CS Xs and Os | Adil Dittmer

[Adil] (0:00 - 0:18)

Getting new revenue, expansions, renewals, expansions, cross-sells, upsells, stuff like that. Like that's playing offense, right? That's scoring.

That's trying to get more points on the board. And so that's super important. But I think sometimes we just forget that like playing good defense is also a really good part of like winning the game.

[Dillon] (0:27 - 0:43)

What's up, lifers? And welcome to The Daily Standup with Lifetime Value, where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I got JP Mambosauce Frost here.

Can you say hi? Was that Mambosauce? Is that what you said?

[JP] (0:44 - 0:46)

I need a little customer success in my life.

[Dillon] (0:49 - 0:56)

Is that? Yes, it is. Lou Bega, but affected in some way?

[JP] (0:57 - 0:58)

Yes, very affected.

[Adil] (0:58 - 0:59)

Mamba number six right there.

[JP] (0:59 - 1:01)

Yeah, Mamba number six. That's what that was.

[Dillon] (1:02 - 1:05)

All right. And we have Rob with us. Rob, can you say hi?

[Rob] (1:05 - 1:08)

I need a little QBRs by my side.

[Dillon] (1:09 - 1:19)

No, you don't. No, you don't.

And I'm mad you said that. And we have Adil. It's like Advil without the D with us.

Can you please say hi?

[Rob] (1:19 - 1:20)

No, without the V.

[Dillon] (1:21 - 1:24)

I know. I know. I'm making fun of Adil.

Go ahead.

[Adil] (1:24 - 1:29)

Yeah, absolutely. For a long time lifer, first time caller, excited to be here and happy to have me.

[Dillon] (1:30 - 1:48)

OK, we broke the mold a little bit there because Adil, you're just supposed to say hi and then I say my name and then I come back to you. But it's totally fine. We'll just jump right into it.

My name is Dillon Young. I am the host, Adil. Please introduce yourself again.

Say it again. Long time lifer, first time caller. I love that.

[Adil] (1:49 - 2:20)

Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Adil Ditmer, long time lifer, first time caller. And I'm the head of customer success at an early stage startup called Manta.

And we are trying to democratize data science for folks that aren't super statistically savvy, but need to make a lot of data driven decisions in their day to day. And I'm also really involved in an organization called Success in Black, which is a really cool community working to help forward the careers of black people in the customer success field. It's excited to be here.

[Dillon] (2:21 - 2:54)

Oh, yeah. Thank you for calling that out. You know, the first thing I thought of when you were describing Manta and people who need to make data driven decisions, but might not have a data science background is, oh, go figure.

Just about every leader that's out there, particularly in small stage companies. So I feel like you're uniquely positioned in your role and the way you you're involved in the community. But Adil, you know what we do here?

Because you're a longtime lifer, we ask every single guest one simple question, and that is what is on your mind when it comes to customer success? So can you tell us what that is for you?

[Adil] (2:55 - 3:47)

Yeah, for sure. So I was thinking what's on my mind, and I'd love to talk a little bit about sports or really just any industry today. And the idea of like data and AI and how it seems like that just comes in another one of those buckets where why is every other industry or like function like better at doing this thing than we are, like describing what we do, describing our title?

And so like, yeah, I mean, that that was on my mind. I can go go specifics, but really, really what I hope we can tie that to is like I think a little bit of like protecting revenue is playing defense. And like we really struggle to articulate the value of why we need to play defense.

But, you know, in a lot of other places, it's not so hard to hard to do. And so, yeah, I'm just curious what y'all's thoughts are on that.

[Dillon] (3:48 - 4:23)

So I was picking up what you were putting in, putting down for a second until and now I'm going to have to filibuster this as Rob tries to get out his jets helmet to steer the conversation in his direction. It's so it might as well be a brown paper bag, Rob. But I was picking up what you were putting down with this idea of why do we struggle to describe what it is that we do?

It's a conversation we have a lot on the show. But then you brought it to the protecting revenue as a defensive activity. I want you maybe double click on that.

I'm more interested to understand what you mean by that.

[Adil] (4:24 - 6:22)

Yeah, so I think a lot of times when we think about let's show the impact of what we can do as an organization, we go straight to like we've got to impact revenue, we've got to impact revenue. And that's because that's like the quickest line. And we absolutely should do that.

I do revenue. So I'm all about that, too. But I think like we you know, if you were to go look at the jets here, the New York Jets and ask like, where are you going to spend money and invest money?

This this year, like getting new revenue, expansions, renewals, what are expansions, cross-sells, upsells, stuff like that. Like that's playing offense, right? That's scoring.

That's trying to get more points on the board. And so that's super important. But I think sometimes we just forget that like playing good defense is also a really good part of like winning the game.

And so for me, it's like when I think of an organization like the Jets or they're playing defense by by using data and analytics to be like, what's the actual value of spending money on like a cornerback that stops other teams from scoring on us versus spending more money on offensive players that are going to score points for us? And then, you know, you like taking out of sports. Look at industry, for example.

Like why are trucking and logistics companies spending so much money on insurance? Like it's not hard for people to like understand the concept of like, you know, these kind of like defensive things. And so I always struggle with folks being like, you know, the only way we can show value from a data driven perspective is connecting it to like putting more points on the board and saying, you know, I would look at it more from the if we actually didn't play defense or do these non revenue generating activities.

Here's how many you know, here's the negative impact of doing that. And I think data and AI and analytics are like a really good way to do that. I just haven't seen too many folks do that in customer success.

So that's where I'm double clicking.

[Dillon] (6:22 - 6:43)

So I just have to digress for a second, because anybody who's not watching the video, this is the saddest little juxtaposition as we have this very serious conversation. Rob has this oversized Jets helmet on his head with his glasses on. He's just sitting so stoically.

It does not fit perfectly.

[Rob] (6:45 - 6:47)

Sponsored by Breeze Hall Cereal.

[Dillon] (6:47 - 7:18)

Well, and so, Adil, what I think is interesting is actually in our case, defense is actually even more valuable than offense by way of this idea of revenue acquisition cost versus customer acquisition cost. That might be a thought for a different time. I want to throw it over to the sad Jets fan, Rob, and let him ask whatever questions he might have or or if he wants to try to belabor this analogy with the Jets.

No helmets off, thankfully.

[Rob] (7:18 - 9:21)

No, Adil, you're right. You're right. You're super, super, super right.

And it's it's driving me crazy. I posted a couple of days ago, not dating the pod. Recently, I posted about the fact that if you ask a bunch of customer success leaders, can you show me the quantifiable impact that each of your plays in your playbooks had over the last 90 days?

Or can you show me what your most effective play was? Most of them will say, I don't know. And some of them will say we don't actually have plays or playbooks, let alone measure them.

And that's super interesting because I actually did. This came up in a conversation with the client. I did have this conversation about like, look, as a sad Jets fan, it's more like being an aficionado.

It's more like being a Jets connoisseur than being a fan because you got to get into the statistics if you're going to enjoy this sport. So that's why, like, you know, when I'm reading about my sports news, I'm reading about like DVOA. I'm reading about EPA.

I'm reading about yards after catch. Like I'm reading these deep like statistics that I don't know if most fans are that intrigued by that kind of stuff. But I have had this honest conversation with myself that like, why am I not doing that for the stuff that that the plays that we're running at work to if, you know, to your point, if like scoring points wins the game, what is scoring points in our work?

Well, potentially it's retaining customers. Potentially it's expanding customers. But we're not measuring the plays that get us to that end.

We're kind of just scattershot saying like, oh, maybe if I throw these this email sequence at a customer, that'll get them to respond and to convert or whatever. And I think that's part of the reason why we sometimes have a hard time, you know, getting the attention of our executive stakeholders internally because we're not quantifiable enough. So why don't we do that?

I mean, it's it's a combination of reasons. I don't think the tooling is out there today to do it yet. It's slowly coming on the market.

But I think the tooling historically has been very rules based, very regimented and not super quantifiable in the impact. But there's also a degree of like a lack of statistical rigor that we as an industry just have yet to build. Yeah, that will change over time.

But yeah, that's my quick take really quickly.

[Dillon] (9:21 - 9:58)

And I think this is what you're getting at at all, which is I think I don't even know if the tooling matters if you have chat GPT at your disposal now because you could say to chat GPT, I'm a customer success professional. I don't have a lot of experience with this. I need your help in creating this.

Tell me what the steps are I need to take in order to start gathering the information that I can measure after the fact to understand the efficacy of each one of these motions. So like you could get started right now. Anybody listening to this using even the free chat GPT version to start that process?

And of course, you got to refine it. You got to make it your own thing. JP, jump in here, please.

-: 11:32

Yeah, I think the to go back to sort of like the definition thing, I think it's just a byproduct of just young. Like someone's like 50 years old and you ask them to define themselves, like they usually have a better answer than someone who's like 15. You know what I mean?

And customer success is like the 15 year old in this example. And just like a 15 year old, there's also all these different avenues that are available, right? Maybe, you know, customer success.

We're seeing it applied in different ways. I've been in three different customer success roles now. Yes, they have some things in common, but they're also different, yet similar enough that like it's not great.

Like it's not too much of a jump for me to work on. Like I could go back to any of them and sort of work them. So it's I think like, I don't know.

I part of me just feels like we're always looking. You know, Rob loves statistical rigor and all kinds of stuff. I like I just think that like customer success inherently has some very a lot of like qualitative value.

And I just think that like what if it's like, yeah, we're going to get more numbers. But like what if part of it is a bit antithetical to having such a like, you know, it's not like sales. It's not like what if that is what customer success is?

And we just keep trying to tell this 15 year old kid that you got to do this. You got to do that. And he's like, I just want to be a multi-platinum rap artist, man.

I don't want to go to school for economics. You never know.

[Dillon] (: 11:34

Tell them this way. So I think, JP, I will just fundamentally disagree with you through an analogy. And that is that of marketing.

I think marketing was treated the same way for a really long time of like it was difficult. It was it was all about brand recognition. And it was how does marketing drive additional sales?

And they couldn't create that through line. But through technology, they got to a point where it became a thing about impressions and click through rates and conversion rates and all that stuff. And I do think that customer success is going to see a very similar path in that regard.

And you see us trying to get there with things like CSQL or NRR and all the leading indicators that lead to that. I agree that there's always going to be a bit of fluffy bit, but I think we've got to find a way to quantify the fluff at all. I want to give you an opportunity to close this out here.

[Adil] (: 12:26

Yeah, no, I think let's go practical, right? I think to your your points that people made today is like you can start doing this today if you if it's just like a new idea to you. As simple as going like chat GPT and being like, OK, instead of doing the same thing for everyone, like I'm going to run an experiment where I do an email campaign for these five customers that look exactly the same as these five that I don't and help me understand how I would measure the effectiveness of it and just start communicating that to other people on your team.

And so this doesn't have to be like a super deep thing that goes up to all these compound metrics that we know are made up of a lot of different things. Yeah, I'll end this on start quantifying the impact of everything, all the plays in your playbook. I love that, Rob.

Appreciate it.

[Dillon] (: 13:09

That is our time, Adil. I love it, man. I feel like we just can't get away from AI.

I knew you were going to you were going to bring it because of Manta, but I feel like it just permeates everything we do now. So I would love for you to come back in the future and just tell us more about Manta and how you guys are thinking about it. I mean, look, you're an AI company.

What I think is interesting is how much dog food, their own dog food, are AI companies currently eating? The big question I have right now, because we've had a couple of guests on who kind of question that, like, are they actually is it a lot of smoke and mirrors, whatever? But we can't talk about that now.

Until next time, Adil, we do have to say goodbye. Thanks, y'all. Appreciate it.

[VO] (: 13:50

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