Ep 78 | Erik Törnblom

Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to Mastering CS Candid Leader Insights, the podcast where we dive into the world of customer success with industry leaders. I'm your host, Irina Chismash and today I'm joined by Eric Thornblock, customer success manager at playhip, a digital signage platform that helps organizations manage what shows on their screen across multiple locations. Eric, I'm really happy to have you here. Thanks for joining.

Speaker B: Thank you, thank you, thank you for having me.

Speaker A: Eric, before we dive in, football, uh, has been a huge thread through your life since you were 11 and you are now CSM at play it. What do football and CS have in common?

Speaker B: Some things that I surely take away from that, that part of my life is being a football player and a coach, is that we work as a team. I think that team element and my ability to also compartmentalize tasks is something that I've learned from sports the way that I don't. I like to structure things a certain way but also when I'm attacking a problem, I sometimes have the ability to focus on that problem and maybe view that problem in compartments rather than at whole. Often when attacking something in that world you solve one thing or you focus on your job and then you move on. Especially in American football when it's very rigid and yeah compartmentalized sport in a way. So uh, bringing that into my work, I think it's very beneficial.

Speaker A: Paint us a picture of your day to day as a CSM at play. Who are your customers and what does the work actually look like?

Speaker B: Mike in general in digital signage a customer can be anyone. Having someone that has a small shop that wants one screen or an um, enterprise level companies with thousands of screens. So it can vary a lot from day to day. I personally work more with enterprise level customers or customers in the public sector so they tend to have uh, another complexity to them than just having setting up one screen. Uh, but since digital signage is a very flexible tool and it fits in very well into large and small businesses in their communication mix and I tend, as I said I tend to work more with the uh, slightly larger customers but my day to day uh, consists of teaching and guiding and supporting existing customers but also onboarding newer customers or being part of the early pre sell process when we are demoing our product to newer customers so we can implement them in there and there's in the company.

Speaker A: Speaking about the onboarding, what does good onboarding look like at uh, Playlit? What are you aiming for in the first few months and how do you know when you've got there?

Speaker B: Yes, I think that's one of the key questions that all customer success managers struggle with. But the onboarding process is we have a standard process so to speak where, where we have three sessions set up for our customers and that's a general process that we have. If you just purchase our products onboarding that's what you get and we feel that's very sufficient to learn and implement our product and to get going. And um, that consists in training sessions and follow up. It's a technical product that communicates so that you have to learn both the technical side of it and then also the communication part of it. So maybe we have customers that are more technical, then we focus more on the communication content creator part. But sometimes we have customers that are more very good at the uh, communication part that we might have to focus more on the technical administration part of the tool. But uh, more complex onboarding source structures can take months depending on the scale of the customer and what they want to implement. So it's, it varies a lot. But success in a regular onboarding so to speak. Look looks at uh, the amount of screens that might be online, the frequency of the frequency of publishing. Are they using the tools in our platform that we discussed during the onboarding we can evaluate uh, those things uh

Speaker A: during follow ups and once they are post onboarding how do you measure whether things are going well? What does healthy actually look like in your case?

Speaker B: Uh, I think it's a hard data point to find out. Sometimes it's so many parameters but uh, we look at how our product, its structures. We have licenses so are all licenses being used, are they at 100% capacity or are they dropping? Are they not using 100% so we can look at that health score. Are the screens online? So we can see that offline screens do not uh, display the most current, the current information. So that's a key health score to us. We can see frequency of logging, frequency of uh, publishing and those type of help scores that we can pull out. And also here depending on the customer, often onboarding we have certain follow ups, how we structure it that we larger uh customers get a dedicated customer success manager. We try to set up at least monthlies or quarterly meetings so where we can have discussions with customers. And often when we release something, a new feature that's also when we have ah a conversation with our customers so that we can follow up then um, because we will likely show a new feature and then we can likely take a little discussion about the overall feeling right now in the platform.

Speaker A: Are you also handling the Renewal part. Are you also responsible for the renewal communication?

Speaker B: Yeah, yes, yes we are. So that's on our department. We work together with our resellers since we very seldom sell that product directly. So here is that that relationship also needs to work with the. In the end, it's often that the reseller is where the customer purchases. But uh, we act as a bridge here to help the customer to, to, to resign a contract or to renew their deal, but also empty Schonberg and such.

Speaker A: So yeah, so you also need to manage the uh, relationship with the customer but also with the resellers a little bit.

Speaker B: We have, how we have structured it is that we have a uh, sales department that works more with the resellers and we are focused on the customer parts. But there are some times where we bridged it. So I will take a sales rep into a meeting or they will bring me so we can co work on it because our sales reps are focused on. They are assigned certain resellers. So they are experts on their resellers and how they can produce good deals for our customers. And I will be the expert on the customers and how they can use our platform. So we do different things in that part.

Speaker A: What is the operational infrastructure behind all of this? What platforms are central to how CS actually runs day to day? What do you need in order to be up and running from a CS perspective?

Speaker B: Yeah, no, we are a HubSpot based. HubSpot based almost through. We're moving more and more. We have dabbled in different platforms trying to weave away in the jungle of tools that you can use. But there's also a, uh, recent strategic choice by the company to move more, more of the company into HubSpot.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So we're merging other tools that we have into a platform now.

Speaker A: What are you out of curiosity, what are you merging?

Speaker B: Mostly we have a CS tool that's called Start. Start Deliver.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And you are basically migrating from Start deliver to, to HubSpot.

Speaker B: Yes. And we have a. Well, uh, sorry, go on, go on, go on. We have a. We have another uh, tool where in connected to our platform where we measure customer satisfaction. We are also moving that into HubSpot now so we can have more data in our customer cards. So everybody. So we can. Because before I can see the value in it, before there was a lot of compartmentalizing or silos. So yeah, we will have one silo. Ah, marketing, they would have one silo. Our product team, they would have one silo and sales would have one silo. Since we Were all almost working in different programs. Uh, so now we can gather in a more general silo so we can all help each other out a little bit more efficiently.

Speaker A: So basically HubSpot, it becomes the central hub.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And all the teams, be it marketing, be it sales, be it yes. Are living in one central, one central central tool. And uh, do you also have support from, from HubSpot? Okay, so basically everything lives in lives in HubSpot. Do you add an AI layer over uh HubSpot? Do you leverage Claude Gemini that stays on top of uh.

Speaker B: Yeah. We are cloud based in that part so we use Claude as an AI tool. I mostly used it for my project management. I can build projects in Claude and very efficiently. It's a very good tool in that part. It can spit out project plans or come up with. I have a way that I want to structure my onboardings or projects in a way so I, I can create that plan, Claude those yeah, that information. And then I can drag in my customer feedback from the first meeting or what they want to do. Then Claude can will create my plan for me with dates and tasks and everything. I have already created the rules for it. But then I can just drag in the customer feedback for each project and then get my project plan and it's very easy for me to display it for the customer and we can make quick changes for it. So it's a uh, very good way to use it I think.

Speaker A: And besides this use case, what other use case do you. Do you have in the CS team? How are you leveraging the AI for your day to day operations for improving efficiency?

Speaker B: One, one thing we have that I think really enhanced our efficiency is that we have an AI load taker. And it's also more than a note taker. We record all our meetings and that is that important in two senses here. One, we need to make sure that we deliver on what we promised in meetings and we can m in a good way bring in information and then just deliver on it. And also that we are all on the same page. But also when we all in the company, all cvs, all meetings with customers are recorded, we can get a very good senses of our customers, how and what they are feeling when we are having conversations with them. Just by then asking questions in our. In that tool we can then very efficiently find out what part of our is it several customers that have the same problem regarding an integration. Then my department can go to the product department and say here we have five key customers this month that have said the same thing that Is a very good way also, because then we have something concrete to bring rather than just me having a lot of meetings during the week. And I just say so and so is saying this and this. Because then of course they will trust me, but they will trust me even more when I have it in text, when it's structured, it is recorded and so on. So they can follow up on it as well. So, uh, that is a very good tool. We run that report monthly. So we have prompted the report from our department or my department head has. Ah, so we get that report as a team every month. So we can have uh, a status on how the customer, what are they saying, how are they feeling right now? And that is, that has been really beneficial for us.

Speaker A: I want to switch gears for a second and take you back to the football chapter of your life. Um, particularly on the coaching side of things. And you mentioned at the beginning of our discussion how the sports basically helped you comfort, uh, create compartments into the whole. Into the whole thing. So boxes split a big problem into smaller ones and tackle it one by one. Now I'm curious when you are trying to. Because you also coached, when you are trying to take a group of people and turn them into a team that actually performs, where do you start?

Speaker B: That's a really good question. And um, there's um, always a saying that there is no I in team. But, but I always. I don't agree with that because the individuals make a team. Therefore we have to create a team of these individuals. And I don't want to have the same individuals because that will not make an efficient team for us. We need to have different people. And start by. If I'm assembling a team or hiring, we need to have different individuals with different opinions, with different backgrounds so that you don't hire the same people to save, to solve the same job and so on. Uh, because constructing a team of different ones, then they will solve the same problem, but in different ways. Uh, from my experience or from what I believe in. So that there is more development. There is highly chance of developing a team in the long run and gaining more efficiency. Because having different people of different opinion or different experiences on are very beneficial. Because there must be conflict in a team. And this is something that most people don't realize, I think because having conflict and having some disparities, that is what moves people forward in the next phase of building a team. So you have to move forward with that. And that takes some people in the team to have opinions, be outspoken, but to uh, be Able to push to the next level. You cannot maybe have 10 people that are exactly the same and all of them want to push because then you get a lot of pushers and that will not work. But you have to have build a balance of these individuals. But we one must have some type of conflict. We one must have some type of disparities in a team to reach the next phase. That is my opinion when building a team from start or from starting any teamwork process in that sense.

Speaker A: And speaking about building a CS team in the current setup and with the AI hype that we have around us, what are the skills that you would need into a CS team in order for the team to perform?

Speaker B: That's good, I think from our point of view and how we work since the span of customers is so wide. And I think that's very good. Of the team I work in, our skills are very different. We have, uh, Some of us are include myself here more maybe like project management come from the type of experience. Some come from more of a. Even more of a sales background and some are more of a. Have grown from the support side and grown into our customer success side so that we are taking all the, all the people from that span with different experiences and having that. So those three skills are something that you think you need to have at least working here. Because we have large companies that need project management. We have that sales part or upselling, I should sell at least having a business sense and seeing business opportunities, but also seeing when the customer is not happy. I think that's somewhere in here. The risk of churn, for example. And the last part here, the customers, the true support player, um, we could say people pleaser or somebody that always wants to do everything for the customer like that part. So those three things are I think very important in that role here, I would say.

Speaker A: And the last question. Is there a habit way of thinking or something that you learned the hard way early on that still shows up in how you run accounts today?

Speaker B: Yes, I'm fairly comfortable in my own skin, uh, so to speak. And I can only be me. That's the thing that I, uh, want to push. And that sounds easy in a way, but being comfortable in your own skin and how you are as a person here to reach that, I think that it can be a tough experience on that or the road to it. What I really, uh, I can be quite frank and straightforward as a person even in both in my business role, in my work life, but also in private. And that is a great skill in uh, One way being very, very straightforward. But also there's two sided, two sides to this coin. Sometimes it's a good, it's a gift to be straightforward and working very efficiently and moving on and being very honest with people. But also you can probably see the other side there some. Sometimes it can go the wrong way in a way there. But the ability to say no is something that I value and saying no to things that's not in my, that's not something that I want to do now. But also saying in my role saying no to customers, I think it's because I have a working in a very customer based businesses basically all my life very. I feel that many just say yes maybe or we try to work it out or we just finding ways to keep the customer interested or feeling that we are doing something for them. Sometimes it's better to just say no and be very honest with them and say no, we're not going to do that right now. This is what we're going to do instead. It's going to be better for you right now if we tried this. Your idea is very nice, it's good but it's not something that's feasible right now. Maybe in six months when you have landed in our platform so to speak. So that we are. And that is a hard conversation to maybe have with a customer that is new or maybe hasn't even signed a uh, full contract yet and so on. So yeah, I think that's something that I can bring to the table. A habit there.

Speaker A: Eric. This was a really good conversation. Thank you, thank you, thanks for joining, thanks for joining me and to everyone listening, thanks for tuning in. Until next time, stay curious, keep learning and mastering customer success.