The Customer Success Channel

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Marco Carrubba, Director of Customer Success at Microsoft about how to design customer success for a mature organization. An enterprise software company has plenty of functions fighting for priority. But growing your existing customers is just as important - or even more important - at large-scale organizations as at SMBs. So how do you ensure CS is seen as a crucial business function in an enterprise environment? And how do you handle internal change management in order to build a global CS team?Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Marija Skobe-Pilley, Head of Customer Success (EMEA) at Clickup about leading a CS team in EMEA and working with EMEA customers.Leading a CS team in EMEA and working with EMEA customers can be quite different from other parts of the world. So, how does local culture play into expanding your CS operations? How do you strategize globally but execute locally? And what sort of CS strategy works best in EMEA? Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Bill Cushard, General Manager at Dragonboat about everything you need to know about customer education.At some point as your business grows your CSMs are not going to have the capacity to continue to educate your customers individually. So, when should a SaaS company start adding customer education into its business? How do you use customer education to grow customers, gain new prospects and educate your market? And what are the KPIs and data points that you need to measure for a successful customer education department?Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Harini Gokul, Head of Customer Success at AWS about her experience of shaping and building CS as a value realization.Shifting from defense to offense in Customer Success is not a simple task. But to help your customers achieve their business goals, you need to have a proactive mindset and not a reactive to-do-list. So, how do you make a move and find the time to focus on the offensive? And what are some metrics that companies should focus on to see CS as a value realization?  Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Erika Villarreal, Senior Customer Success Manager at Condeco about how to build your personal brand in Customer Success and how your personal brand can land your dream job. Landing your Customer Success dream job is far from being a simple task. It is a competitive industry and you need to find a way to stand out from the crowd - and that’s where your personal brand comes in. When done right, personal branding is a tool to help climb the career ladder. But how do you get started building your personal brand? And why is it so important in CS? Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Matt Myszkowski, VP of Customer Experience for EMEIA at Cision about why mental health should be prioritized in Customer Success. Mental health might still be a taboo topic in your Customer Success department, but we are here to help you change that. So, what are some of the first steps a CSM or a CS leader can take in making sure that mental health is prioritized at their workplace and that it is actually “ok not to be ok”? And how do you find the balance while still delivering results and outcomes for your customers? Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Vijay Mehrotra, Professor of Business Analytics and Information Systems at the University of San Francisco about what tomorrow's CS leaders are being taught. Just a few years ago, Customer Success was still an emerging profession and barely mentioned at university. Many of us have ended up in the industry through a different career path, such as sales, marketing, or product. So, how did CS go from being unknown to being taught as one of the MBA courses at the University of San Francisco? And what’s the future of CS education?Vijay's resources:USF Facebook pageUSF Customer Success ManagementAnalytic Magazine Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Andrew Marks, Co-Founder of SuccessHACKER, about how to build effective health scores. Today, most businesses are adopting some level of health scoring in order to track if their customers are healthy or not. So, what are some of the basic metrics that you need to put in place to understand health scoring? And when should a SaaS company consider building out a health score?Check out SuccessHACKER: https://www.successhacker.co/Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with David Jackson, CS Coach, Author and CEO at TheCustomer.Co, about why we should focus on people, not customers. In the early days for SaaS companies, we tend to focus on sales and product led growth as we are trying to find some sort of proof of concept of a product. So, when should a SaaS company really shift to customer led growth? And why should customer success focus on people and not necessarily a company or logo name?Link to David's book: https://www.amazon.com/Customer-Led-Growth-guide-building-company-ebook/dp/B09DBMXJK7Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Jeff Heckler, Director of CS Solutions at MarketSource (former Global Head of CS at Pipedrive) about scaling CS teams and CS models.Scaling Customer Success in (any) organization is not a simple task. It requires the right combination of technology, people, and processes to hit the mark. For example, how do you manage to keep up with rocketship growth and make sure you have a team and process around this to scale effectively? Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com