The expert's dilemma | Pallavi Gadepalli | Ep. 92

[Dillon] (0:03 - 0:16)

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 JP with us. JP, do you want to say hi?

[JP] (0:16 - 0:17)

What's up, people?

[Dillon] (0:18 - 0:28)

I've got Rob with us on a train. I feel like this is like green eggs and ham. Your location is constantly changing.

Rob, would you like to say hi?

[Rob] (0:30 - 0:31)

Guten tag, Lifers.

[Dillon] (0:32 - 0:37)

Is that your train lady? Ruining our show already?

[Rob] (0:38 - 0:40)

She's doing customer success for the train. Relax.

[Dillon] (0:41 - 0:42)

Do you know what she's saying?

[Rob] (0:44 - 0:52)

She's saying the person sitting in row 54 is incredibly handsome. No, she's not. I have no idea.

[Dillon] (0:52 - 0:56)

And we've got Pallavi with us. Pallavi, would you like to say hi?

[Pallavi] (0:56 - 1:03)

Hi, everybody. I'm looking forward to sharing my insights on customer success, as well as being a founder. Really glad to be here.

[Dillon] (1:04 - 1:09)

Perfect. And I am your host. My name is Dillon Young.

Pallavi, would you please introduce yourself?

[Pallavi] (1:10 - 1:56)

So I started out in big tech. I started out as a developer. It was real boring to be a developer, to be honest with you.

And I decided to switch very quickly into product management. That was the bulk of my career. I eventually moved to customer success because as a lot of B2B SaaS company PMs know, you don't get much access to customers when you're that.

So I decided that I want to be on the front lines a little bit, try to understand what the customer is feeling, try to understand what the customer is going through with a product mindset. And that's what I truly believe in. So while doing the CS stint, I did help set up some teams.

I advised a lot of companies on how to set up their teams. So definitely love that space a lot.

[Dillon] (1:57 - 1:58)

Where are you now, Pallavi?

[Pallavi] (1:59 - 2:25)

Right now I'm building my company. It's called Enterprise Chai. And as you could predict, it's about customer success.

I found that customer success was a very transitioning kind of function and the role was changing as we speak. It's still trying to find its place in the world. What I want to do is make customer success managers experts and be viewed as experts in the industry.

So that's what my product is going to be doing.

[Dillon] (2:26 - 2:37)

Perfect. I love it. We've got to get to the one and only question we ask of every single guest, and that is, what is on your mind when it comes to customer success?

So Pallavi, please tell us what that is.

[Pallavi] (2:38 - 4:13)

All right. In my opinion, customer success managers, whether they're in a leadership role or not, they have to be product experts. And that's what I truly believe in, and that's how I have found success.

So what's on my mind right now is, first, you have to gain the respect of not just your customers, but as an organization, in the internal organization, you have to gain the respect of everyone that make up the functions, right? So let me explain what I mean by that. First of all, you have to have the respect of the product team.

How will you gain the respect of the product team? Help me understand where the customer is at. Tell me what the customer is looking for in the next release.

Write up the stories and ethics, if you can, and pass it on to me and prioritize it for me. That's something that you can do right away and look for the weak signals when you're talking to customers about that, right? So you must know your product deeply and be able to give the information to the product team about what exactly they need.

What do they need? They need requirements and they need prioritization of those requirements to build their roadmap. That's what product managers do.

So that's number one. Number two is help everyone's voice be heard in the product team. If you look around, there are four critical functions that help with the customers, right?

One is professional services. One is solution consulting, because they're actually selling it. The third one is support.

And the fourth one is marketing. Make friends with marketing, make friends with support, make friends with solution consulting, and make friends with professional services. Collate all that information, do readouts to your teams, and get more information to educate yourself, to educate the customers.

That's top of mind for me.

[Dillon] (4:14 - 4:16)

Rob and JP, who wants to jump in there?

[JP] (4:17 - 5:48)

I think in general, in the professional world, it's good to make friends with everyone because working in an organization, you want to be able to leverage the support of everyone. Whether you're a CSM or not, that's good. With CSMs, we have an opportunity to do that because of how our function connects to so many parts of the organization.

But going back to that point of being a product expert, I think that is something that can really be helpful for people. I will call out, I think it depends on the product. Some products don't necessarily require expertise for the customer success manager to execute their role really well.

Sometimes their role is built on, you need to be able to leverage all these other things at your disposal because we need you to focus on doing X. We have solutions engineers or we have other people, but I think that really depends on how technical the product is. If I could flip it a little bit, is really becoming a company flow expert.

How do we solve this customer problem? Where do we go for things? Having those relationships with people so they know who to reach out to, and they're responsive.

I think being an expert at how your company functions and knowing the boundaries and limits for how to effectively work with the customer and the product to achieve that goal, I think that that definitely is applicable everywhere.

[Pallavi] (5:48 - 6:51)

That's true. I would like to challenge that a little bit because maybe it's coming from personal experience, but I have been in heavily technical companies and to be honest with you, I'm going to say something non-PC. To be very honest with you, if you're in a heavily technical company, you get paid more.

Sorry, I'm just going to say it. If you're in a cybersecurity company, if you're an IT company, if you're in a heavily technical company, you get paid a lot more and you get to build your brand further for longevity in the industry. That being said, being a connector to all the functions is a big role.

But what I find, and I would like to challenge what you just said, JP, which is if I was going to just ask people for information, you become a program manager. What I'm advocating for is a non-program manager. You're already an expert.

You know the product well enough to not ask that question and look for a turnaround time. CSMs are responsible for certain things. It's not a support role.

It's not a solution engineering role. It's becoming a management consultant and being an expert in your field to say, where do you need to go based on what the salespeople sold you?

[Dillon] (6:53 - 6:56)

Rob, are you free and clear? Is your lady still talking?

[Rob] (6:57 - 7:40)

No, no, no, I'm good. Am I coming through okay? I think you sound great.

Cool. Since we're in the spirit of challenging ideas, I'm going to challenge in return. Not that I disagree.

I don't disagree. But I want to entertain a different hypothesis that there are different things someone can be good at in their job and customer success. They can have product knowledge, as you said.

They can have deep industry knowledge. They can have functional knowledge about how to be a CSM, how to be a really effective CSM. You're really good at upsells and renewals and that kind of thing.

If I wanted to stack rank those, I might, don't quote me on this, I might put product knowledge at the bottom.

[Dillon] (7:40 - 7:57)

I love the idea. I imagine that if you're creating this, I certainly don't want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like at the end of this, you'll say, and this is all things that Enterprise Chai is going to help you do, right? Get rid of a lot of the busy work and help you be the product expert.

[Pallavi] (7:57 - 7:58)

Yes.

[Dillon] (7:58 - 9:49)

I've made this joke before, and I am certainly cognizant of the fact that this is one perspective, so I'm not poo-pooing any of it, but it feels like this is a fantastic time to once again say, great, just another thing that a CSM has to do, right? And I come from a world where product expertise, I do not want to touch that with a 10-foot pole as a CSM, because that is a deep, wide ocean that I would rather rely on my product folks whose job and salary and KPIs are all based on that and allow me to be a fantastic facilitator, a fantastic opportunity finder, and sometimes a great translator between the customer and the product. But I do believe that there is a space in which what you describe is absolutely the ideal, and I believe it is in those highly technical roles, and it is the ultra enterprise level.

Like you have one customer, and all you do is manage that customer and make sure that they're using the product to the best of their ability. We largely, in our conversations, speak to a more, they might be enterprise, but we do also speak to a lot of SMB where you've got a larger book of customers, anywhere from 10 to 200. And it can be really difficult to be that product expert or to have the time to speak to all of your customers about your expertise at that level.

And so less of a challenge and more, I want to recognize the value of what you're saying while also saying, like, I want to call out to the audience that this is not the end-all be-all if you're in a scenario where it's just not possible. With that, Pallavi, I do want to wrap things up. Is Enterprise Chai live?

[Pallavi] (9:49 - 10:07)

We are in beta right now. Please go ahead and try that tool. What we are aiming to build, it's kind of a guided tool.

We are also building a pre-call prep tool and a post-call task tool to send pre-crafted emails, look at summaries, and build a customer blueprint from it. So over time, we're going to have deep analytics on customer base.

[Dillon] (10:07 - 10:09)

Is there a website folks can go to?

[Pallavi] (10:09 - 10:12)

Yes, www.enterprisechai.com.

[Dillon] (10:13 - 10:34)

Perfect. I love it. Pallavi, thank you so much.

I love this topic. I think it's a really cool, it's a blind spot for a lot of us about how certain folks are conducting business. So an awesome thing to bring to folks' attention.

We'd love to have you back and talk more about this in another three, six months to hear how things are going. If you're leaving beta, let's talk about what that looks like. But for now, we do have to say goodbye, Pallavi.

So thank you again.

[Pallavi] (10:34 - 10:38)

Ciao. I really enjoyed this conversation. Thank you for challenging me.

It's fun.

[Voiceover] (10:47 - 11:12)

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.

Until next time.