In episode 2 of 2 with Stacie Ward, VP of Customer Success, Stacie shares a prediction: the best CCOs of the future will have backgrounds in Product and CS.

Seven years ago, Stacie Ward made the switch from being a Sales manager to a VP of Customer Success. Today she joined ‘wellsaid to explain why she made this move and the specific skills she knows a Sales manager needs to successfully transition into a CS role.

In our final episode with Asaff Zamir, Asaff explains his approach to risk assessment by treating customer accounts as a subjective ecosystem. To do an accurate assessment of account health, he advocates for looking at each persona within an account and analyzing each person's perspective, experience, relationship strength, and personality.

In episode 2 of 3 with Asaff Zamir, VP of Customer Success at Siemplify, Asaff shares how to coach CSMs on how to nurture positive emotional experiences with their customers using six key elements: personalization, integrity, (setting) expectations, empathy, time to value, and responsibility.

Asaff Zamir, VP of Customer Success at Siemplify, argues that being in Customer Success is much like being a customer psychologist—you have to describe, explain, predict, and change the behavior of others. He explains why it’s crucial for CSMs to “identify the needs of their customers and drive confidence and trust through transparency.”

Tanya Strauss, Director of Customer Success Strategy and Operations at ServiceNow, breaks down best practices in preventing risks via a streamlined escalation process. She advocates for defining categories of risk, documenting tribal knowledge about historical escalations, and building a team whose sole focus is on helping CSMs with fire prevention, not firefighting.

Lauren Humphrey, former VP of Customer Success and Payments GTM and current advisor at brightwheel dives into lessons learned from working with a high volume of SMB customers. Her tips include making every touchpoint count, thinking of onboarding as a product, delivering high quality experiences through specialization, and investing in systems early on.

Here’s part 2 of our debate with Dave Jackson, CCO at DeepCrawl and CEO of TheCustomer.Co, on the pros and cons of assigning “ownership” within companies. Chris and Dave cover: how CEOs can be thoughtful about breaking down silos, the viability of company-wide commission plans, and more.

This is part 1 of our discussion with Dave Jackson, CCO at DeepCrawl and CEO of TheCustomer.Co, on the topic of “ownership.” Dave explains why he thinks ownership is “built on the bankrupt idea of hierarchy” and Chris makes the case that every decision must have one owner.

In episode 2 of 2 with Keri Keeling, the Global Head of Customer Success Innovation & Intelligence at VMware, Keri digs into her latest project—creating “listening posts” to collect and measure customer sentiment across the user journey.