Peter Voss is a pioneer in artificial intelligence (AI), and he coined the term ‘Artificial General Intelligence.’ He is also the founder, CEO, and Chief Scientist at Aigo.ai. For the past 15 years, Voss and his team at Aigo have been perfecting an industry disruptive, highly intelligent and hyper-personalized Chatbot, with a brain, for large enterprise customers.

We talked  about chatbots with a brain, why most chatbots aren't helpful, and we went into real use cases his customers are implementing with his chatbot, Aigo.ai. We even talked about his favorite chatbot use case.

More about Peter:

* His company: http://www.aigo.ai

* On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vosspeter/

* On Twitter: https://twitter.com/peterevoss

* On Medium: https://medium.com/@petervoss

Theresa Lina is the author of the bestseller, Be the Go-To: How to Own Your Competitive Market, Charge More, and Have Customers Love You for It. She is also a long-time Silicon Valley business strategist and practitioner who specializes in helping companies become differentiated, innovative, and more profitable market leaders. As founder and president of Lina Group, Inc., she has more than 25 years of strategy, technology, innovation, and marketing expertise.

Theresa comes back on the show (her pervious episode is 277) because the last time she was here, we didn't have enough time to cover the second part of her subtitle, "...charge more, and have customers love you for it."

So in this episode we focus on that. After all, price is a refection of value, and we need to set our prices based on how valuable we are to our customers. Theresa shows us how to do it.

More about Theresa:

* Her website: Apollomethod.com

* On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theresa-lina/

* Her book: https://www.amazon.com/Be-Go-Competitive-Market-Customers-ebook/dp/B088RKV1WF/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=be+the+go+to&qid=1631277389&sr=8-1

I put two and two together this week to hopefully come up with five. This is an episode about the fourth habit of highly effective people: seek first to understand, then be understood. This idea is based on my podcast appearance with Kristen Hayer on Transforming Experiences in Customer Success and from a recent The Heretic Newsletter edition on listening. Or lack thereof.

Something for me to think about this weekend.

Anita Toth is a churn crusher. In fact, she has taken her 20 years of academic research experience and created The Churn Crusher System for B2B SaaS companies to discover the real reasons behind why their customers churn.

We talked about her ultimate guide to customer exist interviews, having purpose with every customer interview, and how her background is academic research helps her dig deeper and discover what's underneath the reasons customers actually tell you they leave.

More about Anita:

* Her blog we talked about: https://anitatoth.ca/ultimate-customer-exit-interviews/

* The ChurnZero Webinar on Anita's topic. See video below:

* Her website: https://anitatoth.ca/

* On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anitamtoth/

Kristi Faltorusso is the VP of Customer Success at ClientSuccess and she is BACK on the pod to finish what she started on her last appearance (episode 283) when we started to talk about her seven reasons software companies need customer success software. In this episode, we spend the entire episode walking through each one.

And remember the deal, if I came up with an eighth reasons, Kristi would give me a free ticket to the next CS100 Summit.

Listen for the big reveal.

More about Kristi:

* Customer Success Leadership Bootcamp Series: https://www.clientsuccess.com/resources/webinars/customer-success-bootcamp-webinar-series/

* Her Partnership Kick-Off Meeting Blog: https://www.clientsuccess.com/blog/so-long-onboarding-kickoff-its-all-about-the-partnership-from-now-on/

* On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristiserrano/

* CS Real Simple: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cs-real-simple/

* ClientSuccess CS100 Summit: http://cs100.clientsuccess.com/

Mike Arnold is the author of Slacking Off: A Successful Way to Work from Home. Mike has worked from home for 15 years. In fact, he calls himself a work-from-home entrepreneur. His career has put him in consulting roles with some nice brands like Cox Automotive, Verizon Super Pages and several major finance companies.

The counterintuitive book title acknowledges that we all slack off from time to time and it's OK. As long as you get back on track.

We talked to Mike about how in his book he aims to help readers who work from home become aware of favorite ways to slack off (he has an exercise to help you do this), how to use scheduling to make better use of one's time, and how to wield the power of saying "No."

More about Mike:

* His book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08RXFYMDZ/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0

Ruben Rabago is the chief customer officer at Intelllum, and co-author of The Customer Success Professional's Handbook: How to Thrive in One of the World's Fastest Growing Careers - While Driving Growth for Your Company. I've known Ruben since his Gainsight days, and the moment his book came out I've wanted to get him on the show.

We spent most of our time talking about the intersection between three chapters of the book: chapter 2 on the role of the customer success manager, chapter 11 on how CSMs should help customers achieve their business goals, and chapter 12 on driving revenue growth.

Every CSM and aspiring CSM should read this book.

* His book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B083XKZN8C/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

* On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rubenrabago/

Jeff Meyerson is the host of Software Engineering Daily and author of the book, Move Fast: How Facebook Builds Software. I am not a software engineer, and I enjoyed this book. I enjoyed it because it is a book about management and strategy more than it is about building software.

Any business and any team can learn lessons from how Facebook organizes the entire organization around speed. Everything. Culture. Tools. Processes. And even how people join teams. After you read this book, you will think differently about how you might organize your team or company.

More about Jeff:

* His book: Move Face: How Facebook Builds Software - https://www.amazon.com/Move-Fast-Facebook-Builds-Software-ebook/dp/B093HMJ4KB/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=move+fast&qid=1628641198&sr=8-1

* His podcast: Software Engineering Daily - https://softwareengineeringdaily.com/

As Theresa Marcroft shares in her book, 90 percent of companies that fail in the first five years did not concentrate foremost on the customer. A customer-centric mindset, therefore, is the antidote to failing as a business and a customer-centric mindset is the beginning of the path to revenue.

How does Theresa know?

The stats.

According to research from CB Insights, the number one reason startups fail is "no market need" (42%), and the number two reason startups fail is "ran out of cash" (29%). This is why, as Theresa describes in her book, The Path to Revenue: Secrets of Successful Tech Leaders, the secret to viability, sustainability, and growth is to embrace a customer-centric mindset and get on the path to revenue.

We talked about what that path to revenue looks like. Hint: the path to revenue is how you chart a course through the technology adoption lifecycle, advancing from one market segment to the next larger market segment, and adapting your messaging and your marketing strategy along the way.

The way Theresa puts it, I feel like I can design a marketing path through the adoption lifecycle and know what to do every step of the way.

More about Theresa:

* Her book: https://www.amazon.com/Path-Revenue-Secrets-Successful-Leaders-ebook/dp/B08J8CD9P2/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=path+to+revenue&qid=1628278949&sr=8-2

* Her company: https://www.market-savvy.com/

* On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theresamarcroft-cmo/

Chris Aubuchon is the director of customer success at Cycle.io, which helps companies deploy modern cloud container orchestration. We each had a homework assignment for this podcast; to read the book, Product-led onboarding: How to turn new users into lifelong customers by Ramli John and Wes Bush.

Guest what we talked about?

More about Chris:

* On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopher-aubuchon-a682707/

* Cycle.io: https://cycle.io/about-us/

* Cycle's Slack Group: http://Slack.cycle.io

* The book we read, Product-Led Onboarding