In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Harini Gokul, Head of Customer Success at AWS about her experience of shaping and building CS as a value realization.
Shifting from defense to offense in Customer Success is not a simple task. But to help your customers achieve their business goals, you need to have a proactive mindset and not a reactive to-do-list. So, how do you make a move and find the time to focus on the offensive? And what are some metrics that companies should focus on to see CS as a value realization?
Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com
In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Harini Gokul, Head of Customer Success at AWS about her experience of shaping and building CS as a value realization.
Shifting from defense to offense in Customer Success is not a simple task. But to help your customers achieve their business goals, you need to have a proactive mindset and not a reactive to-do-list. So, how do you make a move and find the time to focus on the offensive? And what are some metrics that companies should focus on to see CS as a value realization?
Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com
Hello everyone. I'm your host, Anika zer. And welcome back to the next episode of the customer success channel podcast brought to you by plan hat, the modern customer platform. This podcast is created for anyone working in or interested in the customer success field. On this podcast, we will speak to leaders in the industry about their experiences and their definitions of customer success and get their advice and best practices on how to run ACS organization. Today, we are speaking with HERI GOCO, the head of customer success at on web services. In addition to her position at AWS, she is also an advisor, an investor, and a board member. She has a unique background as an engineer, as well as leading services teams prior to her leading customer success. Her unique background is how she has been able to transform customer success at AWS by shifting traditional customer success into value realization. A lot of companies might be in the same boat where they're undergoing digital transformation or moving from on-prem to cloud services, or maybe they're trying to move from defensive to offensive customer success. All of these topics and more will be covered as we speak to Herrani about her experie of shaping and building customer success as a value realization. So welcome her to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you here today, before we get into the topic. Can you please tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself, your career in customer success thus far and what you're doing at AWS current?
Speaker 2:Thank you, Anika. That is, um, I'm so excited to be on, uh, your podcast today and excited to talk about customer success, our favorite topic. So I'm, Harini Goku and like many of us, I wear multiple hats at work and beyond I'm a builder, I'm an operator and an investor, and those are the three hats that I think we will focus on for this conversation. I trained as an engineer, so love building and innovating and creating solutions. I've been an operator in the cloud business for 20 years now had the fortune and the privilege of working for some, uh, very large public companies, building, growing, and scaling businesses and teams in the cloud and guiding customers through digital transformation. I'm also an investor and I invest in founders, I believe in and spaces. I know something about which translates to B2B software and SaaS investments. At AWS. I lead customer success for our NextGen growth tech portfolio. These are the customers that will define the next set of fortune hundred customers. They include hypergrowth, hyper innovative startups, digital native businesses, ISVs, and small medium businesses among others. So I feel incredibly fortunate and privileged to be able to work with these customers and help them accelerate, uh, their journey.
Speaker 1:So many accolades. Thank you so much for sharing and such a pleasure to have you here today. I know you ha wear many hats. You've already talked about it a little bit, but what kind of inspired you to work specifically in the customer success field?
Speaker 2:It's such a great question. When I started, um, I remember I graduated from engineering school and I, I, you know, I'm an engineer by profession, but I've always been attracted to translating technology for human good and for human impact. And so when an opportunity came, uh, to support implementation of, uh, ATM technology in parts of India, which at that time was a big, radical step to improve access to money. That caught my attention. And I wanted to think about how we could take this technology, which at that point was ATM technology and translate that to human impact, which is making my access to money easier. And that got me thinking about, uh, what part of that life cycle I would want to be engaged in. I was, I remember working on that project and thinking that the creators of technology who wanted a certain impact from their ATMs were so disconnected from the end consumers who are actually trying to access that product. And that has been a theme all my life, right? Which is the product. The impact of a product of a service is disconnected from those using it. And we struggle to bridge value and we struggle to bridge the original objective from the final outcome. So that has always been important to me. It got me thinking about how we bring users and builders together to create this flywheel. And that really inspires me to work in customer success every day.
Speaker 1:I also love that you come from such a unique background engineering, something that I don't hear that often when I am speaking to different customer success leaders. So really love how in customer success, even though it's a relatively new discipline, there's just so many avenues that you can go down in order to become a successful CS leader. And I know that in your career, you, you met mentioned number of different ways, but also you've led services teams as well. That's led into customer success, any tips or advice for our listeners who also wanna make that transition, whether it's in services or engineering into customer success,
Speaker 2:Another great question. And I love that customer success is evolving. It it's a newer discipline. As you know, as I know, um, as our audience knows and it's evolved and shaped over the past number of years to better meet the needs of customers, right? So I love being in a space where I have an opportunity to shape it, where it is not just about stepping into something that's already determined, but we have an opportunity to shape to what we want it to be. Um, and given the vast surface area and the different definitions of CS, you can absolutely bring your skill to back on behalf of the customer. In my experience, as we just talked, you know, I was an engineer, which means that I gravitate to having more technical conversations. I gravitate to a customer success definition that is more technical and AWS happens to be, have a technical customer success role. So it's my happy place. But if I step back and think about, you know, folks who are listening, who wanna transition in a CS role, I would say that it is really less about the experience you bring versus the capabilities you have. And you want to invest in, uh, let me spend a minute on that. When they think about what customer success is, right? It's about delivering value, how do you deliver value? First? You have to figure out what good looks like for your, which means that it requires a lot of active listening. It requires tolerance and actually thriving and ambiguity because people always don't know what they want or what they're going to use the product or where, how the service is going to give them the biggest bang for the buck. So it's about active listening. It's about thriving and ambiguity. And finally it's about walking talk, customer success teams are the ones that take sort of the art of the possible, the goal of the product and the service and make it a reality. So having a skill that lets you think the art of the possible, and then translate that to reality with a strong execution muscle is key. So if you have some of these things, we've just talked about, if you're able to it out, if you're a, if you like listening, if you're able to actively listen, if you, if you are tolerant and you love ambiguity, if you can connect dots, if you can pattern, match, and then walk the talk, you're a great candidate for CS.
Speaker 1:I love that. There's so many pieces in that, that I wanna dive deeper into, into our conversation today, especially what you mentioned about Del delivering value, because that is the main topic that we are talking about today. Customer success as a value realization, which is I think a little bit underrated, even though we are NCS and CS has been a discipline for a while. Sometimes I feel like it doesn't come up as often. And isn't as let's say, traditional CS and, and how CS let's say emerge in the, your days and what most people think about customer success is usually in the traditional SaaS cloud space. But in your experience, you have seen CS develop in software companies that were undergoing digital transformation and innovation. And that's what led you into your position today? Where do you see some similarities and differences within that new versus old side of value realization for customer success?
Speaker 2:Right. I know this is a topic we're both passionate about. I love that customer success is evolving from sort of the more traditional, you know, preventing churn, prevent improving retention to the value and growth conversation. That has been one of the most deeply exciting things for me in the past few years. And when I think about what is the common thread, it is, it is, it comes down to customer obsession and defining value the way our customers define it. Not what I think it is not what you believe it is, but to truly work backwards on what good looks like by our customer, right? And I'll give, I'll give a few examples. Many of our customers, especially the past two years have seen hyper growth. They want help expanding into new market segments, new, uh, customer segments, and they, and customer success can help with that. Many other customers have already captured a huge amount of market share and they are redefining how to scale customer experience, how to deliver a consistent customer experience for this much larger segment as they drink from the fire hose. Customer success helps with that because that is value for them. There are others that want to offer their customers, uh, advanced functionality that makes it easy for them to use. It serves as competitive differentiation and they're making build or buy decisions. Do I build this myself? Do I buy from somebody else? Do I partner? And that's where customer success comes in as well. And finally, there are so many others that are just starting the process of transformation, right? They're focused on fundamentals like retiring technical debt and closing down data centers and upskilling their workforce and figuring out what security looks like. And so regardless of the opportunity and where your customers are, I think our, our roles at the end of the day is about helping them, um, address that opportunity and get value from it. And I, I can share more examples, but I love, um, you know, food delivery and take out is, has become such a common theme for us these past two years that I love sharing an example of one of my customers who came to us and said our customers are choosing between us and our competitor based on a millisecond lag on the website in dropdown, Cho in food dropdown choices. So when they go in and start to pick, drop, found options, there is a millisecond difference between me and my competitor. And that's making them switch because people are hungry and want their food fast. And that is what they came to us for help with. So we worked from what they wanted to deliver from their customers. So we started with their customers customer then worked backwards and said, what's the technology you need. And it turned out they need some, um, IML help. And we were able to help make a build or buy decision for them. And they, and they, uh, made a decision to partner with AWS on, uh, IML features that would help deliver their customer experience to them.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. I love that. And I also love that focusing a on your customers value, defining really how customer success can drive value for the business, but also like you said, super important for you to focus on your customers, customers as well. I think a lot of people end up saying, okay, what is company a, B or C want? Because they're my customer. But at the end of the day, what are they trying to get to their customers by using our software? And that's really where customer success really dives in deeply and, and can have those consultative approach where you're able to really understand where is the value and where does it deeply lie and where can we add value? Which is awesome. And I think we're already getting into our topic already, but I do wanna understand a little bit more about what does customer success look like at AWS? What sorts of process and playbooks have you created there so that our listeners can get a better flavor of what you guys are doing?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Um, customer success is key across Amazon and end at AWS, as you may know, and our listeners may know customer obsession is a key leadership principle of the culture at Amazon and AWS, which means that our customers at the center of everything we do there was this story before I joined AWS. And now that I'm here, I know it's true that in every meeting we do, there is a chair that's left, empty. The chair is left empty to indicate the customer. Who's not in the room, but as a sign that everything we do is oriented at serving that customer and their needs, which tends to be their customers best. So it is easy to be in customer success at AWS us, everyone's obsessed about the customer. We're always thinking about how do we work backwards from our customer's needs? And so the mechanisms, the playbooks are all keyed towards supporting that conversation. What I will say is the two things about customer success, I'll call out in addition is one, it's a role given the nature of our customers and what they expect from AWS, that is a high degree of technical credibility required by our customer success managers and the customer success role. So what that means is any, if you are hired in the customer success role at AWS, you come in and in your first you have a certification and it's a solution architect certification, which means that you are going through some very stringent technical training before you get in front of the customers. What that does mean is our customer success managers have seats at the tables and places that normally many CS roles don't. So they're because they have they're, they're fairly technical. They can have hundred, 200 degree conversations. They're talking to chief product officers. They're of course, talking to CIOs CTOs in addition to speaking to the business. So it's this very unicorn role that straddles both business and technology.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. I know that a lot of companies use solution architects or technical C SMS, but it definitely feels like at AWS, you have that all encompassing into one role of the CSM, which is amazing to see. And it's so clear that you guys have built customer success into the culture, at everything that you're doing at AWS by that empty chair, that really made me smile, that you really do consider the customer at the heart of everything you are doing. And we know that customer success is a team sport. It's not just one person. You definitely have to get buy-in from other departments and maybe even other people, the CSM is technical, like you said, but are there other teams that are helping the CSM as well? And how is that working right now?
Speaker 2:CS is of course a team sport. And the way we are structured at AWS very much translates that team sport to reality. So every customer who's eligible for a customer success manager also has a dedicated solution architect, as well as an account manager, this triage of sales solution architect and the CSM together deliver the value for the customer. In addition, of course, you know, we have an extended team that's so important as well. So we have, uh, technical account managers, what is called us TAs in the industry that help us get ahead of, of escalations that help us work on reactive situations and help translate that reactive learning into more proactive learning. So the customer does not have to go through that. Again, services teams are another one that we work very closely with, again, back to the fact that we are a technical role. Our services teams are a key part of in need customer conversation. As our customers adopt use advanced services or any services, our friends from the product team are going to be in their walking hand in hand with us, making sure the customer has a great experience.
Speaker 1:Amazing. I know you mentioned that the CSM is quite technical and did that rigorous training, but you also just mentioned a account manager, a solutions architect, very, very technical, heavy team. Just curious. What's the difference then between what a customer success manager is doing versus the Tam and the solutions architect.
Speaker 2:So the solution architect, if you think about, let me step back. If you think about that capital alphabet T, and I'm drawing it out on video, but our viewers can not see that the spine of the T the bottom half of the T is the technical depth that a solution architect brings to the table, right? Uh, he, she or they are deeply, deeply ex are deep experts in their technologies. And across AWS, they have multiple certifications, 304 level expertise in topics. The top bar of the T is the think of that as the customer solution manager. So he, she or they are have enough technical expertise for a starting conversation. You can do a proof of concept. You can talk intelligently about services, and then there is a Baton pass. Once that initial business need value is established. Once that is a sense of what's the right conversation to have, then our solution architects become the CTOs of the conversation. They come in and bring their deep technical expertise to have workshops and architecture design, and so on and so forth. So that's the difference between the CSM and the essay now about the TA. So the TAs, uh, sit in our support organization and the TAs help us respond to escalations respond to reactive situations, but really they're great partners for our, because when then, right, the customer experience is SNO detail, right? It starts it's reactive as well as the proactive. So we sit and learn very closely from our tabs, understand what's the escalation coming up. So we can take that feedback to the product teams. We can work on strategies for our customers based on that. So it's a very close relay.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for sharing that. I'm sure a lot of our listeners who are maturing in customer success can take a lot of key takeaways from that and think about how they wanna build out a technical team or a technical customer success team in order to support their customers. But let's dive a little bit deeper or get back on track of value realization, cuz that's what we're here to talk about. Really customer success as a value realization. And we were already talking about early, how to focus on your customer's value really is what the whole point of customer success is. But we know in the previous times that customer success was focused on churn lagging indicators, retention rate, all our very defensive terms and we are kind of moving towards that offense. And so what are some offensive let's say terms or how do you get CS moving from reactive to that more proactive nature?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. I think it's a journey so many of us are on, none of us have cracked it, but I think we all need to share what we are doing. So we get there in, in my perspective, there are to move from lagging to leading, right? It takes, it takes both the work to be done as well as the metrics you're looking at, you measure what is important to you, right? So once you start measuring what is leading you measure outcomes, then I think we set up CS to have a larger role in growth conversations, have a larger role in commerce. And so the, the metrics that I think about are around adoption, what is my customer adopting and using? Right? So usage is important that tells me what is valuable to them. What is not a second one? So adoption and usage is one bucket. Customer health is another bucket when done right. When we put the right mechanisms in play. When we put the right tactics into play, the health of the customer needs to improve. Are we seeing that improvement in health? That's another indicator for us. And finally when done all of that, right? Their lifetime value increases. And that's an, the third bucket I think about internally. But all of that is of course in eternal, for me, what's important is what the customer sees value in right back to that common theme in this conversation. And it's about has the customer met his, her or their objectives and they may differ. So one example is, you know, we have customers who are retiring technical debt and they have a metric on what they want to retire and what good looks like depends on the customers. So we have customers as an example who have, who wanna retire technical debt and they have milestones to do that, to data center leases coming up migration of data migration of services away. And so their success becomes our success. Externally. Similarly, we have customers who are looking to have their own product launches, right with velocity and have I helped them accelerate that velocity to get to their customer, to launch their product by helping them make smart builder buy decisions that becomes another indicator for me. So the other common theme is, you know, acceleration, right? We believe all customers are understand the journey they're going through. They understand what they need to do from a technology perspective and a business perspective to get to their customers. I help them from a customer success perspective is accelerating that journey by bringing in experience, by bringing it insights by bringing in the right services and assets and playbooks that can help them accelerate their journey. So that's the final metric that I think about is have I accelerated my customer's journey?
Speaker 1:Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. And I know metrics are super important as we make that transition from reactive to more proactive. I know a lot of people listening as well as a lot of people who are building customer success teams are trying to figure out which metrics are super important and metrics are thrown around and often mentioning customer success as we're defining them in the industry. But some of these proactive metrics aren't really there. You mentioned usage, you mentioned health, you mentioned lifetime value. What are some metrics that companies should really definitely focus in on to CCS as a value realization?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think when done right, your customer becomes your advocate, right? So that's the sort of north star metric I would focus on. What does customer advocacy for us look like? That would be the Uber metric. Is this customer willing up on stage, be a reference for you? Talk about the work that you and the customer have done together. That is the ultimate sign of a trusted relationship where we've added value and helped them move on their journey. But if you think about from a board context or other reporting context, then I think we should think about is our customer adopting and using the righter services, right? Are they using more foundational services? Are we helping them move towards more advanced services? If that is the right thing to do second it's about understanding how are they doing in terms of growing the, the customer, right? How are we doing in terms of growing the customer? Are we just sort of maintaining services where they are? Are we helping to expand our footprint at the customer? Are they finding more users for us than they did three, six months ago or a year ago? And so the final part comes back to acceleration, right? Where are we able to do what we said we would do faster, quicker, cheaper, better, right? Did, is there a baseline for us to do it in 90 days versus 120 days? So those are the three buckets I would measure customer advocacy, usage, and adoption, maybe four buckets, customer advocacy, usage, and adoption growth with the customer and acceleration.
Speaker 1:Those are group great metrics to focus on. And I know a lot of people have built customer success into the DNA of a business, but sometimes either board members or executive wanna see CS metrics brought as a value realization. And as you mentioned, advocacy should be the north star usage growth. All of these are so important to continue of focus on, but what metrics I guess, would be best to put into that board deck or put outwardly into the wider team so that they can understand. For example, a lot of people use net revenue retention and these types of, um, metrics to really drive how BI, how customer success is causing BI business growth. Are there any other, I know you mentioned lifetime value. Is there anything else that you would say would be a, a great metric and, and how would you measure that?
Speaker 2:Right. I think metric tension is a good metric, right? Because it helps me understand, am I retaining this customer and I'm growing them. And it really works for SA based companies for others, whether it's more services is dependent, then increase in adoption, increase in usage is important. Third, I would think about for a board. I would wanna understand how am I maturing my customer portfolio? Right? So at many companies, we think about how we move our customers across the maturity life cycle from left to right. And when you help a customer mature in their cloud transformation, then all of the other things happen. Your usage increases, your adoption increases, your NR increases. And so I would, if I was sitting on the board of a company, I would wanna know one, I would start with, who's advocating for you. Who's a customer. Who's gonna go out there and back for you. If, if, if you're looking for a, if you're looking for a customer to share in a sales call, who is that customer? So logos and customer showcases and advocacy and advocates are important. Second, um, I would look internally and say, how are we moving a customer through their maturity life cycle? Uh, how many have we moved? What's the ARR, what's the usage, it's the adoption. And what's the NR coming out of it, depending on the customer. And then finally, I would say, what are we doing in a programmatic scalable mechanism way to help accelerate this move? Yes, customers are moving, but how fast are they moving? So the third metric would be acceleration to create a baseline. And then to say, we expect customer to move from milestone a to B in 90 days. And are we achieving that? So when we think about what optics or lenses are helpful from a board or leadership perspective, Anika, I would categorize them in three buckets, the bucket, we should start with our customers. So I would start with who are your reference showcase customers, who are your customer advocates that would go out there and bat for you, be a reference for you and speak to the work you're doing with them. And how are we increasing that number? That would be one second. It would be about how we are moving our customers through their maturity like journey, right? Regardless of the journey, a customer is on whether it's from on-premise to the cloud or moving to a multi-tenant SaaS model, what are the services, products, assets, playbooks mechanisms, frameworks, we're bringing to bear to move our customers. So that movement is important. And with that movement comes the KPIs of usage and adoption and NR is part of it. Of course, right? Then the final piece is how fast are we helping them move in their journey? Because that's the other key part of value is the acceleration, as we've talked about, yes, all customers will move, but have we helped them move fast or than they would have on their own? So the third part is having metrics that measure acceleration, setting baselines to say, we want the milestone accomplished in 90 days. How did we do against it, which customers are doing well, where could we be better? And what's the course correction that needs. So those are the three buckets of metrics that I would think are valuable from a board and leadership perspective for CS.
Speaker 1:I love that maturity model comment as well. I think a lot of people always think of the customer lifecycle journey or the maturity model in the early days, but not necessarily thinking of how metrics combine into the full life value of a customer into the full life cycle. And also what you mentioned about how quickly you realize, or how quickly someone can get value realization from customer success is so critical time to value. I think these days so important, everyone is trying to get something done faster than they did a a year, a month ago. You know, we're definitely in the technological era. So that means that, you know, trying to deliver that value as quickly as possible is so important to, and, and report back on as well. So thank you for sharing that. I know we can go on and on about this topic Ernie, but I do wanna wrap us up and go into our quickfire discussion where I wanna challenge you to try to answer the next few questions in a sentence or less. Are you ready?
Speaker 2:Let's go.
Speaker 1:Okay. Let's do it. What's my first question is what do you think is next for the CS industry?
Speaker 2:Three things PLG led, uh, evolution, second, a more technical role for CS third web three.
Speaker 1:Ooh, I wanna dive in so much deeper into what you just said, but I have to stay on topic and I'm challenging you. I'm gonna challenge myself and ask the next question, which is what sort of tool set or tech set does your CS team use like slack, Google docs, et cetera. What is it that you guys are using?
Speaker 2:Asana and slack are two of my favorite mechanisms to use. They keep us connected. They keep us collaborating and moving fast back to the time to value.
Speaker 1:Amazing. And then the next question is what sort of compensation should a CSM get? Should it be just a base salary or a base salary and commission? I know this is controversial. So I'm curious what you think
Speaker 2:Controversial, but very clear in my mind, just base stay for focused on the customer and what they want to achieve. Do not get tripped up in internal compensation discussions.
Speaker 1:Oh, another one we could dive in deeper too, cuz you're one of the few people who are saying that and versus other people have said differently, but we have to save it for another podcast. So final question is what is your favorite part of customer success or being a CSF? Um,
Speaker 2:Easy customers every day I get to meet with incredible founders leaders, operators who are innovating and uh, and creating a better world for all of us. And you know, their technology enhancements will, we will see the benefits of that for generations to come. I'm honored and privileged that I can be part of those conversations.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Thank you so much her for your insights, all of your sharing of knowledge with our listeners today, if our listeners, do you have any more questions or any follow up questions? Where is the best place to find you?
Speaker 2:LinkedIn?
Speaker 1:Amazing. Thank you so much. Hernia. Appreciate the time.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Anika. Great chat and uh, have a wonderful evening.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the customer success channel podcast today. We hope you learn something new to take back to your team and your company. If you found value in our podcast, please make sure to give us a positive review and make sure you subscribe to our channel as we release new podcasts every month. Also, if you have any topics that you would, would like me to discuss in the future, or you would like to be a guest on the podcast, please feel free to reach out all my contact details are in this show notes. Thanks again for listening and tune in next time for more on customer success.