Who will watch the watchmen? | Sarah Desjardins | Ep. 101

[Dillon] (0:00 - 0:11)

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 Rob here. Rob, you want to say hi?

[Rob] (0:12 - 0:12)

Salute.

[Dillon] (0:14 - 0:17)

And we've got JP here. JP, do you want to say hi?

[JP] (0:19 - 0:20)

Hi folks.

[Dillon] (0:21 - 0:25)

And we've got Sarah here. Sarah, do you want to say hi?

[Sarah] (0:25 - 0:29)

Hello everyone. I hope everybody's having a great day.

[Dillon] (0:30 - 0:34)

I know I am. I am your host. My name is Dillon Young.

Sarah, can you please introduce yourself?

[Sarah] (0:35 - 1:02)

Yes, my name is Sarah Desjardins and I currently work at the company Unitas as the customer success platform administrator. In my free time, I enjoy reading, doing walks, and pretty excited today because it's Friday. Not sure if you'll be watching this on a Friday, okay?

So love that. And we're just having a good day. So everything's going good.

[Dillon] (1:02 - 1:22)

Cool. Yep. I won't edit out that part actually.

I love that it's Friday. I want everybody to feel our energy. And if it's a Monday that they hear this, well then that's their problem.

Sarah, you know what we do here? We ask every single guest one simple question and that is, what is on your mind when it comes to customer success? Why don't you tell us what that is for you?

[Sarah] (1:23 - 1:48)

Yeah. So I really think my topic today is just talking about CSOps and how CS teams can be better enabled with systems and processes to improve the overall CS teams learning. Truly, that's my topic for today.

So how can CSOps help facilitate that? What can we do to make sure that people feel as though they are empowered when they're using the system and the tools for what they're doing?

[JP] (1:49 - 1:52)

You didn't know I was bringing in the ops. You didn't know that.

[Dillon] (1:55 - 2:10)

And where is this coming from? I know obviously you're in the CSOps role as a platform administrator, but is the idea like, do you have some PTSD that you'd need to get off your chest? Or are you coming with one specific tactic you want to share with the audience?

Tell me just a little bit more.

[Sarah] (2:10 - 3:36)

Yeah, I think it's from multiple companies I've worked at now. I've seen CSMs really struggle with sometimes the processes and the systems we put into place. You can have a great knowledge base.

You can have a great overall experience with content. You can have great data-driven insights, but unless people actually know how to use it, that's a problem. So understanding and using some of that stuff, the automation, the technology, how to interpret the information that is provided to you, that's where I think CSOps can step in and do a little bit more at times to be able to help facilitate that understanding and knowledge because we are the ones that create it.

So you can have a great CS enablement team. They're awesome. But if we're not helping the end-user actually be able to understand the information that we are providing them, then we are hurting them in the end.

It's truly how I feel. And I've seen this again and again at multiple different organizations. So that's where I'm coming from with this.

Understanding the information that CSOps is providing to ensure that the team, the CS team knows how to use it and they know how to use it well so they can help their customers. And I think that sits with us. That sets a job with CSOps.

[Dillon] (3:37 - 3:56)

Rob, in your roles in leadership, how has your opinion of CSOps, I don't think really existed this specialization five years ago. Do you have that same belief or was that your same experience, Rob? And how has your opinion about it evolved over time?

[Rob] (3:56 - 5:38)

You're right. Nobody called it CSOps. People tended to call it sales ops that did CSOps as a hobby.

I think a lot of companies now they've moved toward consolidation where they bucket it all under rev ops. So in other words, all the systems and processes that support the operations that a CS person could do day to day. The example, this is perfect timing because the call I had just prior to this was one where I was talking to a CSM.

He's like, I don't know how I can get in contact with all my accounts. I just don't have enough time in the day to dial them all. He's a relatively new to this book of business.

And I was like, I bet you can make 40 dials in a day. He was like, that's not possible. And I was like, I bet we can set up a cadence that's just going to auto dial, bang, bang, bang down every one of your accounts.

You do that for a week and you'll get introduced to all your accounts. I promise you that. Now I know that's just like a blitz approach to a very nuanced, complex problem that he's trying to solve.

And I'm not trying to recommend that he trade off with actively getting to really know his accounts, their business needs. But there are times where I've done something like that and it kind of results with someone feeling like they've done the impossible. Right.

Or another example that comes up is like I implemented an LMS once where it saved literally 10,000 hours of training time in the first year that we implemented it. And it was like, it was such a no brainer after the fact that prior to it, we were like, oh, we'll just do training the traditional way, conference rooms and whiteboards and whatever presentations where people are half asleep. But yeah, I think there's so much untapped potential in the world of CS ops.

I'm a little worried because I think a lot of companies are cutting it back now. I don't think they should, but there's a ton of untapped potential.

[Dillon] (5:39 - 5:48)

JP, from your perspective, how has CS ops or maybe just systematizing certain motions, how has that benefited you?

[JP] (5:49 - 8:34)

I think my experience has been, first of all, I'm lucky to have it. So that's one thing I can even, you can even get CS ops or like a good enablement. Like you're at least fortunate in that sense.

I would say I've been seeing some things that have been really interesting without a CSP. For some reason, whenever I think of CS ops, I automatically want to think about there's a CSP involved, but not necessarily, right? Does not have to necessarily be involved.

And I think about, I've seen things particularly around like onboarding because this is such a crucial part of the relationship. When you're talking about being a trusted advisor, again, it's much easier to build trust and establish trust early on than it is to try to get it back somehow after losing it. And I think that the operationalizing, I feel like that's a word.

I think that's a word for operationalizing of the process really helps so that there's less cowboys when it comes to your things like your onboarding function, just to try to look at one slice of it. I think that there's something that can be really said for CS ops stepping in and really saying, oh, wow, it looks like this can be a crucial in terms of, let's say, information that needs to be captured. I've seen, for example, a field get added to Salesforce in terms of capturing some additional information.

What that does is that also helps, of course, there's confluence doc or whatever, but the idea is that now that I have to capture this information, I'm knowing that this is part of the process that needs to be part of the standard. And this is going to really help in terms of when someone needs to look, I think like CS ops is also a function of the visibility, right? So that people who are maybe in those RebOps leadership positions can actually make more informed decisions that aren't so thrashy.

I don't like the thrashy decisions where it's like, I feel like things aren't going well. And so I have this opinion, I have this experience, we're going to do it this way. I think that operationalizing like protects against something against cowboys, the Dallas Cowboys suck.

But it's really just about people adhering to more of a standards that we can like, again, the recurring part of revenue, we need to have that consistency in our process.

[Dillon] (8:35 - 8:50)

Sarah, I have a question for you. So first of all, do you believe that CS ops and a CSP go hand in hand? Or have you been a part of organizations where you served in this capacity and did not have a CSP?

[Sarah] (8:51 - 9:35)

I have not. So we've always had a CSP at every organization I've worked at under a CS ops function at different organizations. But I don't necessarily think that you have to have a CSP to have CS ops.

You can do this. You can build playbooks without a CSP. You can use spreadsheets.

You can do other things. I guess I've hit a hot topic. You can do other things to operationalize without necessarily having a CSP, to still be able to have CS ops.

I guess what I'm saying is it's good to have a CSP, but it's not an absolute necessary piece of the puzzle if you don't have one.

[Dillon] (9:36 - 9:45)

Yeah, I'd say it makes it a lot easier, of course, right. But it's not impossible to do without one. Sarah, based on our comments, do you have any last words?

[Sarah] (9:46 - 10:47)

Yeah, I just want to leave with the thought of I go back to this really, because I think CS ops guidance to CSMs really does help one them by us to as a CS ops team, because when I reiterate things, so when I recreate or redo something in a V1, V2, V3, V4 format, let's say a joint success plan, let's talk about a health score or something like that. If I've had that one to one feedback with a CSM and I've provided that guidance and that understanding, it makes it easier for my job to know what I need to do to make it better as we continue to move forward. And I think that's the point is not only does it help them, but it helps us too.

And it's a two way street. So I think the help and the guidance is really, it's such an important piece of this. And I think if more people had that guidance and help from CS ops, we'd be CS teams would be in a lot better place overall.

Not saying that they're in a bad place.

[Dillon] (10:47 - 11:08)

Well, they are. You can say it. Anyway, Sarah, that is our time.

I love this topic. Not one we've heard ever before, or much of for sure this idea of process and systematizing and can we specialize a little bit more. And so it's awesome.

Thank you so much for bringing this to our attention. We are out of time, but we'd love to have you back in the future. For now, we've got to say goodbye.

[Sarah] (11:09 - 11:10)

Thanks, everyone.

[Voiceover] (11:38 - 11:45)

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