Andrea Bumstead: Transforming Customer Success with The 15-Minute QBR

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 back to Customer Success with Fahim Moller. Today I'm joined by someone who's truly redefining what it means to drive growth to customer success, Andrea Bumstead. Andrea is the CEO and founder of CES Impact, where she helps companies make millions from their existing customer base by turning CES into a revenue engine. Andrea, great to have you on the podcast. Welcome.

Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker A: Fahim, thank you for taking the time to record, uh, this session with me. The first time I noticed you was on LinkedIn where he posted about this 15 minute, uh, QBR and that went, you, uh, know, super viral. So it's clear that you struck a nerve. I'm really excited to hear more about that during our conversation today. Um, but before we dive into today's episode, could you please introduce yourself to our listeners, tell us a little bit about yourselves?

Speaker B: Sure, I'm happy to introduce myself. So, um, I like big, meaty problems. And throughout my whole career I've been focused on solving the biggest problems in customer success and in sales. So I started my career in sales, um, but right from the time I was a director of customer success at Procore, standing up their customer success organization in Canada for the very first time, and then through to a vice president of customer success at Revenue IO, which is formerly Ring DNA, and then Kindsite, which is formerly iWave. Um, I've always been focused on solving some really big challenges. Either companies that are going to upmarket for the first time, they have a brand new merger. So they've acquired some companies, they're releasing new products, they have a churn problem, a growth problem, um, you name it. There's pretty much, I'd say there's nothing I haven't seen in customer success. And right now, as a fractional leader and as a consultant, um, I specialize in companies that are 50 to 150 million. That really is my sweet spot. However, my current clients are everything from, um, sub $10 million, um, you know, working on churn problem or standing up an account Management function for the very first time. $2 billion organizations, um, that are actually standing up a brand new CS function. Um, so I just, I love big meaty challenges, particularly in post sales.

Speaker A: Yeah, really exciting. And obviously you have a lot of experience in the customer success, uh, field. Could you tell us a little bit about how you get your first start? Maybe what was it that you uh, know, interested you about customer success? How did you get into customer success?

Speaker B: It's a great, um, great question. So I did start. Well, I started my career actually in marketing and then I was in sales. Um, so I did field sales and then I was an account executive. Um, I loved the long term relationship with customers. I feel like that's reason why a lot of people move from sales to customer success. But I loved who holding onto my customers, building long term relationships. And so I actually transitioned into being more of an implementation manager then, um, customer success manager, um, and then sort of, sort of grew through the ranks, um, from there. But I, I leverage actually my sales background pretty much every day. Um, so I'm pretty, I'm very grateful that I started my career in sales.

Speaker A: Yeah, me too. I have a similar background and for me it's really natural to have that, you know, that revenue conversation as a customer success manager or as customer success leader. So for me it felt really natural. But I know a lot of CSMs or CS teams feel this is a little bit difficult. You know, how should we now suddenly we are responsible for renewals for Upsell Cross sells? I don't want to be salesy. So this is often what I heard here when I talk about with customer success teams. Um, do you have some quick tips there? How can CSMs or CS teams feel, you know, be comfortable with selling and having that revenue conversation without uh, it being too salesy?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean I have so many thought on this, but I've managed a lot of teams, a lot of teams in my career. And uh, in almost every team someone has said exactly this to me where like if I wanted, if I wanted to sell, I would have been in sales.

Speaker A: Sales.

Speaker B: Right, right. Um, and, and I always say that this is different. Right. You're, you're coming at this conversation from a consultative perspective. Right. So customer success, we sit on the same side of the table as the customer. That's very different than when you are chasing new business. Right. Um, and so I always say come at it from a consultative approach. Like you know your customers best, you know how to get them value from the solution and what you're helping them do in upselling or cross sell is just get more value. You're making strategic recommendations based on the outcomes that they want to achieve. As a business that is very different um, than cold outreach, right. Where you're trying to generate brand new business. Um, so I say I hear you, you didn't go into sales and you don't wanna sell, so don't sell. Right. Like come at this from a consultative approach, sitting on the same side of the table as your customer.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's solid advice for every CSM or CS leader listening to this episode. And uh, this is in tune with what I've experienced as uh, you have to look at sales as you know, helping the client. Not just you know, pushing a, uh, pushing uh, a product or just attaining a quota. Obviously it has to be more, more consultative. And that's also what drew me into customer success. I felt like, you know, my sales background was a little bit uh, obviously it's quota driven. Right. You want to sell on value and you know, do it in a consulted manner. But when it comes to customer success it's much more. No, that's, that's what it's about. And in my experience the CSMs are uh, best suited to do this also because I'm um, really direct with my. When I worked as a customer success manager, I was really direct with my clients as well. It's like I'm not uh, my KPIs are not uh, quote attainment. I just want to make sure you succeed with our product and uh, get as much value as possible from using our product. That's most important for me. So I don't have uh, a quota and stuff like that. And the ironic thing is that the customers really responded well to that. They sort of relaxed, okay, this guy is not here to sell me anything. He actually wants me to achieve my goals, my outcomes. Um, and ironically it was easier for me to sell and I actually did a um, yeah, sold a lot of uh, upsell and um, cross sell products for my book of business. So uh, that's really interesting.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean and it is easier, right? Like you've already built that, you already have that relationship. And so the conversion rates post sales are always much higher. Right. Like they're over 50% right. Post sales. Um, because you have that relationship and that trust, you do have to be very careful to never break that trust. Right. Never sell something for the sake of selling something. Right. But always making a recommendation based on how they achieve their business outcomes, what's best for them and Their business.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And one thing that, you know, customer success, the profession of customer success can learn from sales is obviously to have templates, to have, you know, frameworks, to have playbooks and do it a little bit more structured than maybe, uh, in the beginning of, you know, the customer success movement. Uh, and that brings us back to the point about, you know, the QBRs, and if you can share a little bit about this 15 minute QBR, because this is something that's really exciting and I think interesting for a lot of CS teams that you can have a QBR that's valuable for vendors, sorry, for clients. And it's only 15 minutes. Can you just give us a short, you know, crash course in, uh, what's the thinking behind this, uh, 15 minute QBR?

Speaker B: Sure, yeah, I'm happy to. Before I jump right in, I'm going to tell you a little bit of a story of how the 15 minute QBR came about. Because it wasn't just me sitting at my desk one day thinking we should run a QBR in 15 minutes. That's not what happened. What actually happened is I was training a customer success team. I was actually training them on how to have a consultative approach and commercial negotiations. And so the QER was actually not part of the training. But in the Q and A, at the end a, uh, CSM asked me, she said, andrea, how do I get executives to show up to my qbr?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And, and I thought, wow, okay. Like I've, I've experienced this right. Myself with my teams. It's hard to get people to show up. And so I sort of paused for a second and I said, why don't you just run the QBR in 15 minutes? Uh, and she sort of looked at me like, what? And I was like, okay, just hear me out. I was like, every executive has time for a 15 minute meeting, right? Like executives will agree to 15 minutes. And I said, in that 15 minutes, all you need to do is cover three things. I was like, just cover the value that they have gotten so far. So what is the value that they have achieved so far? How can they get more value and what are three recommendations that you have? So I was like, that's it, that's all. I was like, you can cover that in 15 minutes. So, value they've received so far, how do they get more value? Three recommendations, right? Because all, uh, a customer ever wants to answer, particularly an executive, is am I getting value from this product or service and should I keep spending money on it? Those, uh, like those two things you need to constantly answer that question. So I was like, you can do this in 15 minutes. And so after the training I decided, you know what, I'm going to create a slide for the manager of this team so that they have this framework. So I just created a mini slide and then I just did a quick little post on LinkedIn. Literally a brain dump where I was like, you know, QBRs are broken. We can do these in 15 minutes, here's how. And then I was like, and if you want the slide, just put 15 in the comments and I'll send it to you. So my rationale was I want every manager to have this framework and then when they go to their next team meeting, just drop it into their team meeting, right? And have a bit of a discussion around it. But I wanted them to have this slide. Um, um, so anyways, I was shocked. There was like, people just started putting like 15, 15, 15 in the comments, right? And so, and I just started sending it, right? Like I would DM it to people. I would, um, I have a sales navigator license, so I would like, I would send it to them. I just kept sending them like, here's the link, here's the link, here's the link. Anyways, it got up to, oh my gosh, I think it was between 2 and 3,000 comments. I can't remember now. It was like 200,000 impressions or something. Um, and uh, by that point, like I actually had to hire someone. I hired someone on upwork, right, who was working alternate hours and they, their whole job was to send people the 15 minute QR. So it was just.

Speaker A: Wow.

Speaker B: And what surprised me is like CSMS commented on the post, which is what I was expecting. Managers of customer success teams, directors, vice presidents was cos, um, uh, oh my gosh, what am I trying to say? CEOs. Like, I was, I was shocked at like, and the number of AES that commented. So.

Speaker A: Oh really?

Speaker B: What I realized is that it wasn't just the 15, it wasn't just a QBR that people were struggling with. It was meetings to executives, right? Because what happens, and I've heard this so many times, is a team will spend literally hours creating a QER deck, right? That's executive facing. And I did, I've done this with my own teams. Like I can clearly think of examples in my mind where we spent like five plus hours creating this deck, right? And then, and then we finally like, we, we get the executives to agree to the meeting and lo and behold, the, they get into the meeting and they say, I have a really busy day. Can we just do this in like 3:30 minutes? Can we do this in 15 minutes? Right? This happens all the time and then teams just stumble all like, they can't do this in 15 minutes. They have no framework in which this could happen in 15 minutes. And so what happens is they deliver sort of a low value, uh, kind of all over the place. 15 minutes, the exec uh, hops off and they never join again because they think, well, that was a waste of my time. And so my rationale was like if I create the 15 minute QBR and if your QBR is actually 30 minutes, maybe it's a little bit longer. But if I teach you how to do this in 15 minutes, you will, you'll never get caught, right? In that situation you'll be prepared that uh, like okay, Andrea told me that this would happen, that at some point you're only going to get 15 minutes. And so you cover these three things. Value they received so far. How do they get more value? Three recommendations, that's it.

Speaker A: Yeah, I don't think it needs to be more than that either. I've uh, you know, conducted the QBRs and a lot of different check ins and meetings with clients myself and I know that I'm always, you know, asking myself does it really bring value to my customers when I do this? You know, I sat in a meeting and I had a two hour QR with one customer as a csm and that's like, I was really fried afterwards because it's, it's way too much. And I don't know if that really, you know, uh, impacted them as the way I wanted it to impact. But one thing I was wondering about, um, Andrea is after CS teams have implemented uh, this 15 minute QBR, have you checked up on them? Have you gotten some feedback about how CSMs or CS teams are using this? That would be really interesting to hear.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's a great question. So I've released this sort of out into the wild, right? And I've heard from a lot of leaders that they're trying it, right. So I actually did. There was the first post that got about 2,000 comments. There was a second post, got 3,000 comments. So it's, it's now in the hands of about 5,000 people. And then I created like a mini launch kit of like, okay, here's how you actually implement this. And so then I sent all that out, right, to a few thousand people. I haven't actually heard how it's going. I love to hear so if you are listening and, uh, have tried this, I'd love to hear. I am currently implementing it with the team that I'm working with right now. And so I'm very curious, um, how this is going to go. Right? Um, they're really excited to implement it. The leaders are excited about it. Um, and so, um, let's, you know, future podcast episode. I'll tell you how this goes, but we're very much in like, uh, okay, we're going to try this and I've created like a deck for the team I'm working with right now. Like, okay, here's how. Here are your three slides, right? If you only get 15 minutes, these are the three slides that you cover. Here's your optional slides. So I've given them the sort of full template here. Um, um, but yeah, this, this is going to be a future podcast episode, I'm sure.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, really excited. Maybe it's a little bit too soon, but it's, uh, you know, I was just curious about. Because obviously when you are, you know, uh, and it's really generous of you also to, to just provide this free of charge to anybody, that's the last. I will really, you know, uh, commend you for that. That's really great that you do that. We have to spread more, I wouldn't say awareness, but we need to spread more information about, you know, what frameworks does, uh, work, you know, what kind of templates, uh, are good to use. This 15 minute QBR is a great example of that. So I'm sure that, uh, people who are, you know, using, uh, this for their clients, uh, are happy with it. Um, so now that I have you here, you know, an expert in customer success, could you tell me a little bit about what you see, maybe some, some exciting trends that's happening inside our, our, our community. Um, do you have some insights for us there?

Speaker B: Sure, yeah. It's an interesting question because. So I think, you know, over the past, I'd say six months, maybe even a year, um, there's been a lot of predictions, right, of like, the future of customer success. Um, everyone wants to know what is the future of this prevention, right? Like, it's just, it's a topic everywhere. And I will say that, um, a few months ago I was quite nervous about the future of customer success. And I was nervous, ironically. Um, um, and I'll tell you why. It's ironic in a second, but ironically, because customer success seemed to increasingly get tied in with the sales organization. Now I say that this is ironic because Um, a proponent of my business, right, of CS impact is that I turn customer success into a revenue driver. And you'll hear me say things like customer success is sitting on all the money, right? So very much like I talk about how much money customer success sits on, how we can drive money, how we can attach ourselves to revenue, right? But, but also I was concerned because what I was seeing was a lot of customer success teams being replaced by more of an account management function, um, or sort of disappearing altogether, um, and having more of an account management take over some of that relationship and that function. Not that that's a bad thing, but I was sort of definitely starting to feel like m. I don't know about like maybe customer success is going to get sort of um, taken over one by support and agents on this side and then the other side by sales for this commercial acumen that as CS leaders and as CSMs we just haven't done very well. Right? Um, today we just, we haven't. And so I was worried but you know, I went to cs, um, week in New York a few weeks ago, um, talked a lot about the future of customer success and then since then, um, talking more about the future and I actually feel differently about the future of customer success today than I did even a couple months ago. Um, and so here's why. The reason is because I think what we're seeing in customer success, which is very interesting is um, when organizations move to a consumption based model, right? So think of like the continuum of SaaS, right? Or like you have on prem, which was like, you know, that's where we started with with on prem. Then we have SaaS. And I think the next, you know, stage three, if you will, is this idea of consumption, right? And what I see in this consumption model is that the role of the CSM is really very important, right? Because it's all based on usage and utilization. And so customers need really fast time to value, very focused on outcomes, very focused on like the value that they're getting. Otherwise like your consumption drops, right? Like it's just that easy. They're not getting value, the consumption drops, you realize less revenue, right? And so I actually see customer success playing a very important role in this sort of new model. And yes, there's like there's agents coming up and there's you know, support. We're using more agents and there's more AI. And yes, we're still focused on like driving revenue. But like I see this like very interesting shift just in the past, like month or two, maybe even the last few weeks of like, of consumption based and how important the role of customer success is, is in that. Um, and also a much, much deeper emphasis on outcomes and CSMs acting as consultants. Right. And increasing their business acumen. And so I've seen quite a few sort of articles and posts lately talking about how customer success is going to be a very important function in this new model. So I mean this is the past few weeks. Right. I think what I've really sort of come to realize here is that customer success, we're not going away, yes, we're going to morph a little bit but we are still a extremely important function. Um, and so you know, and that focus on that revenue, the value sitting on all the money, it works with that new sort of framework of like consumption based outcome focus, fast time to value, consultative approach. So I'm quite excited about um, the future of customer success. Uh, excited to see the direction we go over the next year.

Speaker A: Yeah, really interesting. Uh, Andrea, thank you so much for sharing that. I think uh, you know, customer success is obviously not going anywhere but like all you know, different uh, disciplines or professions, it goes through change. So I think that's something that's inevitable. Customer success will go through some transformations and it's. But it's also difficult for us, you know, to say something really general and broad about you know, uh, this is customer success for all different organization because you know, when talking with different customer success teams, different companies, they vary quite a bit. So it's difficult to say that you know, customer success is this and you have to it just like this. This doesn't work for some companies. Maybe you know, um, it also depends on the maturity stage of your customer success organization. Obviously. Is it a startup, a scale up or is it a, you know, uh, established business? So all of these things adds to the, you know, confusion. Maybe it creates a little bit of confusion I see amongst customer success leaders and organization. But I, I completely agree with your point. Um, you know, this consumption based model, it will obviously you know, challenge the customer success professional a little bit and uh, uh, yeah, make us. Yeah. But I think product usage has always been important right. For you know, when it comes to customer success at least in my opinion it's important to. If a customer is using the product, that usually means that they're getting some sort of value or some sort of impact from the product. Uh, I always been a huge, you know, um, fan of measuring product usage, not just number of logins and stuff like that. But it's important that you know they actually use the platform. If they don't use the product, uh, it's difficult for them to get any value out of it. You talked a little bit about AI and AI agents. Um, would be interested to hear a little bit more about that. How do you think AI and AI, uh, agent would challenge customer success managers and CS leaders? Do you have some thoughts there?

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think a lot about this too, of like, what, again, what is the future of customer success? And with AI, it's a really exciting time. Right? So in customer success, I see a lot of leaders, myself included, experimenting with AI, right? Custom ChatGPTs agents that will do a certain workflow and then produce sort of the same result every time. Right. Um, I'd still say we're, we're in, um, I wouldn't say our infancy, but like, really in the beginning stages with this. Like, I don't see a lot of advanced use cases in customer success. I just see a lot of, like, experimentation. Um, you know, so first it was csms leveraging AI to do things like research on accounts, write emails, write content. You know, just sort of the basic, sort of your use of like chatgpt or copilot. Now I'm seeing more. Okay, how can we automate some workflows, right? How can we create some mini agents that do the same thing every time with the same output? Um, but I, I wouldn't say that I'm seeing a lot of like, really advanced use cases. I think there's, um, two reasons for that, if you will. Maybe, maybe three, actually. Um, so one is data. So like, um, if you, if you ask an organization, like, how confident are you in your data? Um, you're lucky if you get over 50%, right? So a lot of organizations recognize their data is not that great. So if you start, don't start with great data. Um, it is hard to automate things, right? And create workflows. The other thing. So data is the foundation. The other thing is the workflow itself. A lot of teams actually don't have their processes documented. Like, we talk a lot about Playbooks, like, like for CS leaders listening. Like, when was the last time you updated your playbook? Like, is that, is that up to date? Right? Because AI needs to work on like a workflow, right? Or know where to slot it into a workflow. And so if you don't good documentation, um, you know, it's really hard to automate things or figure out which pieces AI can take. So it's data, it's the workflows, right? And Then the third thing is it's a bit of the Wild west right now. Right. Where like people are just experimenting with AI sort of all over the place. Organizations don't have sort of AI policies in place. Um, and so, you know, you could have a company using upwards of 76 different AI solutions, none of which are approved by the organization. Right. Um, which for anyone in IT sort of listening right now, more security. That's a big concern. Right. And so there's a lack of like standardization across organizations. Um, it's a bit of like just go and experiment within these parameters. But I guarantee you that nobody is staying in those parameters. Parameters. Right. And so it's data, it's a lack of documentation to know where AI can actually be helpful. And then it's the wild west in terms of who's using what solutions and whether. Right. They're actually compliant with the organization.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I think that sums it up pretty well because, you know, obviously my advice is that, and I recommend that all customer success teams should look into AI solutions. You know, what can we automate? What can we use AI for? It's obviously important that the data is good. But, uh, I think the main point is that you have to start, start experimenting. Just do, uh, you know, start, start, uh, do something simple. You don't need to have a, you know, complex AI agent. And the reality is that the majority of AI agents actually fail in production. So it's like you don't need to. I feel a lot of CS teams and CS leaders feel a little bit left behind because you. It's difficult to not get wrapped up in all this AI hype. Right. On LinkedIn or wherever. It's a lot of hype around AI, so it's difficult. Maybe a CS leader maybe thinks, wow, okay, all of the, all other CS teams are really advanced when it comes to AI use, but I don't think that's necessarily the case. Just like you, like you said, Andrea. So I think they, yeah, just uh, have confidence in what you are doing for every CS leaders who are listening. But start experimenting with AI. I think that is smart, Ah. To start doing some stuff.

Speaker B: Um, yeah, yeah, I agree. I think we're intimidated. Right. Um, when we feel like we've been left behind. I always say when someone is saying that they're using AI if, if they're able, get them to just share their screen and you'll see that this is not actually as complicated. Right. Even for me, a few weeks ago, I can think of like the word agent sort of intimidated Me, it was like, ooh, agents. And I think of like robots walking around, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: But then I started experimenting with, with this site where you can really like simply build an agent. And I realized this is not that hard. Like an agent just does a predefined thing the same way every time with the same output. That's an agent, right. Um, and if I can do some automating, right. Um, to automate the inputs so that I always get the same output and I don't have to keep putting in the input. It's not actually that complicated. I almost feel like the language around AI has made it sound like it's bigger than it is. Whereas I can guarantee most people are using AI on a very regular basis.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think so too. I think so too. Just lastly, before, uh, I let you go and you wrap up, uh, this episode, do you have some advice for customer success teams or CS professionals who want to succeed in customer success? Hit us with some hard hitting, ah, tips, uh, at the end.

Speaker B: Yeah, sure. I, um, mean, so maybe I'll leave you with two pieces of advice. One is around AI, right? Experiment, um, find out what other people are doing. Um, you know, create a culture on your team where it's okay to experiment. Um, you know, see where you can slot in AI in a workflow. Right? All that experimentation is how we're going to learn, right? What works and doesn't work. So continue to experiment. Don't be intimidated. Nobody in Customer Success has this figured out, let me tell you. I know, like, I can't name a single leader or I'm like, they have built some kind of super robot thing that does everything. No. Okay, so this doesn't exist. Everyone's in this like, experimentation phase. So just keep going. And then my second piece of advice is, and I know we didn't touch on this very much, but like anything that you can do to increase your business acumen as either a leader of customer success or as a csm, that is a good thing, right? So customer success is increasingly being tied to the revenue of companies, which is good, right? We want it to be tied to the revenue means that it's an indispensable function. Right? We want to drive revenue. We don't want to be seen as a cost center, but we need to be able to speak the language of executives and have a level of business acumen that we can prove out our function. Right. Um, in, I actually teach CSMs, the basic sort of like metrics of customer success, how to calculate them, what do they mean? Right. Um, I feel that that's really been lacking. And so if you're a csm, pay attention to how your company measures success. What do those numbers actually mean? And if you're a leader, you constantly want to be increasing your level of business acumen to the point where you can be in front of a board and speak very intelligently about your function. I feel that that's. It's really been missing in customer success. We need to do a better job of really empowering our leaders and our CSMs to have this level of business acumen.

Speaker A: Yeah, I completely agree, Joe. You know, so even some SaaS metrics, right, like the rule of 40, for instance, or, you know, CAC to LTV ratio, it sounds like, wow, what is this? But it's actually not that, uh, not that complex. I think that C should, uh, at least have some surface knowledge about that. Great tips. Uh, great tips, Andrea, and thank you so much for sharing your insights and experiences. I really appreciate you taking your time.

Speaker B: No problem. Thanks so much for having me, and

Speaker A: thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this, uh, conversation, don't forget to subscribe and share this episode. See you next time.