Level of expertise | Kimberly Ayala

[Kimberly] (0:00 - 0:15)

Customers like survey results from customers is that customers want more product help and they want that from the CSM. They want to understand best practices like more from a user perspective as opposed to that executive level, which is what I'm kind of used to.

[Dillon] (0:24 - 0:35)

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 my man JP with us. JP, do you want to say hi?

[JP] (0:36 - 0:37)

Hey, what's going on?

[Dillon] (0:37 - 0:40)

And we've got Rob with us. Rob, do you want to say hi?

[Rob] (0:41 - 0:42)

I'm not stuck on mute.

[Dillon] (0:43 - 0:48)

That's right. Thank goodness. And we have Kimberly with us.

Kimberly, can you say hi?

[Kimberly] (0:48 - 0:51)

Hello, everyone from the Northeast Connecticut.

[Dillon] (0:53 - 0:53)

Hello.

[Kimberly] (0:53 - 0:55)

I love shooting out my state. It's so beautiful.

[Dillon] (0:55 - 1:05)

The dirty jersey. I am your host. My name is Dillon Young.

Kimberly, thank you so much for being here from Connecticut. There you go. Another shout out.

Can you please introduce yourself?

[Kimberly] (1:06 - 1:18)

Sure. So I'm the director of customer success at a software company called Akinio. We help customers, our customers build product experiences for their customers online, wherever they do business.

[Dillon] (1:19 - 1:31)

Right on. Kimberly, not your first rodeo. So you do know what we do here, which is we ask every single guest one simple question.

What is on your mind when it comes to customer success? What is that for you today?

[Kimberly] (1:32 - 2:18)

We've had a little debate going at work. And so I've been asking everyone this question. I'm really curious to hear what your thoughts are.

So in my opinion, there are layers to product knowledge. It starts at like, what does our product do? How do customers get value from it?

And then how customers are actually using it from a conceptual place. And then, you know, actually being able to demo and like a demo environment. And then maybe on like a personalized, customized environment.

So you see there's lots of layers here. What does the CSM need to know? What is their level of product knowledge?

Especially if you've got folks like product teams to lean on pre-sales for when it's a sales type of thing. Where should we sit? Product knowledge.

[Dillon] (2:19 - 2:28)

JP, I want to come to you first because you have a unique product to support. What? Pillsbury?

What are you going for there?

[Rob] (2:29 - 2:31)

Layers, man. Flaky crust.

[Dillon] (2:31 - 2:33)

Oh, I gotcha. I gotcha. I gotcha.

Yeah.

[Rob] (2:33 - 5:12)

Jeez Louise. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Yes. Yeah. So he went to me first because he knows like how many layers our product definitely has.

And considering, yes, when you have, say you have solutions engineers who are brilliant, they are a resource to tap into for a certain area of the product. Then you have your product team, right, to send them suggestions for something. We have support.

I have all these different things available to me. Yet the question of me as a CSM, you're saying like, where do I like sit? And I'll tell you what, I have never wanted to shout out my peers.

I have some really smart peers who know so much. If I get handed a customer of theirs, I try to gently let them know that that is not what they will be getting at all. So I try to do it very artfully because I know that I can bring something of my own, right, that's valuable as well, right?

Like I work there too, even if I don't have quite as much knowledge as someone who's been there for years. And so when I think about, okay, what is it that I need to know that can really serve me? Part of that is, how can I optimize the experience at the point of when I interact with the customer?

If I think that it is worth having a certain amount of knowledge, if there are certain points that are sort of frequent in which I am reached out to, like it would behoove me to know how to answer that question because there is going to be some fatigue from passing off, right? Like even nice customers to pass them off to say, hey, I'll get back to you with an answer. Then I have to remember to make sure that I follow up, get a good answer.

And hey, what if they have a follow-up question? Now I have to go back and ask someone else. So I'm constantly thinking about what is the best way for me to answer this particular question that could be related to product.

I'd say it's usually related to getting to the question behind the question so that even if I do have to leverage another resource, I've saved the customer some time in that experience, but it's going to require for me, I think that's my CSM trait, right? That curiosity, hey, what's the real question you're asking so that I can get to a better answer?

[Dillon] (5:13 - 6:31)

Before I let Robin here, I will add tidbit or a fact here. I have worked for companies where I literally didn't log into the software for years, but I understood how it worked. I understood the value prop, but if I needed to, first of all, and if something changed in the product, we would usually get a download from product like a new demo.

And that'd be enough for me because all I'm doing is talking about it. And if they want to dive deeper, I've got a TAM I can introduce them to, or I've got a support person I can introduce them to. And I'm typically just talking to economic stakeholders, directors and above who also aren't in the software.

So like it doesn't really matter. And I used to feel self-conscious about that. And I recently was talking to somebody who was like, they were hiring for a role and they actually thought that that was more valuable because it showed a level of focus.

It showed a level of understanding what was actually valuable for the role for, did you understand what was actually needed from you in a given situation? And the way the company was structured, it wasn't important for me to know the product. Rob, actually, no, I'm sorry.

Kimberly, I want to ask you, first of all, are we going down the right path or what has been the debate at your company? What do you guys sit?

[Kimberly] (6:32 - 8:01)

So I know where I sit. And my thought on this is kind of similar to what you just said, right? Like we don't want to be too in the weeds and really it comes down to how our customers define value and are they getting what they set out to get right at the end of the day?

Can we attribute the actual outcomes, the results back to what it is that they were looking to achieve from like a business objective standpoint, like the bigger business objectives, right? Which usually ties to revenue. And so I think that it comes more from the relationship building, understanding the customer's business, understanding their use case.

And we can lean a lot on some of the other folks who are product experts, like support, like the SEs, like the product team itself, et cetera. But I've read a few times and I'm seeing more studies about this, that customers like survey results from customers is that customers want more product help and they want that from the CSM. They want to understand best practices, like more from a user perspective, as opposed to that executive level, which is what I'm kind of used to.

And so that's the debate is do we kind of branch off and do both? Why not add another hat on to the many that we're already wearing? Or do we continue the way things are and see if maybe we can bridge that another way, close that gap somehow else?

I don't know. What do you think, Rob?

-: 10:31

Rob Markman Yeah, good question. Because I love how this conversation progressed. It started out, the two layers that you mentioned, Kim, were what the product does, then how it works.

But if you follow how this conversation progressed, the answer so far is actually kind of neither. It's actually a layer deeper, which is the why behind the product, the why behind our customer use cases, the why behind even us interacting with our products. Why do we have our jobs?

That's often what customers care about. What is our relationship to our jobs and the customer outcomes? And why is the customer there?

Why are they in this call? Why did they make this purchase? So I'm thinking about a couple of things.

I'm thinking about, first of all, you guys have probably read the book, Start With Why, or maybe you haven't. But if you have, it's a relatively straightforward read, book by Simon Sinek, where he talks about this golden circle, where most companies on the outside of their, quote unquote, golden circle, they know what they do. Some go a layer deeper.

They talk about how they do it. Some go the deepest layer, and they communicate first why they do what they do. And he uses examples like Apple versus Microsoft.

Microsoft might say, we make computers. They're super fast and slick, and you should buy one. And Apple had this different approach where they're like, we exist to change the status quo.

We do that by making computers. And that was a fundamental flip on the go-to-market strategy that presumably was pretty central to how Apple grew as a company. And so I think about all these applications that we have.

It applies to how we introduce ourselves to our customers. We should explain why we do what we do. It pertains to how we handle feature requests from demanding customers, not just what they're asking for, but why.

How we handle escalated customer situations. What's at the real root of why they're escalated, why they're canceling, or even why they're not responding to your emails, right? If we can get that layer deeper, which sometimes takes a little guesswork, we're way more effective at our jobs.

But yeah, I'll finish my part just by saying I've been practicing this by hanging out with my four-year-old nephew who's going through that phase where he's like, he's like, let's play, Uncle Rob. And I'm like, I can't. He's like, why?

Because I have to work. Why? Because I have to make money.

Why? Because if I don't, then I'll have terrible anxiety and a low view of myself. And I can't, go away from me, kid.

I can't have this conversation right now. But yeah, that's a good segue back to Dillon.

[Dillon] (: 10:31

What I think is interesting is, Kimberly, I wonder if you were taking a shortcut in the explanation you gave about these studies and customers saying they want more product expertise. Because I think that that is so dependent upon, first of all, the user persona, what level they sit at, the scenario in which they're asking the question, and the product for which they're asking the question about. And I think I come back to this every single time, but it is so personalized or specific to all of those variables that it's really difficult to have an answer.

And then I think you combine it with what resources does the company have available to them? How do they want to structure their operations? Do they want one person to do all of it?

Well, in really small companies, that's sort of the way it goes. But as you get larger and you specialize, that is rarely the case. It can't be the case.

And it's why a large account, maybe it's $10 million, has multiple people assigned to it. Because you have to have a person who's just having commercial conversations. You have to have another person who's way more technical.

And so all of these things come into play for me. I feel like it's an unwinnable conversation or argument without knowing all of those things. And maybe it's starting with the like Rob said.

Would you agree, Kimberly?

[Kimberly] (: 11:57

So I'll paraphrase what you just said.

[Dillon] (: 12:02

Now I'm hungry.

[Kimberly] (: 12:04

I think what I heard was it depends. And I think that's true. I think there's different variables.

Obviously, when we're looking at this and we're trying to use data, there's just so many variables and it's hard to control for everything. So I guess the organization just has to do what's best for itself. And I think the things we'll be doing is experimenting in a lot of different directions this year and kind of seeing what spaghetti sticks to the wall.

Now you're really hungry. But yeah.

[Dillon] (: 12:32

I love it. Kimberly, that is our time. You've already come back once.

Why don't you do it again? Tell us what this looks like in another six months, whether this conversation has evolved at all at Aquinio. But for now, we do have to say goodbye.

[Kimberly] (: 12:45

All righty. Well, it was a pleasure as always.

[VO] (: 13:20

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