Protecting customers from themselves | Dan Schmith

[JP] (0:00 - 0:14)

One of the first adages I learned in customer success was a customer is going to use your product the way that they want to use your product and not always in the way that you intend for them to use the product.

[Dillon] (0:21 - 0:38)

Nope. Ready? What's up, lifers, and welcome to The Daily Standup with Lifetime Value, where we're giving you fresh new customer success perspectives every single day.

I got my man Rob with us. Rob, you want to say hi?

[Rob] (0:38 - 0:39)

What's up, lifers?

[Dillon] (0:40 - 0:43)

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

[JP] (0:44 - 0:45)

What's up, Mephers?

[Dillon] (0:46 - 0:49)

And we have Dan with us. Dan, can you say hi, please?

[Dan] (0:50 - 0:50)

Hey, lifers.

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

Hey, lifers. And I am your host. My name is Dillon Young.

Dan, thank you so much for being here. Can you please introduce yourself?

[Dan] (0:58 - 1:18)

Yeah, Dillon. Excited to be here. I am the Director of Implementation at a company called Wolf.

We create, I guess I should say, we allow staff and companies to leverage a platform that we make to transform their business. And I'm the first customer success hire at Wolf. Very exciting stuff.

[Dillon] (1:19 - 1:22)

Is that recent or you were the first and you have since built a team?

[Dan] (1:23 - 1:31)

Very recent. Started August 1st and looking for building my team. Actually starting hiring the next month or so.

[Dillon] (1:32 - 2:13)

It's interesting. Somewhat surprising, but shouldn't be. First customer success hire is actually in implementations.

Makes sense, right? As you're just starting to gain customers, what's the thing that's most important? It's making sure that they're...

But you don't always hear that. Like when we had Morgan Strong on, it was she's the head of customer success, but is a player coach. And she did talk a lot about onboarding.

It's interesting to hear the distinction there. Anyway, Dan, thank you so much for being here. You know what we do.

We ask every single guest one simple question. And that is what is on your mind when it comes to customer success? So why don't you tell us what that is for you?

[Dan] (2:14 - 3:24)

Some challenges I'm really focused on are improving the onboarding experience. Because once you're post-sale, we're talking about first impressions. How do we make great first impression and how do we keep that?

And it's not just as simple as being nice and following up and having timely communication. There's a real sort of art and a science to making those first steps in that customer journey successful. And I think it needs to be talked about more.

And more emphasis needs to be placed on that in the customer success conversation. So what's your theory? Well, my theory is that in customer success, most of the emphasis should be placed on how we measure business outcomes for our customers that are in those first critical phases.

So in that implementation phase, in that first go-live phase, where they're actually getting activated with the product, how meticulously are we measuring how they're achieving their desired business outcomes? And a lot of times that's for us to decide in collaboration with the customer. Customer doesn't always know that coming into the conversation.

[Dillon] (3:25 - 3:57)

And that's what I thought you were going to say is, let's spend less time on the tactical, connect this system to that system, and let's spend a lot more time on maybe not the theoretical, maybe it's more like a theorial level. What are you trying to accomplish? Which sometimes I would think a customer can get frustrated with that.

They're like, look, dude, I bought this thing. I'm ready to go. But at the same time, that's the art of how do you get them to slow down and talk about these things and build that foundation?

Anyway, JP, you're nodding along vigorously. So why don't you jump in here?

[JP] (3:58 - 5:59)

Oh, I didn't realize I was that vigorous. Yeah, just a very important topic that you're bringing up, Dan, because I think so much of CS, we can really win in the beginning. And Dillon also did a good call out about the art of slowing a customer down.

They come in with their expectations. I remember learning one of the first adages I learned in customer success was a customer is really going to use your product the way that they want to use your product and not always maybe the way that you intend for them to use the product. And so I think that there is this space that I'm hesitating to say friction, but there's this expectation setting that I think has to really happen.

And I think that's what's so important about onboarding. When we talk about zooming out, it's OK, realistically, yes, you do need to connect X, Y, and Z systems that you can get started. But as the experts of said product, I think we really want to know, OK, yeah, why did you buy this?

Or if you've had the luxury of a very good handoff and you actually know why they bought and all the other things, you want to be able to get deeper into things so that we can really maybe know, OK, who are the correct people to be talking to? What's the value that you're really trying to show on your side? So I do believe that the deeper the conversation we can have, the better.

But of course, there's this natural friction between, OK, maybe our agenda is to have that deeper conversation about value, whereas they're like, but right now I'm trying to get this thing installed because I have my own plans for this and I want to get that started. And I have my own people who are calling me, asking me about what's going on. So you need to do what I'm saying, right?

There's this like little friction point. I don't know. I definitely experienced that a lot in my early career.

[Dillon] (6:00 - 6:45)

Dan, I have another question for you before we let Rob in here, but I wanted to point out one. This reminds me of I have a toddler and protecting them from themselves in a lot of cases, because if you just give something to them, like with no context, OK, you got to be careful because this might hurt you, blah, blah, blah. Like they will just go wild.

And often the use cases is not what you could have predicted, similar to what JP was just saying. So it is a little bit of you've got to protect them from themselves. But Dan, I want to hear from you really quickly about some of the tactics that you're using and maybe that you learned in previous roles to slow things down without pissing off the customer and protect them from themselves throughout this process.

[Dan] (6:46 - 7:58)

Yeah, I would say in the earliest stages possible, I'm trying to get the customer to quantify and agree with what their success outcome looks like. Because when we're forced to quantify, we're forced to actually think about what we can measure. And that's an important conversation for the customer to have, because a lot of times who we're dealing with is whoever's onboarding the tool, whoever's the project manager, right, whoever is our champion.

But that's not necessarily the executive sponsor. That's not necessarily leading us in a conversation that sets us up for in six months, in a year, us reevaluating our partnership and then saying, are we achieving the expected ROI for this tool or not? And so that conversation needs to be set that direction on a quantifiable basis very, very early on.

A lot of questions that the customers aren't expecting, right? Questions about quantifying their existing business, taking that and then setting up achievable goals in the customer journey at 30 days, at 90 days, at six months. So that when you're doing your EBR or your QBR a year from now, it is not new data that we're trying to justify why the account is doing well or what we can improve on.

We have a historical record already of how great it's gone and what greatness can we continue to achieve together moving forward.

[Dillon] (7:59 - 8:08)

You almost have to run those processes in parallel. It's not like you stand it all up and then you talk about it because a lot of times they're already running and gunning. Rob, why don't you jump in?

[Rob] (8:09 - 10:07)

Yeah, this is fresh and relevant for me because I just got off a new client kickoff. And it's interesting because in my work in consulting, it's the same thing as being a CSM. And we do kickoffs, we establish value outcomes so we can start to set up a success plan.

And one of the things that I was thinking as I left that call is time to value is this thing that has been, I think it's being discussed incorrectly in our space to an extent. I think people are like, oh, should we talk about time to value or time to launch? And it's a silly debate because they're actually quite different things.

But I think that the principle of time to value is interesting. It's like this very elusive thing where to your point, Dan, yeah, you should be establishing milestones for 30, 60, 90 day marks or one year marks or whatever. But I think the time to value starts even earlier.

It starts in the kickoff. When you have a kickoff with a customer in the onboarding process, there, in my experience, what I keep learning is that there have to be mic drop moments. There have to be aha moments within minutes of the customer interacting with you.

And they're not gonna see those value outcomes as, oh, okay, ROI for their business or their organization or whatever within minutes of getting started. But you do have the opportunity to be like, look at this really cool, sleek feature. Or let me tell you about this really amazing value outcome that we're going to achieve that your current processes pale in comparison to.

So for anybody listening to this, I do encourage people to think critically about, okay, do my customers leave their kickoff calls high-fiving each other? Because they're so stoked about what they're gonna accomplish. Sounds absolutely absurd to most of us because it doesn't happen.

But what if it did, right? We're like, we're fired up to implement this thing. It doesn't happen often.

And the fact that we're laughing at that is like proof to the fact, to me, of how important this could be, how much of a game changer this could be.

[JP] (10:08 - 10:11)

Everything's not the launch to Windows 95, man.

[Dillon] (10:13 - 11:02)

Yeah, you step outside of some sort of venue with your friend and you both jump into the air at the same time and then the frame freezes and you try to crawl. I don't know that work life is like that, but what came to me with what you were talking about, Rob, is it sure sounds a lot like sales, like we're getting them excited and we're hooking them in. And I wouldn't think anybody thinks implementations or onboarding is a sales role.

And yet here we are again, talking about a lot of the same elements of getting engagement, getting interest, keeping people focused and involved. And it just feels like the overlap is increasing and increasing until these two circles in the Venn diagram are just going to be one.

[Rob] (11:04 - 11:25)

Maybe. If I could drop one more quick tidbit, what I also keep trying to recommend that I do and that others do is end your call when there's five minutes left and just say, how did this go for you? And just have a quick open conversation at the end of your kickoff.

Like, how did this go for you? Did you get what you were looking for from this call?

[Dillon] (11:27 - 11:34)

Do you think that, Dan, in your experience, how would that work for you doing that today? Do you think you'd get an honest answer?

[Dan] (11:37 - 11:49)

I think it depends upon who's asking the question. Wearing too many hats, I don't think that's maybe the best approach for me, but maybe in a bit more of an advanced organization, maybe a quick follow-up by my CSM could do the job.

[Dillon] (11:50 - 12:33)

I wonder if it would work better, it works better as a consultant. Because you're already, like you guys have already agreed, like they're paying you, Rob. And so you are going to be the trusted advisor.

They've already decided they're paying you to do that. You've already created this relationship where they should feel comfortable providing you that feedback. But a lot of times in that onboarding scenario, you're two or three degrees removed from the individual who trusts and believes in the system.

You're now working with that tech contact or you're working with who should be the power user at the end of the day. They're not necessarily bought in yet. So I could see how it could work.

The reason I asked that question is because I wonder if you have built a relationship such that early on.

[Rob] (12:35 - 12:40)

Anyway. Personally, I think that's all the more reason to do it. Because you're doing it.

[Dillon] (12:42 - 13:21)

Look, hey, I'm a direct sort of guy. I just don't know if that works in a lot of cases. That's like meeting a girl or a guy and saying like, hey, do you want to do this?

Do you? You gotta be a little bit more greasing the wheels before you ask those sorts of questions. Definitely send NPS surveys post-date.

Dan, thank you so much. I think this is an awesome topic and I love the path it went down. I would love for you to come back once Wolf has matured a little bit.

Maybe you've built up your team a little bit. I'd love to hear what's going on there. But for now, we do have to say goodbye.

[Dan] (13:22 - 13:23)

It was great talking to you.

[Voiceover] (13:27 - 13:58)

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 Lifetime Value Media. Until next time.