Inside HPE’s Secret Weapon for Customer Success: Executive Interviews Explained!

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Hello everyone, thanks for joining us for another episode of CSM Practice, the podcast.

So if you're a big organization, you probably have a formal voice of the customer program. And sometimes there's a little bit of a silo between that and customer success. So how do we resolve for that? How do we run the voice of the customer program that actually results in a higher lifetime value? We're gonna share all the secrets. And if you're a small organization and

you don't have excellent engagement with your customer executives, or you do, but you don't feel like you're getting enough feedback and you're not closing the loop on things that they do tell you and it's not normal. I think you're gonna get a lot of Nuggets here on how you can take your relationship with executive sponsors of your existing account and take it to the next level.

Ready to get started. I have Susanna Esteban from Madrid. She's now in Silicon Valley for six months and I snatched her. I met her at TSIA. She's a lovely, lovely person. Super, super smart, and she's done her presentation at the same time as I delivered mine at the latest TSIA conference. And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is an amazing topic. We gotta bring her in. And she said yes.

So we work with more than 100 customer success managers around the world. They have responsibility over their own accounts at their local level. And what we do from a central level is partnering with them to accelerate and identify opportunities where we elevate the voice, raise the voice of their own customers at central level and work together to make things happen, to change with a customer focused mindset.

The idea is to use an standardized framework that we adopted from the TSIA in understanding how good of a job are we doing in delivering on these business outcomes that are expected. The second one is Making sure that we understand the experience throughout the life cycle, but with very strong focus in emotions. And I know this is a concept that in business is sometimes tricky.

even more now with all this AI explosion, going from generative to agentic to human AI, we think it's extremely important to recognize that we are human and as such, we make decisions with the heart. And then we justify what we have decided with the rationale, with the head. But this was bringing a new way to look at the customer journey with these emotions and the emotions drivers in the middle of the assessment process. And then once we have assessed

what is expected from an outcomes perspective and what is the experience that we are delivering this is of course at the core of the interview the third pillar is making sure we do something with that because as we always say it's better not to ask If we're not going to act, it will never be worse than spending one hour talking to a high influential customer persona.

in a top account or in whatever account, talking to the customer and not doing anything with that and not showing back to the customer what is that you're doing. So what we put together is what we call a closed loop action that basically has three dimensions. One is for of course the customer when we show for each one of the opportunities that have been identified who is going to be doing what.

in taking action. We formalize this with the help of the customer success manager who orchestrate this close loop plan and we come back to the customer. So like a return on investment on the time they have invested with us. We take the opportunity in this closed loop to recognize the customer success managers or the accounting members, basically considering the feedback that proactively the customer has shared with us.

So as part of this closed loop, yeah we have the improvement actions that come back to the customer. We have the recognition to the customer success managers and whomever in the accounting the customer has called out during the interview as doing a specifically good job, we take this opportunity to recognize from a central organization, from a non-biased

organization, the good job that the account team and the CSMs are doing. And of course, this is what I always said is the dream of any customer experience management professional. We take the opportunity to convert all these conversations in actual

here is very very easy because again during the conversations it's easy to identify what can we do upsell cross-sell work how can we mitigate contract and this translate clearly in quantifiable impact on the business bottom line, which is of course very much appreciated by executives and by the company and by the customers themselves, because we are gonna grow in whatever line they are expecting for us to help them.

And of course, we also have members from the BOC organization that we, like me, interviewing some of the customers. But the beauty of involving the CSMs in this interviewing role is also that they learn. from accounts that they don't manage directly. So it's a great opportunity to share what's going on and to leverage from whatever they're putting in place in their own accounts. in maybe suggesting to their other colleagues in the CSN community how could they just go in the same direction.

that allow the customer to just relax first and then also think while they're talking about what is important. So what we will have four main areas that we will ask the customer to choose from. to go into the conversation in more detail. These four areas have to do with how we as a technology company Can we help our customers to, number one, maximize their operational performance? This means basically stability, so having no disruptions, uptime as expected, compliance.

to all these vertical new regulations. Again, coming back to the AI, many things are transforming, manufacturing.zero, the new healthcare, a lot of things we need to be in compliance with. The second topic is how do we help our customers in optimizing their own costs?

in buying either what we call CAPEX or OPEX or helping them to maximize the productivity of their own staff or prevent from the attrition to occur. The third one is how do we help our customers to grow their own revenue by either acquiring new customers, maintaining the ones that they already have or expanding those.

And the fourth one, which was added last year and has a lot of traction, a lot of focus, is having to do with sustainability. How do we help our customers to decrease their carbon emissions or their energy consumption, and also how do we help them to just support any kind of circular economy refurbising recycling initiative.

Con estas cuatro áreas en mente y diferentes subcategorías que he explicado, lo que le preguntamos al cliente en esta primera 30 minutos de la conversación es We have stars like on top of the we share one slide with all these areas and we ask the customer to just choose between three to five areas of these subcategories.

The second slide is just taking those and asking them to rate us with a scale that goes from zero to ten on what is the score to your point because it's important that they focus on the score and then they provide the why. Otherwise it gets message so they will tell us okay for if they have selected operational they will tell us okay operational is very important for me and i give you a three out of ten and these are the reasons why

And then the third and last slide that they see is basically this one. Here will have the scale 0 to 10 and they will have to rate each of these faces. From zero to ten. What is the experience of working with us in the discover and consider phase, the purchasing phase, the onboarding phase, and the reasons why?

six different life cycle phases that we have adopted from what we call infinite loop. What we did was aggregating results to understand what were the emotions. In each of the phases of the journey and which were the moments of truth, just to prioritize what is that we want to make improve and why.

journey with the consolidated insights from all the surveys, this is what we were able to learn. And was basically that at the two customer persona levels that we normally interview, which are the CIO and the operations manager. Basically there were very different emotions when you were considering the upstream process or the downstream process. So the orange means emotions were kind of concern or hesitation, lack of confidence, while green was

positive emotions. From here what we determine because the moment of truth having to do with expanding and renewing, of course, is the moment of truth of every other moment of truth. If they decide not to expand with us, then We have an issue. So focusing on the emotions here in this last part of the journey. We were able to basically the issue was that the emotions in this phase were basically the customer were worried and were disillusioned of using our solution like two years ago.

And then we said why? And this is why I insist so much in understanding what is behind this emotion. What are the emotion drivers? So in this case they were worried because they didn't thought that they were going to be able to achieve the business outcomes that they were expecting to achieve with our solution and they were not maximizing the utilization of what they were buying. And then with that is

where we said, okay, let's understand why. Why they're not meeting this business outcome. They why they think they might not be able to meet all the business outcomes that they would expect of I mean out of working with us. so we identify the improvement themes we prioritize them and we took action these three slides the first one is the framework for them to choose the second is the framework for them to

score us in these business outcomes that they have selected and provide insights on how can we improve. And the third one is the customer journey with six phases where we would ask them using the same scale that goes from zero to 10, 10 B invest. how would you rate the experience in each of those phases that you get working with us so we basically get quantitative results and qualitative insights for business outcomes in one side for life cycle experience in the other one

this more strategic value-based realization that they're thinking through in this conversation. And of course we come back to the account team and say, hey, these are the areas of interest that need to be developed with the help of the customer success manager.

Alright, let's get back to it. This is where the good stuff really kicks in.

then we have what we call customer insights architect, meaning the one that is gonna have to summarize all these insights in actionable document. And sometimes an observer just to train these people in again the future role of leading interviews. So we normally say at the end, thank you for all these lovely inputs and because customers are very clear and very candid and very honest in their feedback. And we said if you now will close your eyes

What does it mean to work with us in HPE based on all this insight that you have provided? What the rating will be and why? And then we also said if you feel comfortable, only if that is the case and without going into branding names or brand names, how that experience will be if you will think about working with our competitors. And this gives us a lot of information about what is that we want to keep doing and what is that maybe we need to rethink.

And if time permits, it depends. We also asked closing questions, which is if instead of being here today with let's say Susanna and whomever is with me in the interview, you will be here today with our CEO. Antonio Neri, what would you say Antonio should be the main opportunity for improvement that we have?

of course, in making sure that the feedback is properly captured. So in a matter of days, they will receive the notes, validate the notes, and then we come back to the account team as a post-interview meeting. together the action plan with the CSM role orchestrating that because they know who is who in the account team. And then we come back to the customer with this action.

Somebody takes action. How do you hold your own internal team accountable on closing the loop?

two hundred and fifty actions at account level that are identified and put in place. But also when we see patterns across accounts, across geos, this is embedded in a quarterly report that gets up to all the executives in the company on what is that we need to improve. It's two dimensional kind of improvement strategy. Plus, when we do these customer journeys that has the strategic customer journeys with a three years horizon, these inputs are also being made part of the customer journey to be.

versus what it is now. And the follow up goes in the hands of the CSMs. As I said, very much related with the customer success plans. So we put together the action plan, the commitment communicated back to the customer, but then is the customer success manager follow up that counts to close the loop in a constant manner.

To say, hey, my program is actually making a difference. What kind of KPIs do you track? Do you use any technology, any systems? to sh literally show that there's a correlation between the time that you had that discussion to the time that something changed in like out of a hundred accounts where you had an interview, we see a difference, we see a trend.

or reinforcing their efforts. This is qualitative feedback that we track. Of course, the customer feedback. Do they feel the conversation has gone? What type of value they see in the conversation and the action plan that comes together? afterwards. But also the industry and the academia within us to like today have the honor to be part of many different forums at both the industry and the academia with thought leadership because this connection with business growth is not something that is

usually in place for again customer experience programs which normally focus more on continuous improvement. But how do you translate that into actual impact on the bottom line? This is not so common. And it's very useful for us in the world. It's, as I said, it's our dream. I mean, I was in the past involved working in many other different programs, survey programs with more than 40,000 surveys being launched every month and whatever.

But in the end you have to go into very complex mathematical regression analysis, mathematical hypothesis, wait for two years to be able to prove if the overall satisfaction increases This is all in my eyes really a waste of time. It's like an academic exercise. It's not practical. And here it's very practical. You talk, you identify, you put things in place to the point that with the help of the CSMs, what we do is we quantify

las oportunidades que vienen en el funnel con estos insights. Y puedo decir que básicamente esto significa que estamos contribuyendo a apoyar el crecimiento de negocio en 30% de la valoración de la billeta. this is the way we track it and of course this is all reported in in power bi format so everyone can access to their own account their own impact from a billing value perspective of their own improvement plans

and also share points with very restricted access because all this information is confidential. So you can only access to the information on your own account. But yeah, you have everything there, the pre interview meeting, the post interview meeting, the action plan, the interview record. We also put together like an initial a market analysis before going into the interview with the help of the CSM to make sure that

we are all acquainted on okay, what is the situation with this customer, with the solution they bought from us. So there is a lot of records before and after the interview to set the scene and to connect

such interview successful. I'll tell you what my takeaways are and then you can add or detract any of those. One, don't have your CSM do the interview. Maybe have somebody in marketing do it. Or somebody in sales do it, but don't have the person actually intimate with that count do it. Secondly, make sure that you ask the right questions.

And when you ask about outcomes and when you ask about the journey, give them a buffet to choose from so that the conversation is efficient, but you also have control over it and you can frame it. to specificity and then before you ask open-ended question, ask for the number. It gives the person a chance to give you sort of from a numeric standpoint immediate

point of view to what to focus on, where are the biggest gaps so they could focus on the right priorities. Otherwise you don't have a holistic information. And lastly, do share the information with the CSM. and internal teams so that we can have an immediate short impact with the CSM taking it to an actionable plan, but also a strategic long term impact by sharing it with the ELT. Did I miss anything? Was that something like that?

capture the value in the way you have described it, make it objective, non-biased, and for sure the CSM cannot interview their own account. And then maybe making sure that you have a sponsorship. Because and no matter the size of the company, you always need sponsorship because there is always the beginning, okay, what is in here for me, why is different so just having executive sponsorship that this is gonna work, the reason why and this is part of our mission.

that will help to mitigate the initial resistance to chains and then also make sure that you design these with the CSMs involved, this needs to be something that they find to be useful. So you need to adapt that to the reality of your company with the input.

much easier to understand what the customer is coming from if you have this, let's say, free mindset already acquired from the CSM and the accounting. In the pre interview meeting is normally the CSM participating and orchestrating that, but not only the CSM is the account executive is the what we call the delivery for organization involved the preset channel anyone that has

Any meaningful information to be shared. So you are good to go when you are confronting the customer because it's a very important conversation to have and you need to be well prepared.

But I mean this is just the second phase, just to when you scale it up to a different level. Just to start with Teams, PowerPoint and one extra file. Very, very easy. And a very positive attitude with everybody involved.

Type in in the comments below and then hit me up on LinkedIn to let me know if you actually did it. What came out of it? Oh, I'd love to invite you back on this YouTube channel and interview with you to see what opened up for you. What take did you take on it? This is Dana. Thank you so much for coming. You're absolutely delightful.