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Intro 0:00
[Un]churned as presented by UpdateAI.

Meenu Agarwal 0:06
Customer experience in my mind always, is the driving force that helps us meet customers when they are in the journey. And we need to make sure they they get what they need when they need it, and how they want to consume. Right? It’s all about creating an engagement model with I call it the key basic tenets, right simplicity, ease of use, and unity right Northstar? Always customers when we make decisions, thinking what our customers will always

Intro 0:35
come to [Un]churned, a show about the leaders and innovators of companies who have forged incredible customer relationships, and stories you can use to advance your own career. Here’s your host, Josh Schachter.

Josh Schachter 0:48
Welcome everybody, and welcome to [Un]churned. I’m Josh Schachter. I’m the founder and CEO of UpdateAI and host of unchurned. Joining me today I’m very excited about having Meenu Agarwal on our show. She’s the senior vice president of customer success at workday, meaning that thank you so much for being on this episode.

Meenu Agarwal 1:07
Thank you, Josh. And first, I’m delighted to be here today. And welcome everyone. I’m meno agreable. I am at working, I have responsibility for customer success. Let me just say a little bit about what workday does. Work is providing unify finance, human resources, and student faculty lifecycle management. Cloud applications are really designed for the way people work in today’s organizations. And our revenues today are over 5 billion, and we have over 15,000 employees globally.

Josh Schachter 1:41
That’s That’s amazing, amazing. One of the leading SAS players, for sure, out on the west coast there Meenu, I want to before we dive in completely on a topic of customer success and leadership and all that you’ve done in your career and things that others can take away from it. Want to get to know you a little better here. We call this first segment here of the podcast on journey because we’re getting to know you raw and authentically. And so the first question for you is where were you born? And where do you live? Now?

Meenu Agarwal 2:12
I was born in India, and I live in Seattle, Washington. Having said that, I will say that I have lived in multiple continents. Right. So born in India, I lived in Australia for over 10 years before moving to the United States. I lived in Chicago, but moved to Seattle, Washington last year,

Josh Schachter 2:30
you’ve worked at some incredibly prestigious firms. When I look at your background, you were at VMware, you at IBM, you’re at HubSpot. There are other folks that I know that work in corporate America at some great firms that have kind of journeyed around the globe as a result of their careers. Is that your case as well, like when you were in Australia and Chicago is were these for roles in your career, or is this something else?

Meenu Agarwal 2:54
No, it was I’ve always been in software, I’ve always worked for software companies but but to move from Australia to the US was really I work for a company called open text. And so I had the opportunity for two years to come work for the CEO of open text headquartered in Chicago. So that’s what brought me from Sydney, Australia to Chicago. And you know, it was supposed to be a two year assignment that did not end. So you’re still stuck in the US.

Josh Schachter 3:26
So usually, that’s usually a good sign. You’ve had a lot of people that have flattered up to you, you know, past and present roles. And I want to ask you, what’s something that those folks and others would be surprised to learn about you?

Meenu Agarwal 3:42
That’s a great question. So let me let me share one, which may come as a surprise to some may not to others who know me better. You know, I spent over 10 years in Australia, Asia and travel to New Zealand multiple times. So one thing I really enjoy is bungee jumping. So you know, it’s the it’s the girls bungee jumping full style at the first time I did it. I know it was a lot of butterflies. But since then, it’s been it’s been something that I try and do every time I get the opportunity.

Josh Schachter 4:16
What is scarier talking to one of your top accounts who has just had a change in management and an executive sponsors or bungee jumping?

Meenu Agarwal 4:26
I love that question. That’s, you know, nothing scares me is what I would say. Right? I’m very bold. I think you know, one thing I’d say about customers is our customers are very forgiving, typically, right? It’s always about making sure we’re listening to them. So So definitely, that’s one part of it. I go in always, you know, trying to understand and listen to our customers. So it’s never scary, but I think it’s the action and the follow up which is important bungee jumping, easy piece of cake.

Unknown Speaker 4:57
I would agree with the follow ups by the way that’s updated. I that’s what we’re helping folks with falls from calls, we won’t we won’t go and plug that. But

Josh Schachter 5:04
last quick style question for you is, who is someone in your career that can be personal to whether you’ve known them or not, whether they’re dead or alive, that you’ve really looked up to, because I know lots of people have looked up to you and continue to look up to you. So who’s someone who’s inspired you?

Meenu Agarwal 5:19
There’s so many people I’ve had, I’ve been very privileged, I have to say this, Josh, I’ve really had the good fortune to work with some amazing leaders, I’ve learned from each and every month, right and made it my own. So I feel very fortunate to have had that those opportunities. And I, you know, talk about a situation where I learned so much, and this was I was working for IBM, IBM had a corporate as a corporate services program, where I got the opportunity to serve in the Philippines for the USP school, right. And you know, as a company, right for IBM to invest in its team and do that, I think, amazing, first of all, for me to get that opportunity, I feel so humbled and honored to do that. And then the learning on the ground was something that was just, I don’t think I could have ever done that any. So amazing experience. But again, company has given me the opportunity, right? And that for me to make the most of it. So that’s an experience that does come to mind, which is completely unique. And you know, the one thing I share with people whenever I can, if you ever get this type of an opportunity, you know, explore serving the Peace Corps or other ways to give back because you learn so much from these experiences.

Josh Schachter 6:36
Why? What’s one? I mean, I totally agree, but But why what’s what’s what’s something that really sticks out that you’ve learned from that experience that helped you professionally?

Meenu Agarwal 6:43
So great question, right. And I’ll say this, like with some, again, being very honest and open about it, right? When we got to the Philippines, I serve in the Philippines, and our assignment was with one of the government agencies there, The Weather Company pagasa. And it was just so fascinating that when you look around the table, the diversity of the team, right, we had people from all over the world, different experiences, not all technologists, right. And the problem statement was, we need to have to save lives, right? So solving a problem, which has a completely different dimension to it with a very diverse group. And how we approach and how we got to the end of job has been an experience that will stay with me forever,

Josh Schachter 7:31
is that idea of intersectional diversity of people coming from different perspectives and backgrounds to that can often be the most effective problem solving. And in this case, it was for something that was mission critical, right, so great meno. So I want to take our conversation into the topic of your profession, customer success and your experiences in that. Tell us a little bit about your role now at workday and what you were doing before that role as well, because I know you’ve had again, a really impressive career ends Yes.

Meenu Agarwal 8:02
Yeah, thanks. I’m, it’s a great, great segue into what I’m doing and what I’ve learned and what I bring to the new role, right. So very recent and new at warping, customer success. I mean, as an industry and as a function, it really is all about customer value, right? Getting our customers to outcomes. And that is meaningful, but in the context of understanding where the product is the maturity of the company, the go to market model, how we operate, and how we embrace customer success to help our customers be successful, is kind of what varies from company to company. Right. And before this, I was at VMware, again, responsibility was customer success, I led the global team there. And the interesting thing at VMware was that I actually established the function from the ground up right, when from a team of zero or one to 2000, I established the partner success model, right, there was a very intentional move to get help from partners towards customer success, right, launched the monetized Customer Success offering it was a very function that was built from the ground up on all of these levels, and then building it for scale, right, strong self service. So that was VMware before that I’ve had, you know, we can talk about my journey services, role sales roles, but really, it is about customer success. I’m passionate about it. And if we’re again, driving, it’s a $5 billion, over $5 billion in revenue, a large responsibility for my team to lead from the front and ensure customers are getting value every single day and having great experiences. Because at the end of the day, experiences matter. Getting to your outcomes matters. And you know, value matters.

Josh Schachter 9:47
Yeah. And that’s really interesting that you took VMware from from the zero to scale. I want to ask you, how does one go about building a program to scale in customer success?

Meenu Agarwal 9:58
Yeah, that’s a good question. And then you know, something that I think all of us all of us Customer Success leaders obsess about. Right? So I do think it starts with an understanding of where our customers are. So segmentation, right? cohorts of customers, we can take several approaches right up in at companies, we’ve taken a needs based approach market based approach to segmentation. But it does start with understanding, where are your customers? Who do you want to service when and how it’s about engagement. So engagement and differentiating that engagement, I think is critical customer experience, in my mind always, is the driving force, right? seamlessly. You can use technology, technology is a great enabler. So with people without people learning technology, right? This is the powerful combination that helps us meet customers where they are in the journey. And you know, we need to make sure they get what they need, when they need it, and how they want to consume, right? It’s all about creating an engagement model with I call it the key basic tenets, right? Simplicity, ease of use, and unity, right Northstar always customers when we make decisions, thinking what our customers will always win, right. So that’s, I think, fundamental to any program at scale thinking thoughtfully, a combination of segmentation coverage, technology, people and crafting that. And I think the one thing I would say is, again, large customer populations at larger software companies, the way you service your customers, it may be the right cause to serve many times is important. We want to pay attention when we talk about efficient growth. If our growth as a company, the headcount growth is there’s a correlation between that and the ARR growth, then you’ll be missing something. So cost to serve cost of retention is important. We don’t want to just tell people the problem, right? We are building for scale, optimization is critical. So it’s elements of all these measuring the moments that matter, but ultimately driving great customer experience.

Josh Schachter 12:02
And those are all the inputs, and the output output, like you said, is driving great customer experience. What are the ways that you’ve measured that past present future of the ideal outcome?

Meenu Agarwal 12:14
Yeah, I think measurements I mean, are critical, right? Listening to customer feedback, we talked about actions taking an actionable approach is key, right? Because because we have to hear them if we are taking making the effort, I would say I like to take like a leading indicator and a lagging indicator approach, right? Like, like most most businesses, so you know, what percentage of our customers are AR is going through channel versus direct as an aspect, ease of use and expert content? Like how’s it being consumed, consumed by customers? That’s more about the how right? Is this channel working that channel more use? Which cohorts of customers gravitate towards what when they have problem or proactively, like which phase of the journey? It’s all about operational rigor and improving that right, ultimately, but it’s also the lagging indicators and adoption usage, our customers adopting is that rate and pace of adoption going up? Right? Are they healthy through the process? Right? Where is their, you know, sentiment on health. And of course, the lagging indicators that tell us whether we’re winning the race or not, is the retention rates, close retention, net retention, NPs for customer experience, experience? But NPS is a holistic figure, I think we have to look at the experience through the customer journey, right? So every one of these metrics, I like to peel it by layers, and know that for every COVID of customer customer, because the approach may vary. So we want to know what’s working, what’s not. So we can actually take action. So I like to kind of think about the whole state, like,

Josh Schachter 13:50
who owns a metric like NPS? Is that customer experience? Is it? Is it product? Is it it? Who owns some of these different metrics that you just

Meenu Agarwal 13:58
mentioned? I think is such a great question, right? I don’t believe in like, owning metric, I would say accountability, right? And NPS is one metric and everybody in the company has accountability for that. So it’s the action when a customer gives us feedback, who is accountable to respond to customer success is accountable to make sure it gets to the right people inside the company to act on it. I think that’s our responsibility and accountability. And make sure that action is taken right directing it. It’s like okay, the customers you know, and again, we do a lot of analysis on sentiment by your numbers. Also, how many customers feel this way versus that? It helps us prioritize right so we get the feedback, the product to support all parts of the organization based on what we are getting from our customers. But then it’s our job to take it all back to the customers also you said this, we heard you we are listening. Here’s the actual your take, right? It’s that closed loop, which is

Josh Schachter 14:56
you mature about your headcount now, but in the past, I know you’ve manage up to in the 1000s. Right up to four fingers of people, I believe under your purview. And I’m curiously How does one manage that many people effectively at scale? What have been some of your techniques and maybe some gold nugget lesson that you would share with other aspiring executive leaders?

Meenu Agarwal 15:19
I don’t know if I have any gold nuggets, I can I can share some of the experiences for sure. I think the thing to understand here also is Josh, our world is changing, right? The traditional roles we had are are evolving. Now new skill sets, new capabilities, I mean, how we work with technology interact with it is a big part of it. So initially, we had like the CSM role right. Now, if I look around, and the org that, you know, we are sitting in we have kept touch roles, digital CSM roles, right? People who are building contact, right, that’s all part of our digital capabilities. That’s part of it. Right? renewals, right? How do you make sure that the renewals motion is it, you know, the Reb ops piece of it becomes critical. So I think within customer success, there’s this holistic view that we have so many different roles. Now, as we evolve and mature, I think the industry is mature Customer Success is a function is maturing, where we were 10 years ago, is very different where we are right. Next, retention rate net dollar retention, it’s a boardroom conversation now, right. So it’s a very different skill set different ways of working the peer learning. So it is about identifying the right skills, putting the right roles, but then marrying it to our customers. So you almost come from the left with the skill set, create roles in the middle of that skill sets of capabilities in the career ladder, or on the right, it’s a segmented customer model that just comes together the right people with the right customers. That’s kind of a big part of what we do. Right. And I talked about cost of retention optimization, best cost locations is a factor as well, for many of us. I’ve done this and several companies have been right, where does it make sense to have this pool of people help us scale, for instance? So our organization survey, diverse global, typically, and all of these roles fit into it? So it’s an art and a science, right? And we’re still learning our way through that.

Josh Schachter 17:20
Yeah, and I’m hearing from you this is about the growth and sub specialties within customer experience and customer success over over recent years.

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Josh Schachter 18:11
Hey, guys, it’s Josh. If you’re like me, you buy the doggie poop bags on amazon.com that have the most ratings and reviews. So please give our podcast a rating or review. It’ll help others discover us go ahead right now. I’ll be here. When you get back. I read an article that featured you in the Wall Street Journal. And it talked about some really impressive work that you’ve done leading CES, work with channel partners and how to leverage them to build out this more holistic ecosystem for customer experience at scale. Can you talk a little bit about that experience of how you know how one goes about leveraging channel partners to really build an incredible experience for your customers?

Meenu Agarwal 18:54
Yeah, it’s a fascinating field. First of all, I would say you know, the opportunity ahead of us, I find them in some of my experiences with channel partners and building the success methodology around it. Right? I feel channel is a natural choice for many of us in software solution providers, right? It’s about creating stronger bonds with their customers and our customers trust partners. So by spending time with customers, we learned that they want partners to be a big part of their future and success. So collaboration between our customers partners and you know, service providers and did this at VMware. So there’s a big and article I think you’re referring to the Wall Street Journal article on the on the partner success. So significant opportunity to expand the business. That’s how I felt at the time by enabling partners and it was about leveraging the same tool set that we in customer success, use, right? And share that out so that partners can do that. Right. It’s about personalized customer success. It’s about data. option guidance is about, you know, proactive, reach out, right? Whether it’s machine learning AI, or human interaction, all of these elements of customer success, imagine that word delivered through partners. Now, having said that, certifications, training, all of those important elements to it as are incentives. So driving adoption usage are tied to incentives and make sure the partners are certified. They’re trained in those common ways of work. And it’s a it’s a real win win, right shared goal for both us as a solution provider and the ecosystem partners, right. Great way to differentiate strong teaming. And, you know, ultimately, I keep coming back to this ultimately, the goal is to reach more customers, and deliver more rewarding experiences for our customers through partners.

Josh Schachter 20:52
It sounds like an incredible, an incredibly valuable initiative. It also sounds to me like an incredibly heavy undertaking. I mean, this to me, you know, at arm’s length sounds like a whole different business unit, to be honest with you. This is this is franchising. This reminds me of my friend out in California that owns a really successful, fast casual franchise or not franchise, about a dozen places locations, and he doesn’t want to franchise because he’s concerned, how am I going to keep the quality and consistency of my customer experience? If I franchise right, those would be my channel partners. So I get it. But is it not monumentally difficult to create the playbooks that might already be internal facing, but now you have to kind of reframe them for partners to do the certifications to monitor and measure how they’re doing to manage them as in their success, and then see how that, you know, affects the the end success of the end user? I don’t know, I just feel like very overwhelmed and very impressed by the the ability to lift up a project like that. Maybe you can talk me through that a little bit.

Meenu Agarwal 22:05
Yeah, it is a big lift. Right. It is a big one, everything you said was a part of how we approached it. And the elements we approached it with, right? So how do you make sure the quality is there? How do you make sure that you know, the right things are happening for the right customers at the right time. So it is a little bit of again, intentionality in building the program. Big part of it, as I said, before, certifications training, playbooks sharing, in a very tight fashion through common system, I think, you know, again, it’s very important to know which customers are getting this from which partners, and what’s their retention rate, for example, what are those same leading and lagging indicators, right. So the measures were super critical for us to also go and again, it was not something like a poof, like a big bang, right? We did it very gradually learned from three partners to get to 30, then took a deep breath and made a 300. Right? Learning at each and every step of the way, both from partners and customers. So a lot of feedback coming in to keep improving before you know, scaling. And again, this is continuous progress, right. But I think the value in it for is is tremendous. It is almost, as you said, it’s a monumental effort, but the rewards and the returns and the dividends are monumental and small. So it’s worth going down. And

Josh Schachter 23:27
it certainly sounds like you are a woman in leadership in Silicon Valley, working for a tremendous organization, SAS company, what’s the state of female leadership right now in SAS Customer Experience functions?

Meenu Agarwal 23:40
Yeah, definitely something I think about a lot. So, you know, I would not differentiate the sassy except let me talk about study. I was just reading a card was released, I think about 10 days ago, right? It’s a woman and workplace study. And it’s done jointly by lean and lean and.org and McKinsey, right, they publish this report, they’ve been doing it for years. And it’s based on information from hundreds of companies and with millions of employees. So it’s a pretty comprehensive study. And it was very interesting. I’ll cite a couple of things from that study, right? Because it truly, you know, hones in on some of the some of where we are today. Right. And again, the pandemic so many things have happened to us in the past two or three years that have brought us to where we are also recognizing that I would say that first first thing was women are still to this day, right dramatically underrepresented in leadership and only one in four C suite executives is a woman and only one in 20 is a woman of color so definitely have work to do right that’s one there are a couple other things that you know that that were interesting and really broad. You know, top topics top of mind for me like actions, what can we do? The Broken run weeks We’ve been talking about it for years, right? It is still holding women back, right? It’s almost like, the numbers are something like 100. For every 100 men from audit from entry level to manager, only 87 Women are promoted and only 82 Women of Color, right. And the most interesting part of the study I found was women leaders are leaving their companies at higher rates than ever before. And there’s a reason for that, I’m sure but Right. So it’s almost like you promote for every woman you promote at the director level to women directors are choosing to leave the company. So we have a we have a problem. Right. So and I think it’s also because we as women, spend a lot of time with other women leaders also, we want to advance right, but they’re stronger henman’s. Right? So women are looking for more right? switching jobs at 48% of women, if you look back to the past two years, see, they did so because they wanted more opportunity to advance right? There’s some really basic things that are happening to right. I think it was fascinating to, for me to read the study where it said 37% of women leaders have had a co worker get credit for the idea, compared to 27% of men leaders, I would just some really interesting, nuanced pieces of information. But again, I think it’s a representation of where we are today, right wisdom and leadership. And in the industry.

Josh Schachter 26:23
Yeah. And it’s something that we all need to be. It’s not enough to just acknowledge it and agree with it. We need to be intentional about being a catalyst to change that to make things more of an equal footing. I myself in his podcast production was not intentional. But I realized, you know, first five episodes, I think were six or seven episodes like there was one female guests and the other were men was not at all by design. But I caught it. And I said that’s this can’t stand or Hey, like this is not helping the cause that you want to help. So we balanced that now. But it’s it’s challenging, but we all have to be intentional about giving women an equal platform and ability to lead. Because I see so many women out there that are phenomenal leaders. What’s one ask you to have of other women leaders listening into the show?

Meenu Agarwal 27:17
I love what you just said, Josh? Right. It’s it does start with awareness. And, you know, learning, I would send each of us, I think, absolutely hands down, muscling in right, and support, be an ally, empower employees at all levels to take meaningful action, right? foster inclusion, challenge, gender bias, right. I think it’s on each and every one of us support the women of your organization’s compliment your I think most companies have diversity inclusion efforts today, complement those by creating programs for scale might start small, that’s great. But then think about scale and how you can make the systemic, and just part of the fabric and culture of organizations. I think that’s an each and every one of us, we can all do little things that can become bigger, impactful things. So lean in and support. Right. And that’s a big part of it. And I love what you just said also just, you know, intentionality lean in with intentionality.

Josh Schachter 28:15
Yeah. And I love what you said intentionality, plus the little things, the little things add up. And they accrue and they become bigger things and they become bigger rocks. For those that have been inspired by what you’ve told us today is like what’s the best way to get in touch with you? Where are you most active these days?

Meenu Agarwal 28:33
Yeah, so you know, I, I would say all social channels are great channels, right? Send me a direct message, LinkedIn message. It’s a great one. And I do I spend a lot of time learning. And for me, the value is I learned a lot when I interact and people reach out. So I try and give as much time back to the community and to people as well. So I would love to hear from you from everyone. And LinkedIn is a great one. To reach out professionally. And I look forward to hearing from many and learning continue to learn. It’s a journey.

Josh Schachter 29:06
Meanwhile, well, thank you so much. It was a tremendous pleasure having you on the show.

Meenu Agarwal 29:11
Thank you, Josh. It was my pleasure.

Josh Schachter 29:14
Hey, guys, it’s Josh. Don’t hang up. If you enjoyed this episode, you know, even if you didn’t, I’d love for you to give us a rating in iTunes or Spotify. And after you do email me josh@blog.update.ai With the name of your favorite charity, and my company update AI will make a donation on your behalf. I’d love to connect with each of our listeners. Send me a LinkedIn request and I’ll accept it immediately. Just go to www.blog.update.ai/linkedin and it’ll redirect my profile. Thanks