PRODUCTEA with Leah, Growth & Senior Leadership

84: Kristi Faltorusso - Aligning Customer Success and Product Management

Nov 17, 2024

Kristi Faltorusso, a seasoned customer success executive and coach, dives into the interconnected worlds of customer success and product management. She emphasizes the necessity of effective onboarding strategies that focus on delivering quick value and the importance of aligning customer success with product development. The conversation critiques traditional customer happiness metrics like NPS, promoting a shift toward leading indicators. Kristi shares insights on bridging communication gaps between teams and the impact of customer feedback on product improvements.

47:19

Episode guests

Kristi Faltorusso

AI Summary

AI Chapters

Episode notes

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Effective onboarding strategies should prioritize delivering quick value by understanding and aligning with customer-defined success milestones.

Collaboration between customer success and product teams is essential to address customer needs and improve overall product effectiveness.

Measuring customer success requires focusing on engagement and progress towards customer goals rather than traditional health scores or happiness metrics.

Deep dives

Incentivizing Desired Behaviors

Incentivizing the behavior organizations want to see is crucial for aligning teams with business goals. Employees tend to focus on what their compensation rewards, making it imperative for product organizations to connect their actions directly to revenue impacts. While sales and marketing teams have clearer pathways to measure their contributions through metrics like revenue growth and lead generation, product teams often struggle to define their business impact. Establishing clear metrics tied to product performance not only enables product teams to measure success but also helps prevent losses due to product deficiencies.

Intro

2min

Navigating Customer Success Dynamics

15min

Bridging Data and Teams for Customer Success

19min

Rethinking Customer Satisfaction Metrics

5min

Bridging the Gap Between Customer Success and Product Insights

2min

Navigating Customer Feedback and Data Insights

2min

Innovative Brand Engagement Strategies on Social Media

2min

Kristi Faltorusso, a CS executive and coach, joins me in this high-energy conversation about customer success-assisted onboarding, alignment, and the dreaded realities of cross-functional working with product & sales.

We explore effective onboarding strategies, the importance of aligning customer success with product development, and the necessity of quantifying challenges faced by customer success teams.

What’s the importance of defining effective KPIs for customer success, focusing on leading indicators rather than lagging ones? How DO we measure customer happiness? Is the NPS as useless as I believe it is?

takeaways

Onboarding strategies must focus on delivering value quickly by measuring time to value.
Consultative approaches to customer success add significant value.
Customer success teams often act as advocates for product improvements.
Focus on leading indicators for customer success.
Customer segmentation should be based on use cases, not just size.

Chapters

04:45 Understanding Customer Success and Onboarding Strategies

09:48 The Role of Customer Success in Product Development

14:50 Bridging the Gap Between Customer Success and Product Teams

19:56 Quantifying Customer Success Challenges and Solutions

23:41 Understanding Product Impact on Business Metrics

28:19 Defining Effective KPIs for Customer Success

33:06 Measuring Customer Engagement and Value

38:07 The Myth of Customer Happiness

43:11 Data-Driven vs. Data-Informed Decisions

Send us a text

Leah on Linkedin / Twitter / Youtube

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PRODUCTEA with Leah, Growth & Senior Leadership

84: Kristi Faltorusso - Aligning Customer Success and Product Management

Episode guests