In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Gemma Cipriani-Espineira, Chief Customer Officer (CCO) at Chili Piper about what metrics are important and how to report them correctly.
Metrics are critical in customer success – especially when reporting to the leadership team. But often SaaS businesses are unsure on how and what to report. For example, when it comes to customer success, what does leadership want to know? And what are the metrics that really matter?
Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com
In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Gemma Cipriani-Espineira, Chief Customer Officer (CCO) at Chili Piper about what metrics are important and how to report them correctly.
Metrics are critical in customer success – especially when reporting to the leadership team. But often SaaS businesses are unsure on how and what to report. For example, when it comes to customer success, what does leadership want to know? And what are the metrics that really matter?
Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com
Hello everyone. I'm your host, Anika Zuber, 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 I have the honor of speaking with Gemma Sari Espara, the Chief Customer Officer at Chili Piper. Gemma has had an amazing career in customer success where she has grown and led international customer success teams. And her career acceleration has led from CSM to cco due to her resilience and perseverance as a leader. Not only is she an amazing CS leader, she is also a fellow podcast host of CCO Secrets, but she is also an award-winning leader that has recently been awarded top 50 women CS leaders of 2022 and Top 25 Cs influencer of 2022. Today, she will be sharing with us her career progression into becoming a Chief Customer Officer, what a CCO does, and more importantly, how to prepare a board deck As a cco, let's chat to Gemma about what metrics are important as a CCO and how to report on them. Welcome, Gemma to the podcast. I am so very excited, honored, overjoyed that you are joining me today to share your wealth of experience and knowledge with our listeners. I know you very well and I consider you a good friend, but for our listeners, can you please tell us a little bit more about yourself, um, what it is you do at Chili Piper, and, uh, kind of how it all started there?
Speaker 2:Oh, thank you so much Anika for that gracious introduction. I wish we were doing this in person, it's been too long. But yeah, for, for anyone who I haven't met yet, uh, my name's PRI Panera. I'm currently the Chief Customer Officer for Chili Piper, which is a series B startup that provide routing and scheduling solutions for revenue teams. So in essence, our mission is to make meetings happen. So it's a highly valuable tool used by a lot of my friends and peers in the SA world, which is fantastic. And as cco, I'm responsible for the entire customer experience. So I'm looking after, uh, so solutions consultants, customer success managers, customer support engineers, and the digital CS group, which makes the rest of everyone in CS a little bit more effective and saves time for our customers. So that's my, my team. And, you know, our, our agreement is, is highly technical in ensuring that we deliver everything that customers require to make meetings happen as effectively as possible. So it's a lot of integrations, uh, that kind of thing to ensure that value is being received upon our technology.
Speaker 1:Amazing. I love that tagline. I always have, I think, make meetings happen. I do like that. I think Chili Piper's done a really great job with that. Um, but before<laugh>, before your time at Chili Piper, you've worked in a number of customer success roles, you have a amazing career. Um, what kind of inspired you to start working in customer success and become the leader that you are today?
Speaker 2:You know, I think I, I was inspired to work in customer success from a love of working with people. I really do enjoy working with people. I find that I'm someone who can get the best out of people, who's good at bringing people together behind a shared mission and in customer success. That is an essential part of the game, right? We have to take, uh, different perspectives from our customers, from, uh, from our own internal teams, uh, from our investors and shareholders. Then we have to take those perspectives and, and put them together and find some kind of reality where everybody is happy. So that's what I really enjoy about customer success, bringing people together behind a shared mission. And I definitely didn't start my career going into it thinking I'm gonna be a CCO because there wasn't CCOs at the time that I started
Speaker 1:<laugh>. Definitely I feel the same. I'm so, I love it that their title is there now, but when I was a csm, who knew what a CCO was doing?<laugh>.
Speaker 2:Yes. I mean, I think you, I think you probably had shared experiences as, as CSMs where the, the reporting line was always into sales. Um, and I knew that I didn't really wanna do sales, but I, I knew that I liked working in that fast-paced environment and that tech environment. And it was actually, um, one of my CROs who I was reporting into at the time was as a VP who suggested the path into CCO and connected me with some other CCOs. And that's where I, I realized that was the, the path I wanted to take.
Speaker 1:Amazing. I love that too. But I also shared experience where a lot of my early days in success was reporting into a sales or revenue leader, and there wasn't a clear path to cco. So I will dive a little bit deeper into that in a second, but I wanna jump back into what it is Chili Piper is doing, you guys race series B, amazing amount of growth you guys have gone through recently. And, uh, really just tell us a little bit more about kind of what the business does and the different teams that you own do.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So as a business, we are mostly working with B2B SAS companies who have large revenue teams that need to spend time with prospects or customers. And so the challenge is in ensuring that you're getting your prospects straight to meetings with the right people. And the same, same kind of challenge occurs with customers. How do we make it easy for customers to get through to the appropriate person based on their request? And then in doing that, uh, with our routing and scheduling solutions, we also then have a lot of reporting behind it, which is highly valuable for understanding, um, speed to lead deal velocity, as well as, you know, capacity planning for more post-sales teams. So, um, our teams, uh, on, you know, at a, at a very high level, we've obviously got product, uh, marketing, engineering people, team. On the revenue side, we split sales and CS with sales being focused on, um, proving out the value in order to get the paperwork done. And Cs being focused on providing all of the domain expertise and technical expertise to get the value going. Right. So we, um, under, under the customer success org, we are really focused on having highly technical people who know the domain that we're working in, which is, you know, Salesforce domain, HubSpot domain, an inbound domain, a rev sales op, CS ops, everyone on our CS org is, is effectively an op specialist, um, helping their, helping their customer get all these amazing automations in place. Um, and that's been, that's been great for us. It's, it's been a competitive differentiator, right? Because we are not just there responding to inbound queries from customers, we're proactively giving them experts who effectively are a part of their team, who are willing to put the graft in, do whatever it takes to ensure that Shell Piper is delivering the value for which they, they joined us for, which is really about improving efficiencies and improving performance, which is, you know, everybody wants to do that right now. And on the sales side, we, we have typical sds, AEs, and we also have account managers sitting in sales mm-hmm.<affirmative>. So that allows the account managers to focus more on who do we, who do we see as a customer that is, that has potential to grow from across our perspective. This is a really big focus for our account managers. How can we take Chili Piper from just being used in the sales team to also being used in the CS team, or how can we take, you know, one of these products into another product for that customer? So that's how the, the org is built right now, and it's, it's working very well with that model.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And all of that obviously funneling up into the cheap customer officer role that you currently hold, and we were just chatting about how that role is relatively new to the CS space. And when we both started in customer success, it's not something that you aspire to or you didn't even know which direction to become a cco. Um, and we'll, we'll get into more details about, you know, what it is you're, you're doing and building and what you have to do. But for those listeners who are also maybe new to the title of Chief Customer Officer and what it is a chief customer officer does, can you give us a brief sneak peek into what it is you're doing as a Chief Customer officer?
Speaker 2:So, as a Chief Customer Officer, I'm effectively the owner of the, the customer journey. So I, I have to be the, the glue that ensures that we're telling prospects ahead of time, the right expectations. We're setting people up for success. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, you know, very early stages before they even have a demo with us, that we are then delivering that promise in their sales experience. We're setting them the right things at the right time. Um, and then when it comes to onboarding and adoption and growth and advocacy, these areas are really within my remit because I have to ensure that they receive value quickly during onboarding with a great experience that we are taking them from being recently onboarded to highly adopted, so that they're actually utilizing what they're, what they've purchased, and there's no software sitting on the shelf or licenses sitting on the shelf. Um, and then on the growth stage, you know, it's all about understanding the customer's business objectives, the original ones. Have we met them and do we now have the right to work with them on, on more business objectives through even more products, more integrations, different ways that we could be embedding our solution around, across their organizations and partners. Um, and advocacy. Advocacy is, you know, the fun, the fun part of the role where you've got customers who have gone through that journey and they're willing to tell others about how great it was, and they effectively become your new sales people,<laugh>, but they're also customers, right? So they're, they're the best, they're the best type of, um, sales when, when you get someone to that point of advocacy where they're willing to refer you and recommend you.
Speaker 1:I totally agree. I think that advocacy is underrated because really, like you just said, they become your best sales associate or sales executive because they are literally singing your praises and getting to that point, I think of where a business is seeing so much success with your product, that they're able to then sing your praises for you is, is really a great place to be. And I think, um, you guys have done a great job at Chili Pipe, at least what I see, what you guys share about your customer story, so that's awesome to see. But, um, let's dive into, uh, CCO board metrics. What we're really here to kind of discuss today, and you just mentioned some of the things that your team is responsible for, like time to value, like business objectives, like really delivering that value, um, over the course of their, their life cycle with you. Metrics I think are something that's super important in customer success, especially in leadership, but a lot of times, a lot of SaaS businesses are unsure what it is we should be reporting on how we should report on it. What does the board even care about when it comes to customer success? In your experience? Can you like give us some of the metrics that really matter to you and your board, um, for report purposes?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so let, let's start with the board. The most important number and our stage of business, you know, as a series B business is nr. So net revenue retention, it could be called net dollar retention. Um, different ways to explain the same things. Are you making more money out of the customers that were with you a year ago? What does that percentage look like? Because it is the truest indicator of the product providing value. People are not gonna stay with you and increase their spend if they don't see value in your product. Um, so NR is definitely the north star metric and it's a north star metric for the board, but co coincidentally, it is not, it is not how I pay commission in my team.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Yeah, you tell what, what's, uh, what's your team looking at then?
Speaker 2:So we do have people who are focused on that. Um, the account managers are focused on that net net retention number. Um, and their comp plans are very much built on, um, cross-selling. That's, that's a big focus on their comp plan. They do have some portion of Lego retention, but it's mostly cross-selling.
Speaker 1:So you do have two different teams that are then looking after things then by the sounds of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we've got these account managers, they are with the sales, uh, team who we partner with highly, closely, but you know, they are focused on optimizing that number. And I say optimizing because it is an optimization point at this point, right? You cannot just create that number as a, as a great, um, heroic account manager. You, the customer has to have received and delivered and realize the value through going through a great purchasing experience, onboarding experience on, um, adoption experience. So for that reason, our CSMs, they're not focused on NR in that, in that way because they would be focusing on something that is a organic output of, of onboarding a customer quickly, of ensuring that they're receiving the right value from the products that they're using, the products as, um, they intended to, that they've got that adoption at a high level that their sentiment is strong. So for the CSM team, we look at, um, two things. We look at logo retention, which is obvious, you know, you need to keep your customers. Um, and then we look at product adoption. Those are the two big things that we actually CSMs on. The idea being that we don't want our CSMs to try and sell to customers, it's just not helpful. We want them to be part of the customer team. So we want to ensure that that team remains like a retention, but we wanna be part of that team to ensure that the team is getting the full value of the product measured through product adoption. And then we have some additional, um, SPS in there for, um, onboarding customers, quickly gearing, great onboarding experience, uh, survey results and identifying opportunities that could lead to upsell and cross-sell. Um, but we, we, we don't put a quota on it because we don't want our CSM to say, I'm not gonna work with these customers over here that don't have a immediate path to grow today. Because that would be focusing on customers who are good for chili Piper as opposed to customers who need us. And the thing is like, you have to be proactive in, in customer success. You can't just be there when your customer's about to renew or when they've just come into new money. You have to be there for them when they need you,<laugh>. And then the organic, the organic thing that happens is they give you more money when they have it, right? So it's like, um, we're, we're, we are focused on nrss and North Star metric, but we understand that it is an organic outcome of customers having a great experience and achieving their desired outcomes and an organic outcome of us being there for them when they need us the most, not the other way
Speaker 1:Around. I love that mantra as well. I think that's so important. Cuz again, a lot of businesses focus on success of like, oh, we need to make our customer successful so we as a business are successful. But really it's the the other way around, like you said, being there for a customer when they need you. Interesting. Where you have the team split and we could probably have a whole nother podcast
Speaker 2:That'll debate. I have, by the way, Anna, I will say I have run other CSM teams that are focused on a NR number in different products. So I think, you know, if we wanna go into that debate, I would say it really depends on the type of product that you are providing.
Speaker 1:I agree, and I think CS has done so differently at every org, depending on what stage of maturity you're at, what side of maturity of your customers. I think all of that truly depends on how you structure and balance out metrics and who's responsible for who. But let's not get too off topic here. I wanna come back to that board deck cause that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 2:I will say this is one of the reasons why we recently went public with our handbook. So we took inspiration from GitLab who've done this for many, many years, and they've got a very extensive handbook. And we said, you know what? We're gonna, we are gonna, um, post ours and make it publicly available. So it is publicly available. You can actually look at how Chili Piper organized the teams and comp and all that stuff and all of our processes and rules of engagement. But it's out there with the contact, with the hope that people will tell us what we're missing out of. But also we're not scared to share it because whatever we are doing here is like very unique for us<laugh>. So if you were to just like, try and rip it and put it in somewhere else, it doesn't mean it's gonna work. You know, that you have to, you have to do the work to create
Speaker 1:It. You've just highlighted like what you do today at Chili Piper might not be what you have to do 10 years from now at Chili Piper because customer success is ever evolving and it's never gonna be the same because your product, your customer, your maturity of your business is never the same. And again, we're getting into so many topics, Java, and I wanna keep talking about all of them. The handbook, by the way, is brilliant. For anyone who hasn't seen it, go check it out. I, I love it. I love that the community here in customer success share so much and that that handbook is, is great to see and, and take away what you, what you might take away from it. Um, but again, coming back to that board deck,<laugh>, I definitely wanna talk about that. Um,
Speaker 2:Let's be in the present,
Speaker 1:Okay, let's be in the present of CS leaders, CCOs, VPs of cs. You're starting to report to a board, which is awesome. They have to start structuring a board deck. Cool, great new challenge, but for some people that are listening, that's brand new. So how do you go ahead and structure or prep your board deck? What do you include, you mentioned tons of metrics that we just talked about, but what is important to include in your deck to the board?
Speaker 2:Maybe I'll start with the, the big, the big takeaway, which is board decks only work when you're highly prepared. So we actually, the process of creating a board deck and what it, when it comes down to, you know, like 10 slides, that whole process is a quarter long process. It is not something that we just pull together the day before the board is, the board is happening, you know, and I'm talking about this from a relatively, um, small company. Um, you know, we're, we're under 300 people and 25 million arr, right? We're not, we're not huge, but we, we spend that much time preparing for it. So, you know, if you're thinking of these like large, large companies, they're spending a lot a, a lot more time probably than, than we are. But really the preparation is key. And I use the board as a method to drive the entire team that I have to towards the same goals. So I'm bringing, um, my directors from customer onboarding, from customer success management, from digital customer success from customer love, which is our support team. I'm bringing them together at the start of the quarter and we are saying, you know, what is it that we really want to deliver? What is it that we were able to deliver? What is it that we are struggling with? And we're, we are debating with each other as to the high level objectives that we're, we want to achieve. And then we agree upon them and we take them into monthly OKRs. So every month we also come together and we say, okay, out of the 20 things that we wanted to do, what are we doing this month? What are we doing next month, et cetera. And we review progress and there's a, there's a lot of collaboration. We're all holding each other accountable to different things that we need to put in motion. So, um, that preparation is happening consistently. Then we get to the point where we are, let's say we are, um, a month out from the board, we'll do something called an internal board. So I'll have all of my directors create, um, slides showing for the past quarter what insights they've learned, learned what actions they wanna take upon those insights and what is their forward looking view. And we'll go through this and we'll, we'll spot where people maybe have similar insights, similar actions that they wanna partner together on. And, you know, we'll try and kind of trim that, trim that slide deck down so it's more consistent, but it will still be pretty comprehensive. It'll probably be like a 30 page slide deck at this point. And then we'll present it to the entire team. So the entire team, including all the individual contributors, solution consultants, customer support, um, people, uh, customer success managers. And we'll say to the team, this is what we see happening. These are, um, the insights that we've seen happening, the actions we wanna take upon them. This is our forward looking view. Tell us what risks and dependencies we are missing. And this is so valuable because then we have input from people who are closest to the problem, you know, actually working on support tickets, working with customers, um, and we'll, we'll learn other things that maybe we're missing that we needed to put into our forward, like in view. And then, and then after that happens, I'm able to kind of bring that down into a smaller deck. Next step is share with my executives. Ensure that my executives understand, um, the insights and actions that I'm taking from my perspective, that they understand what my forward looking view is and that I'm giving them value. I'm, I'm, I'm helping them. If I see an insight around, um, a certain type of customer, ideal customer that is onboarding really quickly, I will give that value to my SB of sales and say, Hey, these are the types that we really should be focusing on because we know that these types getting value. Um, and if I see that there's a, a feature request that is potentially holding back some expansion, then I will share that with a product team and give them the opportunity to bring, to bake, to bake that into their forward looking view as well. So it's a lot of prep, it's a lot of collaboration, um, for what comes down to very few slides. There is, um, a big workflow behind it to, to make it work.
Speaker 1:Amazing. I love, there's so many pieces of that that I wanna dive in a little bit deeper. I love the collaboration piece. So obviously this is something that your whole team is behind, something that you're presenting back, something that you're talking about internal. I love the mention of the internal board. I think that's so important cuz it's great that your team is doing great work and you're highlighting that, but there might be pieces you're missing because they're the daily operators like you just said, but you also mentioned 30 slides, 10 slides. There's a, there's a lot of back and forth on how big this deck is. I get it, there's a lot of preparation that's going in there. It's smaller and solid. But what's your, what's your final presentation? What is it that actually Gemma when she goes in front of the board, what is it that you're taking to the board at that point after all months of presenta uh, preparation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so structure wise, it starts with, um, highlights and challenges slide. So this is a great, great opportunity to talk about the kind of high level observations that you are observing in the business. And observations by the way is just a great way to talk to, to explain these because it, neither is good or bad, it's just what, what is happening, right? So you're proving highlights some challenges with real data, always start with that. Um, that was a recommendation from one of our board members actually to start with that. And I really like that approach. Um, second we look at insights and actions. Um, and then third we look at the forward looking view. But the content within, within it is very much, um, retention, which includes care. Oh my gosh, it is, we're recording this on a Friday, so you're gonna have to give me for that one. Um, so we've got retention, which is chan or Contraction. Um, and then we've also got expansion in that retention deep dive adoption. So we are looking at product adoption in terms of breadth, how many licenses are active and depth in terms of what type of products are being used, um, self-service. So within here I'm combining efforts that we are making to help customers help themselves and help customers help each other. So this could be through, um, optimizations we're doing to our Chile hub, which is our knowledge base, our certification programs and so forth. Um, advocacy, which is gonna be talking about what, what we are learning from customers who are advocates, what we're learning through voice of customer programs, what we're learning through customer advisory boards, what we are seeing in terms of their recommendations on how we should go to market. And I always, within there, I always try to bake something innovative that we've done in, in the quarter because there is always, there is always in a startup, there's always something new that you've done. So I always try to bake something in there, um, to show the momentum that the team team is having.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And you mentioned a lot of things and I know it's hard to visualize cuz we're talking about things, but curious, are you doing, um, some sort of metric graph or visual or is it bullet points? Like what is it that in the combination of presenting back either the new initiatives or looking forward, looking back, all of the things that you've just mentioned, how do you best present it in a pretty package so that it's well received?
Speaker 2:So I think I, I would think the way to think about it is for each piece of content, let's take retention as an example. Have in, in one slide if you can, um, insights, actions and forward looking view, that's the way to think about it. But always less text. And if you are gonna show some data, make sure the data tells a clear story, right? So you are there to provide context to the data. So yeah, I think in terms of the bullets, keep them short and sweet, what insights have you learned? What actions are you taking based on that and what's your forward looking view? Um, and try to keep graphs to a minimum and make them easy to understand. And this is something that I, I, I will do, you know, before a final presentation, I will go through and I will say what, what questions do I think someone might ask me? And if there's anything that isn't very clear, I'll try to ensure that I'm, I'm describing
Speaker 1:That and obviously lots of time preparing for board decks, as you mentioned, it's a, a full quarter before you have have to actually go and present the information. You've probably done quite a few now at Chili Piper or in previous roles. What is kind of like a big learning or something you definitely wouldn't put into a board deck today that you might have done before?
Speaker 2:You know, I don't know. That's a tough question. Annika, cuz this, I don't think there's any wrong or right thing to include. I think it's all contextual. I think you really have to consider that board members, they, they want to help, they're in, they're on the team with you. So take that into your mindset as you're going into it. Like ideally this should be a discussion and not a lecture. This should be, this is what I'm seeing, this is what I'm thinking at at this point. I I always start, are there any questions I send, we send the deck in advance, right? So we start with any questions so that it really can be a discussion rather than a lecture, rather than them finding out something for the first time. They should be briefed in advance and we should be using the opportunity to discuss. So they do want to help, but they also want to see continual progress. And the reality is if um, the progress is great, then that's, that's great. It's kind of talking about how, how do we, how do we continue to optimize upon that? And if the progress isn't great or isn't what you expected, you just have to be really clear in explaining what it is that you're gonna do differently to improve it.
Speaker 1:Yep. It is a story, it's a story of, of the quarter of what you guys have done, haven't done what's worked, what hasn't worked. And I love that you just mentioned that because it's so true. It is a conversation. It is not educating, it is brainstorming at the end of the day. It's, it's pretty package of everything that's happened and what do you take from that and how do you move forward or how do you learn from something or how do you double down or triple down on, on a successful moment. So I completely agree that it's, it is something that should be conversational and something that both parties take away from the deck as well.
Speaker 2:Right? Right. And you know, if a change is needed, um, because something that you tried isn't working, that's okay. You are the subject matter expert, so you, you should take control. Um, but the board is there as a, as a sounding board, right? So, um, I guess what I'm thinking about the question you asked, which is what have I learned through doing it? Don't let there be any surprises unless they're get surprises, you know? So if, if you, if you are gonna propose a change to the structure of your team, let's say let's totally fine, but ensure that your peers on the executive team are aligned with that, that they've had a chance to, um, to collaborate with you on it, you know, to potentially identify any, any gaps that you weren't aware of or align it with any other programs that they were doing. So try to minimize that element of surprise. And again, that comes from prep, it comes from prep and discussion and collaboration, which is really hard to do in a start, is really hard to do in a start world for some reason, I'm, this is what I enjoy doing, so I found that works. That works well for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really important, that communication piece that you just said, and it's easier said than done. Also, like you said, it's just you need to make sure you're continuously collaborating with your peers and your fellow exec team and your wider team as well. It shouldn't be a, I don't think a board deck should be a surprise to anyone within the business, especially like you said, in the startup world. Everyone should be aware of, of metrics of what's went well, what hasn't gone well, because a lot of people contribute to those, to those numbers day in and day out, which is super important. Um, one thing we didn't touch upon, which I've seen in board decks that have been shared online and stuff is a lot of people highlight lagging leading indicators in customer success or just across the board, whether in marketing, sales, et cetera. Is that something you've seen done before? Is that a good way to go down with the board deck? What do you think about leading lagging indicators?
Speaker 2:We look at that and we obsess, we obsess about, um, we call it our scorecard, which is activities and leading indicators as well as the lagging outcomes. We, we do that every week, multiple times, um, in the week as a team. Um, so when it comes to the board, you know, they, the north star metric, let's say is NR okay, but I need a very good understanding of the activities and the indicators that are driving that number to be able to provide the context around the NR number, for example. So I think, you know, potentially you might wanna show them, um, that's really your call, but the most important thing is measure them and know them so that you can talk to them so that you can provide that context in a discussion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fair, fair. Awesome. I wanna talk a little bit more about your career progression, chief customer officer. We could keep going on about the board deck. I've taken so many notes,<laugh>, but, um, career progression. What was yours like for listeners that are looking to become a chief customer officer, what can you share, um, about your career that's led you to, to where you are today?
Speaker 2:You know, I think it was a mixture of, um, performance and opportunity and it's hard to get both things right and I was fortunate to, um, be in different places where that worked. But I guess what's quite unique about the CCO role, um, is that because because there aren't that many CCOs still, there's definitely been an an increase in the past couple of years, but there's still relatively not that many. It's not a role where you are likely to be given a clear progression path by anyone else. You're probably gonna have to do a lot of the graphs yourself in terms of researching the role, explaining what value it can provide, explaining how it can work with other roles on the executive team. And so that, that, that was a big part of my journey. Um, you know, as a, when I got to the VP level, um, there was no path ahead of me. I had to, I had to create that path into cco. I was fortunate to, to be able to do it. Um, but it took a lot, it took a highly academic research driven approach.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Another, another podcast we could probably go into deep. How do you research and how do you like present the CCO to your ceo, basically? But, um, in that, in saying that Chili Piper is a series B company and a lot of companies are evaluating when to bring in a cco and what point is pivotal to have a cheap customer officer, um, you speak to, to CS leaders day in and day out. Where, when do you think is a pivotal moment for a company to, to really have the role and, and possibly if someone is at a company that that's at that point, how do they shape into that role?
Speaker 2:I have spoken to a lot of people about this Anika with CCO secrets, which you, you remember actually, you haven't been on it, so we gotta
Speaker 1:Yeah, we should. We should. But I love, I love your podcast. Good, good. Shout out. CCO Secrets is an amazing podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I need to, I need to pick it up. But, um, in talking to people on, on that podcast, the trend was the point at which a company reaches 10 million ARR is when it makes sense to have a cco. Because the idea is at that point you have a solid product market fit. That was kind of the, the, the big takeaway there. And in larger companies, I think it's challenging to create the role just because larger companies will tend to move, uh, more slowly. But we're, you know, we, we are seeing, we're seeing change happen and I think the industry is the, the CS industry is on the cusp of, of boundless growth because of what we are learning from growing at all costs. That is like, you know, just hiring a bunch of salespeople and try to bring in as many deals as you can. Um, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. We're we're seeing the economic downturn and um, a lot of that was that, you know, growth, that that wasn't necessarily good growth. And so the CCO role is one that really addresses that problem of bad growth in terms bad growth into better growth, customer driven growth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I completely agree with you by the way, on when a CCO should be brought in. Speaking of that 10 million mark, I think it's 10, 15, whatever, like around that mark. But it's more about the pivotal moment where you've got that flywheel already set where you already have an ideal customer profile, you're selling to the right people, you have a good established base of what customer success might be doing or figuring out, let's say like you're not, you're no longer just reactive. You do have some sort of team behind you and you're now doubling, tripling, whatever down on customer success and the revenue predictability and growth that CS can bring. I think that's when having that chief customer officer really makes an impact to that, that future trajectory of growth. So, um, thanks for sharing that. Um, one more question before we go into quickfire, um, questions is, looking back at your career or just anyone who's aspiring to become a cco, what's your biggest piece of advice to them or biggest piece of learning?
Speaker 2:Be resilient. Resiliency is key. You know, you have to be able to maintain a positive mindset and a solutions driven approach to everything that comes your way.
Speaker 1:I agree. I think that that comes also from the, the startup and scale up world too. Whether you're ncs, CCO or not, I think resiliency is the characteristic quality that you should carry throughout your career. Cuz I think it, it results in you getting to where you need to be if you are a resilient person.<laugh>
Speaker 2:The role is so rewarding. Like it really is a dream career if you enjoy working with people and helping people and that really makes it all worthwhile When you see people, whether they're in your team or on in in your customers, when you see them progress and expand their learning and progress in their careers, it's, it's incredible. It's so rewarding. But, um, it's, if it was easy, everybody would do it, you know, so it's not easy
Speaker 1:<laugh>, it is not. And you have to be resilient in order to get through those tough times.<laugh>. I completely agree. Awesome. Um, let's jump into quickfire questions. I could keep chatting Geva, but we should, we should wrap up here. So I'm gonna challenge you to try to answer these next few questions in a sentence or less. I know it's gonna be difficult, but are you ready?
Speaker 2:I'm ready.
Speaker 1:Let's do it. So the first question is, what do you think is next for the CS industry?
Speaker 2:I think digital CS is the most exciting part of our industry and I'm very much, uh, looking forward to expanding our digital CS efforts in 2023.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Next question is, what is your favorite app that you cannot live without, either on your phone or your laptop?
Speaker 2:I can't say chili Piper can I?
Speaker 1:<laugh> can, but maybe
Speaker 2:Something else saves time, saves ton of time for me. I meet with lots of people. I wouldn't be able to live, live without it.
Speaker 1:That's true. We did book in this podcast recording with Chili Piper, so very true. You sent me your link and said, find some time in my calendar,<laugh>. Awesome. Okay. And then, um, next question is, what sort of compensations should a CSM get? Should it be just a base salary or a base salary plus a commission variable piece?
Speaker 2:I think having skin in the game is, is always a good idea. So base plus commission variable.
Speaker 1:Final part is what is your favorite part of customer success or being a CS leader,
Speaker 2:Helping people.
Speaker 1:I love that. I do thank you so much Gemma, for sharing all your insights, tips, tricks, all the pieces. Really appreciate your time. I've learned so much. I'm sure our listeners have as well is that if there are questions or people wanna come to you for further discussion, what's the best way to find you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, reach out to me on LinkedIn and I'll be more than happy to add any additional context to the ramblings that I've shared with Atika today.<laugh>. But it's been a lot of fun and just thank you so, so much for having me. You know, I'm so passionate about, um, what you do and what you stand for in terms of helping others progress in their career path in, in customer success. So honor to to have been on this with you. Thank you Annika.
Speaker 1:Thanks Trevor. That was so sweet. Way to end it on, on a hi there. Thanks so much and, uh, thanks for being here. 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 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 the show notes. Thanks again for listening and tune in next time for more on customer success.