Help Me Help You | TDSU Ep. 19

00:00:00    there's a phrase I heard recently don't let the customer see your org chart basically the disconnects between CS and product CS and sales CS and leadership that shows up in negative ways for our customers we don't need to air out our Dirty Laundry to our customers they don't need to know how the sausage is [Music] made you're listening to the Daily standup by lifetime value consider this your daily dose of new ideas fresh perspectives and or hot takes as they relate to the worlds of customer success post sales or whatever the hell

00:00:38    we're calling it these days and where we ask each guest one simple question what's on your mind what's up lifers and welcome to the Daily standup with lifetime value where we're serving up fresh customer success ideas to you every damn day I've got my man rob with us Rob do you want to say hi what's up lifers JP would you like to say hi hey it's the CEO of five wise come get your burger and fries JP baby Jay would you like to say hi absolutely hello everyone I'll keep it simple please please give us a break and

00:01:18    I am your host my name is Dillon Young Jay would you like to introduce yourself sure thing so my name is Jay Sanchez I'm the manager of customer support and success over at leanlaw using he him pronouns and yeah that's a bit about myself awesome awesome thanks so much for being here Jay you know the deal we're asking everybody what is on your mind in customer success so why don't you tell us yeah absolutely the main thing that's been on my mind really has been turning customer success inwards and aligning

00:01:49    your organization and their goals with your customers's goals with your own goals so that's kind of been what's been in my mind a lot so the the very first question that comes to my mind and this is a little bit of a flip question but I I want to break it down shouldn't we know what our customers goals are long before we even need a customer success group isn't that kind of why we're building businesses yes and no we should definitely know what our customers goals are but it's more so of a what does our

00:02:18    Market want what is the pain point that we're trying to solve but then it's up to the customer success team to then connect the dots across the board okay so we know what the pain point is but does the customer know know that that's the pain point that they're talking about does the organization know that that's the pain point they're addressing and is this so why is it on your mind lately is it a thing you're being challenged with internally just something you're seeing within the community bit of both my experience has

00:02:46    been that customer success is cogs when it comes to accounting when you're budgeting for CS a lot of times organizations are like ah we'll leave that for last you know we'll focus on we'll build a support team we'll build a product team sales team all of that leaves customers success for last and then when it's time to cut cost customer success usually is the one on the table customers don't really understand what a customer success manager is meant to do for them leadership doesn't understand what customer success is meant to do for

00:03:15    the organization it just makes everybody's job a lot harder and I actually just had a conversation about this today where I explained you can hit me with 20 different customers all screaming at me at the same time but if I know that my organization has my back because they know what I'm supposed to be doing I'll take I'll tle that every time can I just ask a question Jay yeah this is super interesting and I I I this the term turning CS inwards is new to me and I I understand it in practice but I

00:03:45    would love to hear just a little bit more about what that means to you and what that looks like in practice when you know you use the example of a customer yelling at you we'll say one instead of 20 um so like you help help me understand like I I I would love to to learn from you yeah absolutely so I'll give you a great example when I first joined Lan law the first thing I did was a companywide survey to understand what did they see as customer success and do they believe that the current team is actually achieving that

00:04:13    part of that was for me to understand where we at and where do we need to go kind of that Discovery but inwards into the organization there I found out a lot of great things and a lot of gaps that were happening there's no relationship between customer satisfaction and retention but that was still still a thought process that was still existing in the organization we didn't quite understand the customers some of us did some of us didn't so there was that Gap as well and when I kept digging I had

00:04:41    one-on-one meetings with different people on each team specifically leadership I kind of started noticing these patterns where they had tried implementing customer success in the past they tried building account management they tried building customer success management and every time it kept fallen through so when I asked like why do you think that fell through you know more customer Discovery understanding the pain points of leadership a lot of that I found was just a general misunderstanding of what

00:05:07    customer success could bring to the business okay great now I'm about eight months into my role now we're tackling building the foundations of customer success now that I know what the other teams struggle with with understanding what we do I can meet with them clarify like this is our goal this is what we're trying to get to it turns out frequent meetings with sales where we can do better better transfer of knowledge better transfer of information meetings with leadership of where is your business goal so that I can work with

00:05:37    our customers to help you get there but at the same time doing customer calls and understanding where do they want to go with our product so how can I get them there super cool that was really helpful thank you and you clearly seem like someone who's given so much thought to the connection between there's a phrase I heard recently which was someone at a conference said don't let the customer see your org chart and I thought that that was really good and I think you're sort of speaking to the same point which a lot of times

00:06:06    our org chart basically the disconnects between CS and product CS and sales CS and leadership or whatever that shows up in negative ways for our customers and they don't need to we don't need to air out our Dirty Laundry to our customers they don't need to know how the sausage is made so I think you're speaking to a really deep wisdom with connecting our internal processes and relationships to the customer experience yeah that was really helpful thank you yeah no problem something I do want to add on there is a lot of times the

00:06:37    accountability of connecting those dots tend to fall like nobody knows who take who is accountable for it that's why I think personally CS is the perfect place to be accountable for it because that's kind of what CS does business goals how do we get from uh A to B for the customer just again turn it inwards how can you get from A to B for the business we also just end up playing the facilitator the quarterback whatever you want to call it so much that it's a natural place for us to live I think

00:07:07    that becomes a delicate balance because we do have to have a bit of deference for those other groups they have very important roles and in a lot of ways we are just supporting them sales sell something assuming they sell it correctly right let's get rid of any talk about maybe their mishandling expectations but it's then we are meant to be the steward of that contract and that relationship and sales is trusting that we can do that and the same with product we are the steward of the product and the customer's voice back to

00:07:37    them and so it is a natural Evolution for us to want to facilitate those conversations and to help drive that conversation but at the same time to bring folks along for the ride and not necessarily act like we've got all the answers JP I want to give you a chance to jump in here oh yeah I was say I think that to use D to like these relationship analogies so I think I'll use one a lot of times people will say I want a relationship what does that mean right if you actually start to Define what that is right you can really figure out

00:08:16    if you're actually aligned and so I think there's a lot of companies be like oh I will yeah I want to have customer success and it's like all right that's that's like what does that mean go like a lot deeper right like what is what does that mean and I think that being more well defined helps you be more well aligned taking that one taking that one love that and that's I mean that's exactly it a big thing that I talk about when I talk to individual contributors versus Team managers is this doesn't have to

00:08:54    stop just at managers as an individual contributor there is literally nothing stopping you from reaching out to anybody anybody in sales and going hey what can we just chat like how can I help you sell more and if you start with that approach because you're not going to tell a customer what can you do for me so don't do that with other teams hey what can I do for you how can I make your job easier and from there focus on connecting to dots for them I recently worked with a salesperson who joined our organization

00:09:24    and everybody was like oh he's so awesome he's the best he's got all these industry connections and I remember pretty early on he hit the ground running pretty fast and did well pretty early on and I was handling most of his accounts cause they were larger accounts and so I set a meeting with him and I said how can I help you and he literally said to me just get the hell out of the way like just let me do my thing don't talk to my accounts I'll deal with it all I te them all up for additional sales

00:09:53    after the fact like just just stay out of my way and so I just think that's a funny story but I wonder Jay like with the time we have left how would you handle that you know what that is that's something I've also heard myself before really a lot of it it goes back down to psychology shoot I can't recall off the top of my head what the name of the effect is but it's when you ask people for small doable and impactful favors but something that would take no time from them and I started analyzing that a little bit more

00:10:28    I like why does that make people want to like you more why does that make them want to trust you more is because the power Dynamic is different they're the ones that are doing the favor for you that's kind of the approach that I have is like okay well you want me out of your way totally I totally want to be out of your way let me can I understand your process so that I can make sure to stay out of the way and then as you start developing that you're like oh actually I noticed that you're doing this on this process I can actually do

00:10:54    this that can help you do that process and I'll still stay out of your way but here's how we can make it better Jay I think it's the Ben Franklin effect or also that's what it is foot in the door effect I don't have you guys heard of this before Dillon my personal hero Ben Franklin I'm surprised I didn't know that so Ben Franklin he like wanted to correct me if I'm wrong Jay if I'm getting into this incorrect but I I think that the story is that Ben Franklin wanted to get on the radar of some very important person when he was

00:11:21    young in his career and so what he did was he asked this person just a small favor to borrow a book or something like that and this person then registered in their mind I have a relationship with Ben Franklin this young guy and he's interested in books and I guess we have some kind of like connection here and the fact that this person had done a small favor for Ben Franklin had enabled this person to then do him future favors because it was just kind of like they got the muscle memory going of doing

00:11:47    each other favors which I thought was pretty cool I might be misrepresenting that slightly but that's how I remember it yeah well that's a as good a place as any to end it Jay that is our time I want to thank you so much for being here and for sharing that you had a very clear topic and I love that and it sounds like you did your research and we love that here at the daily standup so thanks so much we hope to have you back soon absolutely would love to come back and happy to be here thank you for

00:12:13    having me all right thanks y 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 lifetime Value media.com find us on YouTube at lifetime value and find us on the socials at lifetime Val media until next time hey folks it's Dillon here thank you

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