Follow the data | Laure Maisonrouge

[Laure] (0:00 - 0:21)

That's where I decided to build an onboarding team to really crack the code on like, hey, what should we do differently? Because we know what successful looks like. We have a bunch of customers that are very successful with a platform.

Let's boil it down to a framework on steps and what we need to drive them to do to make sure they get to value.

[Dillon] (0:30 - 0:44)

What's up, lifers, and welcome to The Daily Standup Live with Lifetime Value, where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I've got Lar with us. Lar, can you say hi?

[Laure] (0:44 - 0:45)

Hi. Good morning.

[Dillon] (0:46 - 1:00)

Good morning. And I am your host. My name is Dillon Young.

That's right. It's just the two of us because we are recording live from the Customer Success Summit here in New York City. Lar, thank you so much for being here.

Can you please introduce yourself?

[Laure] (1:01 - 1:20)

Yeah. Lar Maison Rouge. I'm the head of customer experience for Colibra.

I've been working to scale CS organization for over six years now and enjoying every minute of it. Lots of learning along the way. And I would like to take this opportunity to walk you through the maturity and how to engage better customers.

[Dillon] (1:20 - 1:33)

So you know what we do here. We ask every single guest one simple question, and that is, what is on your mind when it comes to customer success? So tell me a little bit more about how it is you scale as an organization matures.

[Laure] (1:34 - 1:35)

You follow the data.

[Dillon] (1:35 - 1:36)

I love it.

[Laure] (1:36 - 2:15)

You follow the data. You look at your customer base. You look where you think you have blind spot.

And you try to get the data to tell you where you need to act first. So when I started with Colibra a couple of years ago, I looked at our churn analysis and I looked at why are we losing customers? Why is it that we are doing or not doing that we should change or anything else we need to change approach?

And the bottom line was we really we were losing customer not because of the product, but because they were not getting started. And by the time they renew and we came back into the conversation, we were too late in the game.

[Dillon] (2:15 - 2:17)

So it was largely an onboarding.

[Laure] (2:17 - 3:26)

Yeah, it was failure. It was an onboarding failure. It's a data management platform, so you can take it many direction in any direction you want.

So without a proper strategic vision from the customer, if and if you lose people along the way, it can quickly become either shelf or just not getting the ROIs they wanted to see. So that's where we decided. I really kind of cracked the code on like, hey, what should we do differently?

Because we know what successful look like. We have a bunch of customers that are very successful with the platform. Let's boil it down to a framework on steps and what we need to drive them to do to make sure they get to value.

And that's how we build the onboarding program initiative. And it was a freemium model. So we started with like giving them a little bit for free and then work with our services team to develop packages that make sense that we can plug in afterwards if the customer didn't purchase from the get go.

So it really worked well.

[Dillon] (3:26 - 3:29)

Okay. So there's a lot of pieces to this.

[Laure] (3:29 - 3:29)

Yes.

[Dillon] (3:30 - 3:34)

So it started with data. Let data tell you the story. Let data lead the way.

[Laure] (3:35 - 3:35)

Yeah.

[Dillon] (3:35 - 3:54)

Okay. So the example we landed on was the data is telling you that your churn is largely from or because of failed onboardings or partially launched onboardings or adoption. Do you include adoption within onboarding?

[Laure] (3:54 - 3:55)

Yes.

[Dillon] (3:55 - 3:57)

Okay. And then you went...

[Laure] (3:57 - 3:58)

It was failing to adopt.

[Dillon] (3:58 - 3:59)

Yes.

[Laure] (3:59 - 4:00)

The initial pilots.

[Dillon] (4:00 - 4:20)

Okay. And then you went down. It was a phenomenal path, but there was a lot of steps to it of like, okay, we did this, we did this, we did this.

Do you use data throughout every decision point in that process? Or then do you start to lean on sort of like your historical knowledge of, I know that this always has the highest impact, so on and so forth?

[Laure] (4:20 - 4:38)

I did both because we had a very strong support team that was kind of doing some of those technical pieces anyway, because it ended up on their lap. And that's where I got some of the triple knowledge of like, okay, when we help those customer do those few technical pieces, it works better.

[Dillon] (4:38 - 4:39)

Yeah.

[Laure] (4:39 - 4:43)

We get more adoption, we get the project on the ground and they get to...

[Dillon] (4:43 - 4:47)

Okay. So you were attacking time to live.

[Laure] (4:47 - 4:47)

Yes.

[Dillon] (4:48 - 5:03)

How do we pull that in as early as possible? And did you have data about what features got used most by customers most likely to renew? And were those the features you were trying to get live the soonest?

[Laure] (5:03 - 5:22)

Yes. It was more, we knew what were the technical impediment to get... That main feature live, because we have data cataloging and data governance were the two most used feature.

So we knew that to get the catalog live, the biggest impediment was really integration.

[Dillon] (5:23 - 5:23)

Okay.

[Laure] (5:23 - 6:05)

Integration obviously is a much larger scope of things than just, you know, that requires services. Obviously we're not going to give that for free, but we had a couple of integration we knew were working well. So we kind of channel customer to if you want to do one of those 10, it was more than that, but let's say one of those 10, you can get that first use case within a couple of weeks.

And if you go to another, it's going to take longer. So it was a conversation with the customer on making sure that, hey, what pain points are you trying to solve? How do you demonstrate the value to your internal sponsor and get them to have that first MVP, right?

[Dillon] (6:05 - 6:15)

This was not at Colibra, right? This was at a previous... No, that was Colibra.

Okay. Fantastic. Colibra have a self-provisioning version where...

[Laure] (6:15 - 6:15)

Okay.

[Dillon] (6:15 - 6:21)

So no matter what happened, somebody at Colibra had to touch this onboarding process.

[Laure] (6:21 - 6:27)

I mean, they can try to do it themselves and we have the items, but it's an enterprise software.

[Dillon] (6:28 - 6:28)

Okay. Yeah.

[Laure] (6:28 - 6:53)

If they never done this type of integration and they don't know where to look, if we don't do a minimum of guidance, it's like, hey, you need that skillset, you need that type of person, you need support from IT. It depends who's a buyer, right? Who bought the solution?

Is it someone from the business side? Is it someone from the IT side? Either way, at some point, because there is integration, the two of them are going to need to work together.

[Dillon] (6:54 - 7:07)

Okay. So then you said, you started to create almost like these modules or these building blocks that you could slot into the onboarding based on, I imagine, information you gather...

[Laure] (7:07 - 7:07)

Free sales.

[Dillon] (7:08 - 7:13)

Free sales. And then during a kickoff or something like that, or do you try to have it all before...

[Laure] (7:13 - 7:39)

We try to have as much information from the sales team. And we had that initial call post-sale to kind of gather the key components and also validate who is a stakeholder because in most cases, it's a CIO or a CDO that have the vision and bought it, and then he passed it on to a project manager. He was never necessarily appraised of what they were trying to do or...

[Dillon] (7:39 - 7:44)

He was told about that kickoff call 30 minutes before it happened, probably, right?

[Laure] (7:44 - 9:02)

Yeah, about something like that. So we tried our best to really make sure the customer had the right tool and understanding. And it led eventually as I matured the program and I start to streamline that with services where for our CSM, we build that customer success framework with a value consultant and myself and a few other experts from different areas from the business to make sure like, okay, how can we guide and give a practical step in understanding ahead to have your initiatives, your data initiative being successful. And it's kind of agnostic of what the product is, honestly. It's more to drive a successful project, you need to have adoption, you need to plan the communication, you need to show the value, you need to teach the people what to do, where to go, what is it for.

So there is all those little things you need to work on to really give it to. And because our key stakeholder usually as a product manager was like a data scientist or data governance people, not necessarily someone with strong project management or change management knowledge. It was kind of the CSM was providing kind of that guide, it was like, hey, tips for change management, tips for adoption.

[Dillon] (9:02 - 9:31)

So much of the job. I remember the day I learned what change management like actually meant, like it probably was not the first time I heard the term, but maybe I had like read about the definition and like what somebody who's responsible for change management did. And I remember bursting into my VP of CS's office and being like, this is what we actually do.

This is like 80% of the job. And she was like, duh. And I was like, oh, OK.

[Laure] (9:32 - 9:39)

Yeah. It's all about enabling the customer to drive their projects successfully, because if they're successful, then we're successful.

-: 10:30

I think enablement is a positive way to say it. But I think there are when I think about change management, I think about the detractors, the people that are in the way. And it's not through any fault of theirs.

It's often they haven't been educated properly. I mentioned previously, like a project manager can unknowingly be a detractor if they're thrown onto a meeting for a new big project 30 minutes before it happens. Then they're ticked off and they're not going to be in the right mindset to kick this project off right with you.

OK, I digress. The last thing I want to ask you is this idea of the modularization of the onboarding, right? Like you can take in or you can put in or take out pieces of this onboarding based on what the customer is trying to accomplish.

Was that also created because of data?

[Laure] (: 10:30

Yes.

[Dillon] (: 10:31

OK.

[Laure] (: 10:32

Yes.

[Dillon] (: 10:32

Tell me about that.

[Laure] (: 10:33

So there was when I started the team, I took two engineers and two CSMs. OK. Two engineers that were more support that had the knowledge of like, we know that they get hung up on those two critical piece and two CSM that had the mindset for project management to really drive the outcome. And that's how we build the building block on like, OK, what are the few technical steps we are OK to give for free that are scalable and that will not hinder our revenue?

And what is the project management adoption keys success framework we want to put along the way with the CSM to really map those first 90 days or, you know, four or five months in our cases, but like really kind of give a cadence of like, even if they don't have services or a partner to help them, just say, hey, you need to look into this, you need to look into that and do that proactive guidance. It only worked because we had a very high touch segment and a very high AR product.

And as we grew as a company, obviously, that strategy has to change based on the data because it would have not scale. Right.

[Dillon] (: 11:45

Well, let me take a step back. It worked because the high AR was able to subsidize the lower AR, like lower touch.

[Laure] (: 11:53

We had mostly very large enterprise and enterprise at the time.

[Dillon] (: 11:58

So then it was unlikely that they didn't have services of some sort from you. Right.

[Laure] (: 12:01

We ended up to to a point where not 90 percent of our customer purchased services, but we had to kind of help the sales team understand you need to do that if you want the expansion, because otherwise it costs us a lot to acquire a new customer like every company.

[Dillon] (: 12:18

And they were failing.

[Laure] (: 12:19

And then they're just failing. So you're killing your expansion business. You're killing the renewal business.

[Dillon] (: 12:25

So I even make it an option. Why not just package it up?

[Laure] (: 12:29

So we also had to. We had a few things changing because we scaled the product. We moved from an on-prem product to a cloud product.

So we didn't necessarily add the right sales skill sets. So we also had to make that switch of like, hey guys, now we're selling services, software as a service. You cannot just give them the key and walk away.

So there was a little bit of change management internally to drive that migration and that change of skill set as well on top of helping the customer.

[Dillon] (: 13:01

So you went from on-prem to in the cloud. And it sounds as though you did not experience significant turnover in your sales team.

[Laure] (: 13:11

I mean, it's a sales team.

[Dillon] (: 13:13

But it is a completely different product. I mean, to everything you just described, I think that that's impressive.

[Laure] (: 13:18

Yeah. Customer at the time, at the option to buy on-prem or cloud, we had both for a little bit. So the more traditional on-prem salesperson either adapted or left.

So we lost a little, a few people, obviously, through the change. It's been a drastic change. The thing is, in the last five years, we went to pull the business.

We multiplied the team by 10. So there was like, it's been absorbed because we were, we had to hire to scale up the team, to scale up the support, to scale up the CS teams as well. So we started with like, we were like six or seven CSMs at the time when I joined, they were just like trying to figure out what is CS going to do to starting to mature this program, follow the data.

As I said, look at the knowledge, the triple knowledge, look at what we were trying to achieve to change the product and get to have now all our customers are on the cloud. But it was, it was definitely a journey and we had to do it like step by step. Look at the data, try a few things, iterate along the way.

And obviously like you don't, you don't move from an organization from 300 people to 1,200 people without a few, you know, people, obviously it's not the same organization. It was six years ago. It's not the same people we have still, you know, people are staying with the organization.

We had a great culture, but some of them obviously left. Usually the sales team, any software company I've worked with, honestly, their lifespan is usually two years. It rotates a lot.

And that's why you have the CSM that usually lasts longer. So you can keep that account relationship. And that's the whole shift that's happening in the industry right now where people are really have to choose.

What do you want your CS person to be? You want to be an account manager and drive revenue? You want it to be a professional consultant?

Yeah. We could go into many other.

[Dillon] (: 15:23

That is our time. We cannot know. I think it's great.

I think it's fantastic. Really cool subject. I love how you incorporate data into every piece.

Try not to rely on historical knowledge because it does change. Like you just alluded to at the end there, like the entire industry is changing, but then also you can change from on-prem to cloud. And so you've got to, you've got to change with it.

I love that topic. Thank you so much for being on The Daily Standup.

[Laure] (: 15:52

Thank you so much for having me. It was delightful.

[VO] (: 16:01

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