Angeline Gavino: How to align Customer Success with Revenue Growth

Speaker A: Welcome to Customer Success with Fahim Wahler, Norway's first and only customer success podcast. I'm Fahim. I'm, um, 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 Wohler. Today I'm excited to welcome Angeline Gavino to the show. Angeline is a seasoned customer success leader with over 17 years in B2B SaaS. She's built and scaled CS teams across multiple startups. Currently she's leading Customer success at Catalan and she is the CEO and founder of CSREVspeak where she empowers CS leaders to drive revenue growth and grow their careers. So, Angelyn, welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Thank you for having me. Very excited about this discussion. Thanks for having me.

Speaker A: Thank you so much for accepting my invitation. You actually popped up in my LinkedIn feed a couple of months ago and I've been following you since and really excited to follow your journey.

Speaker B: Same, same. And I'm, I'm glad that we get to have this discussion face to face because, uh, we've been interacting on LinkedIn for the past months. Um, and happy to have, you know, like a more in depth discussion.

Speaker A: Really. Um, yeah. So before we dive into today's episode, could you please introduce yourself a little bit to our listeners, what you do at CS Rev Speak, and of course a little bit about yourself.

Speaker B: Yeah, sure. That was a great intro. I think you kind of encapsulate my experience at this point in time. And like you said, I do have a full time job where I lead CS at, you know, a startup called Canlon. But on the side I work in a con a coaching and consulting capacity with other CS leaders who are, have revenue responsibilities or are building and scaling their CS organization. And I do also provide a lot of free content on my podcast and newsletter as part of CS Rev Speak. Right. And like I said, um, you know, we've been very active on LinkedIn and have interacted on LinkedIn. I share a lot of my insights there about CS too. Well, most people don't know this about me actually. I'm based in Vietnam. Maybe they know it if they go to my LinkedIn profile. I'm a mom to two incredible kids. So that's me outside of work. Um, but, but yes, I'm passionate about all things cs. So I'm fired up with the discussion we at hand.

Speaker A: Really, really great. Exciting to get to know her a little bit better. Angeline. I actually have two kids as well. I have one, he's uh, three years old and the one that's uh, just turning six months. So uh, if I'm tired today and I look a little bit tired, it's because I don't sleep so much.

Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah, I know, I remember that face. I have a three year old turning four as well. And the older one is we have a big gap. He's turning 13 this year so it's like.

Speaker A: Yeah, okay, so four years old in the third. Yeah, that's a big gap. Uh, and yeah, I guess every phase comes with its uh, own challenges.

Speaker B: For sure. For sure. Like, like when you just think that there's light at the end of the tunnel, there's a new challenge.

Speaker A: No, don't say that. I was thinking maybe, maybe it gets easier.

Speaker B: Yeah, I guess it's a different kind of challenge every time. But it's exciting just the same.

Speaker A: Yeah. What I really like about you Angeline is your focus on, you know, um, customer success and how we can align it with revenue. It would be really interesting for me and our listener. Tell us a little bit uh, more about that, um, what you do at CS Rev speak. And also if you get just a little bit about how you first got started. Customer success. A lot of customer success people have talked with, have you know, really different backgrounds. So interesting to hear your story.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. Well, I actually started my career in customer support and from customer support I went into operations and from operations I went up into a team manager role and then I discovered customer success. That was 15 years ago and it wasn't called customer success then. And that was kind of my first foray into, let's just say like the client facing, post initial sale engagement with the customer. So ever since then, uh, you know I've worked. I started working for a big multinational corporation like with 50,000 employees. And like I mentioned, that's my first foray into cs. Um, it was a very mature organization where there was an amc. Yes. Um, and you know a big sales organization as well. Um, and then nine years ago I moved into a, into the startup world and have sent since then work for four different startups building and scaling customer success. And I've never looked back. I haven't. I love being in a startup environment. I Love the fast pace and you know, you have, how you have to be scrappy and really very resourceful and also inventive. Well, what I do at CS Rev Speak and actually why I built this organization is because as you know, right in the past years or so there's a lot of this debate around should customer success own a revenue number? And I actually, in my current organization, when I joined this, I was hired to lead a CS team that owns both renewals and expansions. And at that time, that was several years ago, there were no playbooks around how you can do that in the context of customer success. Yes, we all know about, you know, how account management works and so on, but in the context where a CSM has to do the commercial conversations and um, you know, negotiations and all of that, there were no playbooks available for us. And so I realize now that this is becoming, going to become the norm. This is the shift that we're seeing in the industry right now. And I know and I've spoken to a lot of CS leaders that are navigating the same challenges that I navigated like a few years back. And I wanted to create a resource and a person that they can go to first when it comes to how do I shift my team to manage revenue or manage expansions as well and help them create frameworks and systems to help their team be successful in the new, let's say the new reality that we have to face now as CS leaders. So that's kind of where my inspiration came from when I built CS Rev Speak. And so now, like I mentioned, I work in a coaching capacity and sometimes in a consulting capacity to help CS leaders navigate the shift. And you know, just like I mentioned, generally build the CS strategy and organization and their, and their companies.

Speaker A: Really interesting. I think that is uh, really needed. I think there's a huge need for that actually. And that's one of the things I liked a lot but uh, about following you on LinkedIn, you know, align. How should with, align customer success with revenue? I would like to pick your brain a little bit on that later in the episode also just to give some if there's some CS leaders or customer success managers listening or watching, watching today, this episode, uh, how can that, you know, get started with some, some, some, some easy tips in the Nordics, I feel like we're maybe, you know, a lot of companies and customer success leaders are really, really, really great and they are really mature in the customer success way of working, but I think, I think the majority has a little, little bit Lagging behind when it, when it comes to this. Some of the customer success leaders uh, I have spoken to in the last couple of months, you know they're actually outgoing all in, in uh, the customer success owning revenue. And that's really interesting to see. I talked to one VP of customer success a couple of months ago and all of the CSM are, are actually they have a quota almost like salespeople. Obviously they're not. You know, now you have to sell at all costs. It obviously still value based. Right. And there has to be a real need for the customer. But I think it's a great shift that CSMs are starting to have some sort of quota attainment just to serve that this is a uh, department that has a uh, quota. And if it's a question of whether or not you have to you know, hopefully not downscale the company but if that's a question about headcounts, I feel like if the CSMs have a quota and the customer success departments are aligned with revenue, it makes it more difficult to downscale that department. That's my.

Speaker B: Yeah, for sure. I agree with you. And you know how in the past decade CS has been wanting a seat at the, the table, you know, for a real table. And this is how you do that. This is how you tie what your cs, what CS and the outcomes that you create for your customers to actual business and revenue outcomes. And I think uh, we already know, I think those of us who have been in CS for a while understands the role that we play in revenue generation but we haven't owned it. And I think this is the chance for us to really step up and get that seat at the table like we've been trying to fight for in the past years.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's a really great point. Uh, Angeline, let's say you have a customer success leader who is listening right now and uh, you know a lot of customer success professionals, uh, don't come from a sales background. How do you, do you have some tips there for a customer service leader? How if they're new in the job or they come from a non sales background. Do you have some, what is your sort of first steps there to get the customer success professional to be a little bit more commercial, uh, or revenue oriented?

Speaker B: I think leverage the commercially aligned organizations and roles within your company. Already everyone will have a sales team. Maybe they would have a separate account management in the beginning or maybe actually later, but depending on you know, the organization, you come in shadow or buddy up with your sales teams. And try a sales leader and understand, you know, their system. I think what we need to learn from sales is the system, the operating rhythm that they create to ensure that, that revenue is a process that is predictable and not just, you know, you're not leaning on hope. And the thing is, I do believe that CS in general have all the fundamental, shall I say, fundamental skill set to be successful. Right. Because like you said, whether we're selling or not, we every, every conversation that we have is, needs to still be anchored in value. It still needs to be value based. And we all know us in customer success. We don't want to sell something that doesn't align with what the customer actually needs because at the end of the day that's going to fall back on you. It's going to be a churn. Next, let's say next renewal because they didn't need those licenses that you sold them to begin with. And so you need to be very deliberate. It doesn't change the fundamental foundation of CS which is we need to be a trusted partner of the customer. We need to be leading with value. It's just we're putting more structure and how we navigate that and ensure that we're continuously creating value and creating revenue in a predictable and sustainable manner. So that's why I said yes. Buddy up with your sales team. They have their best practices. Things like forecast calls, opportunity reviews. These are things that we typically don't do in CS but low hanging fruit that you can easily learn from the sales team yet shadow their forecast calls, shadow, shadow their pipeline meetings, shadow their opportunity reviews and all the frameworks they use like MEDPIC or other other uh, sales methodologies. I don't want to push too much of the sales lingo but I think we should try to understand how we can learn from our sales counterparts. Um, and then small things as well. When you think about how you position customer success, especially as a customer success leader within your executives, you need to not talk in activities or I don't know, NPS course or you know, you need to talk metrics and that tie to revenue and not just you know, measuring grr and R, that's, that's a great way to start, right? But then also tying your outcomes like what your CSM do, what what your CS teams do to grow revenue or team customers. Example when you're looking at accounts that you are onboarding, like if you see that onboarding you can link how onboarding and what you do at onboarding ties to retention or tries to ties to expansion. Some things And I know I'm putting a lot here and you said like just you know, the first few things but I feel like these are really low hanging fruit. Yeah, just, just know what I'm saying is know how to link what your CS team does to revenue and don't end it with the metrics that we use like number of activities and CSAT and NPS and so on.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's ah, really, really great tips so far. All of you are listening I think. Uh, before I forget, make sure to check out angeline Gavin on LinkedIn and uh, I will link all the information in the show notes as well so people can check you out and if they have any questions they can just reach out to you. Um, I completely agree with what you're saying there. You know one of the challenges I have seen with customer success teams and I've been working with uh, uh, with a couple of customer success teams lately is you know, let's say you are in an organization when you have, you have a customer success team, let's say you have a couple of CSMs that are managing um, obviously their book of business and their portfolio and you also have account managers or key account managers. And a lot of times it's a little bit, I wouldn't say conflict but it's a little bit difficult to say, okay, who owns this responsibility when it comes to you know, upselling or cross selling on the existing customer base. So one of the things that I have seen is that obviously I'm a little bit biased but in my experience I see if a customer success managers owns that revenue number or owns that, you know, to do a uh, sell more on existing customers. For me it's an easier sell because a customer success manager has a completely different way of interacting with customers. You know, they aren't typically measured on. I just have a quote I have to attain and I think that energy is something that the customer are picking up on. You know, they're picking up. If a sales rep is calling you that it's the end of the quarter, you know that they're probably trying to fill their quota. Right. But for a CSM is a completely different approach. So what I have seen is that when customer success managers actually are owning at least the upselling, right. So you have an existing subscription and the CSM is responsible for upselling them, let's say more users, you know, easy stuff like that, then you can have, if it's a more complex product that your company are uh, is, uh, is um, you have a more complex product in the company. Then you can have an account manager who is a little bit more sales savvy, maybe have that responsibility. What, what are your thoughts on that when it comes to, you know, what's the responsibility of the account manager and the csm?

Speaker B: Um, yeah, I like where you're going actually and I believe in a lot of the things that you said. First off, we are really well positioned to be, you know, sourcing those potential expansion or growth in the account. The funny thing is when I speak to, and I speak to a lot of CS leaders, when I spoke to a lot of CS leaders last year, one of the major pushbacks for them, to them, um, having their CS teams own a revenue number is that they're scared that their trusted advisor Persona is going to conflict. Right? Like they don't want to lose my trust, they don't want to lose the trusted advisor role essentially. And the truth is the very reason that we're best positioned to be selling or growing our accounts is because we are a trusted advisor. Like they trust you because you know what their, what their challenges are, what you're trying to solve for. You've been working with them all year round during their subscription and you understand their needs and I thing that positions us in the best way. Now the other thing that I wanted to address with what you said is there's no one size fits all, uh, just like how there is no one size fits all for customer success in general. Right. I think that being revenue driven as a customer success team could also look very different depending on the maturity of your organizations, the size of your organization, the complexity of your product and so on like you mentioned. And so for me, I actually speak a lot about this on LinkedIn as well. There are three different revenue driven CS models. One is revenue protection where your CS teams are responsible still for, you know, ensuring value and um, you know, empowering or enabling retention and renewal later. They may not necessarily hold the commercial responsibilities of negotiating or maybe even upselling. But for me it's still revenue driven because it's not very different to the traditional models that we know because it's still about experience and value and so on. But what you need to do differently now is that as I mentioned earlier, you need to be able to tie your business outcomes, your, your csm, um, outcomes to business outcomes. And that's how you can still be revenue driven even if you're in a revenue protection model, which is like I said, more like the traditional model if you may, out of a lack of term for it there is also the revenue enablement. That's how I call it, where your CSM is responsible for identifying opportunities, expansion opportunities. And we call that a lot as CSQLs in the industry. Right. You don't necessarily have to close the sale, but you are as a csm, because you know the account, you're able to surface these opportunities to the sales team. So then maybe you put this forward to your AM or sales team or whatever the role is in your organization for them to continue and to close. And then the third model for me is the revenue ownership. And this is where we see a lot of CS teams are on now or are being converted to right now. Just like my team, you know, in the current organization when I started, um, we own both retention and expansion. Um, and I actually did a survey for customer success leaders last year in one of the big communities on LinkedIn and it says like, I think 65%, 70% of CS teams own, are in this model. They own both retention and expansion. And I think that's why a lot of people automatically assume that that is what being revenue driven means. But if you have a complex product, like you said, does it actually make sense for your team to also own that? Do you think that your team can help onboard, enable on the product, do value realization, but then also upsell, renew and all of that? I think you have to balance the responsibilities on their plate and figure out. And that's how you figure out how. When does it make sense for it to go into the sales team or when does it make sense for them to just identify CSQLs and so on?

Speaker A: Yeah, I think really, really interesting there the three different models when it comes to. I think this is the first time I've heard it. Uh, now obviously I'm, you know, uh, speak to customer success teams and you know, I'm aware of the. But to have it sort of modeled like that, really, really interesting. It's um, hopeful. A lot of our, our listeners got, got some value there. That was really interesting. Thank you for sharing that.

Speaker B: Yeah, well, I guess one, if there's one takeaway that I want from there, it's that to showcase that not all CS teams need to own retention and expansion. I think that was the difficulty that a lot of us in CS had to go through in the past couple of years because founders and CEOs suddenly hear wind of oh, customer success should own a revenue number and then they put expansion and renewal on the customer success team without understanding that there are different ways to do it and that there are different considerations to ensure that your team is successful. So I think if there's anything they would take away from that, it's that and to help make their case internally with their organization.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, really great. I completely agree. So now that I have you here, I want to pick your brain as much as possible. So one of the things in the Nordics a lot of customer success leaders are and customer success teams are talking about, you know, how are other teams, customer success teams working? What are the trends that are happening? How should I position myself in the coming year? Do you have some uh, some insights there about emerging trends in customer success? Is there something you are excited about there?

Speaker B: Okay, well, I still think that we're, we're going to hear a lot of this Customer success shifting towards being a revenue driving function. When I look even ahead, when I look at the direction with which, with where I believe CS could potentially go, I think that the next phase of this is CS as a philosophy. Okay, so let me rephrase that a bit. I think I posted also a bit about this on LinkedIn at one point in time, but I feel like right now we're sitting in this and the evolution, when we look at the evolution of the CS organization, let's say more 15 years ago, or maybe uh, more than that, when they said customer success started, was it late 1997, 1990s. Right. So um, it became uh, CS emerged as a function, as a department because there was a need for us to be able to continuously service our companies when we shifted into the SaaS, um, the SaaS model and the recurring revenue model. And so the CS department was born because you know, we need to, to be able to ensure that our customers renew. And so for me that was like early stages of customer success. I do believe that we are now in what I call CS as a GTM motion where we're seeing CS leading, uh, revenue outcomes. Um, and it's no longer just like a customer service, customer experience oriented role, but it's now a critical part of the growth engine. And so if you saw in the, in the early beginnings there was confusion between CS and support, but now there is a confusion around what is CS and am like what is customer success versus account management. Right. And so for me that's like this is where we are at at this point in time. But what I really want to see is like the next level of evolution. And again there's no, there's no written, um, how should I say, literature on this. This is just me making some prediction based on how I saw the industry has evolved. For me the next stage is CS as a philosophy where customer success isn't just a function, it becomes a company wide operating principle. But I mean we're not there yet. But also, you know, I'm sure I'm speaking to the crowd because you're like well we all know in CS that CS should be a mindset, CS should be the company culture. But the reality is on the ground it's really, really very different. Right. Until I think we see executive buy in at the boardroom level around what is CS and what it means, what CS means for a company. And we, until we see like the comp, the compensation models and the org design to align and not just CS but sales, product, marketing support and all the other cross functional teams into shared customer outcomes. And until we have a cultural shift towards seeing customers not just as revenue sources but as partners in long term impact, I don't think we'll get there. But I think it's about how for us in the industry who has a voice like, like yourself, who people a lot of people look up to, there is an opportunity for us to educate not just the industry itself but um, you know, where the industry within where we operate. Right. Like I mentioned, um, um, if we educate that we need to create or recreate or redesign the way that we look at customer success, I think that's where we're going to get into that. That being said, even now in CS as a GTM like being a revenue driven cs there's still a lot of pushbacks. I think like you mentioned, um, in the Nordics where you know, CSM is quite nascent. It's actually the same where I am in APAC where the conversation isn't even about that. It's even. It's a conversation that was taking place maybe 10 or so years ago in other parts of the world where CS is more mature. And so we're taking it one stage at a time. But, but yes, I mean that's how I see the industry hopefully evolving into.

Speaker A: Wow, that's really interesting. And the picture you're painting there is, you know, obviously it's music to my ears. Right. And I think, I think a lot of people who are listening and working in customer success are, you know, they have that sort of ideal, you know, that customer success should be a cross functional and company wide commitment. But where I think a lot of the confusion arises for, especially in the Nordics, that's where I work. So I can't speak about the entire world but in the Nordics, it's a little bit, you know, I feel like customer success almost has gone through a little bit of identity, uh, crisis and it's difficult for customer success leaders and CS team. So you know, if you listen too much on the influencers or people that have a voice like you and me, it's like, okay, it's difficult to know what should I, exactly, what should I do? So it's difficult to know, just cut through the noise. But I think it's maybe easier in startups maybe to be a little bit more customer centric, be close to the customers and to get the entire organization to have this customer success mindset. As the company grows and matures, in my experience at least, I see that it becomes a little bit more departmentalized and silo based. So you have marketing, you have sales, uh, customer success, you have support and it, it almost becomes a little bit, you are a little bit pushed away from the customer. So my thoughts on that, you know, what should happen with customer success moving forward is just taking back to the basics and obviously aligning with revenue. So if you can take it back to the basics, what is customer success? At the basic level, you have to make sure that the customers, uh, actually achieve their desired outcomes. So that's sort of what I go back to when I talk to customer success leaders who are a little bit confused and perhaps a little bit overwhelmed as well. But I really liked your response there, Angelina. Thanks for sharing.

Speaker B: No, thank, um, you for sharing that too because I agree with you. I think there's a lot of this. Customer success should be like this, like that. And like you've mentioned, it can be confusing. Like which one do I follow? And like I said, at, uh, the very base of it, customer success is about value. Right? It's about bringing value to the customer and helping them achieve their outcomes. If you stay true to that, anything else that follows actually will naturally come into play. So if you focus on your outcomes and value, well, that expansion is going to happen. We're just, you know, in this, when, if you're operating in this revenue driven shift, there are some things that you need to add to put structure for your team, but the way that you work with customers is not going to change.

Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. I want to talk, touch a little bit upon the, you know, obviously there's happening a lot in the industry and one of the big things is obviously AI who can't, you know, not talk about AI. So what are your thoughts about AI and automation in customer success? How do you think that will shape the future of this.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's going to change the future. And I want to tell you a bit of a story because when ChatGPT came out years back, I think that was late 2022, I distinctly remember calling out on LinkedIn, um, to all of the CS industry, the CS leaders and influencers and industry movers. I think I even tagged Nick Metric that and like all of those, all of the different founders of you know, CSPs. And I was, it was a question like what are we going to do? How are we going to be able to take advantage of AI? And that post years ago was like one of my first forays into being active in posting on LinkedIn. And uh, honestly Silver means one of my most engaged posts. But I think that when all these started, you know, with ChatGPT really, you know, just becoming so mainstream, I immediately thought is that how digital CS can leverage AI and how it will allow us to scale personalization? Because at that time when I was in my current organization, I was building my, our digital CS emotion and so I was like, oh my gosh, the impact of AI and how it can make things faster for us and more efficient for us, how AI can help us send the right messaging to the right segment of customers at the right time. But then I realized, you know, now it's more mature. I think we're still not there. There are a lot more tools now than to two years ago. But there's so many ways that we can leverage AI in C and cs. Right. Like for content generation. All of this meeting summaries, all these note takers allowing us to easily take notes, action items that's like for me a game changer. Like when I was a CSM in my early years, I have to, that was such. It takes so much of your time, right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Very manual. Exactly. And things like you can automate creating a QBR deck now, um, or even your knowledge base and FAQs can be, can be AI driven. And then let's mention, let's talk about automation as well. I think there are a lot of tools too that will allow you to automate your playbooks and your customer follow ups. Not to mention customer intelligence and predictive analytics. Right. Customer intelligence allows you. If there is one tool that I would really want and need right now for my team, it's a uh, tool and maybe I haven't done my research yet, but that is able to analyze all customer touch points across, I don't know, like meetings, engagement tickets and then all the data about customer to provide holistic view and health of the account. Actually what am I talking about? I've spoken so much to a lot of these founders after that post that I did a couple of years back there was so many to reach out, hey we're doing something on AI and back then it was so, so early and I was like okay, let's wait a little bit and see how this plays out. I think there's a lot more of them right now and that predictive analytics, trend prediction, expansion, identifying expansions, those are all the things that AI can really help us with.

Speaker A: Yeah, really interesting. I have a developer uh, on my team that's using Fathom as an AI note taker and it's really interesting to see how well it actually you know summarize the meetings uh and also uh, recommends the next steps. We'll check out Fathom if they for the people listening. That's a really great tool I think for using you know with the AI boom right now I think it forces the customer success ah managers and CS leaders to be even more strategic because when you have AI that does a lot of the routine, maybe repetitive tasks that you don't want to do, it forces the actual human that does the you know, the cs, CS work to be more strategic. That's, that's what I found. So it's a bit different landscape to navigate. So if you don't, I wouldn't say people are getting replaced by AI but I think it's important uh to learn to use AI and adopt the different AI products that are out there. At least use GPT to you know, uh, have some customer emails, whatever. Just, just, just, just start using it because I think a lot of CS teams and CS leaders and CSMs are you know find it difficult to adopt AI uh solution. There's a lot of them right now, uh, you know and the next thing is the A.I. uh agent, you know the agentic stuff. That's really interesting. I see I have a few people founders building uh, customer success agents. That's really interesting. I haven't seen it live yet so it's a lot of, I wouldn't say hype but there's a lot of talk about how great it is. But I would like love to see how can you actually implement an AI agent in a customer success workflow. I think that's ah has a huge potential.

Speaker B: That's true and I agree with what you said. It frees up the human to actually put their time on high value tasks that will you know actually result to outcomes and then kind of put all of those repetitive tasks to AI.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think just, uh, I could talk to you probably for hours, Angeline, but just to wrapping it up, do you have some, uh, practical advice at the end there for customer success teams and CS professionals who want to succeed in customer success?

Speaker B: Um, I like how you said earlier how you know, if you're confused with what everything you see on LinkedIn is talking about when it comes to CS, I think listen to this one advice, ABV. If sales has ABC, which is always be closing, it says embody ABV. Always bring value. And I think that whether this applies for whether you're a new CSM or a CS leader, your job is to consistently ask yourself, am I bringing value in this interaction? I'm, uh, not just talking about customer interaction because obviously that's a given, but then internal interaction within your organization. So for me, ABV in practice means you understand your customers. Why, why are they using your product, their goals, their success criteria, and what value really looks like to them. Because only if you understand this fully will you be able to bring value. And it also means sharpening your commercial acumen. And we kind of talk a lot about this where, you know, don't just speak to metrics like product adoption or activities. Always tie them into ROI and internally. How does that look like in practice? How do you bring value internally to your organization? First learn the language of the business. So be comfortable talking about metrics, outcomes, strategic impact, and then master the art of influence. Right. Whether it's aligning cross functional teams. Because we all know in order to be successful in the customer success industry, we can do it alone. We need the support of our adjacent teams like product marketing, sales support to help us. And so it's so important that you are able to master the art of influencing and being the voice of the customer as well. And then finally, I would say own your growth because the CS landscape is evolving so fast. Right. Like I said two more than two years ago, there's no mention of AI. When I got started 15 years ago in customer success, it looks so different. And I think that the only reason that I'm able to be where I am at today is because I was willing to take the risk. I was resourceful and I really tried to, to grow both in my role, but also learn more about, you know, what I'm seeing in the industry, listening to your podcast and podcasts like this that share, you know, the insights, uh, from real people on the ground, networking and so on. I think being committed to your growth is very important, actually, no matter what industry you are. And I think that's. That's something that should be there all the time.

Speaker A: Yeah, I really like that one, abv. Always bring value. Yeah. Always be closing. That's been the main part for the sales for, you know, the sales. Yeah.

Speaker B: We gotta have our own, uh, how should I say? Moto or something like that.

Speaker A: Or mantra.

Speaker B: Catchphrase. The mantra. Yes.

Speaker A: Thank you so much for sharing your insights and experiences. Um, really appreciate your time.

Speaker B: Thank you, Fahim. I've enjoyed this conversation a lot.

Speaker A: Me too. And thank you for listening. If you enjoy this conversation, don't forget to subscribe. Subscribe and share this episode with others in the CS community. See you next time.