What makes your customer's customer happy? | Kimberly Ayala | TDSU Ep. 36

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I super disagree with that. I think a ton of stuff we do is not strategic, right? What's up Lifers and welcome to The Daily Standup with Lifetime Value where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every day. I've got my man Rob here.

Rob, you want to say hi? Cheerio Lifers. Yes, Rob is newly landed in the United Kingdom. So thank you so much for making it Rob.

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JP, do you want to say hi? Hello governor. And Kimberly, would you like to say hi? Hi, howdy from America. Yes, let's bring it back.

Bring it back to America. I am your host, the resident cowboy of customer success. My name is Dillon Young.

Kimberly, would you like to introduce yourself? Sure. I am currently director of customer success for a company called Akeneo. We do product information management for probably a lot of your favorite brands and retailers.

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Our focus really over the last two years has been scaling the team and becoming more efficient, becoming better at what we do and just upselling, up leveling. Right on. Thank you so much for being here.

You know what our question is. So Kimberly, can you please tell us what is on your mind when it comes to customer success? Yeah, I think there's like a ton of talk right now on how to be strategic, how to uplevel your game. How do we actually demonstrate to our customers that we're delivering value? We hear from gurus all the time, like Greg Daines talking about when it comes to retention, there's only one thing that matters, right? It's the value that your customer is getting.

And one of the things that I push to my team is how do we know what value actually looks like to our customers? And a lot of times I think that comes through in what their customer experience is. So how do we get into the minds of our customer's customer and then pull that back into the value that we're delivering at Akeneo? Rob, I'm going to hand it right over to you because I know strategic is your favorite word. Yeah, I have a love-hate relationship with this term.

I've got a mixed history with this term, only because I've seen people use it as a crutch to avoid doing certain work. I'm not going to do that because that's not strategic. I'm like, let's do this other thing.

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No, that's not strategic either. And I remember I was talking with a CEO of this company, Kojo, a former client of mine. She was like, this also drives me crazy, Rob, because literally everything you do in a business is strategic.

It's towards some upper strategic goal. We wouldn't do anything if it weren't strategic. So that was the position I was coming from.

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Now I've grown in my rant. Oh, this must be recent then. Yeah.

Because I have heard lots of good lessons from people like Kim, who have given really good talks on this stuff. There's also a guy named Chad Horenfeldt, who has been at some of the same conferences that Kim and I have been to where we've met, who's really leveled up that conversation to basically, like Kim said, what the term means to them is leveling up your understanding of your client's business, assuming it's like a B2B model. And the impact that essentially how they make money and how they interact with their clients.

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So once I reframed that understanding of the term, I have more of a soft spot for this type of thinking, because I totally agree with it in concept. I'm just trying to find a new label. So whenever I find a label, strategic 2.0, let's call it, then I'll be a changed man.

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So what do you think of the term consultative? That seems like another one that gets thrown around a ton, but that's often what a consultant is doing. I'm good with that one. That's it.

We figured it out here. Boom. Done.

JP, you don't get to talk. We're done. Okay.

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Drop a comment and let us know what you like, what you don't like, or how we can get better. We want to make sure we're giving the best content we can to you and others within the community. Thanks so much, guys.

I'll let you get back to the show. No, please go ahead. That's how strategic of you.

When strategy comes to my mind in terms of what I do day to day, I'm thinking of two things. I think it's the internal alignment, right? I feel like misalignment is so very unstrategic, right? I'm saying this from a very recent experience, but I think that having that internal alignment is just an obvious ingredient, right? You got to start from there. The other part of strategy to me is taking that moment to really make the most of the opportunities that I get in my interaction with the customer.

In a field like customer success where as one of the people who's boots on the ground, people can just not respond. Why are people not responding? When you have that opportunity of contact, especially earlier on when people are excited, I feel like that is your moment to shine strategically. It's right there.

Strategy I think is so crucial upfront and early in that relationship as opposed to the backpedaling strategy where you're trying to jump back on a galloping horse as it were and you have no idea. That's my two cents. Kimberly, I love what you said because it puts some substance to what I think a lot of times we call business acumen.

How does your customer make money and how do they treat their customers? It's a little less fuzzy. I think also when we talk strategic and we talk about customers, we often get directly into the tactics. I need to multi-thread.

Why are you multi-threading? It's so you can better understand their business. You can identify if there are then opportunities for you to help them further with different SKUs or using the same product but configured slightly differently for a different line of business. When we get down to brass tacks, it is totally about how they do business.

I'm going to stop there. I want to give you an opportunity to give us the last word. Yeah, for sure.

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I'm just going back to what Rob said about everything we do is strategic. I super disagree with that. I think a ton of stuff we do is super not strategic and wasted energy.

But I think that's the whole point is to get into your point, JP, when customers come in right after signing the contract, half the time they don't even know what their goals are. They don't even know what they're set to accomplish. You're right.

Getting that ball rolling and even just asking them the question, what is it that you're hoping your customers experience by doing business with us? What changes are you looking for? It helps to get the ball rolling and just get them in that mindset of where the value is actually going to be and then have everything geared towards defining that, illustrating that, demonstrating that. That's really how you're going to be strategic. It doesn't come down to adoption all the time.

That's a piece of it, but it's a small piece. This is like the meat and potatoes, I guess. I have expected you to say this and I think also broadcasting those customer desired outcomes to everybody within your organization, whether it's some sort of intranet that you have or individual Slack channels for each one of your customers.

I've done that. Making sure everybody within your organization, the vendor organization is very clear on what that customer is trying to accomplish because it should influence every conversation, every decision, everything you do should be in service of that customer. We recently spoke about this with Betsy Gilfillan.

She wanted to look at it from the perspective of a personal connection with your customers. I do believe that is great, but it's also about how every decision we make should only be so many degrees removed from what the customer is trying to accomplish. We should always have that in the front of our minds when we're making decisions.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Your statement about misalignment earlier. Exactly right.

Yep. Staying aligned is a big piece. Kimberly, that's our time.

Thank you so much for bringing this to our attention. It's one of those same topics, but we're looking at it from a slightly different angle. That's why I love having these conversations.

I would love to have you back, but until next time, Kimberly, we have to say goodbye. That's great. Well, it's been my pleasure.

You guys have an awesome rest of your day. You too. Thanks.

Thanks, Sam. 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.

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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 Lifetime Value Media. Until next time.