In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Brandon Ramsey, Head of Customer Success at OnsiteIQ about how to ensure that customer success truly stands on its own and is not overshadowed by sales.
Customer Success (CS) is frequently linked with sales and often entails revenue targets. However, is this truly the most effective way to structure your CS department? Why should CS not be seen as a mere extension of sales? And how can you persuade senior leadership that CS should not be responsible for renewals and upsells?
Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com
In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Brandon Ramsey, Head of Customer Success at OnsiteIQ about how to ensure that customer success truly stands on its own and is not overshadowed by sales.
Customer Success (CS) is frequently linked with sales and often entails revenue targets. However, is this truly the most effective way to structure your CS department? Why should CS not be seen as a mere extension of sales? And how can you persuade senior leadership that CS should not be responsible for renewals and upsells?
Podcast enquiries: sofia@planhat.com
<silence>
Speaker 2: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 CS organization. Today I'm speaking with Brandon Ramsey , head of Customer Success at Onsite iq. He has helped build their CSS function from the ground up, and Brandon has spent a number of years as a principal, CSM, and with four years of consulting experience, his focus has been on maximizing efficiency. Customer success often gets tied into sales more times than not, CSMs have revenue targets. But is this the right way to structure your CSS team? Should CSS be an extension of sales? Today, we are going to chat with Brendan all about his opinion on this topic and how he has built customer success teams from the ground up that have not held revenue targets and have been measured for 9.9 out of 10 for their CSAT scores. But this didn't happen overnight, and it happened because he focused on purpose over profit. Let's chat to Brendan on how he made sure CSS is not sales. Welcome, Brandon , to the podcast. I'm so very excited to have you here with us today, but before we get into this very juicy topic, I would love to hear in your own words what it is you do, who you are, where you're working. Give me the lowdown of who the heck Brandon is. Yeah,
Speaker 3:First off, thank you for having me. It's, it's always a absolute treat to be able to talk to another CSS professional who is focused on kind of cultivating our message as a, as a team and a program and , and advertising in the space. And what you're doing is, in my opinion, the Lord's work. So I, I truly appreciate you having me on. Aw ,
Speaker 2:That's so
Speaker 3:Sweet. In terms of who I am , my name's Brendan Ramsey who said , head of Customer Success at Onset iq. Onset IQ is a construction intelligence platform that leverages AI to detect progress changes throughout the life of a capital asset. So any person building any type of property, it doesn't matter if it's a home or a data center or a New York skyscraper, we send someone to capture that asset on a regular basis. We process that data through ai and then we're able to spit out insights , uh, and information to key project stakeholders on the owner, developer, and investor side so that they can see exactly how their projects are coming along. We're in an incredibly innovative space, and obviously AI is taking the forefront, and so we're super privileged to be able to service our customers to kind of be the first to come to the market with a truly comprehensive solution. In terms of me and my customer success experience background, I would consider myself a serial principal. csm, you know, I kind of have jumped from a few organizations as the first CSM built the CSS team and then, and, and then moved on. And really my mentality is people over profit and, and I'm sure we'll get into this in a little bit, but my personal belief is that if you can develop deep, meaningful relationships with your customers in a way that works for them, that's not invasive to those customers, you can have an incredibly collaborative and productive relationship with those people. And so to that end, I personally fall in the stance of customer success is not a function of sales. Customer success has to be a function of its own supportive customers and driving those positive outcomes. And so you can only do that if the customer views you as a team player, as a member of their team, and not so much a salesperson trying to get their next dollar .
Speaker 2:So you've had a number of different roles being a principal, CSM, and you say that you've built custom success from the ground up, which is no easy task. I think a lot of people listening to our podcast have done it, but it is an easy, and especially in the prop tech or AI space that you find yourself in. What inspired you to actually start in customer success and not go down a different avenue?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so first things first, in my upbringing, I was very much so encouraged by my parents to always engage people, try and build connections, try and build relationships with people, and not force a relationship, right? Try and build deep meaningful ties with people. So from an early age, I was, you know, really, really promoted and put into an area where I could actually engage with people. My dad had a public speaking platform, he was always engaging people in the community, and so I was able to watch firsthand on kind of what that looks like to, to love people where they're at and engage with them. All throughout my life, I've been looking for ways to connect with people, and in college that was very much so the case. And you know, most people, whenever they're put in a position to engage with people, they kind of go down the traditional sales route, but for me it was more about problem solving than it was about selling somebody on a vision or a product that, that we wanted to promote. You know, it's, it's always been for me about how do I work, spend my time, my hours in the day to help people solve the problems or the needs that they have. And that really goes into that people over profit mentality. Um, if you really work on developing a, a deep tie with somebody, if you can build a strong relationship with them, you're gonna find multiple different avenues to work with them on solving side problems, but most importantly, to feel like to, to drive that person to feel like they have an advocate or a champion on their side.
Speaker 2:I love that. I was just gonna say that purpose seems so strongly tied to who you are as a human, and it seems like you almost had a calling towards customer success, especially when you said people over profit and building strong relationships. Those seem like natural characteristics that you would say any great CSM should have or any great CSS professional should have. And I'm so curious, did that come from your parents? Do you think that that's just who you are at the core? Do you think that's something that can be learned? Because for everyone listening, maybe they don't have those as, as core principles or core skills that they have within themselves, but I think they're great and very important to have as a CSM. What would you say is critical?
Speaker 3:I mean, I'd be remiss if I didn't say a large part of it was early indoctrination by my parents and, and them kind of putting me in those areas where I could engage with people from all different walks of life and be able to work with them and love them and support them in any aspect. It doesn't matter if I'm going over the neighbor's house as a little kid and mowing their lawn, you know, you wanna build a, a good relationship with them. In part, it's due to my upbringing, but I do think it could be taught, you know, empathy is something that I don't think everybody's necessarily born with, but that's something that they can develop. And if you can understand an empathize with a person and the issues or the , or the problems that they're facing, you can really start to cultivate a path forward where you can help them drive those positive and successful outcomes. So between that and then, you know, being the oldest of seven kids and thinking that accounting was the right career trajectory for me, and then quickly getting into that role and realizing that's not gonna allow me to work with the people the way that I wanna work with, I've been very, very fortunate to have a number of different career experiences and ultimately all of them drove me down this customer success path.
Speaker 2:I love that everyone I speak to on this podcast has such a unique beginning and a unique way into customer success. Hence why I asked the question, where did it all start? And like you just said, you went into accounting and you quickly realized, hey, this isn't for me. I'm not able to connect and build those strong relationships that you said are so critical and important to who you are as a person. I personally also went down the law route, and when I was working as a legal intern, I was just like, Nope, this isn't for me . I'm not able to build those meaningful relationships, but also be able to really see outcomes out of this. And I think that a lot of being a CSM has a calling to it. It has almost a natural ability to be the person that wants to help. But also, like you said, there's so many things that can be learned as you grow into your trajectory in as a CSM or a CSS leader, which is again, really great to hear that you have so many mixed bits that have made you who you are today, but you also have built CSS at a number of different places from the ground up. Again, no easy task. If I were to ask you, what is next for your CSS career, what would you think is the next big leap or bet you would make in CSS for your career? What would that be? That's
Speaker 3:Really tough. You know, I really, really enjoy being the first to build within an organization CSS process. And every organization is so different in their unique challenges. And so for me it's, you know , I haven't hit the full gambits of all the different challenges an organization can face. And so, you know, that startup lifestyle is, you know, for those people that are listening that have been in that startup environment, they know first it's very addictive. Is it very draining? Yes. But once you get into startups, it's very hard to get out of it. Definitely.
Speaker 2:I know that feeling too well. I'm a startup like junkie. I could never imagine life outside of a startup <laugh>.
Speaker 3:No, and it's, you know, it's, it's the ability to work with the business leaders early on. It's , it's getting exposure into new and unique problems. And so there's always the temptation to quote unquote , you know, sell out, go to a big organization and be a small cog in a big machine. But there's something very satisfying about being that big cog in a smaller machine because you can really see the fruits of your labor and how if you really do put the time and energy in, if you're willing to pay attention to the details, if you're willing to take on that mentality that there is no task too small, it's a very, very rewarding experience. And so of course having that addiction to the startup space is one thing, but there's always new and , and interesting problems to solve for. And so whether that keeps me in customer success or moves me into maybe a more people-driven product, however, looking at the operations piece of it all and kind of building out those processes, which is also very enjoyable for me. Every day is new and, and I try and focus on where I'm right now, of course, looking forward to see what opportunities are out there, but really ultimately it boils down. The way I got pulled away from my last organization was I loved ai, I love construction technology. And that was what was fascinating me at that moment. And so when Onset IQ came calling , it was , it was very hard to deny.
Speaker 2:I love hearing that. Again, the reason I ask is because a lot of CSS leaders now move into CEO roles actually as well. We see the chief customer officer move into CEO , but also CSS leaders because they are a jack of all trades, they end up moving in multiple different directions, like you just said, whether it's ops, whether it's people, there just seems to be so many avenues, and I think that's so great because we are business strategists as CSS people. We, we think about customer outcomes and how that affects the wider business. And the reason I ask is because I think today's topic directly relates into it, is we are going to talk a lot about how customer success gets mixed into sales, or even sometimes reports into sales. But in this economic climate, there's a lot of pressure for CSS to sell into sales or be a really big contributor to that revenue piece. But I know you've told me that your team at onsite is not doing that. And I'd love to hear a little bit more about how the CSS team is structured. What does it look like there? What is a CSM responsible for and how are you not part of sales there?
Speaker 3:Well, I think first things first, you , you have to acknowledge the people who support you and, and give you that platform to where you can only focus on customer success and not so much on the selling. And so , uh, without leadership, specifically our CEO Ardo and cus repo who has firmly and from day one been Brandon, your job is to make our customers happy. Without that level of support, you know, you , you're kind of fly directionless or fly under the, under the banner of whatever organization is willing to leverage customer success the most. So to have that CEO support and say the only thing that CSS is gonna do is focus on making our customers happy, and there's gonna be a separation of church and state between sales and between customer success. It's very, very empowering. It gives you all the flexibility in the world to really look top down and go, how can I create the best possible customer experience? So, you know, when it comes to building the process, you have to acknowledge first that the leadership team within your organization has to be supportive of this mentality. So I understand that that's a luxury that I've been afforded, but not necessarily every other CSM has been
Speaker 2:Afforded. I was about to say, I'm pretty sure a lot of CSS leaders are challenged by their CEO of like, Hey, why aren't you hitting these revenue targets? Or a sales leader saying you should be part of the renewal cycle. And rather than saying put the customer first at all costs , which is great that your CEO is saying that, but not everyone gets that.
Speaker 3:Well, and I think to be absolutely fair, the majority of CEOs probably will not get to that place where they're willing to say, if we let customer success be customer success and drive those successful outcomes, the profit will follow suit. Because people have such a positive experience, they, they won't be able to separate the experience they're having from the organization, what they're trying to achieve in the revenue goals, right? And so in the experience that we've had just by driving those super successful outcomes and, and being those customer champions, customers naturally are coming to us. It's, it's inbounding, you know, we're not going out and selling or, or trying to promote a new product or new solution. Customers are going, we need more of this experience. Your product does what it says it's gonna do. You guys deliver on the things you say you're gonna deliver on whenever you kick us off as a customer. And now there's a relationship of trust that's been built to where the customer doesn't think they're being sold into. They think that there's somebody at your organization who's full-time focused , is to make sure that as long as you're a customer, they're not gonna have any needs or concerns or issues. And so they wanna continue to work with those people. I mean, you've , you've interviewed a number of people and you probably know as well as I do, it's very, very easy to slip from, Hey, this is a positive customer interaction. Oh by the way, do you wanna spend 10%, 20%, 30% more of your a CV on a new product? And it almost breaks that relationship of trust to where they feel like, oh, this is another person trying to sell me something. And they don't necessarily look forward to the engagement. I tell my team all the time, at the end of every single call, you should feel good about the fact that the customer will never hesitate to jump on another call with you. And so that's something that we emphasize on as a , as a culture. That's where the people over profit mentality comes from is, you know, we are strongly devoted to our customers because we've seen firsthand that if you take a customer and give them the time, energy, and , and attention that you've promised them from the outset, they will expand. It's not a ma it's not a question of if, it's a matter of when. That's what we've been able to really hone in on as an org and , and we've seen those fruits come from that investment.
Speaker 2:So if they're not focused on that revenue piece or the upsell, or Hey, do you wanna spend a little bit more money with us? Which is a tricky question to get right in the best of times, what is A CSM responsible for? What are they held accountable to within your team?
Speaker 3:So we have a couple of obvious metrics that I think every organization tracks. It's your nps, it's your csat . Um , and of course , you know , we as a , as a team track in RRR and GRR , we wanna know how how a customer is evolving with us as our product evolves, right? And, you know, regarding NPS and , and csat , that's, that's something that we've seen that as long as customer success is doing, the things that we've committed, those scores will stay very high. And our scores have been very high. When I first started at onsite , our , our NPS was right around 18 and it is now right around 68 to 72 . That's kind of where we sit. Wow,
Speaker 2:That's a , it's a huge jump.
Speaker 3:It , it's, and again, credit to the product team for, for creating a better product that customers do wanna promote. But a large amount of the feedback that we've received from our customer is that, you know, NPS in their mind is , is a sentiment not only of the product, but of the operations piece, right? It's how do we professionally support our customers? And of course we wanna extrapolate that. And so we send out customer , uh, satisfaction scores, right? And our CSAT score right now is at 9.9 out of 10. And again, it comes from this mentality of there is no task too small, there's nothing that a customer can ask us that we're not willing to jump through hoops to do to try and cater to that experience. And in real estate, specifically in property technology, you know, these are people that if you can show them good value and good support, they're gonna stick around for a very, very long time. And they're going to , to continue to believe in the solution that you're , that you're offering and , and how it's improved their product. And we have testimonials all up and down the chain coming from people about how impactful the product in combination with the support has been. It's definitely been a long road to get there. However, we have really had the distinct advantage of customers that believe in our team as well. And so that's a large part of it with customer success.
Speaker 2:Amazing. And I'm gonna play a little bit of devil's advocate because I know you mentioned csat, NPS, customer happiness, all of these are valid and very important to make sure that you are ensuring long-term relationship building with customers, but also ensuring that your customer is seeing value from your product. Like you said, you wanna be that trusted advisor, but in today's economic climate and with, you know, everyone focused on sustainable growth and ensuring that revenue is secured and renewable and regularly incoming, how is it that you and your team are tying GRR or NPS or csap back to company revenue if you're not directly responsible for that renewal or upsell? 'cause I know that that can get tricky and then sometimes you're seen as a cost center rather than part of the revenue function, which you , you rightfully are, you have customer testimonials, but how are you doing that? How are you justifying it to the wider teams?
Speaker 3:There are multiple different avenues of how customer success can provide value to a customer in a way that is a revenue positive event, right? In a way that is, that is promoting growth still without being viewed as purely a cost center. So number one is if you bring in customers that are in fact ICP and that you're very, very strict with how you qualify accounts within that ICP domain, you can really start to hone in a very succinct and fluid motion to support said customers while also not necessarily sneaking in the sales and the upsell and the renewal, but making it seem as though it's, it's automatic, right? Customers start to believe that if they continue to use you and your services and that support that you're offering them, that their business as a whole is gonna continue to improve time and time and time again. And so we review every single quarter with our customers, this is your engagement today , this is the adoption that we're seeing now, what is it gonna take for us to to promote this adoption within your organization and continue to grow our partnership together to create more successful outcomes, right? And so, you know , when I say CSS is not sales, what I mean is customer success is not overt selling. We're not trying to be sneaky, right? But at the same time, if we do our jobs and we promote those successful outcomes, the sale happens automatically or naturally. So, you know, our leadership team and our sales team firmly believes that if customer success delivers on the things they're gonna deliver on, it serves as the support function for the AE to go in and promote the renewal or promote an expansion because we have all the data points that we need to prove out that we have delivered on the value said we're gonna deliver on . So are there sales activities that happen within customer success and in our qbr? Absolutely, but it's not as overt as a customer success going into a call and saying, what is it gonna take to get more of your business? It's the CS saying, what is it gonna take for us to continue to promote this partnership and drive better adoption throughout the organization? Um, so by purely focusing on the adoption, the implementation, the continued support of a customer, that sales motion is elevated and promoted automatically. So when the AE does step in, they have every single piece of information they need to make that account , uh, grow and expand or renew. So for us, it really is just a function of if CSS does our job, we are supporting sales better than any other sub sales organization possibly can.
Speaker 2:Awesome. And I don't wanna say quota here, but is there some sort of quota or level of, hey, this is how many accounts we hand off to our AEs to close per quarter. Like, do you guys have almost like A-C-S-Q-L or something that you are tracking that if you're doing your job correctly, like you said, then naturally the renewal happens, but are you tracking that or is there some sort of reporting happening there? Or is it just based on renewal rates and churn rates? What are the the metrics that are being tracked against the, the revenue marker there?
Speaker 3:It is really purely a , a , a measure of retention, right? And , and this in full disclosure is unique to the industry that we're in. You know, we do not sell licenses and seats. We have an unlimited user model. What we sell is documentation on a per project basis. And so part of this comes from the constraints of how much development is a customer doing within a year and how saturated into that portfolio are we . So something we do track is if a developer is doing 10 apartment complexes a year and we're on two, how do we get from two to four, how do we get from four to eight, how do we get the entire portfolio so we're measuring the saturation of the TAM of that account.
Speaker 2:Got it. Okay.
Speaker 3:And so every account is, is measured against that. And then we look at NPS and customer satisfaction and the sentiment of the customer through our customer success platform through Plan Hat . And that ultimately informs how primed an account is for expansion. What we don't wanna do is, is , is enter in the conversation too early and we certainly don't wanna enter in the conversation too ways . So we use these leading indicators to inform when an account is, is primed for that expansion and whether or not they have room to expand in the first place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that sounds awesome though. That sounds great that you have that level of insight and operational excellency, I should say, of where you guys know when to pull the right levelers to have the right conversations to then hand over the customer. And I think that a lot of people give a bad rep to sales and CSS mixed in together because a lot of people repurpose account management into customer success, but it doesn't sound like that's the case at onsite . It sounds like you guys have uniquely decided to make customer success about customer outcomes and happiness versus sales is, like you said, making sure there's a , someone signing a contract essentially or, or buying more from you. How did you guys come to build out that model? I know you mentioned your CEO had that fundamental, this is what your job is and what you're going to do, but operationally, how did you separate the two? Because a lot of times we're naturally LinkedIn.
Speaker 3:There are two areas really where we, we, we really took our focus and started to build out from there. Number one, we knew what we didn't wanna be. We knew we didn't want to be account management relabeled as customer success. And that's what a , you know, a lot of SaaS organizations do is they'll take their account management team, they'll drop their dedicated support team or reduce it significantly and then you try and repurpose these account managers to be technical account managers or, or support plus account management. We knew we didn't want that. What we did look for from day one is how do we build and hire people with a strong sense of empathy for customers that love to solve problems and that are gonna view that every single customer as if it's people in which they are building meaningful relationships with. Because at the end of the day, a property technology relationships are everything. And so we looked for people with experience in PropTech, but also people with that no task is too small mentality and work ethic. So, you know, having identified early on that we didn't wanna relabel account management as customer success and then knowing what our industry holds for us and how important the relationship building aspect of that actually is that really set for us the outline of how we were gonna build customer success. So for me, in my previous experience, that was the , a very similar relationship that I had built with our customers. Our CEO knew that and, and again gave me that license to go out and build from there. And again, we've evolved multiple times since initially building that a few years ago and , and the outline of it, but at the heart of all of it, at the core of all of it is making sure that no matter how hard we change our process or , or whatever ship that we make, that we never lose sight of what we're trying to accomplish, which is building those deep, meaningful relationships with the account. And as you know, and , and as most other CSMs know, there is a strong delineation between building a relationship that's a business transactional relationship and building a personal deep connection with your account to where you know, the brand of whiskey that your customer drinks and that you know, you know what their kids are are up to and and where they're going to school. And you can ask those personal questions. So we always look to, to make the relationship as personal as possible, not so transactional. And again, that only comes from having identified early and often that this is not gonna be a transactional relationship. This is gonna be a very personal, meaningful relationship.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. I think it's something to always come back to is that you are building a partnership with your customer rather than, like you said, a transactional approach and everything you are building is a meaningful step forward together, not necessarily you're using my product so this is the way the relationship is gonna go, or Hey, you are just this vendor and this is the way the relationship is gonna go. It is about coming together between that vendor customer relationship to build out that partnership piece that you just mentioned. I wanna come back to one of the really key things you said earlier in our conversation, which was a lot around NPS and CSAT and you achieved some amazing results within that you like more than quadrupled, I think 10 XD your NPS at this rate and your CSAT also is, is nine out of 10 or something that crazy that you just mentioned, which is amazing and great metrics to be tracking your CSMs. Again, how did you come to receive those results? How did you transform from such a low NPS to such a high number?
Speaker 3:It's funny, I , you know, whenever we talk about NPS as an organization, I've always brought back to a few weeks into the job. I , I had told our leadership team what my goal was for NPS and and understand the score and where I wanted to go. I was like, yeah , we can get this from eight to 70 , I'm telling you, and I don't wanna say I was laughed out of the room necessarily, but it was very much so met with a sure, yeah, we'll see. Right. And sincerely, just by consistently following up with customers, even to this day, I get calls from customers who I have not personally supported in months , um, that another CSM is, is is engaging with on a regular basis. But I'll get calls from users who will be like, Hey Brandon , can you help me reset my password or can you jump on this and, and help me work through a tool? Every single person on our team has to have that mentality. And if they do have that mentality, then the NPS score will rise automatically. Now again, you gotta give flowers where flowers are due. The product has to be something that the customers are willing to promote , right? And so does for us , the operations piece , how we're documenting job sites , but in combination with the sentiment about how they feel with the product and the sentiment about how they feel, you know, they've been supported throughout the engagement, you can really create an impactful difference on your NPS score. We always ask, you know , in our NPS scores the traditional question, how likely are you to go out and promote Onset IQ to your friends and family or to your colleagues and partners? Right? My team is, is fully aware that the greatest driver right now for our business for NPS and improving that score is making sure that that relationship with the customer has been built strongly and that when they think of promoting onset iq, it's not just promoting the product, it's promoting the s service and support that we've offered our customers to date . So that's one piece. In terms of customer satisfaction, our goal is to get to a 10 out 10 on our NPS or on our customer satisfaction score every single time we send that survey out. And it's funny, the people on our team, if they get a nine, that is more frustrating to them than if they get an eight. If they get an eight or lower, that can easily be quantified and, and we can teach and, and educate on how to make that relationship better. But a nine is the most frustrating score you can get because you're always left wondering, what's that one point? What could I have done different to get that 10 out of 10 score? And so having that 9.9 as a matter of pride within the organization, we, you know, as our CSS team talks, we wanna be this best CSS organization that any customer interacts with ever period of hard stop. And that when they go to future programs or use other tools and they have CSMs, that they're always wishing that that CSS team was like our CSS team. And so you have people who really care about what they do day in and day out, people who really, really do take that no task as too small mentality and are willing to jump on any call with anybody at any time. If you hire the best people, you're gonna get the best outcomes. And I firmly believe that we've had the ability to do that. And I'm super fortunate to have the teammates that I have it , it is purely a reflection of them. It's a reflection of me and Jason Lemkin says something super interesting, which is every year his goal is to hire one more incredible csm, just one. And so I feel like every year that I've been at , at the company, I've, I've been able to do that. I've been be able to hire one more incredible csm and whenever I go to hire csm, I only look for people that could do my job better, should I, for whatever reason disappear. So I think a large part of it too is making sure that you're not just hiring for scale, that you're hiring people that genuinely care about the cause that they're promoting. So that all factors in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. I love that. It seems like you're hiring for a purpose rather than just the cause or the problem. And you are really trying to solve for a real reason and you're hiring for the right reason . So that's great to hear. You also seem to have some really great mantras on how to build and scale teams. And I know you mentioned earlier that you're a startup junkie and that, you know, in your next phase of your career it would probably be another startup where you're able to really help and shape things. Um, a lot of people listening to this podcast is probably building customer success at a startup and you've done it a number of times. So in growing a CSS team from the ground up and achieving the results that you have, which are amazing, what is your advice to aspiring leaders and CSS teams that are trying to achieve what you've done so far?
Speaker 3:First things first, nobody's gonna do the job for you, right? So if you're waiting on some catalyst moment where the company gets well funded and then all of a sudden you've got a team of, you know, five, 10 people and you can start to really, you know, diversify your strategies and, and how you engage your customers, that's a luxury you may not ever be afforded, right? Yeah,
Speaker 2:I was about to say , in the startup world, that might take years <laugh> .
Speaker 3:Exactly. And so you have to enter in, if you're gonna be a problem solver and you're gonna build a CS team, you have to enter into it with the mentality of it's just gonna be me for the foreseeable future and it's just gonna be the work ethic that I have and what I put in to drive these outcomes. And it's exhausting, don't get me wrong. It's not for everybody, but if you really wanna be a customer success leader, if you really want to elevate your career to that next level and build a best in class CS team, it starts with you as that leader. It starts with you and your mentality and what you bring to the table. And so are you gonna get emails at nine o'clock at night on a Saturday from a customer who has a problem or has a question? Yes, you are. Are you going to face the decision of do I wait to address this on Monday or do I respond right then, right now and let this customer know that I'm there for them no matter what? In my mind, the answer is obvious. You have to take that white glove approach. You have to go in with the mindset of there is no task too small, there is no time, that's too inconvenient. You, you have to promote the customer and if you do the rest of your life and engagement with that customer is gonna be made so much simpler because they see you as that champion, right? And that's where expansion renewal almost becomes automatic. If you're a new CSS leader in the space and or you're a principal csm or you're wondering how do I go to that next tier? Have the mentality, have the work ethic to support that customer success isn't just about being a customer person or just being a people person. I jokingly say this with our, with our team, the perfect CSM is someone with a incessant need to be liked by as many people as possible and the work ethic to support that impulse, that that desire to be loved , that is , should be managed healthy. You shouldn't, you know, throw everything at that necessarily. But if you are a, I'm a Monday to Friday person, guess what? The customers are not a Monday to Friday group of people, right? They are using your product through all days no matter what. They're working hard, they expect you to work hard to support them , right? So there is of course a very healthy work-life balance that you have to account for. But if it takes you five minutes on a Saturday to respond to an email, that customer's gonna view that as hours and hours and hours of labor put into that. So for my team, they know I want them to have that healthy work-life balance, but we also expect that our customers will feel supported no matter when that support is requested.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Awesome. And I feel like we could keep chatting about how you've built out amazing teams that have grown and been able to transform your customer experience at onsite , but we do have to wrap up today's podcast and I do wanna ask you our quick fire questions where I challenge each one of my guests to answer the next few questions in one sentence or less. Are you ready? Let's do this . Awesome. My first question to you is, what do you think is next for the CSS industry?
Speaker 3:Man, I think it's, you know, unfortunately obvious of the role that AI is going to try and play in automating customer engagements. And while I do think there's a a time and a place for that, and I do think there , there are certain moments within an account lifecycle where you can automate some of the steps leveraging ai, it's gonna be very obvious when an account is transitioned from fully css managed to AI is what's primarily driving the responses and the engagement with the customer. And I think you're gonna lose a sense of the magic and you're definitely gonna lose the close ties with the relationship. So for me, looking forward at how AI starts to play a part in automatically responding to customers and automatically trying to drive and promote engagement, I'm concerned for the state of CSS that it's gonna lose its character, it's gonna lose its color, and it's gonna kind of become this beige business system that's automatically managing customers <laugh>.
Speaker 2:I love that automagically, but I do think it's, it's important . It is , AI will play a big part in how technology businesses, SaaS businesses, and customer success works moving forward. So it's interesting that you did bring it up and I did love that automatically, but you did not answer that question in one sentence or less, by the way. I'm
Speaker 3:So sorry. <laugh> , I'll, I'll do better.
Speaker 2:It's okay. We'll go . We'll move on to the second one, which is, which SaaS product can you not live without as a CSS professional?
Speaker 3:It's tough. There are a number of tools that we use, you know, tools that have really changed the way that I work. The obvious ones like notion, the not so obvious ones like superhuman. But for me, the biggest tool that our entire business has started to leverage and has created the biggest impact is, is, and this is gonna sound like a plug, is is Plan Hat
Speaker 2:Not a plug. He was not paid to say that. That's,
Speaker 3:That's right. <laugh> , our entire team leverages Plan hat . Our instance of, of our customer success platform is, is very robust and credit to our CSS ops lead Tess who has , who has built a lot of that. That is the tool that we cannot live without.
Speaker 2:I love hearing that. I also love that so many people are bought into your entire customer lifecycle journey, everything that a customer is doing in one tool. So that's great to hear. The next question I have is, what is your favorite CSS learning resource, or where do you get the most education around css?
Speaker 3:I mean, outside of podcasts like this one, Jason Lempkin is, for all intents and purposes, someone who has their finger directly on the pulse of customer success and is, is seeing the trends and identifying the most. So anything that he promotes is an an awesome learning opportunity for me. Any show that he's on or any podcast that he's on , but getting to read on LinkedIn or , or other resources like LinkedIn, like bravado, what he's writing about, what he's considering is a great learning opportunity for me personally.
Speaker 2:Awesome. I love that. I also love his podcast as well. He, he definitely has lots of insights into the whole SaaS vc , CSS world, so love that. Right. My final question for today before we wrap up is, whom is inspiring you in css? Or who should I next have on this podcast?
Speaker 3:So going back to Jason, I think Jason has a super unique take.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Well thank you so much, Brandon for spending your time with me today. I know there were so many takeaways and insights and learnings that everyone that's listening today can take away from this conversation. If any of our listeners have any more questions or wanna get in touch with you, what is the best way to reach out ? Reach?
Speaker 3:So LinkedIn is obviously a , a great platform to, to connect with me, but in the same way that I tell all of our customers, if you ever need anything from me, please don't hesitate to reach out. You can reach me at Brandon at onsite IQ io . I am always happy to engage with people. I'm working with a handful of startups on kind of helping build their CS practice before they go out and hire, you know, a CSS leader. So I'm always happy to take on those conversations and, and work with people on how they can build that unique brand of customer success for their business. So do not hesitate to shoot me an email. We'll set up some time. I'm , uh, I'm happy to, to help anybody who's looking to help make the customer experience
Speaker 2:Better. Amazing. Well, thank you so much Brandon . I really enjoyed this
Speaker 3:Same, thank you so much for having me again, and this is an amazing format and, and you are an absolutely incredible host. So again, thank you so much for, for having me.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to the Customer Success Channel podcast today. We hope you learned 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.