Trust but verify | Derrick Smith II | Ep. 93

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

What I got from that is that you are a hater of the abacus.

[Dillon] (0:04 - 0:14)

Is that when the calculator came out? 1965? Well, so the handheld calculator, 1967, but the original calculator, 1642.

Pascal's calculator.

[JP] (0:14 - 0:19)

I love Pascal, man. You ever seen Game of Thrones, man? All right.

[Dillon] (0:25 - 0:28)

Hey, look, we're not prepared either. So we're all in this boat together.

[JP] (0:28 - 0:30)

That's the spirit. It's all freestyle.

[Dillon] (0:31 - 0:33)

Love it. Cool. You guys ready?

[JP] (0:34 - 0:35)

Let's do it.

[Dillon] (0:36 - 1:21)

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, Bucket Hat JP here. JP, do you want to say hi?

And we've got Rob here. Rob, do you want to say hi? Hi!

Oh, boy. And Derrick, you've got to try. We've got Derrick here.

Derrick, do you want to say hi? Hi. I love it.

I love it. Straight man. And I am your host, hooty-hoo.

My name is Dillon Young. Derrick, thank you so much for being here. Can you please introduce yourself?

[Derrick] (1:22 - 1:50)

Yeah. Thanks, guys, for having me on. I'm Derrick Smith.

I am a Strategic Director of Customer Success at Jellyfish, which is a multinational marketing and advertising agency, as well as a digital analytics shop. So we assist GMP tech clients with license reselling, as well as Google Analytics integrations, various digital media and digital marketing functions as well.

[Dillon] (1:50 - 2:08)

You said a bunch of things in there that I didn't understand. Maybe we'll get into it during your topic. Top of the list is GMP.

I don't even know what that is. Maybe I'm just an idiot. But Derrick, you know what we're doing here.

We ask every single guest one single question, and that is, what is on your mind when it comes to customer success? So can you tell us what that is?

[Derrick] (2:09 - 2:54)

Yeah, it's something I've been getting into a little bit more recently. I've had an interest in startups, venture capital, and you can't have venture capital without having AI. And I've seen a huge blow up in the amount of AI-powered CSM tools.

And I've used a few, and I've onboarded a few to my company. And it's got me thinking, at what point do those systems become like a double-edged sword, where you start relying on them so much that you either don't keep upskilling in your CSM function, or you just take them for granted and use them for what they're worth and just coast by on the functions they provide?

[Dillon] (2:56 - 3:10)

So this reminds me very specifically of a statement, I'll say, that JP had on a previous episode. So I actually want to hand it right over to JP to either clarify what you're saying or to share his thoughts and get this started.

[JP] (3:11 - 3:53)

Yeah, Derrick, I think what you said, first of all, is such a great approach. I think that it's becoming more and more refreshing to hear people speaking more about basically not overly relying on the tech, because we still are the ones who have the executive function, right? We still have the ability to have context and make those decisions, right?

It would be really cool, actually, if you could, without giving away any sort of financial info or anything that's going to get disclosure issues, just an example of something where you noticed this, and you were like, where's the line here?

[Derrick] (3:54 - 5:20)

Yeah, I'd love to. I'll be the first person to admit, I am a horrible note taker when I'm leading a call. So I jumped fully on board with the AI note taking apps.

And in the beginning, I would have them take the notes for me. And I'd watch them take the notes while I was having the call just to make sure it was catching everything, everything looked right. And then the more I trusted it, the more I just decided to stop watching and have the full conversation, give the client my entire attention.

And then I'd review the notes afterwards. And put them in a doc, do the follow up action items. And then I noticed I caught myself not even really reading over the entire transcription of the notes and just going in and picking out the things that I might have missed or the things that were important.

And it dawned on me that I might be missing some valuable context there, if that's what I'm doing. You're also not really getting the full picture when it comes to the client's message there. Sometimes the notes from that meeting tie into notes from other meetings.

And when you're really looking over that one transcription, you might not go back and tie it into something else. So I've just noticed over time that with the ease of use of these products and how convenient they might be to people like me who love talking to the clients, but hate having to pause and take notes while I'm doing so, what you might be missing and how that can impact your relationship and your business long term.

[JP] (5:22 - 5:51)

That's awesome. And I'm going to pass it to Rob, but I just want to say this issue of context, I think is super important, right? If something's able to, say, connect to all the resources that all the data that's available at your company, maybe you can trust it a little bit more.

But I think that you really hit on something which is important, which was how skills can get eroded in the over-reliance on the technology. Anyways, Rob, I know you've want to share.

[Rob] (5:51 - 7:37)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm going to share my personal experience with the same question, which will actually somewhat challenge this assumption in a good way, in a healthy way. Because I worry about this too.

I worry about this all the time. I worry about robots taking my job. But the analogy that I sleep at night on is I think about, imagine this, it's 1965.

You're an accountant. Calculators are about to come out. You've heard about these things.

And you're like, oh, am I going to lose my job? And you're saying the same thing. Am I going to stop upskilling myself on math?

Am I going to coast by? What if I lose my job? I don't know.

You have all these fears and concerns. What actually happened is quite different, right? First is the skill set just changed to be not so much menial, manual math, and to move more to knowledge work.

And a lot of professions really blossomed as a result, except for the ones that didn't adopt the technology, by the way. And the other thing is that I think it actually enhanced the skill set of the people who adopted the technology. So for me, one question I ask people in interviews when I'm interviewing for clients of mine is like, what tech stack are you familiar with?

And for me, I've changed to become especially intrigued when people can show that they've effectively used AI tooling to enhance their operations, to enhance their client experiences, to enhance their efficiency, to enhance their quality control or whatever else. So I think we're going to see a pretty cool shift in the market that to me is positive overall.

[Derrick] (7:37 - 7:41)

What I got from that is that you are a hater of the abacus.

[Dillon] (7:44 - 8:02)

What I got from that is, is that when the calculator came out? 1965? So I googled it beforehand.

The first calculator, well, so the handheld calculator 1967, but the original calculator 1642. Pascal's calculator, also known as the arithmetic machine.

[JP] (8:03 - 8:05)

I love Pascal, man. You ever seen Game of Thrones?

[Dillon] (8:08 - 8:21)

Derrick, so you started, it sounded maybe a little dystopian. Do you have any tips for folks on how to keep it on the positive side of the spectrum about how to use AI without getting fat and lazy?

[Derrick] (8:22 - 9:21)

Yeah, it's all balanced. And I will be the first person to like I said, admit that it's hard to strike that balance. Honestly, upskilling, just improving your critical listening skills.

And this is just for note taking in general, but just for using AI tools, you hear the horror stories all the time. You can't really put all of your eggs into one basket regarding any one of these tools or any sort of software platform that's out there. Everything needs a check and balance.

It's the same thing with Excel spreadsheets. So you can have the model, you can put them in function, but then it could spit out something wrong and you have to go back and check and you have to know how to check it and you have to know where to go and you have to know what it's supposed to look like. It's the same thing with AI, you have to get as familiar with the tool as possible and also be confident with your abilities and your experience to know if something doesn't look right or something needs some editing, some revision, and be able to go back in and fix that.

So yeah, I think most of it comes down to upskilling on AI and your CSM capabilities.

[Dillon] (9:22 - 9:38)

I love it. Derrick, it's a fantastic topic and I think it's got a lot of legs to it. I don't know about you guys, but I think AI is sticking around.

Maybe you can come back in the future and tell us some more horror stories or some big wins, but we're out of time for now. So we've got to say goodbye, Derrick.

[Derrick] (9:39 - 9:43)

Yeah, of course. Thanks for having me on guys. It was really fun.

First podcast.

[Dillon] (9:45 - 9:55)

Oh, we never got our sound effect. I'm going to have to put one in post about first podcast sound effect. We're happy to be here first.

It was special.

[Rob] (9:57 - 10:30)

Yeah, boy. 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 LifetimeValue and find us on the socials at LifetimeValueMedia. Until next time.

[Speaker 5] (10:36 - 10:37)

Oh, damn!