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Jon Johnson:
We just adore you for, like

Kristi Faltorusso:
No one’s ever ready for this.

Josh Schachter:
I’m making faces at all you guys right now, but you can’t see me.

Kristi Faltorusso:
I don’t know why you won’t come off camera and just blur your background.

Josh Schachter:
It’s my childhood bedroom.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. We all wanna see your childhood bedroom.

Kristi Faltorusso:
We wanna know about your child, Josh.

Jon Johnson:
Josh, let’s talk about your

Josh Schachter:
childhood bedroom. I’m gonna I’m gonna show my camera for one second, and anybody watching on YouTube at this second can see my childhood bedroom, and then it’s gonna be done. Ready? 1, 2, 3, go.

Jon Johnson:
Oh, the story is Everyone

Kristi Faltorusso:
pick something you wanna talk about. Okay.

Sarah Parker:
Got it. Done. That’s not any pillows.

Josh Schachter:
That’s my life. We’re not sure

Sarah Parker:
that there’s more than 10 pillows.

Jon Johnson:
There’s more there’s definitely more than 10 pillows.

Josh Schachter:
Well, you need one for between the knees. Right? Because if you don’t

Jon Johnson:
have between the knees saying.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. What

Kristi Faltorusso:
are you guys? Pregnant? Like Yeah.

Jon Johnson:
You know what?

Sarah Parker:
I have one I I see so many pillows.

Jon Johnson:
I have one

Kristi Faltorusso:
My my my female friends have a lot of pillows, and I get that,

Sarah Parker:
But Hey.

Jon Johnson:
This is not a gendered opinion. Comfort is comfort.

Kristi Faltorusso:
That. No. You no. I’m just saying, like, that Your hip aligns pillows

Sarah Parker:
and stuff. Alignment.

Jon Johnson:
I sleep with a pillow

Kristi Faltorusso:
between my knees every night. One little this is crazy. Are you guys side sleepers? Is that what’s happening? Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah. And then I just wanna be held sleeping on your back.

Jon Johnson:
So I Wait. What do you

Kristi Faltorusso:
wanna be held? Okay.

Sarah Parker:
So you

Kristi Faltorusso:
wanna be the little spoon. Got it.

Jon Johnson:
For I just need a little jetpack. We all just need a little backpack.

Sarah Parker:
Pregnancy pillows for the win.

Jon Johnson:
I’m telling you, I need the pillow that has, like, the whole I need the pillow that the arm goes underneath. It has the hole with the bed with the hole so that I could lay on my side, and, I mean, it’s a complication, guys.

Kristi Faltorusso:
That’s like the lonely man’s pillow.

Josh Schachter:
I was gonna say you

Kristi Faltorusso:
need to you need to partner.

Jon Johnson:
Happy birthday, Sue.

Josh Schachter:
Everybody, it is John’s birthday. We’re filming this out of my day.

Sarah Parker:
Are you birthday now.

Jon Johnson:
I am celebrating my, 21st birthday for the 21st year in a row, actually. I’m 42.

Sarah Parker:
Yes. I had

Jon Johnson:
to do some math, and

Sarah Parker:
it made me nervous because

Kristi Faltorusso:
I know. Yeah.

Jon Johnson:
Two numbers.

Josh Schachter:
John, happy birthday. You don’t act a day older than 27. So

Jon Johnson:
That’s all I go for. My 401 k also agrees. Yep.

Josh Schachter:
And then I also wanted to start us off this episode, with a And so I wanna start in the spirit of we’re gonna introduce her in a second.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Here we go.

Josh Schachter:
But in the spirit of her and her company, I wanna start with a communal moment of a deep breath work together of of taking, like, a a breath together. I don’t know what I’m trying. I’m trying to I’m trying to run

Kristi Faltorusso:
this thing. I’ve never run. You should have had a license. Breathing with you all on a Zoom thing, a recorded thing that lives in forever.

Josh Schachter:
Okay. Ready? On the count of 3, we’re all gonna take a deep breath, and we’re gonna inhale and exhale. 1, 2 So

Kristi Faltorusso:
we go with our eyes. Arms up, like, what’s it gonna do? Okay. I’m not closing my eyes. I’m watching all of you.

Jon Johnson:
Thanks, Josh.

Josh Schachter:
Feels good. Feels good. And with that I feel like

Sarah Parker:
a pro at this.

Jon Johnson:
I’m centered.

Sarah Parker:
I’ve been introduced to to breath work from my current company.

Josh Schachter:
Yes. Yeah. Sarah’s like, hey, guys. I’m here. Introduce me already. I was This

Jon Johnson:
is actually the fastest that we’ve introduced a guest, by the way.

Josh Schachter:
It actually is.

Jon Johnson:
Well Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Except now we’re kind of gonna go on another round. Okay. We’ll get back to it. Sarah Parker, welcome to the show.

Jon Johnson:
Josh Schachter.

Josh Schachter:
Sarah Parker is the senior No. Guys, let’s just see how many times we can get in the way of her intro. Sarah is the senior vice president of global customer success, not just North American. Global customer success, heads up customer success at BetterUp. BetterUp is a really cool company, because I think they’re doing just something that everybody needs, which is which is coaching, personal coaching. And she’s got all kinds of different product lines there. And maybe, Sarah, you can explain that a little bit, and I’m sure I’m not doing any justice to a description of your company.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Doesn’t sound like you are.

Josh Schachter:
Nope. Doesn’t to me either. Prior to BetterUp, because she’s been here 6 months, she was a VP of customer success at UiPath, which has done some really cool stuff with RPA robotic, process automation, and I’m sure now in the AI world as well, you know, even enhancing their their their capabilities. So, Sarah, thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Sarah Parker:
To be here.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Yeah. Do our listeners a favor and give them a better description of BetterUp.

Sarah Parker:
Sure. BetterUp, definitely began. Its roots are in offering, digital coaching. We actually own the patent on it. But where we’ve evolved to, which, quite frankly, the the market’s taken us is we are what we refer to now as a workforce transformation platform, so you’d be hard pressed to find an enterprise today that isn’t transforming of some sort, digital transformation, operating transformation, m and a related transformation, and through all the process and and systems work that that comes with those types of large scale changes in organizations, we we tend to forget the the last component, the human transformation aspect, So we offer a suite of both technology and human in the loop type, services that help customers with the, what I would call, the final frontier of transformation, and that is the workforce, transformation. So, very cool company. Yes. 6 months out the gate.

Sarah Parker:
Feels like it’s been 2 years with the, the pace of growth and change we’re about to unleash on the market, so it’s it’s been a fun time.

Josh Schachter:
Oh, let’s hear about the change you’re about to unleash on

Sarah Parker:
the market.

Jon Johnson:
Carrying the lead. Yeah.

Sarah Parker:
Well, it’s my yes. This is a what’s interesting from this stint in my career, this is only the 3rd company I’ve worked for. I, this is also the first blue ocean experience I’ve had, so we’re creating a market. We we sell and position things in the market, where there isn’t existing budgetary line items, no one feels that they need this. There’s not many, if any, competitors that that compete at our scale. So a lot of heavy influencing, going on and and a lot a lot more visioning than I’m used to in in my prior roles in companies. So

Josh Schachter:
Well, what I love about the concept of BetterUp I don’t use BetterUp. I have a a a an executive coach, and I I know her from my last job. And she’s been so kind to stick with me through the startup because god only knows I’ve needed a lot of coaching in the startup. Yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso:
And that’s your longest relationship. Right, Josh?

Josh Schachter:
And that’s my longest relationship, yes, to date. I I do have, a long standing relationship with my body pillow like John.

Jon Johnson:
Hallelujah. Praise the lord.

Josh Schachter:
And, but coaching has just been such a godsend. It it, like it’s like, Katarina, if she’s listening, has just been it’s it’s been everything that I’ve needed, in the company to to help me navigate and and way find through the different directions and key decisions that we need to make and challenging situations with colleagues and partners and investors and everything. And and she’s, like, my closest confidant. And, I I know for some you think about coaching, and you’re like, well, okay. Only when I’m at a certain executive level or I have a certain income can I afford to coach? And I think that’s what you guys are trying to democratize, Sarah, at BetterUp is, like, no. You don’t have to be the SVP of global customer success to have a a personal coach. Right? You you you can anybody can have it, and it may it takes it it it pays such dividends is what I’m trying to say. So

Sarah Parker:
Absolutely.

Josh Schachter:
Kudos to you guys for tackling that.

Sarah Parker:
Yeah. Soft and hard benefits, I think we we tend to neglect or not even think there is a financial benefit that you could track back to a coached employer workforce, but you’d be surprised if dug into the data. It’s it’s pretty good. And, yeah, I think there’s a what I like about this company is outside of being, there’s obviously what this could do for enterprise and workforce, but there is a higher order mission for our founders, for the individuals that work here that wanna kind of impart and make the world better, and we view pushing this capability through enterprises as, like, a great way to get a large chunk of the population before who knows what the consumer journey may lay may play out for us.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Totally. I mean, it reminds me, a little bit about of of Headspace’s path of go to market. You know, they started out consumer, which may be a little different, but then they had a major play in enterprises way to to capture, you know, the the larger audience.

Sarah Parker:
Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Sarah, I wanna hear kinda the story about your joining BetterUp. You’re 6 months into the leadership role. Tell us a little bit about the process of, you know, your moving over to BetterUp, what you really kinda came into, and what you’ve been focused on improving or maintaining, what have you, in those past 6 months. And then, eventually, we’ll lead this into a conversation around low touch, tech touch, digital touch, all the digital trends? Because I know that’s something that’s, on your priority list right now as we’re stepping into 2024.

Sarah Parker:
Sure. Happy to.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. What did you step into when you what did you find when you came to to BetterUp about 6 months ago?

Sarah Parker:
A lot of churn. Not too much, but, you know, I think in a as I I called out earlier, this is a, this is blue ocean space. This is not you know, very few enterprises out there have a recurring budgetary line item for workforce transformation and coaching capabilities. So, with that, the the barriers to continued adoption is are a lot higher than I have seen in other enterprise SaaS companies. And, you know, I joined the company late 2023. This technology this this company went bonkers big through COVID, post COVID, where all of a sudden the the mental health and and wellness of your employee base became of front and center focus, not just for CHROs, but CEOs. And so we saw the market start to cool and normalize, and, hence, we started to see churn, become a become a problem. It was not a problem before.

Sarah Parker:
So when I came in, like, my current state was we we had a we had a leaky bucket. We had a singular, I would say a singular engagement model for customer success, and it was high touch, bespoke, customized, tailored, and when you really dug into what we did, we were doing product support. We were doing consulting. We were doing work that would very clearly categorize as paid services. And, you know, if you think about it, a lot of breadth, you know, in term versus depth. We were doing we were generalists to the 10th degree. I’d say we were doing a lot of work that could be automated, that should have been done in systems. And then my last and favorite, which I when I lament with other CS leaders is we were also the Band Aids of all the things that were yet to be configurable features within the platform.

Sarah Parker:
So we were like the Band Aid around the platform.

Jon Johnson:
Traditional customer success then.

Sarah Parker:
Yeah. Pretty much. But it was the perfect storm. I’m used to kinda seeing these kinda phased out over time. It was it was all at once, so so it’s been a game of of focus.

Josh Schachter:
Where where were your leaky buckets that you were that you were intent on addressing?

Sarah Parker:
Yeah. So one is, I think customers that didn’t realize they saw they bought a renewing product. So them seeing the renewal quotes was a surprise to them, so that was fun. That’s something we can solve commercially upstream. We’ve seen a lot of programmatic purchases. So, when we sold or we we anchored to a business need, it was like a point in time, like, campaign or event or program that had an end date. So we we we saw a lot of churn through that.

Josh Schachter:
Kinda mean, like you mean, like, hey. We’re we’re it’s it’s peak COVID. There’s a lot of, stressed out, exhausted employees. We need to do something. And then 6 months later, oh, okay. We’re not on that bandwagon anymore.

Sarah Parker:
Yeah. Or, you know, we’ve got a we’ve got a hypo program that we wanna throw some coaching licenses out, but, you know, it only runs 6 months out of the year, and we don’t know if we’re even gonna do it next year. So, you could have the most successful launch, high engagement, high value ROI, but the program is not a not a constant.

Josh Schachter:
That’s interesting.

Sarah Parker:
Yeah. And so and it it was interesting as I was staring at the churn and and then the other kind of, I would say, week we had in the bucket had to do with, our high touch customer success motion meant we really couldn’t touch the bottom third of customers. So these were customers that were, like, getting talked to when we sold to them and when we were passing over renewal quotes. So naturally, churn just due to poor service levels, unengaged, never got off the shelf, so, that was the scenario, that I walked into. Now, on the flip side, I saw some headwinds. I have never seen higher NPS in my life at a at a company. Our customers adore us, are so engaged. So I was like, so why are we churning if there’s if they love us so much? So it was.

Sarah Parker:
It really comes down, I think, of What

Josh Schachter:
was your NPS score?

Sarah Parker:
It was, like, 75.

Josh Schachter:
Wow.

Sarah Parker:
Yeah. Did

Kristi Faltorusso:
you have a higher response

Sarah Parker:
rate? Any

Josh Schachter:
anything that’s higher than John’s GPA. Rate.

Sarah Parker:
So, like, a 36% response rate. And these are, like, big fortune 1,000 enterprises. Like, you know, this is you know, they’re so I was I was

Jon Johnson:
Going over that dig, Josh. Just moving right past it.

Sarah Parker:
Yeah. So we, so we our our customers loved us. We have really good mind share, like, CHRO level. We’ve got a lot of executive, I would say, not presence, but, like, reach and penetration to the CHRO office. But it something wasn’t operationalizing as you got down, downstream in these organizations running on a on a year to year basis. So as it relates to kind of how, you know, I’ve been wrapping my head around it, those those issues or headwinds. The programmatic selling piece, that’s things that we were working with, like, CS as a partner to to sales in terms of how they sell and position differently and maybe tether themselves to other types of programs or business metrics that have a more evergreen presence in the organization versus, seasonal, And then as it relates to, like, service level degradation or, you know, not being able to touch, like, a third of our customers, that falls squarely in our customer success core. We’re just we’re not organized to operate at at the scale we’re at, let alone the scale we wanna move on towards.

Josh Schachter:
How many customers do you guys have?

Sarah Parker:
700.

Josh Schachter:
That’s a lot.

Sarah Parker:
Yeah. 700. So our big customers are big, but we do have a long tail, and, you know, it’s a pretty high touch, I would say, implementation and adoption life cycle for our customers that I don’t know that our customers have truly felt the brunt of. I think our CSMs are carrying a lot of that. Would like to see the product carry more of that. So, anyways, you know, the my now being 6 months into the gig or or after my first three months of kinda taking the lay of the land, there was clearly a lot of we could control as far as how we organized work differently, how we partnered with our platform and product team to what I would corn coin product led adoption so we can facilitate more of that out of the tool versus manually through our CSMs.

Josh Schachter:
You you’ve you’ve referred to that a couple of times, Sarah. First of all, before I forget, what’s the size of your team, the size and structure of your team?

Sarah Parker:
So our CS organization includes both your pure play CSMs of which we have around 25, 26 of those, and then it includes services of which we have implementation, technical services, and coaching services as, you know, digital coaching is a big piece of our, of our, of our platform.

Jon Johnson:
Okay.

Josh Schachter:
And and that but you’re but they’re they’re

Sarah Parker:
carrying covered too.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Services wait. Josh, I wanna ask a question.

Jon Johnson:
She’s just waiting.

Josh Schachter:
Kristi, we’ve gone through this before. Sarah Kristi, we’ve gone through this before. When I speak, it sounds John explained this to us a couple of weeks ago. It sounds to me like I’m talking first. And when you speak, it sounds to you like you’re talking first. But you’re always very accusatory of me for speaking over you. Meanwhile, in my to my perception Here

Sarah Parker:
we go.

Josh Schachter:
You spoke over me.

Jon Johnson:
This is Josh’s gaslighting. Answer, Chris.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Right. Thank you. Thank you. Sarah, tell me about your services. Are these premium services? Is this pay to play? Just are these all complimentary? Are you attaching services to every deal that comes in because of the complexity of it and the change management that’s required?

Sarah Parker:
I’d love that. No. No. None of it. It’s it’s a little bit of a it’s a mix. We’re No. Largely unpaid, unpriced services that, you know, we we’ve been incubating to to start to paywall. So one is, I would say, in today’s world, even if we had sold services, our customers cannot be a 100% autonomous.

Sarah Parker:
There is a requirement for people inside of BetterUp to help them implement, run, extract value from from the platform. So but our services are, I’d say, this year, we will see some we’ll we’ll probably see 2 things. 1 is formalized pricing and a formalized services menu, so we’ll get a lot more organized on that side of the house. The other piece is defining the standard, like, it defining standard versus premium type support, which some of my team members would would orient towards. So, like, essentially, what’s the implementation support that’s included in your license cost versus that which is either custom or so complex or so dense in scope that we require to to charge a fee for. The we also do include some, I would say, consulting services, which are you don’t need it to run and implement the platform, but, you know, given our we’ve got a lot of our platform is already science backed, and we own the patents, and we own we actually have a lot of scientists on the roster, so, like, our consulting type services are something that are, I would say, value accretive to our clients, but not a necessity to run our platform. So we do some of that as well.

Kristi Faltorusso:
So if you’re not selling them, how are you determining who’s getting what?

Sarah Parker:
Good question. Still figuring that out. We are so we’re selling in the sense we’re giving away a lot, but we don’t have standard price, I would say, price catalogs yet. You know, we’re maybe if I were to contextualize it, we’re just coming off of the the phase of growth where it was market share by any means. Give them whatever they need. We’ll figure out how to price it and account for it separately. I’m coming in to say we need to price and account for it even if we’re counting it as a 100% discount. We need, you know, we need the paper trail.

Sarah Parker:
We need customers to see that there is value associated with what they’re getting versus feeling it’s it’s an entitlement or feeling like they’re purchasing that license fee is, entitles them to a turnkey type operation. We just haven’t had honestly, we just haven’t had consistent ownership of services. It’s been a decentralized, like, background function.

Josh Schachter:
Sarah, you tell me if I’m onto something here. Like, I I get the sense that you went from one massive hypergrowth tech company to another, that UiPath was similar, maybe offset a couple years ago, that they really grew incredibly quickly. And, probably, it was very similar words. Hey. This is like it’s a public company. Right? So our our our market our our our our prices at this were growing incredibly quickly. We’re raising all this money, etcetera, etcetera. And then now we have to actually get the house in order a little bit to to support that growth.

Josh Schachter:
And, probably, it’s a little bit of a similar situation where BetterUp has grown so quickly over the past few years given people’s changing mindsets and remote work and all these things. And now it’s a little bit of the same. Like, now we actually have to get the house in order.

Sarah Parker:
Exactly. Yeah. It’s it’s very much similar growth trajectories. The key difference is UiPath was operating in an established market. There was a lot broader set of learnings you could glean from from our other competitors in the marketplace, whereas whereas here, we’re creating. The other thing I would say is unique is, UiPath was automation technology. We were selling into the CIO. They’re they’re used to owning and managing platforms.

Sarah Parker:
In BetterUp, currently, our buyer is the CHRO, and they’re not used to consuming platforms and technology and what does it mean to be a platform owner and working with a technology vendor. So it’s it’s I’m I’m trying to I’m trying to lead a customer success organization in an enterprise SaaS world that’s treated like a service company. So that’s it’s been it’s a very different customer persona, which has been it which is causing me to rethink and not just immediately reapply the learnings of the past. As we’re gonna if I wanna evolve the customer success function, I need to evolve my customers

Jon Johnson:
So Sarah, that’s it’s interesting because so I work for a company called User Testing. I’m not sure if we went over that in the intro. But we’re very much while we’re in a different space, it’s it’s a similar customer base. Right? I’m used to we work with user researchers and research departments that just like, they’re used to just sitting in a lab and talking to people. And we’re having this day in and day out, these conversations of, like, treat us like a partner and they’re, like, but you’re a service provider. Like, we just sign you a check and you give us insights. Like and it’s it’s actually the last 2 years of my life has been really, really focused on this transition as well within my brain of, like, our folks don’t talk ROI. There’s no direct revenue application.

Jon Johnson:
There’s no way to say you have saved x or done y because that money doesn’t even go go to them. Right? It’s like 4 levels above. Right? And what I found interesting about a prep the prep docs that we kinda got is this transition into, like, the mid touch, I think, or low touch, but still, like, human led. Right? We talk about tech touch. We talk about let’s talk about platforms. But I think a lot of people just expect it to be or just send an email instead of getting on a QBR or whatever it is. Right? Like, I would love to hear kinda where you’re at with I know you’re leading into it. This isn’t anything that is defined.

Jon Johnson:
But it one of the things that we did talk about earlier was just it’s not just the people or the process. Like, it is also the way that our customers interact. And then a lot of these companies are built with product led in mind. Right? So they’re kind of there already. How do you get that transition internally when you have an organization that is really, really high touch where customers are like, hey. I can call Mark whenever I want to. Right. They’re gonna give me an answer.

Jon Johnson:
2, I’m gonna get the same value, but in a different way.

Sarah Parker:
No. It’s a good prompt. The way I’m thinking about low touch customer success is, the first wave of this is augmenting the CSM, not replacing them. So I do not see I am not signing up for the hell of change you know, I’m I’m interfacing with a chatbot or a general web interest form. Right? So, you know, my first thing is, for 1, it’s like, I need to enable my CSMs to enable their customers as if they’re platform owners and not just saying yes to everything. So we are we are definitely in the phase of, we say yes. We if we can do it, we will do it, versus should we do it, or should we, you know, should we do it for the customer on behalf of them, or should we take the time to teach them and lead them through it? So I’m using this analogy with the team. It’s like, this year, we’re evolving from the Sherpas carrying the customer’s junk up the mountain and doing it for them versus we’re training them before the climb, and we’re there to join them on the climb to make sure they don’t fall or if they need help or reinforce coaching, we’re gonna take them up.

Sarah Parker:
So we’re it’s really first is like driving the mindset shift of my CSMs.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah.

Sarah Parker:
You don’t have to be the hero, save the day, say yes to everything, and you need to and before we can ask our customers to change, you need to shift your mindset from that of the doer to, like, in the Sherpa to the enabler and the coach. So that’s, like, at a very basic cultural level, mindset level. Like, that’s part 1. Secondly, is we haven’t really designed or equipped our CSMs with tools that are customer facing. Like, we give the CSMs playbooks and SOPs that it speaks to them to do the work. I’m like, no. These should all be customer facing and written through the you know, for the reader being a customer, not a CSM. So we need to even rethink our building of collateral assets.

Sarah Parker:
Infrastructure for customer success should only be built with the customer as the end user, not the CSM. We’re not a service provider.

Josh Schachter:
Don’t don’t just don’t create one of those, like, community things where people get points for, like, for adding a forum comment. Just as long as you’re as long as we’re on the same page with that, Sarah, I completely

Sarah Parker:
I wish that was my problem. We were that far.

Josh Schachter:
Okay.

Sarah Parker:
I just I would love a public facing website with some information that the customers could get. So

Josh Schachter:
I gotta go. The 3rd the

Sarah Parker:
3rd piece is start to think through our self-service strategy where it’s not like the customer will only have that, but rather than a CSM dumpster diving through a Google Drive or their desktop, oh, why don’t I point you to this great resource that you can intuitively find, look for what you’re looking for, or find what you’re looking for? So, yeah, mindset shift, which is a cultural change for customer success, is a function here, designing with the customer as the end consumer of playbooks, SOPs, guides. And then 3rd is, like, start moving on a self-service strategy where customers can start to learn

Josh Schachter:
how to,

Sarah Parker:
you know, at least have a place to go to fulfill their needs. Today, they they have nothing, so, of course, we create the bottleneck with the CSM.

Jon Johnson:
What’s the what’s the impact that you’re feeling with your CSMs right now knowing that they’re looking at augmentation as you call it this year and then potential change the year after that. Right? We live in a wacky economy. How are you communicating this with your team so that it isn’t the big scary boss coming in and saying I’m changing everything? And more, I hear your pain. I hear your stress. You’re burnt out, and this is a solution.

Sarah Parker:
They’re begging for it. So there is a Good. So that’s one is Check that box. Yeah. No. There’s you know, to be straight, like like a lot of comps enterprise SaaS companies over the last year, we went through our our few rounds of layoffs, and the CS organization was not exempt from those. So but the workload continues to increase. So the team is begging for capacity relief, and because hiring is not the lever I can pull right now, The lever is how do we operate more efficiently and effectively in introducing low touch motions, such as self-service, more customer facing guides, giving CSMs the air cover and leadership support to say you can push back and teach them versus do for them, is, I think, permission they’ve been waiting to have given to them.

Sarah Parker:
So, you know, I would say there’s, you know, on one side, a very high appetite and, demand, quite frankly, for for introducing these type of low touch models. But there is a whether it’s conscious or not, there’s absolutely resistance from moving from the bespoke, I’m the hero, I can exert all this creativity in what I do for my customers to standard vanilla, you know, and that is more cultural change management we’ll have to work with and also reserve and and understand that there’s gonna be customers that deserve the white glove concierge, I just wrote this plan just for you type treatment versus those that get the the off the shelf version. So, I’m seeing starting to see hints of that, hesitation to moving more towards the standard, but, quite frankly, for good or for worse, like or for bad, the the size of the workloads these CSMs are having are kinda, like, forcing them to wanna adopt more towards the standard, because it’s it’s it’s the only way forward for for some of them to be able to get the

Josh Schachter:
Sarah, what’s the number 1 like, very concretely, the number one task that you would love to see set into UiPath and automated for your CSMs?

Sarah Parker:
Number 1 on my list this year is, like, I have a set of these 10 10 or so features that need to go into our our platform. Like, that would it that amounts to a high percentage of work for our CSMs that require the lowest amount of brain power. So I wanna take the stuff that I’m paying the highest hourly rate for that is, you know, nondifferentiating in the eyes of the customer. So that is number 1 is just embed stuff in the platform. And then in this case, it was just accelerating and building the business case to get this done next quarter versus next year.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah.

Sarah Parker:
So that’s that’s that was the biggest start clearing room. And then on the low touch p like, truly on the low touch model, the first thing I would prioritize is one to many programming, meaning, like, webinars, newsletters. I mean, we’re talking really low lift stuff that have immediate gratification, immediate application, and every CSM could use it, whether you have a small 50 k customer or you got a 5,000,000 customer. So everybody you is broadly applicable, low cost to implement, high high range of of impact or impressions you can drive off of it. Like, it’s a quick win and and it also starts to, I think, show the team art of the possible. You don’t have to be afraid of low touch. This stuff is great. It’s gonna augment you, not replace you.

Sarah Parker:
So

Josh Schachter:
Sarah, we didn’t we didn’t mention it, but we actually get our revenue for this podcast from being a lead gen platform to tools that we can so we now know the number one tool that’s on your list if you’re if you’re an LMS or you’re you’re helping to broadcast webinar content contact Sarah. I’m joking. I’m joking. Don’t contact Sarah.

Sarah Parker:
I’m not using my free Zoom account that turns off after 40 minutes.

Jon Johnson:
Duh. It’s the worst.

Sarah Parker:
It’s also the cheapest. So yeah.

Jon Johnson:
Awesome. Well, this was thank you so much for sharing all that. I I’ve, you know, not to just, like, recap everything, but I really like the way that you’re thinking about this. This transition is is so important to what so many people are going through right now. I’m sure that there’s gonna be a bunch of people that have a ton of other questions too. It’s something that we’re going through as well. This this move out from, like, super high touch to, holy shit, we have so much to do. We can’t do it anymore.

Jon Johnson:
And I really like the way that you framed it. It’s like, you know, CSMs are kinda trained to be the superhero. They’re just, like, they’re always the ones that save the day. Right? And I think that’s okay within reason. But that transition is a cultural shift that I’m really interested to hear, like, 6 months from now or a year from now when you when you kinda come out the other end. So we’re definitely gonna be, like, having some follow-up on that.

Sarah Parker:
Yeah. I’m I’m excited about it because the more we can we’re less diluted as a function, meaning superhero, you do everything when it’s time to articulate your impact, your worth to the organization. It’s hard to do that when you’re, like, I do 15 different things, and they’re, like, wait, what? You know, versus I do these three things. This is how it influences revenue or GRR. And, and I and I can certify, like, my team is doing work that’s appropriate for the hourly rate we’re paying for not that they’re hourly, but, you know, if I were to distill their average salaries to hourly rates, like, this is work we should be doing with knowledge workers of this caliber, and we owe that to our teams. I don’t know who wants to stay to do busy, low value work. That is, you know that that’s not why they joined the function.

Jon Johnson:
I love that. That’s that’s such a great perspective.

Kristi Faltorusso:
Hey, Sarah. Did you know what you were walking into?

Jon Johnson:
That’s the other question.

Sarah Parker:
Yeah. I always walk out of the have to ask that. Yeah. No. I I I I did. I did. I was really ready for a change. I loved UiPath.

Sarah Parker:
I still say we for UiPath, but 6 years is like it felt like 12 years of dog years there. We the company changed and grew a ton, and I was interested in playing my hand with a global scope, and then the customer success at BetterUp included services and incubating the services function. So this was a a personal more personal calling. So I was I was made very aware of, like, the challenges, but the things that are going for this company are far outweigh the operational challenges, which I view as controllable and solvable whether within CS or working in partnership with our sales teams. So, but the higher order mission of helping people live with greater purpose and clarity, the mindshare we have with CHROs, and cross our fingers, like, truly truly create and define a category and then lead said category is would be a really a really great chapter I’d love to see come to fruition. But, obviously, the best chapters have the highest cost, so let’s see, let’s see where I am a year from now.

Josh Schachter:
Well, I love it. If I had money, I’d invest today because I think you guys are in the right space. Like you said, you’ve established your market category leadership. I think you walked into a really tough opportunity. Yeah. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
But, like, it’s the sky’s the limit, and it’s gonna be fun in in in quotation marks. It’s gonna be fun. All the opportunity you have to really kinda help help the company sort of greater heights. So thank you for taking the time. Amongst your very busy schedule, thank you for taking the time to chat with us.

Sarah Parker:
Of course. No. Happy to do these, and thank you for inviting me.

Josh Schachter:
Thanks, guys.