The Customer Success Channel

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Matt Myszkowski, VP of Customer Experience for EMEIA at Cision about why mental health should be prioritized in Customer Success.  Mental health might still be a taboo topic in your Customer Success department, but we are here to help you change that. So, what are some of the first steps a CSM or a CS leader can take in making sure that mental heal...

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Vijay Mehrotra , Professor of Business Analytics and Information Systems at the University of San Francisco about what tomorrow's CS leaders are being taught. Just a few years ago, Customer Success was still an emerging profession and barely mentioned at university. Many of us have ended up in the industry through a different career path, such...

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Andrew Marks , Co-Founder of SuccessHACKER , about how to build effective health scores. Today, most businesses are adopting some level of health scoring in order to track if their customers are healthy or not. So, what are some of the basic metrics that you need to put in place to understand health scoring? And when should a SaaS company consider...

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with David Jackson , CS Coach, Author and CEO at TheCustomer. Co , about why we should focus on people, not customers. In the early days for SaaS companies, we tend to focus on sales and product led growth as we are trying to find some sort of proof of concept of a product. So, when should a SaaS company really shift to customer led growth? And why shou...

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Jeff Heckler , Director of CS Solutions at MarketSource ( former Global Head of CS at Pipedrive ) about scaling CS teams and CS models. Scaling Customer Success in (any) organization is not a simple task. It requires the right combination of technology, people, and processes to hit the mark. For example, how do you manage to keep up with rocketship...

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Jennifer Cramer, VP of Customer Success at Planhat about "is all churn bad"? Every SaaS business is fearing churn. It is also one of the most important metrics to be tracking for all Customer Success teams. But maybe not all churn is bad? For example, should it be okay to let go of bad fit customers? And when should a SaaS or tech company...

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Emily Garza , AVP of Customer Success at Fastly about CS responsibility for revenue. Customer Success responsibility for revenue is a hot topic and highly debated in the CS world. So, should a CSM hold a revenue target? Should CSMs be compensated like we do in sales? And should we really be charging for CS or should it be baked into the cost of goo...

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Wayne McCulloch , Global Head of CS (SaaS) at Google Cloud, about the taboos of Customer Success. The function of Customer Success is still maturing, and most companies are currently evolving and growing their CS departments. That being said, there are all these unanswered questions that people don’t really mention or avoid. For example, is it okay...

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with the inspiring Emmanuel Malanda , Global Head of Customer Success at Calypso, about data driven workflows and scaling CS Operations. As your Customer Success team grows, there comes a point when your CSMs are spending more time doing some of the administrative work rather than focusing solely on what drives value to your customers. So, how do you bu...

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with the inspiring Elisabeth Courland , Digital CSM at Talentsoft, about data driven customer journeys in digital CS. Data is undoubtedly crucial in customer success management, as it enables you to have data driven insights, provide analytics, and any upsell opportunities. So, how do you integrate this data into your customer journey to optimize the pr...

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with the inspiring Kristi Faltorusso , VP of Customer Success at IntelliShift, on switching from a reactive to proactive CS. When establishing their CS team, many organizations start with a reactive business strategy, responding to unanticipated issues only after it occurs. Shifting the mindset to a proactive strategy can enable the team to anticipate t...

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Kellie Lucas , author and coach, on how to turn customer feedback into insights. Gathering customer feedback is an important part of the CS journey, not only can it provide valuable insights but can help maintain relationships with customers. But once you’ve collected this information, what do you do with it and how do you make it actionable? Podca...

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Ray Rauch , VP of Customer Success at Concord , about the evolution of the CSM. Customer success has been a discipline for over 10 years now and what started out as a proactive account management position has now evolved. Companies have teams, including customer marketing, account executives and product managers who work directly with CS to deliver...

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Alex Farmer , VP of Customer Success at Cognite , about building customer advocacy programs. Creating strong customer advocates is something that every customer success professional strives for with their customer base. But what makes a good customer become an advocate? Is it how much of your product they use? A positive survey feedback? or them be...

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with Fran Beckley , Head of Client Services at SourceBreaker , about keeping CSMs engaged at work and career development. Remote working has become part of the new “normal” and being distant from your team can make it hard to gage what your CSMs are doing, how much they enjoy the job and any issues they may be facing. So, how do you ensure that your CSM...

In this episode, our host Anika Zubair chats with George C. Huang , Director of Customer Experience & Success at Remo , a tech startup behind Remo Conference, an interactive videoconferencing platform for creating interactive online experiences that rival live, in-person events. A large part of Remos’ success is directly related to Customer Success and their customer experience. They have scal...

In this Podcast our host Anika Zubair chats with Chris Jones , Director of Customer Success at Enboarder , an experience driven onboarding platform, about Remote Customer Onboarding. Chris has worked in Customer Success for 6 years, having worked with both small to medium sized businesses, through to global corporations rolling out SaaS solutions. Chris has been involved in developing a Customer S...

Our host Anika Zubair chats with Nabil Dabbagh , Head of Customer Success at DeepCrawl , an SEO solution that bridges the gap between marketing and engineering departments by ensuring your website's code is Search Engine-friendly. He has been a part of the growth and scaling up of the Customer Success department at DeepCrawl for over 4 years and has a wealth of information to share, discussin...

Our host Anika Zubair speaks with Anna Poorna , Head of Community at Freshworks , the customer engagement software company that enables organisations of all sizes to deliver better experiences. A true customer advocate at heart, Anna has 8+ years of experience in Customer Success and Marketing and in her previous roles helped run and scale the Customer Success teams for the EMEA market at Freshwor...

Our host Anika Zubair speaks with Lauren Cumming , Head of Customer Success at Fixflo , a property maintenance software solution. Having experienced some of the unique challenges that come with working in startup environments and the growth of Fixflo from startup to scaleup, Lauren shares her tips and tricks on managing and scaling a Customer Success team throughout this transition.

Our host, Anika Zubair speaks with Dan Farley , VP of Customer Success at Seenit on how to make impactful Customer Success changes during Covid-19.COVID-19 has completely changed the global economy and it is now, more than ever, extremely important for teams to work together. It is especially important that Customer Success teams come together, strive to retain customers and support their customer...

Our host, Anika Zubair and now VC investor Rav Dhaliwal talk about how he has scaled Customer Success teams, how Venture Capitalists look at Customer Success strategies of their investments and his views on Customer Success leading indicators such as NPS and CSAT. Prior to becoming a VC, Rav has run Customer Success at Slack in EMEA, and held senior Customer Success positions, managing key process...

Our host, Anika Zubair talks to Adrian Beck , Senior Director of Customer Success at Tanium about his experiences growing the Customer Success organisation from 15 people to 70 people in 7 countries over 3 years! As any Customer Success leader knows, recruiting strong CS team members is incredibly challenging. Firstly, CS is fast growing but still a young profession so the pool of experience is sm...

Working with third party vendors to provide your customers with additional services is beneficial to you and the other vendor involved. It can do a lot from a sales perspective by helping to drive business to you and your partners business more quickly. But in Customer Success we’re all about the relationship post-sales, and there is no reason to drop the ball on the customer relationship and succ...

This week I spoke with Paul Henderson, an author, speaker, consultant and founder of Outcome Leaders on customer success, about his new book that’s coming out. The book is called The Outcome Generation - How a New Generation of Technology Vendors Thrive Through True Customer Success, and it provides advice for companies who want to take their operations to the next level with a customer success mi...