Defining Outcomes Strategies: Eric Gardner's Journey in Customer Success

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Welcome to the Customer Success Pivot yout Career podcast. I'm Alex White and my co host is David Loketes. Our podcast is focusing on how AI is impacting the customer success profession and how to best position yourself for your next career Pivot. How are you doing, David?

Speaker C: Alex, I'm wonderful. How are you doing?

Speaker B: Good. What's on your mind?

Speaker C: I always struggle because there's always so much going through my mind. But as we're getting into the summer, actually, we're halfway through summer, I guess right now it's sort of a lot of it's been chill, but a lot of it's also been following up on a lot of the news around AI, how companies are trying to use it, reading about failures in AI, a lot of people expecting it to be this shiny thing, which it is a shiny new thing, but not really understanding how to leverage it, how to continue to have it grow in our careers, and how to benefit from it. So, as I said, we're in the middle of summer. Maybe I just need to take a step back, get out in nature, take a walk or a hike and come back and revisit it with a little bit clearer thoughts than I have right now. How about you? Yeah.

Speaker B: I listened to another podcast that I highly recommend. It's called the Artificial Intelligence Show. It was actually originally people in marketing, and they're doing AI for marketing, and then they expanded it. I get some of my certifications and everything from them. But I was listening to the episode this past week and what they do in an hour and a half every week, they summarize everything happening with the different models and licensing, and they go down all these things. And the great thing is they do these surveys and they come back with information. And what they're finding out is people aren't getting trained on this and everyone's still siloed. But I thought there was one interesting stat that kind of stood out to me is they said people are starting to see AI benefiting them in some small ways, but now that they have the free time, they're not necessarily doing stuff strategically with that free time. They're not being essentially, I don't know why they have to be told this, but they're not leveraging that free time efficiently. Now that they have it, they're using that as either a break in what they're doing or what. But it was an interesting little conversation around that. So I don't know what your thoughts are on that.

Speaker C: It's interesting. It's not a new phenomena. So to speak with people not knowing or utilizing their time properly. I think we have a tendency to get in the weeds and not really spend time in understanding where we should apply our time and having a good approach to whatever it might be, whatever an issue might be, whatever training or learning it might be, we just sort of just haphazardly just jump into stuff. So when you talk about people not maximizing their time or not know how to use it, I think a lot of those folks could use one of two things. Number one is a little bit of coaching or guidance from someone, leadership or just a mentor for him in, in general. The other one is for them to look into themselves and say, where do I want to be? What can I do to really enhance what I do? I was reading something this weekend, I don't know if you remember. He's been around for a long time. I think his name is Bob Jenkins, always goes by Uncle Bob. And he talked about a little bit of an article. And he's well into his 60s or 70s, been doing this a long time. He started coding in the 60s and for all intensive purposes, he's been developing software and writing books and all sorts of stuff. Heavy on the XP stuff since the 60s. And a lot of people were complaining about AI, do I have to check all the code that's being written by AI? And he came out with a really brilliant statement. And I don't have it developed my fingertips, but it was with all my experience, even as I think he referred to himself as an old geezer. Even with that, I leveraged the tool and I train it to code like I want, but I set it up with how to test itself, how to go right. Business design, development. How do I ask AI to test against the code? That way I know when it's gone through and it's validated against all the test scenarios. So here you have something that's been doing this a long time is learning how to adapt and how to leverage AI in the way that we normally would do as writing code. But how are we effectively using it? And I think way too many people are getting spun up around the axle about what does it mean to me. Rather than beginning to peel it apart and say, how do I fit in? How do I apply what my strengths are? Again, it's easy for me to say, but I think rather than the woe is me type approach, peel it back and start. Lay out maybe three, four, five things you want to accomplish. And start, uh, at one, get a mentor. And if you learn something or if it applies great. If not, throw it away. It was a lesson learned.

Speaker B: Yeah. And it's interesting. It goes back to the basics. It goes back to when we started programming and doing all those things. You have to continue to do the same type of work. And I think people are thinking AI can make me shortcut a bunch of it, but if you don't have the controls in place to validate it. Leverage AI as a tool to validate what AI does. And I was actually using AI yesterday and asking something, it was around Canva. It's confusing the way they do photos and designs and projects and everything. And I asked it about folders and it said, oh, the folders are 100 hierarchy that you use in different areas. And I'm like, that does not sound right. That's not what I see here. Because I put something in one folder, but I don't see it in the other folders. And I question it and said, are you sure this is. Because I don't think that's right. Oh, thank you for challenging me on that. So it's, I mean, just take a basic example. That's something that's non coding and just validating and making sure from a coding perspective, which is much more impactful, that you build something that actually validates, Validates what you're doing and think of AI as a tool to make you better.

Speaker C: Uh, yeah. And he's challenging the mindset. And it's interestingly, you challenge the results and the folder structure and how it was being used. How many people, not just there, take things that are spit out through AI as gospel. Okay. It's got a lot more data points, it can bring in a lot more information, it can process things quicker and it spits out answers to me pretty rapidly. But that doesn't mean it's right. And I think you need to just like we've done in the past challenge. Listen, don't jump into the assumptions. If a person tells you something, you have a tendency to say, okay, is it true? How close to the truth is it? But if AI does it, all of a sudden people are just jumping in like, bam. That is the answer. No, you, uh, still need to have the same tenets the way you operate. You need to have the same skepticism in when you're given results and validate, check out the stuff. It's great that you can get there faster, but you still have to have the same core skills and attention to what you're doing. So anyhow.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. And I think just to wrap this up from an AI Perspective I keep hearing everywhere. It still comes down to the basics of AI is great and the technology is there, but do you have good data? Do you have good workflows? Do you understand the processes? Is there information in people's heads that do things, but now you have to automate it and what's the impact of that? All those type of things from a change management perspective, we're still humans and you still have to bring people through the process and you have to have a right process and all those things as well to do it. So I keep seeing things around that.

Speaker C: So, okay, see my comment about going on a hike, sitting by a campfire and just chilling out, maybe a good approach for a couple weeks and then come back and try to sort it out.

Speaker B: Hey, everyone needs to refresh. I'm um, envious of Europe and they shut down in August and come back refreshed and I think everyone should do that. If you have unlimited pto, remember they do that because you're less likely to use pto. So make sure you're managing that and taking time off because you come back and you make up that two weeks from vacation in an instant, being able to have a fresh look at things. So everyone take a break. We'll see you in a couple weeks.

Speaker A: Bye.

Speaker B: No, I'm just kidding. Let's get into our episode. Here we have Eric Gardner from Plan Hat. So let's get to it. Today's guest is Eric Gardner, Manager of deployment and growth strategy at Plan hat. With over 10 years in customer success field, Eric has worked at companies such as Podium, Nice and Viya, uh, before joining Planhat in 2023 as a CSM. Welcome to the show Eric.

Speaker A: Awesome, thanks for having me.

Speaker B: So to get us started, Eric, why don't we dive into your background, talk a little bit about how you got into the customer success field and we'll take it from there.

Speaker A: So for the past 10 plus years have been working in SaaS and mainly customer facing, revenue facing roles. Just like you said. Started out with some strategy internships, moved into sales in my first SaaS gig and quickly realized that I enjoyed developing long term relationships where in sales it was a, uh, very quick transaction and high quantity and so I got into implementation where I went into enterprise implementation pretty quickly and then I ended up going into enterprise customer management which I realized I really enjoyed with the strategy focusing on adoption, focusing on long term relationships and the revenue growth aspect too. And from there I had the chance to build a post sales CS team for a few years and was A director of customer success still, same focus, adoption, long term relationships and focusing on revenue retention and revenue increase. And that's where I actually found planhat where I'm at now. And I purchased planhat and had the chance to join planhat three years ago. So we have a team here of customer strategists that have had some leadership roles, been in post sales CS a long time because that's what we're doing is we're consulting post sales leaders and CS leaders and have had the chance to consult with hundreds of CS leaders. Now at this point in my three years at planhet, so as planhat's customer uh, management tool, and that's what we're focusing on is the overall customer strategy and how to retain and grow revenue. I think of my career as kind of a revenue function, but focused on a middle, uh, ground between strategy and relationship management as well.

Speaker C: Cool. And again, welcome Eric. With all your experience and all the folks you're talking to, I think we're kind of at a pinnacle point where customer success is being redefined, where the emphasis is and what people are demanding of it and where it's going. So it'd be fun to start off the call with just getting your ideas or thoughts on where we're going in the customer success role, what organizations are looking for and maybe how they're dividing or subdividing what the role is and responsibilities.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a good question. And as you both know, you've been in the space a long time, CES if you will, customer success, customer strategy, customer management, customer experience, however you want to define it. It can be so different from organization to organization, depending on the size of the company, depending on where the organization rolls up, if you're rolling up to operations or if you're rolling up to a revenue function. That's usually where in my role, some of my first questions come is what KPIs or metrics are you responsible for? And it seems like as you both know it's divided. You either are adoption, CSAT focused and you don't touch revenue or you do. And so I think that's where my thought goes to. Your question is I think most post sales teams focus on driving outcomes. I think that's always going to be a part of the role and I'm seeing that more and more with the rise of AI. But specifically I think commercial skill sets in owning a revenue piece, owning a growth or revenue function, either you're primarily responsible for the renewal and retaining the revenue or you're primarily responsible for that expansion number.

Speaker C: So diving deeper into the outcome part of it is I think really important because for years we've always focused on delivery and today the way that we're going from a billing perspective and inserting AI, actually being able to define what the outcomes are. I think there's a relationship between adoption use and value added that that helps define what those outcomes are. How does that sort of look? If we could expand on that, uh,

Speaker A: in my role right now, I think it's important that you have an idea of what the service when you sign up with a vendor, like what's, what is the goal and can you define what success looks like with the partnership with the vendor, regardless of what you are? I happen to be in the customer success space. And so our metrics, oftentimes, if we can define that up front, I find that a little bit challenging sometimes with post sales leaders, it's a little bit open. We know we want to have time, be more efficient for our teams. We know we need to do more with less, do more at scale. Maybe they want to expand their digital touch strategy and get better with that. I find it hard for CS leaders to pinpoint what is the business outcome. How are you going to bring this back in six months or in a year in our partnership and evangelize to the rest of your executive team? Uh, the value that we're seeing in our partnership and that's where I can really step in and provide examples and say, you know, well, we want to cut time in our onboarding and what are you currently doing benchmarking and what's realistic for you to improve or what's your current gross revenue retention and how can we move the needle? 3 to 5% or net revenue retention or maybe you're responsible for CSQLS and just finding growth opportunities and can we benchmark that and find an opportunity to increase that? So there's a lot of processes that we're launching within a partnership, working together. And I think if you can just define, well, what's an idea of a business outcome that you would be proud of and can bring this back and channel in the organization. Short true roi. I try to help them keep that in the forefront of their vision and bring that back and we want to quantify as much as we can because these days you're not just signing up for a software. You want to make sure you have a thought partner and somebody who can really push you toward your goal and keep that and actually prove that out. I think of it oftentimes as cheesy as this sounds, like a personal trainer, if you will, they might help you keep a goal within vision and help you attain that goal and keep you accountable, keep you responsible for it. And sometimes you might not be able to see the end where you're going, but maybe I can help them, give them examples of what those business outcomes are. So I, uh, think we'll see that more and more in a statement of work or in a contract. You're actually, you're including that in what you're purchasing and you're saying we need to get to this point and this is why we're signing up with you. I'm signing up for you to achieve this goal. And so we, I haven't necessarily seen that yet, but I hear about it and I think it's happening more and more. And I think that's also where the commercial skillset comes in too, like the influencing. And it's not just driving revenue, but it's driving outcomes. And you'll see that in the commercial skill set as well.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think as SaaS companies, as they redefine how they license their software, they're looking now at uh, how do they get outcome based. So you're right on that cusp that was brought up by David as part of this conversation about how do you start to look at tangible outcomes that you can start charging for because the license model goes away with AI. Because AI, you can have one AI work the amount of 50 people or a hundred or whatever, depending on the size of your company. So as you start to make that shift, I think that's going to be real important to define and you hit on a few of them, how does that play out in the market?

Speaker A: I think if you're a software company and you're not talking about that on your post sales side, you're behind at this point. I think that every software company who has AI as part of what they're building, which is probably every company now, we have to include that in terms of the post sales, retention and growth, you have to include that outcome piece. So yeah, we're talking about it. A lot of our customers are a lot of my peers and my network. It's something that is a part of everything that we're doing now. Yep.

Speaker B: Yeah. And one of the things I think is interesting is your title, Eric, because people could see that and think, well, he used to be in cs, but he's not anymore. But you are a CS leader. Can you talk a little bit about that change in title?

Speaker A: Yeah, we are seeing that in the space, we are making AI deployment a big part of what we do. And so I think we'll see more and more titles like Deployment Strategy. We're Deployment Strategist if you will. I've seen a few other companies make the change. Um, I think we'll see it more in the space. Me specifically, I manage the commercial aspect too. So deployment Strategy, we're setting you up for success, we're helping you with your strategy on how to roll the overall partnership out. But I'm focused on revenue growth at the end of the day as well. So that's a part of my role specifically. And yeah, I think that there is the connection to AI and I think you'll see that more and more. And not to say that the customer success verbiage will go away, I think it will be around for some time. But I think we'll see more and more titles like this. And you're seeing it a little bit. It's not just Deployment Strategy, but you're seeing a bunch of different acronyms used out there tying in as, as we have more AI related roles. Like you're seeing the rise of the forward, uh, deployed engineer. Like that's a big topic right now and it's not necessarily what I'm doing as part of my role, but I think you're going to see a lot of roles similar to the forward deployed engineer pop up as well as a part of this.

Speaker C: I actually like the change in the title because Eric, I think it sends a, uh, strong message as to what needs to be first and foremost in the adoption of whatever tool you're using in your case plan hat obviously. And it also helps I think connect the dots to what is a true outcome. So you're able through that, your role at least to in the eyes of your partner say, hey, we're in, we're all invested. You've signed up for this delivery. Here we are. And whether it's in the sow or not, it begins to imply what success is and how to drive it. And that ultimately, as I see it, the connection there helps drive licensing, helps drive revenue, repeat revenue, just by usage. And it becomes part of the customers or your partner, so to speak, their DNA, once it's part of their DNA and they need that to do their job and it's helping them become awesome or successful. I think then it drives revenue from an outcome base. So they're also on the hook, uh, when they're signing up internally and they're going to get funding. Hey, here's why we're doing it. Here's how it's outlined here. We have a partner that's helping us get there. I think it sends a very strong message, at least on the surface to me.

Speaker A: Yep.

Speaker B: So Eric, I'm going to go back a little bit in the conversation because I had something that came up, but we were going down a great path when people are looking for a CS role. We talked a little bit about the difference of where the role rolls up to which you don't. You can't really tell a lot of times in a job posting. Can we explore in this conversation? Because my thinking is when I look at it, I look to see do they have account managers? So account managers have become CSMs and now CSMs are becoming account managers, stuff like that. Is that kind of something that someone that's looking for a role should look at? Do they have account managers? But they have customer success, so they're probably going to be more adoption if they don't have account managers, maybe that's going to be more revenue based depending on how the sales. Maybe there's an open sales posting. They need to look at that. What are your kind of thoughts on that to help our listeners? Because our podcast is about people coming into the CS field. They're moving up. Can you dissect that from your thoughts?

Speaker A: Yeah, I can give you my perspective on it. I think this is like the age old since I've been in the space just over the last 10 plus years. I see so many LinkedIn posts on this topic like account management versus customer success. Are they the same? Should they be one in the same, very passionate people on both sides? No, they're different. Yes, they are the same. But my personal opinion on it and the way that I've seen my career is I've been somebody who wants to be in the revenue room and uh, I came from the sales side. So this is just my specific preference, my career path. I think with the evolution of AI, you're seeing a big hole that's filled with some engineering tasks from AI. I'm not so sure yet what commercial replacement you see other than just helping make the commercial role more efficient. I think that for me and my career, I've wanted to be a part of the commercial conversation. And so that's something that I've always looked for. Organizations that kind of have a poll method where they approach their customer success in post sales, meaning I meet the customer at handoff from sales and I'm helping you establish your vision and strategy. I'M helping you drive adoption and I'm pulling you along the way. And that means when we get to a point where it might mean time to grow the contract or grow revenue, that's still me. I'm pulling you versus I'm introducing my partner who's an account manager or growth function and he or she pops in it at ah, the quarterly business review or pops in at the renewal and says hi and they're all of a sudden a part of that conversation where you're talking numbers. I think that it's a natural thing when you're proving out adoption to. But I'm still with you and I'm growing the contract with you. We're growing the partnership together. I've been here from the beginning. That's the way I view customer success. So going back to your question, I see like half and half like a lot of in the customers that I work with that I've seen over the past couple of years. I'm seeing it more and more where net revenue retention is a true KPI that the organization owns. And to me that is account management. You own a portfolio of revenue that you're responsible for. You own the relationship and your job is to protect the revenue and to grow the revenue. To me that's account management. And I would feel comfortable like looking for roles that say either account management or customer success partner management because every organization is going to classify it a little bit different. But I think the metrics when you're looking up for a role are really important to zoom in on. If revenue is not mentioned, you kind of know what you're getting into. And I would say that those roles are a little more scary to join if you don't kind of have a number attached to it than the ones that do. And that's also how I've approached my career and I've seen that. So a long winded answer. I think it's going to be a thing for moving forward. I think there's always going to be roles that don't touch the commercial side, that are focused on adoption and some roles that do touch commercial. But I do think that I'm seeing a trend of more and more the customer success roles being pulled that way, if that makes sense.

Speaker C: It does. What would you categorize as some of the key skills to succeed in the role? I mean there's obviously the revenue part of it, but what are some of your key tenants of success in either. Either approach? But I think the uh, revenue, including the revenue side is really important. If you could help some of our listeners.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's coming into a partnership with executive presence. You can speak to your partner's business goals and be a true thought partner. I think that comes from honestly, that's a commercial skill set. You're aligning with your leaders and your stakeholders and you're partnering with them. You kind of have a North Star in mind of where you both need to go. And when I think of more of like the other role, you can be a consultant and you can be um, you can still be a driver of the conversation, but maybe you're not talking about business outcomes as much or maybe you're not talking about numbers as much and you are in a more reactive seat versus proactive. If you know you're responsible for the revenue and you come in with that North Star in mind, I think it puts you in the seat to be a little bit more wolf mode if you will be a little bit more proactive. And you're kind of like a hunter. And I think the skill set of knowing who your leaders are in the organization, know who gets buy in, you kind of have an idea of who's trusted. If there's turnover in the organization, you're doing a good job with multi threading and you have relationships across the organization and you're tapping into other functions. And there's something to be said about navigating the organization from that standpoint and some people a little bit better at that than others. If you're in a customer success role where you're managing many customers, maybe hundreds if you will, you can't really do that, you can't really be strategic at that level and you kind of become a more reactive role just in nature. So I think some of the organizations set some of these non commercial customer success rolls up to not be that way. They become task takers, they become reactive in nature just by the sheer quantity. So I think there's a few, like I mentioned, the skill sets of having executive presence, having the North Star in mind, not getting distracted with some of the product nuances that come up every day, keeping kind of like the business outcomes at the forefront and you're being a, uh, relentless kind of a hunter if you will, and you're navigating the organization well with multi threading and you're not getting pulled down into the rabbit hole of the nuances with the product and the reactive stuff because the support elements of the role are always going to be there. I think navigating that well and keeping the outcomes at the forefront so Eric,

Speaker B: since you work with a lot of different CS folks that span both the commercial and non commercial, do you see turnover in the teams you're working with? Does it lean more towards one or the other or in general do you see a lot of turnover or people staying in their jobs? Because what I'm hearing out in the fields is essentially people are sitting on their jobs because everything's changing so there's not a lot of turnover. I'm um, curious of what you're seeing out there.

Speaker A: Yeah, it's a good question. I think Maybe back in 2022, 2023 we're seeing a little bit more of themes when it came to riffs like large rifts, organization wide. I think as you guys know sometimes the post sales Org within any company is a reflection of the overall health of the business and many other factors. So I think when it comes to a healthy company I've only seen growth on the post sales side when things are going well, which I've seen many companies doing well the past couple years as well and things are going well. You need more bodies and we're trying to figure out how to do more at uh, scale and maximize the heads that we have and put them into more strategic places. I don't know that I've seen an increase in a theme of attrition necessarily. Again like just going back to the overall health of the business. I think I can get a good read early on kind of what's going on and you're going to have some rifts here and there with companies but overall I'm not noticing any new strong themes of attrition at least in my circle and my network.

Speaker B: That's good news I think because uh, to me what that indicates to me is there's some stability in the customer success field and that uh, people are starting to realize the value and aren't doing these just get rid of everybody in cs. We don't need that. That's a good signal from my perspective.

Speaker A: I think you're also going to see some roles pop uh up that are created by AI and I think we're kind of at an interesting point where we've talked about AI for two to three years now. Some companies have fiddled with it and trial and error with it for the past year or two. Some companies are just on the cusp of barely trying it, some are actually using it pretty well and have found some things proven value that they can actually embed into processes and actually drive tangible results for themselves with AI. So I still think we're really early, but I think we're also at a point now where I've seen some different roles appear as a result of AI. And I think we're also at a point where we're seeing, oh well, this role is needed still with everything that we're doing with AI, so I think we'll start to see some leveling out. If there's been some fear around some roles being lost as a result of AI, I think it's just an opportunity for more roles, honestly at the end of the day. And I think there's a lot of, like we said, like the commercial skill sets, roles that are needed and that will continue to thrive with AI here. So yeah, it's an exciting time. I think.

Speaker C: If anything, I think a lot of that, as you say, is as we learn more and as uh, AI becomes more of a norm, the roles obviously are going to change to make it more effective from both your perspective as well as your partner and your clients. And those roles are going to evolve. So I think this is where you're going to have. And please chime in, I think this is where you're going to have some of the changes in the roles and folks moving on. You might have a RIF when somebody is more focused on, okay, I'm going to worry about the task management part of it. But they're not really not thinking from a commercial perspective or from an effectiveness of outcomes with the client. And if they can't adapt their skill set then that may be the normalizing and the staffing and bring on people that are more able, that are better able or better equipped to begin applying the technology and how it moves customers forward in a more outcome based approach.

Speaker B: A theory I have as I've watched everything go on with AI, doing my own experimenting with the three main models. I think more and more the SaaS companies in quotes that adopt AI and build AI into the actual platform is going to be really where people leverage AI and they're going to shy away from the custom thing. We had a guest on the previous version where their company actually manages the models and the pricing and all the complexity behind the scenes and really lean on them to be able to manage it. Which to me from an executive standpoint, there's a lot of risk with AI and I just saw something come across the wire with OpenAI where they said they were doing testing and all of a sudden the thing went crazy on them. I don't know why they actually published that. That seems like it's like shooting yourself in the foot by releasing that. But what are your thoughts?

Speaker A: Yeah, I'm seeing a mixture of both, as you would expect. I think a lot of companies, and I have a few peers, a few colleagues, few friends who have created companies off of the back of the premier LLMs like GPT and Claude and they're creating an uh, industry specific proprietary piece that meets the market, meets that need, whether it be mental health or whether it be helping sales professionals be better with quick analyzation of the call. And you're going to see a lot of things like that pop up off the back of some of the Premier LLMs. Yeah. Here at Planhat we have the option for both, like we have our own native component and we have the option to go to any LLM, um, within our product. So I think you're going to see a good mixture of both here. Yeah.

Speaker B: Any other thoughts you have?

Speaker A: I think the CS career is interesting right now. If you're coming out of school and you're trying to get into the industry in software, I think the traditional career route has been, at least from my perspective. I started out as a business development rep or an SDR if you will, and that's where uh, I've kind of retained that revenue commercial function from where I started and, and that's where I grew into CS or account management, customer management. I think if you start out on the other side, some of the other career outs I've seen is you start out in support, product support. Maybe you're a little bit more product oriented and maybe your career goes in a different direction away from commercial. I think if you're coming out of school and you've taken some entry level coding classes or tech savvy and you're interested in that piece, I think there's a lot of opportunity, whether it be for deployed engineer. I think the CS role is becoming more technical all the time with the rise of AI, learning how to vibe code and feeling affluent there in those areas or going the commercial side, I think that CS can still intersect somewhere in the middle and that's where I've always found my passions and my skill sets. I feel like I can be myself and have my natural personality and have success and feel like I can show up every day on um, the CS career route if you will, because it kind of intertwines all of that with commercial and the tech side. But I think there's still a lot of opportunity here. I think it's an exciting time coming in. I think that you're going to See a lot of different terminologies thrown out there that are still around the same post sales function. So that's something to watch out for. I think there's going to be a lot of new roles introduced as a result of AI and I think the commercial piece will prevail and remain strong and that's my overall sense here.

Speaker C: Well, Eric, this has been great and uh, we really appreciate your time. A lot of really good nuggets in here. What we like to do is ask our guests for a little bit of kind of coaching or best advice for people that are looking for jobs or they're in the customer success or some related industry, some feedback or some ideas you might have on in using LinkedIn in their career. So if you had any pearls of wisdom you like to share, we'd appreciate that.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think I want to lean a little bit into finding opportunities right now. I, I think that LinkedIn can be a really good tool to establish your brand, show your personality a little bit, show, show what you're about, what you've accomplished. But it can also be a great way to find jobs, find opportunities, find gigs. And so I think when you're looking for new opportunities, the easiest way I think to get an in and understand a little bit more about the role or put yourself on the radar with so much just sheer quantity I think within applications and you can see a role posted today and there'll be 500 applications by the end of the, by the end of the day. Like how does that happen? So, and how do you stand out with that? So if you know somebody there, you've worked with them in the past, I think that's, it's the best way to like really understand what they're looking for in the role and really if you're interested in it, uh, or not, and put yourself on the radar and get an interview that way. I think it's a waste of time going in and just applying for roles at scale and I think even more now it's a waste of time with just again like the sheer quantity and what we're seeing out there and the ways that people can apply at scale and so you're doing yourself a, uh, disservice. If you're really interested in looking for a role and just blindly throwing out applications, you might get some bites here and there. But I would think about the great experiences you've had in your career, your network, the great connections you made, the great relationships, think about where they're at. Are they at a place where I want to be and then go and look for roles from there. Do they have a role open that I want? And then use that connection and try to move the conversation from there. Rather than go look for roles and then try to find the connection. Think about who you know, who you've already had good experiences with and who you want. Maybe the pattern you're out after if there's anybody like that. And then go to the company and see if there's any roles and you can have those conversations. There might not even be a role posted, but you can reach out to people and say, hey, this is what I'm looking for. Tell me about the organization. Is there anything popping up and there might be. They just haven't posted on it yet. And, um, that's how I'd go about job hunting in an atmosphere like we have today.

Speaker B: Thanks Eric. We appreciate that advice as well as the whole conversation. It's been great to sit down with you for a little while and pick your brain on, um, details and how CS is going. So again, we appreciate your time.

Speaker A: I appreciate it.

Speaker C: Well, Alex, that was a nice episode. What are your thoughts? What stands out to you?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's great to have someone that's actually in a role that's managing CSMs and interacts with customers every day. Eric's really in that unique position to really understand what's happening in customer success. So I thought a lot of his insights and thoughts on where the role was going, how things are going. I thought that was uh, very insightful because it's undisputed. He talks to the people. It's not something that you're getting somewhere else or third hand or something. It's someone who actually works and knows what these people are doing.

Speaker C: I think there's still a lot of uncertainty. How do you define what are those outcomes? How do you charge for outcomes? How do you validate that? It's almost as like it's in this massive churn or some sort of perfect storm of rivers coming together where there's a lot of turbulence going on without a lot of direction, so to speak.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think SaaS companies in general, they have to rethink and I think it's pretty easy for companies that are in the SaaS business of a support desk. If someone comes in and you interact with them and it through AI resolves their question and that question doesn't come through the support desk or something like that, that's easy to say. That's an outcome and I'll charge you for that. In um, cs, everyone has different goals and it's almost like bringing it to reality. It's like, hey, cs, you've always talked about your outcome based and you do all these things well, how do you measure that? And now it's not just a, hey, we're going to measure this and maybe we get back to it. Maybe we're not real accurate. It's like it's now going to turn to, this is how your company makes money. It's now it really hits you. You need to measure it, you need to make sure they're making that and you're providing a tool to get them to their goal, which I put in quotes because I don't think it's as easy as a ticket solved. It's much more complicated than that.

Speaker C: It is. When you're in SAS and you're providing a service or a tool, your outcomes are almost tied, as you said earlier, to the success of the client. Okay, so we believe. So they go and sell to their leadership. If we get this software, we, we're going to be able to increase exposure to our existing customer base, be able to manage commercials a little bit better. We're going to be able to upsell. Here's going to be what we think are targeted outcomes, Number of subscribers, number of dollars that come in, all that kind of stuff. And if you're a SaaS vendor, that's a pretty risky place to tie your wagon to that horse because you're assuming when you build the software that the organization, the users are going to use it with vigor. They're going to really truly understand how to make that part of their DNA. So to me, it's like, okay, how do you draw that line without somebody coming back and said, well, when we talk to you, we did these return on investments and says, hey, we're going to get a better outcome of retention customer SAT scores or, or even increase revenue by 20%. We're only increasing revenue by 5% and our customer SAT is down. Well, there's so many other things underneath that.

Speaker B: It's, uh, that's the problem. It's like CS is dependent on everybody. Unless you have a platform, which a lot of the platforms are all going across all the different things in, like go to market, you have a little bit more control of that. But still, if there's a product feature that's really key and your company's not delivering it, and your CSAT scores go down below it, but that's how you're getting tied to revenue, like, how do you do that? Every time I have a conversation, I come away going. That seems like a really hard thing to do. Especially with customers are going to have different expectations and what do you do? Turn them away saying, well, what you're asking for that you're going to see the value and how we're going to be paid. We can't guarantee that because of all these X factors. So we're going to walk away from that deal, right? Like no, you're not going to walk away from the deal. It's potential money. Then you get into the whole conversation, is AI going to be able to replace people? Now you're starting to get further away from the human interaction with customers. To go to AI to do that, to get a result that is dependent on a lot of things. It's like, it seems like you need more people. It's a weird cycle. It'll be interesting how it kind of flushes out over the next couple of years.

Speaker C: Yeah, I've always subscribed because a lot of times when we're managing programs or projects and there's deliverables or something that uh, that needs to be released somewhere at some point. I always am a firm believer and I try to preach this is you need to measure your outcomes and what that's driving to towards a release. However, often people will be measuring outputs and misinterpreting those as outcomes. So if you were going to develop, let's say I, uh, use APIs as an example here because it's a really easy one. Let's say you need to go to market with these two main APIs, but yet you develop 12 other APIs. Okay, you have 12 outputs that nobody's going to use or may not make available. But the two APIs that would be truly value added outcomes may not be part of that. So you sit there and say, okay, we had 12 outputs, that's really not ready or not going to be value added. It starts to cross the line. So I agree that you need to measure outcomes. We need to be better at outcome based. But I think there's a chasm as to how sasses and some of these software vendors and even services align as to what an outcome now means and how do you measure it.

Speaker B: Yeah, uh, so many factors in cs

Speaker C: it just, it just wiggles around subjectivity as opposed to objectivity. And that's not a good place to be or an easy place to be.

Speaker B: Let's wrap it up. Uh, we thank Eric for his time to show us what he's hearing out in the market and some of his viewpoints. I think it started a interesting conversation. Hopefully our listeners will grab onto and continue that. We ask you to please rate our podcast so we get to more people share us with other people in your network. We very much appreciate that. We hope our listeners enjoyed this episode as much as we did. Have a great day and we'll talk to you soon.