Ripples on a pond | Kritika Kishor | TDSU Ep. 63

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All right, here we go. 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 Post-It Rob here.

Rob, do you want to say hi? What's going on? I got my man JP here. JP, do you want to say hi? Hello. Remember, this is in multiple media formats, JP.

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I said hello. I said hello. And Kritika, would you like to say hi? Hi, everyone.

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Great to have you here. And I am your host. My name is Dillon Young.

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Kritika, thank you so much for being here. Would you please introduce yourself? Yeah, absolutely. All my professional life, I have done customer success, which is almost a decade now.

Right now, I was based out of India, but right now, I'm in the U.S. these days. And from last one year, I'm living that mythical life of roaming around and seeing the world and taking a sabbatical from my 9-to-5 role. Yeah, that's what's happening with me right now.

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I'm very jealous. Never get pets, never get children because the wandering slows down significantly, at least in my experience. They're hard to track.

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I've been saying this for a long time, Dillon. I know. I know.

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You took your kids back, Dillon. It's almost like I hate all these things that I've accumulated in my life, which I don't. I don't.

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Toys R Us, bring them back. Kritika, you know what we do here. We ask one simple question, and that is, what is on your mind when it comes to customer success? Excuse me.

So why don't you tell us what that is? Sure. I want to talk about how the current macroeconomic situation is impacting the productivity of customer success managers. The internet is filled with how the current situation is.

We are in a tricky market scenario where industry experts waited for that full-blown recession, which never actually happened. First strings drew tighter than ever. Customers are critically analyzing every penny spent on every application purchase.

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They are asking for value. They are asking for ROI more than ever. And this has created a domino effect on vendors as well.

We saw the adoption where every non-critical software was ripped out from the application stack. And the companies that took that, they were not able to justify the ROI they were asked to get out. Vendors also have started laying off the employees.

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And so I want to focus more on perhaps the cascading impact of the productivity of the CSM because they are the ones who have to prove a lot for this last tsunami. They are under increased scrutiny. Companies are pushing their CVS team to, like they have never pushed before and they have to perform.

So what are some of the things that the CSMs can do, these companies can do to make their CSM's life easy so they can perform their best? Breaking silos is on top of my list. As a functional vertical, CS velocity, CS effectiveness is heavily dictated by the degree of collaboration across different departments. In today's world, CS leaders need to take more proactive approach in conjunction with the org leadership and to break silos and to facilitate collaboration.

And this needs to stem down from a top-down approach. Second on my list was focusing on functional enablement. Companies really need to invest in their CS team and provide them with the trainings, with the support, the resources that they need to develop themselves and become this trusted advisor.

They can do things more efficiently. The stakes are high and there's a lot of pressure on the CSM team. I want to make sure that the guys have a chance to share their thoughts.

Rob, I want to throw it to you first because you were, I want to say reacting positively to the things that Critical was listing out. So why don't you tell us what your thoughts are? I didn't know I was reacting positively because I have a post-it note over my face. Four words.

ROI calculator. Maybe that's two words. I don't know.

An acronym. I don't know if that counts as a word. But one thing that's been coming up in so many conversations lately, I find that sales is still managing to close deals because they're using ROI calculators to show the value of their solutions to their clients.

And then you ask the CS team, you're like, Hey, have you tried this? And they're like, Oh, we didn't think about using that. The ROI is never more clear than after the point of purchase. That's where the proof is in the pudding.

That's one recommendation I have for anybody out there. But I'd love to hear JP's thoughts too. Yeah.

I think that, you know, it's a multi-dimensional issue. I mean, there's multiple places where you can see where solutions can be made, but it's definitely not simple. I think that people who are CSM, quote unquote, boots on the ground, hate to use that language, but those folks have a set of challenges and have things within their purview that they can do to enhance their experience.

And companies as well can be doing things to help. I guess my thoughts are just like, I think if you pick, if there's one place you could pick and like focus and say like, let's improve this specific dimension and then move on as opposed to like the whole of it, because like, we're not going to be able to solve all of any industry's problems in one go. So I think that my thoughts came to like specificity and picking something to like focus on because each organization has challenges that probably going to look a bit different depending on the context.

The only thing I'll add is setting proper expectations. And what I mean, we say that over and over again, and in a multitude of different ways, what I mean is let's make sure our leadership know what customer success is supposed to do so that they don't cut us off at the knees. They don't think we're redundant when we're not, so on and so forth.

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And I'll keep it brief. Kritika, I want to thank you so much for bringing this topic to our attention. But for now, we've got to say goodbye.

Goodbye. Thank you so much. 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.com. Until next time.