Do you even customer, bro? 

A lot of us in CX feel like we end up being the champions of the customer in our orgs, or even the heroes. But that's not a good thing, right? We shouldn't be relying on heroics to make sure that customers have a good experience with us.

The better we are at retaining customers, the better it is for our bottom line (and even our top line, if they expand with us). That's why businesses are obsessed with Net Revenue Retention, Gross Revenue Retention, and churn rates.

So you'd think we'd be better at understanding what actually makes our customers tick, right? But a lot of businesses have a hard time making the leap from looking at NRR, GRR, and churn rates on a spreadsheet to actually understanding what customers are trying to do with our products, what they get value from, how they prefer to interact with us, and what frustrates them.

The antidote to this is to build a truly customer-centric organization. The "bad" news is that it's hard to cultivate that without total leadership buy-in and having customer focus in your DNA. But it's not impossible.

In this episode, we're walking through the signs that show whether a company is customer-centric. You could audit your current company to see how it stacks up, or use this to evaluate a company you're considering joining.

To make this harder, companies often do things that SOUND customer centric but actually aren't, so we're diving into some of those false signals too.

Look for things like:

We get into these, and more, in the episode. But let us know what you think: what are the signs that you think differentiate a truly customer-centric org from one that's not, or just giving it lip service? Or tell us from the POV of businesses where you're the customer! What is your experience like working with orgs who are truly customer-centric vs ones who only claim to be?

No, really, what's up with it? Is it a good thing that our jobs create so much of our purpose in life, our communities, and our sense of worth? Is work becoming a RELIGION? In this episode, you can skip out on Berghain because we've got tickets to the hottest club in town: the CXetera book club. And in this edition, we're sharing our takeaways from the short-but-profound "On Work" by Derek Thompson. He takes a sociological look at why work has come to be such an important part of our identities (at least in America), and how recent factors like automation, AI, and remote work are all shifting our relationship to work. And we use the opportunity to talk about our own relationship to work and our careers. As two people who have been lucky enough to find success in our careers, we've seen that to succeed, we need to work hard. To work hard, we need to find meaning. And to find meaning, we need to bring a lot of our identities into the job. And that's worth unpacking. If you're like us, and you're wondering if you have the right relationship to work or whether you should take a different tack, this might be the episode AND the book for you.

Are you looking to break into the CX field in SaaS (software as a service) or AI companies? Maybe you're new to the field altogether, or maybe you're trying to enter the tech world from another industry. If so, get ready for a bunch of new terms and assumptions about how things work!

But worry not - Dee and Adam are here to help. We're going to walk you through some of the most common SaaS terms, describe how many SaaS leaders and execs (not to mention their board members!) look at revenue, and talk about the assumptions that many SaaS professionals make that might not be super obvious to you.

We also recommend registering for this course by Jay Nathan if you're looking to dive much deeper into SaaS metrics and revenue:

https://www.chiefcustomerofficer.io/coveryoursaas

How do you know which thought leaders to listen to? How do you approach sharing your own thought leadership? Can one lead with thoughts if one doesn't have a thought with which to lead? What are thoughts?

In this "-etera" episode, we're tackling the deep thoughts around thought leadership. We trace the roots of thought leadership as a marketing strategy and how, with the rise of social media and particularly LinkedIn, the idea of personal branding and expertise have wrapped around each other like some sort of algorithmically driven ourobouros.

Thanks to the rise of inbound marketing as a top-of-funnel lead generation tactic and personal branding becoming more critical to career opportunities, many of us feel the pressure to be louder. We need to post our cutting-edge practices on LinkedIn and share perfect-sounding frameworks and maturity models at conferences. And let's face it; when we do that, we sound smart! But these same tactics get abused by marketers and consultants with something to sell you, who haven't actually worked in the field. This means they often end up sharing things that sound good and intuitive, but don't work in reality.

It's also difficult, if you're new to a field, to tell the difference between someone who is sharing earned insights and someone who knows the form of storytelling. So how can you tell the difference? In this episode, we share some of the signs of good and bad thought leadership, and also offer some suggestions to people who are looking to build their own careers.

And if that's you, we're not trying to gatekeep. We promise. We came up in our careers at a time where things were a bit different, but we've also faced the temptation to share slick-sounding revelations. But paradoxically, now that we are your CX uncle and auntie, we want to offer you some encouragement in a different way: the stuff you actually don't find that interesting or maybe even are a bit embarrassed about? That's the stuff we want to hear about. That's the stuff that makes you and your program unique. Those are the thoughts that lead, because they're based in real experiences and real things you've tried and learned.

When you're early in your career or new to a field, many of the frameworks, models, and even prepackaged concepts can seem like real revelations - because they help you make sense of a complicated landscape. But the best of those are based on nuanced experience. Focus on building that experience, and share what you're learning along the way.

It's part two of "Dee and Adam go to the CEdMA conference" and this time, we do get White Castle! Or at the very least, we get tasty nuggets of wisdom from Dee based on her experience evolving her team from Customer Education into a Scaled CX organization that includes several programs and channels, including Digital Customer Success. Dee talks about what it means to make this shift, how owning a segment of customers drives clarity and incentives. She shares design principles she's used to build and lead effective organizations, including optionality, data hygiene, digital as a foundational journey, hybrid digital and field models, experimentation, in-house production and experience design, risk monitoring across the journey, and resisting false dichotomies. She shares how to look at the happy path and off-track path, with smart signals and CTAs along the way. We even talk about how you can improve your presentation game using Miro and "Steve Jobs-style keynote" formats.

Check out Dee's slides here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1x0zyKQOdskWX8Mr7andJfFj60USDzmk_/view?usp=drive_link

Alternate title: Adam and Dee go to a conference and do not get White Castle.

In March, Dee and Adam keynoted the CEdMA (Customer Education Management Association) conference in Austin, TX. In this episode, Dee interviews Adam about his keynote presentation. We'll be back with Dee's presentation in the next episode.

Adam's keynote was about Scaled CX ecosystems and what's necessary to make them good. (Spoiler alert: it might have something to do with the unique shape of your business and customer base) Walking through experiences at Optimizely, Checkr, Slack, and Personio, we look at what's in an ecosystem and what makes it tick. Do you need a help center? (yes, probably) What types of training and academy do you need? How about a community? Dev docs? Digital CS? And how should all of those things connect? That's what we get into in this episode.

Find Adam's presentation here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/15NPhlqcTy7VgaNuTI0kEVVA3YNS5WqGO/view?usp=sharing

Plenty of CSMs see training customers as a core part of their job. But is it, actually? And if it is, should it be?

It's a common headache in customer success: who should actually train customers? Should the customer success team be doing training, or should that be someone else's job? Sometimes customers need technical training, sometimes they just need to learn best practices, and sometimes they don't even know basic processes in their own industry.

The question we're grappling with: When does training become a waste of time for customer success managers, and when is it actually crucial for driving customer outcomes?

Follow CXetera on LinkedIn (follow our LinkedIn page!) and visit cxetera.com to keep the discussion going!

Let's talk about CX's lunch, and whether AI is going to eat it.

AI is everywhere—but will it replace Customer Experience as we know it? In this episode of CXetera, hosts Adam and Dee dive into the hype and reality of AI’s impact on CX. From AI-powered chatbots to content creation, localization, and support copilots, we break down where AI is truly transforming the industry—and where human expertise is still irreplaceable.

We explore how AI is reshaping roles, the future of scaled CS, and what it means for customer experience teams moving forward. Is AI a game-changer or just another overhyped trend? Join the conversation and find out.

Follow CXetera on LinkedIn (follow our LinkedIn page!) and visit cxetera.com to keep the discussion going!

It's the first episode of CXetera! So let's start with the big topics. 

Is Customer Success dead? Or is it just evolving? In our debut episode of CXetera, hosts Adam and Dee break down the shifting landscape of CX, the scrutiny around Customer Success, and what the modern CX org should look like. We’ll challenge outdated assumptions, introduce a working model for the future of CX, and explore how these changes impact leaders, teams, and careers in the field. Plus, we’ll share what CXetera is all about—CX, leadership, and the future of work.

Join the conversation on LinkedIn and subscribe to stay ahead of what’s next in CX!

https://www.linkedin.com/company/cxetera/

Materials referenced

Only CFO article: https://www.onlycfo.io/p/the-future-of-customer-success

Funnel vs Flywheel: https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesagencycouncil/2020/11/13/marketing-funnel-vs-marketing-flywheel/