart:
The the CasePoint folks and the OpExys folks, put the customer first. It doesn’t mean that we let that supersede, you know, smart business decisions.

Christy:
Right.

Bonnie Hart:
It means that we are always communicating much like internally, you know, being transparent, being highly communicative, and talking to talking to folks internally. We have the same operating guidance and principles with our customers, right, in terms of what what the change means to them, what the merger means, what they can expect. And, really, the answer is we’re gonna take the best of both models. Yeah. So the combined teams have a lot to learn from each other. One of the teams was much more instrumented along the way in terms of, you know, having metrics that we’re tracking and having, you know, very clear customer segmentation and portfolios and risk mitigation, strategies. Right? The other side of the business, was not as instrumented, but has a lot that we can learn in terms of engagement model, in terms of, you know, customer satisfaction, and in terms of interlock with sales. So we’re going to take the best of both of those worlds.

Bonnie Hart:
And right now, it’s just a matter of getting ourselves in a room, probably with a bunch of snacks and tacos. We have taco Tuesday every Tuesday, breakfast tacos. We get in the room with tacos, and we talk it out.

John:
Talk it out over talk taco it out. Taco

Bonnie Hart:
what I did there? See what Yeah.

John:
Exactly. There’s some sort of marketing thing

Christy:
you can do now. About it.

John:
There we go, Christy. No.

Bonnie Hart:
Christy’s nailed it. Christy nailed it. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Because Christy’s been to a lot of

Christy:
Taco Tuesdays. Have I? I’m so hungry. It’s dinner time.

John:
I am hungry too.

Bonnie Hart:
I know. I know.

Christy:
I’m hungry for a learning body.

John:
Just kidding.

Bonnie Hart:
Yeah. The big plans.

John:
Yeah. No. I I I I love that. And I know, you know, a lot of the questions are gonna are gonna be more, like, hypothetical. Right? But, coming out of, what you did before, what is one thing that aside from customer centricity, like, is there something that, like, it’s really important that you carry over into the new teams that you want, that is, like, you know, quintessential to who you are and your leadership style that you’re, like, feeling the energy around and and wanting to implement?

Bonnie Hart:
Yeah. Absolutely. I say this to anyone who has the professional metabolism to go through a process like this. Right? It’s not for everybody. And a lot of people opt out. Right? A lot of people say, I wanna stay in a small company. I wanna be scrappier. Right? I don’t wanna be so formulaic or instrumented or, sophisticated.

Bonnie Hart:
Right? And that’s absolutely fine, and we should honor, you know, anyone who wants to do that. But if you’re up for it, it’s an on the job MBA.

Josh Schachter:
It

Bonnie Hart:
will absolutely change your career trajectory. Right? So if you know, that’s that’s my biggest guidance is that if it’s for you, then, you know, buckle up and learn as much as you can because it is absolutely career advancing.

John:
Yeah. I think that’s one of the things that this last year has really taught me. Like, sure, I’ve had a bunch of great stuff with customers and a bunch of stuff with, like, internal programs. But, you know, every couple weeks, we get a new initiative. We get a new drive. And in the past, that’s felt chaotic and and and, you know, uninformed or, like, not communicated well. But coming at it from saying, like, this is gonna be rough and ready, like, you have to figure out. Like, our c our new CEO would just kinda, like, pop in.

John:
You’re like, oh, shit. I didn’t prepare anything. It’s like you gotta think on your feet. You gotta be, like, prepared to say, I’m gonna defend this, not for any other reason other than, like, you’re asking this question or we’re asking this question on purpose. So I’ve I like the way that you said that. What is it? Not an appetite. Something for you said something that was great.

Bonnie Hart:
Personal metabolism. That’s TM Bonnie Hart.

John:
Professional metabolism. Goes hand in hand with Taco Tuesday, obviously. Exactly. Exactly.

Bonnie Hart:
And I’ll say, you know, you and, like, best practices wise oh, go ahead, Josh.

Josh Schachter:
No. It’s okay. There’s a delay. I didn’t need to interrupt. Yeah. It wasn’t important. Keep going.

Bonnie Hart:
No. Go ahead.

Josh Schachter:
Okay. So, how many new reports do you have now underneath? You’re probably, like, a hundred or 75 or so?

Bonnie Hart:
Not that many. Not quite that many, but, a lot. Right? And it’s gonna take a while for everybody get to to get to know each other. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Sure. Fine. What do you I wanna I wanna actually showcase you to this new organization that doesn’t know about one of their new executive leaders. So tell us about yourself.

Bonnie Hart:
Yeah. You know, I I said this in the in the intro calls with all the different teams and departments this week. I am an open book. I love to talk. I have a very direct communication style. So I I kinda give people that understanding. I’m from Austin, Texas, and so I I call myself a text pat, but I’ve actually been gone longer than I lived there. So I that’s getting harder and harder to, you know, kinda stake my claim on.

Bonnie Hart:
And I sound like a newscaster now. Right? I don’t even have a Texas accent anymore, so it’s terrible.

John:
So you actually do. I’m hearing it, and I’m like, no. Yeah. Like, now, and, you know, the next role.

Bonnie Hart:
Give it away. Right? So, you know, and, yeah, I have a wonderful family, husband of sixteen years, and I have twin nine year olds, one boy, one girl. And we just enjoy a ton of time together, and we are big glampers. So if you ask me what my weekend plans are, it’s typically going glamping at a Harvest Host location in our in our camper.

Josh Schachter:
I love that. Me too. Yeah. Okay. I mean, I was gonna ask about, like, philosophy around CS and stuff like that, but maybe that’s just too broad. And I I Christy, you could ask the interesting version of that question.

Christy:
Yeah. Why don’t we let Chris talk

Bonnie Hart:
a little

John:
bit, Josh?

Christy:
Josh wants wants to know about your philosophy around customer success, Bonnie.

Josh Schachter:
Well, I actually want you to I actually want you to polish that question, Christy, so that it’s a good question. I it’s like a

Christy:
I wanna ask Josh

Josh Schachter:
a question. Diamond right there, and I want you to polish it and then feed it to Bonnie.

Christy:
Not here to do your dirty work, Josh. So Bonnie No. Josh wants to know about your customer success philosophy.

John:
That’s a great question, Christy. I’m really excited to hear the answer.

Bonnie Hart:
You know what, Christy? I agree with John. That is a really great question. Right?

Christy:
No worries. Can we just talk about how good the question is for the next twenty minutes?

John:
Absolutely. Josh

Christy:
sells it every time. His questions are

John:
yes. Hard balls. Have you ever thought about hosting your own podcast?

Christy:
No. I could never.

Josh Schachter:
She’s not much of a self promoter.

Bonnie Hart:
I can’t.

Christy:
I don’t have I couldn’t like, I’m not like Josh with these, like, quick on his toes questions to ask these guys.

John:
I know. Philosophy. Alright. Real real questions.

Christy:
Bonnie Bonnie though. Really. What’s your approach to customer success? As you think about it

Bonnie Hart:
Yeah. Like, how have you

Christy:
strategizing around this? Yeah.

Bonnie Hart:
It’s simple. I’m a purist when it comes to customer success. Right? I, you know, started in customer success many moons ago, Christy, as you and I both know. And I believe that customer success is there to be a strategic partner on your entire customer journey, period. Do you influence sales? Do you partner with sales? Do you work with products? Do you, you know, really investigate the user experience? You do all of those things and all of those facets. But at the end of the day, I’m a purist of customer success in terms of being a strategic partner and helping get business goals achieved.

Christy:
Will your organization own revenue?

Bonnie Hart:
We do not at this point. We influence. So we have customer services qualified leads. So my entire division can submit a lead because leads do not just come out of a strategic review or an executive business review or a conversation or a summit. Right? Leads come all over the place. And so my entire division from implementation through to training to services can submit a can be a part of the expansion journey.

Christy:
Okay. So now you’re a purist in the sense that you focus on the consultative part of the work that we do. What if the mandate now is that you do own renewals and upsells and cross sells? Like, what if that did move on your umbrella? How do you feel about that?

Bonnie Hart:
Yeah. I think that I think that we would talk about what that looks like and what those touch points look like, and and really just be methodical about what, you know, what trade offs that means. Right? It means that you’re not having the other, you know, kind of business partner and strategic planning conversations that you’re having paperwork conversations, right, which I don’t think are as valuable as strategic planning and and enhanced experiences. Don’t get me wrong. Those are extremely critical business motions. I don’t believe it’s the that’s the sole role of a CSM or a CS team.

John:
Yeah. And, you know, this is this kinda gets into that that model too, how how you’re thinking about capacity planning too. Obviously, you don’t you don’t know what account books are gonna look like, and and that’s all Yeah. But, a lot of this push to kinda do better with what we have or do more with less often tends to come into consolidation effort where

Bonnie Hart:
Yeah.

John:
You know, you maybe we as a mature organization, we had renewal managers. We had, inside sales. We had CSMs. We had, you know, implementation managers. And now most of those roles are kinda being consolidated between instead of four people, two people.

Bonnie Hart:
That’s right.

John:
And those other people are, like, doing the same things. Right? It’s not like there’s less work. It’s just that there’s there’s just more people doing less things. Right? Yeah. And it’s more focused. And it I guess it really depends on on on the fix. Right? So we’re really focused on, like, our long term deals. We’re an enterprise solution, so we’re spending a lot of time talking with our customers about that.

John:
It may be different for you guys when it comes to whatever your leaky bucket is or whatever your, you know, thing is, if it’s churn or if it’s or usage or if it’s, you know, any of that. Do you have an an an idea of where you’re kinda heading this year for, you know, how do you justify I don’t need to own revenue because fill in the blank.

Bonnie Hart:
Yeah. We don’t have a leaky bucket. We are extremely sticky. We have very long term contracts. Right? We are in a luxurious position that way. Our biggest focus as a customer success entity is really about expanding adoption. We just started getting instrumentation in our products so that we have a product listening tool to get insights out of. And, you know, our our users and our admins are using a fraction of the capabilities in their systems, which means they’re getting a fraction of the value.

Bonnie Hart:
Right? So we need to come in with that instrumentation and say, how do we get you from 10% of, you know, kind of adoption to stepping you towards, you know, a % of that adoption? So we’re in a really good position to be able to do that.

John:
I love that.

Bonnie Hart:
And I hate to be a buzz killer, but I have to go.

Josh Schachter:
You gotta go. You gotta go.

John:
This is what we get.

Bonnie Hart:
Was knocking on my door, so I could let him on the podcast next time.

Christy:
Oh. Bring him in.

Josh Schachter:
Have you just heard your podcast?

John:
Yeah. Just leave us on in the background.

Christy:
Yeah. Don’t say anything. Just, like, we’re we won’t stop.

John:
By the way, you’re if you get fired on this podcast, then it’s gonna, like

Christy:
Maybe people will listen to it in the future. You know, it’s

Bonnie Hart:
a small Small event going on. So, you know

John:
Yeah. A

Bonnie Hart:
few couple of things to talk about.

Josh Schachter:
Thank you, Bonnie. So much for taking time. We know

Christy:
how busy you are.

Josh Schachter:
Yes. Thank you for dealing with our shenanigans, and we will stay on for you, John. Thank you, Bonnie. Have a great

Christy:
day. Johnny.

Josh Schachter:
Bye, Bonnie.

Bonnie Hart:
Soon. Chrissy, I’ll be in New York soon. I’ll call you.

Josh Schachter:
Okay.

Bonnie Hart:
Okay.