How We Turn Angry Clients Into Loyal Advocates w/ Rob Zambito CEO of Success Scaled Consulting

I dealt with was a guy yelling at me saying, Why are your muffins so expensive? Well, they're gluten-free. And he was like, So you took something out and you're charging me more for it. Put it back.

I want the gluten back. Welcome the customer unsuccess, the podcast where we cut out the noise and talk with real leaders about their hardest lessons in customer success and other go-to-market motions. I'm your host, Joe DeGrande, and in each episode, we're going to unpack real challenges from real leaders. Fail tech implementation, a strategy that didn't yield results or difficult customers.

More importantly, we're going to take those lessons learned and share them with you so that way you can avoid those big mistakes with your team. So if you're in customer success, sales, or other go-to-market motions, stick around and hear from the best. Now let's dig into it. Today's episode, we have Rob Dampito.

He's the founder and CEO of Success Scale Consulting. And in this episode, we dig into how he de-escalated high-stakes real estate clients at Falia and the simple field-felt found approach and why also throwing discounts and renewables can really backfire. We also geek out on some customer psychology, and yes, we also dig into the Planet Fitness 100 gems story. So really enjoyed this conversation.

I hope you do too. Now let's dive in. No, nothing I can think of. Cool.

Awesome. Should we should we kick this off? Let's do it. Awesome.

Well, thanks, Rob, for coming on the Customer Unsuccess podcast. It's good to be here. Great to be here. That's awesome.

Good stuff. Well, Rob Zambito, if you're not familiar with Rob, uh good buddy of mine, he's in, he's actually the founder and CEO of Success Scaled Consulting. Um and he's actually been on this journey for quite some time now, I think around six, seven years, somewhere in that ballpark. Um but at any rate, you have, I would say probably what, close to over a decade of experience in customer success.

Yeah, depending on where you draw the start line, of course. We all sort of have I've I've heard this from a million people saying, like, oh, you know, I was in customer success since before we called it customer success. But I think I you could argue I was in customer success since we called it being a waiter at a diner in New York, in New York when I was a teenager growing up, um where the principles of making customers successful um are kind of the same, even though we were not that good at making customers successful at that diner.

But regardless, um yeah, formerly been in some version of a uh customer success or what I called a decade ago, I called it partner success role. Um so, and I've you know been part of building and scaling customer success teams across uh three different startups. It was my responsibility to start the customer success team from scratch um and then carry through to series B, C, D, whatever, um all the way up to Unicorn status. And I started consulting on the side five years ago, and then I went full-time three years ago, and I started building a team around me about a year and a half ago.

So success-scaled consulting, say that three times fast. We do a combination of customer success uh consulting and fractional leadership. We do customer success uh RevOps as well. Uh it's where you know I know people like you, uh really talented uh tech touch uh specialists.

And then also we do recruiting as well for really all go-to-market functions, but customer success is really our specialty, just since you know, we've we've hired for customer success roles hundreds of times. But yeah, that's that's me in a nutshell. Awesome. No, it's funny.

It's actually funny you brought up um, you know, you being a waiter at a diner in New York City. I think that's what you mentioned because like there are a lot of similarities. Like I kind of compare it for me when I was uh doing sales, like even at Nordstrom's at the time, and they had they had a big ethos around like, hey, it's customer service, or you know, as far as like, you know, Ben, how do you sell into the customer? Like, I also actually was on a podcast um or webinar for Success Hacker.

I was talking about how I was selling kill kids' shoes, and it's like, hey, there was a lot of repeat business at the same time. And but again, I don't know how successful I made those children when selling them kids' shoes, but anyway, we're here today. So there's a lot of synergy still, yeah. But um, but what comes with, you know, I mean, I'm sure you probably have a ton of diner stories, but obviously we're we're here to talk about more so customer success, you know, as its proper function today.

But like there's obviously you can't make all customers happy, right? And I think there's always like challenges within that, right? Like as far as whether you can't offer something, give them what they want. Maybe it could be whatever their product is supposed to do and they can't solve their particular problem, or maybe they're not aware of that problem, or just maybe they might request something that's just without a with not within scope.

So I'm curious. I know we've had you know conversations about this offline, but I'm curious about the stories that you have, you know, under your obviously your wealth of experience. Where do I begin? I really don't know.

Um, I mean, look, using the food background as an example, sure. Uh one of the early customer unsuccess stories or escalations that I dealt with was a guy yelling at me saying, Why are your muffins so expensive? And I was like, Well, they're gluten-free. And he was like, So you took something out and you're charging me more for it.

Put it back. I want the gluten back. And I was like, sir, I can't do that. I don't know, I don't know what to tell you.

Um, yeah, people can get oddly passionate about everything down to muffins, and they can have bizarre feature requests and uh they can escalate significantly. Um, and so you know it's interesting because when I left the food industry and I I got into SaaS, I was like, finally, people who will be reasonable. Uh lo and behold, here we are. And I actually got into you know real estate SaaS in particular at this company, Qualia, which somehow ended up being a huge success.

But I was there from the the founding days when I didn't know the industry, I didn't know the product. All I knew is we didn't have product market fit. And real estate people, some of those are professional escalators. And I mean that in a in a good way because they're good at getting what they want.

But sometimes, man, I was on the receiving end of that, and that was not easy. Well, tell tell me more about that. It's interesting, right? Because you're right, when it comes down to um to real estate, you kind of want, you know, those if it's agents, right?

Whether it's commercial or you know residential, you want them in your corner. But tell me, I guess, a little bit more about any specific run-ins. I mean, I mean, I'm sure you're kind of going through a whole wealth of you know different individuals and personas. Yep, yep, yeah, totally.

Yeah, and so it's interesting, especially when you look at what we were doing in real estate. So we made software for the title insurance and escrow process, which is like the really nitty-gritty back end documentation and accounting processes that support the whole real estate industry. Sure. Now what happens is you're really at the end of the food chain there.

There's, you know, when an escalation, you can think of an escalation amplifying from the buyer and seller has a demand for their, let's say their lender or their realtor. And then that individual or or party has an escalation for the attorneys, and then the attorneys have an escalation for basically like, you know, title companies are kind of in the back-end, tail end of this food chain, which means they receive all the hardest escalations. But you know, who's even behind them is me as the software vendor.

Sure. We think about it like real estate in particular is extremely precious for people. For a lot of people, it's the biggest purchase they'll ever make in their lives. For a lot of people, it's extremely time sensitive because, like, I mean, if a closing doesn't go through, you can't just push back a closing a week without thinking about all the knock-on implications of like, what about what's that family gonna do?

Are they gonna have to go live in a hotel for a week? If they go live in a hotel for a week, what happens to their stuff, right? Like, do they just keep it in storage? And you think about all these, there's it's just so ripe for escalation, those situations that uh, you know, we had uh I'll put it this way too, there's a lot of personalities in that space too.

I think we all know the persona of like the hotshot realtor in our local areas, um who's on the billboards and you know, in your mailbox and stuff like that. Um also a lot of attorneys, so there's a lot of legalese. And uh, you know, if there's one thing attorneys are trained in, it's negotiation. Sure.

So so for me, I basically realized uh, and I'll speak more to this, that two things. One is that the odds of escalation actually go up significantly when your product or service is more important. I had a job once, it was uh one of my run-ins with a SaaS company where I was like, this is so great. It was like my first month, there were no escalations.

And then by month two, I was like, uh-oh, wait, people aren't escalating because they're not engaged and because this doesn't matter. Right? So I realized there's actually, even though escalations used to be this thing that dragged me down and kept me up at night, and I would wake up at 3 a.m.

like concerned that I was gonna deal with a customer who was uh using all kinds of new vocabulary with me. I'll put it that way. Um, I ended up realizing that there's a certain peace and opportunity that can be found in that escalation, especially if I learned to not take it personally, which was an art in and of itself. There's a lot of methodologies that I built around escalation that I can share with you, but uh, I think you see where I'm going with this.

For sure. No, you I could definitely tell you um, this is just based on my experience with um, you know, again, within Tech Touch, digital CS and dealing with like such a large book of business, you kind of get a whole you know, moshposh of different types of customers. And I could say I've been my my fair share of receiving it some difficult customers, and but it does take some time and you you develop a callus. Um, there is a lot of opportunity in that um, you know, as well, right?

Like trying to figure out like, is there something going on? Is there a consistent trend with these different customers? Are there opportunities within a particular like persona, right? Like Equalia, right?

You had you know your hotshot realtor or your attorney. Those are two different personas, right? But you might have, you know, at some point, I mean, I not to not to speak on your behalf, but at some point you probably would have had to think of different ways to kind of handle those, whether it's the way you negotiate it or different, you know, lifecycle motions, would you say? Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, definitely. Well, I think what I learned is there's an interesting principle that um I myself had to learn. And then at that point in my career, I was overseeing a 30-person support team, and so I had to figure out how do I how do I give my whole team a common framework and a common sensibility around how to handle these situations.

And trust me, like I had people on the verge of quitting often. We were understaffed, we were slammed, and it wasn't just that support team, it was my CSM team too, because you know, we were making the classic CS mistake of introducing ourselves as a point of escalation. Yeah, yeah. And then we also actually even would tell customers like, oh, you know, we're actually we're your partner, we're your strategic advisor.

And and customers would be like, I don't need a strategic advisor. I don't need a partner. I have a partner, I need a vendor, and I need you to get this done. I was like, okay, if you say so.

So basically we were forced into reactive mode, um, especially with a product that had to be so specific, so precise, down to every little last dollar and cent that could get audited or could matter to buyers and sellers. And so um, you know, it was funny. At the time I was working with um with a really talented sales team, and I learned a thing or two uh about how they handle objections. Um so I would shadow, you know, their their uh live sessions where they'd they'd practice objections and rebuttals, which not enough customer success teams do, by the way.

And uh the one really simple method that a lot of people learn is like sales 101, but never hear in customer success is this simple feel-felt found method. Have you heard of this before? I have not. Tell me more, yeah.

Customer success people rarely have heard of it. Um but it's a simple method to handle an objection where three steps. You express you feel where the customer's coming from, you've dealt with people who have felt this way before, that's the felt part. And then you you share what you found.

Or better yet, you ask to share what you found. Because I realize that customers who are often escalated, and you know customers who are escalated, they often don't want to feel over-explained to. You know, so so so having a permission-based transition before you express your point, your point of view is really important. Because some customers will tell you no, like, I don't want to hear what you've found, I want to keep venting, and you're like, okay, cool, we're gonna hold off on step three then.

Yeah. Um so you know, if like say there's a deadline missed or something like that, I'm just gonna make this up off the top of my head. Um, so if a customer is escalating off of a deadline that was missed, um thanks to your product team, not that a product team would ever do that to anyone in customer success, at least not intentionally. Um product people.

Um but you know, and if a customer is escalating, there's a simple way to be like, okay, totally feel where you're coming from. Like we really value timeliness, believe it or not. Um, and you know, if we fell short of that goal, I want to apologize. Um the felt part is like, look, you know, we've seen this before.

Maybe like, you know, we've seen many cuss companies before who have had the same need, same goal. Um do you mind if I share what I've found works for them? So that's that's the feel-felt found in some version that I'm just riffing off the top of my head. So, you know, give me a C if you will.

But um, regardless, like I actually, in fact, I do that on purpose in most of my trainings. I'm like, I'm gonna do a bad job on purpose because I just want to get the muscle memory down. And a lot of times it doesn't actually show up as a simple explicit feel-felt found. It's like a it's a much more savvy, smooth relational conversation that doesn't involve uh as explicit use of those terms.

But you get my point that like meeting the customer where they're at is step one. The feel part is the hardest part, and it was certainly the hardest part for me because you know, I mean, I'll put it this way I spent my high school summers in debate camp. That was a real thing. Hey, that will that will prepare you, that's for sure.

Yeah, yeah. But I will say it probably over-prepared me because I figured, you know, what what's the harm in arguing with the customer? That was fun. But yeah, so I overcorrected in many different ways, but uh sure you get the point.

No, it's it's interesting. I haven't heard of that, and I'm assuming this is the the three-step uh methodology you mentioned earlier that you kind of instill in the team. Yeah, and I think it's yeah, and I think it's great um because it's actually similar to I've done kind of the training course with um the Stanler um selling methodology, right, where it's obviously very much a focus on pain selling, but it a lot of those elements and those those key pieces kind of ring true to here, right?

It's just making sure that the customer feels heard and really understand the root of the pain. And then, of course, also I think the similarity there is like asking the permission to give back, like, hey, the recommendation, or you know, so and it can be pretty impactful. It's a great point that you bring up. The one of the differences, so I think the the end states are often similar, but one of the differences is that obviously in a sales process, and I see this in my sales process, you've probably seen it in your past as well.

Sure. You're trying to you're often leaning into things that amplify pain. Meanwhile, in customer success, you're leaning into things that diminish pain. Like yeah.

Um so I've been working on a bunch of other a bunch, I actually have um like a template library of things that I've deployed in situations like these that I'm happy to share with anyone who's listening to this, one of which is a uh concessions playbook. Like how do you carefully deploy concessions that give the customer what they need without giving away the farm, and while also actually resolving their need? Because sometimes things like discounts were all too readily like, oh, let's just throw a discount on it.

And it's kind of like that what's that with that product, that famous meme, the sticker on the water tank. Oh, uh the flex tape. Like the flex tape, yes. We're gonna slap a discount on it.

Um, you know, but that's uh I I try to lean into concessions that are value add, not value diminishing. Tell me more about that, because it's interesting, right? Like I think a lot of um CS folks still to this day are focusing on right if again, if they're responsible for like that renewal and retention piece of it, like they're having those conversations, they're gonna lean more on discounts, but obviously it goes back to CS having the focus on you know driving value. So I guess tell me more.

Can you have any more examples like on concessions or where that could be pretty impactful for retention? Yeah, so there's a lot of different concessions come in many ways, shapes, and forms. Um and uh I think they range from value add would be things like we can offer you a complimentary re-onboarding. We can offer you a complimentary on-site, we'll take your team out to dinner, we'll throw you a pizza party, something like that.

In fact, one of the CEOs I'm working with right now, he's like, I'm just gonna like carte blanche, give my team the ability to throw a customer a pizza party. He's like, I'm not gonna get into too into the logistics, but if someone says, like, hey, this customer is escalated or they just launched or whatever, I want to send them a couple pizzas. He's like, let's do it. Why not?

Everyone loves pizza. Yeah, you know, actually, I I I I heard a story once about um there's a massive protest um that was happening, and and uh the it was in a faraway country, and the ruler of this country was like, why don't we just send snacks? And then everyone just like they everyone ate the snacks and went home, and it was like the whole protest. Fascinated, it's brilliant.

Um but uh regardless, um so so so you know the the high end of the spectrum is like the value add concessions. Um there are also contract concessions, for example, like if the value add ones fail, then we fall back to we'll give you free months on your next term. You know, that's roughly value add, hopefully, if your product has some value. And then that falls back to we'll give you free months on your current term.

Hopefully that's also value add, or at least buys you time. But you can see how we're getting like less value add here. And then the final stages are like, okay, the team is authorized to grant these discounts andor any discounts past this certain threshold, let's say 5% as a placeholder. And I usually like to set up situations where a CSM has the opportunity, they have a certain degree of discretion that they can play with on their own, but they also have internal approval processes that they have to uh you know to run up the chain internally.

Yeah, no, it's it's super interesting, and it's definitely uh I like your approach too, right? Like of having like kind of the different stages and seeing where it makes sense, but also like having stuff pre-approved. I mean, this is something like I've done with digital CS and you know, Tech Touch teams because again, if you're dealing with volume, right, like you kind of need things, kind of give them the levers, I like to say, of what to pull in different scenarios, um, and then kind of give them kind of like you're in a bowling alley, right?

Like the when they pull the bumpers up, you know, you just you know, you're giving them a little bit of the guidance. You would probably love the fact that like I have uh a note in my phone. I'm gonna pull it up right now. Nice.

And it's and I've I've been doing this since 2016. Uh I started tracking what I now call digital customer success in the wild. You can call it Tech Touch. Sure.

You can call it whatever you want. But um, so I have in here things like uh, you know, I bought a light bulb from Home Depot and then I refunded it or returned it, and then they were like, Can you tell us more about why you're like that's actually a kind of a savvy motion? Sure. Um, but I think the best ones are or the most interesting ones are cancellation flows.

So, like, for example, with one of my clients, we put in place a cancellation flow where we took this whole process, this cancellation process, and we said to ourselves, well, you know, I think there's a tech touch way to do this. And we used this tool to basically have the customer uh get offered and uh get offered certain things to stay. And a lot of us, if we've tried to cancel something like, you know, a little company out there called Amazon. Uh if you ever like try to cancel your your Amazon Prime subscription.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I swear that they should just have that cancel button like as a moving target on the screen. Like, I it's so hard to cancel. They they'll offer you the moon, they'll like offer you discounts, they'll make you jump through hoops, they'll ask you how many times you're sure.

And I'm like, I'm thinking harder about this than I thought about proposing to my wife. Like, this is crazy. So there are tech touch ways to to to um make this stuff work. 100%.

No, I think um, you know, when I you know worked during the past, like uh past life, you know, at a publication, it we had a lot of a lot of similar motions, right? You went down different paths during cancellation flow and got you know served up different offers. I will say the Amazon one's funny because every time I've called to complain, I'm like, this is no longer two days. Like I'm I'm still back in the days of like when I, you know, I was a prime member 15 years ago or whatever it was, and you had you had the two-day shipping guarantee guaranteed.

So I called one time and they're like, yeah, I want to cancel. And they're like, oh, we could just lower your price to like $50. I'm like, ah, damn, they got me. I'm like, okay, fine, I'll do it.

But the the one that always had the best, I was always like fascinated, and they're still around today, is XM Radio. Have you ever gone through the cancellation flow of XM radio? I have not. It's the same, it's the same, it's not digital, and they might have a digital flow at this point, but again, like if you get a new car, most of the time these cards have like a either a year or a three-month subscription guaranteed into the vehicle because it has the tech.

But every time they give you, they slap you with, all right, it's $25 a month or whatever it is, which is insane for you to just satellited, in my opinion. Uh, so you call, you cancel, it's the same dance every time. You're like, nah, it's too expensive. And you're like, oh, well, we could offer it to you for a promotional rate of five bucks a month for a year.

And then you you you take the offer, and then after that point, when it goes, you get the surprise credit card notice at another 30 bucks a month, $25 a month, and you call them again, and you're just constantly on this like retention cycle with them, and they got it down path. I don't know, they they know what levers to pull. Yeah. I don't know if I told you.

So my it's interesting. My academic background is actually in consumer psychology. Interesting. So there's so many principles that some companies have nailed down uh that tap into your exact threshold of what you're willing to buy at.

Right? It's it's it's really interesting. The behavioral economics that go into these flows. When done well, when done poorly, they're an absolute disaster.

But sure. It's like our site just mysteriously crashed when you were trying to cancel. Turns out the cancel button doesn't actually work. And then you have to call a rep, and then the yeah, it's uh interesting.

Yeah, that's interesting. Um, I I guess like um what are some interesting things when it comes to customer psychology that you learned when it comes down, not to put you on the spot, but I'm curious. Yeah, because I'm at the ready all the time, to be honest with you. Um, so uh a simple one is there's something called the default effect, um, where the the default effect basically shows how much people just go with the default option that's presented in front of them.

They did a study of healthcare plans, and in the control group, they had the default as healthcare plan A. In the experimental group, they had the default plan as uh healthcare plan B. And I believe, don't quote me on the exact number, but I think it was in the 80s, around 85% of the time, people just went with the default. And so that shows up in not just like cancellation flows, but like think about onboarding flows.

If you put yourself in the shoes of a customer, it's really, really hard to figure out new tools. And a lot of times you're like, yeah, sure, I'll just go with the default, right? I mean like you feel when done well, you actually feel like the software is doing you a favor. Yeah.

Which is really cool. That's one of many effects. There's a ton of other effects. There's like uh one called the mirror exposure effect, one called the primacy effect, there's recency effects, there's loss aversion, there's a ton of other effects that I could could blabber on about, but um I won't talk your ear off.

Uh no, I love it. I uh the default effect is is interesting, right? Because it's it kind of goes to, I mean, and I obviously I'm not as experienced when it comes to consumer psychology as probably as you. It's not really my background, but like I've read a thing or two, and it's just like I guess like humans are just naturally in a lot of cases, like they're obviously an analysis paralysis, you know, their decision-making process are just fried at the end of the day, so they apparently become lazy.

So it kind of makes sense, right? Like it's just like, all right, I'm just gonna trust, trust the system's gut, and then just go with what's recommended. Um, if if out of all of the different effects or different like you know, concepts, what would be like your favorite? So um, you know what's really funny?

I'm just pulling, I've got these papers here from a conference that I was at recently where I love it. Where my transition between each of the speakers as I when I was MCing was a different psychological effect. I'm like, which one that's awesome want to talk about? Um geez, there's so many good ones.

Um I think to tie back the concessions playbook, sure. There's one called the Ben Franklin effect. Okay. And it harkens back to basically what it suggests is that uh when you do a small favor for someone, they're more likely to reciprocate and can actually reciprocate with a significantly larger favor down the line.

So there's the reciprocity effect is often, you know, the bucket of research here. Um it sounds really intuitive, but um, you know, the interesting story, and this is a true history, is that a young Ben Franklin wanted to get on the radar of some older, important politician. And one of the interesting things is that he didn't do the guy a favor, he asked the guy for a favor. He asked to borrow a book.

He asked to borrow a book from this guy, and so for some reason, this older, you know, politician was like, I let him borrow a book. Maybe he's not such a bad guy, and it kind of helped break the ice at the very least. But also helped develop a degree of like muscle memory that this older guy was gonna do Ben Franklin favors. Um and and there's a bunch of research around around how those effects work and how they work in mutual directions.

Interesting. So what you're saying is in the Ben Franklin effect, it's almost like reversed. So it's like asking for the favor as opposed to Yeah. Now actually, I don't know that you could pull that off if uh you know if you have a customer churning, it's like you're not gonna ask that customer for a favor, but my other level of like depth of these effects, uh it sometimes even just goes beyond intuition.

Um I think of like examples like you know, interdepartmentally, sometimes these reciprocity effects show up. I remember I uh did something pretty counterintuitive once where I remember I had this uh product team, engineering team that was in a different office. We had just gone remote, and I couldn't get updates on these needed features. Um and what I decided to do, so they were all in an office together, co-located, was like, what if I do something counterintuitive?

And even though I'm pretty angry with them, I'm gonna go buy them a bunch of breakfast tacos. No reason other than to say thank you for all you do. You got a hard job, I do too. And I bought breakfast tacos for for the whole office uh over there.

And um it really significantly elevated our relationship, especially in difficult times. Yeah, it's interesting. Um, definitely it's actually it's really interesting when it comes to interpersonal relationships as well, because especially now with where customer success is going, because again, obviously, uh not to for lack of a better phrase, beat a dead horse, right? Like obviously like it's kind of in like this limbo phase, right, where it's becoming more of a revenue function, and a lot of people are starting to realize like they're gonna need to kind of change up their process, but you're gonna have to get work more collaboratively with different, especially obviously like with digital CS, it's a whole different ballgame, right?

You're working with marketing, working with product, you're whole different um, you know, in terms of getting things automated, but at the same time, uh same thing with traditional CS, right? Working with sales leaders, marketing leaders, just the same, as well as product, right? Keeping up to date with you know product features as well as if you're dealing with difficult customers, you know, that maybe there's someone that's you know a high value customer, right? And you're trying to get an update of whether we have that feature request, you know, having building those interpersonal relationships could help potentially move the needle.

Um, you know, and it's it's the riprocity, you know, effect for sure. Yeah, but um yeah, that's good stuff. Cool. I mean, I guess like yeah, no, it's inter it's definitely interesting.

Um, you know, the psychology piece we I feel like we don't talk enough about, but like, you know, I guess like if I have if if if there was a second one, I'll ask, I'll leave it to you for that. Like the last one I'll ask. What's your second effect? We talked about the default effect, talked about the Ben Franklin effect.

What would be like the third one that comes to mind? I think one worth considering, uh, there's a lot of research around loss aversion, for example, uh, which basically says that losses are bigger in our minds than gains. So if I told you that you were going to lose a hundred bucks, you take that way more seriously than if I told you you were going to gain a hundred bucks. And objectively, they should be the same if we were what psychologists and behavioral economists call homoeconomics, like the perfect economic buyer.

Uh none of us are. And so when that comes into effect, uh like if I tie into uh if I tie back in this thought of how do you persuade a canceling customer to stay, or um what you shared around like customer success being responsible for more revenue ownership. I think a lot of times we're put into situations where we have to prove what the customer would be losing if they were to leave. Right?

There's probably no more high pressure moment than that. Um a lot of teams deploy things like ROI calculators. I think those are pretty cool when they work. And even when they don't work, they're still effective to at least like get some numbers out there of like what's your tool or offering?

What is it really worth? And what that does is it helps the customer see what they would be losing if they leave as opposed to what they'd be gaining if they left. So uh there's other stuff that comes into that psychological moment that customers have, but I think that's a really important one that I recommend people look into. Yeah, it's that's actually um it's funny.

I'm thinking in my own mind, I'm like, damn, I'm like they they it's a number of subscriptions. They got me. They got me every time. They're like, oh, here's what you're missing out on.

I mean, look, simple way to think of it is just kind of a FOMO effect, right? It's it exactly. And it's not exactly, but there are definitely FOMO effects as well. Uh speaking of which, like, there's a lot of um social norm effects as well.

Like people, I think you know, everyone's heard the phrase keeping up with the Joneses. People are way more likely to um take your advice if you're in customer success, if you say, like, if you share what most customers do, that's related to this default effect, but if you share like most of our customers do this, more of our customers will do that. Because they're like, well, it seems like it's working out for everyone else. Obviously, it's really, really important to be authentic and uh ethical when using some of these um strategies.

They shouldn't be like manipulative, they shouldn't change the truth of the situation. Of course. This is customer success after all. So and at least my line of work, we're not here to make customers fail.

Um but um there's no they're nice ways to like sort of shed light to the customer on what the full landscape looks like. 100%. Yeah, I think um the the like this concept of like I mean fear of missing out, right? Like and and I think there's a lot of different strategies.

Like I actually have done this in the past, and this is early early in the career, and I couldn't um at the time it was just like, hey, you were just kind of throwing stuff at the wall and seeing kind of what stuck. But I remember when we I was at an organization, research organization called the marketer, and I would go across looking at usage data, right? It was a SaaS platform which they could access the content, but I would say, like, well, we have all this wealth of knowledge of different industries that are engaging with different types of content.

Why don't we just share that? We're like, hey, here's what people in this industry, or better yet, we kind of did an A-B test to say, like, hey, here's what your competitors are looking at. And it got them, oh well, I gotta, I gotta stay up to date of, you know, ahead of my game here. So like that content exploded across those different different verticals.

Um, but it's it's interesting, right? Um, the different ways in which you can use psychology to making sure that they're getting the value um and also making sure that they see it, right? I think that's um an important one. You brought up you brought up uh ROI calculators.

I guess like tell me more about that because it's interesting because there's a lot of companies that fall in the trap too about like just like regular usage metrics. Like, hey, here's yeah, here's what you got, right? Like, I mean, I'm talking more from a QBR perspective. When we're talking about ROI, you know, it's how it's impacting their business.

I guess like tell me more of maybe even an example of where you've seen it done well, maybe even on a consumer level, right? Talked about like different ways in which you've seen it customer digital CS in the wild. I'm curious if you got any any of those. So, yeah, super good question because usage is not adoption, adoption is not ROI, ROI is not value necessarily, it often is, but not necessarily.

So, like the example that there's someone I look up to a ton, her name is Diane Gordon, she's a friend here in Boston, and I've learned so much from her about customer success, and uh, she's been in the space for like 30 years. Um, one thing she said is like you think of a gym membership. Um I'm gonna modify her analogy a little bit here, but it's like usage at the gym. It's like, okay, someone's used these different machines.

Okay, right? How is that inherently valuable? Um take that a step further. Like ROI.

What is the ROI? Well, it kind of depends, right, on what you're spending and how much you value the outcomes that you're getting. And then value is its own question too. Like, well, are you did a consumer join the gym because they wanted to lose weight?

Because they wanted to build muscle, maybe they just wanted to socialize with their friends, right? Maybe they wanted a spa, maybe they did it for mental health reasons. And so the value outcomes in that's really what's at like the center of the equation. And it's often very hard for us to find.

Um, but um, but yeah, a lot of us get stuck in the usage trap where they're like, how could they possibly churn they were using the product? It's like, okay. You know. That's not that that usage is um it's a nice indicator, but I would recommend everyone just you know do a degree of statistics to see how often usage actually does predict retention.

Yeah. I guess it's interesting. Um, it's definitely based on outcomes. I love the gym example because there's so many different reasons as to why you'd be going going to the gym and or cancel, right?

Like I think kind of also goes to it's it's actually a great example too, because if you look at like uh a gym like Planet Fitness, right? It's so cheap enough that it's almost too cheap to cancel, right? And it's like, oh, I'll just I'll just let it renew anyway. It's almost like it's almost like actually on the complete opposite side of the spectrum where some SaaS platforms are too sticky to the point where it's too costly to get rid of.

So it's like it's there's different ways. Um outcomes. Yeah, yeah. Did you use the Planet Fitness analogy on purpose?

I don't know if you know my I just uh you don't know my yes, I did I forgot about that. That that was completely unintentional. But um But yeah. Did I tell any new listeners in case they haven't been following me?

Yeah. Let's hear it 100%. So basically, like I said, I used to work in the food industry, um, not just the diner thing, but also started a food business, co-ran a restaurant at one point in my career, taste tested food for a living. That was crazy.

Gained like 70 pounds, and then I switched jobs, and the only way to to to yeah, I mean, seriously, just like picture it, just think of your weight and then add 70 pounds, and you're like, ooh, yeah, that's a lot. Um but you're eating good food, probably. Sounds like that because like basically this was my first you know, quote unquote partner success role, where Restaurants were trying to they had to demo their food to sell on our platform. It was like my job.

I was basically doing like a field sales type success role where I would go out to a restaurant and they would also have to demo their food. That was part of the process. Part of the process was me taste testing all their food to make sure it was qualified to sell on our platform. What credentials did I have?

Not many, but fine. Um so so after all these experiences, gained a ton of weight uh over a couple years and decided that this was like not good for my health. And uh I speaking of behavioral economics, one of the things that I'd been reading about is how you can inst you can enact significant behavior change with a change of incentive structures. And so I bet money with my friend, my roommate at the time, that I would work out five times a week.

That was starting ten years ago. I've maintained that now since. That's awesome. More jacked by this point, but hey, biology, I don't know, works in mysterious ways.

But regardless, I so I I I started going to Planet Fitness when I was traveling for work, and I ended up going to a hundred different Planet Fitness locations, culminating in the farthest away location that exists in the world this past May, which is uh a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, um, Ballarat, Australia. Um I like proudly told the woman who worked there, I was like, this is my hundredth location. She was like, Oh, okay, whatever. I really thought it would be more well received than that.

Yeah, it was quite the journey. Um, and it's funny because it was kind of a journey of customer success where it was like, I mean, I got the value I was looking for, which in that case was uh multiple. It was, you know, combination of weight loss, muscle gain, mental health benefits, and a bunch of other things. Um hundred percent.

Yeah, Planet Finna still won't respond to my DMs. So if they're less than that, definitely not. This was featured on Boston 25 News, which was kind of crazy too. Um that's right, yeah.

Still, they won't, they won't, they haven't responded. Little Rob. Hey, listen, we'll we'll we'll we'll try to uh we'll try to we'll we'll tag them in the description and we'll see if we can call them out. That's awesome though.

No, it's that's an awesome journey for for sure. And it's also interesting on the psychology piece, right? Like as far as how you're able to achieve it um and kind of like kind of essentially make the bet yourself. Um, you know, it's awesome.

Good stuff. Um well listen, I know we're we're coming up on time. Really enjoyed our conversation, but before we kind of go, I always ask, I always ask my guests, like, hey, where do you go to learn, right? Like obviously you're coming from a background of consumer psychology, I would imagine maybe schooling, but maybe not.

Maybe it's you know, yeah, alternative schooling or a background there, or if there's books, or anything else you would kind of gear, you know, guide listeners to to check out. Yeah, school of hard knocks. Um, I actually do think there's uh significant value in journaling. And I know that sounds cheesy, not enough of us do it, but I feel like just uh having a certain muscle memory.

If you want to set a bet around it, I'm happy to take anyone up on that debt. Um, but having a certain like muscle memory and habit around like learning from your experiences, it just makes things like honestly so much better. Um, some reading recommendations that can complement that that come to mind. The ones that came up as we were talking were never uh Thinking Fast and Slow.

I think a lot of people know that. There's a lot of books around behavioral economics. Thinking Fast and Slow is like the the sort of the implicit Bible of the space. There's a book called Why We Do What We Do by uh um a great psychologist as well.

There's um there's a book called The Leader Lab that I really like. It was one of the more pivotal readings of my career because it just explains really simple uh simple ways to do things like give feedback, handle escalations, handle meetings, simple things like that. That's an easy one to pick up and pick up some good tips from. Um and then there's a couple others too, especially if you're like in that customer success cohort that's trying to figure out how to own revenue.

I'm happy to be your thought partner in that. I've been a reluctant salesperson myself, but there's some really good readings that I have uh and and podcasts in in that bucket as well. So a lot of a lot of you know, sort of tentacles from this conversation, but I'd encourage anyone to just connect with me if you're looking for anything specific. For sure.

No, I love this. These are some good titles here, uh Think It Fast and Slow. I haven't checked out the other two. I'm definitely gonna check them out and add them, you know, to the Amazon card or the Kindle.

Um, but I guess um on that note, right? Like connecting with you. I guess like Rob, where where can everybody connect with you, right? LinkedIn, it's uh easiest way.

I mean, you can also email me hello at robzambito.com or there's a bunch of other I have like I I have a bad habit of picking up domain names, so most of them link to the same place, but probably the easiest is hello at robzambito.com. Um and and I'd I'd love the opportunity to continue the conversation with anybody who's uh running into some of these challenges in the customer success world in particular.

Awesome. No, I love it. Definitely uh I'm sure we'll definitely have you on the show again and talk about more of this stuff because it's all very fascinating and interesting and super super valuable. But Rob, this was an awesome conversation.

Thanks for coming on. Thanks, Joe. Appreciate it. That's a wrap for today's episode.

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