Customer success from the Ground Up Podcast

Most CS teams think their CRM problem is a data problem. It isn't. It's an architecture problem — and by the time you realise it, you're already drowning in dirty data, broken workflows and customers receiving emails they were never supposed to see.

In this episode we're joined by Tom Mitchell, HubSpot Consultant and Director at TJM Digital, who spends his days fixing the CRM setups that well-intentioned CS and RevOps teams built in a hurry and are now quietly paying for.

Tom is practical, specific and refreshingly honest about what goes wrong — including his own worst moment, which involved one incorrect Boolean, a very heavily attended COVID-era webinar, and customers receiving generous discount offers they definitely weren't supposed to know existed.

We cover:

Getting your CRM architecture right from the start — why the decisions you make in year one about how to structure your HubSpot data will either compound positively or haunt you for years

The Slack chaos problem — why giving every client their own channel feels supportive and becomes a productivity nightmare, and Tom's underused fix that most people have never tried

Claude + HubSpot — how Tom uses Claude to generate Python scripts that recalibrate historical CRM data in minutes instead of days, and why he switched from ChatGPT and never looked back

What belongs in your CRM vs what doesn't — the common mistake of trying to make HubSpot do everything, and how to think about your tech stack as a CS leader rather than a RevOps engineer

The email workflow horror story — one wrong condition in a post-webinar flow, hundreds of customers getting the wrong message, and the stomach-sinking moment when you realise what you've done

Plus: Slack canvases, the case for agreed communication channels with clients, and why fast communication isn't always better communication.

If you're a CS leader or founder trying to work out how to set up your CRM properly from day one — or if you've inherited a HubSpot instance that nobody fully understands — this episode will save you significant pain.

Here are the YouTube chapter timestamps for the Tom Mitchell episode:

0:00 Intro — Slack channels, client chaos and Volcano Jones

3:13 Well That Escalated Fast — Managing 30 client Slack channels without losing your mind

7:24 Slack Canvases — the most underused tool in client communication

8:30 Meet Tom Mitchell — HubSpot Consultant & Director at TJM Digital

12:00 Getting your CRM architecture right from day one

17:30 What belongs in HubSpot vs what doesn't — building a smart tech stack

22:00 Agreed communication channels — why fast doesn't always mean better

27:00 Using Claude + HubSpot to generate Python scripts in minutes not days

35:18 Something Tom's proud of — AI-powered historic data recalibration

38:19 Epic fail — one wrong Boolean, a COVID webinar and very awkward customer emails

40:27 Wrap up & key takeaways

Customer Success from the Ground Up is hosted by Mike Marshall , Global CS Programme Lead, and Deborah Knight from KaptivCX. Find us on Spotify, subscribe on your favourite podcast app, and join the community.

LinkedIn Community - https://www.linkedin.com/company/customer-success-from-the-ground-up/

Customer Success from the Ground Up Programme: https://www.skool.com/cs-from-the-ground-up-9350/about

KaptiveCX Customer Success Consultancy: www.kaptivecx.com

A renewal shouldn't feel like a crisis. If it does, something went wrong six months ago — and it probably wasn't in the last conversation you had with that customer.

In this episode we're joined by Lara Barnes, Head of Customer at Civica Government and Defence, who has spent her career walking into organisations at senior level — often inheriting customer success functions with no structure, no lifecycle design, and no clear ownership — and building something that actually works.

Lara brings a perspective you don't often hear on a CS podcast: the view from the top of the house. Not just how to manage accounts, but how to architect the entire customer journey across an organisation, align it to go-to-market, and make sure the middle bit — the part everyone forgets between onboarding and renewal — is doing the work that makes retention inevitable.

We cover:

The first 90 days in a senior CS role — how Lara approaches joining a new organisation with no existing infrastructure and turns observation into a structured plan without burning political capital in the process

Make renewals a non-event — why the renewal conversation is really just a symptom, and how building the right lifecycle in the middle means the renewal practically takes care of itself

The middle bit nobody owns — why so many CS functions are laser-focused on onboarding and renewal but completely neglect the sustained value delivery in between, and why that's where most churn is actually decided

Lifecycle design isn't just a CS thing — why the COO and CCO need to be joined at the hip, and how go-to-market architecture and customer lifecycle have to be inextricably linked to scale properly

NPS is lying to you — why sending NPS to only the people who love you is one of the most common and costly data mistakes in CS, and how to fix it

Five use cases, not fifty — why being ruthlessly specific about what you need your CS platform to do before you implement it is the difference between a powerful tool and an expensive distraction

Plus: how AI-driven product velocity is creating a new CS challenge — and why shipping features faster means nothing if your customers haven't finished getting value from the last ones.

If you're a CS leader trying to build something that scales, a founder working out how customer success fits into your go-to-market, or a CCO stepping into a new organisation and wondering where to start — Lara's framework is one of the most structured and immediately usable we've had on the show.

Here are the YouTube chapter timestamps for the Lara Barnes episode:

0:00 Intro — AI is shipping faster. Is CS keeping up?3:12 Well That Escalated Fast — Product velocity vs customer value: who bridges the gap?8:22 Meet Lara Barnes — CCO & Head of CS at Civica Government & Defence12:00 The first 90 days in a senior CS role — observation before action17:30 Building a CS strategy when there's no existing infrastructure22:00 Lifecycle design — why the middle bit is where churn is actually decided27:30 Five use cases, not fifty — being ruthlessly specific about your CS platform31:00 NPS is lying to you — why you're probably sending it to the wrong people35:00 Don't implement a CS platform until you know exactly what you need it for38:00 Is lifecycle design a CS thing — or does it belong to the whole business?40:13 Make renewals a non-event — the perfect closer

Customer Success from the Ground Up is hosted by Mike Marshall , Global CS Programme Lead, and Deborah Knight from KaptivCX. Find us on Spotify, subscribe on your favourite podcast app, and join the community.

LinkedIn Community - https://www.linkedin.com/company/customer-success-from-the-ground-up/

Customer Success from the Ground Up Programme: https://www.skool.com/cs-from-the-ground-up-9350/about

KaptiveCX Customer Success Consultancy: www.kaptivecx.com