Share the wealth | Parul Bhandari | TDSU Ep. 60

(0:00 - 0:09)

I have a question. What does that even mean, CS is dead? I mean, CS, customer success, think about that. Come on, oh, come on, bro.

(0:09 - 0:34)

Do you want me to tell you? Because I have written several posts about it. I know what you, Dillon, Dillon, if I. Oh, my God. Okay, all right, you guys ready? 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.

(0:34 - 0:41)

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

(0:42 - 0:56)

Rob, do you want to say hi? What's up, Lifers? And we've got Parul here. Parul, do you want to say hi? Hey, everyone, how's it going? I got it right, I saw the nod of approval. Fantastic, and I am your host.

(0:56 - 1:04)

I struggle with simple instructions on how to pronounce people's names. My name is Dillon Young. Parul, thank you so much for being here.

(1:04 - 1:21)

Do you want to introduce yourself? Absolutely, my name is Parul Bhandari. I recently launched a consulting firm of my own, so new entrepreneur, calling it CustomerX Success. So I am focused on consulting in the customer success space, as well as fractional.

(1:21 - 1:40)

But I'm also very proud of another thing I launched this year, which is a community for customer success professionals that have South Asian background like myself. So I'm keeping busy doing different things. Yeah, yeah, I'm in the same boat of launching two completely different initiatives at just about the same time.

(1:41 - 1:47)

It's not for the faint of heart. So congratulations and make sure you sleep. Anyway, thank you so much for being here.

(1:47 - 2:00)

Do you want to tell us what is on your mind when it comes to customer success? Yeah, I love this platform. Thanks for having me. I just came back from a CES conference, big one, run by Game Day called Pulse.

(2:01 - 2:23)

And during the keynote, the opening keynote, Nick Mehta was talking about the Snowflake CEO talking about customer success is dead and that they've changed up their teams to support their customers in a new way. And this is not the first time we've heard this. And I've been having a little pushback with folks here and there when they say that.

(2:23 - 2:41)

One is customer success is very young. We're a baby, we got a long road ahead. But second of all, are we really treating our customer success teams the same way that we treat our other teams in our companies? And I think one of the key areas that stands out that I feel like it's lacking big time is incentives.

(2:42 - 2:55)

I don't know if you guys are in RevGenius, another kind of a go-to-market community. And I love it because it's really not all CES people. It's a lot of people from every other function and CES is a growing space in that community.

(2:57 - 3:53)

And there's so many people talking about the value of their sellers and how much they need their BDs and things like that in the early stages, but you're not hearing any chatter about how are they gonna launch their customer success strategy? And so I do push back to people and say from time to time, so why don't we treat all of our teams like we treat our sales teams? If we think there is a lot of value to be had in retaining our revenue, which there is, why do we not take time to incentivize properly? I think this is the question out there for many CES leaders as well. Well, let me also say, incentives is a huge piece of human behavior and the motivation behind certain activities, but how about the same level of training and education and support and budget that salespeople get? I'm just gonna leave that there because otherwise I'll go on a rant. Gentlemen, who wants to jump in? I have a question.

(3:54 - 4:06)

What does that even mean, CES is dead? I mean, CES, customer success, think about that. Come on, come on, bro. Do you want me to tell you because I have written several posts about it.

(4:06 - 4:18)

I know what you, Dillon, if I have to hear you go on about how customer success is dead. What? Yeah. What's up, guys? It's Dillon here and you know why I'm here.

(4:18 - 4:27)

Your 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.

(4:28 - 4:47)

And if you wanna know when we're dropping new stuff, give us a follow, give us a subscribe, and maybe best of all, you wanna 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 wanna make sure we're giving the best content we can to you and others within the community. Thanks so much, guys.

(4:47 - 4:58)

I'll let you get back to the show. So this is my question. I more mean like, what did it mean in that setting? Because I think those of us, a lot of folks that I talk to know that I think things being dead is dead because a lot of people use that line.

(4:59 - 5:07)

And sometimes it's very meaningful and sometimes it's not. Clickbait, clickbait. I'm just kind of curious, Parul, if I think about a customer success, it's a concept.

(5:07 - 5:26)

It was a concept before it was a department, right? Making customers successful as a concept just makes perfect sense, regardless of whether there's a team built around it. So in that context, did it mean as a department or as like a strategy or as a concept in general? I'm just curious to learn. I think it's the noun and not the verb.

(5:26 - 5:37)

You're right, you're 100%, right? Like customer success is multiple things. It's a verb in that it's an action, it's a goal, it's something we all hope to achieve. And then at the same token, it's a noun in that it's a department.

(5:37 - 6:05)

And I think that, unfortunately what those leaders are implying is I think the loss of or the need to change up the department. Of course, the way that they phrased it is, as you said, going clickbait, trying to get high impact readership. But that being said, it is concerning because what happens is it infiltrates the airwaves, right? And it makes people go and question, like early stage founders question if they need to have a department focused on their customers.

(6:06 - 6:30)

I haven't had so many conversations about this recently, but you spend so much money and budget, as you said, and training on your salespeople, and you are willing to invest in them to get those customers. But yet you like give your revenue to a team that is untrained and unprepared to deliver. Yes, of course that team is not gonna be the top performing team without the right resources.

(6:30 - 6:53)

I think going back to what they're trying to achieve and they're saying that this team is irrelevant and other teams can take on the effort and do the work. I think the reason that customer success came about is exactly because there was a gap and sellers couldn't handle all of the burden of bringing in new logos as well as maintaining customer life cycles. You add so much helpful specificity to that for me.

(6:53 - 7:08)

Honestly, it's really helpful. And I love that you bring it back to incentives too, because I've also said similar to what you and Dillon both said that like everything boils down to incentives and people behave in accordance with those incentives and resources. I gave a webinar which was around exactly this.

(7:08 - 7:21)

It's like, why do we look across the room and we see that our sales counterparts are getting pummeled with resources. They get an LMS, they get like sales engineering, they've got like this and that. And then we're sitting there like being told to just pick ourselves up by our bootstraps at times.

(7:21 - 7:37)

I don't wanna sound like I'm complaining, but maybe I am. It's not a complaint. If you see that something isn't as successful as you'd like for it to be and then you complain about it a la Jason Lemkin, a la these other guys, think about why maybe that's occurring.

(7:37 - 7:47)

That's it, that's it. And it seems very simple to us. I'm sure the people at the top are like, ma, well, it's not, whatever.

(7:47 - 8:10)

I hate this topic because it seems so simple to us. Like I love that we're talking about it, but it just seems like the sort of thing we should have already frigging figured out. Yeah, so like maybe people are hung up on the name, maybe people are hung up on customer success, maybe it just sounds, maybe it's just grating on the ears.

(8:10 - 8:16)

Customer success, you know, sales sounds so easy. It's one syllable. Customer success, what's that? Get over yourself.

(8:16 - 8:44)

Look, the way I think about myself is I love solving problems. I think that organizations like you said, Parul, like sales can't handle all these wholesale things that are happening with the customer. I always have to think of the origin of customer success, which is being born out of the subscription economy, right? These companies are having more risk upfront and we need the customer longer to become profitable.

(8:44 - 9:00)

So we wanna ultimately keep that customer around. So I'm thinking part of my main function, what I'm there to do is to keep that customer around. Now, to me, that's like a blank canvas and there's a lot of place to paint and to play.

(9:01 - 9:12)

So saying CS is dead is like saying art is dead. Is there still a canvas? Then there's still paint and there's still ways that we can do things. To me, that's like a lack of imagination.

(9:12 - 9:24)

And as you said, Parul, it's really in its infancy. I think that as things change, you can probably look at history, see a lot of different examples of things. You know, ah, fast food is dead.

(9:24 - 9:47)

It's like, all right, go see is fast food dead. So I think that it's just one of those things where I think over time, we're gonna figure out more about how to standardize things and maybe certifications are gonna become more respected or accredited, whatever word you wanna use. And I think that, yeah, we're just starting to see where things go.

(9:47 - 9:53)

Things always evolve. Just cause you got a Charizard don't mean your Charmander is dead. You know what I mean? It's still there.

(9:53 - 9:57)

I love that I know what you're talking about. I love that I know what you're talking about. Yeah.

(9:57 - 10:01)

Cause I have a six year old, yes. Exactly. Me and, yeah.

(10:02 - 10:08)

If you asked me last year, I wouldn't have. That's what she just likened you to a six year old, my friend. No, no, no, not at all.

(10:10 - 10:14)

I'm more proud of myself. I'm more proud of me. I'm not, yeah, I'm not hating on anybody.

(10:15 - 10:22)

I just wanna, can I make a, oh, go ahead. No, yeah. I want you to share any closing thoughts before we close up shop.

(10:23 - 10:29)

Yeah. Oh, sure. I know there's people that are gonna come back and say, we don't want CS people to act like sellers.

(10:29 - 10:44)

We want them to be building these longer relationships and things like that. And kind of the root of why incentives to me I think are important is that the shape of CS has changed so much. If you look back to 2022 to 2023, now so many teams are taking on revenue.

(10:45 - 10:54)

They're taking on expansion. They are actually bringing hard dollars in. I was very proud to lead a team that brought in the first expansions for a startup.

(10:55 - 11:15)

That's the reality is they are taking on sales activities and you can still be human first and do a great job as a CS leader but providing customer value where they actually need it and where they can grow. So this is not a ploy to scare everybody away and say, you have to become a seller and you're cold calling, you're not doing that. This is all warm, friendly place to be.

(11:15 - 11:27)

And when you're doing extensions and when you're driving incentives, you're doing it based on actual customer value and outcomes. So, yeah. I think it's funny that we're all afraid of sales as the scarlet letter, but they get all the money.

(11:28 - 11:33)

Just seems so odd. I just can't get over it. Anyway, Parul, thank you so much for being here.

(11:33 - 11:39)

Thank you so much for knowing what Pokemon are and we'll see you next time. Please come back. But for now we've got to say goodbye.

(11:40 - 11:43)

Thanks for having me. Have a great rest of your day. Bye.

(11:47 - 12:18)

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.