Masha
Perfect. And I'll actually pass you over to Anwar, for the interview, I'll be taking notes in the background, and maybe we'll chime in, but otherwise, we'll kind of fly on the wallet.
Leslie
Sure thing. Yeah, I took some notes. So if I look down, I'm just kind of checking to see what I had, you know, written down a couple notes. But yes, I certainly will be, everything I'm going to share with you today's is based on, you know, my own experience, too. I just wanted to try to be as prepared as it could be.
Masha
That's so lovely of you. Thank you. [Laughs]
Anwar
Alright, I guess more of like an introduction. So let's start with you. Tell us about yourself and your current role.
Leslie
Great. Sure. And my name is Leslie Riley. I'm currently a Customer Success team lead at a company called Integrate. I've been there, I actually just celebrated my three year work anniversary in September. So, hooray! And, you know, not surprisingly, in the tech world these days, that sort of makes me almost a grizzled veteran of the Customer Success team. So yeah, I've seen seen a number of changes during that three year period. And now I'm now a team lead there.
Anwar
Fantastic. So how large is your team right now at Integrate?
Leslie
I mean, overall, gosh, this is where I don't want to get in trouble. Because if I misspeak, then I'm gonna kick myself. But as a company, we're definitely over 200 employees. As a Customer Success team, we're approximately 15, I would say, give or take.
Anwar
Good. And how are you guys organized or structured? We'd like to get an understanding of what structures in CS teams look like?
Leslie
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I would say right now, again, gone through a couple of iterations here, but we have, the bulk of our team is based in the US. We do have two UK based folks. Right now, we have a couple of different levels. So we have Customer Success, I believe, specialists, then CS, you know, CSMs Customer Success Managers. Right now we have a single team lead, which is myself. And then above me is the manager of the team. So she's the manager of Customer Success, not a Customer Success manager, because we don't want to confuse things. But, as well, as part of the Customer Success team, we also have to account directors, and those two folks, they are more specialized with our largest global accounts. So they have a smaller volume of customers, but they have our biggest customers. So like global multi-region, you know, multi-department groups that you can only handle one or two of those at that size. And then they may have one or two assistants or Customer Success specialists under them to handle that volume. So, again, a bit of iterations there. As a Customer Success team lead, I don't have anyone directly reporting to me. But my role is mainly, is to help be sort of, not a buffer to the manager, but to help sort of with the onboarding of some of our newer Customer Success Managers. And we have two squads, the entire team is broken into two squads. And the purpose of the squad model is really just to have the opportunity to have smaller conversations with, again, a smaller group within the team, because that helps to evoke more, you know, just sometimes it's easier to ask questions and a smaller team than it is to ask question to the wider team. Just for simple things like, "am I supposed to know this already and I feel silly asking in the wider audience, but now I feel a little bit more comfortable, it's a smaller group," that type of thing. So the squad model was created. And honestly, there used to be two team leads, I was part of one of the squad's just as a Customer Success manager. And there were two team leads. One of those team leads actually got promoted to the the manager of the entire team. And then the other team lead left the company for a new opportunity. And so I got promoted as one of the team leads and in the interim, I am basically just covering both of those squads right now. I'm sure they will be hiring, like promoting, a second team lead at some point but for now, I'm kind of the sole team lead. And my job is to jump into both of those squad calls to help facilitate those conversations. And I've also sort of taken it upon myself to, as I mentioned, helps with some of the newer Customer Success folks that have joined us. And, you know, personally, like I set up a weekly meeting with those newer folks, just to be like, "Hey, let's just make this a q&a. What questions have come up this week? You know, let's just throw them out there." And so that those questions can be asked. And, you know, again, answered in a smaller forum, and by myself, but also for some of the Customer Success folks who have now been here for six months, who are still new, but again, have a lot of more knowledge where they can share it with the real newbies. And everyone is just learning from each other. So that's a model I think that has bode well for us both. I think that's right. [Laughs] Yeah, it's been successful thus far.
Anwar
I like that. That sounds very collaborative, as opposed to like some of the—it's more of a human-based collaboration, as opposed to putting tools in place to share information.
Leslie
Well, we do have those too. But yes, it really, I agree with you Anwar. I feel like one of the strengths of our team specifically, is that collaboration aspect to it. And I've been in other companies, not in a Customer Success model, if you will, but in other departments and other companies where it felt very rigid, as far as, you know, are more segmented, I should say. And that collaboration, more competitive, if you will. And that hinders collaboration, in my opinion. I think as a Customer Success person, and my fellow CS colleagues, we're kind of all of that mindset. Like, hey, we want to work together, we want to, you know, like Kumbaya, we all want to help each other. And really, it's not an environment of like, "Hey, if I can make you look bad, I'll look better, and I can get a step up." We don't have that attitude at my company. We just want to help each other. And really, if you do well, it's, it's not hurting me. It's like, hey, great, good job, you got promoted, that's awesome. Maybe I can learn from you, like, what are you doing well? What can I do to kind of get to that level that you've just achieved? That's more of the mentality that we have.
Anwar
I see. And who does the CS team report to then?
Leslie
Yeah, so we have a manager, again, who is the direct reports to all of the Customer Success team. And then the manager reports into a CS VP, so a Customer Success VP. And again, they're more on the executive level, and they're meant to, sort of represent us across the board for the entire organization. Like, how is Customer Success represented here? You know, how do we fit in with Sales, with Services, etc. And building processes and that type of thing. Again, more bigger picture role. And then that person, that VP reports, now, we actually have a brand new Chief Customer Officer at Integrate, who now he owns the Customer Success channel, as well as the professional services team. I mean, collectively, we're all customer facing. So it does make a lot of sense that that person, we have a single person that oversees both of those channels, and they're gonna work on, you know, how can we be more collaborative? And what can we do, again, just to continue to accelerate and improve things across those organizations.
Anwar
Fantastic. What does Customer Success mean to you?
Leslie
So, yeah, I wrote down a couple of things that that when I think of, you know, good Customer Success, like what what is one, what are the skills that one I think has to excel in to do the job well? And I mean, off the top of my head, definitely, you have to be a multitasker. You have to be a problem solver. Ideally, if you are doing the things right, you become a trusted adviser. And I think that follow up question about "how do you know if it's working?" That you gain the trust of your customers, that they know that they can come to you for good things and bad and that you're going to help them get through—and I mean, let's not kid ourselves. It's usually when there's an issue, right? But they know that they can come to you and that you're going to help guide them through whatever that issue might be. It's not always that we have all the answers. I definitely have learned that. But that's okay. We don't need to have all the answers, we just need to make sure that we're bringing the right people into the conversation, we're addressing it quickly, we're communicating with our customers on a regular basis to make sure that they're informed. Because sometimes half of the battle is to have internal conversations, brainstorm, figuring all this stuff out, what's happening. But we have to make sure that we're continuing to communicate to the customer. Here's where we are. Here are next steps. Here's where we are. Here are next steps. That kind of thing, so that they don't feel—like when they're coming to us to ask for updates, that's not ideal. We want to proactively be reaching out to them, letting them know, again, status, next steps, cut down on any potential confusion, making sure all teams are in sync. So that those are some of the characteristics, in my opinion, that make us a good Customer Success manager.
Anwar
With that framed up, what experience from your past would you say is an absolute gold medal winning shining example of Customer Success done right?
Leslie
Yeah, I would say, if I think about it from a single account perspective, if you have, let's say, a global account, where you have multiple regions—so like, in the US, maybe you have an enterprise region and an SMB region, and then you have multiple, and then outside of that you've got AMEA contacts and departments, you're working with, APEC, etc. And then you have the executive team. You're balancing a lot, you're juggling a lot of different contacts. And, you know, each team has their own unique issues and that type of thing. A gold standard is somebody who is able to organize all of those different factors and variations, and be able to, you know, have a central point of contact, be able to share with the executive team what's happening in all the different regions, addressing all of their unique concerns, making sure that your internal teams from a services perspective are addressing each of those locations, kind of being on top of everything. As a Customer Success person, you're not in there necessarily doing all of the, you know, turning all the levers and all of that, but you're managing the people that do. And that you're making sure that issues are getting addressed. Communication is constant. And again, that the executive team feels like, okay, Integrate has this. There's a lot going on, but I know that they have it, and I can ask them questions, and they'll be able to tell me, "here's where we are with this, here's where we are with this" via project plans, you know, whatever organizational charts, whatever tools are needed to help share all of the complex details. That we have that, we could share that with the customer, and that we ourselves know what's going on.
Anwar
I see. How often are you communicating how progress is going on the CS team with executives?
Leslie
I mean, again, I'm thinking of myself in one specific account that I have, and I have a monthly executive meeting with this particular account. And full transparency, when we set up that that meeting, we were dealing with some outstanding issues. So we set it up to be like, okay, let's walk through, here are the outstanding issues and here is what we're doing to address them. And when that was going on, that meeting I think actually started, could have started on a weekly basis. Because again, there were like, "Alright, we got some fires, we're going to address them." So we wanted to be in regular contact with the executive team to share what, again, progression of those items. But happily, we have knocked off a lot, you know, many of those fires, many of those issues have long since been addressed. So now we can meet with them on a monthly basis. And we're not talking about like, we got to fix this, this, this, this and this, it's more about like, okay, what are we doing, what are next steps? How are we growing the account? What new channels are we working to bring into the account? And that type of thing. So the conversation has changed, and the frequency, honestly, it can be a less frequent conversation, because these are more strategic level conversations that are not necessary, you know, to have on a weekly or even necessarily a bi-weekly basis.
Anwar
Given your time in Customer Success, how have you seen the role evolve over the last two years?
Leslie
Yeah, I was thinking about this. And from my own perspective, not necessarily maybe all of the industry, although there's some overlap, I would say, the CS role, again, from my own perspective has kind of become less tactical, less getting into the weeds in the platform itself and trying to address issues. And, again, it's usually the issues that you have to get to get into the weeds and, and we've become, we're evolving into more of a strategic role. And that's really where we're supposed to be, you know, we want to make sure we, again, become a trusted adviser to our customers, understand their industries, what their pain points are, etc. So that we can kind of think bigger picture. And again, how we can help them. Again, not just in the weeds, but more bigger picture type of thing. And I would say, in addition to that, one of the things, and this is will always be our foundation as a Customer Success team, is retention, right? We definitely want, you know, just eliminate churn if at all possible, or minimize it at a minimum. So that will always be a core thing. But we're evolving from just retention to a growth center as well. So, that mindset of like, okay, yeah, of course, we want to make sure they're happy, and using all of the things that they've purchased with us thus far. But we also want to keep our ears open. "Oh, you have a pain point in this area? Oh, well, actually, are you aware that we have a product that can address that? You know, perhaps we can talk to your events team, we're not talking to them today, we're talking over, you know, to this marketing team, but maybe if you could connect us with this team, we could help understand what their pain points are," that type of thing. So evolving, again, from straight out like, okay, don't have anybody churn to alright, we want to make sure they're happy, but we also want to see how can we grow these existing accounts?
Anwar
So we're also seeing this shift, and we've heard through other interviews, that this is a shift that they're also experiencing. I'm curious, what challenges has this shift posed to you and your team? If any?
Leslie
I mean, as far as a challenge goes, I mean, I would say, sometimes we, it is hard to get out of the weeds. If you're dealing with services, issues or issues around the product, and I don't want to give the impression that, you know, we have a great product. [Laughs] So I want to make sure that that's, yeah, just always want to make sure that that's that's communicated, but, but yeah, it nothing is perfect, stuff comes up. And so when you end up focusing on sort of those in the weeds, you're just putting out those fires, you know, again, if you have a customer that just, like this issue happened, and then this issues happened, and then you have a change maybe in the team, right? You have a new services person, so they're picking something up, and sort of that continuity can can take a dip, if you will. Those types of things, it can be challenging to get out of the weeds and focus more on the bigger picture stuff. Because you have to have like a solid, strong foundation, to then say, hey, let's look at beyond, what's beyond what we have today and how can we help you? And how can we help you in these other areas? So yeah, you know, full transparency, that can be difficult. And I'm sure that, I think many tech companies will have those same issues. But ideally, that's what you want to do. You want to say, "Alright, we've got a good foundation, things are going, they're pretty smooth. So let's talk about, customer, what are your strategies for next year? How are you guys changing? Are you going to have the same—?" Our focus is on marketing teams, right? So we asked them, "What are your marketing strategies? What are your objectives for next year? Are you guys gonna use the same channels that you were using, you know, in 2021 next year? Oh, you're pivoting over here? Well, let's talk about that. And how can we help?" So that's what we want to have. Those are the conversations we want to have. Just sometimes it's hard to kind of pull ourselves out of the weeds when we're, again, addressing issues.
Anwar
If we're to give you a crystal ball, how do you see CS changing over the next five years?
Leslie
Yeah, so one thing that's sort of happening now, but I think that COVID has accelerated this, is sort of the way that we're communicating and how we're communicating with our customers. So pre-COVID, we were definitely trying to do more in-person conversations. And, you know, any CS can have accounts that certainly are not all local. It would be nice if everything was within, you know, 50 mile radius, but it's just not feasible. So there's definitely going to be times where it's like, yeah, I have a couple of West Coast accounts, and maybe I'll fly out there and try to see a couple of them in the San Francisco area, you know, etc, hit a couple birds with one stone. But with COVID, obviously, that really has, we've pivoted over to almost a completely remote model. And that probably isn't going—I mean, yes, we definitely want to go back to more in-person, if and when we can. But it's going to be really difficult going forward to have people from different departments, necessarily all in one conference room at one time, because those teams are remote now, you know? So, yes, I think from a digital perspective, we're just going to continue to see more of what we're doing today, which is Zoom calls, remote conversations and that type of thing. So happening today, but we'll probably continue to happen going forward, even, you know, as COVID becomes less of an issue. So I'd say that's one thing. Some other items, like, from a data perspective, I think that CSMs are going to become more data driven. And I think of that both in an external and an internal model. So externally data driven, so what am I talking about? Well, we need to be able to show metrics to customers to say, "Here's your ROI, right? Here's what you're getting with us." Because relationships are crucial and super important. But at the end of the day, as much as like, we're buddies, and we love working with each other, we have to give our customer contacts, reasons to defend that spend, right? Like, okay, well, this is what they're getting when they're working with Integrate, this is what we're saving from a cost perspective, from a time savings perspective. So they can turn around to their managers and be like, "Guys, look at me, I made this great investment with Integrate, here's what we're getting, we definitely want to renew with them." So we have to show those kind of metrics so that they have a reason to renew with us. So that's an external perspective. Internally, we can use data better, I think, we're going to continue to evolve using data from a churn and growth perspective. You know, which customers have a potential to churn? Which ones are good opportunities for growth? You know, quite honestly, we're doing that internally right now. Like from an account health perspective, you know, red, green—red, yellow, green, right? So how does the CSM determine what's a red account, versus yellow, versus green? I mean, there are certain factors, certain definite criteria that we can use. But part of that criteria is kind of like, yeah, my gut tells me we're in a good place, you know, that's not ideal. Your gut should not be part of the equation. So what other metrics can we use internally that says, no, no, these guys are green and here's why. So I think that that will continue to evolve as well, whether it's like with CSM tools like Gainsight, or ChurnZero, those type of things, you know, better utilizing those to pull in real data to give, again, just better insight into what our customers are doing, and like where they are from a health perspective.
Anwar
So in our conversation with CSMs, we've come to understand that they really want to be superheroes for their customers. [Laughs] So if you could have a Customer Success superpower, what would that be?
Leslie
Yeah, I don't know if this is all that exciting. But I would say, I think mine, if I could have a photographic memory, I think that would be awesome! Because, you know, just to keep track of all of your contacts, and where they are located and what products they have, and what issues they're dealing with and who just got promoted and who left the company and where did they go? What account did they go to? And, I mean, obviously, we've got lots of tools to organize that data. But even like, when you have a meeting, and they're telling you a bunch of things, and it's like, did I get it all down? Did I remember? Did I write it all down, you know, correctly? And do I have time to go back and listen to a recording? Having a photographic memory, be able to retain all that data that's swimming around one's head, I think would be a fantastic superpower to have in this role for sure.
Anwar
Is there anything you want to add about the life of Customer Success that you want us to know about right now?
Leslie
I know, I was thinking about that question, actually not too long before, and one of the reasons I was also late, I was like, do I have the right answers? [Laughs] You probably don't need to add that into the final product if you don't mind. You already have blackmail material on me. I would say, you know what I would tell like, my earlier self, is that, you know, don't necessarily wish or hope for a perfect account, because it doesn't exist, and it's okay. And also don't expect to have all the answers, because you never will. Just know that, it's how you handle things, how you handle adversity when it comes, because the inevitably it will come. So, again, if you don't have all the answers, find the people that do. If an issue comes up, like jump on it, don't run from it, because it's not going anywhere, and it's just gonna keep getting bigger. So I know that stuff is kind of common sense. But it does have more impact. I can think about those things now. And I'm like, I guess I knew this before, but it really, you know, it just really resonates now more than maybe it would have earlier. So I think those types of things, you know, if you keep that stuff in mind, then you won't be afraid. Like oh my god, something's happening. It's like, okay, whatever, let's jump on it and figure it out and get past it. And that's sometimes strengthens bonds with customers too. So, you know, sometimes a little adversity isn't the worst thing in the world.
Anwar
Fantastic. That is an awesome answer. [Laughs]
Leslie
Alright, that said, I'm going to take the rest of the day off!
