The freedom to connect | Julien LeTerrien | Ep. 85

[Rob] (0:00 - 0:03)

Did any of you guys catch what Tom Brady said?

[Dillon] (0:03 - 0:32)

He was like everyone should do football for the one reason that football is hard and i'm like My man's never been in customer success What's up lifers and welcome to The Daily Standup where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single Day, I got my man jp here jp. Do you want to say hi?

[JP] (0:32 - 0:36)

JP checking in from bean town home of the celtics.

[Dillon] (0:36 - 1:09)

Oh 2024 championship celtics Unobstructed path to the championship and i've got my man rob here rob. Do you want to say hi? What's up lifers and jerry curlers and jerry curlers the gcs And we've got Julien here Julien.

Do you want to say hi? Hi everyone And I am your host, my name is Dillon young Julien, thank you so much for being here. Can you please introduce yourself?

[Julien] (1:09 - 1:58)

Absolutely. Thank you for having me. So my name is Julien.

I'm currently the chief customer officer at mobile expense Mobile expense is belgium company headquartered in belgium that propose travel and expense management tool And we basically have an offering for managing and streamlining corporate expenses So yeah long story short you go on a business trip You have expenses and we facilitate your reimbursement to make it as seamless and touchless as possible Uh, are you currently in belgium?

I am. Yes indeed How are the waffles this time of year? They are always good and to full disclosure.

I'm french national so I had to adapt a bit I don't know about french waffles. I don't know I uh, we do waffles We do Things are better than the belgium, but I give them the waffle the beer and the chocolate. They are the top.

[Dillon] (1:58 - 2:15)

They are the best Even the chocolate do french. Yeah, whatever. Okay, Julien.

Thank you So much for being here. You know what we do here aside from talk about pastries and chocolate We want to know what is on your mind when it comes to customer success. So can you tell us what that is?

[Julien] (2:16 - 4:51)

Yeah, absolutely So i'll just give a little bit of context because it's closely linked to my experience back in the day at mobile expense I was heading the professional services department and we start reflecting on customer success back in summer last year And obviously we were jumping to something or jumping to the unknown Basically, and there was two things that really strike me when we start diving in is first of all how great and how vibrant the customer Community is it's incredible and it has been very helpful Uh in in our journey Like I know that you are the moussa on the podcast and he was actually one of the person I reached out At the beginning of the year and he was kind enough to carve out a bit of time in his schedule to tell me What he was doing his journey and all of those experience and sharing are very helpful. And so I love it I love it there And by doing so I was like why are those people so passionate? What is it that customer experience customer success is different from the rest?

and I think one of the answer I found is like In an organization customer success has a unique position to really deliver something that the other services cannot so if you take Sales marketing procurement, whatever they mostly work for the benefit of their employer. It's business. It's normal customer success can actually they have the freedom to Look at the success of their customer and make their customer their primary target their primary goal And by doing so you can create really genuine relationship with your customer You can create something you can really care for and have this really transparent and honest relationship That's all there.

I've got the freedom to do so and when you do that, obviously you get passionate because well business is still people talking to people Even if there's a lot of ai now, but we're still human talking to each other and as human we like to be heard We like to participate. We like to make an impact and by doing that we create relationship and you create attachment to your company And your brand and then you create loyalty and loyalty is really the holy grail of the subscription business So when you reach that then obviously making that happening You need to have passionate people and I think that's one of the reason why this community is so vibrant and why? Customer success is being more and more successful are creating What we are missing as a product company and as customer like creating this relationship that are at most at the utmost very important You sound pretty passionate yourself Yeah, yeah, and so I am well Julien, it sounds like the cco title is relatively new.

[Dillon] (4:51 - 4:53)

So is that the case in the past few months?

[Julien] (4:54 - 5:35)

Yeah, absolutely. So I Thank you very much To be fair it was more of a rebranding of the actual position So we changed a little bit the organization, but we basically Doing different with the same people the interesting things was Our kpi before which were really revenue driven as a professional services and department Suddenly where we were like, okay, where do we go now? Do we go on nps?

Do we go on c-sat? We go engagement. How do we transform our mindset instead of Looking for Our margin and our timeline and our project.

How do I look for the customer himself the satisfaction the engagement and all of that

[Dillon] (5:37 - 6:04)

That's gonna have to be a part two We're not gonna have enough time to go through all that, but I love the idea of passion I was gonna take a cynics approach and i'm only gonna say this because I do think it's funny even though I don't know if I totally agree, but I wonder if we're also passionate because Nobody else cares about us. Does anybody else feel that way?

It's much maligned I feel like we've got to fight for our right to be here a lot of times Yeah, it's a fair point.

[Julien] (6:04 - 6:37)

It's sometimes fairly difficult to highlight the value we have within an organization. So yeah, it's a daily fight, but there is also a way of like making it more obvious for your leadership like You can also as a customer success You have to be data driven in in any case and being data driven can also tell you oh Look at how much revenue I save this year. Look at how much retention I get Look at how much cs qualified lead I bring to you So this can help bring the the stigma that well customer success is a cost center.

[Dillon] (6:37 - 6:47)

Uh, is it though not all the time Rob, I want to give you a chance to jump in here Yeah Did any of you guys touch what tom brady said?

[Rob] (6:47 - 7:05)

He was like everyone should do football play football for the one reason that football is hard and i'm like My man's never been a customer success I think you want to be careful how you talk about the Adopted son of the city you live in All right. Yeah.

[JP] (7:06 - 7:17)

Well, look i'm just saying i'm just saying he's never working before Yeah I will just say he thinks tom brady is his son He's a giant he's a jets fan So it doesn't apply.

[Rob] (7:17 - 8:31)

Yeah. No, let me just say let me just say I think i've thought long and hard about this Julien and I think it's a really great question I don't think I would be in customer success if I never had this one moment where I found community in customer success Because I spent the better part of the first half of my life asking myself What am I going to be when I grow up? Right like we all do but for me it was like crippling at times And it wasn't until I remember I had just moved to austin and I went to this meetup And I finally saw people in this group this local community, which is strong and tight-knit in austin Where I could look at people and say I can see myself doing their job in five years in 10 years And that the power of that community really was a defining moment in my career And so I appreciate it and I think that's a big part of what we're trying to do on this podcast too We're just building community Dillon gives me a hard time because I talk about it all the time but it's such an important topic and especially in such a new field where It's not even just our companies or organizations that we're trying to prove our value to but we're getting yelled at on the phone by angry customers And there is nothing like being able to just go talk that up chop that up with some industry colleagues

[Dillon] (8:32 - 8:41)

Value a slack channel coming soon, by the way Rob's gonna moderate JP I want to give you an opportunity to get in here.

[JP] (8:41 - 10:14)

Oh me I'll say i'm reminded about Something you said Julien. There's one thing that we can do that that other these other departments can't do And I got a reminder about that recently because the temptation is sometimes when you're a customer success manager You are playing some different roles sometimes you're dipping into The support role sometimes you're promoting an event that's coming up. Sometimes you are Depending on what you're responsible for if it's upsells or different things you take on these different flavors from people and There's an element of danger to that because sometimes that can violate That very sort of pure relationship that you can have as a customer success manager I recently got some feedback that really helped me to dial back in which was like Even if i'm compensated on these different things The customer really needs to trust me like it was just a reminder of hey ultimately I need to Build this trusted advisor relationship.

I know that I have kpis. I know there needs to be data I know there's all this stuff but I think it helped me to come back to this idea and the sort of the sanctity of cs, which is that Really do want to build that relationship where the customer really feels Like I am in their corner and not simply Just trying to get more money out of it even though well Jp loves money.

[Julien] (10:14 - 10:55)

Yeah, even it happens, but it's really true what you say because What we never We should always look at one thing. Our north star is basically valuing our customer And if you value your customer, it's like tell them also if they are the top tier customer if they are important for you Tell them they are important tell them what they can expect and always close the feedback loop If they give you a feedback tell them thank you. Tell them what you do with that feedback Oh, yeah.

Thank you for that. We will put it on the roadmap in six months. We will be using it Make them part of what you're doing and I think that's what we are uniquely positioned to do I love it Julien And that is our time.

[Dillon] (10:55 - 11:10)

Thank you so much for bringing this topic. I love the passion great This is our first recording of the day. Let's pull back the curtain a little bit and that energy is exactly What we need it Julien So, thank you so much appreciate you taking the time to be here.

[Julien] (11:11 - 11:11)

Yes email For

[Dillon] (11:11 - 11:19)

Thank you guys for having me, I'd love to have you back in the future, but for now we've got to say goodbye whenever you want

[Julien] (11:19 - 11:19)

Cheers guys

[Voiceover] (11:24 - 11:54)

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 lifetime value media.com Find us on youtube at lifetime value and find us on the socials at lifetime value media until next time