A customer success masterclass | How to design, build, and scale a CS org | Stephanie Berner (LinkedIn)
In Depth
Introduction
They discuss the importance of building a customer success team and share insights on hiring, collaboration, and scaling startups' approach to customer success.
Stephanie Berner is a Customer Success Executive at LinkedIn. Since 2018, Stephanie has spearheaded all post-sales functions at LinkedIn Sales Solutions through its period of rapid growth. With a background in building and scaling customer success teams at Box, Medallia, and Opower, Stephanie has extensive experience in delivering exceptional customer experiences across various company stages.
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In this episode, we discuss:
- Common customer success mistakes
- Creating a world-class customer success org
- Tactics for hiring exceptional talent
- How to structure compensation packages
- Where customer success fits into the wider org
- Key early-stage customer success metrics and rituals
- Successful strategies from Box, Medallia, and LinkedIn
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Referenced:
- Aaron Levie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boxaaron/
- Box: https://www.box.com/
- David Love: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-s-love/
- Gainsight: https://www.gainsight.com/
- Jon Herstein: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonherstein/
- Jonathan Lister: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanlister/
- Ken Fine: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmfine/
- Medallia: https://www.medallia.com/
- Nick Mehta: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickmehta/
- Opower: https://www.oracle.com/utilities/opower-energy-efficiency/
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Where to find Stephanie Berner:
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Where to find Brett Berson:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson
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Where to find First Round Capital:
- Website: https://firstround.com/
- First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/firstround
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital
- This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast
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Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction
(02:21) Formalizing customer success at a startup
(05:01) Hiring ICs before CSMs
(06:22) Tactics for hiring standout talent
(11:39) 3 questions to ask candidates
(15:38) Fail-case patterns among customer success hires
(17:49) Considering candidates with non-traditional backgrounds
(21:21) Indexing toward a bias for action
(24:17) What v1 of customer success looks like
(26:03) Key early-stage customer success metrics
(28:21) Whether customer success or sales should own renewals
(30:40) Where customer success fits into the org
(32:14) Why customer success doesn’t report to an executive
(33:48) Distinguishing a product problem from a customer success one
(35:18) Simple way to deal with customer churn
(39:21) Tactics to get customers to give honest feedback
(40:58) What happens when customer success and product teams collaborate
(44:14) Rituals for zero-to-one customer success
(48:23) How to structure an early customer success team
(52:01) Structuring compensation packages
(54:35) Aligning customer success with the business model
(60:14) The role of customer success in B2B software
(62:17) Common customer success mistakes
(67:44) People who had an outsized impact on Stephanie
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