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Josh Schachter (00:00:00) – So, hey everybody. I’m Josh Schachter, founder and c e o of UpdateAI and co-host of this CS Insider unchurned collaboration with Kristi Faltorusso, Jon Johnson  & Mickey Powell, andand a very, very important guest, special guest, uh, only like the most famous person in all of customer success. So all you know, a hundred people out there. Nick Mehta, CEO of Gainsight, Nick, thank you so much for being on the show today. Awesome

Nick Mehta (00:00:22) – Being here. Josh, thanks for having me. I love the energy of this thing. Super cool.

Jon Johnson (00:00:26) – Well, we, that’s why we do it at five o’clock on Friday, uh, is so that everybody is at the top of their game. Chris, we had to actually wake Kristi up. Um, yeah, this

Kristi Faltorusso (00:00:36) – Was, uh, this is brutal. This is really brutal. I had, they had to wake me up. I fell asleep for 10 minutes. I woke up in a panic sweat.

Nick Mehta (00:00:42) – Is this like a video thing? But are we gonna be on lot? They’re, these people are gonna see yes or

Jon Johnson (00:00:45) – No. Yes. They will see our faces. Ok.

Nick Mehta (00:00:46) – So then I have to explain that I normally do shave and get a haircut, but we have our pulse conference next week. So I, I will this weekend. This weekend is grooming to get ready. So I have, I’m, I have a playoff beard, as you said going on right

Josh Schachter (00:00:59) – Now. We, I’m sorry. Yeah. What, what is Pulse? What’s pulse? It’s a new

Nick Mehta (00:01:01) – Thing. Yeah, it’s a new thing.

Jon Johnson (00:01:02) – It’s a new thing. Okay. Well, first

Nick Mehta (00:01:03) – All, there’s this new job called Customer Success. Have you guys heard of it? No,

Jon Johnson (00:01:06) – I’ve not. Not at all. Huh?

Josh Schachter (00:01:07) – Wait, customer service. Oh, I know. Customer service.

Jon Johnson (00:01:09) – Yes. That’s,

Kristi Faltorusso (00:01:10) – No, no technical support guys. You’re getting it wrong. Yeah, yeah,

Nick Mehta (00:01:13) – Exactly. It’s some, it’s all of those. Yeah. Um, no. Um, so yeah, we have our pulse conference. For the people that don’t know, it’s an event we’ve been doing. It’ll be the 10th anniversary of our Pulse conference. So happy birthday, Paul. Oh,

Kristi Faltorusso (00:01:24) – Right. Nick, do you have, do you have special 10 year swag?

Nick Mehta (00:01:27) – We have swag for sure. I, no,

Kristi Faltorusso (00:01:29) – No. Do you have anniversary swag? Like, I, like a marathons do like 15 years running. Like, I mean, do you have like 10 years of pulse swag?

Josh Schachter (00:01:36) – Chris,

Nick Mehta (00:01:37) – You’re just gonna, you made my marketing team mad. Cause now I’m gonna messaged them and said, do we have,

Jon Johnson (00:01:40) – We need to get this .

Kristi Faltorusso (00:01:42) – And if you don’t, they’ve got a few days to get it together, Nick. They’re

Nick Mehta (00:01:45) – Literally gonna, they’re gonna kill me. But

Josh Schachter (00:01:47) – Chrisy, you know the answer. You know the answer is, the answer is, the answer is no. Told himself a Rolex in honor of the 10 year anniversary.

Jon Johnson (00:01:54) – Yes. . Well,

Kristi Faltorusso (00:01:58) – It has a big, it has a big pee in diamonds in the background. Right?

Josh Schachter (00:02:02) – Well, we’re all gonna, we’re all gonna be there. And I just wanna announce before we start talking about like the weekend and everything ahead, we are filming this on Friday. This will be a, this will be launched I think on Tuesday or Wednesday, right? To coincide with the beginning of Pulse. So let’s not talk about like our plans for the weekend and stuff. Nice. In the back view mirror when folks actually listen to this. Um, I appreciate that. I have to remind my, my co-host of this every single time. So,

Jon Johnson (00:02:23) – Yeah. Well, I will say there is one thing that won’t be in, in the back mirror, Josh. And uh, this is actually the reason that we brought you here, Nick, is that we actually need to, we need to have a serious conversation. Um, I am, I was disinvited to your executive dinner.

Josh Schachter (00:02:41) – Nick, don’t ca us. Why don’t cave?

Jon Johnson (00:02:43) – How I got a fancy email. I was like, you’re an important person, John, you are gonna come. And then I got wait listed. I got wait,

Nick Mehta (00:02:54) – Oh my

Jon Johnson (00:02:54) – Gosh. Listed. So

Kristi Faltorusso (00:02:56) – It’s like he bought, he thought he was buying Taylor Swift tickets, uh, and then, and then he found out that the, the Oregon go through. So Yeah. Yeah.

Nick Mehta (00:03:04) – Here’s, here’s the, the reality. We have an amazing marketing team and they also have good, um, they, they, they do a good job of like holding the line. Cuz I slacked them yesterday and said, Hey, we have this really important customer. Can you get them to this ex dinner on Tuesday night? And they said, we’ll see if we can fit them in. I’m like, okay. That’s what we’ve gotten to is the CEO reaches

Jon Johnson (00:03:21) – Like, who’s this nick guy slacking me? Yeah, exactly.

Nick Mehta (00:03:24) – They’re like, they

Kristi Faltorusso (00:03:25) – Gonna spam now. They’re

Nick Mehta (00:03:26) – Like, yeah. They’re like, Nick, you’re on the wait list now too because you asked, that’s

Jon Johnson (00:03:29) – Ok. We’re gonna be going to Waffle House anyways. In, in, oh my God. Downtown instead. So,

Josh Schachter (00:03:35) – So kick things off.

Mickey Powell (00:03:37) – Don’t let ’em,

Kristi Faltorusso (00:03:38) – There’s some nice restaurants and the Tenderloin. You can go to

Josh Schachter (00:03:40) – John. Yes. Oh yeah. Absolutely.

Nick Mehta (00:03:41) – Totally. I mean, you can, and, and you know, you can buy lots of stuff along the way on the street. Yeah. Like, don’t be fun.

Jon Johnson (00:03:47) – All kinds of stuff. Who knows what the morning brings

Nick Mehta (00:03:49) – Anything you want. Exactly.

Mickey Powell (00:03:51) – You’re not gonna make it morning.

Jon Johnson (00:03:52) – I’m not gonna make it. There’s, I it’s gonna be a, it’s gonna be a week

Nick Mehta (00:03:56) – Just to be clear. Pulse is not endorsing any of those activities. So , what happens from these podcast hosts in the Tenderloin that night? That

Josh Schachter (00:04:07) – Iss Let’s get things going on. A serious note here. So I, I wanna start out with, um, is that boss? So I try, I really try. So I wanna play a game. Uh, I want everybody to go around and take a, a quick guess the game is called, um, describe the shoes and jacket Nick will be wearing on stage for the opening ceremony. So I’ll start. I I think you can’t get first Christ. Yeah, I’m talking. So No. Yeah. You, you have like, I think it’s gonna be a sequence jacket, uh, purple color, um, with some kind of alligator skin shoes. That’s my guess. Christie,

Kristi Faltorusso (00:04:42) – Definitely. No, on the shoes. I’m going hard on some fancy sneakers, but I don’t know. I’m feeling like a Louis Vuitton like jacket or like some like mega designer get up. Like I, I’m getting like really strong LV vibes. Mickey,

Jon Johnson (00:04:55) – I’m going plaid. Plaid jacket.

Kristi Faltorusso (00:04:57) – Cause you’ve never been to Pulse.

Mickey Powell (00:04:59) –  .

Jon Johnson (00:05:00) – I’ve

Nick Mehta (00:05:01) – Never You’re saying Men’s warehouse. Exactly.

Mickey Powell (00:05:05) – He’s

Kristi Faltorusso (00:05:06) – Like, you know the, the Navy and gray. Yeah,

Jon Johnson (00:05:08) – Yeah, yeah. Which vintage

Nick Mehta (00:05:10) – Of Boulder with the Tweed. Yeah.

Jon Johnson (00:05:11) – But I do think, I think the Nike, I think Nike kicks like Fresh Jordan’s or something. Well,

Kristi Faltorusso (00:05:17) – I think didn’t, didn’t Lou Vuitton do a collab with like one of the, he’s like, yes,

Jon Johnson (00:05:21) – That’s

Kristi Faltorusso (00:05:21) – It. This is where I’m going. Yeah. Is that like, in my heart, I’m feeling like it’s, it’s gonna be a designer get up head to toe. And I’m thinking that it’s part of the collapse series that Louis with one of the sneaker brands to bring that all together. So like, if I win though, what do I get? You

Jon Johnson (00:05:34) – Get to go to the executive dinner executive

Mickey Powell (00:05:46) – Say Canadian,

Kristi Faltorusso (00:05:46) – What’s your gas

Mickey Powell (00:05:48) – Canadian tuxedo. Wait, what’s a

Nick Mehta (00:05:51) – Canadian tuxedo? Is that a different kind? Tuxedo,

Jon Johnson (00:05:53) – Solid gene. All denim, denim. Denim

Mickey Powell (00:05:56) – Tuxedo.

Jon Johnson (00:05:57) – Yep. For real. Yeah. Made it sadly.

Kristi Faltorusso (00:05:59) – It’s making a comeback.

Jon Johnson (00:06:00) – It’s sad. I have, I want

Josh Schachter (00:06:01) – That. Yeah, that’s cool. Bruce

Jon Johnson (00:06:02) – Springsteen disagrees.

Kristi Faltorusso (00:06:04) – No, I, I say it’s back to like Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears. Uh, Britney Spears on like the early, like it was two one he say like late nineties, uh, when they both were like their denim outfits like that. Oh, that’s

Nick Mehta (00:06:16) – Awesome. I love, by the way, I’ll just say that, that I, I can’t, I can’t reveal the answer of course, but I’ll say that there’s some, some, some wisdom in what Josh said and some wisdom in what Christie said. And not much wisdom in the the last two.

Jon Johnson (00:06:26) – That’s pretty normal. Honest. That’s a very, you’ve learned so much in your 10 minutes .

Kristi Faltorusso (00:06:34) – I just really hope that I’m more on point than Josh’s so that I could say that I was the winner.

Nick Mehta (00:06:38) – You, you can decide.

Josh Schachter (00:06:39) – Ask questions. Uh, we, we, we realize actually in our little pre pregame here that we all have drinks in our hand. Nick, do you have anything? Are you drinking anything right now?

Nick Mehta (00:06:47) – I have a, um, empty, but it’s

Josh Schachter (00:06:49) – A fancy, it’s a fancy couple wine. Exactly.

Nick Mehta (00:06:52) – Where’s

Kristi Faltorusso (00:06:53) – Your team to help support you? Like where’s the army? It looks like I’m in prison

Nick Mehta (00:06:57) – Right now. . I’m like, we’re literally like a, in like a, like a coworking space. Do we just wanna do uh, keynote prep and like a really, yeah, somebody helped me. Somebody sent help. Blink.

Mickey Powell (00:07:07) – Yeah, blink twice if you need somebody to

Josh Schachter (00:07:09) – I’ve got, I’ve got my emergency, Nick. I’m, I’m like amazing powering up here for, for Pulse next week. Uh, cuz I, yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. Wow. I’m starting to feel like, I know I’m gonna feel next Friday, but, but, so I’m trying to like, you know, get the, get the reserve energy. Uh, Christie has, um, some, some type of, of Rose that she’s pretending is Lemonade stop.

Kristi Faltorusso (00:07:29) – I do not, it’s not Rose. It’s grapefruit spin drips. Okay, cool. I just like it in a fancy cup. Cool.

Nick Mehta (00:07:34) – Oh, ok.

Josh Schachter (00:07:35) – Mickey is, uh, well, Mickey Mickey’s just like wet cause he just came from the ocean outside. You can see that in the back.

Mickey Powell (00:07:39) – Yeah, I was on the beach for like three hours today. Nice.

Nick Mehta (00:07:44) – South, you’re South Carolina, California, right? That’s

Jon Johnson (00:07:48) – Yeah, Southern Carolina.

Kristi Faltorusso (00:07:50) – Southern Southern

Nick Mehta (00:07:52) – California. .

Mickey Powell (00:07:54) – Yeah. Fruit Island. And I’m drinking a sour, blackberry, raspberry American sour from

Jon Johnson (00:08:00) – That’s too many words. Mickey. There’s

Kristi Faltorusso (00:08:02) – Too many words.

Nick Mehta (00:08:03) – There’s a lot of berries. Well done. Yeah,

Jon Johnson (00:08:05) – I’ve got myself, their

Kristi Faltorusso (00:08:06) – Marketing team’s getting fired. I know. I’ve

Jon Johnson (00:08:08) – Got a lovely, uh, IPA from Wicked Weed called Pernicious one of my favorites. It’s a little east coaster

Nick Mehta (00:08:14) – That looks like it goes well with the Beadie. I like the beanie by the way. I

Jon Johnson (00:08:17) – Just didn’t want to do my hair, so. Yeah,

Nick Mehta (00:08:20) – No, it’s good. I I obviously need one right now, so. Okay.

Josh Schachter (00:08:22) – So

Jon Johnson (00:08:23) – That’s amazing. You

Kristi Faltorusso (00:08:24) – Could have had 10 year pulse, uh, anniversary beanies.

Josh Schachter (00:08:27) – .

Nick Mehta (00:08:28) – Seriously, we marketing again? Christie’s fault, not mine.

Jon Johnson (00:08:32) – It’s okay, Nick. Nobody’s listening. We’re fine. . Exactly.

Mickey Powell (00:08:36) – All three people are gonna be disappointed.

Kristi Faltorusso (00:08:38) – We actually just record this for ourselves

Jon Johnson (00:08:42) – Weekend. Our Families. I made it mom.

Josh Schachter (00:08:44) – Okay, Nick, we’re gonna ask you about, we’re gonna ask you about Pulse, but the reason I wanted to ask that question is we have a drinking game now with these drinks in our hand and it is anytime Nick Meda

Jon Johnson (00:08:54) – Says the word specifically specifically says the word durable. We drink. Oh boy. Yeah. Yeah. So we’re gonna be hammered by like halfway through Pulse the first day. I’m

Nick Mehta (00:09:04) – Mixing it up this year. We’ll see, I don’t know. I might have new words.

Jon Johnson (00:09:08) – Is there, do you have a, so what’s the

Nick Mehta (00:09:14) – But I, I thought you were gonna say, see I find like in this profession, sometimes you say the word success too much. Yeah. Like, literally like, it’s like customer success is successful. We wanna be successful cuz of success managers success. I, I think like, I wonder what G P T thinks of our profession. I think they think we’re like crazy, right? Like Yeah. They,

Kristi Faltorusso (00:09:33) – They think we’re a joke. . Yeah.

Nick Mehta (00:09:34) – Yeah, exactly.

Jon Johnson (00:09:35) – That’s right. So do my parents. Alright, next, uh, with that drinking game in hand here, tell us why you’re so excited about Pulse without jargon. No jargon, no jargon. This 10th

Nick Mehta (00:09:45) – Anniversary and the swag is gonna be lit. Um, it’s Christie, the Christie Falso line of a Louis Vuitton collaboration at Pulse. That’s why

Kristi Faltorusso (00:09:54) – I was really pumped. Yeah,

Nick Mehta (00:09:55) – Exactly. I just have to figure that out over the weekend. So that’s number one. But, um, in a, on a serious note, it is cool that it’s 10 years and like you all, like, especially Christie and other folks, like Total OGs been at this for so long, and like, it’s so easy to be critical of the things people haven’t done or the things we don’t have right. As a profession, but like, people should be proud of like how far it’s come. And I’m gonna do a little look back and like where we were and where we are and just really proud. That’s one big thing I’m excited about. Second big thing is, you know, it’s a, it’s a really challenging time of course in SaaS and tech and we should be real about that, but we should also like, recognize that there’s a lot of companies who are seeing the value in CS and how important it’s, I’m gonna share both sides of like where things are today and some cool stuff.

Nick Mehta (00:10:39) – I mean, I was just, I I, I’m doing prep calls for this, you know, the keynote and I was prepping it with different friends and like, I talked to two friends who are CCOs who now have sales underneath them as well, right? Like, how cool is that? That didn’t happen before. We’ve a, you know, uh, some of you know Christina Kowski, she’s the now the CEO of Logic Monitor. She was like one of the first CSMs at Salesforce and she’s the CEO o of a big company now. I mean, these things are happening. So I’m excited about that. And then, you know, talk about the future, like what you said, there’ll be little bit of durable, but a lot of digital. So that’s the drinking game this year. Uh, John is is is digital. That’s, you’re not, you’re not gonna get anywhere with, with durable. So digital is what, if you wanna do the shots this year, that’s what you wanna do because I think we all realize every single company, even the best of companies, earn this world of like hiring freezes or very limited hiring. And so we gotta figure out how to do more with less. I, I don’t like that expression.

Jon Johnson (00:11:27) – No, I hate it. Don’t. Oh good. Please,

Kristi Faltorusso (00:11:28) – Let’s never say that. We’re trying, we’re trying to condition people to not say that now.

Nick Mehta (00:11:32) – Yeah. What’s funny, and Mike, you know what I say?

Jon Johnson (00:11:34) – Yeah. ,

Nick Mehta (00:11:35) – Uh, in these times, um, in these challenging times and in ge, Jeffrey Moore has a great quote, which is instead of saying do more with less, he says, let’s do less but accomplish more by focusing on the things that work, whatever aphorism you want to use, it’s not an easy situation. And so we have to figure out how to do things differently. And so we’re gonna talk a lot about digital and honestly, it’s like digital’s been around forever, but I’d argue that like a lot of companies just, they, we’ve all done it not very well. Like, you know, you, you have like, you spam customers with so many uncoordinated messages. You have like, like in-app stuff popping up all over the place, all these websites to log into. And by the way, I don’t think this is just a technology like solution, like gain site’s gonna do some stuff we’ll announce, which is cool, but it’s a lot.

Nick Mehta (00:12:13) – It’s really us embracing digital as like a critical strategy for our teams. Having a digital CS team, you know, we have a, we’ve l announcing this digital CS advisory board of some of the best companies out there and doing digital. So all this stuff around how do we bring the same best practice and community in the first decade we had to the human led cs, which is so important, but then augment it with the digital side. That’s the thing that I think from a practical perspective, I hope people leave with. And within that digital of course, and you know, tying Josh back to like what you’re talking about, you know, like the opportunity and generative AI is just insane. And like, it’s like, I would say as a total science fiction geek, I’m like, every single thing you look at, you’re like, this could be changed and me better.

Nick Mehta (00:12:51) – And so we have all kinds of things we’re doing and releasing some stuff that’s really cool next week, but also like, just talking about what we see everyone doing. Actually fun, fun story. I was, last week I was, or this, this week, I don’t know, last week, this week, I know I was bunched together, but I was in Salt Lake City at some point recently. And um, I had lunch with some customers and prospects and, and um, one of them was at a company where he basically, uh, they’re IT software company and um, he, they use Gainsight and he’s like, okay, I’m gonna go into like Chad g, PT and type in make me a success plan for my company as if Gainsight was a customer. So that a little bit meta there, but imagine that scenario and like the success plan, like the list of things was exactly right. Right. And so you just look at like, the opportunities here are amazing. Now, Josh, you could probably tell us a lot of the challenges too, right? So it’s not like this is all perfect, but I think the amount of innovation we can do is exciting. So I would say that it’s a really challenging world for sure, but there’s also a lot of excitement and I think that the people that succeed always find the opportunity and the challenge, and I think a lot of people in this community are those

Josh Schachter (00:13:50) – Types of things. Yeah. I mean, it’s an exciting time. It’s a tough time, but I think that this is a time right now where CS has always been the, they’ve all been shit on, right? We’re we’re the unsung heroes of sass, right? And so this is the time,

Nick Mehta (00:14:02) – Don’t, we don’t have

Josh Schachter (00:14:03) – Content filter. And also we, we didn’t ask permission to go through your comms team before publishing it. So we’re good here. We can, we we’ve got carp blanche. Yeah, yeah, yeah. . There

Nick Mehta (00:14:12) – I go. Alright. Did I endorse these, uh, swear words here, but, uh, okay, good. Alright.

Jon Johnson (00:14:16) – Well, what I love about this, you know, I I’ve not been in the, the upper echelons where you guys have been, but I’ve been a practicing CSM for almost 11 years now. I was actually your C sm uh, for, uh, a couple years over at Splash, uh, Nick. Oh, cool. Which is pretty rad. But anyways, um, what I love is we are starting to look at the, like the e emphasis of what we do, right? CSMs used to, used to, like you came out of AEs or you came outta CSRs or all these, all all this other kind of whatever feeder we had, right? Where today you, you kind of have to have a, you gotta be a marketer, you gotta understand, uh, like you gotta understand how to write, write. You gotta understand how to find where people are at. You gotta understand data and analytics.

Jon Johnson (00:14:55) – And it’s not only is it up-leveling what we’re doing as an individual and as a practitioner, but the, this, you know, the, the big groups that we’re doing like Pulse and, and all these things around around the country are, are allowing all of us to have these conversations in a, in a large scale. That just wouldn’t happen without it. Right? I mean, these are the reasons that, that this industry is taking off is because 10,000 or however many people are coming get into a room together and they say, Hey, I’m doing this and it’s working. Yeah. Right? And, and it’s this iron sharpen iron thing that I’m, I’m glad, you know, 10 years is, is a huge, uh, achievement. So congratulations on that. Um,

Nick Mehta (00:15:30) – I appreciate that. And by the way, I totally agree with you, John. Like, I mean, I look at, it’s not really just Pulse, it’s just this community Yeah. In the broad sense of the word. And I’m gonna flatter Christie, people like Christie who are all constantly trying to help other people, and it’s like this very unique thing about this job. I, I don’t think every other profession like this were like, everyone wants to help everyone else all the time. And you see it all the time on LinkedIn or wherever you go, and it’s just amazing. I Christie you probably feel the same way, right? It’s just awesome to be a part of

Kristi Faltorusso (00:15:54) – It. Yeah. I mean, you don’t see it in any, their industry actually quite the opposite, right? I feel like everybody keeps their secrets and like their trademarks of like what they do, right? Like you don’t see other salespeople telling them how to like go crush it at their job. No, no. But whereas customer success, right? Like I don’t think if there is a LinkedIn post that isn’t like prescriptively written of like, here’s this problem that I solved, here’s how I did it, here’s how you can go do it, and here’s all the tools and templates Totally. I built to go do it. It’s a very unique and special space and I think it’s one of the only communities that you see. It doesn’t matter if, I mean, Nick look in, in, in a world where we would work in another industry as competitive solutions, right? We might not be on the same podcast thing as ch ch as we’re Right. But it doesn’t matter. Right? I, I know that like Dave, our ceo client success has calls with other CEOs, you companies. It’s, it’s really beautiful to see that. Like regardless of where we’re, regardless of what we’re all trying to accomplish, we’re all trying to do it together and push, push this industry forward.

Nick Mehta (00:16:48) – Totally. Yeah. I love that. So well said Kristin. Well,

Jon Johnson (00:16:51) – We’re all, we’re all empathetically driven, right? So most of us got into this because we care about people. We care about. Yeah. We’ve all been on, on a call where we just did not get the things that we needed, like with anything, right? So we come into this industry saying like, I can actually help people connect the dots. I can actually like, solve problems here. And, and most of the people that I’ve met in this industry are driven by empathy. And when you get a bunch of empathetic people in the room, yeah, there’s probably a lot of tears. But there’s also like, like a good amount of like support structure, right? Like, I mean we are built to support each other. And it’s what I love about it, it’s why I have always hated going in. Like never wanted to go into sales.  just couldn’t do it. .

Nick Mehta (00:17:28) – Well, and, and John, one of things i I I plus one, but also build on that is I think it’s empathy a hundred percent, but that’s not the whole story. Yeah. Also, like you’re seeing awesome business people that can really drive results Sure. And are very, like they’re, they can, they’re not soft. They can get things done. Not everyone. Right. But like you’re seeing really like the mix of like the, I I would call it like the incredible double threat of like people who genuinely care and care about people but also are viewed now by their companies as drivers of change. Absolutely. And performance. You know, and I think you can be both. It’s not an either or. I think that’s the false thing we would all believe in business was like, oh, you can either be empathetic or you can be high performance. And I think this community really well said. Really well said. Agreed. I love it. Go ahead.

Mickey Powell (00:18:25) – Shift. Cause I’m bad like the dayto day, grinded out execution stuff. I’m really good at the strategy and the deep thinking. So I write a lot about chatt. Yeah. Ires awesome. I’m giving so, so much. Spend more time in the areas. I’m strong. So I wanna hear everybody’s opinions on if we take stuff off’s plate, like creating a success plan, which I’ve done by the way webinar. All do with all that extra time. If CSNs have more time, which I’m gonna, I’m gonna make a prediction that CSNs are gonna have more time on their hands.

Nick Mehta (00:19:11) – Wait, wait, that’s I idle time.

Kristi Faltorusso (00:19:14) – That’s a, that’s a big number. That’s a big number. You’re saying we’re getting back 2050 of our time.

Mickey Powell (00:19:20) – Yeah. Does

Jon Johnson (00:19:21) – That include like mid-afternoon naps? Don’t

Kristi Faltorusso (00:19:23) – Think Mickey’s ever been a csf. Yeah,

Jon Johnson (00:19:25) –

Mickey Powell (00:19:29) – I have what they

Nick Mehta (00:19:30) – Even, right, what

Mickey Powell (00:19:37) – Science folks, Pennsylvania and open ai, they did a study together and they said all tasks, they think somewhere around 15% can be done with the same level of quality. And as soon as we start building more tooling on top tool, they think upwards of 50 60. So that’s like initial findings. We don’t have longitudinal studies across years. And this is like, this is like first pitch of 20 to 50%, but like there’s a massive band. We dunno. So let’s start thinking ahead. What are we gonna do? Are we just gonna give them more accounts? Are we gonna actually have them do high value activities?

Jon Johnson (00:20:26) – Well it gets down to like what you just said, high value activities. Like I, I spend most of my time up until this, you know, open AI world. I spent so much of my time writing emails and getting really Yep. Thoughtful. Like I use every tool in the book Hemingway app and Totally. And like spending a good amount of time crafting well thought out communications, right. And then prepping decks and, and data analytics. Like if I can just go in and say all of my points are, you know, everything’s pointed to these 10 things I wanna report that says this, yes, that’s gonna cut down hours and hours and hours of my day and I get to spend my time with customers making an impact make and, and having meaningful conversations. I hate the fact that I spend 10 hours a week logging Salesforce notes and all that kind of stuff. Right? Like there’s better things that I can be doing as a human, uh, with my time. Yeah,

Nick Mehta (00:21:16) – Totally. We, we have this whole thing in, in the keynote about how, uh, you know, it’s like, you know how that whole meme of like, you know what I think my job is Yeah. And what people think my job is. Right? But it’s like, you know, ev no c s m wants their job to be logging things or you know, John Deere, your point and like, just to pick a very simple example, I was at, you know, the same lunch a couple days ago with Salt, salt Lake City and a customer had already today is doing this. They, they have this, they got some transcription software for their calls, like something that just runs on your Mac, I forget what it’s called. And it, and it runs in it pushes it into G P T, turns it into really nice notes and then pushes it in this case into gain site timeline. But imagine whatever CS technology and they’re doing that today. So John, like what you described is not theoretical. It’s literally there today. Totally. I’m like, oh my god. Sounds a lot like

Speaker 5 (00:21:56) – Nick, could you introduce us?

Jon Johnson (00:21:58) – Yeah. And I’m like,

Nick Mehta (00:21:59) – What

Speaker 5 (00:22:00) – Was, was this

Nick Mehta (00:22:00) – Customer? Yeah, you should totally talk. And so it’s Yeah. Uh, I’ll, I’ll tell you actually. But um, it’s interesting cuz that whole thing is there, but Mickey, going back to your point, I think like the way I’m gonna talk about is efficiency is table stakes and that’s great. We will totally find more time. I think there’s another thing which is being more effective with customers, right? Yeah. And so just, I’ll give you two examples I’ve been thinking about that we’re working on. One of them is, um, like you talk about your email example John, right? So part of the emails, uh, part of the thing is how do I not write that email over and over again? The system can write it that there’s some, there’s some real value there, but I think we can take it one step further. As an industry, each person is a recipient wants a different kind of, you do, and I I know this cuz like lots of times our team will ask me to send an email to the CEO of a customer or whatever, right?

Nick Mehta (00:22:42) – And, and I know that each CEO’s different. And by the way, CEOs want different emails than VPs. What? And so over time, imagine if the system could actually personalize the email, not just based on what’s the best email for that company, but that person lives in New York and they’re this kind of personality and they’re, they’re, or they’re, they speak, they’re in a different country and they use different idioms. Like I think we can be more effective. Another example, which I’m really excited about, I think one of the most common questions CSMs get is can I talk to customers that are like me? Yes.

Jon Johnson (00:23:08) – Oh my gosh. That is

Nick Mehta (00:23:10) – Like an insanely common question. Now, the challenge is, as the csm you get that question and first of all you have like 20 or 30 clients. So what’s the random luck of the draw that those are like, like that customer probably low. And then the vendor has lots of other customers, but they’re in other CSMs books, right? And how does CSM even figure that out? They go on Slack and they say, Hey, is there a customer like this? And they wait for an answer and never get one. But actually I think that’s very solvable problem in G P T because you can look at all the data and you can say, hey, these things are similar. And so I just think the, I mean it’s really cool Josh, what you’re working at cuz the possibilities are unlimited. Yeah. I mean it really is. And it’s not just about efficiency, efficiencies, table stakes. We can deliver more effectiveness and a better experience for customers. So yeah, it’s really exciting.

Jon Johnson (00:23:47) – Well like to the point of like, it really is taking the mindset of a marketer. Like how do you take lookalike data of saying look like Exactly. I’ve got That’s right. I’ve got a, like as a, I come from like some performance marketing background and like the idea of saying I need to go find 10 other people that meet this criteria. You know, I’m now in UX research, which is a whole pivot, um, . But it’s, it’s the same type of thing. How do I find people that look like X so that I can solve this problem? And I think we as CSMs, the the good CSMs, the great CSMs over the next, you know, five to 10 year hell, the next 18 to 24 months, um, are gonna be the ones that that understand that their job is not this like relationship manager that just nurtures an email and it is saying Checks. Checks. Yeah. It’s, that’s it. That’s not it. Like we’re not doctors. No. Like, we’re not health check. And by

Nick Mehta (00:24:34) – The way, you’re, you’re totally right. This is probably one of the final comments cause all the time, but it’s not five years, it’s,

Jon Johnson (00:24:39) – It’s like a week,

Nick Mehta (00:24:40) – Six to 12 months. And I think there’s a responsibility, responsibility for all of us to be honest with people that you have to, like, you have to learn this stuff. You gotta forget about Gainsight, you gotta learn this new world like right away. Yeah. It’s gonna be truly the difference in careers, you know, very quickly. So

Jon Johnson (00:24:55) – Yeah, because it’s not the guys that, that, you know, you’re not chat. G P T is not gonna replace your jobs. The people are gonna take your jobs are the ones that understand open ai. Understand, that’s a great way to say it. This

Nick Mehta (00:25:05) – Stuff. The person that’s better at using it. Yeah. I love that. That’s a really good one. You should tweet

Jon Johnson (00:25:09) – This. I know it’s, I know we’re getting a time. Is there anything that we wanna ask Nick before he has to drop or do you have some wiggle room on this Nick? I

Nick Mehta (00:25:15) – Don’t, I have a hard stop but, and I, and I obviously have to go get a haircut too. So lot seriously do things

Jon Johnson (00:25:19) – That I’ll Venmo you, I’ll take care of that for you. Go figure out

Kristi Faltorusso (00:25:21) – How to go get new swag for the 10 year anniversary.

Nick Mehta (00:25:23) – Introduce swag. This, I got more to-dos on this than I planned for it. I’ll say just, I’ve done like a trillion podcast you guys. This is pretty Will you come back? Cool. So you guys have a good vibe. Thank you. I gotta say it. Yes on

Jon Johnson (00:25:34) – That. Perfect. You heard it here first guys and Josh,

Nick Mehta (00:25:37) – Let’s chat. I wanna talk more about lm so I’ll, but by the way, you’ve been very persistent so I appreciate that as well. So,

Jon Johnson (00:25:43) – Well, we’ll all see you in San Francisco next week. So yeah, thanks guys.