Today on the show we have Kevan Lee, Head of Marketing at Oyster HR. In this episode, we talked about Kevin’s experience with churn and retention at Buffer, Polly, and Oyster HR, and how the main reasons for churn differed at each company due to their business models and customer segments, and we then discussed the role marketing played in each case to reduce churn. As usual, I'm excited to hear what you think of this episode, and if you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you. You can ...
Dec 15, 2021•34 min•Ep. 144
Today on the show we have Louis Rosenfeld, publisher and founder at Rosenfeld media. In this episode, we talked about what information architecture is and how it led to the formation of Rosenfeld Media, how the UX Design space is evolving, and the importance of understanding your customers' needs when building out your product’s information architecture. We also discussed Lou’s plans to introduce Memberships and Subscriptions at Rosenfeld Media and how introducing Attendee Cohorts at their confe...
Dec 08, 2021•37 min•Ep. 143
Today on the show we have Dave Jackson, founder, and CEO of TheCustomer.Co, and author of the book Customer-led growth. In this episode, we talked about customer success as a company-wide capability, the motivation behind his recent book Customer-led growth, and Dave explains why you should purposefully design your organization around customer value. We also discussed why you should screw best practices, and dove into the 7 principles of customer success to deliver maximum customer value. As usu...
Dec 01, 2021•41 min•Ep. 142
Today on the show we have Ryan Glasgow, CEO and founder of Sprig. In this episode, we talked about the pros and cons of the different stages of company growth, how Ryan took his experience at the 0 to 1 stage to build out Sprig and how Sprig solves the tension between user research and the speed at which product teams move today. We also discussed why churn and retention always comes back to user onboarding, how you can determine which action to focus on for your onboarding experience and the co...
Nov 24, 2021•38 min•Ep. 141
Today on the show we have Puneet Kataria, founder of CustomerSuccessBox. In this episode, we talked about what made Puneet make the switch from engineering to sales, the importance of selling to the right customers to avoid churn, and we debated whether “customer success” is the right job title for the job. We also discussed the building blocks a customer success team needs, the five different animals of SaaS and the type of customer success model to use for each animal, and finally Puneet dove ...
Nov 17, 2021•40 min•Ep. 140
Today on the show we have Harini Gokul, Chief Customer Officer at AWS. In this episode, we talked about the challenges of building and scaling customer success teams at companies like Amazon and Microsoft, and how they bake their customers’ customer perspectives into their work, to deliver true value for their customers. We also discussed the importance of being proactive and knowing what your customers might be wanting next, the characteristics and traits Harini looks for when hiring for custom...
Nov 10, 2021•31 min•Ep. 139
Today on the show we have Gareth Drabble, Director of Customer Success, Northern Europe at Contentsquare In this episode, we talked about what led Gareth to Contentsquare, the recent acquisition of Hotjar, and what it means for Contentsquare, we then talked about how they plan to structure their customer success team as they scale, and what fuels its growth. We also discussed how rushing into a tech touch model wobbled Contentsquare’s retention rates, and dove into how they use health scoring to...
Nov 03, 2021•29 min•Ep. 138
Today on the show we have Suresh Sankar, Founder & CEO of Crayon Data. In this episode, Suresh shares how he connects the dots looking back going from an account director to marketing, and then to founder. We then touched on what Crayon data is and how it helps it’s enterprise customers with personalization. We also discussed Crayon data’s process in identifying the gap in the market and the inspiration behind it, their different strategies on how to validate or invalidate markets, and then ...
Oct 27, 2021•37 min•Ep. 137
Today on the show we have Scott Singerman, VP of Global Partnerships at Mixpanel. In this episode, we talked about Scott’s role as a VP of Global Partnerships and his responsibilities, how Mixpanel is giving back to the startup community with their Startup Program, but also the benefits a program like this has for any company in general. We then dove into the different partnership categories at Mixpanel, their impact on the business as a whole, and how these partnerships are tied to customer ret...
Oct 20, 2021•43 min•Ep. 136
Today on the show we have Shreesha Ramdas, SVP & GM at Strikedeck. Having lived through a couple of acquisitions, Sri shares his #1 learning and why he believes that founders should roll up their sleeves and work alongside the sales team, post-acquisition, as early as possible. We also discussed the motivation behind Strikedeck, how to assess your customer success maturity cycle, and then dove into how to jumpstart a customer success program. As usual, I'm excited to hear what you think of t...
Oct 13, 2021•34 min•Ep. 135
Today on the show we have Ryanne Doumet, Customer Success Manager at PandaDoc. In this episode, we talked about what drove Ryanne to make the switch from media & advertising to customer success, how PandaDoc scaled their customer facing approach as the company scaled, and how they put together Customer Success decks to bring value to client conversions, using their own tool. We also discussed the upsides and downsides of a Matrix organization, setting, tracking and measuring KPI’s, and we th...
Oct 06, 2021•30 min•Ep. 134
Today on the show we have Basel Fakhoury, CEO & Co-founder of User Interviews. In this episode, we talked about what drove Basel to user research and why research participant recruiting specifically, how the team validated that "User Interviews" was the biggest pain point, and then Basel shared their process of idea exploration and how they invalidated their ideas, before reaching that AHA moment. We also discussed the importance of marrying qualitative research with data analysis, how movin...
Sep 29, 2021•30 min•Ep. 133
Today on the show we have Kris Rudeegraap, co-founder and CEO of Sendoso. In this episode, we talked about how Sendoso helps it’s customers retain and delight their customers, the different ways a sales team can help avoid or decrease churn, and how to make sure you’re selling to the right ICP. We also discussed Sendoso's sales strategy when they first got started and how it evolved, their ups and downs when it comes to churn and retention, and the changes they made in order to hit a net dollar ...
Sep 22, 2021•36 min•Ep. 132
Today on the show we have Marty Cagan, partner at Silicon Valley Product Group, and author of INSPIRED: How To Create Tech Products Customers Love, and Co-author of newly published EMPOWERED: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products. In this episode, we talk about the tremendous gap between how the best companies operate and how the rest work, what they do differently and why, and then dove into Marty’s new book EMPOWERED and the motivation behind it. We also discussed how the best leaders empowe...
Sep 15, 2021•38 min•Ep. 131
Today on the show we have Carlos Gonzalez de Villaumbrosia, Founder and CEO at Product School. In this episode, we talked about the evolution and future of product management, the motivation and story behind building Product School, and why Carlos believes retention is the future for sustainable growth. Carlos also then shares how they retain their students, how he set out to build such an amazing community, and how it adds value to their business and keeps students coming back. As usual, I'm ex...
Sep 08, 2021•34 min•Ep. 130
Today on the show we have Christoph Janz, Managing Partner at Point Nine Capital. In this episode, we talked about what Christoph loves the most about being an investor and what he misses as an entrepreneur, we also discussed how back in the day companies were flying blind when it came to churn and retention, and we then dove into the inspiration behind the infamous “Five ways to build a hundred million dollar business” post. Finally, Christoph shared how much churn and retention come into the e...
Sep 01, 2021•37 min•Ep. 129
Today on the show we have Babis Makrynikolas, VP of Product and Pricing at Blueground. In this episode, Babis explains what Blueground is and what his role is responsible for as the VP of Product and Pricing, we then dove into his experience at Amazon with pricing and packaging strategies, their methodology, customer interviews and more. We also discussed Babi’s challenges moving from a data-driven company like Amazon, to a fast-growing startup, and how their Business Intelligence team at Bluegr...
Aug 25, 2021•35 min•Ep. 128
Today on the show we have Jeff Heckler, global head of customer success at Pipedrive. In this episode, we talked about how Jeff went from being a numbers guy to a career in customer success, how Pipedrive’s CS team scaled from 15 to 55 people in just 18 months, and how the team is now structured. We also discussed the functions of a Customer Success operations team, the engagement and growth team within customer success, and the populations they serve. We then dove into KPI’s, key metrics, and h...
Aug 18, 2021•40 min•Ep. 127
Today on the show we have Sharad Khandelwal, co-founder, and CEO at SentiSum. In this episode, we talked about what motivated Sharad to build SentiSum, how brands leverage their customer conversation data to help increase retention, and how many customer conversations companies have to have before a platform like Sentisum really makes a difference. We also discussed the different challenges organizations face when it comes to utilizing customer support data, how the market has evolved, and we th...
Aug 11, 2021•23 min•Ep. 126
Today on the show we have Alfie Marsh, Head of US GTM at Spendesk. In this episode, we talked about Alfie’s responsibilities as Head of US GTM, the differences between the go-to-market strategies launching in the US vs the UK, and the different ways their sales team contributes to retention. We also discussed the positive impact on churn by knowing exactly who your ideal customer profile is when sourcing outbound leads, identifying and reaching out to outbound prospects and how product positioni...
Aug 04, 2021•47 min•Ep. 125
Today on the show we have Srikrishnan Ganesa, co-founder and CEO of Rocketlane. In this episode, Shri shares his experience navigating through a couple of acquisitions and how trust is the main component that ensures a smooth integration between the companies, Shri also shared what Konotor (his first startup) did prior to being acquired by FreshWorks and what their growth looked like leading to the acquisition. We then discussed how Freshchat changed their target customer by taking a step back a...
Jul 28, 2021•40 min•Ep. 124
Today on the show we have Paul Lynch, CEO at Chargify. In this episode with Paul, as a venture partner at Scaleworks we talked about their focus on investing in companies and operating them to drive growth, how they decide which companies to invest in and the enormous impact churn and retention has on making their investment decisions. We also discussed how Chargify sets targets and the metrics they need to focus on, why a data analyst should be one of your first hires, or not, and lastly... is ...
Jul 21, 2021•36 min•Ep. 123
Today on the show we have an extremely exciting announcement to make and I am joined by a special guest, Panos Papadopoulos, partner at Marathon Venture Capital. In this episode, we talked about what Panos misses the most about being an entrepreneur having made his move into venture capital. We also discussed why every VP or C Level of a company should spend time on support and dove into why communication and alignment within a team is critical when it comes to combating churn and increasing ret...
Jul 14, 2021•40 min•Ep. 122
Today on the show we have Wayne McCulloch, Global Head of Customer Success at Google Cloud (SaaS). In this episode, we talked about the evolution of Customer Success at Salesforce, the greatest challenge Customer Success reps face and Wayne then shared his biggest learning moving into the Customer Success industry. We also discussed the importance of data when it comes to customer success at Salesforce, and dove into how to build a CS framework to reach a Salesforce or Google Cloud level of soph...
Jul 07, 2021•39 min•Ep. 121
Today on the show we have Etie Hertz, co-founder and CEO of Loris.ai. In this episode, we talked about why Etie decided to double down on support and build Loris.ai, how it works, and how their customers use it to reduce churn. We then dove into Etie’s experience building his previous company Payment Revolution. How they prevented churn at the very beginning and how they made sure to stay top of mind. Etie then shared how they dealt with the customer transition between Payment Revolution and Sho...
Jun 30, 2021•40 min•Ep. 120
Today on the show we have Jeremey Donovan, SVP of Revenue Strategy at SalesLoft. In this episode, Jeremey talks about his responsibilities as the SVP of Revenue Strategy at SalesLoft, what the word “Strategy” means to him and how he goes about implementing one. We also discussed how building free tools helps SalesLoft with lead gen, customer delight and ultimately retention, and Jeremey then shared some ideas he and his sales team implemented throughout the years to boost retention. As usual, I'...
Jun 23, 2021•38 min•Ep. 119
Today on the show we have Fletcher Richman, co-founder of Halp who now serves as the head of Product for Halp after the recent acquisition by Atlassian. In this episode, we talked about the role churn and retention rate when it comes to evaluating an investment opportunity. We then moved on to discuss what Halp is, the motivation behind building it, and how they made the decision to pivot from building an integration tool, to a standalone ticketing solution built on top of Slack and Microsoft te...
Jun 16, 2021•35 min•Ep. 118
Today on the show we have Esben Friis-Jensen, co-founder and Chief Growth Officer at Userflow. In this episode, we talked about Esben’s experience building out the sales team at Cobalt and how they kicked their sales motion off the ground, what triggered the need for customer success 3 years in, and what the benefits are of having sales incentives as a customer success manager. We also discussed how customer video interviews keep the Cobalt team on the same page when it comes to their ideal cust...
Jun 09, 2021•39 min•Ep. 117
Today on the show we have Teresa Anania, VP of Global Customer Success and Renewals at Zendesk. In this episode, we talked about effective ways to measure the impact of Customer Success, how Zendesk runs “experimentation programs” within their CS team, and Teresa also explains why time to value is their go-to metric. We also discussed the role of a Practise Manager and their function within the team, how CS and sales work together in upsells and renewals, and how Zendesk makes sure to mitigate c...
Jun 02, 2021•37 min•Ep. 116
Today on the show we have Eric Keating, VP of Marketing at Appcues. In this episode, we talked about how Appcues differentiate themselves from the pack operating in such a competitive market, how they use their own service and why their marketing team owns customer onboarding. We also discussed how big successful companies got away with shitty customer onboarding experiences and why you cannot afford to do it now. We then dove into the importance of continuous onboarding, and talked about how Ap...
May 26, 2021•32 min•Ep. 115
