Anika Zubair: How to Master the Skills and Strategies That Drive Revenue in Customer Success

Speaker A: Welcome to Customer Success with Fahim Woller, 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 Uller. Today I'm beyond excited to welcome Anika Zubair to the show. Anika is a globally recognized customer success leader with over 13 years of experience scaling and transforming CES teams at high growth B2B SaaS companies. She's currently the head of CES at Griffin and the CEO and founder of the Customer Success Pro. She's been named a top 25 CS influencer and and is recognized as the one of the top 50 women leaders in CS. And on top of all that, he also hosts the Customer Success Pro podcast. So, Anika, welcome to the show.

Speaker B: Thank you so much, babe. I'm so excited to be here. I'm also loving being on this side of the podcast. It's always fun when you're a host to be on the other side of the hot seat. So I'm super excited to chat to you today and I'm honored to be a guest on your podcast, especially as you move into the English speaking podcast.

Speaker A: I really, really appreciate that, Annika. Um, I'm super, uh, great to have you on this podcast. We talked a little bit before we hit record and I just told Annika, for our listeners out there, I just told Annika that I have been a huge fan of hers and I've been following her on LinkedIn for a while. So I am really excited that you accepted to be a guest on my podcast, uh, Annika. So before we dive into today's episode, which I think will be a really, really great one, could you please introduce yourself to our listeners? Just tell us a little bit about yourself. Who, who is Anika?

Speaker B: Of course, I'm happy to. So as you've already kind of given me a beautiful introduction, I'll. I'll kind of go off of that, but my name is Anika Zubair. I am a executive customer success leader. I've spent the last 13 years specifically in what I called post sales revenue leadership, because it's different at, uh, every company. I've been at. I'm also a customer success and revenue coach, which is what the customer success pro is all about. And I know him already mentioned that a little bit. But I do help enable customer success professionals feel are strategic and commercially minded. And that's what my enablement and coaching program's all about. And I also host my own podcast, but that's all things that you could probably find out about me online. I also like to introduce me as a human, um, American, which I know the accent is where everyone probably is listening, can hear, but I'm also British. I'm based in the UK in London, and I like to say I'm British with an American accent. Now, um, I have been living in Europe for the last 13, going on 14 years. This will be my 14th year living in Europe, which is, um, amazing. I love it. I haven't gotten back and I absolutely enjoy being uh, in the UK and in Europe as well. And I love all things customer success. I think if you come across anything and everything I talk about or share online, I'm really, really passionate, which I think comes across. But I really love it. Like what everyone asks, like, why do you talk about it so much? I'm like, I really love what I do, so it's super corny. But that is who I am and I'm super excited to be here and chat with you today.

Speaker A: Really, really great, really great. Annika. Um, I think that comes across really well also, like I said, I've been following you and just, just for our listeners, if you haven't been, uh, checking out her content, Go, go, go. Follow Anika Zubair on, on LinkedIn. She's a really great content you are putting out. And what sort of my experience a bit with customer success is, especially in the Nordics, is, uh, it's a little bit difficult to just use all the, maybe the typical American frameworks and stuff like that. So it's difficult. The way it works in the Nordics, in my experience has been a little bit different. So a huge part of my work has been, you know, how do we translate this to the Nordic communities in Norway, Sweden and Denmark for instance? But I think, uh, really interesting. So, yeah, obviously the, you know, the passion for customer success, I really see that in you. I have that as well. I come from a sales background, so I've been in customer success for the last 10 years, but I started in sales. Could you tell us a little bit how about your sort of journey? How did you first start in customer success? How did you end up in Customer success. Yeah.

Speaker B: I love always hearing everyone's story of how. Because customer success isn't something you studied at university or isn't something that. When I was, you know, 15 years old, it was like, oh, that's the career path I'm going to go into. I also, like yourself, started in sales, funny enough. I, uh, my first gateway into the B2B SaaS world, I was an STR. And then I moved into account management. And then when I was moving companies, I was actually interviewing for an AE or an account executive role. And while I was in the interview process with this company, they were saying, hey, actually, have you ever heard of a customer success manager? Like, we think your personality and your, you know, previous experience would perfectly align to, to our CSM role. And I was like, what the heck is customer?

Speaker A: What is a csm?

Speaker B: Like, what is that? That sounds like a really fun title. But I. All I knew was sales. I knew the career progression of a salesperson and becoming an AE was the next step in my career progression. But I was like, okay, cool, this sounds really fun. And like, it was a really great company. And I was like, why not let me take a chance on my career and start in customer success? So that was back in, um, 2013 that I, that I did that interview and then I was just like, from there it was just fully focused on customer success in my career. I would not turn back or look back at anything else. But I too, started in a different direction and because of a happy coincidence of, of where I was in the right time, right place, I ended up taking an opportunity in customer success. And probably, well, before it was cool or known, but I think it, it was a really good bet I took in my career.

Speaker A: Yeah. Before it was cool, was it that you said?

Speaker B: Yeah, before it was, I don't know, like, I like that now it's like really cool. Like, yeah, everyone gets it. And, um, I remember my very first Christmas or my very first family holiday where I had to explain what a customer success manager does. Maybe the Nordics is still like this, but at least in the UK most people get it. Like, most people understand what that title means, but back then everyone was like, so do you just make customers happy? I remember that was the number one question I was asked.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Classic.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: It is interesting to hear your story, Annika. I also have a sales. Sales background, so I started in customer success. Yeah. So three years prior to. In, uh, sorry, after. In 2016, I think, you know, having a commercial mindset and having that sales background has really helped me when it comes to customer success because for me it was, it has been, I wouldn't say easy, but it has felt more natural to having those commercial conversations with customers and actually driving revenue and aligning the customer success motion to revenue. I've actually been accused of being too commercial when it comes to customer success. So that's sort of.

Speaker B: There's no such thing. I wouldn't say that's possible.

Speaker A: I had a leader who actually wouldn't, I shall not mention her name, but she said actually was too commercial for the CS team. And I was like, okay, maybe I have a wrong understanding of what customer success is about. But yeah, a couple of years later I see that, uh, yeah, I see that the whole uh, customer success as a field is moving towards commercials, uh, the way of being in CS teams, owning revenue. It would be interesting to talk uh, with you about that. How do you feel that uh, you know, that commercialization of customer success is something that you also see?

Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. But I also think that CS has kind of done a 180. If I'm completely like or like a 360, I should actually say because back when I was in sales at account management, the natural next step if I wanted to work in post sales instead of new acquisition sales was customer success. Like you were dealing with everything post sales. So I find that actually the commercialization, everything that we're now building and doing in customer success is actually probably exactly what we were doing 10 years ago. But what happened in the middle, which again my career also had this as well. And I'm pretty sure people listening feel this is like between, let's say 2017 to 2021 or so, a lot of CS people who joined customer success came out of support or professional services or a lot of the leaders that were leading these teams were very much looking at CSAP or NPS or some sort of like, like metric that was not revenue related. It was more towards our customers adopting or are they happy, are they using our product? And a lot of that has resulted in again CSMs who either started their career like I said, in maybe the early knees or even before, but just they find themselves in this world where they never had a commercial target. But for myself personally, I've always had a commercial target. Yes, I come from a commercial background, but actually churn was always my number one metric, meaning gross revenue retention and maintaining churn or a low level of churn. And then eventually it was net revenue retention. When I moved into more senior leadership roles and making sure not Only are we reducing churn, but we're actually increasing revenue from our customer base. So, like, I've always had these targets. So to hear that it's now new or something, that's, like, coming back around, I think it's great because actually, and I tell this to everyone I coach and work with, I'm like, we actually own more revenue than any salesperson does.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: And like, no one sees it that way because it's like, no, I'm just looking after the customer. I'm just managing this account or whatever. But, like, each CSM is, like, responsible for hundreds of thousands, if not millions in, like, annual recurring revenue for all the customers that they're dealing with. That's a lot of money versus a salesperson is maybe tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. And once they've closed it, that's it. They're moving on. And so I think customer success has actually been commercial from day one, from the day that you have to look after the full customer base. But I think the difference is, is now we're, I guess, recognizing it or met or, uh, measuring it against revenue or commercial targets, which is now making everyone really nervous with, like, oh, wait, I'm not commercial or I'm not revenue person. But you are. You are literally handling revenue every single day. So, yeah, I think it's happening quite a bit now. And I think the main reason is companies realizing that it's cheaper to expand within your existing customer base rather than go and chase new logos. But also, the market is very different. Like, cash is not cheap anymore, investment's not cheap, and most people are having to look inward at their existing customer base rather than chasing, you know, new ads with new marketing and new customers. It's. It's just not the same as it used to be.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, completely agree. But when I talk with CS teams and CSMs, I feel like maybe the skill set that got them the CSM role or the job they're doing currently is maybe not enough to take them from where they want to go next. How do you know? When I'm speaking with CSM and coaching CSMs is always some CSMs are really technical, right? They're really great at the technical aspects and they're good at support and stuff like that. It's difficult. I haven't found yet a CSM that's really commercial and also is really sort of technical person as well. How do you. If you would, you know, a CSM is listening right now who is maybe a little bit afraid of having a Commercial, uh, commercial kind of way of working with customers. Do you have some tips there?

Speaker B: Yeah, I would say. The thing is, like, you just said, skills are learned. Skills are something that you can learn. So whether you're technical right now and you're worried about commercial, or maybe you're super commercial like he mentioned he was before, like, and you're not technical. The beauty is that what you're hired for is the first step. But, like, as you stay on at a company, whether it's months, years, decades, whatever you decide to do in your career, you're learning and evolving every month, every day, every year, you're. You're constantly evolving. Like, I'll take a really great example. AI. I know it's a hot topic, but if you asked me 10 years ago when I was a CSM, if AI would be my co pilot every single day, I wouldn't even know what you were talking about. But AI is a skill that, that I've had to actually learn. And, you know, I'm not exactly a spring chicken, but I've had to learn a new skill on how to actually use AI every single day. And I definitely feel like in the era and the world that we live in right now, these skills that we're learning, they're going to constantly evolve. So for anyone who's listening, who's a little bit intimidated or maybe thinking like, oh, well, I don't have the commercial skills or I don't have the technical or whatever the skills are that you're lacking, the beauty is a skill can be learned. It's just a matter of you wanting to learn it and then finding the right resources, the right coach, the right direction to actually learn it. But if you're constantly going to be like, I just don't know, I just don't know, then I'm sorry, you're going to be left behind because an AI bot is going to probably do your job for you. But I think the beauty is, as a skill is teachable, it is learnable. I didn't know none of us went to school for customer success. I had no idea how to build high functioning CS teams, but I do it every day now because it's a skill I practice.

Speaker A: Yeah, we just read Lincoln Murphy's book Customer Success a couple of years back. Yeah, that's it.

Speaker B: That I got my degree.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that was a really great answer, Annika. I really appreciate that. I think if you are a csm, listening, this is, I think this was a really actionable advice as well. Every Skill is teachable, so you have to be a little bit proactive. And uh, yeah, I really like that growth mindset. You're not stuck, you know, in that skill set. I have your hair. I want to pick your brain as much as possible, Anika. So of course, really, I think our audience also is a little bit interesting in what you think about emerging trends in the customer success space. Do you have some? Uh, it's difficult to look into the future, of course, but do you have some. Some, um, some overall. Uh, yeah, predictions there. Some emerging trends.

Speaker B: I mean, I would say using. I mean I kind of already indicated towards the AI piece and I find it really interesting because even though everyone says they are using AI in some way, shape or form, there's more to learn. Every single week or month. I feel behind and I use AI every single day, literally every day. Whether it's writing show notes for my podcast or whether it's refining an email. I literally prompt sometimes saying this customer is being tricky. Can you give me a better closing line to this email to make them join this call? Things like that. I am prompting my. My like chatgpt every single day to help me. I. It's almost like my coach and guide in some ways where I am prompting it to help me become a better customer success professional. And I do think AI being your co pilot is exactly how you are going to be unstoppable in customer success. Because let's be honest, we have been asked to do more and more and more every year. I have been told, okay, first you have to handle churn. No, now you've got to do upsell. Wait, wait, wait. Now you also have to do renewals and then you got to make sure they onboard in less than 30 days. Oh, wait, now you have to do all of this standing on your head? I don't know, I feel like a CSM's job is getting harder and harder every single day. And I honestly, I do think it's one of the toughest jobs out there, but I think there's amazing people who are resilient and do it well, but you do not have to work harder to be successful in customer success. Like, there are so many tools out there, AI being one of them, where I would highly recommend using it as your co pilot and the trend. And it's something that you should jump on and you should definitely, yeah, you should definitely use it every single day. That's my, I guess, trend. The other thing I would say is using other teams. The other thing I think CSMs do a lot. And I'm guilty too, is playing what I like to say, the hero complex. We like to do everything ourselves. We think we're literally a hero. And listen, I get it. You're, uh, maybe Superman, Superwoman, whatever. You do so many things for your customer, and that's amazing. But I don't know why we're always reinventing the wheel. Like, if you are having a tough conversation on a renewal with a customer, I bet you someone in sales has a slide deck or at least a talk track that, uh, you can use that's like, objection. Handling, for example. But for some reason CSMs want to reinvent it and come up with their own tactics for dealing with like a rejection on a renewal or something. I'm like, go ask your colleagues, go ask your teammates. I bet you they know. And they actually probably have a much better deck or talk track or whatever. And I find that sometimes the trend is that CSM like to do it all themselves or feel that they have to. And I'm just here to say, please don't because you're going to burn out. Yeah, I, um, think those are like the two trends is go ask your colleagues for the help and make sure that they chip in because churn upsells dealing with customers. It is not a CSM problem. It's a company problem. Everyone employed at your company has to deal with it. So that means that product should be involved. And I don't mean by just giving feedback. I mean they should be building a better product. They should actually be doing more. Like, I think sometimes CSM see it as like they have to do it all. I'm like, please stop. Because it's never, it's going to result in burnout.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think what you mentioned there is really great points because not only does the csm, um, you know, not, uh, burn out, but you also foster communication and collaboration between departments. So that's, that's something I see with a lot of customer success teams is that they are working, you know, in different departments. They don't have common KPIs. It's difficult. Is also the sales and CS alignment. I don't know anybody who has cracked that, you know, nailed that, uh, you know, sort of cooperation really well. I feel like there's always some sort of, uh, sort of issues with the sales and CS department. So that's a great tip. Just talk to your colleagues and the sales reps. You know, they are really good at what they do. And uh. Yeah, and I don't think AI is going anywhere so it's smart to, you know, if you don't at least use chat GPT for, you know, drafting emails or like you said, you know, tweak some sort of part of your emails, I think you're falling a little bit behind. And I also think it's important to say that I don't think AI is going to replace CSMs, maybe some of them that are not really strategic. But I think, hopefully I think that most CSM jobs are safe. And like you said, Annika, I really like that look at AI as a co pilot and something that helps you become even better. But I know a lot of people are a little bit, you know, uh, a little bit afraid of that maybe it's going to be replaced by AI.

Speaker B: But I think the thing is, is like we evolve like human nature, the whole, our entire species evolves. I mean, if you think about it, I mean at least again, aging myself here, when I first opened a bank account, I had to go into a bank. I had to speak to a person and go to a teller and even when I wanted to pull out money, it was in person. Right. Like I didn't have the option of this machine that gave me cash and now cash is not even there anymore. If you think about it, I just transfer on my phone or I tap my, I don't even have a card. I just take my phone everywhere. But like, does that result in some job loss? Yes, but those people aren't fully unemployed. They're not on the street. They've, they've evolved. They, they do different roles, different things. And that's where I see where CS and AI will evolve. If you are on the AI train, like you have to evolve with it. And if you're working technology, it's the fastest paced evolution ever. And I think that using it every day to help you become more strategic, to help you unlock the right conversation, to help you do the research on what your customers are doing and what they value, what they're, you know, how they're using your product is only going to help you, but if you shy away from it, I think those are the people that are actually going to be ending up with the job loss and feel quite upset that AI took their job. But if you're using it as your co pilot, I think that's where you're really going to be unstoppable.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I think also I love being in the customer success space and been there for the last decade and it's evolving a lot. Like you say, do you have some Some overarching guides. How should I put it? What direction do you think the customer success field is headed? Do you have some. We talked a little bit about AI and optimization, obviously, but would be interesting to hear your thoughts about that.

Speaker B: I mean, I think based on what's happening in the world right now and when we're recording this, I think the world in general and the economics of the world is quite unstable. And because of that, there is a lot of ups and downs when it comes to not just the job market, but also like the tech market and like, who's investing in what and what everyone's doing in the, in the tech world. I think what's, uh, emerging and what's really, really important is that if you are not tying your efforts or what you're doing in customer success to some sort of business outcome or revenue or commercial outcome, I would be worried, I personally would be worried if I didn't hide my efforts and my team's effort towards some sort of revenue. Because let me be really clear to everyone, every business in the world, whether it's 2 people or 2 million people in that business, they are trying to make money, they are trying to grow, they're trying to be a more profitable, successful business. And if you are not contributing to the profits of that business, like, what are you doing there, basically? And so I think at least early in my career in customer success, a lot of my role was very cushy. It was very much like, make sure that customers are using us, make sure they're logging in, make sure they fill out a CSAT survey. And I look back on it, and that was way easier than what we're challenged with today. But what I'm trying to say is if you're only being measured on the number of calls you're having with customers, or if your customer logged in today or something, then I would really be questioning the value you drive within the business you're part of. Because, like I said, that business is trying to be profitable, it's trying to grow. And I think the trend here is that customer success needs to be more closely aligned to revenue or commercial metrics and not in an icky, ew, I'm not in sales. We're all in sales, by the way. Literally, we're all in sales. If you interviewed and landed a job, you're in sales because you sold yourself into that job. But regardless, I think the thing is, is like, we all have to be here to help our companies grow in profit. And how are you doing that? And if you're not able to connect CS to that profit, you're going to always be seen as a cost center and nobody wants that in this day and age.

Speaker A: Yeah, really well put. I think you said it really well and uh, of course completely agree. But what I find maybe is for some customer success teams struggle a little bit with is you know, even if they know they have to tie their customer success motions to revenue, it's like how, where do we start? Right. And one of the things I've seen some sales teams are doing is of course you probably know about this, just use customer success qualified leads at least. Right. Just have some sort of metric that ties revenue back to the activities you are doing. Right. Not only measure NPS and um, so I would say that would be a place to start. You use csqls. But an easy thing can also be, you know, if the CSM at least had some uh, you know, responsibility for upsells. They don't have to you know, cross sell or sell new products but at least they could upsell on the existing subscription or something like that. What are your experiences there to get some. If some CS teams want to get started with being more revenue revenue driven, what's an easy first step, you think?

Speaker B: Yeah, I'm going to give the easiest of easy first step. Okay. I can almost guarantee that every person listening their sales team has a channel. Whether it's slack, Microsoft Teams, whatever you're using, there's a channel that says like ring the gong or new deals closed or something. Every salesperson also will always put it in there. Just closed a hundred thousand dollar deal with Riverside let's say, or whatever the company is. Right. And they will list it out in there. I almost rarely see CS professionals actually give shout outs to the revenue impact that they are having in their business. And this is what I see, which isn't wrong. But I want you to take it a step further. They will go and say hey team, we just secured Riverside's renewal for example. And then point blank and they'll be like happy face emoji, like champagne popping emoji. All these great emojis, right? Awesome. But can I just tell you, your executives, including your CFO have no idea how much money that account is worth to the business unless they go and dig into a CRM or dig into something they're probably not going to know off the top of their head. So instead of just saying hey, we've closed this renewal with this company, I would like to say we just closed a uh, 3 million renewal with Riverside that congratulations to X, Y and Z csm, that's worked on getting this across the line. Do you see how that's like so much more different? And again, just putting that number at the very start of whatever accomplishment you're, you're saying immediately quantifies that you are a revenue driven csm, that you are holding a revenue target. And I think the big thing to just call out here is this is something you're already doing. You are already handling renewals, I'm guessing in some way, shape or form. By the way, even if you're handing it off to a salesperson to close that renewal, you are still nurturing that renewal. You are still making sure that when it comes to that renewal date, they are going to actually renew. So share it. That's my easiest, quickest tip is most CS people are probably not actually even sharing the accomplishment of what their, what renewal or what revenue target they're they're holding.

Speaker A: Yep, really great advice. There you have it, guys, for csm. So CS leaders, uh, listening. If you need an easy, you know, first step in aligning your customer success motion to revenue, I think Keanu can give you a great first step there. Just, um, just finishing up. It would be interesting to hear, um, if you had any specific advice for customer success teams or CS professionals who want to succeed in customer success. What I imagine myself when I try to answer that question is what would I tell myself when I started 10 years ago? But, uh, do you have some advice there? Really interesting to hear.

Speaker B: Yeah. I think there's so many things I can say, but I will try to tailor it to one which is you really have to stick things through with customer success. I think that the world changes quite quickly. There's no perfect playbook for customer success. Yes, there's probably Steps outlines, the Lincoln Murphy book. There's so many things that can give you a good framework, but I've never done one thing the same at all the businesses I've been at. But what I have done is been consistent and resilient. And I think in cs, if you are deciding to continue a career in customer success, or maybe you're starting, it is you really have to be consistent and resilient. And that can apply to many things, that can apply to your career progression and becoming a leader, but that also can apply to the customers you work with. Believe it or not, you're going to have to be consistent with following up with them, with guiding them, with helping them see the value. But you're going to have to be resilient because your customers are actually probably going to be more difficult than you probably planned on. And I think those two skills or those. That mindset of being resilient and consistent is probably going to pay off in the longevity of your career. So if I were to tell myself when I started in cs, make sure that you're in this for the long haul, and if you are, make sure that, you know, you've got to have a little tough skin to get through it.

Speaker A: I think that's a. That's a great tip. Uh, how do you say it? Yeah, I think that's a. That's a really great, great place to. To. To. To wrap it up. Thank you so much for sharing your insights and experiences. I really appreciate your time.

Speaker B: Ianika. Um, of course, babe. I love this. Thank you for having me. I feel honored that I was able to be part of this.

Speaker A: Thank you so much, and thank you for listening. If you enjoy the conversation, don't forget to subscribe and share the episode with others in the CS community. See you next time.