Perpetual onboarding | Karla Kannan

[Karla] (0:00 - 0:24)

What really means using the system to the persona that is going to be utilizing the platform? So when you do that, then you're able to measure it. And then when you have your business reviews, that adoption ties with the education.

Because if you're seeing people logging in, doing these activities that are not necessarily best practices, then you can say it's time for us to look at probably a retraining, a refresher or building with you a training.

[Dillon] (0:33 - 0:45)

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 here with a tickle in his throat. JP, can you say hi?

[JP] (0:45 - 0:46)

Hey, y'all, how's it going?

[Dillon] (0:47 - 0:51)

And we have Karla with us. Carla, can you say hi, please?

[Karla] (0:52 - 0:52)

Hello.

[Dillon] (0:53 - 0:59)

Hello. And I'm your host. My name is Dillon Young.

Carla, thank you so much for being here. Can you please introduce yourself?

[Karla] (1:00 - 1:17)

Absolutely. So I've been in customer success for, I'd like to say a decade, because if I say more, it ages me. So I mean, I had customer success for a little bit over a decade.

And right now I'm going solo. And I am the founder of a company called Chimera, where we do customer success, customer education.

[Dillon] (1:18 - 1:33)

Very cool. Very cool. And I believe education is where we're going to go with today's conversation.

Correct me if I'm wrong. But you know what we do here, we ask one simple question of every single guest, and that is what is on your mind when it comes to customer success? I think it's education.

Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

[Karla] (1:34 - 2:36)

Absolutely. So for me, education is one of those portions where most of the time customers tend to forget that that's such an absolute necessity for adoption. So people think, let's get the system in or product or service, whatever we're doing, let's get it in.

And then people are just going to use it and run with it. But when vendors go and share that product or service, there might be an initial training initiative. But as we know, businesses tend to have attrition, so they will lose employees.

And those people that you train at the beginning, they could be gone very quickly. And the adoption of your products or services can just walk out the door as well. Because they're not going to find value.

They don't know how to use it. They're going to forget it's there. And then when the renewal comes, you know what's going to happen?

Nobody's going to know why they were using it or what benefit it had. So education programs are very important to be part not only of the first stage of implementing a product or service, but also why is that ongoing? What is that sustainment?

So it becomes part of the onboarding. If your tool becomes part of the onboarding of your customers, that's pretty powerful.

[Dillon] (2:37 - 3:51)

I have so many questions because it feels like such a, almost a black box. Because my real question, I'm going to list a couple here and feel free to take it in any direction you want. I think this is fascinating.

I love training and it's where I've spent a lot of time on it. And I remember just constantly discovering these new challenges and new values and like things like blind spots we might have that we need to try and remind ourselves of. So one of those is like, how do you calculate the level of education within an organization against the number of individuals that should be educated in order to use the software?

It's a thing that I just sort of thought of as you were talking, because it's like, okay, well, if it drops below a certain threshold, then you, like an alarm goes off and you start exploring and trying to create new programs. Of course, you don't ever want that to happen because you should sort of have like this cadence of programs that are always occurring. So I'd also love to hear about how you design that.

And then specific to your business, how do you communicate the ROI to businesses because they do so often forget about this as an ongoing function. So I'd love if you want to touch on one of those, all three of those somehow in the time that we have, please do. I'd love to hear more.

[Karla] (3:51 - 5:33)

Well, depending on how your business is structured, but I think the majority of companies, what they do is they always measure what they call usage. Let's say that the user log in. Well, that's great.

But did they do anything else in the system? If the answer is no, and they just log in, is that usage? So from the side of the vendor, what I like to think about is how sticky you are with your products or services, but also what does that mean in terms of every offering that you have?

What do we expect out of that user? So when they come into your platform, what do we expect them to do? And are they doing it?

And then that's where you nail into what is true adoption, because using it and adopting it are very different things. Are they getting the value that you actually promised during the sales process? Since I've done e-procurement for a long time, one of the core measurements that you can have there is not only, hey, are they logging into the system, but are they creating purchase orders?

And are those purchase orders that they're creating after the fact, meaning are people just being naughty and they call the vendor and then the order comes in, or they're doing it proactively, right? So it takes you really understanding how the user is moving through the platform and in understanding that, and that can be with anything, right? Procurement, inventory, anything that you sell, you have to understand what really means using the system to the persona that is going to be utilizing the platform.

So when you do that, then you're able to measure it. And then when you have your business reviews, that adoption ties with the education, because if you're seeing people logging in, but doing these activities that are not necessarily best practices, then you can say, it's time for us to look at probably a retraining, a refresher, or building with you a training program.

[Dillon] (5:33 - 5:57)

Okay. JP, I recognize that at your current role, you have the unenviable position of not necessarily being able to see what usage looks like. So how do you guys think about this?

And how do you maybe personally, is it just questions you ask of your champions when you're on the phone or how do you try to tackle this problem of ongoing education and its impact on renewal chances?

[JP] (5:58 - 7:09)

Yeah. Usage is one of those things where, yeah, when you cannot see how someone's using it, or even be aware of if they're logging in, you have to ask questions. So that just becomes naturally a part of things.

Even today, I was in a meeting with someone and they had three products. And I remember sort of talking to them about those products and then hearing that maybe they weren't using one as much. And then sort of starting to ask questions around that and really understanding there was actually a churn risk there, because not a lot of people were using it or people, they were like, oh, I think I used it once.

Once people start sort of using language like that, you can be sure that the product is probably on its way out. So there's definitely tells that you can have around usage before we even get to the value. I mean, I think usage and value do sort of go hand in hand.

But I think, yeah, if you're seeing that people are really not using it much or you do not know, that is clear churn risk. I actually have two questions for you because the name of your company, is it pronounced Chimera?

[Karla] (7:09 - 7:10)

Chimera, yes.

[JP] (7:10 - 7:19)

So this is a name I'm familiar with from a creature from Greek mythology, which I love. So is that where you got the inspiration for the name of the company?

[Karla] (7:19 - 7:30)

That is correct. Yeah, because it's a combination of different things. And since customer success is an amalgamation of different disciplines all together, that was the inspiration behind it.

[JP] (7:30 - 8:44)

That's awesome. And then you spelled it actually a little bit different. It's Q-U-I-M-E-R-A.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I really thought that was interesting. I had to go and look that up and say, oh, what is this?

So I think that's a really ingenious way to also distinguish your brand and what you're doing and being personal to you. It was even cool to see you talking about your grandmother in Mexico City and all these things. I think that that is such a great, powerful lesson to folks out there who are listening, maybe thinking about brand identity.

Because I know we must have some budding consultants with all the consultants and people we have coming on the show. So there's a tip. Carl has got a really great brand and name for that.

The other thing I wanted to ask you really quickly is I noticed that you're Lean Six Sigma certified. And I've seen a lot of people, especially from Purdue. What is it that you feel like that brings to you in customer success?

Or maybe do you find that it has a bigger value in other ways, maybe just overall? I know it's very good for organizational things, but I wonder about the value you find in it, particularly in customer success.

-: 10:03

You know, I actually find a lot of value. And I'm going to tell you something very interesting. How many of customer success leaders have had to think about segmentation and the logic behind segmenting your accounts?

And then you have to question if that segmentation down the line makes sense. So one thing that we did was look at the ebbs and flows of our revenue. And then with that, we develop a histogram, which you do a lot when you do Lean Six Sigma.

And then we figure out where were those breakdowns. Did we have like huge disparity between the different segments? And then it allows us to put us together and say, yeah, we have an SMB, we have a mid market, we have an enterprise, but then we have such a difference between the majority of the enterprise and the whales out there.

So then we ended up calling them the strategic account. So I think that that's a perfect use case of that. And the second one is finding waste.

And waste not only internally, which is organizational, but also with your customers. And when you have that consulting element into your practice or into your toolbox as a CS leader, it's powerful because then you can go to customers and actually say, this is where I see waste in your organization. And it might not be something that your product or service can solve for, but the fact that you can tie how operationally they might have some waste and how you can help them create efficiencies with your tool is invaluable for them.

So it allows you to be more consultative.

[Dillon] (: 10:08

I am personally not Lean Six Sigma, just Six Sigma certified and yes, histograms and waste. Two entries on the bingo card for Six Sigma. Carla, that is our time.

Fantastic topic. Would love for you to come back and talk more about maybe some like tactical examples or ways in which companies can improve upon their education experience and maybe create a bit of a flywheel, a cadence that continues on and on. But for now, we do have to say goodbye.

[Karla] (: 10:38

Well, thank you very much. And I love the questions. Thank you.

[VO] (: 10:40

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