A B2C-to-B2B evolution | Georgia O'Farrell

[Dillon] (0:00 - 0:00)

Rob, what are you doing?

[Rob] (0:01 - 0:02)

Cleaning my camera.

[Dillon] (0:03 - 0:05)

It's not going to help, buddy.

It's not going to help.

[Georgia] (0:06 - 0:09)

Well, this is my podcast debut, so...

[Dillon] (0:09 - 0:10)

We love those.

[JP] (0:10 - 0:12)

We need an alarm. We need an alarm.

[Dillon] (0:13 - 0:14)

We'll give you a rating afterwards.

[Georgia] (0:15 - 0:15)

Oh, perfect.

[Rob] (0:18 - 0:22)

If we gave ourselves ratings, we'd be like C plus students.

[Dillon] (0:23 - 0:35)

Jeez, I'm generous. JP, did you want to sing before we jump into this?

[JP] (0:35 - 0:36)

I'm going to sing as part of my hello.

[Dillon] (0:37 - 1:00)

Oh. Okay. Well, this will be good then.

Okay. What's up, Lifers? And welcome to The Daily Standup with Lifetime Value, where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day.

I got my man JP here. JP, do you want to say hi?

[JP] (1:02 - 1:08)

Georgia? Georgia. Hello, everyone.

We got the right one baby today.

[Dillon] (1:09 - 1:12)

Without the visual, the visual is a real problem.

[JP] (1:12 - 1:14)

That's okay. I can't see the visual either.

[Dillon] (1:15 - 1:19)

Oh my goodness. We've got Rob here. Rob, do you want to say hi?

[Rob] (1:20 - 1:22)

What's up, Success Satchmos?

[Dillon] (1:22 - 1:28)

Success Satchmos. That's...

Okay. Okay. And we've got Georgia here.

Georgia.

[Georgia] (1:28 - 1:30)

Hello, everyone.

[Dillon] (1:31 - 1:37)

And I am your host. My name is Dillon Young. Georgia, thank you so much for being here.

Would you like to introduce yourself?

[Georgia] (1:37 - 1:57)

Yeah, sure. My name's Georgia O'Farrell. I am the Customer Success Manager at MagicPlan.

It's an app for mapping interior floor plans. I actually came into success from non-profit fundraising. So I've worked with customers in a lot of different aspects, and I've been in customer success for about two years now.

[Dillon] (1:58 - 2:08)

Interesting. Yeah. Thank you for being here.

So you know what we're doing here. We ask one simple question. What is on your mind when it comes to customer success?

So can you hit us with it?

[Georgia] (2:09 - 2:19)

Yeah, sure. First, Jean-Pierre, I want to thank you for the very nice welcome. Because that's happened since I was in elementary school.

Roll call, people sing that song. So...

[Dillon] (2:19 - 2:21)

Do they put on sunglasses and...

[Georgia] (2:21 - 2:23)

They did not do that part.

[Dillon] (2:23 - 2:25)

They did not do that part.

[JP] (2:27 - 2:29)

That's Ray Charles. That was not Satchmo.

[Rob] (2:29 - 2:31)

I don't have a good musical acumen.

[JP] (2:31 - 2:33)

I was like, what are you talking about?

[Rob] (2:33 - 2:41)

I was gonna let it go. It's all problematic. Can I keep doing this to myself?

Georgia, please go ahead.

[Georgia] (2:41 - 4:00)

Yeah, not to derail it. So the main topic on my mind these days is effective communication at scale. Rob and I have had some chats about our setup at MagicPlan.

And we are an app started as a B2C and have been like more and more going into B2B. But our customer success functionality really started as technical support reactive. And we've been doing more of the proactive work for a little over a year now.

But we're not meeting with every customer. We're not doing a month-long onboarding session with all of our customers. A lot of it is starting with email communication and then offering opportunities for in-person touch points.

Especially for higher priority clients. And I think because we're still at the foundation level, how do people actually want to hear from us? And we're working with different industries.

So it has to be broad enough for a wide array of people. But then also touching on the value for specific industries. And it's just a constant thought that goes through my mind.

We keep getting closer and closer, but it's something to continue working on for us.

[Dillon] (4:01 - 4:23)

Can I ask a clarifying question before I let the boys loose? Do you believe it is a challenge or a benefit that you started B2C and therefore had to have a bit more of a PLG motion? Do you think that is to your benefit or your detriment as you now shift your focus towards B2B?

[Georgia] (4:24 - 5:32)

I think there's pros and cons with either. I think the benefit is that we have a strong support function. And so we all really understand the product.

And we're a smaller company, smaller team. So we do have our hands in all post-sale functionality. We need to have that tech knowledge.

We also, as a product, were able to develop in that B2C function where I think we were able to figure out a lot of kinks. And now with B2B, it's bringing in this stronger product. But it also, on the product side, it's like, OK, now we need to move our direction from just people purchasing it in the app store to businesses.

We are like, our product is providing a business tool and changing the language around that. That was a pretty big shift, changing the language of this is a tool for you. This is not just for DIY home improvement folks.

We've gotten a lot better. And I think we're still just working in that direction.

[Dillon] (5:33 - 5:35)

Gentlemen, who wants to jump in?

[JP] (5:36 - 5:38)

Rob, it looks like you're ready to double-dash first. Go ahead.

[Rob] (5:38 - 6:07)

Yeah, no, I think I can relate to this, Rob. First of all, I appreciate the topic because I think you're bringing up a topic that is difficult for a variety of reasons. First of all, we don't talk enough about B2C and most of the content out there on customer success.

Georgia, you and I have talked about this. A lot of it's geared to a B2B audience or maybe B2B2C, but not a lot of it is really designed for B2C, which introduces a whole set of new challenges. Because the second thing I was going to say is, if I remember correctly, aren't you dealing with a book of business that's like thousands of individuals?

[Georgia] (6:09 - 6:24)

Yeah, we each have almost 4,000 people. Think about that. But one plus, since we last talked, is we use HubSpot and they have, thank goodness, released a customer success workspace.

So they have a- But we know.

[Rob] (6:25 - 6:26)

We're familiar.

[Georgia] (6:26 - 6:30)

Yeah, it was a huge highlight when I figured that out.

[Rob] (6:30 - 6:33)

We had a conversation about that tool recently.

[Georgia] (6:33 - 6:34)

Nice.

[Rob] (6:34 - 6:36)

Which is why we're laughing about it now.

[Georgia] (6:36 - 6:37)

Yeah, it's a shift.

[Dillon] (6:38 - 7:11)

What's up, guys? It's Dillon here and you know why I'm here. Hat in hand.

I got a favor to ask of you. If you like what we're doing, give us a like on whatever platform that you find us on. And if you want to know when we're dropping new stuff, give us a follow, give us a subscribe.

And maybe best of all, if you want to give us some feedback, drop a comment and let us know what you like, what you don't like, or how we can get better. We want to make sure we're giving the best content we can to you and others within the community. Thanks so much, guys.

I'll let you get back to the show.

[Rob] (7:11 - 8:53)

Well, you know what I think is so funny, too, is if I'm in your shoes and I log into LinkedIn, and people are giving advice like, you have to set up Google News alerts for every single one of your clients. And you have to be having strategic conversations about their business goals. And you're like, who is the audience behind this?

It certainly isn't me, right? Meanwhile, I've worked with some other models, I think I've mentioned a couple to you out there, that are B2C models, which I remember first time I had this conversation, I asked a guy who ran the customer success team, one person, thousands of accounts, thousands of individual accounts, consumer accounts. I was like, well, how often do you talk to your customers?

He was like, why would I ever want to do that? And I was like, oh, I felt that way with five of them. I felt that way, yeah.

But it was like super interesting, right? I mean, it's a completely different paradigm, because you're thinking purely at scale. Now, I did recommend ultimately that he do some deep customer interviews, but it was not foundational to his role to have direct one-on-one conversations with any of his clients.

So I think there's a lot of strategies that kind of come into place for this, starting with segmentation. And then there's also a lot of digital and tech touch approaches to build customer success at scale, which is really hard, because a lot of times it's hard to balance that with personalized value development for your clients and personalized communications and personalized renewals. So I do often find that doing some standardized customer journey mapping for the different personas per segment that you have can help with this kind of thing, but it's a tough position you're in.

I don't know if I gave you an answer there, but it's just my musings. JP, why don't you take us out?

[JP] (8:54 - 10:35)

Well, it's tough to follow paradigm, Rob, with the glasses. No, put them back on. It's all you, yeah, you're one of us now.

Yeah, I think communicating at scale, look, every customer obviously is not the same. Like you don't need to be having the same types of conversations with every customer. I mean, I worked in scale, not 4,000 scales, but, you know, like a little over a hundred, but I know that's different, right?

Like we even have someone, I think Artea does like digital touch, which is, I think that they do handle accounts more en masse. Communication is one of those things where like, there's like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Well, communication is in the lips of the talker.

What are we talking about? What do we need to talk about? You don't need to have a QBR with everyone, but some people do need a QBR, right?

So sometimes we get into these conversations, to your point, about some of the content that's out there, advising people. Sometimes we get into these conversations that really lack nuance, but like, I think one of the cool things about customer success is finding a bespoke solution to what the problems that are presented. So if you have customers at scale, I think it's just figuring out what's the most essential thing that they need that's keeping them there, right?

Because that's the only thing that you can do. What's the essential thing that they're needing is keeping them there. And you build that communication around that sort of value premise, making sure that the customer is recognizing that value when everything else is just gravy.

Can I add one quick thing to that?

[Rob] (10:36 - 10:37)

I just, real quick.

[JP] (10:38 - 10:38)

Yes, doctor.

[Rob] (10:40 - 11:19)

What I was gonna say real quick is one of the cool things that I've learned is when dealing with B2C models, it's a relatively easy thing for us to do some user-ended research on. If you go sign up for tools like Superhuman or Motion or Notion or whatever, even Gmail, right? There's a lot of consumer flows that you can study to see how do they do consumer onboarding?

How do they deal with my cancellation, right? If you ever try to cancel from Amazon, you'll see how they handle it. It's a nuisance.

But there's a lot of experimental things we can do as consumers to figure out what works and what doesn't just from the user perspective.

[JP] (11:20 - 11:22)

And what a sponsorship loss, thanks, Rob.

[Dillon] (11:23 - 11:30)

Exactly. That is our time, Georgia. But I do just have one last question for you.

Did you take anything from this?

[Georgia] (11:30 - 12:06)

I did. Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's reminders largely. And it's, you know, we're doing the steps.

It's just, it takes time. We have been doing this for a year and it takes time. And there's a lot of thoughts swirling in my head around it.

And we just, we're iterating. I think we are just like starting at certain steps and then going back and iterating and seeing what's working and what's not. Then we actually work in sprint cycles for our team because that is just, it's what's keeping us moving forward.

So building up some of these ideas, yeah.

[Dillon] (12:07 - 12:36)

Ideas, consistency, long-term horizon and ruthless intentionality. I think you can get swept up in, oh, we got to do this, we got to do that. We got to do all these things.

But understanding really what is important to your customer base is probably the most important. So I already said it, but that's our time, Georgia. Thank you so much for bringing this to us and for summoning Dr. Rob for us. Much, much appreciated. So we'd love to have you back in the future, but for now we've got to say goodbye, Georgia.

[Georgia] (12:36 - 12:37)

Well, thanks for having me.

[Voiceover] (12:42 - 13:12)

You've been listening to The Daily Standup by Lifetime Value. Please note that the views expressed in these conversations are attributed only to those individuals on this recording and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of their respective employers. For all inquiries, please reach out via email to Dillon at LifetimeValueMedia.com.

Find us on YouTube at Lifetime Value and find us on the socials at LifetimeValueMedia. Until next time.