Practical AI applications | Diego Tjen-A-Tak | Ep. 99

[Diego] (0:00 - 0:28)

It's really helping me with creating success plans. The customers I work with, they usually have annual reports, and they have a lot of interesting information available. Let me just use those annual reports.

Use ChatGPT instead of asking them, what do you want to achieve? I'm already prepared. Hey, I went to your annual report.

These are the objectives that are relevant for the solution you purchased. We're starting the conversation based on the research I did.

[Dillon] (0:35 - 0:49)

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, Rob, here in a nice, crispy polo. Rob, do you want to say hi?

[Rob] (0:51 - 0:58)

Konnichiwa, Lifers. Is that right? Is that even the right word?

[JP] (0:59 - 1:01)

I heard something else, but that's okay.

[Dillon] (1:01 - 1:05)

And we've got JP here. JP, do you want to say hi?

[JP] (1:06 - 1:09)

What's going on, people? Brand names, brand names.

[Dillon] (1:10 - 1:22)

And we've got Diego with us. Diego, do you want to say hi? Hi there.

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

Can you please introduce yourself?

[Diego] (1:23 - 1:37)

Sure. First of all, thank you for inviting me. My name is Diego Tjen-A-Tak, currently a Customer Success Manager at LinkedIn.

I have a background in retail, HR. I've been in Customer Success for five years now. And again, happy to be here.

[Dillon] (1:38 - 1:46)

Diego, can you get my LinkedIn posts more engagement? Do you have that? Do you have a dial somewhere?

[JP] (1:46 - 1:49)

What's the secret? Yeah, turn us up, Diego.

[Diego] (1:49 - 1:54)

Give me some juice. So let's put this on mute, but I'll send you my bank account numbers.

[Dillon] (1:57 - 2:08)

Perfect. $3 coming your way. Diego, you know what we do here.

We ask one simple question of every guest, and that is, what is on your mind when it comes to customer success? Why don't you tell us what that is?

[Diego] (2:09 - 3:07)

I think we're all trying to understand how AI is going to impact our jobs. Not only in customer success, I think everyone has that on their mind. But if we look at customer success, there are interesting times ahead.

AI is nothing new. You have a lot of customer success platforms out there that already are doing AI. But I think most interesting is generative AI.

And that is something that is fairly new. Now, I think we started with that, what, four years ago when ChatGPT became mainstream. Not sure if it's mainstream already, because a lot of people are trying to figure out how it's going to work for them.

But I've been experimenting a lot with how to use GenAI in my own work. I think that's the most important thing right now, just experiment, because everyone is trying to figure out how it's going to work for me. What can I do with it?

And how can I benefit from it? So yeah, AI, especially GenAI, that is currently on my mind.

[Dillon] (3:08 - 3:24)

So what's been your determination? AI is a topic we've heard a ton about. Often it's about how it's going to steal our job.

Oh, wait, no, it's not. It sounds like you've got a little bit more of a positive spin on it. Maybe you found some ways to use it.

Do you want to share what those are?

[Diego] (3:25 - 4:37)

Yeah, sure. To give some context, because I've been busy with AI for, let's say, the past six, seven, eight months right now. And AI is not going to take our jobs.

Let me just put it out there. I think if you don't start upskilling yourself, people that are already using AI will take your jobs. So how I have been using AI the past several months is especially, just a very specific case, using it for success planning.

Success planning is really important. I think every CSM should be focused on success planning with their customers, especially now that customers are really focused on value. They want to see value, otherwise they'll churn.

And I've noticed that with some customers, it's sometimes difficult to get something on the plan, because they don't know what kind of objectives they have, or what the company objectives are, and how they should be leveraging your solutions. So I was like, you know what, let me just turn that around. Because usually I have a conversation with a customer, and they're like, what do you want to reach?

And I'm like, you tell me, because I purchased your solution.

[JP] (4:38 - 4:38)

I don't know.

[Diego] (4:39 - 5:28)

This is not going to work. I need to flip it around. So what I did, so the customers I work with, they usually have annual reports, and they have a lot of interesting information available.

So I was like, let me just use those annual reports, use ChatGPT. I came up with a few different prompts that are important for my own role. And based on that, I'm having conversations with my customers.

So instead of asking them, what do you want to achieve? I'm already prepared. Hey, I went to your annual report.

These are the objectives that are relevant for the solution you purchased. Here's my proposal. Or not a proposal, but we're starting the conversation based on the research I did.

So that's a very specific use case, but it's really helping me with creating success plans with my customers.

[Dillon] (5:28 - 6:01)

Let me just clarify. Annual report means they're publicly traded. Is that right?

Yes. Yeah. Okay.

Got it. Okay. So I'd be interested to hear from JP or Rob.

JP, I'm going to throw it to you first. But if either one of you have any ideas about how we can modify that idea for smaller organizations, not taking anything away. Diego's what we all want to be.

But how we can, in turn, make that more practical for folks who don't, maybe don't have that publicly available information. But JP, my resident favorite AI commentarian.

[JP] (6:02 - 6:10)

Oh, Lord have mercy. Oh, and I have been bequeathed something beyond my comprehension. But I will do my best to say it.

[Dillon] (6:10 - 6:11)

You're right. I bequeathed you.

[JP] (6:11 - 8:12)

Yes. Right. So first of all, Diego, awesome.

Awesome perspective. Great call out to that annual report. And as well, great call to Dillon for, yes, we don't always have the luxury of having an annual report for a company.

And so I think that goes to speak to the call out to the level of discovery you have. And so I think I want to call it the luxury of discovery. Because if you are drowning, if you are saying, like, I think if you're like, say, enterprise CS, maybe even some commercial CS, and you don't have as big of a customer base, you can usually have more time just by default to really do more discovery.

And so I'd say that kind of discovery can be done through the Googles, through LinkedIn, which is a great product, by the way. I love using LinkedIn. I use it all the time.

You can go on LinkedIn. If you have a premium membership, you can actually go in and you can start looking at how a company is performing. I know this because I actually had somebody from sales at my company that was saying that's something that they do before calls.

When they're going to go talk about different things, they'll actually go look at LinkedIn and look at how the company has been performing recently to get an idea of where to sort of guide them in their conversations. So I think if you have the time to do some discovery for a client, maybe that has some potential, right, if you have Coca-Cola as a customer, and they're spending $5, and you're like, baby, you need to spend way more than $5, then it's probably worth setting aside some time to look at what's going on at Coca-Cola. And even one of our previous guests talked about the importance of stakeholder mapping.

So that's that other part. You can get some stakeholder mapping going and do all this. But again, these are the luxuries.

When you're dealing with the scale team, sometimes you're just trying to tread water. But if you can do that, I think that's pure gold right there. So excellent call out to you.

[Rob] (8:14 - 8:29)

Rob, how about you? I think a great speaker once said that generative AI has significant potential in customer success by enhancing various aspects of the customer journey and enabling more efficient and personalized service.

[JP] (8:30 - 8:31)

Are you a bot?

[Rob] (8:33 - 9:42)

ChatGPT said that. I just read it while we were on this call. Vapid.

Vapid. That is the word for most ChatGPT lists. First draft.

Yeah, I know. So that's actually super interesting. I was reading a study recently.

It was a study on academic papers that have come out in the last year. And the number of times that words like the word delve has just skyrocketed and how often it's used. People don't often use the word delve, but here's this majorly statistically significant rise in the word delve.

And it's like, why is this happening? Well, it's because ChatGPT was trained on a model and a language set that used the word delve a lot, which I think is kind of interesting. So I'm seeing that even in customer success circles too.

LinkedIn posts, so funny. Honestly, I love it. But it's also crazy how few people have adopted generative AI.

And I think just if anybody's listening to this, I think the key difference, Diego, stop me if I'm wrong, when I think of like generative AI versus just AI in general, it's that generative AI is producing new content as opposed to like traditional AI, if you will. I didn't even know that was a thing. It's more like interpreting what already exists.

Am I correct in that assessment?

[Diego] (9:43 - 10:18)

Yeah, no, that is correct. That is correct. And also to add to the earlier mentioned points, and also because a lot of people are still trying to adopt generative AI.

Spoiler alert, I'm working on a personal project. It's called the AI Guide for Customer Success Managers. I started this end of June.

So it's still a work in progress. But I think the future of AI, that will be a big game changer for customer success. I think for a lot of different industries are going to be agents.

But that's a topic for a different conversation. But agents are really going to be the future. And invite me again for the next session to talk about agents.

[Rob] (10:19 - 10:38)

Yeah. No, so I have an example that I was using today that's not quite agents, but parallels that line of thinking. Objection rebuttal documentation.

It's something that our counterparts in sales use a lot. They have like, okay, the prospect has this objection. Here's my rebuttal.

And so...

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

Is that just battle cards?

[Rob] (10:39 - 10:47)

Yeah, basically. Whatever you want to call it. Battle cards are usually like specific to certain competitors.

Okay. I also think that term is like, oh, stupid battle cards.

[JP] (10:47 - 10:48)

Oh, yeah, not a heuristic language.

[Rob] (10:48 - 11:22)

Yeah, we're not in a battle here. We're just trying to sling a product. Like, anyway, my point is, if you can train...

This is not good either. Slings, yeah, it's... That's a medieval weapon.

My point is, if you can train like ChatGBT, or I use Google Gemini a lot, to act as a customer, and to argue with you, that's a really cool and useful skill when it comes to honing your skills. I've even used it before going into one-on-ones with people. I'm like, imagine you don't like me very much.

I'm going to give you this feedback.

[Dillon] (11:22 - 11:53)

How do you respond? This is interesting. In both cases, Gemini is perfect because it's got all that Reddit posting built into it.

So really good for your battles and for your contentious one-on-ones and for your slinging. Diego, incredible. I love the practical application that you shared with us.

That's fantastic. That is our time though. So we'd love to have you back in the future, particularly once this tool or this guide that you're putting together, when that's getting ready to come out, please come on, let's talk about it some more.

But for now, we've got to say goodbye.

[Diego] (11:55 - 11:57)

Thanks for the invite, guys. And see you later.

[Voiceover] (12:23 - 12:32)

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