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Jon Johnson:

There’s an intro.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Is anyone going to play the intro, though?

Josh Schachter:

Hello, everybody. Welcome to this episode of CS and BS, part of the unchurned Podcast series, part of Update AI and CS Insider and Kristi Faltorusso Enterprises. I’m Josh Schachter.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yes.

Josh Schachter:

Yes. Kirsti, why don’t you go ahead? Who are you?

Kristi Faltorusso:

I am Kristi Faltorusso. I’m currently the chief customer officer over at Client Success. We are a customer success management software platform. We help our customers manage from new to renew. Been in the space for nearly twelve years, building, scaling, and transforming customer success teams now hyper focused on sustainable success.

Jon Johnson:

Gosh, it gets better every week.

Erica Akroyd:

Wow. I just like, dude, I am not prepared at all.

Josh Schachter:

Right above you. Not literally, but on my screen, not below me. Johnson.

Jon Johnson:

Hey, guys, I’m John Johnson. I’ve been scaling enterprise value strategy, retention and growth for the last twelve years. I currently work at user testing, where we’re changing the way organizations build products and services through feedback directly from the people who use them.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Nice, John. You’ve really honed your intro.

Jon Johnson:

It’s my elevator pitch.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I love it.

Jon Johnson:

I love it.

Kristi Faltorusso:

It’s almost as good as mine.

Jon Johnson:

Almost.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Almost.

Josh Schachter:

We have all yours, Erica.

Erica Akroyd:

You have to nail it.

Kristi Faltorusso:

You have to nail this.

Erica Akroyd:

Good Lord. Great. Well, I’m Erica Acroyd, and I have been at Pendo for almost seven years and started in my customer success journey just about that same time ago. And I’ve gone from enterprise to scaling customer success, and now I lead our customer education team at Pendo.

Josh Schachter:

Wonderful. And I am Josh Hackter, a newly anointed top 25 CS influencer. And yet I’ve never worked a day in CS. I just follow these guys to teach me each episode what it is that’s going on. And it’s starting to work a little bit. But I’m a CS fanboy and the founder and CEO of Update AI. Okay, so let’s jump right into it. Serious matters at hand.

Josh Schachter:

John went to the barber shop this weekend.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah, we have to talk about this.

Jon Johnson:

We don’t.

Kristi Faltorusso:

No, we literally do.

Josh Schachter:

And remember, this is a podcast, so.

Jon Johnson:

We need to be described on.

Kristi Faltorusso:

No, no, I like this. We have to be descriptive. I’m ready. I have all the words.

Jon Johnson:

This is the only reason.

Josh Schachter:

Let’s do word associates. So one word to describe John’s hair. Okay. Christy, you first.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Tight. Do I win? Do I win?

Josh Schachter:

Do I win? Yeah, you’re up there. I mean, you’re a contender.

Jon Johnson:

You’re the first.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I love it.

Erica Akroyd:

I don’t even have the word. Like, smooth.

Josh Schachter:

Smooth.

Jon Johnson:

Okay. They’re getting better.

Josh Schachter:

Mine is NBA.

Kristi Faltorusso:

NBA.

Jon Johnson:

And I also got my eyebrows done, guys.

Josh Schachter:

Yeah.

Erica Akroyd:

Nobody’s mentioning my hair tinsel.

Jon Johnson:

Well, they didn’t they didn’t see what do you have?

Kristi Faltorusso:

You have tinsel.

Jon Johnson:

Oh, it’s still in.

Erica Akroyd:

It’s still in. Remnants of yeah. So is that what you yeah, like.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So I didn’t even know that was a some I don’t know.

Erica Akroyd:

Where you’re from? Erica.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Where are you from, Erica?

Erica Akroyd:

I live in Raleigh, North Carolina. There. Okay. Literally.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Okay, so this is very funny. I was in Raleigh Durham for an event, like, two years ago.

Erica Akroyd:

Raleigh Durham.

Kristi Faltorusso:

The person I was talking with had tinsel in their hair, and apparently that is a thing. And now I’m starting to feel like this is a thing.

Jon Johnson:

No, we had a region last week. We had an event last week. I also had glitter on my face.

Kristi Faltorusso:

But I don’t even know that people were getting tinsel. My point, John, is I didn’t even know that was an.

Erica Akroyd:

Options.

Josh Schachter:

It was. It eric, you still remember it?

Kristi Faltorusso:

What?

Jon Johnson:

Nothing. We’ll cut that part out. Okay.

Erica Akroyd:

I spent a lot of time at the Raleigh Durham airport.

Josh Schachter:

Tell us about this massacre. Just give us a quick quickly. We got to get onto the CS part.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Can we talk, like, a visual? If you don’t know what John looked like before this, john had voluptuous. Voluminous? Like, just run your finger through ringlets like curls. Like, beautiful. And he has since given us a tight shave. I mean, they did a great job. Like, your barber snaps to him because that’s quite the transformation. Steve, great job.

Jon Johnson:

I mean, everybody goes to a tech conference and then has a panic attack and shaves their head, right? That’s, like, a normal thing. No, I had to find a last minute I don’t know. I woke up in a mood on Saturday and had to find there’s no anyways, I’m fumbling on my words.

Josh Schachter:

Self destructive.

Jon Johnson:

It was absolutely self destructive. I’m not happy with my hair. I do not appreciate it. I miss my curls. It’s all gone. It’s the shortest that my hair has been ever in my life.

Erica Akroyd:

Okay.

Kristi Faltorusso:

What did your kids came home except.

Erica Akroyd:

For my arm hair.

Kristi Faltorusso:

No, it’s actually my and your hair is missing.

Jon Johnson:

They did not.

Kristi Faltorusso:

What did your family say?

Jon Johnson:

I think I scared them. Daddy looks weird. So I literally normally go to a barber who I’ve been going to since I moved here. Love her. She does great work. But everything is, like, booked two weeks in advance, and it was an emergency. And I needed someone to fix things. Right.

Jon Johnson:

And so some guy told me about another guy, this guy named Steve, and he runs a barbershop in Raleigh called in the Cut. And I sat in his barbershop, and he preached to me with BB Winans playing in the background.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I love this.

Jon Johnson:

Like, full on. I got the full barbershop experience, which I’d never had before. He lined me up. He did my eyebrows. He shaved my face.

Erica Akroyd:

It was like, normally the experience you.

Jon Johnson:

Have no will you go back every.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Time with different maybe next time you FaceTime me. I want to meet Steve.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah, it’s pretty great. It was, like, $20, too. Like, come on. I usually spend a lot of money on my haircuts.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Because you were going to a hair salon. That’s the difference.

Josh Schachter:

And was Eddie Murphy there dressed as an old no, no.

Jon Johnson:

But it was really fun. I really enjoyed it. It was very much like I don’t just it was in my neighborhood, and I got to hang out with people I never met before, so it’s good.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Oh, I love that. But now you look very handsome. John.

Jon Johnson:

I have customer meetings.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I know it’ll grow on you, but.

Jon Johnson:

It will also grow. But I like having customer meetings, and I just don’t know. I’m struggling. My wife keeps telling me that it’s fine, and I trust her, but I’m.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Not here to tell you it’s fine. I think it looks good. I think it looks good. It’s not fine like you’re fine. It looks good.

Jon Johnson:

Thank you.

Erica Akroyd:

If no one had met you, they’d be like, normal, but because we’ve all.

Jon Johnson:

Seen normal podcast about it.

Erica Akroyd:

Curls.

Jon Johnson:

I know I had a lot of curls when we did Eric and I did karaoke last week. What was your still waiting on video. Oh, Erica.

Josh Schachter:

No, we’re getting away from the BS part. We’re going to the CS part.

Jon Johnson:

We go into CS.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Can I just know what the song is, please?

Josh Schachter:

Josh, no follow up commentary.

Erica Akroyd:

Okay. Classic.

Josh Schachter:

These ladies are lying. I hope for your sake that your hair grows back, but I still love you very much. John.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Thank you for the hair doesn’t grow.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah.

Josh Schachter:

I am just jealous. I am completely jelly. All right, Erica, on to you. We have your LinkedIn resume in front of our eyes. It’s so detailed, like the time and the craft you’ve put into this. Is there something you want to tell us?

Erica Akroyd:

I just changed my picture today.

Jon Johnson:

I know. I saw that. I saw your pendo shot.

Erica Akroyd:

Great. I didn’t honestly, I haven’t even updated it with my most recent position because I’m just so insecure about how many times I’ve moved around at Pendo. People are going to be like, Is she okay? What’s happening?

Jon Johnson:

This is an intervention.

Erica Akroyd:

Literally had a job, a new job every year that I’ve been at Pendo.

Josh Schachter:

Oh, we know. We talked about that before the show. Yeah. We’re going to.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Good thing.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah.

Erica Akroyd:

For sure.

Josh Schachter:

Can I start with this, though, before we get into that?

Erica Akroyd:

Sure.

Josh Schachter:

I think it’s really cool that you have a Bachelor of Social Work from University of Georgia and a Master’s of Social work. So you were all in in social work. What happened?

Erica Akroyd:

What do you mean?

Kristi Faltorusso:

This is social work. What we do.

Jon Johnson:

Okay, what happened?

Erica Akroyd:

What happened? Well, it was social work.

Jon Johnson:

How much time do we have?

Erica Akroyd:

Yes. So I grew up in a small town in Georgia, so I think you kind of have to go way back to the beginning to understand how I got there and how I got yeah. My hometown is a very small town in Georgia, so I didn’t even know what tech I didn’t know what software really was. There weren’t that many opportunities. And so I went to the University of Georgia. Like, I want to help people. What do I do? My mom’s a social worker, so I was like, yeah, totally. I’ll be a social worker, because I love helping people.

Erica Akroyd:

So, yeah, that’s what I did. And I was a social worker for seven years, and I had a lot of different experiences, and I realized that you really can’t go far working for the state, especially there’s a lot of red tape. There’s not a lot of change that you can really implement. I kind of felt like I was just punching a clock and getting the numbers that I had to get, and yeah. Although it was fulfilling work and it made me feel good, it was kind of like I felt stuck in a way.

Josh Schachter:

You’re referring to being a case manager for the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services for five years, which is what you did after getting your social work. How did so Erica checks her resume.

Jon Johnson:

That’s right. That’s what I did. Yes, exactly.

Erica Akroyd:

Thank you for reminding me. I worked with people with disabilities, and I helped them find jobs, and I feel freaking good about that. I love that it was soul draining in another way that yeah, I was kind of just, like, doing repeating doing the same thing over and over. As you see, that bothers me because.

Jon Johnson:

I like to jump around.

Josh Schachter:

We know.

Jon Johnson:

Bureaucracy, in my experience, often removes humanity, and when you’re dealing with very needed humanity and facing it into a bureaucratic standpoint, there tends to be a lot of loss, like, just pointlessness. Right. Welcome to SAS.

Josh Schachter:

So you left working for the state. You were helping folks with disabilities, which is awesome. You were helping other types of case. I want to go into the stories here.

Jon Johnson:

What was the story going from that.

Josh Schachter:

Into CS, and how did you get.

Jon Johnson:

It litho, or is it in motion? It’s litho.

Erica Akroyd:

It was in motion.

Kristi Faltorusso:

It was in motion.

Jon Johnson:

Okay.

Erica Akroyd:

Yeah. And they acquired litho, so yeah, I had a friend who left, a coworker who was working at the same job at the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services. And he went to a local software company and became a customer success manager. And I had never heard of that before. I was like, what is that? He’s like, Eric, I promise this is what you need to be doing. This is perfect. You’re helping people, but it’s fun. And it’s honestly, I hate to say it’s like, low stakes, right? It’s like, we’re not saving lives.

Erica Akroyd:

We’re not helping people cure cancer or anything. It was like, yeah, we’re just going to help people buy software. I’m like, oh, cool, I can do that. I got rejected so many times, though. It was not easy to just get into customer success. But in motion now. Just gave me a shot. I think I was employee number 20, and they saw something in me.

Erica Akroyd:

They saw like, this girl can handle all sorts of crazy shit. She’s seen it all. This is great. So I had a lot of transferable skills, so to speak.

Jon Johnson:

Did you have somebody? Okay, so this is actually one of the questions, too, is I’ve been in tech most of my career, so the learning curve of coming into a customer success job from Tech was very easy. Let’s talk about that transition from the software to the processes to the expectations to what the heck is software? You know what I mean? What was that visceral kind of experience? What was a learning curve for you? And then, yeah, we’ll start there.

Erica Akroyd:

I was super lucky that I had that friend who was kind of coaching me through it. And during the interview process, I had to give a tour of how to do something that I was good at or whatever, and I was like, fuck, I’m not good at anything. I don’t know what I’m doing. So I kind of used my photography business and how to make a website. And so he was kind of coaching me on what to say. And then when I started, I had an awesome manager and I had teammates who were great at just kind of like, coaching me through it. And I actually was like, I don’t know, I think just going from the job that I had to this, I was like, this is easy. People are upset.

Erica Akroyd:

But I’m like, about what? And I think I cared, obviously, about my job. About what? About the software? Come on. And I think that really helped me not to be completely stressed and overwhelmed and just paralyzed by the pressure because I had gone through and seen so much bad stuff in my very short career that I had had in social work. So it kind of helped me keep my cool. And yeah, I just learned the ins and outs of I already knew how to be empathetic. Although it doesn’t sound like it because I’m like, who cares? But it was more just like, all right, let’s really get to the root of the problem and figure out how we can solve it and knowing that it wasn’t life changing.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah, no, I think that’s really I love that. Let’s see, what was the last one? You kind of mentioned it, but did you have, like, a mentor, somebody inside of the company, or was this outside of the company?

Erica Akroyd:

Yeah, so once I started, the folks there were just, like, really helpful. There was a girl who had started literally the day I started, and she was just, like, a badass in customer success, although not a lot of people came from customer success. She was, like, a consultant and did something similar, so like account management or something. So she really coached me, trained me once I got up to speed on the software. But customer success back then was a lot of just, like, know, here’s how to use this, here’s how to use this. Click here, click there, answer questions in a queue and call people on the phone and ask them how they’re doing and stuff. So it was very different back then.

Kristi Faltorusso:

All right, can we jump to the good stuff? I want to hear about this journey at I. I like to think that my first customer success stint, I had a lot of roles in the five and a half years that I had been there. Obviously, you win. You’ve been at Pendo for over 67 years is about and you’ve had how many different roles at Pendo?

Erica Akroyd:

I think seven.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Let’s talk about that. I mean, that’s super impressive. I look at that and I see so many strengths. To me, these are all green flags. I know you feel like it might be perceived differently. I am, like, in awe of this because it means that the company values you so much that as there’s challenges presented, you seemingly are the first person that they’re thinking about.

Erica Akroyd:

Right.

Kristi Faltorusso:

These are opportunities they’re presenting to you. Tell us about your journey at oh.

Erica Akroyd:

Thank you so much. I’m, like, feeling so validated by the queen of CS right now.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I wish John and Josh would feel validated when I say nice things to.

Josh Schachter:

I thought I thought John was the queen of CS.

Jon Johnson:

Not after this haircut.

Kristi Faltorusso:

You can come back anytime you want.

Erica Akroyd:

All right, well, thank you.

Jon Johnson:

I knew this was going to happen. I knew it was going to happen.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Me and Erica started our own spin off podcast.

Erica Akroyd:

Guys. Sorry.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah.

Erica Akroyd:

Okay. So I was a customer success manager. I was using the software Pendo at InMotion now. And no one was surprised when I said I was leaving for Pendo because I was like, the Pendo girly. Like, we got to use Pendo more. Let’s use pendo. Can we do this? Can we do that with yes. So Pendo offers analytics for what your users are doing in your product.

Erica Akroyd:

And then we also provide in app messaging so you can actually guide users onboarding or know education within the product using just in app guidance.

Jon Johnson:

I’ll show you my whole set up there Josh.

Erica Akroyd:

Oh, God. I need to work on my elevator.

Josh Schachter:

Pitches to inform our listeners those maybe.

Erica Akroyd:

Not familiar with you. So I was super pumped to use the software that I was supporting and to see the value in it. So that was a lot of fun for me. So I started at Pendo. I think I was employee number 81. Well, I know I was employee number 81, but there was only five CSMS at that time and really small. We grew and then as we grew, we needed leadership. So then I went from everyone has just like a certain number of customers.

Erica Akroyd:

I moved into an enterprise role. That’s the first little notch there, which moved into enterprise very quickly, realized I don’t want to touch Enterprise. I don’t want to go anywhere near Enterprise.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Like most people, enterprise people think that that is like the path to accelerating your career. That’s not my favorite either. Not my favorite segment. I’m not surprised.

Erica Akroyd:

I did not like it at all.

Josh Schachter:

Why not? What was the challenge with it?

Erica Akroyd:

I’m not good at, like, I don’t know. I felt very like, oh, I got to be super tight with this champion. And it was a lot of pressure to get the renewal and I just didn’t want to go deep in relationships with customer champions. The way I got excited and the way I found this really cool challenge is how do we do things at scale? I’m having the same freaking conversations with people over and over and over and over again and I’m fucking bored. So how do I automate and scale the things that I’m doing over and over again so I can do more important things? And so that’s kind of how I got tapped to lead our mid market and corporate customer success team. So once there was a position available for a management team, our team grew. I had already created a lot of process for this kind of like down market customer.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Erica, is this your first role as a people?

Erica Akroyd:

Yes. Yes.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So this is when you were the manager of mid market and corporate customer success. You’re now leading a team. Right. Tell us about your team. What are the team dynamics? How many people do you have? Are you managing any leaders? Give us breakdown.

Erica Akroyd:

Started with five, grew the team to ten. We started just in Raleigh and then had folks in San Francisco. So it was all sorts of skill levels. I hired folks who had very little to no customer success experience to people that I worked with alongside coworkers with. So that was interesting to kind of go from coworker to boss in a way to leader.

Kristi Faltorusso:

That’s an interesting shift, right? And not one that I think is easy. All right, let me put you on the hot seat for a second.

Erica Akroyd:

Okay.

Kristi Faltorusso:

What was the toughest thing for you personally about doing that?

Erica Akroyd:

Right.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Moving from a peer to now leading people that may have been friends?

Erica Akroyd:

I will say that the peer to leader actually wasn’t that difficult because I had already been seen as someone who was a leader within the organization and kind of had already established that kind of, like, mentor mentee relationship with a lot of those folks. The hardest part was going after the same job as friends and having to continue on and be like, oops, I got the job. How do we move on from this? And I think that was harder than management.

Kristi Faltorusso:

I got the job. It’s like, yes, I got the job I deserved. I wish you all luck in the rest of your careers. Right?

Erica Akroyd:

Yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Don’t say, oops, don’t apologize for your success. Ever.

Erica Akroyd:

You’re right.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Ever.

Erica Akroyd:

But we’re all still friends, though. I just want to reiterate, we didn’t let it affect our relationship. It was just awkward at first, and it was hard because these people were my friends, and they were sad. So it was a little sad, but not for me, obviously.

Jon Johnson:

Right.

Kristi Faltorusso:

This is where I lack a little empathy.

Jon Johnson:

Well, and this actually leads us into one of my questions, too, about your path. Too, is the thing that a lot of CSMS do, probably three or four, maybe five years into their careers, they start thinking, maybe I should move into product. Oh, God.

Erica Akroyd:

We’re going to talk about the dark times.

Jon Johnson:

So tell me about the dark times, because I know a ton of CSMS are like, I’d be a great product manager, and then they’re like, oh, shit.

Erica Akroyd:

Yeah.

Jon Johnson:

Or maybe they are. But yeah, I’ve had that thought a ton of times. Right. And people talk me out of it. I think you’re one of them. Yeah, but tell us about the dark side.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Say that.

Erica Akroyd:

I never want to talk anybody out of pursuing their dreams, but I’ll say, from my experience, it was one of those things that I had only been in the yeah, nine months, not even a year. And we were at our company kickoff, and the CEO sits down next to.

Jon Johnson:

Me and says, good old Todd.

Erica Akroyd:

Have you ever thought about being a product manager? And I was know, like, no, I haven’t. What’s up? And he basically offered know this job on the spot and said, if you want the job, it’s yours. And the reason they were doing is because they were wanting to build out more for their customer success persona. They saw me as a subject matter expert, someone who is product led using the product and could really understand what a customer success manager or leader or executive would be looking for in these types of features. And I said yes, because you don’t fucking say no when the CEO says, hey, do this job. Do you want to do this job? And I figured if there’s ever a place I’m going to be a product manager, it’s going to be Pendo. So I kind of was just like, tod, I just need to know that if I don’t, like, like, please make sure that this isn’t going to impact the rest of my career, because I wasn’t sure I was so scared, to be honest. But I had already made a huge career shift that I was like, bug it, let’s go.

Erica Akroyd:

What’s the worst that could happen? What was the worst that happened?

Jon Johnson:

Yeah. So what was the worst that happened?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah.

Jon Johnson:

So I moved into my car.

Erica Akroyd:

Honestly, I would not take it back because I learned so much. I learned a lot about what that world is like, which ultimately served me when I went back into customer success, because now I understand the product persona better than anybody else. I understand the pressures. I understand the day to day. I did not like the day to day. It was not like the Glitz and Glam that a lot of people say that product management is now. I had really awesome moments. Do people say that?

Kristi Faltorusso:

Do people say that there’s Glitz and Glam in product management?

Jon Johnson:

I mean, we just came from a product management convention conference this last week, and that’s all that it was, was literal Glitz and Glam.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Glitz and glam. Okay.

Erica Akroyd:

It can be very strategic role, but I didn’t like working with engineers. I didn’t like people telling me I couldn’t do something. I didn’t like having this vision. No, I’m dead serious.

Jon Johnson:

I love it.

Erica Akroyd:

No, I know why I left working for the government, because people were like, no, you can’t do that. No, you can’t do that. And I went to Product, and these engineers were like, sorry, you can’t do that. No, you can’t do that. And I’d just be like, well, why tell me what I can do? And I was like, I’m out. I’m done. I don’t want to keep getting rejected. So I went back to customer success, where I could do whatever the hell I wanted.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So you don’t get rejected. Okay.

Josh Schachter:

Erica, I was a product manager for 15 years, so I’ll take the shade that you’re throwing.

Erica Akroyd:

No shade. I didn’t like it.

Josh Schachter:

But what did you learn then from that experience around the relationship between CS and product?

Erica Akroyd:

Yeah, I actually feel like there was a lot of beef between customer success and product.

Kristi Faltorusso:

More than customer success and sales?

Erica Akroyd:

Yeah. I would say can’t again. I’ve only worked at two software companies, pendo being the majority of my time, and we’ve had really good sales and CS relationships now in motion. Now, that shit was not good. I mean, they were just know, selling shit that didn’t make sense, and we were, like, constantly having to clean up their mess. But I can really, truly say that the sales.org at Pendo is probably just top notch. They’re really great, and there’s a great partnership there. The product team, I think, just had there wasn’t a lot of communication between the two teams.

Erica Akroyd:

There wasn’t a lot of, like, here’s why we’re not doing this, or I don’t know what it was, but I think that it really helped create empathy for both sides, where it was like, okay, CS doesn’t understand why product isn’t doing certain things. Product doesn’t understand why customer success is asking for these things or saying certain things or whatever. We’re blaming product for customers being at risk. So there was a lot of this, like, we don’t understand each other to bring some of that.

Josh Schachter:

Yeah. What were you able to do to bridge the two or try to bridge the two?

Erica Akroyd:

I just had the experience when I was talking to PMS, I would come at it from a customer perspective. I don’t think at that point we had really ever come at it from a true customer centric lens of like, let’s talk to customers. Let’s get in front of customers. Let’s talk to these people who are talking to these customers every day. Because it felt like, well, we’re product managers and we know best. And I’m like, okay, but what customers have you talked to? None. I’m like, Then how do you know? So I think there was just, like, a shift in how product was actually starting to bring in customers and customer success into the fold, into the product development cycle. It wasn’t all me, but I think it helped.

Josh Schachter:

Well, you were a catalyst, right? Has that taken effect? Has that still taken holds? What kind of processes do you have now to collaborate between product and CS?

Erica Akroyd:

Yeah, so we have pillars now, and so we have a customer facing representative for every kind of, like, core pillar that we have. And so we take things into consideration. I mean, we also have products that can help us do this at scale. So we’ve got feedback collection, we’ve got data, and so, yeah, we’ve just been able to really continue that collaboration and that partnership just to make sure that there’s no surprises. And I think it’s really shown in our product. I think our product has made a lot of changes and also the way that we release things. We don’t go to market unless all of our go to market teams are looped in, which back in the day, it was just like, ship it, ship it, go. And we were all like, we’re not ready.

Erica Akroyd:

And so it made it a bad experience for our customers. At the end of the day, it was those were the ones who suffered the most.

Josh Schachter:

What does that look like when you say that CS is looped into product releases and upcoming releases? Tactically? What is that? Is that a Wiki page that goes out? Is that a live demo? What is the procedure?

Erica Akroyd:

Yeah, I mean, we just have meetings with what we call the pillars. And so we. Have customer education. We have customer experience, representation, sales, engineering. So all the people who touch the customer at whatever point in the lifecycle is a part of that product development. So getting feedback, hey, what are we not thinking about which customers should be in this beta? Making sure that our customer facing documentation and all of our videos are up to date so that customers can actually be enabled. And then we have our go to market enablement teams who make sure that all of the cross functional teams know how to use the feature before we release it. So it’s just ongoing meetings, lots and lots of communication.

Erica Akroyd:

Maybe over communication, but that’s better than not enough.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah. So you went back from product into a senior manager role, but that was direct in customer success. I assume that’s going to be the named CS team. This is not in scale yet.

Erica Akroyd:

Correct.

Jon Johnson:

What was the difference that you found between manager and senior? Was there a difference that you could kind of identify between the two or was it merely a linear path?

Erica Akroyd:

Not really a lot of difference, to be honest. I mean, I did go back to just manager, and then I was promoted to senior. I’m not going to bullshit you. It was more just time and role and expertise and honing my craft.

Jon Johnson:

I guess. The big shift. And you touched on this earlier when you were kind of in the enterprise space, is like, you and I are very we talk about this a lot, but we’re very similar in this where it’s like, man, I love talking to people and I love relationships, but how do I become a force multiplier? How do I get into this scale model? And I know scale is kind of all the rage right now, but just when it comes to a timeline, you were kind of ahead of this, right? And Pendo’s kind of been leading a lot of the stuff in this. And I’m a you know, you’ll hear me talk about it all the but, like, walk me through that thought of, okay, I’m going to move into this scale, pendo is going to build out these roles and I’m going to lead this. But what was it like on day one when you took over the scale team and when you left into the enablement role that you’re in right now? Give me an A to like, what’s the change that you impacted and what’s the things that you learned that led you into kind of the path that you’re on?

Erica Akroyd:

Yeah. Okay. So like I said, I’ve been in so many roles, but because Pendo was changing and going through so much transformation that it was truly like a different company every time I turned around. It felt like every year it was just like a new problem to solve, which is exciting. So when I went back into management, I was actually co leading a large commercial customer success team where it was like 500 to 5000 was like the employee size of these customers. So we had some small that were like I mean, that was kind of like our size at that time, hendo size, where we were growing, we were acquiring, we were doing big things. And then we had these kind of very not stagnant in a bad way, but stable, larger commercial accounts. And so I kind of naturally gravitated towards building out more of that scaled strategy we implemented.

Erica Akroyd:

Sorry, Christy. Turn zero.

Kristi Faltorusso:

No, listen, they’re good at that. Their platform does support that, right? Like, we’re a high engagement model platform.

Erica Akroyd:

And I also use client success at Emotion Now. I just want to shout that out. Yay, big fan. So we implemented a CS tool which was totally supposed to help us scale and have multi channel strategy and communication. And we really were focused on just like the foundation and the backbone of customer success, the day to day function. And then we were really shifting towards this high strategy, get it high and wide within the organization, which wasn’t my favorite thing, but leading folks that were doing those things. I was able to help those folks grow in their careers. And then we had someone who was leading the scale Cs.org at the time, and I would work really closely with him.

Erica Akroyd:

Actually, it was the guy who hired me in Motion Now, so it all is full circle. But then when he left, my leader was like, hey, we need somebody to fill this role. And I was like, say no more.

Josh Schachter:

Did you take him out?

Erica Akroyd:

No, of course not. Gosh.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Yeah, it was like a whole, like, Nancy Carrigan, Tanya Harding situation.

Jon Johnson:

Take him out of the.

Erica Akroyd:

Know. I was actually on parental leave when this guy left, so I was just like, hello, Erica.

Josh Schachter:

I want to give you a shout out because I really like your LinkedIn resume. Your resume, which is post on LinkedIn. I want to refer all of our ten listeners to Erica’s LinkedIn profile. It’s Erica with a C and it’s Erica Ackroyd. Her husband is the nephew of Coneheads Tommy Boy at all. But the one thing I really like about your profile here is for your current role, you have notable results, and I want to read off your notable results. In the past year and a half that you’ve had as senior manager scale customer success and programs inbound email volume decreased by 30% in the first three months, increased discussion forum traffic by 118%, with customers answering 36 percentage. More questions.

Josh Schachter:

38% increase in second week retention of new users and 67% of users logging back into the product after a no login activity. Risk management risk program was launched. I want you to pick one of those that impresses you the most. I’ve got one on top of my mind, and I want you to tell us how it’s done. And actually, before you do that. The reason I refer people to your profile here is I know there’s lots of folks that are looking for new work or looking to scale up their own careers and being metric outcome driven in very quantifiable ways here. Kudos to you. I think it reads really well before.

Jon Johnson:

She makes her favorite thing, I also want to make sure that you lob on to that. We also implemented the no Login Activity Risk Program because of Erica, and we have had similar reports, so you can also include our successes in your career.

Erica Akroyd:

That’s awesome. Okay. It’s really hard to pick one. It’s like asking me to pick my favorite child.

Jon Johnson:

Oh, that’s easy. Come on.

Kristi Faltorusso:

Oh, that’s easy. I was going to say, doesn’t everyone have a favorite child?

Josh Schachter:

We only have one Christy, so it’s easier.

Erica Akroyd:

Whatever.

Kristi Faltorusso:

So she’s my favorite, so mind your business, Josh.

Erica Akroyd:

Okay, I have to go with the first one, the inbound email volume, because I think it sets us up for the rest of it. And there’s a story where when I came into the scaled Customer Success Team, I had one Customer Success Manager, one for 800 customers and $40 million in revenue. And it was a perfect storm of structure changes, people leaving to go do other things. We had folks go to professional services, pam, sales, whatever. People just went, gone. And I came into like, wait, what? I have one customer success manager. And there was really no as much as they want to say they were scaled customer success, they weren’t because they were doing a lot of one to one things over and over and over and over again. That’s not know that’s just you know, the first thing that I did was I just basically put a pause on anything that the CSM was doing, and I said, you can’t talk to customers anymore unless it’s, like, dire, urgent need.

Erica Akroyd:

I’m serious. It was not very popular amongst our sales, and that’s maybe the one time where sales is like, what the fuck is this girl doing? She’s coming in and she’s saying, I can’t talk. And honestly, they understood, though, because they knew I had one CSM, and they felt horrible. They were like, oh, my gosh, we’ll figure it out. We’ll help you. I mean, some people were like, I’m desperate, so we would help in certain of. So I had a CSM, I had a program manager, and I had a community manager. Those were my three people.

Erica Akroyd:

And we had one guy who was on parental leave. So I’m like, great, three people on my team for 800 customers. And we went and looked at the data, and a lot of the questions we were getting were around new user overviews onboarding, and how do I do this, how do I do that? So we started basically a bi weekly onboarding, biweekly new user overview. So if there was even a whiff of, hey, I need help using this or hey, I’m kind of new, or whatever, we would direct people to this webinar. So we just said, oh, this sounds like something that would be really helpful with this webinar that’s either this week or next week or whatever, the week after. And we also had recordings, so if they missed it, we just sent them one from the last week. So we had this inbound email volume that was just like rocking this dude, I felt so bad. He was just like drowning in Zendesk and that’s not what I want my CSM to do.

Erica Akroyd:

I know CSMS, regardless of what segment you’re in, they’re valuable assets to the company. And him just answering emails, one off emails, is not what’s going to bring value to these customers. So after we implemented the new user overview the two week, every other week, over and over, we were able to reduce the volume just by deflecting putting people in these new user overviews or putting them into the discussion forum or whatever we had to do to basically not get on a call with them. We did, and luckily we had some really good education. We had Academy, we had our community, our discussion forum, so thankfully we had the resources to send people to. If we didn’t, then I would have probably cried and maybe not wanted to take that job. But I knew that we had a really strong education team and a foundation there, so I felt comfortable kind of like pushing people off.

Jon Johnson:

Well, I think you also just kind of really well defined what scale is supposed to be, right? I mean, you shouldn’t use humans for what humans are for, right? If there’s data there that can be found, let’s direct them to the data that they need so that when you do get on a call with somebody, it’s a meaningful interaction and not just, hey, how do I log in? We can take care of all of that programmatically. Yeah, that’s awesome. Okay, so we’re now coming up to today and you are in senior Manager no, senior Manager of Customer Enablement. Correct.

Erica Akroyd:

Customer education.

Jon Johnson:

Education. Okay, sweet.

Erica Akroyd:

Yeah. They basically moved customer Education and Community under the product organization that’s actually was.

Jon Johnson:

Going to be my next role was like, if you’re aligned with sales or product.

Erica Akroyd:

Product.

Jon Johnson:

Yeah.

Erica Akroyd:

And it was kind of interesting at first. In this reorg, they took my community manager and I was so mad. But I was like, whatever, we’re still going to work together, it’s fine. But I was like, oh, there was a reason I hired her, because I knew how critical community was going to be to scaling customer success. After not even a year in this scale role, there was an opportunity for me to move over to this education role where I would work more closely with the education team that does like our knowledge base. All of our product led pendo on pendo the instructional design videos and then working really closely with our product growth team and doing a lot more true. Like we have no humans. What do we do? So I’ve literally gone from customer facing to my team is really solely responsible.

Jon Johnson:

I never want to talk to a.

Erica Akroyd:

Customer without a human. Yeah. We are not customer facing, but we create the content that enables our customers at the foundational level so that they can get what they need. And the only time, hopefully, they talk to a human is to get more of that high value, that high impact.

Kristi Faltorusso:

America. What do you want to be when you grow up?

Erica Akroyd:

Yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso:

No, seriously. Listen, I promise you, if we had a spin off, I would give you 100,000 reasons why you don’t. That’s just kidding. I love my life. It’s Great. But maybe there’s life after pendo. Maybe. What are your career aspirations?

Erica Akroyd:

Right?

Kristi Faltorusso:

You’ve done so much cool stuff here. You’ve made clearly a huge impact. All of your notable results are here for anybody to go and check out. Impact is real. What’s your ultimate goal? Right? What do you want to do?

Erica Akroyd:

I do see myself being like a chief customer officer someday. I think that would be really cool because I think I’ve had the product experience, I’ve been under the product, I’ve been under the customer success and I think I could bring a really unique perspective going back into customer. Success or being a chief customer officer where I can really help guide and, I don’t know, optimize the strategy for how customer success is at any company. Honestly, we don’t have a chief customer officer at Pendo, so maybe one day but yeah, totally see myself kind of going in that direction. Even though I’m not under the customer success of revenue, everything I do is very customer focused and user centric.

Jon Johnson:

I think this also bubbles up another topic that I love about our industry is it’s not just we always say customer success is a whole organization. It’s a whole company. Motion. But for folks that are looking at getting into customer success, it’s not just getting a CSM job. It is looking at all of the peripherals and you pretty much have done all of them. I haven’t seen a sales role, but that’s fine.

Erica Akroyd:

I did renewals when I was a CSM. Another reason I didn’t want to be an Enterprise, because I was like, this is too much pressure. I would give it all away for free. And I got really good at renewals, but I did not like it. Yeah. I always say for people who are interested in customer success, you either get really lucky and you have someone who’s willing to give you a shot, or you have to find your way in another way. And a lot of times that’s like SDR Roles or whatever. Sales entry level role.

Erica Akroyd:

But I actually helped this guy who was in construction, get a job as an implementation specialist for a construction management software company. So I’m like find the place where you were going to be the subject matter expert and just go there. So if you’re a former educator, go in through the customer education route because we’re looking for people who can train people and teach people. And I always say my quote is always solve for the 80%. And that has been true when I was in scale and customer education. Now, so you can’t please everybody, you just have to figure out what works for the 80% and then tack on all of the other more tactical one to one, one to many.

Jon Johnson:

On top of that, this was erica.

Josh Schachter:

What do you think? I want to end with this here. What’s your prediction for the future of customer success?

Erica Akroyd:

My prediction, I think that people need to be flexible. And if there’s one thing that I’ve been in my career is I haven’t been tied to a title. I’ve never been tied to a title or a department or anything that I think things should be. And I just kind of go where the business needs me to go. And I would say that stay flexible. If you’re not used to doing renewals and that becomes part of your job, say yes. Figure it out. If you like renewals but that is no longer a part of your job, say yes and figure it out.

Erica Akroyd:

And eventually you’ll find your way into what is going to be ultimately what.

Jon Johnson:

Makes you happiest man, I want to touch on that just a little bit and then we can drop Josh. But it’s interesting because I want to point this out because I do think it’s a little bit counter to what society tells individual contributors to say. Like, if you’re doing something that you don’t like, leave. Right. But you said something really important and it’s something that I believe to you love Pendo, obviously, or whatever company you’re working for. Right. But you have a job there, you have a role there, you have something that you’re doing and it’s providing income and value and that company values you to a certain extent. I really like the perspective of saying if you find a spot that you love that works, say yes to where you can provide value for the company.

Jon Johnson:

Right. If the company comes to you and I don’t know how many people have the opportunity for a CEO to come to you and be like, hey, I think you’d be great at this. But that’s my hope, is that these are the organizations and I know that that’s the way that Hendo runs, but I just want to put a bullet point on that, that sometimes the job is to do the job and sometimes the job changes. And I really like flexibility. Obviously within boundaries, we don’t want to be taken advantage of in any way. But I think that’s an incredibly mature perspective and I think it shows a lot in the growth that you’ve kind of had over the last few years is that that flexibility with a point meaning to continually provide value and to seek out that thing that really kind of ignites you as an individual. And the best people are the ones that never actually achieve that. That just keep searching, right, keep learning, keep growing.

Erica Akroyd:

There’s always something new. Yeah. I don’t know what’s going to happen with customer success, but I know that things will change regardless. I mean, it’s already changed so much just from the time I was in customer success to what it is now. And with the way macroeconomic environment is working, don’t resist change, just kind of go with it and your company will see kind of like that you’re open to trying new things and who knows? I never thought that I was ever going to be in customer success, that I would ever be doing what I do now. And I’ve changed and changed and changed and it’s just been an interesting ride.

Josh Schachter:

And the last thing on that is that that change is going to help you. You want to be a CCO. Well, what better knowledge base than having sat in different seats and having a broader perspective of the organization. That is what will prepare you for that executive role at Pento and then eventually you’ll keep climbing whether it’s there or somewhere else. Erica, thank you so much for joining us on this episode, really enjoyed it. I think our listeners are going to get a lot of value from hearing your story and your journey and have.

Jon Johnson:

A great week everybody.