In Customer Success, you benefit from ensuring that your customers are getting value from your product/service. Throughout our conversation, Adam stressed the importance of supporting your customers and guiding them towards value.

Masha

Okay, Adam, we've given you a little bit of our background and context, I would love to get yours as well, just to set the context for the interview. You know, what are you up to now? What are you up to a Klue? How did you get into Customer Success?

Adam

Yeah, well, I guess I'll start, I got my—I feel very fortunate, that I got my start in technology really, about 20 years ago. And I joined a very early-stage startup. And so I was employee number one after the Founder. 

Masha

Whoa.

Adam

And then, fast forward—lots happened—but fast forward 14 years, and we had sold that company, we were acquired through Vista Equity Partners. 

Masha

Oh, yeah!

Adam

And so it's all I knew with tech, so I was just like, "this happens all the time to everybody, right?" But lots of learnings there. We actually, you know, didn't realize it at the time, but I kind of developed our own proprietary Customer Success type platform that does a lot of the things that the Gainsights and others did, because you just had to, to understand what your customers were or weren't doing with your product. And you understood—and I think most people do understand this—but what features and functionality do your users need to be using, based on the use case, to actually get value. And if they're not doing those things, you gotta intercept them somehow. And so our initial one on this was literally built using a Microsoft Access database...

Masha

Nice!

Adam

That we then upgraded to SQL and then had visualizations in Tableau. So it was actually pretty good. And then I went from there wanting to just, you know, having been in a startup and growing, wanting to do something a little bit different. So I joined HootSuite at a time when they had just raised hundreds of millions of dollars, we were hiring all sorts of people. That was the tech company to join in Canada, bar none at that time. And that was super fun. It was still pretty small, the Customer Success team was somewhere around 14 people. When I left, just over five years later, it was about 150. And the company had grown a ton, revenue had gone from somewhere around like—I can never get the exact number—but somewhere around like 15 to 20 million to 200 million over that period of time. So that was a lot of fun. And when I first went into that, it was at a time where I wanted to experience an IPO. And it was like, this company is on that path... hasn't happened yet, but optimistic that it will eventually for them. And then, you know, we got to the point where we had—there were a lot of great people I worked with, we had built up this, what we think is a really good Customer Success team and best practices. And a lot of those people have gone on to do amazing things in other companies, which is cool to see. And I wanted to get back to an earlier state building. And so that's where I came across Klue, we were actually a customer of Klue at HootSuite. So I had some familiarity with the product and I had gotten to know the co-founders, almost three years before actually joining. And just like, timing wasn't right for me, it wasn't right for them. And then it was like, coming into 2020, it was like, "Hey, I'm ready for a change. This feels like the right thing." I had taken a couple months off. I started literally at the beginning of March 2020, super excited, all this energy. A week and a half in, the world changes and no one knew what was gonna happen, right? And I was thinking to myself, like, "what did I just get myself into?" We didn't even have healthcare, like, that's how early stage we were. And I have a young family and it's like, that just feels risky. And then pandemic hits, and you're like, are we ever gonna have a business in a week, right? Anyway, six weeks later, we had raised our Series A and now we're in Series B and the company has grown a lot. So we've gone from 30 to 170. Over that period, Customer Success team has gone like from 40 to 45 over that period. So it's been a lot of growth and a lot of fun, a lot of hard work, but it's  flown by.

Masha

That's awesome. What does the Customer Success team look like? Like where do you report into and what functions report up into you?

Adam

Yeah, so CS reports directly to the CEO. And the functions today at our stage is everything that happens post-sale. So what our Sales team focuses on new business logos and then our post-sale team is—so Customer Success is inclusive of the Customer Success Managers, Support, Onboarding, Account Managers, Renewal and Expansion sits with our team as well. And then we have some specialist functions that are more unique to our space. So experts in helping customers with content. And then our team also manages our partners who can help our customers with supplementary services.

Masha

Cool. Very cool. So thank you for setting that context. Really appreciate it. So we know that's an incredible experience and incredible journey you've had. Tell us, if you can, define Customer Success—what would you say if you had to define it, I don't know, in a sentence or a couple sentences?

Adam

Yeah, I think—so I'll give two, probably two descriptions. One is internal and one is external. The internal is more Customer Success is the ultimate revenue growth engine. When you get to a certain stage, and even though Klue is still a pretty young company, we will get to the stage this year, your revenue from existing customers—so your subscription revenue—will be more than your net new revenue infinitely. You've got your renewals, your expansion. And that's what is driving, especially with net retention, that's what's driving valuation. So I look at that as like a revenue growth engine and helping people understand that is really important. Where the function sits is less important than understanding that this is what actually drives your revenue. And then externally, I think it's in the title. Like customers—in some companies, you don't need a Customer Success Manager, right? A lot of PLG or product-led growth companies, you don't really need that. And so in cases where you do need a Customer Success team, I think it's all about helping the customer maximize the use of the product for their use case. It's about challenging them. This isn't easy, and we have to sort of push-pull and drag customers sometimes for their benefit. If it was easy, they'd do it by themselves or be able to do it by themselves. And so the way I think about it is customers come to us to help them solve a problem better or faster than they could do on their own. And so that's our job to help them do that, hold them accountable and push them, just like we should ideally do with our own employees.

Masha

That's awesome. That's a great definition. I love that. Where I guess my mind goes immediately to is like, why can't they solve it on their own? What is the customer kind of looking for in that solution? And how does CS end up helping them?

Adam

I think they want to solve it, but depending on the market, and the type of product you have—so take Customer Success as an example. Customer Success might be new to a lot of companies, or it's at different stages of maturity. And so you really have to help them understand what does good look like, how do you build a program? That takes education, it takes relationship building. In many cases, it's actually sometimes focused more on helping them navigate their own business than it is "Here's how to use the software."

Masha

Wow. Yeah, that's incredible. The follow-up question that I have to my first one is, this is a little bit of a weird scenario, but imagine you were stuck on a desert island doing Customer Success and you only got to take one metric with you to measure how well it's going and whether it's working, what metric would you take? Because that's what you take to a desert island... [Laughs]

Adam

So I would—well, my very strong opinion is that the most important thing is the outcome, which is net retention is the ultimate measurement. The one that I would focus on if there's just one would be the most important leading indicator, which is tied to adoption or engagement. And more specifically, it is, is the customer using your differentiated feature functionality? For two reasons. One, that should be your biggest value point and two, that's your stickiness feature functionality. And if you can get your customers using your sticky differentiated functionality, they're less likely to leave you. And so it would be something tied to engagement.

Masha

Gotcha. Very cool. And we started talking about this in the preamble a little bit but we'd love to get this on record. So how have you seen the role of Customer Success change and evolve over the last two years? And I guess, maybe the not just the role, maybe the function itself, but also kind of the surrounding enablement of it, like, what have you seen?

Adam

Yeah. So probably, I mean, that's kind of been happening for the past decade, really. And this is tied to—so whenever a new category is created, somebody takes the lead in this. Gainsight definitely did this in the Customer Success world. We actually had Nick Mehta come and speak at our kickoff about—

Masha

I saw that!

Adam

Which is so cool! Yeah, it's amazing. But it's really been this evolution from the classic—and I think there's time factors here. So it's the classic reactive to proactive that everyone sort of throws out those buzzwords. But that's because of the move, the shift to the cloud and subscription revenue. And you can't just sell a deal and then forget about it, right? The selling never stops. The helping customers realize the value never stops. And so we're having this conversation even in the company this week, where so many companies, most companies, put most of the emphasis on acquiring new business. That's where the marketing dollars go, that's where the enablement typically is around. But we have prospects coming into our landed customer base literally every single day. There's turnover depending on—we're in the MarTech space and the turnover in marketing roles is super high, right? So you have prospects in your customer accounts constantly, and we need to be marketing to them, too. So I think one of the biggest shifts is that understanding and making sure that Marketing isn't—when we think about Marketing's job is to help Sales sell, it's the definition of Sales has to extend into your existing customer base. So it's not just about new logos, it's got to be expansion, it's got to be retention. And so I think that also helps create this mindset of CS across the org because it's hopefully more clear to people how each function can contribute to the overall Customer Success.

Masha

Yep. And so with that, kind of arriving into the current state, what would you say is the biggest challenge to Customer Success today? Like what keeps you up at night?

Adam

Yeah, I mean, if there's one thing, it's always going to be are our customers using our products and taking advantage of our services in the way they could be to maximize value? The answer to that question is always going to be like, "no, not 100% of them". So how do we achieve that? I would say in my case, what I've experienced in the past is there tend to be two friction points for Customer Success. Usually, one is with Sales, and one is with Product. The one with Sales is typically around like right-fit customers, expectation setting, all that kind of stuff. The one with Product that I think is the worst kind is when you have like a buggy product and just the customer experience is kind of crappy. And that's a tough place to be for a CSM. Fortunately, for me at Klue, I have neither of those issues. So it doesn't mean customers aren't, you know, making asks on Product and things like that, they always are. But when they're not constantly complaining about issues, that's a much better place to be. And so for me, it's honestly, it's about the engagement, because we have, you know, 99% of our customers are in our ICP. And so if there's a challenge that's unique to us, it's we're in a newer category that where we're needing to educate the market. There's all sorts of different levels of priority that companies put on certain initiatives when it's a new category, same with CS, like, how much budget are you going to put to this? So there can be starts and stops, there's different levels of maturity. And so those are the pieces that probably consumed the most of my thought.

Masha

Cool. On your desert island, I will just have handed you a crystal ball. So now you have a metric and you have a crystal ball, you're set. So how do you see I guess, CS changing, kind of continuing this line over the next five years, let's say, like what are the early signals that you're seeing? 

Adam

Yeah, so I think it's been interesting, where we've seen the—and this is maybe more specific to cloud and subscription. But we've seen the shift that's happened with PLG companies, and that puts lots of pressure on the market. Lots of notions of like going from product-led growth to customer-led growth, which is a narrative you're seeing out there quite a bit. And then where I think that ends up, where actually it's already sort of going to some extent, is more likely this notion of user-led growth. And user-led growth is more about taking the best of what we all know or can learn from B2C, and taking all of those personalized experiences to drive engagement in a B2B environment. And so it's kind of the equivalent of going from like the account-based marketing, to like marketing to somebody on Facebook or Instagram. How do we do that in the B2B world? How do we personalize those user experiences so it's not just about the account, it's actually about that user and what I need or expect to get from this product. And then what becomes very interesting is, when you have, when you think about like the customer for life type analogy, it's actually like, the customer is a user. More and more people are moving to other companies, they're taking your product with them, or it's going to be something they ask for. And so I think there's something really interesting about doing more to empower the user. And the more users you can get to be big advocates and users of your platform, all those people take you into their next company, you get that second-order revenue, and I think there's just this massive untapped flywheel impact that can come from that.

Masha

Hmm, that's awesome. Adam, I love asking this question, what is the most controversial opinion that you hold about Customer Success that you wish other folks and other companies would just hurry up and catch up to already?

Adam

Yeah. Controversial... Well, something that I've sort of been saying, I feel like I've been saying forever, that now is becoming more widely accepted, is that Customer Success needs to own the number. And I think that's important for a whole number of reasons. But for anyone who's in Customer Success, the thing that I would try to say to them is, or try to help them understand is, when you own a revenue number, you have better influence or greater influence in your company. And so if you're in Customer Success, you think about, you know, again, I use Klue as the example, you get to a certain point where your subscription revenue and revenue from existing customers outpaces, by a pretty wide margin over time, anything from net new revenue. So if you're the owner of the subscription base, your influence grows over time. And I think that that notion 10 years ago, like, try to convince a CFO or CEO or Head of Sales that, good luck. And so now it's just become more widely accepted. And I think that's why you're also seeing CS get a seat at the table. So reporting to the CEO, or the Chief Customer Officer is something that, you know, you see more and more of, and I really believe that person needs to own the number.

Masha

Yeah, that's really encouraging. We have also heard you mentioned in the beginning that Account Management is now rolling up into Customer Success at Klue. We've seen that trend sort of beginning to happen, where Sales kind of lets it go and it comes over. What do you think is driving that? Like, what's the reasoning behind that?

Adam

Yeah, I'm not sure what's driving it at a sort of macro level. But for me personally, it's something that I was pretty firm on that we need to have this in Customer Success, at least to start with. Because there's just a lot of—I think there's some important differences based on the status of the company. So we're in this early stage, there's lots of market to be captured. And so we want AEs focused on go win new business, that's what you're really good at. So that's the profile of account executive that we want today. And then for expansion and retention, it's a bit of a different type of sale. And the challenges with quota-based folks, is you're going to take the easiest path to your quota. And the easiest path to your quota doesn't necessarily mean I'm paying attention to every account in my portfolio. That can't happen at our stage, in my opinion. And so, but overall, I think I see lots of companies experiment with this. And it's interesting, there isn't one best way to do it. Otherwise, everyone would be doing it the same way. Right? For our current situation, it makes sense for Account Management to sit with Customer Success. In the future, might that change? Sure. And I think as long as the incentives are aligned, I think that's the most important thing. And so to give an example of what that looks like at Klue, is if you—where I've seen this have issues in the past is where, friction will always enter where you have misaligned incentives, right? And so an Account Manager, if their variable plan as an example, is 60% expansion and 40% renewal, or maybe it's 80/20, my belief is the CSM plan should be the reverse of that. And so it encourages them to work together and they're working towards the same number. And you don't end up with the situation I've seen happen in the past where Account Managers only show up on a call. If there's dollars to be made from that call. Customers know that, customers hate that. They backchannel to their CSM and say, "Oh, is so-and-so gonna ask me about money again?" That sucks. No one wants that. Right? So by having the aligned incentives, I think it's in everyone's best interest.

Masha

Super interesting. Thanks for sharing that. Okay, last super cheeky question. If you had a Customer Success related superpower, what would yours be? And usually we kind of see people say, you know, either they love to feel like superheroes saving the day for their customers, or they love to make their customers feel like superheroes. But generally, if you could have a CS-related superpower, what would yours be?

Adam

Probably... well, my hope, my hope is that it would be related to team building and building a team that can scale into the future. So thinking about how do we go from, you know, how did we go from four people to 45 people in less than two years? And then how do we double that potentially this year? You need to be thinking down the line and hopefully you trust your instincts and talk to enough people who have done this too, but trying to see around corners, so to speak. So what role could I put in place now that is going to have an impact, you know, six to 12 months from now? That's, the stuff that really excites me is thinking about what might happen in the future and trying to plan for it now. And so I think I enjoy that. So I hope I do that well. But that's what I would say there.

Masha

Yeah. So seeing into the future mixed with like, building a team of Avengers, right? [Laughs]

Adam

Kind of, yeah, yeah.

Masha

Adam, thank you so much for taking the time. Really, really appreciate your insights. 

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