Where do we go from here? | Therese Mucherie

[Therese] (0:00 - 0:25)

The world overall has changed together with technology and I think technology has finally caught up with the CES's needs and aspirations and it's making what was not really possible in the beginning now possible. So if we take for example how we measure activities or how we work with our customers today.

[Dillon] (0:34 - 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 with us. JP do you want to say hi?

[JP] (0:45 - 0:47)

Yeah it's a good day for a cup of tea.

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

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

[Therese] (0:52 - 0:54)

Hello everyone, very nice to be here.

[Dillon] (0:54 - 1:01)

Very nice to see you here. And I am your host, my name is Dillon Young. Therese, thank you so much for being here.

Can you please introduce yourself?

[Therese] (1:02 - 1:12)

Sure, so I'm Therese. I'm in Stockholm, Sweden. I was born and raised in France and lived a couple of years in Australia, hence my very weird accent.

[JP] (1:16 - 1:17)

Croissants dipping.

[Therese] (1:19 - 1:22)

It's a mix. I usually call myself an international.

[Dillon] (1:23 - 1:25)

Okay yeah yeah yeah.

[JP] (1:25 - 1:25)

Global citizen.

[Therese] (1:25 - 1:44)

But professionally I'm a director of customer management at NShift and I've been in customer facing roles pretty much my entire life. Been in sales, solution engineering, customer success. So yeah, excited to discuss more about it.

[Dillon] (1:45 - 1:52)

Customer management, there's no success and there's no accounts involved. Is that on purpose?

[Therese] (1:52 - 2:00)

It is, it is. And it's because we've mixed the two and this is something that we could discuss further today.

[Dillon] (2:00 - 2:17)

Okay, I love that you didn't want to give it up yet because you know that there's another piece to this introduction. Therese, 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 management?

So can you tell us what that is for you?

[Therese] (2:18 - 2:43)

Definitely. I was going to talk about customer management or customer success and the changes in this kind of world, whether it's going from non-commercial to commercial, organizational changes. So really the question for me would be have customer success managers gone from CS managers to possibly growth managers?

[Dillon] (2:44 - 3:13)

Can I be honest? Growth to me is such a, it feels like one of those platitudes, doesn't it? Growth.

So I don't love the term but I don't want that to dissuade you. I don't hate the theory. I think the term is just a little bit played out.

So do you want to expand upon that or would you rather I let JP give his opinion as well?

[JP] (3:13 - 3:17)

No, no, no, no, no, don't do that. Don't kick a hornet's nest.

[Therese] (3:18 - 4:41)

All right, let me jump in here and let's calm ourselves a little bit. So I'm not saying that we should change the terms customer success managers to growth managers but it's really about how has the customer success world changed, right? When we're looking at KPIs, how did we use to do things?

When we measured success, how did we measure it? Well, from the beginning when customer success kind of came up, it was all about is the customer happy? It was about happiness.

Then it moved to retention. We all looked at churn and the churn numbers. And if the churn numbers were low, then we did great within customer success.

And now with the world, we're more so looking at growth. Growth can mean very different things. But talking about KPIs, again, we can talk about activities.

We can talk about CS metrics. We can talk about segmentation. And in all of those different KPIs of ways of measuring customer success, we've evolved, which is very interesting.

So that's why I set the question as customer success managers, are we more so looking at growth rather than measuring the actual success of the customer?

[JP] (4:42 - 4:56)

I guess, you know, one thing that I'm thinking here is and why do you think that is? Like, what do you think is behind that as like a necessary sort of shift into what you would say a growth manager?

[Therese] (4:56 - 6:00)

That's a very interesting question. And I think the world overall has changed together with technology. And I think technology has finally caught up with the CS's needs and aspirations.

And it's making what was not really possible in the beginning, now possible. So if we take, for example, how we measure activities or how we work with our customers today, previously, we were very much ad hoc, right? And then we moved to playbooks.

And now we're more so looking at data and making sure that we personalize our different interventions with the customers. When we look at the different segmentations, how did we do it? Well, first of all, we looked at the AR, we looked at how much a customer spent.

And now we're more so look at how the customer or the customer's ability to grow.

[JP] (6:00 - 6:31)

So I think technology has helped us a lot. So when you say technology, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say referencing AI, correct? I would say so.

Yeah, definitely. And so our ability to, when you say our dreams and aspirations, this is the ability to scale, to be able to provide what you're saying is like, just to clarify, like personalized, sort of, I guess, catering for lack of a better word to the customer using AI.

[Therese] (6:32 - 6:45)

Well, it's not so much about the customers using AI towards you and your products. It's more so us using the data in the right way to be able to help the customer use the product correctly.

[Dillon] (6:47 - 7:40)

I might add an additional facet here, Therese, and that is just the overall maturation of the role. It didn't exist 30 years ago. I think it's 29, 28 years old at this point.

And it has evolved from what was a theory based on a changing business model. We now know more about that business model as well. So I feel like it's sort of, you know, the dreams and aspirations of CS.

I don't know if I agree with that only because I don't know if we knew enough to have dreams and aspirations back then. And nobody did because SaaS was brand new. I don't think that invalidates your thought process.

I think it is just, you know, we're still figuring this whole thing out altogether, not just CS.

[Therese] (7:41 - 8:21)

No, definitely, definitely. And, you know, a lot of people talk about the commercial aspect of the role. Should a CSM be commercial or should it not?

Within the organization that I'm at now, hence the role, customer management and not customer success management is because we've kind of merged the customer success department together with the account management department to make it one. But depending on the maturity, I would say, as well of the company, it has different needs.

[Dillon] (8:21 - 8:25)

Can I ask you a question about how you define commercial?

[Therese] (8:26 - 8:48)

Yes. So commercial to me would be being part of the retention strategy. So being counted on retention as well as upselling and cross selling to existing customers.

So not at all towards new customers and new logos, but to existing customers.

[Dillon] (8:49 - 9:34)

If we follow that bouncing ball, wouldn't we also say product needs to be commercial and engineering need to be commercial in different ways? Product needs to build something that people actually want to buy. Engineering has to build something that isn't cumbersome upon your systems or your servers.

And in that way, I think I'm just coming at this, the age old, you may not want to be in sales, but everybody is in sales argument of like, I this this is certainly not against you, but I grew tired of this conversation of commercial versus non-commercial when, in fact, everybody has a commercial component to what they do.

-: 10:31

Definitely. And I was at a role previously at my old company where I got into, just like you said, moving the organization from being non-commercial to being commercial. And when we announced that to the team, they said, hold on, but I'm not a salesperson.

And I was like, well, everybody is and nobody is in a way. You don't have to do your job differently. You will just be measured in a different way, but you have to do your job just like you've done in the past, which is ensuring that the customer succeeds within their journey of our product.

So yes, in going back to product and engineering, do they need to be commercial? Absolutely. It just looks different in a different way.

Yeah. And it's measured differently from their side, but communication internally is key there for sure.

[Dillon] (: 10:32

I liked your rebuttal to your team about you don't have to do your job differently. You'll just be measured differently. JP, do you want to, do you have anything before we get out of here?

[JP] (: 10:41

Thinking about, I'm going to, I'm going to step out. You're currently located in Sweden, you said, right? Yes.

Okay. So have you noticed any differences, say, because you've lived in a few different places. Have you noticed any differences in the way that this function has worked in these different companies or countries you've been in?

[Therese] (: 11:06

That's a very interesting question. I think we'd need a lot more time to discuss it, but I think overall the SaaS world is quite similar no matter where you work because you, majority of the time, have international customers and they, they need to work in a certain way. So it's, it's almost kind of one language, but with tweaks.

So yes and no, it would be my answer to that question. There are very many similarities, but for sure, depending on, you know, if it's APAC or if it's EMEA or if it's the Americas, it will be working slightly differently.

[Dillon] (: 11:46

Interesting. I wonder if that, I mean, we've had the conversation before about the cultural like communication differences. So if the, if the largest portion or the majority of your company is based in Stockholm or let's say in Europe, then the way in which you operate may be different than if you're based in, let's say the United States for many of the reasons that are getting a lot of airtime lately on the internet and in the news.

But I do agree that SaaS is SaaS wherever you go, right? The subscription model is, is such that that kind of travels without borders. Therese, this has been phenomenal.

Thank you so much. We are out of time, but I encourage you to come back and maybe we can dig in deeper on the cultural piece. I know that Rob would love to be a part of that conversation.

JP and I may get no talking time during that episode. So please come back for now.

[Therese] (: 12:46

A lot of funny anecdotes for sure.

[Dillon] (: 12:48

Oh yeah. He'll love it. He'll love it.

But for now we do have to say goodbye, Therese. Thank you so much.

[Therese] (: 12:55

Thank you very much. It's been very fun.

[VO] (: 13:03

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