In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Shannon Nishi, Director of Customer Success at Customer.io about sustainable growth in Customer Success.
Times are tough and the “big hiring days” when scaling a SaaS business are long gone. In today’s economy, you have to think about sustainable growth rather than growth at all costs. So, how do you do that in Customer Success? How do you ensure your CSMs are strategic and not just support? And how do you measure sustainable growth?
Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com
In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Shannon Nishi, Director of Customer Success at Customer.io about sustainable growth in Customer Success.
Times are tough and the “big hiring days” when scaling a SaaS business are long gone. In today’s economy, you have to think about sustainable growth rather than growth at all costs. So, how do you do that in Customer Success? How do you ensure your CSMs are strategic and not just support? And how do you measure sustainable growth?
Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com
Hello everyone, I'm your host Anika Bert , 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 a c s organization. Today I am speaking with Shannon Nishi , who is the director of customer Success at Customer io, bringing seven years of experience in SaaS and customer success, including implementation services and technical project management. Her experience working across e-commerce data collection software and marketing automation software has seeded a love for complex problems and an appreciation for simple solutions on distributed customer facing teams. As a leader, she's passionate about enabling personal development and collaboration amongst team members. She likes using iterative processes and open communication to achieve customer defined business outcomes. Today we will talk to Shannon about sustainable customer growth in customer success. Times are tough and long. Gone are the days where you're able to throw bodies at a problem. When scaling a SaaS business in today's economy, you have to think about sustainable growth rather than growth at all costs . So how do you do that in customer success? Let's chat to Shannon to learn about her experience. So welcome Shannon to the podcast. I'm really excited to have you here with us. Before we get into today's topic, can you please tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself, what it is you're doing at customer io , your role? Just give us a little bit of background on who you are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me. I'm , I'm really excited to have this conversation today. I'm Shannon Nishi , I'm the director of Customer Success at customer io. I joined the company three years ago and I started as a CSM on the team and at the time we had seven people in the CS department and uh, I now lead the customer success team, which is , uh, currently around 25 team members and growing. We're a globally distributed and remote first company, so getting to work with CSMs all around the world and uh, yeah, just leading us through all the changes in the product and as we continue to grow as an organization.
Speaker 1:Awesome. And I'm sure we'll jump into more of everything at customer io, but so curious, you started as a C S M, what inspired you to start working in customer success? Yeah,
Speaker 2:When I, when I first got into customer success, I was really interested in tech and wanting to get into the tech space and when I learned about customer success, it was in 2016 so it wasn't as common to hear about customer success managers there. And as I learned about it, I thought it was such an interesting little window into the tech space where you're able to get your hands into so many different pots, so to say, where a CSM gets to work with so many teams internally at an organization and learn so much about the business in that way. But also getting to interface with so many other different companies and learning about their goals and the way their business works. Uh, it just seemed like a really interesting way to get involved in the tech space and learn a lot in a short amount of time, especially for somebody that didn't come from a tech background myself. So that's continued to play out. I still think it's such a fascinating place to sit in any SaaS organization and uh, continues to just inspire me on a daily basis.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. I always love asking all my guests how they came to be in customer success cuz we all have such a unique background, but I really love what you just said is that it gives you that space to grow or explore within the organizations because you interact with so many different people, different departments and you don't have to like just be focused on something cuz you kind of have to do it all in, in CS especially as at , at a startup. So I love that journey. Thanks for sharing. What is it that you particularly did because you started as a CSM three years ago, you're now director of customer success, that's amazing. Congratulations, but I'm sure some of our listeners wanna know that career directory and how it happened and what you did to contribute to the success of your career at customer iu. Can you share a little bit more about that?
Speaker 2:Definitely. And, and I started as a CSM at customer io, but I'd been doing CS for about four years prior to that. So when I first got into customer success , uh, I was in Chicago at the time and I started working for an e-commerce , uh, company as a strategic account manager, right? But very similar function to customer success. And then moved onto another organization where I was able to work in scaling the mid-market offering for their customer success program, working with a pooled customer success model and really developing the processes for that , uh, as well as getting into the activation side of things and implementation. So I had an opportunity there to get a little bit more experience with technical project management and uh, kind of the project management aspect of implementation and working with complex , uh, enterprise businesses to understand what their long-term goals were to set that up in the first three to six months of the customer implementation. But before all of that I actually , uh, like you said, you know, cs, everybody comes from such diverse backgrounds because it's still such a relatively new field. But my, my first career was in acting and performing. Oh,
Speaker 1:Interesting. What a transition <laugh>.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. So I did that most of my life and I went to university for musical theater. I was living in Chicago and I was , uh, auditioning and doing shows and as many actors do, I was supporting that by working in the service industry and a little bit of retail and mostly working in restaurants and bars. And so I really enjoyed that customer element and I , I speak with a lot of actors that are like, I hate waiting tables as the worst. I actually loved it and, and I really enjoyed just making that experience as consistent and reliable as possible and just being kind of that seamless in the background. Like not, not the star of the show, but just creating a a an experience for people that come in to share a meal with their loved ones or with their friends. Uh, to just take all of the stress of the cooking and the cleaning and all of that away by optimizing the communication with the, the bartenders and the kitchen and, and problem solving along the way and prioritizing task management. All of these things like I, I really enjoyed. And so when I decided that I, I was gonna transition careers, I started thinking about, okay, well what makes sense for me? And tech was obviously growing and seemed like it wasn't going anywhere. I learned about SaaS model companies and that just seemed to make so much sense to me. And as I learned more about that then I was, I was introduced to customer success and I was like, wait, this might be my way in because you know, I already have this love of working with the customers, maybe I can leverage some of these skills. I had all of this professional training as an actor where I had really learned about storytelling and empathizing with people that are different than yourself. And so all of these things just seemed like, hey, this might really click. I met somebody working at the bar that I was working at that worked at a SaaS organization and I started asking her questions about it and she was like, how do you know what this is? Like
Speaker 1:Why ,
Speaker 2:Why are you asking all these questions? And I kind of shared that I was interested in getting my foot in the door and she came back several times, we had different conversations and then, you know, she took a huge chance on me. She had an opening on a team of these, this small team of strategic account managers and she came in one day and was like, Hey, are you interested in flying ? And I said, yes. And then that really became just a crash course in everything tech and business and SaaS and customer success. Like all of that was so new to me, but I learned so much in , in a short amount of time there. And um, you know, looking back, I'm super grateful that she was able to take that chance on me and, and trusted me with that opportunity. But I had a lot of autonomy there that just gave me the ability to learn these new tools and skills and, and it all just clicked. I found that I really enjoyed the customer part of it, but also I was really interested by the problem solving when it came to the technical capacities and solutioning and all these other things. So , uh, it's continued to make me happy and and the rest is history.
Speaker 1:Amazing. I always love asking every single of my guest where their passion for customer success comes from, but also how do they break into it? Cuz like you said there , it wasn't really coined customer success until, you know, the 2010s or late 2010s I would say . And so it was just because of that that I love hearing everyone's story and I loved hearing the passion in your voice when you were just sharing how you got into it and how you related waiting tables to customer success. Cuz I've had some people come from musician backgrounds and they were talking about orchestras and how that relates to being, you know, a team player and working with multiple people and you were just talking about like, you know, the front of house versus back of house and coordinating all that. So I really do love everyone's stories and I just think it's amazing how customer success leaders, professions, anyone who works in this industry has such a wide variety of backgrounds because it really shapes the future of our, our organizations and, and the way that we build customer success at SaaS businesses. So thank you for sharing that. But I also do wanna hear a little bit more about the current team. You said it's um, 25 people distributed globally, which is awesome to hear the growth that customer IO has gone through, but you also mentioned pooled model, you mentioned some different things that I wanna dive in deeper too . Can you tell us a little bit about what does that distributed team look like at customer io? What sort of customers do you guys serve? What does the product do? Give us a little bit of background into that.
Speaker 2:Yeah , uh, CU customer AI is a marketing automation tool and we're really used to send personalized messages to customer audiences and automate workflows using the data that you already have on your customers to make sure that they're getting the right message at the right time , uh, with personalized information that helps them engage and understand how they need to use whatever service or tools that you're offering. And so our team is working with customers across a , a broad array of different industries and all different types of businesses that might want to leverage these SMS push notifications in app , any of those things. Uh, we started out by really focusing on mid-market as a company and we found that we just clicked with that segment of businesses. And so that's continued to be something that we put a lot of effort into cultivating those relationships. And really early on that's mostly the way that we were getting customers. It's just through word of mouth with mid-market customers. But now as we've continued to scale, we've had these opportunities that just kind of have organically come to us to get into the enterprise space as well. So , uh, we're working with a broader and broader , uh, assortment of customers as we continue to grow the customer success team as well as our, our customer base. And so customer success at customer AO works with any of our customers that are on a contracted plan. We have self-service options, those customers can work with our technical support team. It's a month to month commitment for those customers so they don't have to plan quite as far in advance, but for those customers that are ready to sign a contract and agree to a longer term, that's where customer success comes in. And we're, we're working with those customers in , uh, a varying capacity based on the type of plan that they're using.
Speaker 1:Awesome, awesome. And I know that we had chatted before, and it's a topic of today's conversation is sustainable growth because back in the day, even just a few years, a year ago, I'd say it's everyone, every SaaS business was growing at any cost and now it's more grow at a sustainable manner. And I think you guys have had amazing growth and continue to have. So as you guys expand into the enterprise part of the business as well, but you guys have made some shifts and changes while, while growing. It's not like you throw a C s M at every customer that that comes on board with customer io. So I'd love to hear from your perspective and your experience of when should a SaaS company start monitoring and measuring like how to grow and scale cs? Cuz like we said, you just can't throw another c s m every single time a new customer buys a product. So what are you guys doing when it comes to scale and sustainable growth? It's
Speaker 2:A really important question and honestly I don't think it's ever too early to start thinking about scaling. And I think most people that have been a part of smaller organizations that are early on , uh, especially in this , this SaaS world, you're constantly trying to think about, okay, how are we going to manage more work? How do we do things faster, more efficiently? And that's all a part of scale, right? So it's just a matter of figuring out what are the biggest impacts that we can make to the customer journey and what can reasonably accomplish with the team that we have today. Uh, knowing that we can continue to grow and set ourselves up for success, but making sure that we're taking those little wins and, and growing it all in stride and simultaneously growing a bigger organization as we put the structure in place. I think the really challenging part is, you know, knowing exactly what is your first move and finding that balance of supporting it with comprehensive data, but also paying attention to the anecdotal and sentimental trends that you get from your team and from your customers, especially when you're early on in scale, right? Like you don't always have the perfect dashboard that's ready to go, that's just gonna surface those insights and those can take months and months and months to build out. You know, you don't always know exactly what you're looking for and it generally takes coordination across the sales department, the product department, you need to get your data teams involved to make sure that the data inputs that you're getting are are really comprehensive. And so , uh, uh, you know, I think paying attention to what data you have immediately avail available, what can you even manually be tracking when you first start in terms of how many customers does every C S M have , uh, how much time are we spending on different efforts? Uh, and then understanding, okay, what is it gonna look like to continue hiring in this direction if we continue doing what we're doing today? That's really where you get into understanding like, okay, where are opportunities to get more leverage here?
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. And I think that you just touched on something that's really important to highlight as well as like making sure your CSMs are addressing the correct customer and also working appropriately while you scale as well, which I think we'll dive in deeper to that, but I'm so curious, like where did you start when it came to the actual customer journey? What, what milestones customers were hoping to reach? Like did you start by segmenting, like you mentioned not only the data, but hearing customer feedback, how did you actually start to build out what customer success looks like today at at customer io?
Speaker 2:So when I first came on board , you know, there were seven people like I mentioned, and it was really easy to communicate quickly across seven people and everybody was kind of doing their own version of everything and we started getting customers at a faster and faster rate and it became immediately clear, we're gonna have to keep hiring and we're gonna have to hire probably a decent amount in the next year. So we actually just, just even to maintain what we were doing. So we actually focused a lot of our efforts on our onboarding program for our CSMs to say, okay, we know we're gonna have to hire, how are we gonna do this as , as efficiently as uh , possible? How are we gonna know that we're interviewing the right candidates and that it's a strong fit , uh, so that we can just stay on top of the work that we already have built out? And so a lot of effort went into that initially and, and as we started hiring more people, then we also needed to scale our management structure. So we had always used a bit of a flat structure where everybody was reporting to the same person, but then we introduced this team lead role that offered kind of a hybrid of , uh, doing the individual contributor work and being really close to the job and understanding what that looks like to work with customers, but then also having a people management element that allowed us to bring more people onto the team and be supported directly by a manager. Uh, so that was a huge piece in a , in us scaling initially and getting that momentum. Also, we took a responsibility out of the customer success realm and that is the, the contracts piece of negotiations and logistics when it comes to getting new contracts in place. Uh, because we found CSMs, were doing a lot of context switching and uh, having to, you know, go from a really heavy strategic conversation to then going into negotiate and , and coming , uh, back with different quotes. And we realized that we could outsource that piece, that contracts piece to a separate team, a smaller team, and then really allow our CSMs to focus on the onboarding and the implementation and the long-term strategic goals. So that was also huge in giving us a little bit more room to continue to scale. But you know, as you've mentioned, you can't just continue to hire CSMs forever. Yeah,
Speaker 1:I was about to say like it's , it would be amazing, like, but I'm pretty sure your CFO will say no at some point. So I'm wondering if you guys have hit like a , a pivotal moment cuz 25 across the business, I'm sure that's covering at least some of the the needs, but how are you continuing to scale without the body count <laugh>?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, yeah. So I would say once we got to around 12 CSMs, that gave us enough people power to be able to really manage the existing book of customers and to start making progress in some of these substantial ways that are gonna allow us to scale , uh, more efficiently. And so we started focusing on the customer journey and for us that started with onboarding where we didn't have necessarily standardized and clear processes for how we onboard customers. Everybody had a little bit of their own style and flavor. We thought there's a lot of room here to just put in some structure that will help support the CSMs and mitigate some of the things that become very time consuming down the road if they're not addressed early on with the customers. Um, so putting in that model where we had , uh, you know, specific calls, specific uh, deliverables that we're working with customers on to ensure that consistency early on within the 90 days, which of onboarding, which helped us , uh, you know, really focus efforts on , um, maintaining some of those long-term relationships and not just always fighting to keep up with the new onboarding customers. It really kind of gives people some peace of mind to have that structure in place. And then once we kind of had the wheels greased there and we have continued to hire now, it's been okay, we are supporting a breadth of customers that is huge. We've introduced a new product now as well, our customer data pipelines, which allows , uh, customers to integrate their data, their events, their profile data into one central place, and then not only route it to our messaging product or journey's product, but also to send that out to destinations anywhere where they may need to leverage that data on their customers. And so with that, it's, it's become a lot for a single CSM to manage to have multiple products, metric managing customers across different segments, different processes for each of those different segments. And so it's clear that we have this opportunity to segment our team and have CSMs just focus on one piece of that business so that they can really start to make progress in terms of , uh, the customer journeys that relate to a type of customer where we understand their needs and their goals in a , in a way that isn't just a one size fits all .
Speaker 1:Makes sense. And I think that you've just touched upon quite a few things I wanna dive deeper into. You already said that the CSM have been given responsibility, but they've all were , they also got things taken away from them by the sounds of it, the commercial side isn't as heavily placed on the csm, but the onboarding and implementation is, but also the CSMs have a a pooled model if I'm not , uh, mistaken on that because you guys segment a lot of customers or you service a lot of customers and I think you guys started with the product-led growth or PLG model , um, in the early days of customer io and then you've now moved from that mid-market to enterprise. What made you guys kind of interact in a pooled model ? How did you like set up that segmentation? How did you decide with those, let's say seven to to 12 CSMs in those early days, how did you decide how you were gonna interact with a customer, what the responsibilities were gonna be, and also why not just support? Because when I think of that level of customers that you guys are servicing, I'm , I'm always just thinking of support. So how did you guys even come up with the journey and the interaction of A C S M?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so our pool model is still relatively new for us. We've implemented that in the last, I would say six to eight months. And it really stemmed from the work that we did to optimize our onboarding process because as we did that we realized there's a big piece of our mid-market business where they're really heavily leveraging the CSM during the initial onboarding period and you know, they need some best practices and they want advice in setting up and they really need that product expertise early on so that they can get everything going. But then beyond that, as we looked six months down the line, eight months down the line, they might be getting in touch with us and entertaining conversations with us here and there to talk about a new feature. But overall they're not needing the same strategic support ongoing from a CSM that knows the ins and outs of their businesses and all of their objectives and goals. And so for that specific segment of customers, we decided to move to a pooled customer success model because as we've said, it was becoming more expensive and more taxing to continue hiring CSMs. It didn't feel fair to pass that cost off onto the customer by saying like, Hey, we need to raise our service prices to, to continue providing the service if they're not using it. Uh, so now we actually have that as an option. All of our customers get the 90 day onboarding, but for customers that are in our mid-market segment that want the additional support, that really value that maybe they're growing really fast or they have some ongoing initiatives that they're working on, they may value pulling a , a CSM into their plan and and having that for the duration of the term. But for a big number of our customers, they're happy with that 90 days. And then we have a pooled customer success model where we can continue to work with them on questions that come up around specific use cases and adoption and getting all of that products information in their hands, but also addressing things in a one-to-many sense. And so how are we doing webinars and how are we getting thought leadership into their hands and how are we recreating the customer journey that we know works for our other customers at scale? And so now we have this group of CSMs that are really focused on those opportunities and and seeing what we can do to impact these customers on a broader scale.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. I also love that you guys are almost mixing and matching segmentation and the way customer journey should look like or would look like. I don't think there's a perfect way. I think every business is different and you have to tailor your CS journey and model to your customer base and how they're using your product, like you said. But I love that you guys start with the, let's say high touch one-to-one interaction where everyone gets the 90 day onboarding, everyone's getting that almost high touch model where they are interacting and they're getting that support to get up and running, I'm guessing until they're live with your product and regularly using it. But I love that you guys scaled and grow in a different way in the sense that you've built this pooled model because a lot of people will stay customers in one lane where they're one-to-one and enterprise and high touch white glove service or they'll go directly for the pooled tech touch model, which I think that you guys have mixed the two, which I think is a great way to sustainably grow because like you said, not all customers are gonna reach back out to have very, very inate questions where they're gonna need a CSM on hand for a call or a QBR or whatever it is. They're happy to just, you know, be, get their questions answered, which makes complete sense. And I think that's really awesome that you guys are kind of mixed support and success in a way. Um, and I think you guys also mix in product or you at least work quite closely with product , um, from what I know. And I would love to know kind of how you guys have gotten your product team in involved in this customer journey that you've uniquely built around that mid-market customer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that question. I , I know you had asked about how a product led growth model kind of lends itself to customer success over just support and I think, you know, customer success works the best in a product-led growth model and why, while support is super important to maintain a good day-to-day customer experience for the customer and make sure that we're removing blockers quickly and that they're able to make progress on their goals right then and there , the customer success team is really able to take those interactions one step further and say, okay, how is this problem or this initiative, how is that impacting things six months down the line, 12 months down the line, what does that look like? What overall objectives is this helping to support so that we're able to keep that feedback loop with our product team and and bring those insights back to them and say, okay, so things are changing. We're seeing new use cases that we haven't seen before. We're seeing that customers are really excited about this new messaging channel or whatever it is so that we are able to make those decisions in the product that are both giving the experience to the customer of the things that they just want delivered here and now the features that they're interested in. But also being on the leading edge of what marketing is doing in general and pushing customers beyond just what they're thinking about today and really pushing them towards a strategy a year out and how they're going gonna continue to grow their business and innovate. And so having these conversations on the customer success team with our customers is imperative to be able to do that. Uh, and I would say, you know, for our, our product team is customer success, right? They are constantly using , uh, customer metrics and customer insights to empower the decisions that they're making and understand how to prioritize things so that we're delivering a product that people want to use and that is bringing them value beyond just a a self-service tool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that and I love how involved the product team is. So much so that you've just said product is customer success. I feel like that needs to be quoted and shared to every business. Cuz sometimes we work in silos and we forget that. And I love how integrated your product team is. I think they even work quite closely with your customer feedback loop that you guys are really passionate about as well because like you said, customers are giving feedback and your product team are building the product with them in mind. But how do you guys go about a, collecting that feedback and b ensuring that the product team hears it out correctly and is actually building for the customer in mind? How do you guys like make that all work? Because in theory it sounds easy, but I know there's a lot of work behind a customer feedback loop, so how are you guys doing that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. I feel really lucky to work with our product team that understands and wants to , uh, empower our customers, right? Like I know that's not always the case for everybody at every CS organization. So it's amazing that we get to take advantage of these feedback loops that you've mentioned. And we work with the product teams in a , a couple different ways. First of all, our product managers are incredibly generous with their time and uh, especially when that comes to customers. So when we have new features or when we're doing research and development for something that we wanna build out, our PMs are regularly joining customer calls and asking us for insights of what has come up in our conversations and digging into tickets and getting as much information as they can firsthand about what's going on with our customers in relation to what they're working on. That invitation being open is huge and, and, and just knowing that we can pull product managers in to some of these sticky situations or really interesting use cases. We also have an automation set up. We're we're actually plan ha hat customers ourselves. And so we're constantly recording customer notes, customer insights based on meetings that we have or interactions. And so our CSMs can go into plan hat and tag a note with , uh, CS insights is what we call it. We use that category and that hooks up to an automation that takes the content of their note and spits it into a public channel in Slack where everybody has access. So our engineers or designers, our product teams, they can see the insights that are coming directly from these customer meetings about what customers are doing, what pain points they're running into, what tools they might be using aside customer io, what we haven't seen before that we're now seeing with our customers. And they can set up keywords on that channel or uh, just regularly go through an audit. We can tag in people that we know are interested in certain topics to get those internal conversations going and make sure that the relevant information is getting to them as quickly as possible. And then the third major way, which has become such a huge piece of how we work with the product team is , uh, a monthly meeting that we have with our PMs. So once a month prior to the meeting, the product team makes sure that their current priority list is up to date that we can see, you know, these are the top five or top six items that our squads are working on. And then we as a CS team come up with an agenda as well where CSMs will highlight and kind of go into deep dives of customer pain points or feature requests, things that uh, are coming up for them on a regular basis that they'd like to go more in detail with, with the product team. And then we have a conversation about, okay, what are these items on the list? What is products take on this? Is this something that we wanna explore? Is this something we're already planning on the roadmap? How does this compare against our current priority list? Is are any of these things more important than what we're currently doing? And getting that really honest conversation where we're both challenging each other is so beneficial for us to be able to go back to the customer and have a transparent conversation about this is a way that our product team is prioritizing things. These are the things that we see as the most important to our customers and this is what we're working on delivering on. Uh, and it also just gives you that good gauge with your customers to say, how are these things important to you? Are , are these the most important things to you or is there something that's more important? And that's beneficial for multiple reasons, both so we know if we're off target, but also so the customer may know like, hey, maybe I need a different tool to do this thing that I'm doing. This isn't actually part of the customer IO journey and the last thing we wanna do is just string our customers along. Right,
Speaker 1:Definitely. No, for sure. And I think having product involved in those types of conversations is critical. I think a customer trusts the C S M understands, works with them collaboratively, but having almost the product team reiterate what has already been said and make sure that, you know, we're building something that fits our use case and model as a product, but also fits what you're looking for and we're not just doing anything and everything. And that again comes back to that feedback loop that you guys have closely built with that product team so that you continue to hear the customer but build things that make sense for your business and the customer as well. But saying that as well, the CSM is now onboarding, thinking about the customer pooled model, working with the product team, not commercially, but still there's a lot of , um, hats a CSM is wearing at customer io and I've heard it more times than not, especially in the economy that we are in, is that a CSM has to be doing more and more and almost with less or trying to scale quicker like you guys have, but either with less resource, less people, whatever the case is, there's a fear of C S M burnout. And how is it that you guys are ensuring that you guys are scaling and growing sustainably but not burning out your team while doing so? Uh ,
Speaker 2:Such an important question. I think, you know, as somebody that's worked in cs I myself have gone through periods of burnout. I've seen it happen to so many of my teammates over the years. Like I, I think that the CSM is in a really critical spot where this is, they're prone to burnout, right? I I think it's really easy to get into a position as a C S M where you feel like things are happening to you and you lose that autonomy and you don't have the same power to go into your customer conversations feeling like you can really impact things. And so I think that powers so much of the way that I lead my team and the way I think about the decisions that we're making. So in order to combat that, I think, you know, leading by example is huge and I really have to be mindful about checking myself where, how am I building boundaries and how am I setting expectations with my team as well that my, my direct reports will call me out when they're like, you're not modeling good behavior that's sustainable in this case. You know, like, I see, I see you're online a little bit later than you should be or things like that. And so building that culture where we know what the expectation is and then giving people the ability to let you know when you're not upholding what you've committed to do in terms of your own boundaries and and protecting your own sustainability , uh, that's super important. But beyond that, as you're going through all of these changes and it's constant, there's change all the time, I think it's so important to be transparent about the things that are going to be really hard or, and the things that you're not sure how they're gonna play out about. Uh, I think if you try and paint things in a way as if nothing's wrong and don't acknowledge the the pain that the individual contributor is gonna feel, then you're never gonna have the trust of the team and you're not gonna be able to work through those challenging moments. So, you know, building trust, getting regular feedback and actually taking action on that feedback or explaining why certain feedback isn't going to be acted on is really important. Uh, I also think that it's just really important that as you're describing the why that you're giving CSMs an opportunity to be a part of the solution. That CSMs are not just customer machines. They don't ingest a process and just go have a call with the customer and check a checklist and that's it. The CSMs have so much insight on what the customers need, what in the process is working, what in the process is not working. And so giving them the ability to actually contribute to making these solutions come to life and bringing that feedback to the surface to say what's not working is, is huge in combating burnout because if they feel like nothing is gonna change and that they can't impact anything, then of course when things get hard, it's gonna put you in a really challenging spot to continue. But when you feel like you can see the change and you're actually a part of the change, there's always gonna be something that we have to improve always. And so it's how do we set people up in those positions to be successful?
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. And I think that the other thing that you just said is so important as any business continues to grow, especially in this economy , thinking about sustainable growth, is that transparency. I think you're so, so spot on . The only way to see success with your team, with the ability to grow with your customers is being transparent about what's gonna get solved, what's gonna actually have to drop. Because you know what, we only have two hands and there's only so many hours in the day that we can actually get to customer needs. And that goes for all teams involved in the customer journey. You guys have so many teams that are involved in the entire customer journey and I think that having that many hands helping is great, but it also limits on like what it is you can do. And the only way that you'll know that limit is by being transparent with your team . So thank you so much for sharing that. We could keep talking Shannon about this probably for hours cause I could keep going into more detail about how you guys are running things, how you guys are growing, but we do have to wrap up and I wanna challenge you with our quick fire questions and the challenges that you're gonna have to try to answer these next few questions in a sentence or less. Are you ready?
Speaker 2:I think I'm ready.
Speaker 1:Awesome. My first question for you is, what do you think is next for the CS industry?
Speaker 2:I think CS is learning how to work alongside AI and make sure that computers are doing the work for computers so that CSMs are able to focus on the strategic work that CSMs do.
Speaker 1:Oh , I love that. And I completely agree. I'm so excited about how AI is gonna sh not take away jobs, but shift the work of a csm. My second question is, which SAS product can you not live without? As a CS professional,
Speaker 2:I work at a globally distributed and remote company and I absolutely could not get through a day without Slack
Speaker 1:<laugh> . It's so important, but also so annoying in my opinion. <laugh>
Speaker 2:Feel like super obvious to say that, but it's like I literally don't know where I would start without
Speaker 1:Slack <laugh> . Yeah . Yeah, that's very true. I, I totally agree, but I always know that sometimes when I get that little red notification and bing, it's also the biggest like Beit of my life. <laugh>. Um, next question is, what is your favorite customer success learning resource? Or where do you learn the most from in the, in the CS space?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Uh, I, I think there's three that come to mind. So I love using gain , grow , retain for anything CS specific. If I just wanna see, I know somebody's had this question before. Let me see what people have been saying in the community as a leader. Harvard Business Review is huge for me. I read it almost daily and get just such good little reminders that I can bring into my daily practice with my team. And then also , uh, I love listening to podcasts like Hidden Brain, which really get into psychology and I think that's super important as a leader that you're keeping psychology top of mind and understanding what motivates people, how people tick, and some of the challenges that we just face as humans.
Speaker 1:I love that. Three very different resources, but I'm sure that shapes you into the well-rounded leader you are today. And my final question for you today, Shannon, is who is inspiring you or whom do you think we should next have on this podcast?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so somebody that I follow on LinkedIn that I've kind of crossed paths with in a couple of webinars that I've attended, and I just think he has such a reasonable approach to customer success is Peter Armley , who's the VP of C S E S G , that is customer success as a service. And just every time I hear him talk, I, I just think that something that he says resonates with me and it's like, yes, this is so logical. It doesn't feel like, you know, those trendy things that it's like, let's say this just to be controversial. It's like, yeah, these are the things that we all know but just maybe can't always verbalize.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Peter's amazing. He has a wealth of knowledge and I always love that he's willing to share it as well. So totally agree. Shannon, amazing conversation. Thank you so much for sharing all your insights. If our listeners have any other questions or wanna get ahold of you or wanna follow up , what's the best way to get ahold of you? You
Speaker 2:Can find me on LinkedIn. We're just going through a , a hiring round now. Uh , but we're constantly posting new roles , so keep an eye on our careers page if you're interested or you know, somebody that may be in interest interested in a position on our customer success team. And feel free to send me a message on LinkedIn as well.
Speaker 1:Amazing. Thank you so much Shannon. Really appreciate your time. Thank
Speaker 2:You so much. It was great chatting with you.
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 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.