Impact Show

ON TODAY’S EPISODE:
The relationship between customer success and product is crucial in ensuring that the right decisions are made to make the product a success. In this week’s episode, Johan and Lincoln dive into the topic of Customer Success and Product collaboration. They discuss the role of CSMs in providing feedback and valuable insights, as well as the importance of having a structured process for communication between the two teams. They share tips on how to make the most of customer success interactions and how to improve the overall customer experience.

THIS WEEK’S QUESTION:
“What is the best way for Customer Success and Product to collaborate? How should product feedback be fed back from Customer Success to Product in a consistent and structured way so that the right product decisions can be made?”

TOPICS BEING ADDRESSED:
* The role of Customer Success Managers in providing feedback and insights to Product teams
* The process for CSMs to communicate valuable customer insights to the Product team
* The relationship between Customer Success and Product and how to collaborate effectively to make the right product decisions

QUOTES:
Johan Nilsson (02:42): “Maybe 5% of feature requests will actually become a feature”

Lincoln Murphy (05:39): “The user that you're talking to didn't necessarily want to switch to your product”

Lincoln Murphy (07:11): “It’s  better if we have a system for collecting feature requests that the community can vote on.”

Lincoln Murphy (07:46): “You want to make sure that they feel heard, but without thinking that by being heard that it's going to be implemented.”

Lincoln Murphy (09:26): “There's an opportunity there for  the product side to sort of be a little bit more transparent in how these decisions are made.”

Johan Nilsson (11:17): “Passing things on to product and kind of excusing our product for not having that feature will not help you either.”

Lincoln Murphy (12:43): “As part of that trusted advisor role there's an expectation that the CSM is going to be advocating for the customer behind the scenes”

Lincoln Murphy (14:20): “There needs to be an internal path for this information to be conveyed from customer success to product”

Lincoln Murphy (19:15): “Make a little compliment sandwich, share an interesting use case, then an issue that needs to be addressed, and then a piece of positive feedback.”

Do you want more of this? Check out Impact Academy for interactive Customer Success training programs. https://www.impactdemy.com/

Do you have a question you want us to answer? Submit it here.

ON TODAY’S EPISODE:
How many customers should a CSM manage? And how do I determine this? This is a common but complex question which is why in this week’s episode of Impact Weekly Johan and Lincoln cover the importance of understanding the elements involved in capacity planning and creating a plan that takes into consideration the appropriate experience for customers across all lifecycle stages. They offer insights and strategies to help organizations effectively plan and allocate resources to provide the best customer experience possible.

THIS WEEK’S QUESTION:
“What is the method to calculate how many accounts a CSM should manage?”

TOPICS BEING ADDRESSED:
* Aspects to consider when doing capacity planning
* Common misconceptions and problems about capacity planning
* The importance of Lifecycle Capacity planning

QUOTES:
Lincoln Murphy (01:19):
“I think we need to be careful that we're not just working with accounts.”

Lincoln Murphy (04:40):
“What we wanna do is get to a point where we can have some predictability”

Lincoln Murphy (07:12):
“And so even where we're planning, we're still gonna lag behind because we're not taking into consideration all of the growth from sales.”

Johan Nilsson (07:43):
“Customer success needs to take charge and make the plan"

Lincoln Murphy (10:51):
“If your CFO is coming to you with numbers that were pulled from some benchmark report, you as head of customer success, need to advocate for yourself and your team and push back on those numbers.”

Lincoln Murphy (12:58):
“Segmenting customers based on what you pay, is really just a continuation of that old school account management way of thinking.”

Lincoln Murphy (15:43):
“We really need to understand what our customer's appropriate experiences is and group our customers together like that.”

Johan Nilsson (19:12):
“Some things we do too high level, and this is one of the things you need to spend some time on”

Do you want more of this? Check out Impact Academy for interactive Customer Success training programs. https://www.impactdemy.com/

Do you have a question you want us to answer? Submit it here.

ON TODAY’S EPISODE:
Do you want to solve the mystery of customer ghosting and win back your customers attention? Tune in to this week's episode of Impact Weekly! Johan and Lincoln break down the reasons why customers may stop engaging and give actionable tips on how to re-engage and keep them engaged.

THIS WEEK’S QUESTION:
What do you do when a customer is ghosting you?

TOPICS BEING ADDRESSED:
* Examining root cause of customers ghosting us
* Aligning customer messaging with their goals and priorities
* Strategies to re-engage the customer

QUOTES:
Johan Nilsson (01:13):
"Don't let it become emotional"

Johan Nilsson (05:15):
"Turn the table here and ask yourself: "Am I ghosting someone in my life right now?"

Lincoln Murphy (08:29):
"It's not like somebody is sitting there intentionally thinking about ways to ignore you!"

Lincoln Murphy (09:03):
"We're not always evil and nefarious in our intentions."

Lincoln Murphy (09:32):
"We're overestimating our own importance."

Lincoln Murphy (11:35):
"They're not ignoring you. They just don't care."

Lincoln Murphy (12:46):
"Think about what's in it for them"

Johan Nilsson (13:18):
"You need to make sure you are talking about the right goal for the right customer"

Lincoln Murphy (15:56):
"Taken a few minutes with the team to kind of brainstorm on what could possibly happen"

Johan Nilsson (18:25):
"Instead of trying to achieve everything at once [...] we need to break it down in steps to open the door again."

Do you want more of this? Check out Impact Academy for interactive Customer Success training programs. https://www.impactdemy.com/

Do you have a question you want us to answer? Submit it here.

ON TODAY’S EPISODE:
In this week's episode of Impact Weekly, Johan and Lincoln delve into the often-daunting task of communicating pricing changes to customers. Whether it's upper management's decision or a necessary shift in your business model, it's crucial to approach the topic with a plan to minimize any potential negative impact on customer satisfaction. Tune in for expert tips and strategies on how to effectively communicate these changes and keep both your customers and team happy.

THIS WEEK’S QUESTION:
“If upper and senior management has increased prices across the board for all products and services, what’s the best course of action for the Customer Success Manager and team to reduce the blow?”

TOPICS BEING ADDRESSED:
* Managing Pricing Changes
* Communicating with Customers Effectively
* Minimizing Negative Impact of Pricing Changes

QUOTES:
Lincoln Murphy (02:03): “if you have a high price, there's just automatically a positioning of this being a premium product”

Lincoln Murphy (05:55): “The main thing to focus on here, which is short-term thinking versus long-term strategic “

Johan Nilsson (07:12): “You need to have a clear logic behind this price increase.”

Lincoln Murphy (08:57): “We really need to get away from this idea of difficult conversations.”

Lincoln Murphy (09:00): “We really need to get away from this idea that CSMs shouldn't be commercial.”

Lincoln Murphy (10:33): “Knowing that this is something that your customers are gonna expect will automatically soften that blow.”

Johan Nilsson (12:15): “Empathy in this case is really key.”

Lincoln Murphy (16:20): “You want to tell them as soon as possible because that will help soften the blow.”

Lincoln Murphy (17:32): “Give your CSMs as much of a heads up on this and as much lead time as possible.”

Do you want more of this? Check out Impact Academy for interactive Customer Success training programs. https://www.impactdemy.com/

Do you have a question you want us to answer? Submit it here.

ON TODAY’S EPISODE:
Many are experiencing a shift in customer ownership within their customer success organization. But is this actually valuable for the customer and how do you keep a clear communication across all parts of the customer lifecycle? In this week’s episode of Impact Weekly Johan and Lincoln will dive into the development and potential necessity for team-based Customer Success. They discuss what is needed to stay ahead of the curve and navigate the challenges that come with multiple stakeholders in the customer journey.

THIS WEEK’S QUESTION:
"Is a team approach to customer success the future norm? How to ensure a seamless and value-driven customer journey for the customer?"

TOPICS BEING ADDRESSED:
* Common misconceptions about multiple touchpoints
* Strategies to ensure a successful customer journey

QUOTES:
Lincoln Murphy (02:43): “The trend is definitely specialization across the customer life cycle.”

Lincoln Murphy (03:12): “CSM does not stand for customer success magician.”

Johan Nilsson (04:20): “When you see your customer base growing a lot, you will see specialization coming up as a way to become more efficient.”

Lincoln Murphy (05:16): “The company owns the customer, and there are just people along the way that are ultimately responsible for the customer's success.”

Lincoln Murphy (05:41): “This idea of ownership kind of muddies the water a little bit.”

Johan Nilsson (09:31): “Bringing in specialists is like an overseen opportunity.”

Johan Nilsson (09:58): “Looking at different roles can be a way to free up time and to find new opportunities to grow with your customers.”

Lincoln Murphy (12:30): “If you see a place in your customer life cycle where it would make sense to have an SME [...] it might be exactly what you and your customers need in your unique situation.”

Lincoln Murphy (14:47): “There's a misconception that customers don't like to work with multiple people.”

Johan Nilsson (17:06): “Collaboration between these teams needs to be on a really good level.”

Lincoln Murphy (19:44): “That's where really good leadership comes in, sort of making sure that you're creating an environment and bringing in the right people who will have that attitude”

Lincoln Murphy (20:10): “We're all here to ensure the customer is successful.”

Do you want more of this? Check out Impact Academy for interactive Customer Success training programs. https://www.impactdemy.com/

Do you have a question you want us to answer? Submit it here.

ON TODAY'S EPISODE:
As a Customer Success Manager, expansion is part of your responsibilities, but what do you do if you feel pressure to drive expansion but lack the confidence to know where to start? Tune in to this week's episode of Impact Weekly, where Johan and Lincoln will help you navigate this common challenge. They'll explain how to achieve the right mindset and position yourself as a strategic advisor, as well as provide tips on using orchestration and social proof to prepare your customers for expansion. Don't let the pressure get you down – tune in and learn how to overcome your doubts and drive successful expansion.

THIS WEEKS QUESTION:
“I'm getting more and more pressure to upgrade and expand on my customers, but I'm not feeling confident in doing that. What should I do?”

TOPICS BEING ADDRESSED:
*Achieving the right mindset and objective confidence
*Positioning yourself as a strategic advisor
*Using orchestration and social proof 

QUOTES:
Johan Nilsson (00:39): ”I think we can interpret pressure here both as pressure coming from a boss or manager but also where you have your own pressure to do more, and maybe you feel that you should be doing more expansion but you're just not sure on how to do that.”

Lincoln Murphy (03:50): “My first discussion with anybody that wants to expand is, do you have additional things to sell?”

Lincoln Murphy (04:49):”As customers become more successful with us, there's going to be logical opportunities for them to expand their relationship with us.”

Lincoln Murphy (06:06): ”When you try to employ the same tactics that you would on totally new people, you can actually end up hurting the relationship that we have with the existing customer because we're treating them like we don't have that relationship.”

Lincoln Murphy (08:36): “Nobody is under any delusion that this isn't a commercial relationship. It's right there in your title, Customer Success.”

Lincoln Murphy (11:49): “You have to understand that expansion is part of success.”

Lincoln Murphy (15:43): “This whole idea of expansion shouldn't just be on the CSM to figure out for their customers. This needs to be approached in a more strategic way.”

Johan Nilsson (16:05): “A lot of companies are still missing a lot of opportunities when it comes to setting up their pricing and plans for expansion focused growth.”

Do you want more of this? Check out Impact Academy for interactive Customer Success training programs. https://www.impactdemy.com/

Do you have a question you want us to answer? Submit it here.

ON TODAY'S EPISODE:
Are you frustrated by the lack of preparation some customers seem to have during the onboarding process? Do you wonder if it's a problem with the sales team, or if there's something else going on? Find out by joining Johan and Lincoln on this week's episode of Impact Weekly, where they'll discuss this common issue and provide strategies for overcoming it.

THIS WEEKS QUESTION:
“A lot of my customers are not prepared when starting onboarding. I feel like sales is cutting corners. Should sales have done more before handing the customer over? And what can I do to overcome this?”

TOPICS BEING ADDRESSED:
* Common challenges in the onboarding process
* Causes for unprepared customers
* Measures to take to avoid unprepared customers


QUOTES:
Johan Nilsson (02:09):”There's a lot of things being covered in the sales process they will not go through everything that you might want to know, in the onboarding phase.”

Lincoln Murphy (07:02): “It's not evil salespeople. It's usually the customer either misunderstanding or just not hearing.”

Johan Nilsson (08:40):”So we also need to check ourselves as customer success managers that we cannot expect to have everything served to us when we start onboarding.”

Lincoln Murphy (11:28): “CSMs are doing everything with their customers across all lifecycle stages. [...] And this is where you really need to look at capacity planning.”

Lincoln Murphy (13:21): “There's three things that customers hate and that’s surprises, unknowns and repeating themselves.”

Lincoln Murphy (15:30): “Just open a Google doc and start writing down everything that a customer has to do on their own, outside of the product, on their own inside of the product and things that you will do with them and things that you will do for them.”

Lincoln Murphy (21:31):”If you help the salesperson close a deal, you're now their best friend”

Lincoln Murphy (25:18): “Don't let perfection get in the way of actually making progress.”

Do you want more of this? Check out Impact Academy for interactive Customer Success training programs. https://www.impactdemy.com/

Do you have a question you want us to answer? Submit it here.

ON TODAY'S EPISODE:
Are you tired of losing customers during the onboarding process? Do you feel like your efforts are going to waste as you watch them disengage and potentially downgrade? It's time to turn things around and take control of the onboarding experience. This week on Impact Weekly, Johan and Lincoln will be breaking down the key factors that contribute to an effective onboarding process. They'll be sharing the most common mistakes businesses make and how to avoid them, so you can keep your customers engaged and invested in your product.

THIS WEEKS QUESTION:
“My customers seem really excited when they come in to onboarding, but they kind of lose interest and we lose momentum in the onboarding. How can I keep my customers engaged during onboarding?”

TOPICS BEING ADDRESSED:
*Effective onboarding for success
*Maximizing adoption and engagement
*Managing customer expectations.

QUOTES:
Lincoln Murphy (01:00): “Onboarding is probably the most structured life cycle stage”

Lincoln Murphy (02:14): “I call onboarding the functional valley of sadness.”

Johan Nilsson (07:09): “What experienced customer success managers or onboarding specialists do is that they put a lot of sense of urgency in the beginning to get things moving:”

Lincoln Murphy (12:16): “Onboarding is not about technical engineering or the functional aspects of it. It's really about social engineering.”

Lincoln Murphy (16:49): “There's three things that customers hate, surprises, unknowns, and repeating themselves.”

Do you want more of this? Check out Impact Academy for interactive Customer Success training programs. https://www.impactdemy.com/

Do you have a question you want us to answer? Submit it here.

ON TODAY'S EPISODE:
The Quarterly Business Review is a popularized concept in Customer Success but what it entails can differ a lot and in some cases it can actually work against us in our job making the customer successful.

In this week’s episode of Impact Weekly, Johan and Lincoln challenge common misconceptions around QBRs and put forward some alternatives that will deliver more value to the customer. They also discuss operational metrics and the pros and cons of setting quotas for customer appointments.

THIS WEEKS QUESTION:
“I have a target of doing at least four business reviews with my customers. It eats up a lot of time, and I don't see a lot of positive coming out of these QBRs.”

TOPICS BEING ADDRESSED:
* Operational metrics
* The different kinds of customer meetings

QUOTES:
Johan Nilsson (02:11): “Putting a metric into customer success can be really harmful."

Lincoln Murphy (04:00): “Where we see things kind of go off the rails is when these operational metrics, are just there without any consideration for why”

Lincoln Murphy (08:50): “In theory, if the customer was seeing something positive out of it, you as the CSM would be seeing something positive out of it too. But it's also possible that the CSM could be seeing something positive, but the customer is not.”

Johan Nilsson (09:58):” Maybe we should start moving from what should this person do to how can we help them. What are these types of meetings that we have with the customers and how should we do these meetings?”

Lincoln Murphy (13:32): “Also if you want executives to show up a trick is to simply call it an executive business review because executives are attracted to things that say executive”

Lincoln Murphy (15:38): ”If you don't know what's in it for them and you can't figure out why they would care about that, then it probably shouldn't be part of the meeting.”

Do you want more of this? Check out Impact Academy for interactive Customer Success training programs. https://www.impactdemy.com/

Do you have a question you want us to answer? Submit it here.

ON TODAY'S EPISODE:
We have all been in the unpleasant situation of trying to win back a customer that is about to churn, but how much time should you spend doing that? What should we consider before trying to save a customer and are there important differences here? In this week’s episode of Impact Weekly, Johan and Lincoln cover the many aspects of customer win-backs and how to make sure you leverage your time, energy and focus.

THIS WEEKS QUESTION:
“How much time should you spend trying to win back a customer? When is it over?”

TOPICS BEING ADDRESSED:
* Success potential is a game changer
* Low vs. high percentage activities
* What high impact interventions mean

QUOTES:
Lincoln Murphy (02:04): “If you're trying to scale your organization as a head of customer success or as a csm [...], you're gonna wanna focus on high percentage activities.”

Johan Nilsson (07:32): “Sometimes a customer will inform you that they are thinking of canceling. And I think that's also a quite important distinction to make if they haven't canceled, but they're informing you or they're looking at alternatives or thinking of canceling. That's something to pick up on as well.”

Lincoln Murphy (10:18): “I'm not gonna try to save those customers that don't have success potential. The reality is if you spend any time with them and you are able to save them, you're just prolonging the inevitable because they're, they're going to churn out.”

Lincoln Murphy (11:08): “We need to be transparent about how we got to this point. We know how we got to this point. They know how we got to this point. And if we choose to ignore that, then that could hurt trust.”

Lincoln Murphy (13:18): ”Customers that don't have success potential generally don't stay that long, because they're not gonna be able to get the value that they need from this relationship.”

Johan Nilsson (14:44): “It's also important for a customer success manager to be able to say, I'm done here. I'll have to move on to the next one.”

Lincoln Murphy (18:56): “If you make them give you an exit interview before you know we can finalize the cancellation, what you are doing is guaranteeing that you're gonna get really bad intel.”

Do you want more of this? Check out Impact Academy for interactive Customer Success training programs. https://www.impactdemy.com/

Do you have a question you want us to answer? Submit it here.