What to Learn from Fortune 100 Customer Success Strategies

Transcript

[00:00:00] Steve MacDonald: Welcome everyone to the Contact Center Perspectives podcast. I’m Steve MacDonald, your host. Today, we’re going to have a phenomenal conversation with Shareth Ben. Now, Shareth is the Chief Customer Officer at Apptega. You have worked in leadership roles at companies like Oracle, Sun Microsystems, and PwC, and you’ve got a unique point of view on customer success strategies at Fortune 100 companies.

[00:00:27] Steve MacDonald: In fact, you look at it as everyone is buying change. You’re deploying change. You’re in the change management business. With that comes a lot that we need to be thinking about. But before we get into that conversation, please a little bit about your background so that we know a bit more about you.

[00:00:48] Shareth Ben: Thanks, Steve. First of all, thanks for having me on the podcast. Enjoy being here. To summarize my experience, I would say it comes from the intersection of cybersecurity, customer success, professional services, and startups for the most part. But I also work at a price for a house for a good 5 years.

[00:01:08] Shareth Ben: I have consulting experience along with the enterprise-grade deployment of software across those several years that I worked at. I see myself as a cyber security professional first before a customer success leader because the customers I’m serving, and the communities that I’m working with are all about protecting our assets, reputation, and brand from adversaries. I think that’s the core mission of what I’ve been doing. So, the way I do that is by helping customers extract value from the investments that they make in products and services at those various companies that I’ve worked at. 

[00:01:51] Steve MacDonald: Fantastic. That has a massive rub-off effect in basically anybody in a B2B business and a lot of technology companies where safety and compliance are huge components of the overall buyer’s journey and sales strategy.

[00:02:06] Steve MacDonald: You had said some things early on about breaking down silos, cross-functional collaboration, at the starting point of how you think about customer success. Maybe let’s start there with our conversation.

[00:02:22] Shareth Ben: Yeah, for sure. Before I address that point head-on, I can give you a little bit of background about how I had to figure that out. For me to answer that question regarding cross-functional collaboration, I’m going to take you back in time to the enterprise experience that got me there. 

[00:02:42] Shareth Ben: This was back in 2013 when Edward Snowden happened, that incident sent ripple effects across the industry where any organization that had a brand to protect and a reputation to withhold decided to put together an inside a threat program to monitor for any misuse of company assets information by employees and contractors. I was in the midst of that whirlwind, and I happened to work with some of the largest organizations, including banks and Wall Street, largest airlines, and manufacturers, where I worked hand-in-hand with the security departments to build, augment, and roll out this program. When you deal with an inside threat, it requires you to work with all functions of the business, because an inside threat is a people problem–-it’s not a technology problem, which means you need to have buy-in from HR.

[00:03:36] Shareth Ben: You need to have buy-in from legal. You need to have buy-in from technology. You need to have buy-in from the various functional business units to make sure that when you have an incident, how do you go about triaging that? Because it touches all aspects of the business. I had to figure out how to work cross-functionally to solve that particular need.

[00:03:57] Shareth Ben: When you fast forward to when I was appointed VP of customer success at my previous company which was a 100 million error company. Again, I found myself in a whirlwind where we had to improve our retention rates. We had to improve customer satisfaction and I had to get to work quickly by aligning the synergies between various functional units to deliver outcomes.

[00:04:22] Shareth Ben: The way I see this problem being solved is through using the concept of cultural brokers, and this is something I have to give credit to the Harvard Business Review. My council member was there as well. They wrote up the strategy that I think leaders can use, which I adopted and the concept is that cultural brokers are individuals within companies who can traverse cross-functionally, with ease, with the least amount of friction because of their innate skills and qualities, and so on.

[00:04:51] Shareth Ben: To give you a particular example, when I had to make inroads with the sales organization, I went out there and I hired a VP of sales inside the customer success unit was looking for a transition. What that did is that when I had to talk to 30 different VPs and senior directors of sales, we were a global unit.

[00:05:14] Shareth Ben: So, we had sellers and leaders across the five different continents. This particular individual was able to break the ice and make intros with that unit much better because he was one of them and he was able to speak the language, which I could have never done.

[00:05:31] Shareth Ben: I had to figure it out much sooner. That’s a strategy that worked well because for us to implement change which is working with sales to tell them, how do we go about doing account management? How do we improve our renewal process? How do we improve our upsell process? 

[00:05:47] Shareth Ben: All those aspects require better collaboration, and what better way to do it than by using somebody who understands the language or speaks the language? So, that’s a great example that worked for me.

[00:05:57] Steve MacDonald: I love that. So, I want to pair that with what you talked about in your role at PricewaterhouseCoopers because you use the word consulting.

[00:06:08] Steve MacDonald: This cross-functional collaboration. I love the idea of if you’re going to work with a sales organization, distributed sales organization across the world, bringing on somebody who knows, has lived, and walked in their shoes is seen as a peer. I love that. 

[00:06:35] Steve MacDonald: Tell us more about how you consult with different departments, sales, marketing, and products because you are the fulcrum. You’re the one that is talking with the customer. You’re consulting with the customer. You’re leading the customer. You use words like empathy and active listening, how does that translate? Not only does there need to be cross-department collaboration, but how do you make that happen?

[00:06:58] Shareth Ben: Yeah, I think everybody needs to have a bit of a consulting skill in them because what consulting teaches you is customer empathy, active listening, and strategic thinking. All those skills are life skills that you need both at work and off to basically find solutions, collaborate, work together, and so on.

[00:07:22] Shareth Ben: I truly believe one of the most important and vital functions of a customer success leader is to find synergies between all these different functional units to deliver outcomes for a customer. It can be listening to the customer demands through support and influencing the product roadmap, or it could be looking at post-sales analysis to identify customers that don’t fit the right profile and influencing marketing. So, there are various examples that I can think of, and for you to bring about the synergy, you have to have a consultative mindset where you are looking for win-wins between at the leadership level, as well as going to the team level and looking not just for rolling out processes but identifying inertia, because there’s always resistance to change and figuring out what we need to do at the team level because the mistake I’ve made is I was naive to think that just because I shake hands and I’m aligned with the leader, it’s going to flow down to the team level but that wasn’t the case.

[00:08:31] Shareth Ben: You have to hit the road, understand, listen, and be ready to change, be ready to make about what I was required to translate and make the transformation happen. 

[00:08:44] Steve MacDonald: One of the things that I think I’m taking away from here, which I love, is the idea of active listening, strategic thinking, empathy in terms of consulting with clients makes perfect sense. What I’m hearing from you is that you’re applying that to your internal clients, and these other departments. You have to be strategic. You have to be empathetic to their needs in a sales organization and the processes that they go through and how you’re supporting and helping them. In customer success, you’re consulting with external clients, but you’re also a consultant who has to deploy change management internally as well. 

[00:09:30] Shareth Ben: Yeah, that’s exactly right. I think change management is key and your understanding is correct. It’s a lot of the customer-facing knowledge experience that I’ve built over the years working with enterprise clients is exactly what’s getting transferred to now, the inner workings of what I need to do in order to promote collaboration and achieve outcomes, not just for the customers, but also for the company.

[00:09:54] Shareth Ben: At the end of the day, you have to balance both. You can’t say yes to everything the customer wants. When the company takes a hit, you have to find a balance. When I was VP of customer success in my previous role, I found that working in collaboration with engineering and product management first is one of the most important things you need to do.

[00:10:18] Shareth Ben: At the end of the day, even if you’re working with sales and marketing, you’re trying to impact customer satisfaction through your product and your service and so on. We had challenges making inroads with the engineering department because they are technical people who tend to be less attentive to nontechnical.

[00:10:41] Shareth Ben: I had to identify a way to work with them and collaborate with them. I use a strategy called as an adhesive. An adhesive is a person who has a tendency to rally and bring people together but is also competent. In this particular case, a person who is technically competent to work with the engineering department.

[00:11:00] Shareth Ben: I picked the brightest CSM who understood the product well, and I made that person the interface between us and the engineering team to amplify the voice of the customer with respect to reactive things that we needed to do to go fix the issues as well as proactive areas of the product to influence roadmap and then work brilliantly.

[00:11:23] Shareth Ben: We were able to quickly get past the friction and get past some of the areas of challenges and just stay focused and be occupied with what matters as opposed to being preoccupied with people challenges or communication challenges. 

[00:11:36] Steve MacDonald: What you’re talking about is in customer success, you are in charge of one of the most important customer experience throughout the organization—how it’s deployed with customers. I’m hearing about how you are focusing on customer experience with your internal customers, and creating a very easy way to interact, a way that they accept that to them is interacting with their peers. They’re interacting with somebody that’s extremely knowledgeable. They know those people are focused on their problems and solving their issues. It’s an experience that you’re creating internally. 

[00:12:19] Shareth Ben: Yeah, I think we have to get our internal engines running smoothly for us to operate in the outside world, because your customers will see the disconnects if you’re not functioning cohesively internally, it happens all the time. 

[00:12:30] Shareth Ben: I also think it’s a responsibility of the CEO or the leader of the company to set the right tone and to set the right environment at the leadership level so that we’re not letting our egos and our inadequacies or challenges come in the way.

[00:12:52] Shareth Ben: Let’s just say you fix this at the leadership level, then it’s a matter of how do you roll this down tactically at the team level. I do think companies that do really well, removed the friction internally in their processes and how the handoffs and so on so they’re not being preoccupied with challenges, they’ve just occupied with the challenges in front of them. I truly believe it is important to get your house in order before you start to just focus on the external items. 

[00:13:20] Steve MacDonald: I’m going to ask if you agree with this or you have your own point of view to add to it, but more and more the analyst firms like Forrester and Gartner talks about how companies today have much more competition than they’ve had before. One of the most important ways and where technology that the overall competitive advantage, the long-term sustainable competitive advantage that a company has is no longer reliant on product alone. Because features benefits, as soon as we come out with the latest, somebody else is going to emulate and copy that.

[00:14:00] Steve MacDonald: The sustainable competitive advantage is the most important competitive advantage for an organization and it’s CX, it’s the customer experience. The reason why I had light bulbs going off with what you were talking about there is in order to have a sustainable competitive advantage for the organization externally with clients, you need to have a sustainable competitive advantage that experience internally cross-functionally.

[00:14:28] Steve MacDonald: If you don’t have that cross-functionally internally, where everybody is working together, wants to work together, and that is not working in silos, you will never have a experience as a competitive advantage externally for your clients. 

[00:14:44] Shareth Ben: That’s true. If you ask me that question I think it’s fundamental to get that aignment in place. Majority of companies struggle with this and I think that’s why planning leadership off sites and so on is becoming vital. I have friends who work in salesforce and I think they’re doing offsite, quite recently. 

[00:15:06] Shareth Ben: It really helps to get some of these motions in place, which is to achieve internal alignment knowledge, sharing information and so on. I’ll give you a specific example. Customer insights and customer intelligence is also becoming vital to CX.

[00:15:23] Shareth Ben: You mentioned that CX is playing is a linchpin in a lot of ways because they’re talking to the customers day in and day out. They have a lot of data and information that can really help transform some of the areas of the business that require transformation.

[00:15:37] Shareth Ben: One area I can think of is companies make the mistake of letting the wrong customers in. They have a big problem is because they have a ideal customer profile problem. They haven’t done a job in profiling the customers or they are not doing what’s needed to let the right customers in.

[00:15:59] Shareth Ben: So, that’s something that we see constantly in the post-sales motion. As a customer success leader, it is my responsibility to use that information and take it back to marketing, sales, and leadership and say, “Look, this is the cost to serve. This is the price we’re paying to serve these non-ideal customers.” 

[00:16:25] Shareth Ben: You need to measure the cost to serve and use data and intelligence to bring about the change, as opposed to being a victim. I’ve done that and made that mistake in the past just being a victim of this process. I said, “What can I do differently when I go to my next gig?” Now, that’s what I’m doing. Using this sales data to be able to bring about those changes. 

[00:16:41] Steve MacDonald: Data is so important. You talked about data that was helping you consult with sales so we could close more deals. You were also talking about data that helped inform the product and where that data was coming from, and a big part of that data was also coming from customer support because they’re handling the tickets. 

[00:16:56] Steve MacDonald: They’re talking to customers regularly. Can you tell us a bit more about your point of view on the importance of using this kind of data? If you didn’t have that data, your ability to consult with these other different departments, how would it impact that?

[00:17:15] Shareth Ben: It’s just going to take much longer to get the outcomes and hit your goals because you’re going to have to learn it the hard way. With access to data, you can circumvent all the guesswork, and you can get right to the truth. It is about finding truth in these areas whether it’s looking for an existing customer base to look for an ideal customer and figuring out where you want to expand, where is the expansion opportunity that’s looking for truth, and that comes from data, or if it’s influencing your product roadmap.

[00:17:41] Shareth Ben: It’s understanding what are the needs of your customer and most importantly, which ones to prioritize that come from data or it could be how to build customer advocacy.

[00:17:56] Shareth Ben: How do you identify and how do you nurture these customers who you want to bet on who can come through for you at the time of referrals and so on. Unsolicited referrals are the best state of customer advocacy and experience, and I keep chasing for that. In other ways, you can do this by building communities and promoting people who are your champions because they are out there, but you need to figure out a way to find them. 

[00:18:21] Steve MacDonald: If I were to ask throughout your career and everything that you’ve done, and we’ve talked about a lot today, what would you say that you’re most proud of that you’ve been able to accomplish?

[00:18:34] Shareth Ben: For me, it is about empowering my team to do their best because that’s how I’d like to be treated. That’s why I want to pass it on to my team as well. To create an environment of trust and openness where we can all collaborate, that’s something.

[00:18:52] Shareth Ben: If you interviewed some of my past members of my team, they would always say that it’s about trust and giving them the choice to be able to do what they need to do. I think you achieve far more productivity when you create that environment, as opposed to an environment opposite of that. I think I’m pretty proud of doing that in the past and I’m continuing to cultivate that kind of culture at the moment as well.

[00:19:16] Steve MacDonald: In terms of the lessons learned from Fortune 100 companies and how you apply them to customer success strategies, what areas haven’t we covered yet that you want to talk about?

[00:19:31] Shareth Ben: I think team productivity is an area that’s near and dear to me. Especially, I read this book called Culture Shock, which Gallup released last year. It talked about how America has a productivity crisis, it always had it and made post-pandemic things practically go up.

[00:19:47] Shareth Ben: Everybody was working hard, and then now things are back to 20s or 30s, it’s pretty low. It’s happening across the board where if you take any organization, 1/3 is fully dialed in, 1/3 is in between, and 1/3 is checked out. People can debate about that. How can we be productive in a way that allows people to balance life and work and everything else in between? I think that’s a challenge that we all face day to day. When I talk to my friends or peers, everybody has that challenge, and I think culture makes a big difference.

[00:20:23] Shareth Ben: Fortunately, some companies are in a better position than not. It’s an unsolved problem and that intrigues me and interests me. I’m always keen to learn new ways to deal with that.

[00:20:33] Steve MacDonald: Your title is chief customer officer. The title of this episode that we’re recording right now is strategies for customer success.

[00:20:43] Steve MacDonald: We could have talked 100 % about strategies focused on the customer. We have spent the vast majority of episodes talking about team productivity, trust, internal collaboration, internal experiences, how you’re consulting internally, and using internal data. You’ve spent a lot of time talking about what has to happen internally within an organization to have a successful organization for your customers.

[00:21:16] Shareth Ben: It’s true. It’s not like the customer-facing stuff doesn’t matter. But based on my experience if you focus on the right things to do internally, the rest of it will just take care of itself. That’s what I believe in.

[00:21:32] Steve MacDonald: I’m going to ask you one last question here. Across everything that we’ve talked about, if there was one thing that other chief customer officers, chief experience officers, head of product sales, and anybody who’s listening to this right now if there was one takeaway that you wanted them to have, what would that be?

[00:21:54] Shareth Ben: That’s a tough one. I’m still learning, but I’ll say this. When you are interfacing with your leadership or with your peers about data versus opinion? Data always wins. Try to lead with data as much as possible to get your points across and to bring about the change because if lack data, the effectiveness of what you’re attempting to do is going to be diminished. Pay attention and listen to the data. It’s got a lot of things that you can take away from.

[00:22:25] Steve MacDonald: You can paint a picture. You can tell a story with data and we remember stories when we’re told information in the form of the story. We remember it 22 times more than if it’s just bullet points, the raw data. So, looking at the reports is fantastic, but telling the story as you said earlier, about how much the data is telling us, look with the customers that are not part of our ICP. This is how much it costs us to support them.

[00:22:55] Steve MacDonald: Then, the retention suffers, the testimonials and the validations that we want, we’re not going to get what we need. It’s going to cost us a lot more. We’re not going to retain them. We’re not going to get the kind of aid and enablement for sales and that we need, we’re not going to get the right fit or feedback for the product. All that data tells a vital story. 

[00:23:13] Steve MacDonald: Either way, how we’re being successful, but also how we’re not focusing in the right areas. That’s what I’m taking away. Is that a good takeaway? 

[00:23:26] Shareth Ben: A hundred percent. It’s the best way to summarize it. Connect the dots between the data, the cause, the action, and the change, and you’re able to articulate it well using a nice story and anecdotes as well as facts, I think you can be a lot more effective in your communication when you do that. 

[00:23:46] Steve MacDonald: All right. Fantastic! I know that a lot of people are going to have questions. Would it be appropriate to give out a link to your LinkedIn profile if people had questions and they wanted to get in contact with you?

[00:23:57] Shareth Ben: Absolutely. I would love to do that!

[00:23:59] Steve MacDonald: Fantastic. Thank you, Shareth, for coming on and sharing all of these insights. It just makes us all better and stronger if we can learn from our peers. Thank you very much!

[00:24:09] Shareth Ben: Thanks for the opportunity, Steve. Enjoyed talking to you today!