Strikedeck Radio: Customer Success Live: Recent Episodes
Strikedeck & Kristen Hayer
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Sandra Cashe, Chief Customer Officer at Veriforce. Sandra has been getting set up with a new CS platform and talks about her approach to preparing for new customer success technology in this episode.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Jennie Li, Senior Manager of Digital Experience for Definitive Healthcare. Jennie has been working for the past year to build a team of CX professionals and develop the first iteration of their digital customer experience. She’s on the podcast today to talk about her approach.
Join Kristen Hayer and Tao Stadler as they talk about Scoring Utilization in Customer Success. Tao has developed a report that essentially gives specific aspects of product utilization a score. They call this report the FUGA report. Tao will share more about why he developed this report, how he approached the project, and the results his team has been able to achieve.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Irene Lefton, Customer Success Advocate and Author as they talk about what customers want from customer success teams, what works, what doesn’t work, and how to best position your CS team for a successful partnership.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Bob London, Founder and CEO at Chief Listening Officers as we discuss ways to tear down the wall between customers and vendors by spurring thought-provoking conversations.
Webinar Registration Link Here: https://bit.ly/3tBHhyl The Success League Leadership Program: https://www.thesuccessleague.io/customer-success-leadership
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Chad Horenfeldt, Director, Customer Success for Kustomer. He has recently adopted a change management tool called Motivational Interviewing. We’ll be talking about this approach, how Chad is using it on his team, and the results he is seeing.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Bill Cushard, General Manager at ServiceRocket as they discuss the business model of Customer Success.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Gary Rubinstein, Director of Customer Success in APAC at WalkMe as they discuss how he has created an account planning approach for his team that is simple but incredibly successful.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Emily Garza, AVP, Customer Success at Fastly as they talk about about how customer success leaders can build cross-functional relationships with other teams inside their companies.
It’s been an amazing journey and we want to celebrate with you. Join us at the 100th episode special with Sanjay Poonen, COO, VMWare in conversation with Shreesha Ramdas, SVP & GM, Medallia Strikedeck, and our host, Kristen Hayer, Founder & CEO, The Success League as they talk about how to achieving customer-centricity through executive alignment.
Join us at a live event with Sanjay Poonen, COO, VMWare in conversation with Shreesha Ramdas, SVP & GM, Medallia Strikedeck and our host, Kristen Hayer, Founder & CEO, The Success League as they talk about achieving customer-centricity through executive alignment.
Register here: https://medallia.zoom.us/webinar/register/3316222268642/WN_CbgFxh1nSfm9RuGmCJ2YVA
It’s been an amazing journey and we’d have the pleasure and privilege of hosting some of the most renowned Customer Success leaders in the industry!
We want to thank you for the support and appreciation all these years and want to celebrate with you! Join us at the 100th episode live event happening in June, with a surprise guest lineup and exciting giveaways! Stay tuned..
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Wayne McCulloch, Global Head of Customer Success (SaaS) at Google Cloud as we talk about his new book, The 7 Pillars of Customer Success. I’m excited for all of you to hear more about it along with Wayne’s tips for building a success program.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Donna Weber, President and Customer Onboarding Leader at Springboard Solutions as we talk about her book, "Onboarding Matters" and share some of her approaches.
Check out these links:
New Book: https://www.donnaweber.com/book
Onboarding ≠ Implementation: https://www.donnaweber.com/post/onboarding-implementation
The Neuroscience of Customer Onboarding: https://www.donnaweber.com/post/the-neuroscience-of-customer-onboarding
Don’t Let New Customers Fall Through the Cracks: Four Ways to Nail the Handoff: https://www.donnaweber.com/post/don-t-let-new-customers-fall-through-the-cracks-four-ways-to-nail-the-handoff
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Sherrod Patching, Head of Global Technical Account Managers at GitLab Inc. talks about TAMs: what they are, why a company might choose to have TAMs instead of or in addition to CSMs, and how Gitlab has approached their choice of TAMs.
Kristen Hayer in conversation with Heather Matthews, Managing Director and Head of Core Platforms at Agio talks about the tactics she has used to instill strong communication skills across her team.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Jim Kalbach, Chief Evangelist for MURAL as he shares some great ideas on ways to optimize the customer experience.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Max Klimmek, Global Head of Customer Success at Intercom as we talk about his approach to building the Intercom CS program to where it is today.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Andrew Rowlands, Customer Success Design Lead at Telstra as he shares his approach and some of the challenges he has faced as he has taken on the task of building customer success in an organization that isn’t Software as a Service.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Meredith Blanchar, Senior VP of Customer Success and Support at SailPoint as she talks about how Covid-19 has created a shift in customer success toward a focus on value, and how she is refocusing her team at Sailpoint on customer value as they move into 2021.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Carl Gold, Chief Data Scientist at Zuora as he gives insight on how to collect data on, measure and address churn the right way.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Mel Bilge, Manager, Customer Success at LearnDot as she’ll be sharing her approach to growing success inside of a startup, and moving from the individual contributor role into a leadership position.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Dev Kurbur, SVP of Global Customer Success as they talk about how he has used the Crisis Recovery Growth or CRG framework to align his team around the COVID-19 crisis.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Sunil Joseph, VP of Customer Success at Avanoo as we discuss how professional services are different from customer success, and how to make a shift from a professional services approach to a customer success approach if that is right for your company.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation Rachel Jugai, Customer Success Manager at Mitek Systems talks about how to avoid over-processing your customer experience, and about ways that you can leverage your customers success team’s strengths.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Will Lopez, VP of Customer Success atPhone2Action as they about the concept of creating an ideal customer profile, and how the cost of servicing customers ties into that idea.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Boaz Maor, Chief Customer Officer at talech as he talks about how he is converting a support team to a customer success team.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Michelle Novak, Manager, Customer Success at Iterable as she shares some of the ways she has made Customer Business Reviews easier for her team and gotten their customers more involved in the whole process.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Emilia D'Anzica, Consultant, Customer Success at GrowthMolecules as she talks about emotional intelligence, why that is important as a leader in Customer Success, and how you can develop your emotional intelligence.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Shari Srebnick, Head of Client Success US at Searchmetrics as she talks about how she worked with her team to build both an account plan template and a joint success plan.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Keri Keeling, Global Head, Customer Success Innovation and Intelligence at vmware as she shares her experience in management roles as a remote leader or with dispersed teams.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Andrew Cutler, V.P Strategy, Transformation and CS at Software AG as he shares his experience with putting CS in place in a mature organization, and one that has been focused on on-premise software.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Kris Morrison, VP of Customer Success at Interact Software and talk about how customer success can shift gears in a crisis.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Chitra Madhwacharyula, VP of Global Customer Success & Services at Joveo to gain insight on how a consulting mindset can benefit a customer success professional.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Gaines Murfee, Product Manager at Chili Piper as he shares his approach to shifting to a 100% focus on customer success.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Clayton Moulynox, Founder of MXGrowth as he shares his experience building customer success at Auth0 from when it was a startup with 20 employees, through the scaling process to land at a company of 600 employees.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Chris Hicken, CEO of 'nuffsaid as he shares his approach to developing churn categories that are actionable and easy to implement.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Maranda Dziekonski, the Vice President of Customer Success and People Operations at Swiftly as they talk about the ways to navigate shifting from one industry to another, and the role of domain expertise in learning a new industry.
Women's Month Special Podcast!
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Cairo Amani, Customer Success Manager for Lane and the Co-founder of ThriveNetwork as they talk about how women can promote their careers in customer success. If you’re a guy, please don’t skip this episode. It’s important to the women in your life that you understand how you can help.
All-Female Crew:
- Host: Kristen Hayer
- Producer: Zahra Iqbal
- Guest: Cairo Amani
- Editor: Taylor Cormier
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with Megan Caldwell, Head of CS at Elevate Security as they talk about how to identify your most important customers, and direct your focus toward them.
Join Kristen Hayer in conversation with McKayl Bergman, Head of Customer Success for Merlin, as they talk about building a Customer Success program with very limited resources.
Join Kristen Hayer as she hosts Mike Sasaki, Head of Customer Success and Marisa Carter, Marketing Manager from Mitek Systems to talk about account-based marketing and their approach to driving revenue from existing customers for your organization.
Join Kristen Hayer, in conversation with Jennifer Griffin, VP of CS at Trust Radius as they talk about the process of transforming a largely reactive customer-facing team into a truly proactive customer success program.
Join Kristen Hayer and Mona Yoast, VP of Educator Success at Learning Ally as she shares her experience of transforming a team she inherited into a high-performing customer success team.
Join Paul Piazza, Sr Dr of Customer Success at Reciprocity and Kristen Hayer as they talk about ways that CS can share customer feedback with the rest of the organization, and the positive impact that can have on a company.
Join Lauren Costella and Kristen Hayer as they talk about how lessons from sports have helped her approach to Customer Success.
Join Jason Whitman, VP of CS at JustWorks and Kristen Hayer as they talk about hiring the right people to create a team that both scales with the organization and delivers exceptional customer experiences.
Join Neelu Shaikh, VP of Customer Success at Tipalti and Kristen Hayer as they discuss tactics for scaling a CS team, and developing scalable team structures.
Megan Macaluso joins Kristen Hayer to talk about the importance of balancing automation with a human-driven onboarding program.
Join Kristen Hayer, the host of Strikedeck Radio & Bill Cushard, host of Helping Sells Radio as they team up for one night at Service Rocket, Palo Alto for a LIVE podcast!
Join Lynn Tsofias, a serial Customer Success leader, and Kristen Hayer, Founder & CEO of The Success League as they discuss tactics for building a digital or self-service customer success program.
Join Kristen Hayer, the CEO & Founder of The Success League and Bill Cushard, Director of Marketing at Service Rocket as they give a preview about their LIVE podcast on the 25th of Sept, 2019!
For more details and to sign up, click below: https://bit.ly/2kz2IB3
Ruicong Yan joins Kristen Hayer to talk about how Success teams can and should be involved with Product Development.
Barry Kelly, the CEO of Thought Industries joins Krister Hayer and talks about the various components of a successful customer education program.
Karen Rhorer, the Head of Customer Success and Sales Strategy at Atrium HQ joins Kristen Hayer, the host of Strikedeck Radio to talk about operations, metrics, analytics and KPIs for both CS and Sales.
Palo Alto 2019 Customer Success Live Podcast Link: https://bit.ly/2OLySHK
In this podcast, Mark and Kristen talk about career development in Customer Success, his philosophy on career building as well as some of the specific tactics he has employed in his organization.
Rona Yang will be sharing her Customer Success journey, as well as some of the approaches she took to building up the processes that have made the CS team at Dynamic Yield successful.
Link to CS Live Podcast Meetup: https://bit.ly/2XWA66n
Irene Lefton, a customer success thought leader, joins Kristen to talk about a really important topic in our field – gender diversity in Customer Success.
Andreas, a seasoned customer success leader, fellow consultant and partner in the development of the Customer Success Performance Index, joins Kristen to discuss the CSPI - a publicly available tool that CS leaders can use to benchmark their performance on 8 dimensions.
Jim joins Kristen to share his interesting approach to creating an exceptional customer journey with a cross-functional team. He calls them Journey Teams! Jim goes over who is a part of them, how you form them, how to get buy-in for them, and much more!
Kristen worked with Evan Rich, the Director of Customer Success at NS1, as he built out their first health scoring system. This episode covers that process, what it took to build, how that reporting helped his team, and what he would recommend to other leaders looking to do the same.
Courteney joins Kristen to talk about data-driven Customer Success programs. They get into the details of how to shift from an emotional, reactive program to a data-driven, proactive customer journey, and much more!
John Laino, the Vice President of Customer Success from ServiceTitan joins Kristen to talk about a very cool initiative he kicked off on his team called ALIGN, which is all about optimizing customer outcomes to go beyond product adoption.
Tim is the Director of Client Success at Finalsite; Finalsite is a company that produces top-notch websites for schools and school districts around the world. Tim joins Kristen to discuss how important it is for Customer Success leaders to serve as the public relations team for Customer Success within their own companies, and how to do it successfully.
Shaun join Kristen on the podcast to talk about an interesting role that is surfacing on a lot of success teams – the success engineer. Shaun VanWeelden is the Senior Manager of Success Engineering at Engagio. He started at the company back in 2016 as a success engineer, and has grown his role and the team. He’s going to share his journey and ideas on this episode.
Bill is the author of The Art of Agile Marketing. He joins Kristen to talk about customer education, and shares some practical approaches to building out a client training program.
Mike Sasaki, the Director of Customer Success for Mitek Systems, joins Kristen to talk about what to do, and bravely, what not to do in your first year as a Customer Success leader.
Kristen is joined again by Chad Horenfeldt, the VP of Customer Success for Updater. In this episode, they talk about ways that you can accelerate your career in Customer Success.
Kristen is joined by Arjun Devgan, the VP of Global Customer Success & Services at Percolate in San Francisco. Arjun is passionate about product adoption, how change management is a critical aspect of adoption, and what Customer Success professionals can do to facilitate change.
In this episode, Kristen chats with Lindsay Kapsa, the Director of Customer Success for Schoology. They talk about the journey Schoology went through as they added Customer Success to their company.
Lauren Costella is the Vice President of Customer Success at Medrio, a member of The Success League advisory board, and a frequent blogger on a variety of Customer Success topics. She is back on the podcast to chat with Kristen about how to optimize your hiring process for Customer Success roles.
Ed Powers, the Vice President of CS for InteliSecure, is a frequent speaker on the topic of neuroscience and Customer Success. In this episode, Kristen and Ed discuss how people make the renewal decision, as well as ways that CSMs can better engage their clients.
Kristen chats with Donna Weber, the Principal at Springboard Solutions, a consulting company that focuses on helping companies create amazing onboarding experiences. This episode covers how you can build an orchestrated onboarding journey for your customers.
In this episode, Kristen talks to Andrea Spillman-Gajek, formerly the SVP of Operations & Customer Success for Captricity. Andrea was one of the founding members of the Captricity team, and built their Customer Success function and team from scratch. She talks about how she did that and some of the frameworks she used.
Kristen chats with Chad Horenfeldt, the Vice President of Client Success at Updater. In this episode, they talk about focusing on productivity and how Customer Success professionals can get more of it.
In some of our recent episodes we’ve focused on helping customers achieve business outcomes that are tied to KPIs and goals. Ari Hoffman, Success Fanatic for MindTouch, joins Kristen to talk about how to balance the focus on goals and outcomes with helping customers work with products and understand features in the day-to-day.
Vitor Lopes is a Customer Success professional based in Berlin, Germany. Vitor is formerly the Head of Customer Success for EMnify, and is currently advising early stage companies. He joins Kristen to talk about ways that you can tailor your CS program to the members of your team.
In this episode, Kristen talks to Anne Liiri, the Customer Success Director for Vainu. Vainu has offices around the globe, and Anne is based in Helsinki, Finland. Since Vainu is in the AI and data field, Anne explains how CS teams should look beyond the health score to other sets of data that can help them serve their customers more effectively.
Kristen chats with Kim Oslob, then the Vice President of Customer Success at Whisbi, based in Spain. Kim is based in Silicon Valley, but managed a team located in Europe. This episode covers the ins and outs of managing a remote, global team.
Kristen chats with Suraj Mohandas, the Vice President of Customer Success for Spear Education, an organization that is dedicated to the pursuit of great dentistry through ongoing education for dentists and dental practices that provides continuing education for the dental industry. This is the second VP of CS role for Suraj, and his next logical career step is the role of Chief Customer Officer. This episode covers the role of the CCO, the skills you need to build to get there, and what Suraj is doing to prepare himself for the CCO role.
Antoine joins Kristen to chat about the future of Customer Success and factors shaping these developments, including shifts in the buying experience, an on-demand culture, and how Sales & CS will need to evolve to handle this, along with much more. Tune in to hear how CS will shape up by 2020!
Damien and Kristen share the perspective that CSMs should be able to elevate the conversation with customers to the executive level. This episode covers why that is so important, and how to change the conversation from a product focus to a business focus, a useful skill for everyone, but especially CSMs, to learn!
Megan Dilley, a customer success advocate who most recently served as the head of Customer Success at Chewse joins Kristen to discuss compensation for CS teams, including alternatives to variable comp, and how it all relates to human behavior.
Shane Metcalf is the VP of Customer Success at 15Five, a company that has a fantastic product that helps keep employees engaged with managers, and provides a platform for performance management and communication. Kristen was a customer of theirs for years, and 15Five is now a customer of Kristen's business, The Success League! Shane and Kristen discuss how to engage CSMs and help them build their careers in the field of Customer Success.
Joanel Bernardo, who recently transitioned to a new role at Concord Worldwide, joins Kristen to discuss how she managed customer expectations as the previous Global Manager of Customer Success, Service, and Delivery for Hortonworks. This is a foundational and very important topic, which will be explored in depth, including how to get other teams to buy in, how to train your team on this topic, and how to reset expectations if things have gone wrong.
Maheen Memon is the Director of Customer Success at Nulogy, a supply chain aggregation platform based in Toronto, Canada. Maheen really grew up in Customer Success at Nulogy, and has been there for the past 5 years. She joins Kristen to talk about how you can drive revenue through Customer Success.
Manoj has been with YayPay since they were a very early stage startup, and has served in a variety of roles – including Sales, Partnerships, and Customer Success. As they have grown, he has focused his energy on the Customer Success function, and has seen some of the issues that are caused by customers who aren’t a great fit, and how to deal with them!
Loni rejoins the podcast to cover how she's been able to configure Salesforce to fill the needs of her Customer Success team at Entelo. She's our first repeat guest on the podcast, so we're thrilled to welcome her back!
Pallavi joins Kristen to chat about her previous role at Cisco, where she was the Customer Success Lead Product Manager for Cisco’s Next Gen Firewall solution. Join us to hear more about how to approach customer success in a complex, highly technical environment that includes an on-prem solution, which is not your typical SaaS Customer Success environment!
Angie Im is the Director of Customer Success at Lumiata, a company that employs AI-powered analytics to help organizations precisely identify & manage risk at the individual level. Angie has a background at the intersection of healthcare, data, and artificial intelligence, having come out of Carnegie Mellon University and the IBM Watson healthcare team. She joins Kristen to chat about how to apply Customer Success best practices to a Data as a Service company.
Michael Fulvio, the Director of Customer Success for SeamlessDocs, joins Kristen to elaborate on how he got into Customer Success from Inside Sales, and his tips for working constructively with the Product team! Throughout his time at SeamlessDocs, he has built and maintained a positive relationship with the product team and even loops them in on customer calls! Tune in to hear how you can adopt these methods, processes, and more!
Ben joins Kristen to discuss how his background in Customer Success, with a recent role at Optimizely, as well as in entrepreneurship, co-founding two companies helped him develop a very effective, but somewhat scrappy, approach to building a health score. Whether you are just getting started and considering how to adopt health scores in your own company, or you already have an advanced CS tool you’re using, there's plenty to pick up from Ben’s approach!
Jim Kalbach, the Head of Customer Success at MURAL, and the author of Mapping Experiences, a book about how visual diagrams and blueprints can help companies optimize their customer experience, joins Kristen to discuss how MURAL maps their customer journey. Jim also shares his advice for companies that want to adopt visual approaches for their processes and customer experiences! There's lots to adopt from this one!
Evan joins Kristen to discuss how he grew from joining NoWait as an early hire, all the way through leading Sales, and eventually experiencing an acquisition by Yelp. This is great one if you want to hear how you can expand your influence at a startup and take on more responsibility, craft your own best practices, and understand how an acquisition changes things (You decide if it's for the better!)
Cam joins Kristen to share how incorporating discovery into Healthify's new customer onboarding process was transformational for their clients! Tune in for a detailed breakdown of their onboarding procedure, and how they've customized it based on what they've learned from experience.
Michael, who has a long history in both Support and Customer Success, shares how Success and Support can team up to provide an amazing experience to customers.
Boaz joins Kristen to discuss the ins and outs of customer marketing, and how to implement it from the Customer Success department. The first step? - Becoming besties with your CMO! Tune in for more prescient on the future of this partnership, and how to nurture this relationship in your own company.
Matt joins Kristen to talk about everything he's learned about building high-performing teams in Customer Success, including his criteria for determining high-performance, how to generate passion in employees, and win friends & influence people. Tune in for great personal stories, and tips & tricks to get you on the right path to success!
Thomas Enochs, VP of CS at Heptio at joins Kristen to discuss how his company decided to start with a Customer Success team instead of a Sales team! Tune in for the practical and philosophical reasoning behind the decision, and the practical implementation cornerstones, as well as an in-depth look into how Heptio operates around CS.
David joins us at the Workshop Cafe in San Francisco to chat about how Customer Success can benefit from working with Sales, and shares a tactical action plan to get things moving in a positive direction. Tune in for a great discussion including whether CSMs should be responsible for selling! Spoiler Alert - David says 'no' and Kristen says 'yes'!
Irene Lefton shares her insights from working in multi-generational workplaces, and how Gen-X'ers, Millennials, and Baby Boomers view communication and technology in their careers. Tune in to hear stories from Irene's and Kristen's work experiences, and much more!
Steve & Kristen get together at the Workshop Cafe in San Francisco to discuss their favorite Customer Success books, what they're reading currently, and which books have helped them the most in their careers so far.
We'll be back with more podcasts very soon! Enjoy your summer, and tune back in early August for more interviews with CS leaders and professionals sharing their perspectives.
Tom Lipscomb discusses how he looks at leading, lagging, and process performance indicators, and goes into detail on how to implement all of them. He also goes into depth on how to get started with the right KPIs & metrics if you're just getting started in Customer Success.
Lauren Costella goes into detail of how she went about choosing a CS platform, and what to think about when making your decision.
Loni, who works for a company that deals in recruitment technology, discusses how she builds CS teams, and what she looks for in a new recruit. She explores how to build a Customer Success organization, the various roles you should introduce as you scale, and how to make smart decisions about who to add and when.
Mark Pecoraro, who has previously led Customer Success teams at companies like SOASTA, Conviva, and WhiteHat Security, and now serves as an advisor to Strikedeck, explains how he sees Customer Success working cross-functionally with other departments like Finance, Customer Enablement/Professional Services, and Support, and trend and best practices to implement.
Mark Pecoraro, who has previously led Customer Success teams at companies like SOASTA, Conviva, and WhiteHat Security, and now serves as an advisor to Strikedeck, explains how he sees Customer Success working cross-functionally with other departments like Sales, Marketing, and Product.
Doug leads a joint Sales & Customer Success initiative and explains how he makes it work. He discusses how he transitioned his team from a reactive "customer care" approach to a truly proactive Customer Success experience.
Carey Wong, Director of Customer Success at LearnUp, shares the story of her career development, and how she went from being the first CSM at her company, to leading the entire CS operation. Anyone, even non-CSMs can learn from her journey!
Kristen Hayer, CEO & Founder of The Success League, chats with Jack Phillips, VP of Customer Success, and Victorina McAdam, Head of Implementation, at PresenceLearning about how they structure their onboarding, and optimize their implementation. They discuss the challenges in a seasonal vertical like education, and why that changes how CS operates.
Kristen Hayer, Founder and CEO of The Success League, hosts a discussion with Kim Oslob, VP of Customer Success at Whisbi, on how to structure the first 6 months of leading a new CS team. See Kim's original blog post that inspired this podcast here: http://strikedeck.com/10-steps-to-a-winning-cs-team/.