A customer success masterclass | How to design, build, and scale a CS org | Stephanie Berner (LinkedIn)
In Depth
Identifying and Addressing Churn Problems
Learn how to analyze the root causes of churn and capture data from lost customers, as well as the importance of post-churn activities, such as conducting retrospectives.
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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