M-Files Customer Success Podcast: Recent Episodes
M-Files
The M-Files Customer Success Podcast aims to help you to understand Customer Success concepts and learn from our experience, in order to implement and enhance your own CS Strategy.
As a customer, are you bombarded daily with surveys from products and services that you purchased?
In this episode, we take a look at why from a customer success perspective getting feedback from our customers is so important while avoiding survey fatigue.
We are joined by our Director of NA Customers Success Management, Angela Bailey-Cantu and Marketing and Communications Manager, Jordy De Jager from our partner GeONE, to talk about how SaaS companies are implementing surveys to improve the way they do business and make customers advocates of their products and services .
Topics:
- What are Customer Satisfaction Surveys? (5:50)
- What are the benefits of using Customer Satisfaction Surveys? (8:32)
- When to send these surveys out. (12:46)
- Length and frequency of surveys. (14:06)
- Which customers to send surveys to. (15:19)
- Following up on surveys. (16:17)
- Automating surveys. (17:25)
- Project Delivery Surveys. (19:06)
- Net Promoter Score (NPS) Surveys. (21:12)
- What happens if you don't run surveys? (28:35)
- Advice on running surveys. (29:40)
Hosts:
Shobha Mahtey (Partner Customer Success Program Manager, M-Files): https://www.linkedin.com/in/shobhamahtey/
Patrick Dixon (Customer Success Engineer, M-Files): https://www.linkedin.com/in/dixonp/
Guests:
Angela Bailey-Cantu (Director of NA Customer Success Management, M-Files): https://www.linkedin.com/in/angela-bailey-cantu-2402435/
Jordy De Jager (Marketing and Communications Manager, GeONE): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordydejager/
Website: https://www.m-files.com
Podcast feedback: Email shobha.mahtey@m-files.com
Whether you are a small SaaS company or a large one, Customer Success is becoming pivotal to how your business grows now and in the future.
In this episode we take a look at Customer Success through the years at M-Files, from the viewpoint of our CEO and founder Antti Nivala. From acquiring our first customer to managing thousands of customers, how has Customer Success changed at M-Files and what did we learn from it, to build a better future for our business and customers.
Topics:
- Childhood interest in IT and developing software. (2:30)
- Starting the business. (3:51)
- First customer. (5:46)
- Challenges in retaining customers in the early days. (7:45)
- Growing and expanding customers as a small business. (9:49)
- Advocacy back then. (11:46)
- Being a visionary. (14:21)
- What events drove the decision to invest in Customer Success Management? (15:52)
- Getting the leadership team and employees into the CS mindset. (19:33)
- Inspiring our partners to be aligned with our goals. (24:25)
- Advice to partners on building a CS strategy. (26:20)
- Where did the name M-Files come from? (29:53)
Host:
Shobha Mahtey (Partner Customer Success Program Manager, M-Files): https://www.linkedin.com/in/shobhamahtey/
Guest:
Antti Nivala (Founder and CEO, M-Files): https://www.linkedin.com/antti-nivala/
Website: https://www.m-files.com
Podcast feedback: Email shobha.mahtey@m-files.com
Is an adhoc catchup with your customer enough to really understand the health of your customer and provide value to your relationship?
This episode helps you to answer this question by taking a look at Customer Business Reviews. We discuss the topic with two of our Customer Success Managers, to understand what Business Reviews are and how they could benefit you and your customers.
Topics:
- What Customer Business Reviews are. (5:45)
- Business Review agenda. (6:40)
- The benefits of conducting Business Reviews? (10:14)
- Benefits of Business Reviews to CSMs. (11:26)
- Who should be attending a Business Review. (14:12)
- How often should we have Business Reviews. (15:40)
- What if customers don't want Business Reviews. (16:03)
- Tips on implementing Business Reviews. (18:30)
Host:
Patrick Dixon (Customer Success Engineer, M-Files): https://www.linkedin.com/in/dixonp/
Guests:
Patti Albracht (Customer Success Manager, M-Files): https://www.linkedin.com/in/pattialbracht/
Stuart Barnwell (Customer Success Manager, M-Files): https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuartbarnwell/
Website: www.m-files.com
Podcast feedback: email shobha.mahtey@m-files.com
The M-Files CS podcast team are continuing to look at challenges and topics relating to Customer Success.
When implementing a Customer Success Strategy, one of the first things you should think about is Customer Segmentation. This episode takes a look at what Customer Segmentation is, why segmentation is so important and how to perform segmentation that meets your companies and customers' needs.
Topics:
- What is customer segmentation? (5:16)
- How do SaaS organizations typically segment customers? (6:36)
- How could partners decide which customers go in each segment? (10:33)
- How has segmentation helped M-Files? (13:21)
- Advice on implementing segmentation. (14:50)
Hosts:
Shobha Mahtey (Channel CS Program Manager, M-Files): https://www.linkedin.com/in/shobhamahtey/
Patrick Dixon (Customer Success Engineer, M-Files): https://www.linkedin.com/in/dixonp/
Guests:
Tomi Saarinen (Director of EMEA Customer Success Management, M-Files): https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomi-saarinen-583a683/
Sean Holmes (CSE Team Lead, M-Files): https://www.linkedin.com/in/sean-holmes-7722a41/
Website: https://www.m-files.com
Podcast feedback: Email shobha.mahtey@m-files.com
Customer success is a paradigm shift in the way a company does business. M-Files itself has gone through a transformation from a traditional perpetual licensing business to a recurring revenue-based SaaS operating model.
In this episode, we'll talk about the main difference between these two models, what it means from the operating perspective on a company level to be a successful SaaS business, the part that Customer Success plays in this and how this relates to our partner network. We will be looking at this from the viewpoint of two of M-Files' C-level executives, Justin Kim, CFO and COO and Bob Pritchard, CRO.
Topics:
- M-Files' transformation from perpetual to SaaS. (5:34)
- Any challenges M-Files faced in transforming to a SaaS company and aligning our partners to this new model. (7:20)
- The biggest difference in SaaS vs. Perpetual sales? (8:21)
- Why is Customer Success so important now that we are a SaaS company? (13:09)
- The pandemic's affect on the business. (17:55)
- What if we had not invested in CS a few years ago. (22:58)What value does the CSM role provide to your customers? (19:24)
- What are the key metrics that a company wants to track when it comes to SaaS business? (24:50)
- Advice for those of you who are new to Customer Success and not sure where to start. (28:09)
- Why is it so important for our partners to start implementing CS now? (31:00)
- Our past and future investment in CS and Channel CS. (31:45)
Hosts:
Samppa Lahtinen (CS Program Manager, M-Files): https://www.linkedin.com/in/samppalahtinen/
Guests:
Justin Kim (CFO/COO, M-Files): https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinskim/
Bob Pritchard (CRO, M-Files): https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobpritchard/
Website: https://www.m-files.com
Podcast feedback: Email shobha.mahtey@m-files.com
Customer Success Management is a fairly new discipline and can come in many different forms depending on the company, type of business, culture, available resources and much more. No matter the shape and size of your organization, you need to learn what Customer Success is and how it can benefit you, to ensure that you continue to retain your customers, grow and be successful.
In this episode we are going to take a look at what Customer Success Management is from the viewpoint of two of our seasoned Customer Success Managers here at M-Files and answering questions such as how do you really know if your customers are happy?
Topics:
- What is Retention, Expansion and Advocacy? (5:05)
- How do you know if your customers are really happy? (12:57)
- Reactive vs proactive and how you transform from being reactive to becoming proactive. (14:11)
- Driving a customer success mindset across your company and stakeholders. (15:30)
- What is the difference between Customer Success and Customer Support? (17:19)
- What is the difference between a Customer Success Manager and an Account Manager? (18:39)
- What value does the CSM role provide to your customers? (19:24)
- What value does the CSM role provide to your company? (20:03)
Hosts:
Shobha Mahtey (Channel CS Program Manager, M -Files): https://www.linkedin.com/in/shobhamahtey/
Samppa Lahtinen (CS Program Manager, M-Files): https://www.linkedin.com/in/samppalahtinen/
Guests:
Jonathan Boyman (CS Team Lead, M-Files): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-boyman/
Crystal Wittrock (CSM Supervisor, M-Files): https://www.linkedin.com/in/crystalwittrock/
Website: https://www.m-files.com
Podcast feedback: Email shobha.mahtey@m-files.com
One of the challenges and less discussed topics relating to Customer Success is, as a SaaS company how do you support and enable your partners to implement Customer Success strategies, so that both you and your partners are more aligned on the customer experience and outcomes that your customers receive. This episode takes a look at how M-Files' is supporting and enabling our partners for customer success, from the M-Files Direct and Channel perspective and from the viewpoint of one of our partners. Topics: - How we started our CS Journey at M-Files and where we are today (6:20) - What benefits we have seen with implementing a CS Strategy over the last few years (11:09) - How this ties in with the Channel and why we decided to expand this out to our partners (14:02) - Unitfly's CS journey and perspective of CS (18:12) - Why and how it is important to build the CS mindset from the top down (22:07) - What are M-Files' plans for the future with regards to CS (24:11) - Where to start (26:03) - Why it is important to start now (30:23) Hosts: Shobha Mahtey: www.linkedin.com/in/shobhamahtey/ Guests: Scott Erickson (RVP of Partner Sales, M-Files): www.linkedin.com/in/scott-erickson-5412301/ Julian Cook(CCO, M-Files): www.linkedin.com/in/cookjulian/ Ivan Markovic (Co-Founder/CEO, Unitfly): www.linkedin.com/in/markovic-ivan/ Website: www.m-files.com Podcast feedback email: shobha.mahtey@m-files.com
This podcast aims to help you to understand Customer Success concepts and learn from our experience, in order to implement and enhance your own CS Strategy.