The Customer Success Pro Podcast

Discover essential revenue levers for customer success professionals in 2026. Learn why a proactive approach is crucial and how to shift from task-oriented to strategic thinking. Anika Zubair emphasizes the importance of adoption momentum, aligning with executives, and spotting expansion opportunities. She provides actionable insights and a challenge to map accounts and focus on tangible growth. Transform your role, drive revenue, and elevate customer success!

Anika Zubair explores how transforming from a task-driven mindset to a revenue-focused approach can revolutionize customer success roles. She highlights common pitfalls like being reactive and waiting for sales cues, emphasizing the importance of commercial ownership. Listeners are encouraged to prioritize high-value tasks and engage in meaningful value conversations with their top accounts. Anika also challenges everyone to take proactive steps over the next week to deepen customer relationships, dramatically altering their approach to growth.

Ashley Stamps-Lafont, VP of Customer Success and founder of The Success Rx, shares her journey as the first CS leader at Quotapath. She emphasizes the critical role of aligning customer success with revenue objectives and building trust within teams. Ashley discusses the importance of understanding financial metrics, the future of customer support, and offers practical advice for aspiring leaders. Her insights into integrating customer success into go-to-market strategies and the significance of emotional intelligence in leadership are particularly engaging.

Download the CS Promotion Tracker: https://www.thecustomersuccesspro.com/offers/wh6BFvEc/checkoutIn this episode of the Customer Success Pro Podcast, Anika Zubair discusses the rapidly changing landscape of customer success and the importance of future-proofing one's career in this field. She outlines key trends, common mistakes professionals make in career planning, and provides a playbook for success that includes leveraging AI, connecting work to revenue, and building a personal operating system. Anika emphasizes the need for customer success professionals to take ownership of their career paths and to continuously adapt to the evolving demands of the industry.Chapters:00:00 Navigating Change in Customer Success02:41 The Impact of AI on Customer Success05:50 Common Mistakes in Career Planning08:38 Future-Proofing Your Career11:23 Building Your Personal Operating System14:35 Leveraging AI as a Co-Pilot17:20 Tracking Your Achievements20:28 Acting Like the Next Level Version of YouConnect with Anika Zubair:Website: https://thecustomersuccesspro.com/LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/anikazubair/RevUP Academy: https://thecustomersuccesspro.com/revupGrab our FREE resources here:https://thecustomersuccesspro.com/resourcesWant to be our next podcast guest? Apply here:https://www.thecustomersuccesspro.com/podcast-guestBook Anika as a speaker at your next team event: https://www.thecustomersuccesspro.com/team-event

Discover how customer success professionals can boost revenue without selling. Anika Zubair reveals the common pitfalls in CS roles and emphasizes the importance of understanding value tied to business outcomes. She shares a practical framework for engaging with clients and highlights the significance of curious discovery questions. Real-life examples illustrate the power of identifying expansion opportunities, like asking the right questions that led to a $70K growth. Listeners are challenged to rethink their approach and seek out expansion triggers.

Courtney Balban, VP of Customer Success at Leadr, previously a therapist, shares her unique path to CS leadership. She emphasizes curiosity as a key to engaging customer conversations and building high-performing teams without rigid playbooks. Courtney discusses the importance of distinguishing between urgent tasks and impactful work, reframing discomfort as a learning opportunity, and coaching teams to dig deeper into customer needs. She also explores the balance of psychological safety and accountability in team dynamics, enhancing confidence and reducing turnover.

Discover why talented Customer Success Managers often miss out on promotions. Learn to set promotion-focused goals instead of performance ones. Anika Zubair shares three common mistakes that hold professionals back, such as vague objectives and not tracking achievements. She introduces a three-step framework to align your goals with business outcomes, emphasize measurable results, and showcase your impact effectively. Get ready to refine your goals and take proactive steps toward your next title.

In this discussion, Alana Stoltzfus, a leader in digital customer success at Okta, shares her journey from hands-on customer support to scaling self-service programs. She delves into the importance of digital growth and how Okta's Success Hub personalizes the customer experience. Alana highlights the significance of goal-driven communication, tiered customer entitlements, and the tech tools that enhance their strategies. Key lessons include starting small, the value of data, and adapting to customer needs for continual improvement.

Anika Zubair explores the often-misunderstood Quarterly Business Review (QBR), emphasizing the need to shift from mundane reports to impactful discussions. She highlights common pitfalls, such as treating these sessions as mere usage reports and failing to engage executives. Learn her 5-step framework to align discussions with executive priorities, framing product outcomes in terms of business value. The conversation wraps with a challenge to transform your next QBR into a strategy-focused session that drives growth and opens new opportunities.

Sean Reid, an award-winning customer success leader with experience at HubSpot and Personio, dives into the intricacies of health scores. He reveals how green scores can hide churn risks and emphasizes the importance of multithreading to engage key stakeholders. Sean introduces the concept of a Renewal Probability Score, balancing human sentiment with product signals for better forecasting. He also discusses transforming quarterly business reviews into compelling value stories and argues for viewing NPS as a long-term trend rather than a single data point.