The connections you make through Customer Success uncover the whole shape of your business. Amy Lynn Wass guides us on how to best navigate that connective web.

Masha

Amy, could you give us a little bit of a flyover about yourself, your previous role at LogRocket, maybe some of your background? That'd be great.

Amy

So I have a background that Customer Success is kind of like Sales, people who kind of come from all different walks of life. So I majored in Hospitality and Tourism Management in school. Right after that, I went into travel sales for an educational travel company, which was awesome. And that's kind of where I really started with my Sales life. And then from there, I switched on over into a SaaS company and got more Sales experience there. And then I ultimately ended up at a cybersecurity company and did a mixture of Sales and Customer Success there. And that is really where I kind of got introduced to the world of SaaS Customer Success. And so I did that for a number of years. And then I moved on over to LogRocket as their Director of Customer Success and kind of built that team from the ground up. So I spent some time initially figuring out what type of Customer Success LogRocket needed, because every organization is a little bit different, depending on the product and the stage of the company. And then from there, started hiring a team. While at LogRocket, we had a team of seven CSMs. So definitely lots going on.

Masha

Wow!

Amy

Yeah, it’s been a wild ride.

Masha

Yeah, that's awesome. And so how was your team structured while you were at LogRocket? Who reported into you? And where did you report into?

Amy

So when I was at LogRocket, everybody on my team reported into me. We did have a couple that we worked side by side with like Engineering, Support, Product, things like that. And then I reported directly into our CEO.

Masha

Very cool.

Amy

So there was no VP of CS or anything like that. Just at the stage that we were at while I was there, it was not really needed. We didn’t really need--I've worked other places where it's been like a manager at CS and then a Director, then a VP. And then you can even have like CCOs, Chief Customer Officers.

Masha

We're seeing that role kind of come through. And maybe my first controversial question for you is, what is the best way in your experience or in your mind to actually organizationally set up Customer Success? And what is the worst?

Amy

Yeah, so I think I don't know if there's like a best and worst, because I think every company is a little bit different. And it goes down to the product. So it all is tied back to the type of product that you have. And the type of product that you have is going to determine the type of Customer Success that you have. I've seen it done where CS rolls up under Sales, which works for some people. I've seen it roll up under Support, which, I'm not a huge fan of that because I think those are two totally different muscles that you need to have depending on how technical the Support teams are. And so the way that I really like it is one of two ways--either having kind of like a Sales and CS leg go vertically, like side by side with each other. So you have CS report into could be managers, directors, VPS. And either at the VP level having a VP of Sales, a VP of CS, and then having them both report into a CRO, so a Revenue Officer, I think could be really important. Or if you're going to just kind of go the executive route, just keeping a CEO who is more like that Sales aspect and a Chief Customer Officer and more parallel with each other. Or you can even have like a General Manager then the hierarchies are all totally different. But I think it goes back down to what type of Customer Success Managers you are. So at LogRocket, we were what I call an all-encompassing CSM. So we owned every aspect of the customer journey. So post signature, we do the implementation along with our engineers, we did all of the on-boarding, all of the trainings, all the QBRs, EBRs, renewals, negotiations, upsells, cross-sells, expansion.

Masha

Wow.

Amy

Yeah, it's all encompassing, right? And as we got bigger, I can see potentially a need for breaking out those different aspects. So for what we were doing, it just made sense to kind of have all that living within Customer Success.

Masha

Yeah, absolutely. That's great. Maybe just stepping back a little bit. What does Customer Success mean to you? How do you know that it's working?

Amy

So I think you know if it's working based off of your Net Retention Score. Gross is fine. But, I mean, obviously, you want to have good Gross numbers, but I think Net is super important, because you want to see that your customers are growing.

Masha

Can you educate us a little bit on what those terms mean? [Laughs]

Amy

Oh, yeah, absolutely. So Gross as some people do it on a monthly basis, we did it on a quarterly basis. So Gross is you start every quarter with a number of dollars that you need to renew. And then whatever number of dollars you renew, divided by what was up for renewal, will be your Gross number. And then that is including any upsells, and any expansion that's happening. So you essentially add the renewal dollars, plus any upsell, expansion that you got in that quarter, and then divide it by the renewable dollars. And you can see how much that cohort has grown. So you want to have your customers growing quarter over quarter, year over year. That really signals that someone is super healthy. And to your point of what does Customer Success mean? I ask this at probably every single convention or every single, you know, webinar I go. What does it mean to them? And same thing, it means something different to everybody. I think there's a lot of confusion in the Customer Success space right now as to what Customer Success is. And I think it kind of in a way, almost hurts Customer Success. Because I've heard people say like, “Oh, well you're support.” It's like, no, maybe some people call Customer Success Support folks, but we're not. Or “Oh, you're Sales.” And it's like, maybe but I think you're referring more to like Account Management. It's all encompassing, and Customer Success touches every single avenue of the business except maybe not really so much so with like SDRs, or kind of that new business generation. To me, Customer Success is really in the voice of the customer, but then also the voice of the company itself. So making sure that not only are you doing right by the customer, but then we're also doing right by our company to make sure that we're educating our customers as much as possible as to what's going on in the platform best practices, are we hitting their success criteria, things like that. This is something I'm definitely also keeping a pulse on. Because I find it fascinating that nobody can give a textbook definition. I think it once again goes back to the type of product and what the needs are because Sales is Sales. Support is Support. Engineers are--well, engineers can be very intricate too. But Customer Success, if you have a very intricate product, maybe you need them to be a little bit more technical. If you don't have a super intricate product, maybe you need them to have a little bit more of Sales documents, so they can identify upsell, and kind of execute that way. So it's kind of a catch all and I usually advise people when they're looking for roles to really read the description on Customer Success, because I've seen it's synonymous with a Technical Account Manager, Account Manager, Sales Rep, Support Rep. And it's the catch all. It really is. And I think that's incorrect. Like data analyst or data scientist, there's so many different versions of what they are. It's an overall, all encompassing, and then it's like, break out into silos of what type of Customer Success that is.

Masha

Totally. Well, I guess, to that point, maybe--and you mentioned you started kind of going down this route a little bit. But to that point, how have you seen Customer Success actually evolve over the last couple years?

Amy

I've seen it evolve in a few ways. So especially for companies that are making a SaaS move. So maybe before they had like self-hosted or it was more of a perpetual type model, you didn't really need Customer Success, because you just had Sales Reps renew or maintenance year over year. But the way that I've seen it kind of grow is that there's a shift at some point, where a company that's really healthy at some point in time in their life will have in a calendar year more renewable dollars up for renewal than what their goal for new sales is. And I think a lot of companies, which is fascinating, tend to really focus on the sales aspect of it--which is fair, that's how it's always been. And then Customer Success sometimes once again gets like swept under the rug of oh, well, that's just Support or there's not as much stress on it. But then if you look at Customer Success Managers' individual books, sometimes their renewals are two times what a sales rep quote is for a year. And so you need to really understand that, okay, Customer Success is actually shifting at some point--I don't want to say be more important because everything's important. But there is a more important aspect of it. Because if Customer Success all of a sudden starts doing their jobs, you can have all the salespeople in the world selling new deals, but if nobody's renewing them, and growing them, your company is not going to do well. So I think I've seen it kind of gain more importance, I want to say. And kind of like float to the top as to realizing SaaS companies are not like a dime a dozen. I don't want to say that because there's--

Masha

But there are many!

Amy

There's many, there's competitors. It's a heavily competitive field. If you're not doing everything that you can to retain those customers, SaaS is less clunky than a perpetual model, you don't need physical hardware, things like that. So it's a much easier shift in most cases. So it's not only just about the technology anymore, it's about the people. And it's about the experience that they're getting. And it's about the value that they're seeing from these conversations. So I think trying to keep that in mind, too. And just making sure that you're staying kind of in line with every other area of the business. So with Product, Sales and Engineering--super, super, super important. And I don't even know, Customer Success has actually always kind of been around. But once again, it's had like an Account Manager name or Support Rep name. But now we're really starting to see the breakout because people are noticing more and more that the risk of churn is just as great as the risk of not getting new business.

Masha

Yeah, it's really starting to get more and more strategic. And I think you shouldn't be shy about saying there's definitely more importance being placed there. Because absolutely, there's that breaking point. I love the way you put that. How do you see it--I guess if you had a crystal ball. How do you see it changing kind of in the coming five years, let's say?

Amy

So this is something I think about a lot. And I think what we're going to start seeing--once again, it goes back to the product, right? So if the product--I'm just hypothesizing that the products are all very similar to mine. I think what we're going to start seeing is there's going to be more of a sales mentality shift to Customer Success. But the type of people that I profiled for hires typically, not always, tend to be Sales professionals that eventually did not want to let go of their customers, because they enjoyed the relationship that they built with them. That's partially why I made this switch as well was we build time cultivating this relationship and working with them. I don't want to just hand it off to somebody else to potentially mess up--

Masha

Mess it up. [Laughs]

Amy

Exactly! Hard work, you want to keep it kind of going. So I think what we're going to start to see is more collaboration. And there's already great collaboration between sales and CS. But I think we're going to start to see more there. And then I think we're going to also start to see just more complexity within the CSM role, because at some point it's gonna plateau, where it's like, okay, you know, we're offering great customer experience, we're offering awesome insights into the solution. We're expanding, we're cross-selling, what else will keep people around? So I don't even know if anybody knows the answer to that. But if you're working with two competitors, and their product offerings are exactly the same, their CS experience is exactly the same, and their pricing is exactly the same, what is going to be the trigger to make them stay with one company over another? So I think we're going to also start seeing more companies come out too. Kind of like an Alice or like a Postal.io, where we're getting much more relationship focused, where I can say, ‘Okay, I know my customer works for X Y & Z company, he's a huge biker, let me just send him, I don't know, a new helmet or something like that for taking a call with us and doing a road map review.' So I think it's gonna get super personalized. But then that also comes into question, too, of how do you do that on a massive scale? So I think it's going to be intricate and challenging, but I think it's gonna be fun.

Masha

Yeah, that sounds incredible. Thank you for sharing that perspective. I'm really curious to ask you this question now. What is the most controversial opinion that you hold about Customer Success that you wish other people would just hurry up and catch up to already?

Amy

Do I want to say this on the record? [Laughs] I think my most controversial opinion is probably what a lot of people think where Sales is always kind of seen as the golden child of a company. I actually would argue and say that Customer Success should be the golden child of a company, because that is really going to make or break your retention, which is what investors and boards and everybody actually kind of looks at, is if you're not having a growing business. So I think I would actually argue that Sales is not the golden child of an organization and Customer Success is--Product as well, but that's for another story. [Laughs] Don't get me wrong, they're incredible. But I joke with my VP of Sales all the time, and our Sales team is absolutely fantastic. But a big, big, big part of being successful at Customer Success is understanding your own product offering and how it ties to the business values of your own customers. And so the only way to really understand that is to know the product inside out and really become those subject matter experts, which I think Sales is very good at doing. But we are in the solution more than Sales is. So if we're in it kind of day in and day out, I'm always like, I think personally, we could probably sell you under the table, we just don't have the time to prove it. [Laughs]

Masha

That's great. That's a great take. I just want to dig on something that you said before, because I'm curious, I ran into this conversation with somebody else. Is value the same thing as revenue to you?

Amy

No, it's not. Because you can max out a company for what they're able to spend. And you can still find additional value with them. And they can still add value without adding dollar signs. So if you've reached a company that, you know, you're just absolutely maxed out--the way that we price is through sessions, retention and seats. So if we've kind of hit the max for how many sessions they need, we have a seat for every single person in the organization, and they buy every single line item that we're able to offer them. They're kind of capped on the upsell potential there. But then we can also do advisory calls with them or roadmap planning, or just ask them their opinion on the company and what direction they would ideally like us to go in and things like that, or happen to be references for us. So I think the value that you can still get, while traditionally it is tied to money. I don't think that's necessarily the case. Some of the best customers that I've had have been on the smaller side where I know there's no room for growth. But at the same time, if they're having an awesome experience, if they branch off, start another company, go somewhere else, if they're talking with their network, they're gonna say really positive things about your organization, which is then gonna, hopefully eventually turn into additional revenue down the line.

Masha

It's a great take, like looking at revenue really as a lagging indicator, less so the thing.

Amy

Right, exactly.

Masha

We ran through a bunch of questions. I have one more actually before I spoke to that one. We've heard a lot of Customer Success folks share with us that they love being superheroes to their customers, and kind of like saving the day and fixing everything. If you had to pick a Customer Success related superpower, what would yours be?

Amy

I wish I could be a mind reader, honestly. Because someone can tell you until they're blue in the face that everything's great, everything's awesome. But then, for whatever reasons, sometimes people don't wanna sometimes call out if they're unhappy with something, or if their budget's being cut or from their higher ups they can't move forward. So I would say probably a mind reader because you can do everything right as a CSM on paper and still have churn. The product could be there, they can have no support issues, they could be hitting all their criteria 100%. And then for just uncontrollable reasons, they can churn. And sometimes they usually don't want to mention that until it's either too late or--yeah I guess too late. Probably a mind reader, so I just know if I'm asking someone and they're like, “Oh, everything's great. Yeah, it's awesome.” Just kind of being like, “Is it?”

Masha

Are you sure? [Laughs]

Amy

“Is anything else going on that you want to tell me about?” Sometimes they have to put out RFPs and for discovery processes, and then somebody higher up says, “Oh, this one actually looks better than what you're currently using. Let's go with this.” And has nothing to really do with the relationship there. So I think that just to be able to get ahead of anything early on.

Masha

Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Maybe just to flip kind of the table to you a little bit. What is the one story that you wanted to tell us about your Customer Success experience, Customer Success life, maybe, that we didn't ask you about? What's one story that stands out for you?

Amy

I was always--I think it's more around like just my personal experience. So I've always been very siloed on the Sales side of the world and not as looped into other areas of the organization. So I think people who want to get into Customer Success really should understand that this is a great avenue to understand every single aspect of the business. So whether it's from Sales, whether it's from Product in the roadmap, whether it's from Engineering and understanding what they're working on, and the intricacies of the solution and how it actually operates and how it's built. Even to Finance and to HR and to--what are some other ones? Product Marketing, or Marketing in general, partnerships, things like that. You will get your hands and everything. So for me, I'm a very social person, I like being able to talk to people and kind of learn from them. And when I got into Customer Success, I was kind of floored with just how many different groups of people that I worked with, and how it was so integral to make sure that our communication stayed open, not only internally, but like also around the customer, too. So I think, once again, people tend to just assume Customer Success is either account management or some sort of technical support. What they're not realizing is it's taking every bit of what you're learning from each individual department and applying that to making your customer successful. So you might have similar type of calls, that every type of call that you have is going to be a little bit different, because every customer is different. So whereas with other roles that I've done, it kind of felt like Groundhog Day a bit, you're doing the same thing over and over again, quarter over quarter, year over year. With this, the problems may be similar, but they're very different in the sense of how they impact every single customer.

Masha

That's awesome. Thanks for sharing that!