Alexandra Sagaydak: The Future of Customer Success: Trends and Insights

Speaker A: Welcome to Customer Success with Fahim Wahler, Norway's first and only customer success podcast. I'm Fahim. I'm the CEO and founder of Customer Catalyst, an all in one customer success platform. I've spent the last decade in SaaS helping teams drive real results through customer success. And on this show I will sit down with top CS leaders from around the world to share practical insights, strategies and tools you can use right away. From best practices to the latest tech, we make customer success simple, actionable and inspiring. Welcome to another episode of Customer Success with Fahim Waller. Today I'm excited to welcome Alexandra Sagaidak to the show. Alexandra is the founder and CEO of AI CShub, a company helping B2B SaaS, CEOs and customer success leaders overcome growth challenges and turn CS into a true revenue engine. Alexandra, welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Fahim, I'm uh, happy to be the part of your Customer Catalyst podcast. Thanks for inviting me.

Speaker A: Yeah, no worries. It's really, really glad to have you on the show. We spoke a little bit before we pressed record and I just told you that you post a lot of great content on LinkedIn and uh, for all our listeners. If you want to follow, um, Alexandra, I will put a link to Alexandra's LinkedIn in the show notes so people can, can check you out.

Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you very much.

Speaker A: Yeah, no problem. I like to, you know, share, uh, different resources and I feel like customer success is a pretty, it's a pretty new field. So it's m always great to have great resources. Uh, I would like to share them with my network. So before we dive into today's episode, I always like to get to know my guests a little bit. Could you please introduce yourself a little bit to our listeners, Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Speaker B: Yeah, sure. So my name is Alexandra. Uh, I have been in customer success for 10 years and um, my journey started 10 years ago. I have been an account management intern and eventually in my career I've grown to the chief customer officer. And this summer I decided to quit full time job and start started my own uh, consulting business. Uh, just to try and check my intern apprenticeship site. So yeah, that's it. A little bit about me. I also have a podcast, not so famous as yours. I have only four episodes but I hope that I will get back to it later this month. Thank you.

Speaker A: Yeah, thank you for calling my podcast famous. I appreciate that.

Speaker B: Well, for me it's famous.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We have uh, yeah, I'm really excited to put out great content for for our listeners. Thank you so much for introduction. Alexandra. It's always interesting me when talking with different customer success leaders or uh, I would call you a thought leader in the customer success space as well. Could you tell us a little bit about. I feel like all of us have some very different backgrounds. I came from a sales background. Could you tell me a little bit about how you got into customer success for our listeners? Maybe they have some similar uh, there as you.

Speaker B: Yes, I think my path is quite unusual. So I have been work and living in Ukraine. This is my home country. And I've ended uh, maritime university. University and my master's in management and marketing. But I wasn't interested in this uh, so much even though my parents uh, were seeing me really working in our big seaport and uh, do all this uh, stuff uh, with, with ships and so on. But uh, from very young age I was really interested in um, it in tech. Even for example, if people thinking that Ukraine is very far away. I MySpace page, I was coding there, making it colorful. So yeah, it was, it was, it was like a passion for me. And uh, when I entered university I started exploring what's there and I got uh, the job as account management intern in the B2B SaaS product. And that's where my path uh, actually have started.

Speaker A: Okay. Very, very interesting background. Maritime. Okay. Yeah. So as an account manager. So that's uh, that's fairly similar. And I won't, I don't know if I will go into that topic. You know, management versus customer success management. Uh, it's a lot to talk about but uh, yeah, that's interesting. So uh, I always said that there's no customer success education or a customer success school or stuff like that. So it's interesting to hear about how different CS professionals have gotten their start. Is there something that you particularly liked about customer success? What is something that drew you in? Because I feel like you are fairly integrated into the customer success ecosystem. Could you tell me a little bit more about that?

Speaker B: Yes. So I've switched to customer success in uh, 2018 and uh, that was my first job as a customer success manager in AI B2B product. We have worked with US market a lot in fashion, e commerce, retail. And that was amazing at that time actually when I get the job and I started researching what customer success is, I found out that the resources were actually very limited and uh, there was no, a lot of information. I think that uh, success coaching only have released their course, but not of five stages, but only one or two. So they have only started and there was no such big community as we have now on LinkedIn. However, I still had and found the people who taught me about the customer success. I'm sure that uh, people who are in customer success know these names. It was Anita Todt, she's actually still a very influenced influencer uh, in the community. Donna Weber, she obviously taught a lot about the onboarding. Onboarding, yes. Um, such and other people. I was following them and that's how I gathered my customer success education and also on practice. Everything that I learned, I learned on my first job. And I also very grateful for the CEO and the Chief Strategic Officer who believed in me and who really also poured their time and resources in me and gave a uh, big enterprise account even though I was only 25 years old at that time. So obviously very young, but still, yeah, that's, that was my path of learning about the customer success. And I remember when I got to the first conference, it was SAS Nation. It was one of the biggest conferences at the time in uh, Ukraine. And I remember I came to the conference and I had this beige with the title of my job, the customer success manager and the company. And I remember a few people uh, who were product managers or similar, yeah, product project, product owners because they were interested in SaaS. They were coming to me and they were surprised, oh my God, you're working customer success. That's amazing. And I was, oh my God, you know about this. That's so cool because yeah, it was so early in Europe no one heard about this. It was uh, very uh, popular in US but in Europe it has only started the motion of the customer success. So I was very proud that someone knows about the customer success and also interested in this.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's funny. I really, I feel the same way with uh, customer success. You name drop a couple of uh, names there. Uh, obviously I've uh, learned great deals, uh, from both of them. Donna Weber, Anita Tuff actually had Anita on the podcast. It was my first English speaking podcast. So hopefully my English has gotten a little bit better since then. We also had Lincoln Murphy, of course. I think everybody has read the book Customer Success by Nick Meta also. So that's sort of our schooling, our way of you know, uh, getting, getting better with uh, with customer success. So I feel like the customer success space, you know, it's fairly new, maybe the last 30 days, 30 not days, but 30 years is really taking shape and become, you know, this huge, uh, huge field. Um, and there's a lot of trends coming up, but I Would like to you know get a little bit information from you. Is there some trends that you are really excited about? Obviously AI is a big, big uh, one. Is there something that you feel like this is something CS team should focus on? This is important to, to have an eye on.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that one trend that definitely caught my eye, not related to AI is the thing is probably because I have worked with us from the beginning, even when I was account management I was taught that post sales, uh, jobs are responsible for revenue. And I was dealing uh from the very beginning with uh, upsells, uh, owning churn, NRR and all of this revenue, uh, growth metrics. And I think uh, the trend that surprised me the most is that in 2024 and now the uh, of the content and voices that uh, and obviously the companies who are pushing CS to revenue growth and for many people it became a surprise and this content get a lot of uh, views and engagement and I'm surprised that it has never been the reality for someone else. In customer success. Obviously uh, NPS and customer satisfaction score scores and QBRs are nice but they are just the part of the job. Uh, so yeah, this is the trend that caught my eye. And it was a little bit surprised because I thought that we were all having the same OKRs and KPIs, but in reality it was not. And I see also a little bit of frustration, especially on Reddit forum that people are surprised. They are, that they're pushed uh, to being more salesly if I would say so. And I don't blame them. I rather blame uh, the companies that didn't uh, get this idea to their people from the very young start. I understand that at some point uh, not all of the companies are willing to pass the renewals and revenue growth to customer success. But I think from the very beginning you still need to tell the people that at some point our company will grow to this stage and customer success will own the revenue. So people would not be surprised overnight about this. So yeah, that's a trend that I'm uh, seeing a part of AI.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's great to talk about uh, other things than just AI because AI is obviously you know, on um, everybody's lips and it's uh, for a reason. You know, it's highly, highly effective of course. But the revenue shift is also, I feel a little bit there because I come from a commercial background also been in the customer space for the last 10 years now. So I also started with that mentality like I have to have Some sort of alignment with revenue as a csm. You can say when I started as a CSM in 2015, maybe I'm, maybe it was more like account management back then because I didn't know so much about it. Uh, but this is, you know it's a difficult balance because you don't want to be too salesy like you say. I completely agree. But you also want to have some sort of uh, metrics and alignment to revenue and I think what a lot of businesses and CS teams are a little bit frustrated with or are ah struggling with this. How should we balance this? And my answer is always it's not a, you can't have, you know, it's not a one size fits all. It's not like we can say as a, this is what uh, works for everybody. But you have to look at your organization, your maturity, customer success maturity. You mentioned a couple of names. I will also mention Rachel Provan. She's yes, she have a great framework for you know the CS maturity model. So you have to look at your uh, CS maturity model. Where are you? Are you you know uh, reactive, informed are proactive or predictive like Rachel says. So this also has something to say and how uh, complex are your products you are selling? So if you're just talking about B2B SaaS, is this uh, are they, can CSM sell this? Should they only be responsible for renewals? Maybe should they also be responsible for upselling, maybe cross selling? So it's a lot of different things to consider there and it's difficult to have a definitive answer. But uh, one thing that is we can say for certain is that you have to start you know, aligning customer success with revenue. Do you have some, some tips there for CS teams? How should they start by doing this but maybe some metrics they should track or some um. Do you have some insights there?

Speaker B: Yes I have and I'm m glad that this topic resonated with you. So I remember even on my last job I know from the beginning, even though when I came there were only three people that at some point we will own some revenue metrics. Even though there were no still customer onboarding frameworks, support department and I would need to build this all from scratch. But I remember I done the strategic presentation for the company and for my department at that time and I showed them from the beginning that hey guys, this is where I would like us to grow and there were alignment with revenue metrics and yeah this uh, proactive customer success model and basically every quarter or whenever I Had time I would remind my team as we grew that hey guys, this is where we are. And at some point my plan is that I don't know, from this quarter we will start own this, then from this quarter we will do this. So I was slowly preparing the team and always push them that gaze. Hey guys, what we are doing now, it's not forever. We will evolve and we will do this. And I think that's, that's the best strategy. Yeah, because I was very worried maybe because of my own experience, not to overwhelm people with their responsibilities and also maybe taught them about the different business stages, how the company actually grows. Because at my time no one taught me this. I was uh, basically learning as I grew and at some moments it was a little bit painful. And um, I thought that, okay, I'm a leader now. What I can do the best is just make this experience not so painful as I had and maybe prepare uh, the team a little bit better. So that's the advice I have for others to speak freely about these metrics. Even though, for example, if you're not there yet, that's okay. Uh, but always uh, remind uh, where your organization would like uh, to grow. That's absolutely fine because at some point people will remember this thought. It will be always on their background and when you eventually will roll out some processes, it will be okay. Uh, for them. They will understand that their organization is uh, mature enough to start owning uh, the revenue for the customer success. Org.

Speaker A: I think that's a great tip, uh, Alexandra. So for all of our listeners, hopefully you got some, some great advice there and just something that, you know, the, the days of customer success just let's say protecting revenue, uh, I think those days are, are past. Now we have to also grow the revenue. And I feel like the couple of last years maybe a lot of teams have done this, but there are still some CS teams a little bit left behind. It's not enough just, you know, we are protecting this revenue and we have check ins with customers, we take a coffee with our customers there and we have uh, our okay NPS and we make sure our customers are happy. That's not what customer success is really about. And I, um, feel like customer success has always been about, you know, you know, helping customers achieve their goals obviously, but also aligning with revenue. So one simple place to start. I don't know if you also agree with this, but when I've spoken with CS teams is just start by tracking, you know, CSQLs, just customer success qualified leads, which you know, Right. So at least you get some sort of tracking back to the CS department. If the CSMs are not so comfortable with maybe selling, this could be a place to start. And in my, you know, ideal world, CSMs are best aligned to do the selling also to existing customers. So they should be responsible for some sort of, even if just expanding, uh, you know, a subscription for a customer, just additional user stuff like that. And then you can bring in sales or account managers for maybe the little bit more complex deals. But uh, it's important that you train the CSMs to be a little bit commercial and strategic. Not only, at least in my opinion, the days of CSM just being, you know, relationship managers, we have to move uh, beyond that. I uh, think.

Speaker B: Yes, yes, I absolutely agree with you on this.

Speaker A: Yeah, great. We talked a little bit about AI. I would like to hear your thoughts. Obviously this is uh, something that you uh, hopefully have some, some information about with uh, your experience from AIC as hub. You just, you just smiled when I said it. So hopefully that's a good sign. Could you tell me a little bit, how do you see, you know, AI transforming customer success and maybe if you have some practical use cases for our listeners.

Speaker B: I think that we need to think of AI first of all as a tool. And when we try to incorporate AI, we need to think of the whole strategy that we have. And the best way to start and incorporate is of course to start tracking the manual workload uh, of uh, your department and of course everyday CSM life where they spend the time the most. Just some admin tasks and then explore if these admin tasks can be replaced with AI because obviously AI is still new. And it's okay that for, for example if you have a complex product, you won't have the AI solution at this point. But that's okay. The industry is evolving. But if your uh, product is not so complex then I, I think that uh, that obviously you can definitely use AI. It can be either using the tools that um, that different products already have. For example in HubSpot they release their own AI internal agent that gives you the information about the account or this smart notifications and so on. Intercom. Again, if uh, you have the support department finai, it's amazing for training uh, the conversations on your knowledge base and that you obviously will reduce 20% of your uh, customer support workload. That's also amazing. I think with AI you just need to start small and slowly release but never replace of course uh, people because there will always be strategic conversations, emotional conversations with Customers and obviously we as humans need to talk to each other, not to the AI agent, that's obvious. But all admin tasks, all some routine work. I think that's where AI can help just to do it better and faster. So customer success managers can focus again on preparing to, preparing to the cost for the upsells or even for churn costs. Uh, that's obviously also we have a case or for example work more closely with product teams on some feature requests. That's where customer uh, success department will save time and spend it more strategically and thoughtful.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, completely agree. We have to look at AI as a tool and it's you know, it's obviously highly efficient and there's a lot of different tools you mentioned. Uh, a couple of them. That's great. Hopefully some of our listeners got some, some value of that. But because uh, it's, it's a jungle of AR ah tools and everything is in my opinion it feels like it a little bit overhyped a lot of the solutions so it's difficult to find. Okay, which solution will actually give me value. I think that's a great tip to start with something simple. Start with implementing that. I think the most important thing is to just start, start getting to getting used to this. Not just use ChatGPT, but actually start getting used to, you know, AI notetakers integrate AI in some sort of workflow. And in my opinion also like you said, I don't think that customers would like to speak to an AI agent. I know for myself I don't like to speak AI in this at all. I like to speak with humans. But there's a lot of admins tasks that obviously can be um, AI. But I understand that CS teams are a little bit, you know, confused about this because there's a lot of different tools. It's great to hear that uh, you have a little bit more grounded perception of uh, these tools. Do you have.

Speaker B: Yeah. I have one more tip.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: Especially for customer success leaders, it's about the adoption. You uh, need to have a lot of patience. For example, when your CSM managers will come and obviously tell that at some point AI gives wrong output or it just uh, incorrectly working. You need to let them know that it's actually okay because it's okay. It's a uh, new tool that we are all using if we will remember, I don't know, Excel spreadsheets, back when they only have launched, they have also limited amount of functions and now it has so much evolved. Obviously with AI the same it's A tool, it can work incorrectly and that's fine. We also work with B2B products. Our products also have bugs sometimes. So why we put so much expectations. It's okay that AI can have errors. The only thing is uh, that you verified this error, you have found it and you will just add it or remove it or fix it it and work it through.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's great, great tip. And if our uh, listeners have some questions, they could obviously just reach out to you, right? Yeah, that's great. Do you have really great insights now that you have you here? I always want to do extract as much information I can from my, from my guests. Do you have some general advice for you know, CES teams or CS professionals who want to succeed in customer success? It could be in their career. It can just be, you know, becoming a better customer success manager or a better customer success leader. I'd love to hear some of your thoughts there.

Speaker B: Yes, I think uh, I have uh, two advices, uh, probably that will work for anyone. Either you're a new entry CSM manager or your leader or your even a vice president of customer success, uh, is uh, always uh, have time to study uh, business of your customers. So for example, if you're a customer success manager who is involved in onboarding, try to spend some time and do little research of your book of business. What the general industries where your customers work in, what are they interested in, what even some uh, conferences that they are participating in for their business that will help you as you grow. It will help you not only in commercial but even from the technical side. And the second advice is I really encourage everyone to use LinkedIn and not be ashamed to add your customers and like their posts, engage with their content. Uh, send happy birthday or anniversary congratulations and that's okay because again that's a human side of customer success that you can use in your favor. It will make any commercial conversation much smoother and better and not so awkward. Uh, and again we are all humans, we remember such small and nice gestures. So it will work in your favor. And for example, it had worked with me. Some of my customers left me recommendation on my LinkedIn. It was very helpful when I decided to look for another job. So if you have great relationship with your customers, again that's also how you can find another job. Maybe they will see that you are looking for something. Especially now as we know a lot of companies, uh, across different continents are impacted by layoffs. So if this one thing that you didn't think of one strategy, just try to use it. Maybe it will be helpful.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's great tips. Thank you so much Alexandra. And that's maybe also a great place to finish up this uh, episode. Uh, living on a high note. Uh, that's great. Thank you so much for sharing your insights and experiences. Really appreciating. Appreciate uh, your time Alexandra.

Speaker B: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I hope that everyone find the information that I've shared useful. Subscribe on me on LinkedIn. Subscribe to my substack, follow my uh, podcast and if you have questions on customer success or AI, I would be very happy to help anyone. Thank you.

Speaker A: Yeah, I second that. Just follow Alexandra. Uh, I will uh, like I said earlier, I believe your LinkedIn in the in the show notes and just recommend uh you to follow her on LinkedIn as well. And thank you for listening. If you enjoy the conversation, don't forget to subscribe and share this episode. See you next time.

Speaker B: Thank you.