Hey everybody welcome to the second growth podcast. I am Tori Kinlick joined today by my buddy Matt who I would like to look at your And we have a special guest with us today. So before we allow our special guest to introduce herself Matt you want to say hello? Yeah, how do you everybody and over to you Madeline?
Hi Tori. Hi Matt. Thank you so much for this opportunity Madeline to pray I had a customer success and onboarding for air calls North American region Been an air call for about a year. We are a cloud based phone technology So think of us as the voice that lives within your CRM or help desk as we plug into many of the business tools You already use so we're calls in our software we care to many different industries and we play really well in the SMB space But we're here to help you power your customer facing teams through voice a little bit about me I've been an air call for a year as mentioned in that time.
I've hired over 20 people were hyper growth company I oversee a revenue driving CSM team So my team owns upsell expansion renewal cross-sell etc And prior to my time at air call most of my experience has actually been in hospitality So from my very first job where I played SpongeBob at the Nickelodeon theme park I literally wore a giant yellow costume and I danced around entertaining customer I know to hotel management to building a customer success function at a B2B hospitality tech company And so all of these experiences have made me extremely passionate about all things customer relations Which is a big reason why I joined air call and pleasure to be here today. That's awesome Thank you so much for all that context Madeline I mean, I I think we have to just go back real quick and hear about the SpongeBob I mean, you know, how did you end up in that role and it did it actually help you with anything else that you know You might have pursued a little bit later in life and maybe a little bit of a different I don't know As a kid I was always in the in the food service industry and I am a strong believer that everyone should at least have a short stint If nothing else in the food service industry because it's very humbling, of course But it also you know really kind of forces you to you know, you know, kind of think through You know what type of experience you are looking to create for those those customers on behalf of the company that you work for And and it certainly helps you practice patience. So yeah, I think that that has definitely certainly well as I'm sure You know, you're rolling in playing SpongeBob for a bit with you So I'm not gonna ask you to do it here But I just want to know can you do the SpongeBob laugh is that was that like art of the But the laugh no I didn't have to talk at all which was fun too because I was hiding behind a cardboard yellow box So it was just me nobody saw my base didn't have to talk it was perfect. That's awesome.
So I guess, you know I guess we could talk a little bit more about maybe your your more current role You know that's the one that that I had heard more about before we've had a chance to meet and chat on that the podcast today So yeah, I guess you know, maybe we kind of start real high level So like you know, you leave this team of customer success executives What does customer success mean to you to the company and and then you know the second point would be how do you go about measuring all that? Yeah, absolutely So I like to think of customer success is kind of like the taffy effect with your customers And so think of like the taffy you get in Long Island, and it's you know, it's like really hard It's gonna break a tooth, right? But but when it's made it goes through this giant machine that kind of stretches it out into this real consistency That's kind of like never ending and it's it's gooey and it's sticky and I think of customer success is creating that stickiness and that consistency for your customers, right? So what that really means is throughout every step of the customer journey Which by the way starts very early prior to closing the deal and through onboarding and through that account management phase and hopefully that up So in that renewal phase you want to create that stickiness and that consistency for your customers And so what that means in a customer success function within a company is it's really in many ways a Swiss army knife You're a jack of all trades because you have to be responsible for the customer's happiness And I always sell you know to folks that want to move into customer success that it's like being the CEO of your own small business You have to really own a book of business You own a book of customers and you're ultimately responsible for making sure that they get the return on their investment of your product And so here at air call what that means is in the day-to-day the customer success team is responsible for one making sure they get the adoption They're using the product.
They're getting the full bang for their buck. We in particular integrations are a huge play So partnerships and ensuring that you know air call is great on its own But it's even better when it lives within your CRM like HubSpot, right? And so kind of building that stickiness and building that foundation and so the tool is used in its tech stack to the best of its ability And as that kind of CEO you have to be both be the face to the customer But also represent the customer internally and build the customer's brand and identify their needs to say the product team or the support team Or even the finance team if there's some billing questions, etc So long answer to your question Torian map It's really it's that jack-of-all trades that that individual who's ultimately responsible for the success of the customer and that comes through Many different motions within cross functional alignments and in terms of KPIs It's it's really about here at air call as mentioned You know, we own the commercial side and the customer success team So the team is responsible for that upsell expansion and that renewal But ideally just by building a relationship Understanding their needs and translating that into the end use of your product that stuff comes naturally They're gonna grow with you and so that's really what it comes down to in certain sort of their day-to-day activities and then their KPIs Yeah, I love that and you said something really interesting a few moments ago right about like the The customer lifecycle customer journey be begins far before there's you know, pen to paper on the contract or you know I guess virtual contracts and all that right? Yeah, yeah, Panda dot dot design And so I guess you know, what what role does your team play and all that?
You know so many times that's there's a that's the kind of the delineation point between you know marketing and sales and and CX and so You know what you're suggesting Which by the way, I'm a huge proponent of as well is that you know that customer journey? It starts way way way before there's there's any kind of contractual Agreement engagement in place and so yeah, what role does your team kind of play in all that? Well, and that's just it I think what customers lose and where you lose as a business is when you're broken down into silos And so breaking down those walls and creating that seamless experience really takes putting the customer first And so we talk a lot here air called customer centricity and translating that into their their end experience within your product by saying Let's go back to basics. I we've got a kickoff call You know just coming up here and after this call and I was helping the onboarding team by saying wait a minute Let's let's let's get with the sales rep and let's say why did they purchase air call?
What are their goals and how are we going to hold ourselves accountable to get them there? Right and so that does start very early on in terms of what is the seller selling? I would say get brought in bring in your customer success team in the sales process We are we are the value that's gonna help your customers be successful. So we are part of the sales package that you're selling So sell the onboarding experience sell the customer account management experience.
There's somebody you have a named person who's responsible for your success Let's let's sell that in through marketing and through our actual engagement when we're trying to close the deal And so I think I think it really comes down to breaking down those silos and and creating that holistic experience That at the end of the day is putting the customer first and walking through what their needs are from the customer's lens I love that. I we talk a lot of clients who you know We're especially in the early goings and trying to understand what makes them different especially Compared to some of the other alternatives in the marketplace so many of our clients say you know It's our customer service that differentiates us and that's fantastic. That's great But it's also really difficult to weave into you know any type of marketing language or campaigns I've certainly you know really kind of found a nice place for them in maybe retargeting programs where a person's already landed on your website There's that familiarity and and you know designing an entire campaign around the customer experience and all that but What you're suggesting here right is is having them actually involved in the sales process I think that's brilliant You know that's getting to know that people that you're gonna be doing business with especially if they're gonna become your primary point of contact You don't want it to be a formal handoff of you know Hey, I've been working with the salesperson the entire time for the last couple months We've got everything great and now they're gonna toss me over the fence and I'm never gonna hear from them again Right that is not an ideal customer experience. So yeah, yeah And so I think that that's such a brilliant idea So is that something that your team actively practices or you still you know really trying to kind of break down some of those internal silos with your own sales Team and get them to divide into it approach like that well, we're always working progress right?
I'd love to say but let's be honest right there's there's eternal challenges and there's also segmentations within our customer base whether it's based on industry or based on account size And so when I started here the first thing I did is is I got a luckily I had a great leader who encouraged me to do so who we got in a room I had a whiteboard and I said we are going to map this customer journey And so I had the marketing team the sales team the partnerships team Which is a big part of how we bring a business here in your call the support team on boarding and customer success in a room And we we got on a whiteboard and we said okay, here's a customer We are gonna pretend we are this customer and we're gonna map his experience through every step of the journey And so what is his first engagement with our product? You know whether it was a targeted ad did you see us on LinkedIn? Did you hear about us on a webinar? What did that feel like?
And then what were the steps to get to that demo? And what was the demo experience like? And what was the customer sold and what expectations were set then? And how did that translate when the customer was introduced to the non-borry specialist?
And then the CSF right? And we identified lots and lots of opportunities where there just wasn't consistency And so we kind of took that list and we started to table and knock off prioritize based on what we could and couldn't control And what we needed to identify as being truly the differentiator to get the customer to feel that time And to feel that consistency and not drop the ball and not force the customer to repeat themselves So it's definitely a work in progress. I would say that a lot of it comes down to your tech stack You know having tools that are not siloed that are communicating with each other that integrate well You know that's important and and also as a leader I found it very important to build those bonds with my cross-functional leaders So my peers to say hey, let's have a weekly stand up That's about the customer where I'm sharing insights from my angle But also you're sharing insights on what's what's working or not working up you know from your side of the funnel, right? And so that's really bit continuously work in progress the work is never done But it's really important work that you need buy and top down in order to prioritize That is such a an awesome thing that you're doing and having weekly stand-ups with cross-functional leaders that That is more rare than it seems like it should be You know our you know from the refined labs you we're mostly we're working with marketing teams and depending on the size of the company It may be a demand-gen team within the marketing team And so often it seems like it is Too easy to stay inside of your marketing silo and not get out unless you're you know you happen to be in a meeting with somebody else and Having those types of meetings where you can pick up insights from the other leaders.
What are you hearing from customers that you're talking to? It's it's so important. It's awesome to hear that you guys are doing that Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
No, I was just gonna say you know I myself as a customer leader I wish that I had a better understanding earlier on about the complexities of marketing our products Right. So really you know bringing in a leader within the marketing organization to say hey, what is demand-gen? And how do we do it and how do we build the Final and how long does that take and what are our blockers and educating the CS teams on that and then vice-versa the customer success team Being able to educate the marketing leaders on what sticks, you know We can talk all day about number of qualified ops But what's customer lifetime value actually look like and how do we turn that back to you to influence those? Abilities to market in a way that's gonna create that stanis So I think it comes down to education and building that empathy because that's gonna spark innovation right if I'm talking to a customer They tell me this incredible story.
Oh my goodness This could be a great tool to leverage to capture a new audience that's an untapped market for us So education and relationship building is really key Campaign ideas Where we're I mean there's so much that you can take from these conversations and they I feel like they just don't they just don't have Enough was there were there any big takeaways from I that you noticed from the marketing side when you did the mapping of the customer journey Anything new happen any changes? I think one thing Several changes and candidly we're still working through the list a couple things came out of it that come to mind So one is there was a sense of empathy that was established in terms of the amount of things customer success managers are responsible for I talked about that Swiss army knife where they're fighting fires. They're the support escalation They're having to craft a message around a feature request that they might not have a timeline on from product, right? They're also working on negotiating an upsell and marketing comes in and says hey We want you know a customer to be interviewed for this podcast or we've got this great idea for a webinar We need a customer story or sales needs a referral what happens often that stuff gets kind of pushed on the back burner by a CSM because they're Pulled into so many directions and and and the low-hanging fruit is often the crisis in front of them And so by allowing the marketing team to want to understand from their lens what their day-to-day looks like We were able to get a little more creative.
Maybe the CSM is not able to go hunt for Customers that fit into the specific criteria that we could you know use for this campaign But maybe I as a Individual in the demand-gen team I'm gonna go and air call our own product and listen to call recordings with customers Start to identify those myself, right? So some of that innovation can come and ways to utilize and work together can come and at the same time We also started to see well if marketing teams needed xy and z the marketing team got a little more creative and ways to incentivize the CSM So we ran some space, you know this month We're gonna say we're gonna do a stiff if you can identify two customers that will agree to do a customer interview or a Podcast we're gonna incentivize you with a gift card right sounds little But sometimes those things really can help motivate the CSM's and at the same time We're able to kind of get that inside and get the CSM in front of customers that are happy because there's a return on that I'm talking to customers and great stories And now I got that story to go tell to another customer So we identified a ton of win wins from from that exercise and we still are yeah, that's awesome and incentive always drives behavior Right, that's that's something that I think is is pretty common knowledge is in the let's say in the sales circles of the world But the same can be said for you know people working in customer success as well, right? I've worked for pretty large companies where we had really robust customer success teams and the biggest challenge that they faced was they had So many clients they had to support that they could really only pay attention to the top 10 to 20% and the bottom 10 to 20% Those that are gonna bring in the most revenue and those that you know are potential at risk or going to churn and that leaves a huge chunk of your customers They're just not getting the right attention, you know And that could be you know that could be something that that could really cost a company in the in the long run And so yeah, I think you know like you said it might be something as little as a spiff to get them to just kind of you know Change their perspective change, you know what they're focusing on at any point in time And you know that's a great way to kind of create some renewed energy renewed focus So I think that's a really cool idea one thing that I'll share with you Madeline that has always been my favorite thing to work on with You know with the customer success team when I've been on the marketing team or leading marketing teams has been just something as simple as Reviewing a frequently asked questions document and if there isn't one in existence creating one Obviously, you know, you want the customer success team to be identifying those frequently asked questions But that is gold for marketers, right? When you think about the questions that are most commonly asked to you know the people that are supporting your clients Talk about a list of campaign ideas like you just mentioned that that is and probably an endless supply of campaign ideas and especially things that you know Your customers care about because it's coming directly from them.
They are asking them frequently That's how they make the list by definition right they are frequently asked questions And so working on something like that together just you know doing a little bit of collaborating around building the list But then you know really putting it back on the marketing team to say okay What are we gonna do about this right? So they are frequently asked questions for a reason Obviously that the clients care about them But the other thing if you kind of want to take that a step further is that you know Maybe the marketing team isn't addressing these things enough in that pre-sales process And they should be because it's something that that you know the users of the product of the solution are really curious about or You know have some specific needs that that need to be addressed and perhaps they're they're not right now So that's always been such a huge unlock. It's it's kind of a layup But you know it can really be a great reason to kind of get those teams together So collaborating and can be a great source of insights and campaign ideas for the marketing team too. Yeah, great idea I couldn't agree more You know one thing when I think about some of those questions or some of those things that might get missed in the marketing process that we We see show up the post sales is Both at air-call and our previous company the tool itself has required a bit of change management, right?
So we're we're here at air-call We're sometimes taking people off their personal cell phones and we're saying use a use a tool use a cloud-based phone tool that We helps us know what you're up to or what's yz at Alice my previous company It was a tool that was used throughout the hotel So whether you're a engineer fixing a boiler unit or your housekeeper You would use our software to really help you do your job And so I'll never forget I was at a doing an install on site back in the early days of Alice at a luxury hotel in the mall to use like, you know Rough life, but we were you know We were doing physical installs on site and and I was training on the housekeeping aspect of the tool and and somebody in the audience Raise their hand and she said your website says that this tool will track my every movement Why would I use it and I was so taken aback and I think we often forget in the marketing process that that we're really catering to both the buyer The decision-maker and the end user and so we have to kind of challenge ourselves to target our messaging to both You know on the side I said well Oh, there's many benefits to help you show your work and you'll be able to communicate better with your team and Xy and Z But when the website says something so you know direct that's hard to come back from and so what I always challenge You know the very pre the sales and marketing function is our messaging should cater to the end user as well Because at the end of the day if that change management doesn't happen and if the end user is not using the product We lose that customer because you know the decision-maker the renewal comes up and oh my goodness only 30% of my stuff are using it We're why would I pay for this and that's that's got to start at the very beginning that first impression especially anything that's probably facing I'll tell you what else the I think it goes beyond just the messaging to a huge part of of what we do what we're fine Lives and what we recommend to our our clients is you know that you absolutely shouldn't be targeting exclusively those You know those those folks that you know are the decision-makers right that are gonna be signing the contract Of course you want to include them in your audiences in your campaigns, but you need to be thinking broader You need to be thinking about that that entire buying group right and and on top of it You know if you are thinking about things in terms of a larger audience everyone that might have you know an impact on that That's say all the people that are championing it the end users the decision-makers There's certainly the economies of scale that comes from having a larger audience your dollar is gonna stretch further as a marketer But you know the the other thing is and this kind of plays into the whole dark social narrative that we're always talking about Refine lives right if you're creating that content that is going to appeal to more than just that decision-maker and you're targeting the appropriate way There's a really good chance that you know that that information that content that that ad is gonna make its way in some way Shaper form to the decision-maker right if you're if you're messaging it right if you're hitting on those pain points You know and you're talking about something that that is gonna be appropriate You know for that that entire buying group. Yeah, I think that there's gonna be a lot more upside than just you know focusing exclusively on the hyper segmentation and targeting and personalization Often times you know broader is actually a more effective way to go and so yeah I think like you said it starts with the messaging but definitely continues on to you know the way that you shape your audience is as a marketer To I love that and I always push my team on point of contact mapping right so so who are your stakeholders? And and do we have that well defined and and you know if you're getting on a call do you know who this person is and Don't be afraid to say hey How can air call make you look good in your job? Right because you know if they're going on a limb and they're the ones responsible for adopting your product for their team You need to make them look good because they have a lot of stake themselves and so that empathy But also that really a deep understanding of who are my point of contacts and what is their stake in our relationship?
Is really critical to your long-term success? Love that Yeah, the view that that that that you're taking on this is awesome I love that I love that you have such a a broad view against a stick with that name a broad view of the customer journey And you know as you mentioned before starting way early We talk about helping helping potential buyers to self-qualify and self-educate themselves so that when they come in the door Usually we're talking about it in the frame of it helps the sales rep your their the sales rep is no longer in a position where they're Selling this is why you should buy the product It's more about facilitating them on a purchasing product or purchasing process of the product because the bar the buyer has been able to Self-qualify self-educate with all of the information that you put out there for the marketing team unless you're having conversations with customer success As well as sales you don't know what you don't know You don't know what you're not putting out there And so what it ends up turning out as the sales reps have a difficult time on their on their sales calls and then when they're handed off to the internal team Expectations may not be have said may not have been said appropriately you start seeing issues come up This is like just in having conversations between the marketing team and customer success to find out What are the issues that are coming up every day like that right there can help you say we need some more content on xyz? Or if we rephrase this a little bit in one of our ads it would not only help to educate more But it might also make them more interested in the product like there's just no bad There's just no wrong reason for having conversations across across different team lines Definitely and a big topic in the customer success face right now is is you know tech touch versus high touch and the ability to segment your customers And right here at air call we cater to a wide range of monthly recurring revenue amounts, right? So we have a lot of customers that they self sign up and they're small and They are paying us at a rate where it's hard to justify having a dedicated CSM We still want to create that white glove service experience for them And that all has to do with customer marketing and and man-gen but also product marketing And so we're doing a lot right now of laying the foundation for we want our customers experience not to change We want to create that while experience But I also cannot hire at the rate that we've been hiring right and so what what can we do to start to build self-sufficiency in the product and Customers want that even if they're not even if they're at a higher level and they get a dedicated CSM They want to do things on their own They want to manage their invoices and your tool or they want to it for us They're adding users and adding numbers and configuring and customizing their experience And so that is that that retention is that stickiness and that ability to do that and what's exciting is when you get to the level where okay?
We've got the minimum viable self-service product now How can we create those wow moments and those insights through the product and through the marketing and so whether you're layering like an overlay tool That's education based saying hey click this and you'll get this or whether you're embedding feature release notes into the product experience Or you're saying hey, here's a customer story. Here's a customer that used air call in X Y and Z way Here was the return on their investment and and building that into the self-service aspect of the product It's going to create that stickiness and it's going to drive more customers that can self sign up and support themselves Which is great and they'll scale with you for sure when so when you're thinking about well I guess whether it's a self-serve sign up customer or if it's somebody that's going through a maybe a longer or more hands-on process What what if you were talking to other marketing teams about the relationships that they should have with their customer success teams What kinds of things would you tell them to ask what questions would they ask what what what conversations should they be having? Yeah, great question. I think Oftentimes when we think of the CSMs they're either wearing a firefighting hat or they're wearing it like a go hunt and find a little opportunity to Upsell and there's very little in between right and so what what I try to train my team on is is focusing on that in between right?
So ideally you're looking at data-driven metrics that identify where there is risk or where there is an opportunity to dig your heels into a Configuration change or a best practice change or get them on an integration. That's no value add to us But it's going to make their experience better, right? So I think partnering that way of thinking with the marketing team that you can create a pretty powerful force to say, you know Here's a list of customers that you know They've got this and maybe we're not talking to them all the time But I've identified these data-driven insights. Let's capture a conversation and let's capture a narrative or let's let's send a Something we've already been sending to prospects That's marketing a way of using the system or return on their investment and let's send that to this customer set because they need You know, they don't wow moment.
They're not in crisis They're they're not also growing really quickly. They're in between and so how can we create the stickiness and this real, you know Ability to continuously learn about your product and to gain benefits from your product So I think it's kind of that power of putting the two teams together to focus on a lot of those in between and oftentimes the content is already there The content that you're using in prospecting can very easily be reused and maybe some very minimal tweaks Not every company is at the stage where they can invest in a customer marketing team But really thinking about what are we marketing to our prospects and how can we market that to our existing customers and vice versa? What I love your tour your idea of the top questions or what? Features did we just send out that we need to you know, we were talking to customers about that to new business, right?
So I think it's kind of kind of aligning in that in between in those while moments and being able to do that scale It's good point about the content already being there It's not necessary You're not necessarily looking to invent something new or or even necessarily uncover a new idea that nobody's ever thought of Sometimes it's just getting together and talking and saying what are the obvious things that we're that we're not seeing What are those things that what is the content that? Customers are wanting more of that. We're just not thinking about on the front end when we're creating ads It doesn't necessarily have to be a reinvention of the wheel. It's just about, you know What what what are we learning internally from customers that we're not aware of every day from from the outside of the business?
A hundred percent. It's not just in campaigns. It's also events, right? So if you're if you're getting a group of prospects together grab some customers grab some CSM's they're gonna work the room They're gonna be able to invoke conversations, you know, you might even be able to sell your customers on a networking opportunity Right with other companies, right?
Or hey, they might be selling a software to that company that you're putting in a room with your prospect So you never know so so get get them together and really collaborate more and more I think when we look at like the pre sales and the post sales side so many people think of it as this side of the fence and that side of the fence but at the end of the day it's one product and it comes down to that really Change management and building that customer experience on both sides of the experience and throughout the entire customer journey It's a great call for events to and whether the event is in person or a webinar or whether the event is just a community of people that's engaging Around a piece of content some of your best subject matter experts are on the customer success side They know the product in and out. They know the customer in and out. They know things they love They know the things they hate those are awesome people to have involved in whatever the event is that you're throwing having them very very closely involved And talking to potential customers that that are still in consideration Yeah, that's that's a For some reason a really hard to find trait to is the people that know the product well But also have the interpersonal skills that they can interact, you know on the fly Which is oftentimes the name of the game at those events no matter what type of presence you're organizing whether it be You know signing up for a booth or just you know having some type of a dinner Whatever the case right at the end of the day an amazing customer experience is probably some of the best marketing that you can have now You distribute it how you spread the word on that You know that's gonna be the difference between those companies that are are creating that great customer experience and delivering on it And those that are using it to really enable growth for the company But yeah finding ways to obviously create and and share those those experiences That's a that's what it's all about. I had one more note that I wanted to share with you as well Madeline And this one was I was actually recording a podcast with one of our colleagues last week We were talking about a win-loss analysis And so not something that that you know you would typically think has a really large involvement of customer success But one of the things that we were talking about towards the end of that recording is what what is what do you do with The output what are the best things you can do besides just kind of you know Studying it internally on the marketing team and we were talking about the different teams that would benefit from seeing that win-loss analysis And I would say that customer success team should absolutely be on that list too You know I think just understanding number one why you're winning deals and ultimately the promises that you're making for prospects before they actually enter the The engagement that's really important for customer success executives to know about right so that you're ensuring that you're able to deliver on them Of course, but also so that there's there's no surprises But I think actually the more valuable one is the the loss analysis and starting understand why are we losing deals now Of course the sales team gonna find that valuable the product team is gonna find that valuable But again, I think you know the customer success team is probably you know among some of the most capable people within the organization to speak to these Things about okay, you know, this is something that was brought up in the sales process And this is why we lost the deal Oh, actually, you know This is something that I talked about with a group of my clients or this is something that you know We see as a consistent theme with both It sounds like prospects that don't sign on with us as well as clients that do and some really really interesting insights that I think can come from that So yes, you know, is that anything that you ever work on with with any of the folks over it?
I think that is so so critical and and so two things I'm so one the CSM is probably dealing with these things every single day, right because the customers in and so and so the customer You know all bets are off. They're paying you they're gonna they're gonna ask for what they want or what they need or what they expect And so the CSM we do a lot of objection handling training You know Just as if they were trying to close a new deal and there was something we didn't have because they're handling objections And it comes down to two things one the ability to tell a story and so as a CSM I really want the team to be equipped at storytelling And I think I think marketing teams could help us better tell stories come to think of it, right? So what is the story? It's not just well push this button instead of this button because it can kind of sort of do what you want It's I have a customer who was asking for this as well But what they actually found was by doing it this way they accomplished x y and z that's memorable It's a 30 second story, but the customer is going to remember that an action that and feel the results instead of well She told me to do this instead of this right?
So that's number one story time number two is really helping in Presales but also in post sales your team be able to better articulate and help your customers articulate their needs and what I Mean by that is instead of a customer saying we want this and you don't have it or Hey, can you do x y and see if I'm saying no unfortunately can't I'm sorry saying no unfortunately can't it is turning it back as a question and saying Why is that and how is that going to make your world better or how is that going to make your team more successful? I'm gonna know why and of course it's gonna unlock a lot of different talking points, etc At the same time if there is a last week's reason or if there is something the customer wants and it is a no Instead of you know just saying no being able to frame your response and kind of bucket it So is it one it's a bug the system that the button is supposed to do since not doing this? Okay, that's about I can bring that to my product team I'm gonna work internally to get you a turnaround time blah blah blah. That's one way to handle it.
Is it to they are a Configuration they're not they're not configured in the way the system isn't set up in a way that's gonna give them the ultimate success Wow, that's where we can help Maybe it requires me bringing in a solutions engineer and that's professional services we can sell or it's something I can click a couple buttons and help you on in onboarding or the CSM process or is it a future request? And that's where we say I want to know more and I want to know why so being able to kind of bucket objections lost reasons risk reasons We call it in CSM world into kind of those categories will better equip you and how you respond But also pushing the customer to think a little bit deeper and give you a little bit more and help you take actions internally in terms of what We're gonna do with this request for this year this gap Well, I love that that's that's so smart and and yeah, definitely a different flavor from you know Some of what what we were recording that episode on right, you know talking about the wind reason the loss reason the risk reason I think is yeah a different layer and yeah, that one's definitely got my my wheels turned in today So I love that that's a great. You're talking about risk reasons before they become sure reasons Right The closed last ops and the risk and the turn should pretty much be aligned and you got as a company a line on your strategy against them That's really critical Exactly. Yeah, and and yeah, and those things you know They have to make their way over to the marketing team They have to be addressed in that whatever pre-sales process whatever that actually looks like wherever that happens in the journey You know those things they must be they must be mentioned they can't just be brush aside because again, you know These are obviously reasons that that continue to kind of you know pop up and and yeah That's I think a great signal to be following there so Madeline I think we're getting to the the end of our time here But yeah anything that that we didn't get a chance to talk about today anything You know any questions that you might have for us or anything that you'd hope that we might have a chance to dig into a little bit No, I really enjoyed a conversation I think that particularly if we're looking at potentially economic downturns or coming out of whatever COVID insane growth looked like And we just got some weird times ahead It's so critical that we break down those silos and that we work as one team and and the way to do that starts with by listening to your customers And so I always say you know whatever level you're at the best leaders I've had even at the sea sweet They take the time to listen to customer calls they hear right from the horse's mouth What's working what's not working and that should influence strategy through in the entire customer life cycle?
And so that would be my my advice is you know listen to your customers keep you in the ground and use great tools So thank you so much for this opportunity. That's amazing. Yeah perfect. I think a perfect way to sign off here So Matt Madeline, thank you so much for joining today This is a great conversation and for all those listening hope you enjoyed listening today as much as we enjoyed recording until next time