Mastering CS: Candid Leader Insights

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Sarah Young , Customer Success Manager at Hoptroff, a precision timing platform for financial services and other regulated industries. Drawing on experience across Sales, go-to-market, Customer Success, and performance coaching, Sarah shares what CS looks like when your product operates invisibly behind cri...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Anastasia Veriga , Chief Customer Officer at VideoWise, a video commerce platform for e-commerce brands. With nearly a decade in Customer Success, Anastasia shares her journey from call center agent to CSM, Head of CS, and now Chief Customer Officer. She discusses what the transition into executive leadersh...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Kate Panasenko , Customer Success Manager at Raccoon Gang, a company that builds and customizes e-learning platforms. Kate's path into Customer Success is anything but conventional—from selling apples at a market at age eight to working in industrial sales before managing customer relationships across Asia,...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Patrick Ford , Customer Success Manager at Softr, a no-code platform for building apps and client portals. Patrick brings a background in education and instructional design, which shapes how he helps customers solve problems and build the software they need. He shares what onboarding looks like when custome...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Viola Marku , Head of Customer Success at WunderGraph, an open source platform that helps engineering teams manage their APIs at scale. Recently promoted from individual contributor to Head of CS, Viola shares what that transition really looks like, how her lean technical team uses AI to resolve issues fast...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Veronica Bianchini , Senior Strategy Customer Success Manager at Discuss, a qualitative research platform for enterprise insights teams. Veronica brings a unique blend of experience in political science, data science, research, and consulting across three countries and five languages. She shares why custome...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Katrin Loodus , Customer Success Manager in the cybersecurity space. After more than a decade with the same organization, Katrin shares how working across multiple roles shaped her approach to Customer Success, why deep product and organizational knowledge help her serve customers more effectively, and how...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Nir Kalish , VP of Customer Success at BlinkOps, an AI platform that helps security teams automate their operations at scale. Coming from a company where AI is the product itself, Nir offers a unique perspective on the future of Customer Success. He shares why white-glove CS cannot be replaced by AI agents,...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Alexandra Ardelean , Senior Customer Success Manager at BigTime, a professional service automation platform for project-based businesses. Alexandra brings a uniquely diverse background to Customer Success, combining a design degree, Lean Black Belt certification, and years of operational experience—includin...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Silvana Prodan , Team Lead Customer Success at Bloomflow, a platform that helps large organizations deploy and manage their innovation programs. Silvana brings a unique background to Customer Success, combining a PhD in communication, a career in conference interpreting, and experience working across German...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Anne LiCata , VP of Customer Success at Huma. AI, an AI-powered analytics platform for pharma and life science teams. Anne shares what it takes to drive adoption of AI in highly regulated organizations, why traditional SaaS metrics often fail to capture AI value, and why she believes AI may transform custom...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Vlad Zholnerchuk , CS Team Lead at Health Samurai, a platform that helps healthcare organizations build and scale interoperable clinical data systems. Vlad shares what Customer Success looks like when your customers are engineers building clinical systems on a highly technical platform, why he restructured...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Kiko Rodríguez Moreno , Customer Success Manager at Wazuh, an open source security platform helping organizations detect threats, monitor their infrastructure, and stay compliant. Kiko shares how he transitioned from a linguistics background into cybersecurity, what Customer Success really looks like in a h...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Dylan Berno , Head of Customer Success at Coast, a fintech company helping businesses control and track fleet spending. Dylan shares how Coast built a signal-driven CS function powered by AI and automation, what the CS team focuses on when systems handle the operational layer, and why data accessibility rem...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Sarah Chipps , Manager of Customer Success at FMX. They discuss how Customer Success teams scale through specialization, operational efficiency, stronger systems, and leadership development. Sarah also shares lessons from growing through multiple CS roles within the same company and what it really takes to...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Mark Rocklin , Director of Success Management EMEA at CloudShare, a platform that helps software companies run virtual labs for product demos, training, and technical enablement. Mark shares how Customer Success and operations work together at CloudShare, why responding to every NPS score made a bigger impa...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Beatriz Toledo , Customer Success Manager at iRaiser, a digital fundraising platform for charities and nonprofits. Beatriz shares what customer success looks like in the nonprofit fundraising space, why rebuilding trust with an existing account is often harder than building it from scratch, and what the ear...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Ebba Klementsson , Customer Success Manager at Refapp, a platform that helps companies streamline their reference checking process. Ebba shares how her background in recruitment and HR shaped her approach to Customer Success, what it was like building a CS function from scratch in an early-stage company, an...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Agathe Nivet , Customer Success Manager at Spendesk, a platform that helps finance teams control and automate company spending. Agathe shares why onboarding should focus on delivering value rather than completing checklists, what an effective Sales → CS handoff actually looks like, and how to scale onboardi...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Alex Frunza , Head of Customer Success, Enablement and Support at Otera, a company automating complex enterprise workflows across systems. Alex shares why Customer Success can’t operate as a silo in enterprise environments, what ownership really means when delivery happens through partners, and how to balan...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down again with Porter Williams , Head of Customer Success at BrightHire. One year after his first appearance, Porter returns to share what has changed—from evolving their adoption framework to navigating BrightHire’s acquisition by Zoom. He offers a candid look at what it takes to build and scale a CS function in a...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Hana Gruzman , CS Operations and Enablement Lead at Agora. They discuss what it takes to build CS operations from scratch while scaling a team from 4 to 30+ people, how to structure a CS department into specialized mini-teams, and why health scores alone are not enough to predict churn. Hana also shares how...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Advi Bishnoi , Head of Consulting and Customer Success at SocialPlus. They discuss what customer success looks like when the product is a set of building blocks that each client assembles differently, why infrastructure-as-a-service requires a more consultative approach, and how to define success when every...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Dominik Nenicka , CS Team Lead at Resistant. They discuss what customer success looks like when your product’s job is to prevent problems before they happen, how to prove value when success means silence, and what it takes to scale a CS team in a company doubling revenue year over year. Dominik also shares...

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Pietro Restivo , Manager of Customer Success at Mia Platform — a company helping enterprises scale their digital platforms across APIs, microservices, and DevOps environments. Pietro shares how his background as a product owner shaped his transition into Customer Success, how he built a CS function from the...