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Rachel Tsui:
Unchurned is presented by UpdateAI.

Jon Johnson:
Practically here too. Like, I haven’t had a title bump in 3 years. And there has been a shift for me, not so much of of a patience, but of a mastery. That once you get up to these kinda elevated steps, we’re now looking at what our upskilling looks like without a title bump. And I’m I’m taking a lot more value in the things that I’m learning and the things that I’m able to provide than just a line item on a LinkedIn profile. Right? And I’m really curious what how that’s gonna kinda like filter down into the younger generation that does have this expectation of, like, I graduated from this college and I deserve a director title. Right? It’s like, well, maybe not. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Hey, everybody. Welcome to this week’s episode of Unturned. It is the end of October, which means, oh, Halloween is coming. Yeah. Spooky. So, John, what are you gonna be?

Jon Johnson:
Bob Ross.

Josh Schachter:
Bob Ross. You got the curly hair.

Jon Johnson:
Happy happy happy little trees. I’ve I’ve picked it out, and it’s it gives me the really nice afro, and minimal minimal effort on my part. So

Josh Schachter:
And and, are are you do you know how to paint? Are you an artist? Well, you are. You are a musical artist.

Jon Johnson:
I paint with my words, Josh.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. You are a poet. You and I mean that sincerely.

Jon Johnson:
No. But I actually am a poet. I do write poetry. Yeah. That’s what this episode is gonna be about. I’m actually just gonna read my poetry about software. They’re all haikus.

Josh Schachter:
You’re one of the most emotive people I know, so that doesn’t surprise me. Rachel, you were telling us about your daughter and and your Halloween plans. Tell us a little bit about your your your family plans here for for Halloween dress up.

Rachel Tsui:
Yeah. So my daughter’s gonna be little red riding hood, and, my parents are visiting. My sister and brother-in-law are visiting. So all of us are gonna dress up as wolves and walk around trick or treating with her. So it should be a fun time.

Josh Schachter:
The wolves protecting the riding hood.

Jon Johnson:
Exactly. I love that.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. I’m

Jon Johnson:
a big fan of, like, group costumes. Mhmm.

Rachel Tsui:
Yes.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. Cool. Alright. We’re done with Halloween. Great. Everybody enjoy. Be safe. Get the full size candy bars.

Josh Schachter:
My girlfriend and I right now are having an argument in my apartment about around what type of candy. I I went ahead and I bought full size candy bars, and I thought I was, like, the most amazing neighbor in the world for the full size candy bars. And and and and and this woman, my girlfriend, who has never celebrated Halloween, is convinced that people want the individual, the small little tiny ones because they wanna mix and match. No. No. No. No. No.

Josh Schachter:
You want the full size candy bar. That’s the holy grail.

Rachel Tsui:
Size one. Most adults want the full size ones. Parents don’t want the full size ones Right. Because parents don’t want the sugar, you know, going to all

Jon Johnson:
the kids. Yep. Josh, I think you need to do a poll on LinkedIn when you post this episode.

Josh Schachter:
Yeah. That’ll get us more news.

Jon Johnson:
Prove her, wrong. Right?

Josh Schachter:
I don’t know. Yeah. Well, Jess, I love you, but you were so wrong in this regard. Okay. Rachel Rachel Choi is our special guest today. She is the head of customer success at Comodo Health. Rachel has been there through the growth of the company, which is really exciting, and we’re gonna hear about that. Race Rachel is based in California.

Josh Schachter:
And so, Rachel, welcome to the program. We’re so happy to have you. You and I have been talking. We’ve spoken since the very earliest days of UpdateAI when I was doing, like, the most basic UX research of what is this thing called customer success. And so thank you for those initial tips. And so tell us a little bit about Komodo.

Rachel Tsui:
Yeah. So Comodo Health, we are a health care data platform company. What we do is we really stitch together the identified patient level data, create this health care map, and then we build products and our platform around the insight that you’re able to get from having all of the, you know, best data in this health care map.

Josh Schachter:
So I just wanna oh, so so so just very, very, very careful operative words here. So you stitch together the identified patient data or the identified patient data. Big difference there.

Rachel Tsui:
So non identified. So you cannot know who it is. Everyone is like, all of us are probably in this map, but we are tokens. So you won’t know that it’s Rachel or Josh or John.

Josh Schachter:
But you have their data. You were telling me this last time we spoke. Like, you’ve got the like, my data, presumably, number 001002. You have my data from past health insurers, like, through decades of my life potentially.

Rachel Tsui:
Exactly. Yep. So one of the the big things here that we’re able to do is just being able to aggregate it from lots of different disparate, you know, sources, essentially, and then stitch it together. And I think, having that patient history is really valuable for, you know, just having that thorough patient insight, essentially.

Josh Schachter:
So you take all my health data, you throw it into chat gbt, and what comes out?

Rachel Tsui:
Well, for you, Josh Smith

Jon Johnson:
You need to work out more.

Josh Schachter:
Well, that’s for sure. You don’t need chat gbt for that.

Jon Johnson:
No.

Rachel Tsui:
But yeah, no, but I think like, what’s exciting is that like, you can really kind of understand big population trends that are happening, you can understand potentially, which doctors you should potentially call on if you’re a pharma company, and you have this new indication for a particular therapeutic out there. Right? And so you can say, hey. You know, this group of doctors tend to see this type of patient, and, we have a therapeutic that can really help, you know, this this patient population. So you can really get, you know, just better care and better therapeutics out to more people, if you have a better understanding of the people.

Josh Schachter:
I feel like we haven’t heard the the the trend of, like, big data recently. That’s kind of been usurped from with AI. Right? But, like, when I think of, like, big data and that era of of start ups and whatnot, like, that you guys have to be, like, the quintessential big data company with with what

Rachel Tsui:
you’re doing. Definitely. And I I will say, I mean, I think AI is gonna make getting those insights so much easier. That’s something that we’re really thinking about as well. But in order to get good insights, you have to also have good data to start with that. Right? And that’s not as easy as it seems with, you know, certain types of data.

Josh Schachter:
And is it just so coincidence that you have a PhD in biochemistry that you’re now working with this company of all this clinical and health data? Or is that just how did that work out?

Rachel Tsui:
It’s I’ve always been very interested in just, like, the science health care side of things. And, yes, did get my PhD, but I decided that working at a bench, you know, as a scientist was a very lonely type of role that I just realized I didn’t wanna do for the rest of my life. So, yeah, moved very quickly after getting my PhD over to, you know, in consulting, started working on teams, working with people much more collaboratively, got my start in the startup world with the 1st startup I joined called Science Exchange, before moving over to Komodo Health, but always kind of really enjoy that client side of things and customer service and customer success, and, that just let it stay very naturally into what I do today.

Jon Johnson:
Okay. This is actually one of the questions that I had too. When when when you’re kind of talking with your CSMs, you talk about big data, you talk about, insights for your consumers or customers. How are your CSMs presenting that data? Are they, are they strategic or are they more industry specialists within health care?

Rachel Tsui:
Yeah. Good question. So our CSMs, I would say, are much more strategic in trying to partner with them and understand really their use case. And then the nuances of the health care side, we do have specialists within our organization that can really, help provide kind of the the right framing for the analytic, the right insights for that analytic. But we try to help from a CS perspective, you know, having that conversation, essentially. So

Jon Johnson:
Got it. Josh, go ahead.

Josh Schachter:
Thank you, John. Thank you. Now I wanna talk a little bit. So so, Komodo, you guys are 10 years old. You just celebrated your 10 year anniversary. You guys have raised a bunch of money. You’re at, like, your series e or something like that right now. You’ve got entries in Horowitz involved amongst other top tier VCs.

Josh Schachter:
You joined when there were a 150 people, and now you’ve got 6 to 700 full time employees there. Tell us a little bit about the way that you lead post sales CS. Actually, do you lead post sales or CS? Tell us a little bit about, like, the the constitution of under your purview in that post sales world.

Rachel Tsui:
Yeah. So right now, I don’t lead full post sales. I lead CS. And our post sales organization, there’s lots of different teams that are really involved in that post sales world for the customer and for the customer, really. So, you know, our post sale, we close the deal. We have an implementation team, right, set up the product. They get it already QA’d for us. And when I say us, then a customer success person can come in and really train, onboard, set up that customer in using the product that they purchased from us.

Rachel Tsui:
We also manage that ongoing engagement with the customer. If they have questions that come in, you know, we then send that over to our internal support teams or, you know, product teams or analytics team, whichever, is the right team that can answer the question or the issue for our customer. And then, yeah, we, also support our account managers, in the the renewal process as well.

Josh Schachter:
And what’s the size of the team, generally speaking, and the layout of it?

Rachel Tsui:
Yeah. So the CS team is just under 30 people. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
Cool. And you’ve got multiple pods. Is that right? Exactly.

Rachel Tsui:
We have 3 teams. We have 2 teams focused on our life sciences customers, so pharma, biotech, and then one team that’s focused on all of our non life sciences customers. So the digital health care, health, health care services, payer provider side, consulting as well.

Jon Johnson:
I’m curious how you’re tracking metrics with your CSMs. Right? So, is this a usage based model? Is this, like, what are the what are the KPIs that that define success with your CSMs?

Rachel Tsui:
Yeah. Great question. So for us, definitely, you you know, like product utilization. Right? Like, making sure that they’re up and running and actually using the products during onboarding, during ongoing engagement. I think the the other things that we really look at is ensuring that they’re getting their all their support questions, you know, answered in a timely manner. Some of the support questions, like, we’re able just being by on, you know, CS, we know the answers to them. So we might help with some of those. Others that require more specialists and triaging through our analytics team and our support organization.

Rachel Tsui:
You know, those are ones that we work with those teams to ensure that we’re we’re we’re answering the the issues in a very timely manner as well. So those are kind of, like, the typical, I think, leading KPIs that we look at usage, you know, support. I think the lagging one, of course, is the renewal rate. Right? Like, ensuring that there actually is renewal. And we really look at as as a company at net dollar retention. So, you know, are they using us and growing with us as well?

Josh Schachter:
We are in q 4. We’re entering the end of the year, planning for 2025. What are some of the biggest rocks that you’re pushing up the hill, the biggest focuses and priorities for you right now?

Rachel Tsui:
Yeah. So biggest focus and priorities right now is that q four is usually typically very busy selling season, especially for life sciences customers. I think for Volley for a lot of customers in general as well, but particularly so for life sciences customers. So for me, I’m thinking about a lot of the, customers that we have up for renewal in q four. So making sure that, you know, we’re very tight on having those conversations, ensuring that we have the, the paperwork in, you know, to our customers in time. Those are all the things that I’m really thinking about for q 4, from a customer perspective. And then I think, you know, as is typical for lots of companies, I’m also thinking about, fiscal year planning for next year. So, you know, what are the things that we want to evolve on the team, evolve in our processes, how are we operating as an organization, and how that might change as well.

Rachel Tsui:
So, you know, that’s always, like, the

Josh Schachter:
So what do you what do you wanna evolve?

Rachel Tsui:
What’s of the day job.

Josh Schachter:
Right? What’s your what’s your yeah. What’s on top of the day job? What how do you wanna evolve as a group next year?

Rachel Tsui:
Yeah. I think that’s, one of the things I would really love for us to do more distinctly is really separate out kind of support, from customer success activities. And I think that’s very common in a lot of, you know, organizations. Right? Typically, a first CS hire is gonna do everything post sales. That involves, you know, implementation, that involves support, that involves account management, that involves really all of the things that you would be doing for a customer, just to ensure that they are happy and wanna renew. And, of course, as you grow, you know, you start separating out, hey. There’s these folks that are really good at technical implementation. So let’s set that up.

Rachel Tsui:
There’s people who are really good at, you know, solving, the support issues that come in. Let’s start separating that out. I think we’re at that kind of, like, phase right now where, like, support needs to be more separated out so that the account management activities or, the customer success management activities can be, you know, not, I guess, overlaid with so much support that needs to be done too by by the CSM.

Josh Schachter:
So separating support out, and, do you have thoughts about how you’re gonna be doing that?

Rachel Tsui:
I do have some thoughts. We’re still

Josh Schachter:
concepts of ideas?

Rachel Tsui:
Ages of that. Sorry, say again.

Josh Schachter:
Do you have concepts of ideas of how you’re gonna be

Rachel Tsui:
doing that? I have concepts of ideas, I think. You know, of course, having tiered support, right, like, there needs to be people who can really solve level 1, level 2, level 3. Level 3 is probably gonna be more on the product and, product and engineering side. Right? But this is gonna be a very cross functional, collaborative, big thing to solve, so not something that, customer success can solve in isolation.

Josh Schachter:
Yep. Yep. What else? What are the other priorities for you after support?

Rachel Tsui:
Other priorities.

Josh Schachter:
Hey, everybody. It’s Josh. I’m taking a quick break from the podcast to tell you a bit about UpdateAI. I started UpdateAI to solve 2 major challenges for CS teams. The first is that we save CSMs 4 to 5 hours per week with our productivity through AI. Secondly, we give leaders a window into all the conversations across each account and the entire portfolio. So we help knowledge transfer, we help increase the coverage model of your CS teams, and we help you detect emerging patterns in what your customers are telling your CSMs across all the risks, product feedback, advocacy moments, and expansion opportunities. So come check us out at www.updateai.

Josh Schachter:
It’s completely free to sign up and trial.

Rachel Tsui:
I think it’s always really important to, like, you know, thinking about team growth and opportunities for the team. I think one of the things that we historically had as a team was we had the concepts of associates and senior associates. We moved to manager and senior manager and principal. And, you know, I think probably not dissimilar to other tech companies as well, thinking about, like, a more flat organization, you know, with maybe fewer multiple levels. And, and because of that, you know, not having as many entry level folks and having more of like the mid senior level type of CSMs. So just like kind of that evolution of like, what a team structure might look like, and then how we ensure that, you know, people still see that path for skills development and knowledge development and not just title growth as well.

Josh Schachter:
This sounds like it’s coming from a a manager who is being pinged by many teammates for that promotion in December, maybe.

Rachel Tsui:
Can you can you hear it in my voice mail?

Jon Johnson:
I can hear it. Your Slack going off right now.

Josh Schachter:
And, John, I wanna hear the same from you. I wanna hear your stories about that. I I mean, I was just talking to a leader, same level as yourself, Rachel, and and on Friday. And and she was actually saying, like I mean, it’s crazy, the the expectations, of some of the folks that are a little bit newer to the workforce, of promotion cycles, and she sets the expectation very upfront when they’re first hired. It will be no less than 2 years until you get promoted. And and, of course, it could be less if you’re, like, a rock star and etcetera. Right?

Rachel Tsui:
Of course.

Josh Schachter:
But, like, just set that expectation. It’s gonna be 2 years. Are you in for it? Because I don’t wanna hear from you in in in 10 months. Hey. I did a wonderful job now in almost my 1st year. Where’s my promotion? John, what do you see at user testing? I mean, well, at user testing, it’s maybe a little bit different culture. You just wanna, you know, kinda either be well, I’m not gonna I’m I won’t digress. I’ll I’ll step back on that comment.

Josh Schachter:
But what do you see, John?

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. I think I think this is actually pretty similar experience too. Obviously, like, career growth is predicated on company growth. And I don’t know many companies right now that are growing. And I would say kinda taking a step back, I don’t see success at before 2 years in a role. Like, if you how often as a CSM you win. You have a great quarter. You have a great year over year.

Jon Johnson:
And then you go to your boss. And you’re like, hey, I have 120 NRR, and my GRR is 98. Give me that promotion. It’s like one renewal cycle. You don’t know that you actually have the skills. So I do like this this idea even though it’s very frustrating as an IC who’s been in a role for a couple years.

Josh Schachter:
Stop calling yourself an IC. You you your title is IC, but you’re not an IC. You’re a mentor. You’re a leader. You’re Yeah.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. Yeah. But but but practically here too. Like, I haven’t had a title bump in 3 years. And there has been a shift for me, not so much of of a patience, but of a mastery. Then once you get up to these kinda elevated steps, we’re now looking at what our upskilling looks like without a title bump. And I’m I’m taking a lot more value in the things that I’m learning and the things that I’m able to provide than just a line item on a LinkedIn profile. Right? And I’m really curious what how that’s gonna kinda like filter down into the younger generation that does have this expectation of, like, I graduated from this college, and I deserve a director title.

Jon Johnson:
Right? It’s like, well, maybe not.

Rachel Tsui:
Yeah. It’s hard. Yeah. Because when you’re in that, you know, growth period of before, right, like, you were able to kind of offer that. I think a lot of companies offer

Jon Johnson:
rapid,

Rachel Tsui:
rapid, I mean, seeing promotions in less than a year and things like that as well. It’s, I think very hard to, that’s just not sustainable, I guess.

Jon Johnson:
Mhmm. Well, I do like what you said though. What are some thoughts that that you’re having with keeping it flat, but still giving folks, like, a carrot to work for? Like, how do you get your CSMs to be maybe rethink about a career path differently, but still find value in that growth?

Rachel Tsui:
Yeah. I think there’s a couple of different ways that I’ve been noodling around and really still have to flush out in more detail. But, you know, one of the ways is, are there strategic initiatives, like, within the team that they could work, you know, closely with me or someone, like, on the leadership team on as kind of, like, the, hey. This is, like, a stretch project for you. Can you actually not only see it through, but also, like, showcase that the outcome of it is, you know, impactful as well. Right? Like, is that is that something, that, you know, they can gain more skills and especially if they are interested in, potentially, you know, other types of roles, like long term. Right? And then within customer success, you know, I think, understanding from them, hey. Are there, you know, other aspects of, like, deepening, and can you master your relationships at a more senior executive level with the customer? Can you actually influence, you know, you know, can you actually influence them, right, like, into the decisions that you’re hoping to get as a CSM.

Rachel Tsui:
I think that people often, you know, especially on junior folks on the side, forget, that doing the work and the motions is not the same as having that influence and outcome as well. So that’s the piece that, again, I still need to probably figure out in workshop the exact how to talk about it and what this means for you as a CSM. But, yeah, those are some of the things I’ve been noodling on a little bit.

Josh Schachter:
Well, I think you can you can you can share this episode with your team. Just kinda slide it into their DMs on Slack. Hey, guys. I was just on the show. You might wanna listen to this. It’s entirely yeah. You know, between between minutes 17 and 20, you may be really interested in the conversation we had.

Rachel Tsui:
Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s so important. And, like, I do wanna say on air, like, this is not an easy thing to think about, and I recognize this for everyone. I mean, I felt the same way as well. And I realized now looking back, I was like, how could I have expected, like, that, you know, I knew how to do all of that. I definitely did not know how to do all of that, and I wouldn’t have been able to influence in a in a similar way that I can do now. Right? So

Josh Schachter:
Yeah.

Rachel Tsui:
Some of this comes with, like, the time and the experience as well.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. And I think in general, like, you know, the societal experience that we have with success is more money, more title, growth, these other things. But because of where we’re at as an industry, it is slower. It’s gonna take time. And we actually have to prove a lot of these metrics out and and finding ways to keep people engaged. Right? Because that’s one of the key things here is that if you have a CSM that leaves after a year, number 1, they didn’t really do their job. Right? Maybe one renewal cycle.

Josh Schachter:
They couldn’t even renew themselves.

Jon Johnson:
They couldn’t even renew themselves. No. But, like, that’s the idea is like this. What does success as a CSM look like? And I’ve always said it’s like 3 years to, like, know a customer. Like, the ins and outs of how these businesses run and how these, you know, business cycles run. And we are also as humans, like, I gotta get to the next step. Like, I gotta get to the next step as fast as I can without finding those outcomes. And I think that’s why leaders like yourself are so important to have this kind of empathy to it where it’s like you’re a human being that has goals, and we’re gonna meet those goals regardless of what your title is, regardless of what your salary band is.

Jon Johnson:
Like, that’s the that’s the job here.

Rachel Tsui:
Yep. Yeah.

Josh Schachter:
So so earlier in the year, Rachel, you guys had a a bit of a reorg, and account management is now newly created, you’d mentioned, and even had some former CSMs join that team. One of the things that you’d mentioned to me earlier was the relationship between CS and account management, especially during this time of renewals. And so, like, can you get tactical whether that’s talking about the tools that they’re using or the meeting cadence internally or the playbooks, whatever, how are they sharing knowledge and working together, sharing knowledge about the customer and working together between CS and account management to to really nab those renewals?

Rachel Tsui:
Yeah. So we use Gainsight as our, like, our CRM.

Josh Schachter:
What’s that?

Rachel Tsui:
We have both k. Got that. And customer success access in Gainsight. I’m curious about, you know, the the reactions, John, that you had or or Josh on that.

Josh Schachter:
No. No. No. Because I said, what’s that? I I don’t think you heard me.

Jon Johnson:
Yeah. We we just moved off of Gainsight last year. So Oh, okay. But that’s a whole another podcast. I’m really excited. But you said something that actually is you said sales and CS are both in Gainsight, and that that’s correct. Right? That’s what you said?

Rachel Tsui:
Yes. So our yes. Our so we we we have a, Gainsight integrated. So sales can view it, like, through the their Salesforce Gainsight viewer. But a lot of the AMs actually go in the Gainsight directly because they are former CS folks, and they realize a lot of information in Gainsight that they’re able to leverage, and can use things like CPAs. But they, you know, the the timeline is really helpful. Just having, like, the overall kind of homepage of the account is really helpful, the scoring on there. So I think because of the fact that a lot of the AMs are former CS folks, and we had launched, Gainsight, I think, a couple of years ago now.

Rachel Tsui:
Yeah. Almost, like, almost 2 years now. So those those folks had the, I think, fortune of knowing the ins and outs of the insight already.

Jon Johnson:
Well, I think it’s it doesn’t really matter what tool you use, but the idea of having sales and CS in a similar tool that allows the communication to happen and the account data to be shared is the key. And there’s so many organizations that I’ve been a part of where it’s like say CS is over here, sales is over there, and they’re like, why why do we have this problem? Why aren’t they talking to each other? It’s like our data exists in completely different worlds. I like I like that model though with AMs. I’m seeing a lot more organizations take kind of that model where CS is kind of growing a little bit. Maybe you get renewals and growth and some other things that kinda get that AM y title. It’s just waves. Right? We’re going back to where we were 10 years ago.

Rachel Tsui:
I feel like yes. I feel like I see kind of, like, the org structure waves happening similar to what you were saying. Like, even with in Komodo, but elsewhere, I’m talking to colleagues as well where you had kind of, you know, your your sales exec. Right? Or, you know, your AE, and then you have your AM, and then you have a CS person, and then you saw, like, a support org. And then now, you know, sometimes you, like, combine AM and CS together. And then sometimes that’s actually just one role. Right? Because you’re trying to tie for efficiencies. And I think probably all of these organizational structures really just depend on the maturity of your product and the maturity of, like, the market for your product as well.

Rachel Tsui:
So Yeah. That’s my hypothesis. I’m sure, you know, other folks may share that.

Josh Schachter:
Cool. Well, Rachel, I think we’re gonna leave it at that. This was a great episode. Really fun to talk to you. Fun to learn about all the growth that you’ve experienced at Komodo in the 5 plus years that you’ve been there. Happy 10 year anniversary to Komodo as well. And, we’d love to have you back on the program in 2025, see how you’re hitting those goals, those renewals, those, you know, relationships between CS and AM. And, yeah, this was a pleasure.

Rachel Tsui:
Yeah. Sounds great. It was great to see you, Josh.