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Unchurned is presented by UpdateAI.

Jon Johnson:
It is so hard to say that we have met expectations within 1 year. You need 3, 4, or 5 years. And unfortunately, CSMs don’t do a very good job of sticking with one account for 5 years.

Kristi Faltorusso:
And every time there’s a new customer success leader in an organization, we know there’s a new strategy, there’s new priorities, there’s a new focus, and everyone wants to put their fingerprint on something and do it inherently different than it’s been done before.

Jon Johnson:
How do we get these people trained and retrained and continually retrained when everybody’s fucking leaving and changing on a constant consistent basis?

Alex Farmer:
So I think, you know, thinking more about being the the shepherd or steward of information that then can drive the right outcome for you and kinda put you as the the messenger into the other workflows of those departments is is kind of a way I’ve seen, you know, a nice way to kinda build a a bit of a step change through more tactical, execution, if that makes sense.

Josh Schachter:
How do you tactically do that, Alex? I like that.

Alex Farmer:
But we’ve trained the sales team basically to do success planning about what the customer wants to achieve in year 1. From a statistic perspective, we 6 x ed our average contract value with this motion, and our win rate went from, like, 20% to 33% once we implemented it. Again right, but it it’s a total time suck, adventure bridge, you know, bridge to nowhere, I think, for a CSM to be really chewing their teeth on that.

Jon Johnson:
Our CSMs, I don’t want them to be heroes.

Josh Schachter:
Hello, everybody. It is eclipse time, not for our listeners, but for us, the hosts. We are all here and we’re waiting for the skies to get dark. John just left us. I don’t know where did John just he

Kristi Faltorusso:
went to the dark. That’s the problem.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. I think he just went to go stare at the sun.

Michael Forney:
It is it is pitch black here in Austin, Texas. Sorry, Josh. It is

Kristi Faltorusso:
Josh, we’re not dark yet.

Michael Forney:
Getting darker. It’s crazy. It’s it is 1:30 PM. Wow.

Josh Schachter:
It’s wild. It really is pitch black. You should’ve

Jon Johnson:
I was

Josh Schachter:
just a second ago,

Alex Farmer:
and it was,

Josh Schachter:
like yeah.

Michael Forney:
I know. Even darker. Like, I used to be able to see even across the street. I can’t even see I can’t even see the yard anymore. Now my, like, walkway lights are coming outside. They’re this is freaky, man.

Kristi Faltorusso:
I’m excited.

Jon Johnson:
Michael, where are you?

Josh Schachter:
Well, you know what? Listen. We we’ve actually trained we conditioned our listeners who are now our guests to to derail us. They’re so used to to to Christy and John derailing the conversation with with non sequiturs that Michael’s just jumping in and going into to

Kristi Faltorusso:
you know I invited him here for the BS.

Josh Schachter:
He’s yeah. He’s all about the b Michael, I invited

Kristi Faltorusso:
you here for some CS. CS.

Alex Farmer:
Oh, okay. I’m here for both sides. Side of BS as well. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Forney:
No. No.

Kristi Faltorusso:
No. No. Talking about how we prefer the BS, Josh.

Alex Farmer:
I think, Christy, you were saying we should rename as BS and BS, but that was Yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Just BS. Just BS.

Alex Farmer:
That’s more succinct. That’s true.

Michael Forney:
That’s good.

Alex Farmer:
Marketing. Nailed it.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Straight up BS.

Josh Schachter:
John, what are you working on right now? Your face, you’re, like Am

Jon Johnson:
I it it’s recording, or are you working on something very serious?

Kristi Faltorusso:
Yes. Your back. Your audio is back, John.

Jon Johnson:
Jesus Christ, everybody.

Alex Farmer:
Well Peace to you.

Josh Schachter:
I’m gonna introduce. So I’m Josh Schachter, founder and CEO of UpdateAI. I have with me today Christy Falterusso, my cohost extraordinaire, and John Johnson. John, you’re gonna say hi? Hey, guys. Hey. Cool.

Kristi Faltorusso:
I wasn’t allowed to say hi.

Josh Schachter:
No. Because then it becomes, hi. I’m Christy Felthor. Okay.

Alex Farmer:
Okay.

Josh Schachter:
Okay. Oh, I

Alex Farmer:
see. Okay.

Josh Schachter:
I I built my career over last 12

Kristi Faltorusso:
years. Okay. We have 2 2 more friends on today. So I wanna chase them.

Josh Schachter:
Okay. So we’ve got 2 friends. We have mister Michael Forney. Michael is the VP of CS at Responsive. Michael lives in Austin, Texas, which is why he’s getting the, eclipse a little bit before we do.

Michael Forney:
Is full on nighttime.

Alex Farmer:
Reporting live.

Jon Johnson:
Cannot see Reporting Reporting

Josh Schachter:
live. Reporting live.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Live from

Alex Farmer:
the dark. Crazy. I’ve been

Michael Forney:
through eclipses before, but nothing like this. I was like, it’s not gonna get that dark. No. This is like full of nighttime.

Jon Johnson:
If you think about it, like, 200 years ago, somebody would have been accused of being a witch if this were to happen. Yeah. Do you know? Like, this, like

Kristi Faltorusso:
I feel like

Michael Forney:
a witch. Well

Jon Johnson:
You’d be my guest too.

Josh Schachter:
And then we also have Alex Farmer from the arts. Yeah. So we’ve got Michael’s behind us because John, Christy, and I are East Coast. And then Alex is way ahead of us, 5 hours

Michael Forney:
ahead of future.

Josh Schachter:
In London. The future. Did you already have your Eclipse time on

Alex Farmer:
the eclipse free. So my eclipse is free. Okay. We’re eclipse free since What?

Jon Johnson:
We are

Alex Farmer:
eclipse 3 since, like, I wanna say, like, 2,013. It doesn’t rhyme, but I did see a solar eclipse here in the UK back then. But our eclipse is it’s just dark. It’s 7:30 PM. So Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah.

Alex Farmer:
Yeah. It’s dark. I can’t even do it. It’s dark. Wow. Super cool.

Michael Forney:
There is life after the eclipse. We are gonna survive.

Jon Johnson:
Maybe. You’ll let us know, Michael. Let us know. Yeah. If you cut off. Or if you start ascending into heaven.

Michael Forney:
The purge total eclipse. Pretty sure that’s not where I’m going, but I’ll let you know one way or the other.

Alex Farmer:
Yeah. Please do. That would be good.

Josh Schachter:
So just to round out Alex’s intro, Alex Farmer is the CCO and CRO of NASASA. Did I get the pronunciation of that right? Just yes. Let’s go with yes. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

Alex Farmer:
The the long story that nobody cares about, I say nezaza because I have a obnoxious American accent, but we are a Swiss German based company in Zurich, and they all say I won’t do the accent. But they pronounce it slightly differently due to the locale that they’re from. So It’s a little bit more fun.

Michael Forney:
Need to hear it.

Josh Schachter:
Do they do they pronounce in a very firm, adamant way? Like Yes. Nizaza.

Alex Farmer:
Sure. Yes. Let’s go.

Michael Forney:
Okay. You did great. Oh.

Josh Schachter:
Okay.

Jon Johnson:
Good job, Josh. It’s I’m also also pleased

Michael Forney:
to be here.

Jon Johnson:
I will I am German. I have

Josh Schachter:
a German passport. I I have license to say those things.

Alex Farmer:
Well, yes. And I don’t, to be clear. So that’s great. I’ll be here to correct your pronunciations throughout the session today. So thanks.

Josh Schachter:
Thank you. Thank you. So, we we actually so so Michael and Alex are are, very kindly filling in here. And and, well, they’ve leveled up. They’ve helped us level up here, and I don’t I’m not just saying that. We were gonna have a different guest on for today, but she bailed on us this morning, because she had promised her daughter that she would take her to go see the eclipse. And so

Jon Johnson:
the right thing to do.

Josh Schachter:
Which is the yeah, I guess. Hey.

Jon Johnson:
It’s the right thing to do, Josh. Yeah.

Michael Forney:
It’s okay. Eclipse is not as important as the story.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Yeah. But so then we we had these guys fill in for us, and it’s great because we’ve got some really cool stuff that I wanna talk about with both of them. So, you know, we know that this is a tough year in CS for everybody. All leaders are being being pushed and stretched and pulled and and tugged and poked and pried. And, and so you’ve got some some, you know, some pretty concrete and challenging goals in the organization. And I actually wanna ask you I probably could have asked you this before pressing the record button, but I want to ask if you’d be open to sharing some of the stuff that you’re focused on right now. And then we’ve got some CS leadership extraordinaires here, plus myself.

Josh Schachter:
And, you know, maybe kinda can talk through some of the stuff that you’re going through.

Michael Forney:
Yeah. I would be happy to, and thank you for inviting me here. I feel I feel honored and a little starstruck,

Josh Schachter:
to

Michael Forney:
be seeing each of you. Don’t let it go too much to your heads, but some. At least some. You guys you guys are famous on the CS circuit.

Jon Johnson:
Among the 5 people in this room, we are well known.

Kristi Faltorusso:
And our 7 listeners.

Alex Farmer:
We’re all each other’s biggest fans. It’s just really just this kind of, like, yeah. Please continue.

Michael Forney:
No. I mean, I would say listening to this podcast has actually really helped ground me in a lot of ways, because I think, you know, being in being in sometimes in a leadership position, especially in a remote environment, it can feel like you’re on an island, and it can be a little lonely. And you’re, like, thinking through problems and challenges, and without, like, a really strong network, of folks that you’re just always around, You’re not really just you’re not you’re not having that water cooler talk. So this podcast has actually helped me quite a bit just to hear, like, the real stories of what other people are, are, you know, are going through. And I I appreciate that, and I will I’ll keep listening, because of that.

Jon Johnson:
Well, wait till the end of the episode before you make any promises. We’ll

Michael Forney:
see how

Jon Johnson:
badly we fuck this up for you.

Michael Forney:
I’m I’m a commit kinda guy, so I’m gonna go ahead and put my money on it because

Alex Farmer:
You’ll you’ll listen to it.

Josh Schachter:
So so I’m doing separate only. Yeah.

Michael Forney:
Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Let’s get there. Responsive.

Jon Johnson:
Yes.

Josh Schachter:
Michael has an incredible product and a great group of CSMs, and he’s getting XX percentage GRR. And I’ll let you fill in the XX percentage, Michael. Hopefully, you’re able to.

Michael Forney:
Yeah. Well, we need to I don’t know how much we can talk strong, you know, talk concrete numbers. You know, we’re a private company, but, you know, it’s we’re getting industry best practice GRR, and it’s it’s quite a bit better than some of our others, in the space, which is great. But there’s still room to grow. Like, there’s about, you know, maybe 3 or 4 percentage points that we still want to to get up to to be industry, like, best and top.

Josh Schachter:
And So you’re trying to go from, like, 65 to 70% GRR. Is that it?

Michael Forney:
No. It’s a little bit more than that.

Alex Farmer:
Michael, you’re okay. Our mental math is so bad. We can’t figure out the number that you can’t say. So it’s Yes.

Josh Schachter:
He’s doing well. He’s doing well. It’s he’s not listen. He’s not there’s no shortcomings here. He’s trying to to go from the the a to the a plus. Let’s just put it that way, which just makes it even more difficult.

Michael Forney:
That is a good way of saying it. Yes. Because it when you’re really scratching at that at that level, here’s the conversation I have with, the COO of my company all the time is that, you know, this the results that we’re getting, we believe that they are a com a good combination of solid product, solid team, you know, team and technology behind, behind it. But what others in this space so this is what we’re finding. Others in this space are getting similar results with kind of, like, a what we call a hero CSM team. Like, they’re doing everything and a little bit of everything. But in order to unlock the remaining, you know, 4 or 5%, we need to work really cross functionally and achieve, like, the the company mission of customer success. It’s not just the department’s mission of customer success.

Michael Forney:
The whole company has to do it. So the product has to be working. The team has to be working. The onboardings have to be great. The marketing has to be good. Like, everything has to be well orchestrated. So I don’t have all the solutions. That’s why I’m here, actually, to find out, you know, how, how are others in this space really working cross functionally, so that you’re not just using your own tools and your own tool kit, but you’re leveraging the power of the entire company behind the mission of customer success to really pull off those expert numbers.

Josh Schachter:
What what are the symptoms right now that you see that make you say that you’re not getting that company wide mission of CS? I

Michael Forney:
would say we I mean, we are getting company wide CS up to a certain level, and we’re just always looking to see how we can unlock more of that. So but symptoms of, let’s say, like, common common churn. I mean, I think I’ve heard about it on this podcast and and others that, you know, m and a tends to be a really big slice, of our churn, which, you know, is some degree in your hands and some degree out of your hands. Right? I mean, sometimes Google acquires a company and you’re like, well, there goes that customer. And then other times, you know, you can actually defend because you can have materials and assets prepped in advance to help show, like, why you are the right company for the expansion for, like, a multi business enterprise, things like that. We have some customers that, end up just going we call it going manual. They just do what they do, the hard way. So we we have quite a bit of that.

Michael Forney:
I think, you know, we have the same symptoms that most other companies have, which is m and a is a big slice. Customers are just gonna cut the cost and go manual and just eat it on, like they know they’re not gonna get as much productivity out of it, but there is more of a tangibility on their p and l sometimes when they could just knock some software off. Beyond that, I think we have I think we have a real challenge with customer turnover. You know, we invest all this time and effort and money into onboarding and training a team, and then they get another job somewhere else. And sometimes, it’s all of them who leave, you know, over the course of, like, let’s say, 2 years. And so we have to

Josh Schachter:
Does that become worse in the past 9 months? I mean, are they are are people getting ripped now?

Michael Forney:
Yes. Definitely. We have, we sell into a lot of proposal management groups. And, unfortunately, proposal teams are often, you know, put put on rifts even though, you know, we believe they should not be. I mean, they’re contributing directly to revenue, and they’re operating at extreme efficiencies. But, yeah, it does it does happen. So sometimes it’s nice because they’ll move to another company and they’ll bring the software over there. But we we deal with that challenge quite a bit.

Michael Forney:
So, you know, we’re we’re aware of some of those challenges. It’s just like, okay. We have to, like, pay attention to them, find them, discover them, and then put the motions in place to be like, okay. We have to, like, put a program in in place, for those things. I’m not giving you any answers here. I’m just No.

Josh Schachter:
No. No. I mean, listen. This is this is therapeutic

Kristi Faltorusso:
You answered the question that Josh asked you, which was what are the symptoms of what you’re seeing, and what what are you trying to solve for?

Michael Forney:
Yeah. So who’s got the crystal ball

Josh Schachter:
on the panel? This is like therapy. Basically, you’re just gonna keep talking yourself into the response, and then you’re gonna just be enlightened by the end of this.

Jon Johnson:
So how does that make you feel?

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. How does it make you feel? No. But the other good thing is, by the way, Michael, like, even if we get nothing out of this, our listeners will because, it shows that there’s there’s many people out there that have the same challenge. Right? So you are Totally. Yeah. You’re making others, I’m sure, feel very, like, comforted right now, in having these other similar challenges. I I mean, I could ask you, like, what do you think is the answer? Like, what would be your magic wand as a next step?

Michael Forney:
That is a great question. I don’t I don’t know what the magic wand answer is. And and I don’t think there ever is a singular silver bullet to anything. You know? Everything is just it’s a giant it’s a giant Lego construction. There’s different pieces, different colors, different sizes of things to to make the whole masterpiece, you know, look like something. So I think what I’m most interested in in hearing you know, we can talk all the day long about, like, oh, you need to work cross functionally. And I love asking people, like, hey. What does that mean?

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. What does that mean? What what is strategy?

Michael Forney:
Meetings are you having? What is the topic of those meetings? Who are you meeting with? And, like, what is the frequency of those sessions? You know, those kinds of like, I love getting those kind of tangibles because it helps me a lot. We we have some good cross functional, we have I would say we have good cross functional engagement. We do we do a biweekly here, to talk about, you know, customers who are either at risk or, you know, have some sort of significant thing happening, either something very good about them or something very challenging. And then we go through our, like, churn forecast, renewal forecast, all that kind of stuff. We do we do, you know, we do review all of that, and we have a lot of new players at our company, particularly in our customer marketing function, which I think is a big piece that is probably, one that we can really lean on in the next, you know, 12 to 18 months to to help us amplify the right messages to our customers. So I think that’s probably one area where we are we could use some development is a lot of the communication that customers receive is, you know, one to one communication from CSMs. But, again, it only goes as far as what the CSM can produce, and it would be better if we can be leveraging all, you know, shreds of customers helping to sell their insights and their outcomes to other customers. So, I mean, that’s just one idea.

Michael Forney:
But, anyway, I’m rambling here.

Josh Schachter:
Christy Christy Christy Christy, a minute ago, started going to notepad. So Christy’s been taking notes, and she’s ready to pounce now. Go, Christy.

Kristi Faltorusso:
I’m not ready to pounce, but that is interesting that you caught me catching my little notepad over here.

Josh Schachter:
Are you ready to go?

Kristi Faltorusso:
No. Okay. So I would say, listen, there’s always gonna be a laundry list of things that we’re gonna see. Right? And and the ones that you all rattled off are ones that we are, like, at client success, things that I struggle with as well. M and a is is our largest challenge because our ICP of who we sell to, those companies are ripe for being acquired. Right? And I’ve navigated m and a when the companies I’m supporting are the companies acquiring other businesses when those are growth strategies and those are growth motions for us? Right? Are we getting enough value from the the parent company that we can now penetrate these subsidiaries or these these sister companies or whatever depending on the model? At client success, I can’t solve for the m and a that happens in our Right? It’s not it’s not good it’s not gonna be a good use of my time. So you talked about some of the other things. And so one of the strategies that I’m focused on is really dialing in on what can I control and influence versus what can I not? And instead of trying to drive cycles around m and a, I ignore it.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Not that I ignore it entirely, but it’s just not something that I know even if I won one more deal, it is not gonna move me enough percentage points to have a meaningful impact on the business. So I really started to figure out, well, what are the things that I can influence and things that will have material impact? And so one of the things that we’re working on with our customers right now is a re onboarding motion. So to your point, so many of our customers have we’ve seen either turnover in leadership, especially, Josh, to your point, this year, it’s been the highest it’s ever been. People coming and going almost every 3 to 6 months. And every time there’s a new customer success leader in organization, we know there’s a new strategy, there’s new priorities, there’s a new focus, and everyone wants to put their fingerprint on something and do it inherently different than it’s been done before, which means for our software, it’s almost a reboot. Now even when that change doesn’t happen, companies are evolving. They’re growing. Your priorities are shifting, which means how you’ve onboarded a year, 2, 3 years ago probably means that your program looks a little bit different than it does today.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Right? So we’ve actually put together this reboot kind of, like, re onboarding strategy in place that tackles both of those challenges for us. So trying to find strategies that allows us to have the most amount of impact. So we’ve started to do things like identify how many of our customers have been with us for over 24 months and actually proactively look at their analytics around usage, adoption, what are some of the key ways they’re using the platform, and come up with a curated list and say, you know what? We’re gonna go after these customers in this order based on renewal dates, based on adoption, and actually start to make a really focused program around re onboarding targeting. Right? And offer it at no cost and just say, hey. Listen. It’s been a while since you guys had configured client success. I think this is a good opportunity for us to do a level set and we have a program in place that will do this platform success audit to kind of let you know what does your deployment look like against best practice. And then if you want to engage in a re onboarding, we’re gonna help you and here’s what that looks like.

Kristi Faltorusso:
And so we’re pitching it. We make it very clear. This is an investment The The other one that we do is we also leverage this when we do see a change in leadership. And so sometimes it’s right away, but we do know that a leader’s gotta come in and probably spend the 1st 3 months getting their bearings and start to figure out where they wanna prioritize. So day 1, I’m not pitching it to them. Right? So it’s also sequencing that appropriately where we build a relationship. Maybe the 1st couple weeks we know that they’re there and then come back a couple weeks, maybe a couple months later and say, now that you’ve gotten yourself situated, we’d love to have this conversation and hear some of the things that we can offer to help ensure that your deployment mirrors your strategy and not the one that was there before. Right? If obviously that’s not the one they wanna deploy.

Kristi Faltorusso:
So those are just two examples of two things that we’re seeing where one program designed can tackle those 2 issues. And, obviously, from a poor adoption standpoint, if we think about that as a challenge, which it is, and I’m I am confident that every company has a little cohort of customers that struggle with that. So even if I I I went and said, you know what? We’re gonna go after these low adoption customers as well. That would be 3 different risk buckets of customers where we’ve got this challenge, where one program could solve for that. So I think that’s how I’m starting to approach this is, like, what can I do that’s gonna be the least amount of work for my team where I’m not reinventing 8 wheels to solve 8 problems, but where I can take one initiative, rebrand it, or remarket it a little bit to solve a specific problem, but the meat of the initiative is the same? And so that’s been something that we have found has started to get some good traction with our customers, and we have a whole program around it from the initial even communication and outreach to the platform success audit that we conduct for them through the re onboarding motion, which is basically a scaled back version of our full onboarding. But we do let them know if you wanna go through a full onboarding and you wanna start from a scratch, that’s an option. And so we give them these kinda, like, you know, choose your own adventure. But, again, it’s one program, kind of rebranded a couple different ways solving for these different challenges.

Kristi Faltorusso:
And so I’ve found that that’s been the best way for me to tackle that. And, obviously, these things do require cross functional support. Right? Because sometimes it’s it’s product, sometimes it’s, marketing will help me with that. Right? So it’s also, you know, how do I lean into the different teams? So to your point with cross functional collaboration, this isn’t one where I leverage my sales relationship that much because these customers are already customers, and our our sales team is just new logo sales. But if you did work with the sales team on upsells, cross sells, expansions, anything like that, pull them into this as well because these initiatives could yield, again, additional upside if that’s how your product is sold.

Michael Forney:
I love it. You hear

Kristi Faltorusso:
all that?

Alex Farmer:
Is that your is that your own soundboard that

Kristi Faltorusso:
you think you’re saying? Soundboard, Alex. I don’t cheer well, actually, I do cheer for myself. I am my biggest cheerleader.

Alex Farmer:
I only asked you because I brought my own as well, so I was about to hit to hit the, the air horn, but that’s okay. Guys, you jump in here quickly because I think a lot of great insights I agree with, especially on the m and a point. You know, just to double down on that quickly, if your CS motion is demonstrating value, showing outcomes to the customer, it’s your best defense against m and a. So investing in the investing the time and kind of the standard CS motion is your kind of moat, let’s call it. And I think there’s also something to be said for you know, if you kind of accept it as churn, and and when I present it to boards, I’ll separate it out and call it non regretted churn, makes the number look better. But, and I’m surprised at how please please mute now, board members. But I’m very surprised at how how, how often they don’t challenge that in my experience, which I find quite interesting, but that’s okay. And because, you know, you’ve already kind of written it off and you’re investing in, like, you know, activities that provide more value, giving it to the sales rep is kind of like a hail Mary.

Alex Farmer:
Hey. You know, put in your pipeline. I’ll support you, but it’s your deal to manage and run. And, you know, best case, you get 25% of those M and As back, and they get some big commission, then great. Right? But it it’s a total time suck, adventure bridge, you know, bridge to nowhere, I think, for a CSM to be really chewing their teeth on that. And I think the other point, Christy, from the onboarding program that you mentioned is is really important because I think, Michael, you talked about the hero CSM. And, obviously, for those customers with low adoption that could use re onboarding, that’s gonna be where the hero CSM spends all their time not doing customer success work to try and get to a position where can earn the right to talk about business objectives and outcomes. And and in this way, you can kind of ring fence.

Alex Farmer:
And, Chrissy, I’m assuming you have a separate onboarding team. That could be an incorrect assumption.

Kristi Faltorusso:
That is that’s an incorrect assumption. I wish.

Alex Farmer:
Sound board. Womp womp womp.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Yeah. Go ahead. Mhmm.

Alex Farmer:
Yeah. Yeah. No. Okay. Right. Fine. But but I think similarly though, at least you’re differentiating to the customer. Like, this is onboarding phase, and this is not onboarding phase so that you don’t kind of get sucked into the let me be your technical liaison, you know, partner forever.

Alex Farmer:
Just just a few more things on the cross functionals, challenge that you mentioned. I think the the way I like to think about this is kind of, like, where you know, if the customer’s at the center of the organization, customer success plays a key role in injecting customer information into other departments. Right? Whether it’s customer marketing, you know, who can do advocacy. You’re injecting kind of something that the marketing team needs, right, which is gonna help them generate more leads, etcetera, etcetera. And And product and engineering, similarly I mean, you know, you maybe you’re injecting in in our example, we’re just kind of sending a prioritized list of bugs that’s owned by customer support. But if the CSM gets an escalation, they’ll throw that onto, like, a list of priority bugs that we’ll send the product team every sprint. And it’s pretty tactical, but I’m you know, I think we used the menu analogy before. You know, I’m taking a platter and kind of giving it and serving this dish hot to the people that need it.

Alex Farmer:
And I think for me, I’ve always seen a much more success in thinking really tactically about, like, how can I make this 10% more customer centric based on what you as a team needs, product engineering, sales, marketing, as opposed to kind of the the all hands, let me tell you about all these red accounts meeting, which can kinda be, you know, a meeting with 60 people on it when nobody’s really listening? And and best outcome, they remember one little anecdote you had from 1 customer that influences a decision they make in 2 months. Worst outcome is a waste of an hour of 60 people’s time. So I think, you know, thinking more about being the the shepherd or steward of information that then can drive the right outcome for you and kinda put you as the the messenger into the other workflows of those departments is is kind of a way I’ve seen, you know, a nice way to kinda build a a bit of a step change through more tactical, execution, if that makes sense.

Josh Schachter:
How do you tactically do that, Alex? I like that. How do you like, what’s the meaning you saw?

Alex Farmer:
You you know me well enough. I live in the tactics in the weeds. That’s yeah. I yeah. Let’s just leave it there. Tactically, we have a tag in Jira where it’s called top 15 bug, and we add that tag to the Jira ticket that we would like to escalate. Now knowing just quick thing about, Nasazza, we are 70 customers and 60 employees. So these tactics work for our level, of course, to operationalize something a little bit.

Alex Farmer:
For large organizations, we take a little bit more kind of, administration. In larger companies, we, you know, would have a CSM be a product champion for a certain area that aligns to each squad, and then they would join and kinda be the the one person or somebody in customer success or in support depending on kind of where the head count, you know, which team is larger, would then join each sprint planning for 15 minutes, bring, you know, the 5 bugs that the team has nominated, and then kind of go into their workflow. And I do think this this principle of I also maybe it’s a little bit more admin, but, like, joining their meetings as opposed to kind of creating the all hands right account review so you have to join mine, I’ve always found is a much more effective way to kind of get the the change that ultimately we need to to drive for our customer. So, yes, a tag in Jira is the, the answer. I’m sure you all listen to this podcast to receive, but there you go.

Josh Schachter:
That’s for product. What about for marketing and sales?

Alex Farmer:
We have a a field. We in HubSpot, we have a set of advocacy fields. And when a customer says yes, we change the field from no to in progress, and and that pings an email to marketing. And then once it’s done, it goes to yes. And then it’s easy to kind of KPI across the company which customers are advocates, which aren’t. And it helps me now leading a sales team who used to annoy the hell out of CSMs asking for references all the time, but not remembering who I told them about last week. They can self serve in the CRM, you know, which customer should I use and at least kind of ask, hey. Can you introduce me? As opposed to, let me tell you for 30 minutes about each logo type thing.

Alex Farmer:
So so, again, kind of, you know, in taking the workflow of the the team that wants the information and trying to kind of get into that as opposed to to doing, you extra work, let’s say.

Josh Schachter:
Michael, can we step back for a second? And I should have prompted you earlier. Can you tell us a little bit about responsive, but more interestingly about your organizational setup?

Michael Forney:
Sure. Yeah. So responsive is a is is a platform to help companies put the best, most accurate, most relevant information in front of the people who need it most, who need to respond to inquiries to their companies. So a lot of times, this is gonna be presales organizations working on things like RFPs, RFIs, RFQs, DDQs, etcetera, or security teams, you know, responding to question you know, security questionnaires, those kinds of things. So it has a broad application, and it does, you know, it does does go pretty wide across, a certain across a customer base, once once we’re once we have deployment there. And it’s a very powerful tool. It’s, you know, it’s probably the best in its space. I mean, I’m a little bit biased, but if you look at the g two reviews, like, it’s it is you know, we are we are exceptional.

Michael Forney:
We have a lot of great a lot of great customers. A lot of the fortune 100 are on there, so we’re very fortunate. So the company is very is very powerful. And my organization, I run customer success, which we do have a separate onboarding and professional services organization. Sorry, Christy. But that is a separate function mostly because it’s I mean, it’s so involved. And so you really need a a good group of folks, with a dedicated leader, you know, really iterating on that process. I’m thankful, for our the VP that oversees that because it’s, you know, it’s a big undertaking on on its own.

Michael Forney:
So I oversee all the customer success managers, a CS ops, function, as well as all of our customer support, which is all based over overseas offshore. So that all rolls up into me. So it’s customer support agents, TAMs, technical account managers,

Josh Schachter:
90. And then what generally speaking, what’s your coverage ratio about how many accounts are they managing?

Jon Johnson:
Oh,

Michael Forney:
great question. So we actually changed this a couple of times just in the last 2 years or so. In our enterprise segment, we’re targeting about 30 customers per CSM. Mid market is about 60 ish, which I think is kinda pushing on the upper bounds. We might add some additional capacity to bring that down because I think getting over 50 just becomes really hectic, and hard to manage. I’m sure if any of them are listening, they will they will welcome that. And then in our SMB team In fact, Christy, we have somebody in our team, who I think you know, who leads our our digital efforts. So our SMD is all digital managed.

Michael Forney:
So it’s the pooled CSM concept with I know you hate this, Josh, but a community, a customer community.

Josh Schachter:
But He listens to the shows.

Michael Forney:
Oh my

Alex Farmer:
god. Yeah. I see. He did, Josh.

Josh Schachter:
I know, but this this this verifies.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Does he look like a liar? Yeah. I mean Like Alex, maybe, but not Michael.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. I mean, I love it. Thank you, Michael. Yeah.

Michael Forney:
So it and and for us, I mean, the community was a new motion this last year, and those and those those folks are handling, you know, upwards of 300 customers per CSM because it’s a pooled model. But I will say for the for us, for a community, it it’s actually worked really well. We’ve run we’ve run almost up almost 50 events just in 6 months last year, digital events, and we have over 40% attendance, and we’re getting registrations in the 1,000.

Josh Schachter:
That’s great.

Michael Forney:
So, you know, this is just a content that customers are clearly hungry for that they just hadn’t been engaged, in this way before. So it is it is working, at least as far as we can tell, and I know, at least anecdotally, many of our customers have, you know, met each other offline, just just as a a byproduct of being part of the community together.

Alex Farmer:
You should, you should, CC Josh on all of those emails so that they can tell him directly how much they love communities.

Josh Schachter:
No. Just to be clear, I actually love community in the way that you’re talking about it. I I I I don’t like community where it’s like, let’s just buy, like, a a forum board. Yeah. You know, people go back to me. That’s what I’m referring to.

Alex Farmer:
The cable company community where I have to go through there to find the phone number to cancel, that sucks. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
That’s what I’m talking about.

Michael Forney:
Okay. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s what I’m talking about. I love what you’re doing, Michael. So, Michael, with Christy and Alex, like, what resonates and, you know, what they get right, what they get wrong? Like, what are you thinking?

Michael Forney:
Well, so we are doing a flavor of all those things that you guys mentioned. So to your point, Christy, around re onboarding, this was something that we identified sort of, like, the middle part of last year. We’re like, oh, all the knowledge of these places with turnover is completely gone. Like, of course, they’re not gonna be super excited. They don’t even know what this is. So we did invent what we called a, a PS SOS boot camp, where we can send customers back through that, which is exactly what you described, Christy. So a watered down version of an onboarding so that they you know, we can get them, I like to say, reromanced on the platform because, like, they don’t know what this thing is. And so, we have to get them interested and excited about it.

Michael Forney:
And that’s that’s been I think that I think that that has been good. We have we’re just about at a good enough time where we can now pull the data and see, like, what happened. You know, we put them through a 2 or 3 month program. Where is their data now? So it’s on my to do list to go see if it’s actually working. But I we believe that it is. We’re gonna keep doing it because there’s an obvious gap for it. And if anybody, you know, comes to you and says, oh, I inherited this tool from so and so who left the company, and you try to get them to pay to learn it, good luck. They’re gonna tell you.

Michael Forney:
They take a hike, and they’re gonna go get a free onboarding from another vendor that they don’t have to pay for. So anyone out there thinking that you can charge a customer for re onboarding, with a brand new team that doesn’t know your tool, don’t do that. They’re gonna walk away. I I I’ve seen that. Alex, you’re shaking your head. Maybe not every time, but I just don’t see like, if I was told, oh, you have to pay to figure this thing out. I’d be like, no. I’m gonna go get a free onboarding from someone else.

Michael Forney:
Because I don’t I’m not I don’t think I’m even excited about your tool.

Alex Farmer:
Yeah. I think it depends on how nice to have or, like, ingrained the tools of the business. I mean, I’ve worked in, and I think this is the the CSBS bingo. It depends. There you go. Ding ding ding. Because, I mean, for us, we’re a commerce platform. So to rip us out, you have to turn off your business.

Alex Farmer:
HR tech, obviously, you stop kind of your HR operation. So I’ve always found it in companies, you know, more where it’s easier to migrate. Absolutely right. And I think sometimes, you know, I’ve been guilty of relying too much on the fact you can’t cancel me, which is not a great place to be. So I agree with you in principle. It’s just tactically sometimes that,

Josh Schachter:
Personally, you can be canceled, though.

Alex Farmer:
Yes. Good. And I have

Josh Schachter:
to ask you a thing on this episode.

Alex Farmer:
I didn’t do the accent. Okay, Josh? Okay.

Kristi Faltorusso:
They haven’t canceled Josh yet. I think you’re all fine.

Michael Forney:
Good. Good. Good. Good.

Jon Johnson:
I wanna add I wanna add one thing, just a perspective that I’ve been kind of processing as we’re talking through this. We we actually had we have something similar at my organization, Michael, at user testing. This m and a thing is has been huge. We recently were merged and acquired, and our customers are going through these substantially. If you don’t know, we’re in UX research and design space. So we’re not we’re not necessarily, like, a nice to have or a need to have. We’re kind of somewhere in, like, the liminal space between that. We also don’t necessarily have people, like, logging into our platform every single day, so, like, our stickiness metrics are a little bit trickier.

Jon Johnson:
There’s a little bit more, like, higher level kind of thinking that we have to go into. And, when I was looking at, like, our key accounts, which are some of our bigger groups within, our customer base, we of course, this I love this onboarding. We implemented something very similar after I mean, I’m pretty sure Christy and I talked about this 2 years ago, is how do we get these people trained and retrained and continually retrained when everybody’s fucking leaving and changing on a constant consistent basis. Right? But to that point of, like, higher and wider, one of the things that we found in extremely successful and kinda to your point, Alex, as well is how ingrained are you in the process? Kind of removing yourself from the software from, the typical, I need to have x number of clicks and x and y number of logins. But really, like, we we spent so much time working with our operations leaders that are building playbooks, that are building process docs, to make sure that our inputs and that our product was baked into their already standardized processes so that every single decision maker when they were looking through, well, what do we need? Well, yeah, we’re gonna merge this team or we’re gonna hire a new CS leader. We’re gonna hire a new ops leader. They come in and you hand them their packet, and it says, go to user testing. Do these five things.

Jon Johnson:
Right? And so before they even get to that rip and replace, before they even get to that acquisition and look at budgets, they actually have to change the process themselves before they even get to getting rid of us. And most of the time, what we found is having the opportunity to actually completely remove ourselves from, like, our CSMs, I don’t want them to be heroes. They’ll be a hero one day, but if that that moment of heroics doesn’t lead to completely changing the conversation to let’s talk about your operational processes so that we can ingrain ourselves in. And we do we fly in and do, like, workshops all of the time. I create workbooks and playbooks for customers in their language, and we host them for them, so that there’s you know, the the decision has been made before it even gets to the contract stage, and that helps us with kind of that red flag warning to say if people start coming, coming to us saying, like, I don’t know I don’t know when to use you. I don’t know how to use you. That’s an indicator for us that either somebody’s ripped out the process so that we know that we have to engage our executives or our leaders in a different level, or we’re just not there yet with the maturity level. Right? So when when we segment our customers, we have, like, a maturity model of how ingrained in their process is not this user testing, but the outcomes that they they solve with our platform.

Jon Johnson:
So it’s not even it’s higher than just goes in and uses it. It is the things that they’re doing within our

Michael Forney:
were going into accounts, and I know you were visiting a a customer a couple of weeks ago up up in DC. That is a big motion for us now. I mean, in the post COVID world, I think we’ve been slow to get physically in front of customers, but every time we do it, it’s like fireworks. You know? It’s like there’s all these unintended little side meetings that happen and people that you meet just because you’re in their offices. Like, I think that’s gonna be

Alex Farmer:
You mentioned that, you know, the the applicability of the platform is not for one certain department. Right? So the value of kind of leveraging the partnership you have, but then why don’t you invite the, you know, the ISO response team in the IT department. Right? That kind of pivot motion, I imagine, is super valuable for you guys as well.

Michael Forney:
It is. Yeah. And, thankfully, we have an account management team that is responsible for all the upsells and cross sells. So there is a lot of, like, cross talking that goes on where, you know, if we can, you know, if we can penetrate with 1 department, you know, that’s it’s obvious then white space on the other departments that we don’t know yet. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
I just think you need AI that that brings in the voice of the customer and shares it across the multifunctional organization.

Michael Forney:
Is what I’m asking for.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. There’s yeah. There’s enough for that. There’s there’s enough for that. Okay. So I wanna pivot the conversation actually now, to Alex. Alex, you and I were talking this morning, and I found your approach really interesting and said, hey. Come on and share it with the rest of us.

Josh Schachter:
So and and, Michael, maybe this will be something that that can inspire you as well. Alex, you were CCO. You are CCO. You were promoted to CRO. You’re some combination of the 2, and you’ve set up your presales motion to be something that will set up your post sales motion to be most successful. So tell us a little bit about that.

Alex Farmer:
Sure. So, yeah, it’s been an interesting 6 months. I made the change September 1st. So we have kind of 2 quarters done. It’s been I think my hairline’s receded, in the last 6 months more than it has the rest of my life, but that’s okay. My eyes are down here. Please don’t look up here. But, yeah.

Alex Farmer:
So so it’s been really interesting, and I think maybe I can caveat all of this by saying, you know, I have a sales team of 2 reps and 2 SDRs. So to do change management takes, you know, a 2 hour training session and isn’t like a big kind of enterprise motion. So it’s easy to kind of test, learn, experiment. Context wise, we, as a business, or travel tech company, we sell, basically, think Shopify for travel agencies or tour operators. So bringing all of their products online, so you can book your one trip in a single basket. That’s what our software does. And we had been kind of in between selling to big enterprises and much more, like, SMB type customers. We had a bit of a a summit back in, like, early 2023.

Alex Farmer:
We kind of came up with a plan. You know what? We need to really start moving up market because we’re, like, burning the candle on both ends, blah blah blah. So the the the kind of precursor to all of this unification was we canceled the all the simplification. We canceled or deleted the bottom 3 of our 6, yes, 6, product plans, so we had 3. We raised the price of the entry level plan that remains. We doubled it. And we kind of transitioned from a more transactional motion to a much more enterprise value selling motion. And the reason I’m kind of going back this far is because that’s what we needed to better align a sales organization that had been targeted on velocity, sales cycle length, and things that really just encourage, you shortcutting and fast deal close on smaller price points, which then did not align to a customer success motion that we had quite a complex product that has a separate onboarding team that takes 2 to 3 months and a customer success motion that’s really trying to kind of quantify business outcomes, which to be fair is easier than or some for some organizations because we are a literally a commerce platform.

Alex Farmer:
So I can see how much money you’re making. I can see your conversion rate. I have a direct tie to revenue because money comes through the platform. Right? So we had a real misalignment in terms of how we went to market and how we took care of customers. So in the last 6 months, we’ve done a few things. One, we had kind of this this big summit with marketing sales, previous sales leadership, and CX team, and really sat down and zoomed all the way back. It wasn’t so much an ICP exercise. It was like, it was basically, what are the 5 business objectives our customers are trying to achieve? And that’s where we started from.

Alex Farmer:
Our website, if you can spell the name of our company after hearing Josh pronounce it so correctly, is not updated yet. That’s in the that’s kind of in the the works and should be done in the next month. And but it will have the classic, like, you know, the product drop down and then the solution drop down, which will be increase your revenue, optimize your, you know, manual processes, increase conversion rate, whatever. But But that has all been stuff that we were talking about in the post sale motion for quite a long time. So there was just kind of this unification to make sure that our marketing was not doing kind of fancy, pointless brand marketing, but rather direct demand gen focus on business outcome. And then the sales team will kind of go from there. The discovery process is all interviews about the company. Right? We’re not doing any demos.

Alex Farmer:
We minimize demos. We refuse to talk to the IT person. I mean, I’m kind of teaching basic sales techniques, but, you know, it’s been a learning experience for me. But I think the most important thing is that we actually do discovery and value selling in a success plan. So the marketing material is talking about hypothetical value that gets the right fit customer talking to a sales rep. But we’ve trained the sales team basically to do success planning about what the customer wants to achieve in year 1. Our solution proposal starts with a success plan. We won’t do a demo until the executive sponsor says, yes.

Alex Farmer:
These are our business objectives. And it’s very elegant handover motion to the CSM because then the success plan that, at least in my experience, they struggle to kind of find the lane between the onboarding team to talk about in the 1st 3 months is actually already done. The onboarding team can then set the system up with success in mind. So you’re connecting back to the business objective. And the CSM has a very easy kind of handover to say, hey. You know, these business objective, it’s been 2 months. You’re about to go live. Is this the right one still? How should we change this? And we kind of keep that motion going.

Alex Farmer:
From a statistic perspective, we 6 x our average contract value with this motion, and our win rate went from, like, 20% to 33% once we implemented it. Dude, that’s awesome. Yeah. But, like, yeah. 2 sales reps. So it’s been great to experiment, but, you know, the change management was much simpler, I guess. That’s our unfair advantage to being quite small and nimble.

Michael Forney:
What did you guys think? I mean, the results are awesome, and the fact that you’re thinking about all of those things is great. I I always I kinda wonder, and maybe this is a question for you, John, on the concept of success planning. How closely do you, you know, pin your customers to the, let’s say, like, the concept of of value that they had coming in, and then you fast forward 6 months or 12 months down the line, like, are you are you adjusting your success plans based on what’s happened? Are you always pinning to what the original expectations are?

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. I I like to think of this as, like, honestly, like our success planning and in general success planning should be, like, any relationship that you build. Right? You have your first date, you kinda just set out what you’re looking for, you set out why why you bought, why you said yes, why you swipe left or right. And as you kind of grow and you get to know people, you have to absolutely adjust not only your expectations but also your asks. And you have to come in with a with a decent frame of mind that this is gonna change. Right? I mean, that you know, parents gonna get cancer, they’re gonna lose their job, or they’re gonna get a promotion, or they’re gonna have to move to Europe. Right? All of these things, it cannot be static and stationary. And I think where the problem has come in with success planning is that it is a one sheet template that, you know, some website sent to a CSM somewhere and they filled out their forms, and then it lives on Salesforce, and that’s just utter bullshit.

Jon Johnson:
The truest form of a success plan is aligning on a daily or whatever cadence basis you can with the outcomes of their business, not with what they are paying you to do. Right? Because we are a conduit for the businesses that we are supporting. And and and that’s a broad statement. There are some particulars and specifics that we can really dig into. But if we are not calling success and defining success and requiring success that doesn’t drive their outcomes, meaning, like, for ex you know, if Amazon’s your customer, it’s, you know, attachment rates in shopping carts or it’s AWS shard configuration or whatever they’re doing. Right? If you’re not aligning with meeting those expectations, then your success plan doesn’t matter. You cannot build something that will drive to durable or sustainable growth unless unless you are actually aligned with what those are. So my QBRs or as Christy has literally taught me customer ops, outcomes review, CORs, have been it is saying, like, what’s changed in your business? And if there’s white space between how they use us and how we, as experts of our product, see they can use us to drive their growth and their outcomes, that’s where we fit in, and that’s where the CSM works with the services team or the sales team or the marketing team or any of these other organizations to say, yeah.

Jon Johnson:
You’re you’re meeting your goals at 80% of whatever it is, however whatever marker you wanna use, but did you know you could be doing x, y, and z? Here’s a case study. Here’s a webinar. Here’s a work space. Here’s something that we can do that will actually, like, because I know your business. And this is where this is the problem I think that I have with kind of the market that we’re at where CSMs get cut really easily or we move books of business really easily because just like dating, like, you don’t, sometimes you know you’re gonna marry the person on the first date. But by and large, it takes a really long time to get to know that person enough to say this is value. And that 1st year contract, it is so hard to say that we have met expectations within 1 year. You need 3, 4, or 5 years.

Jon Johnson:
And, unfortunately, CSMs don’t do a very good job of sticking with one account for 5 years with for a number of reasons. Right? So if we’re not actually looking at the maturity of our customer and the knowledge that they have in their business and our CSMs, deeply understanding their specific customer outcomes, then we’re only gonna be talking service level. It’s gonna be really shallow. And thus and the offerings and the outcomes and the support that we’re bringing with these success plans, whatever we write down is going to be incredibly shallow. So day 1, use the platform. And then day 795 or whatever it is, like, you’re scouring the s ten, you know, filings and understanding CEO metrics and all these things, but it has to accumulate and grow. Also, Christy’s dog is in the is in the YouTube for those of you watching.

Josh Schachter:
Charlie

Kristi Faltorusso:
hates I think the my neighbor’s dogs are making a lot of noise because the it looks like the eclipse is probably hitting us in the next, like, few minutes. Yeah. So, all the neighborhood dogs are barking, and so she’s having a little bit of a freak out.

Josh Schachter:
Alright. Alright. We’re gonna wrap it up on that note. We’re gonna go watch the Eclipse, and, I really like this format. Michael and and Alex, thank you for joining us. Like, Alex, some really cool stuff that you’re working on and and growing Nasaza. I’ll say it

Jon Johnson:
more. Nasnasaza.

Michael Forney:
Hit the applause for

Alex Farmer:
that, man. You nailed it.

Michael Forney:
You hit

Josh Schachter:
the applause. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally nailed it. And, Michael, you know, the the strongest leaders are the ones that are are exposed themselves and make themselves a little vulnerable and wanna grow and learn. And that’s what you did, and I really appreciate.

Josh Schachter:
It sounds like you guys are already crushing it, but I appreciate your coming to us and letting us talk about the topics here today. So, John, this is kind of the format we wanted to do. Right? This is what we were talking about. This was a good first Wait.

Kristi Faltorusso:
You guys had a talk without me?

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. We did. We’ll we’ll we’ll fill you in later. Yep. Awkward. Okay, guys. Have a great week, everybody. Bye.