The Silent Competitor: How One Client Deployed a Rival Solution Under the Radar w/ Kristi Faltorusso

Speaker A: Now every time somebody tells me I shouldn't be concerned, Joe, what am I? I'm concerned.

Speaker B: Concerned.

Speaker A: Right. Uh, right.

Speaker B: Of course.

Speaker A: They kind of give me the same song and dance. We're okay. Everything is fine. Well, Joe, guess what happens. We literally get a response. I don't know, maybe five minutes after that email goes out saying, thank you so much. We are not going to be renewing our subscription onboarding. I mean, me and the CSM were floored. We are. We are, like, so blindsided. This customer spent the entire year basically setting up a competitive solution behind the scenes so that when the renewal date came, they could literally just hit a switch and turn us off and turn them on.

Speaker B: Welcome the Customer Unsuccess. Uh, 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. Failed tech implementations, a strategy that didn't yield results or difficult customers. But more importantly, we're going to take those lessons learned and share them with you so that way you can avoid those same mistakes with your team. So if you're in Customer Success, sales or other, go to Market Motions. Stick around to hear from the best. Now let's dig into it. On this episode of Customer Unsuccess, I talk with Chrissy Falterusso. She's the chief Customer Officer at Client Success, and she shares how one flagship account quietly deployed a rival for an entire year before flipping the switch at renewal. She also talks about the shady tactics some of her competitors have used to poach their customers. I really enjoyed this conversation. I hope you do, too. Now, let's dive in. Should we kick this off?

Speaker A: We should.

Speaker B: All right. Awesome. Well, thanks so much, Christie, for coming on Customer on Success. Happy to have you.

Speaker A: Oh, uh, thrilled to be here. Um, I feel like I have so much failure to share. This is just going to be an epic episode. So I'm really excited. Thanks for having me.

Speaker B: Super pumped. Uh, I know we. We kind of, you know, obviously had our prep chats and got a little bit of a glimpse, so I'm excited for this one, too. And for those of you that don't know, Chrissy, she is the chief Customer officer at, uh, Client Success and obviously has years of experience in customer success and, you know, account management and so on. So great to hear her stories. But I know we were talking about, obviously, like, in terms of, you know, the tech space, it's it's in a weird spot right now. Right. But obviously what comes of that. It's, you know, the competitive landscape gets tricky. Right. There's a lot of competitors out there. There's a lot of competitors that do similar solutions. So you definitely have to fight for, you know, making sure that your customer sees value. But what comes to that too is some of the losses that might come up during, during that time. Right. Maybe renewals or even in the new business side. But I'm curious know where you want to start because I know there's quite a few.

Speaker A: All right. I think we need to like just all get on the same page here with competitors because I feel like on the customer success side we don't think about it nearly as much as we should. Right. The new sales team knows that usually if someone is evaluating a piece of software, a prospect comes into the deal cycle, it is likely they're looking at somebody else as well. So the new sales team, right, they are ready for a bake off. But I feel like on the customer success side, we're not always on our toes when it comes to this. Right. So we find ourselves flat footed at times when the reality is, listen, your competitors, there's only so much tam, right? Total addressable market. If you've got somebody who's already procured your technology, they have budget, they have pain, they have decided to do something about it and make an investment, well, that's checking the boxes for your competitors, right. Because this basically says this is a prime candidate for us. Which means, guess what, they're coming after your book and hard. So I think we all just need to get on the same page there because I think CSMs operate differently than AES when it comes to navigating competitive situations and just living in the reality that everybody is up for grabs and your competitors are not out there sitting around waiting for deals and prospects to come in. They're going out there and they're hunting and uh, you know, they are like hunting your customer base. So all those pretty marquee logos that you have on your website, all those customer testimonials that are sitting out there in G2, well that's prime real estate and they're coming for it 100.

Speaker B: It's, it's actually, it's, it's such a great call out too because I think that's a lot of CSMs. Forget that too with the budget. Right. That's obviously the biggest hiccup, you know, when it comes to, for the new business team to making sure like, hey, like, obviously you might have a use case, but they might not be budget. That's already been. Already been set up, right? So now it's just like, okay, not to mention you have the use cases already set. So great. Now it's like, all right, what are my hard work?

Speaker A: We did all the hard work as far as they're concerned. They just have to sell a vision that feels better than the reality that they're living today. Think about that, right? Because that's all sales is doing, right? They're selling possibilities. We're sitting in the reality. So if the reality for your customer has not been great, if they have not had amazing experience, if you've not been socializing ROI with them regularly. Yes. Well, the vision someone else is painting out there might be prettier.

Speaker B: For sure. No, a hundred percent. And I think it's, um. It's. It's where I guess, like, CSMs could almost like fall complacent, right? I think, like, they. They could just look at. It's interesting because, you know, I've had some experience on my own on this, right? Like where adoption comes into play, and it's like, oh, everything looks fine and hunky dory, but then all of a sudden you get those quick moments where you're just like, what. What just happened? You kind of have the rug pulled underneath you. Um, so I'm curious, like, in your experience, where has that come up? Because I'm sure it has, because a lot of times there are solutions that are out there that they have that long onboarding, implementation process. But, you know, it's. It takes time in order to kind of peel back the onions and undo whether it's your current solution and so on. But, yeah, I'm curious as far as what you, uh, what you've experienced.

Speaker A: Oh, Joe, you know, I love a good setup, so thank you so much. Um, okay, so listen, I got to give this story context. This is not in my current role, so this was not a client success for you sleuths that like to go out there and try to figure out where I was, what happened. Um, so I'm just going to say it was a couple of years ago. I've been at five different SaaS companies, so I'm not going to tell you where it was or who the customer was that we lost, but I'll give you the framework here. I was a leader in this organization. I'm managing our enterprise segment. So I've got large, large customers under my umbrella. I've got also a decent sized team. And so listen, just like every leader in every csm, we kind of balance what we're prioritizing and we try to make sure that as we use our time together and our one on ones, we're talking about the things that matter. Now. I had a csm. She, um, was fantastic. I mean, I'm telling you, like, she was top of my list of like a performers. But now she had been working with this customer for a while, so she'd actually been on this count for quite some time, actually saw them through their last renewal cycle. So she knew what to look for, she knew what to ask. She had great relationships. So over this course of this year, her and I, as we're going through her book periodically, we're chatting, I'm asking her like, you know, how is this customer doing? And she's telling me like, Chrissy, that look at usage has never been higher, never been better. They're engaged in the partnership. They show up to all of our calls. She goes, we have relationships. They're at our events, they're attending webinars. They read all of the new release material. I mean, like, as far as an engaged customer who is truly operating as a partner, I said, like, are they behaving like a good customer should? Yeah, they are checking our boxes. So me and this, me and the csm, we're chatting about this and I basically tell her, I'm like, okay, great. Well, if that one seems like it's in a good place, where should we be focusing our time and attention? Obviously, she points me in the direction of some customers that don't look like the one we were just describing. So we put our time and effort around the ones that are clearly in worse shape. Right. Which is normal. Everyone has to prioritize their book. Not every customer could be a priority in every minute. Sure. So we do what we do. We go through her book, we start to reprioritize. I periodically continue to check in on this customer. No, Cristy, things are, uh, same. Like, we're good here. I'm like, okay, well, I also see that, like, they missed our last two calls. And she goes, yep. It's just a busy time for them though. They reassured me everything is okay. They just have a lot on their plate, but things are good. They said that if they need me, they'll reach out, but we shouldn't be concerned. Now every time somebody tells me I shouldn't be concerned, Joe, what am I? I'm concerned.

Speaker B: Concerned.

Speaker A: Right, right, right, right. Okay. So normal reaction.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: So her And I, we kind of navigate this. I reach out to them. They kind of give me the same song and dance. We're okay. Everything is fine. Thank you so much for checking in. We're good. So now we're approaching the renewal cycle. We're doing our forecast. She's telling me, you know, Christie, like, listen, I ran this last time. We're good. We're. They already gave us confirmation that, like, we should be fine moving forward. Right. And it wasn't like they answered our very specific question, which we always ask, which is, is it your intention to renew? Be direct, very explicit about the question we asked. They didn't answer that, but they gave her a response that kind of made her feel like, no, we're good. But they didn't answer the exact question the way that we would ask or assume that they would, which is, yes, our intention is to renew. Let's kick off the process. That's not what we got, but we got some version of something that felt like a soft yes. So she was like, okay, we're good. We'll start the process at the appropriate timeline. Well, Joe, guess what happens. We get to the renewal timeline. I actually am, um, engaged them on this thread. We send the email saying that, you know, this is our window. We kick off the process. Uh, should we be working with the same people in procurement and legal and security? So we kind of give our roster of the people that we've worked with in the past. We make sure that the executives that need that visibility, they're all, they're all aware of what's happening. We're kicking off, we literally get a response, I don't know, maybe five minutes after that email goes out saying, thank you so much, we are not going to be renewing our subscription. Consider this like our formal written communication to you. Please let us know what next steps are with regards to onboarding. I mean, me and the CSM were floored. We are, we are like so blindsided. But lo and behold, what happened. This customer spent the entire year of the last year of their contract with us, basically building out and setting up a competitive solution behind the scenes so that when the renewal date came, they could literally just hit a switch and turn us off and turn them on. There would be no need for them to extend with us, nothing that we can do to preserve the partnership. They had already signed the contract a year earlier. All wheels were in motion. And of course, usage and adoption for us looked good because we were a mission critical part of their stack. So they couldn't not Use us. So from all intents and purposes, the team that was actually using us and engaged, some of them didn't even know this was happening. This was only like uh, isolated to the people that were really important, which were the operations team, the executive stakeholders, like those people knew this was happening. But our core team and some of. I uh, think our main POC did know actually. But I think a lot of our end users weren't aware. And so this like kind of blindsided us all and we ended up losing the deal. There was nothing we could do, Joe. But we read, we read the entire partnership. I wouldn't say we read it wrong, but we definitely were not paying attention to what we should have. We should have been asking more specific questions sooner. Honestly. If I think back to the year prior, there were a couple things that came up in terms of like feature ideas that they had been submitting and some things that they were looking for, maybe some evolving use cases, but. But nothing that I don't think that we couldn't solve entirely. Right. It wasn't a hard. We can't do that. It was probably something we should have invested more time in doing more discovery or understood why they were asking or manage it a bit better. But yeah, Joe, an entire year we lost this customer.

Speaker B: It's un, it's unbelievable. I mean, I guess like the blind side, even like the end user perspective too, it's pretty shocking because in a lot of solutions, right, there's gotta be some sort of offboarding period, right? Like to bring them on as opposed to like the switch. But again like every company does their own, has their own process and way of onboarding, you know, uh, end users. But it's interesting that you bring up though the asking more specific questions and objection handling essentially or try to get. It's kind of uh. I bring up objective handling because it's like objection handling. Excuse me? Because it's like the unheard objections, right? Like you probably didn't ask or the CSM didn't ask the questions that kind of dig deeper as figuring out why they didn't instantly say, hey, yes, we're renewing, right? And digging into that a little bit more. They kind of just had that, you know, gut feeling, but it sounds like that was probably like essentially the loss there, right? It's just a matter of digging deeper into understanding the unheard objections. Would you agree?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean there was a lot like if I really dissected this and we did, we did a full post mortem on this account and we kind of Went through everything. I think there was a few big missteps, though. One, we didn't dig in more. When the customer did bring up some of the things that they were looking for in terms of future roadmap ideas that they were sharing with us, we didn't really understand the implications of not having some of the things they were seeking because we didn't understand the use cases. So we should have spent more time doing discovery there because of the size of this customer, quite frankly, I don't point fingers. I don't blame. Blame. This is, uh, on me. I should have been involved. I should have been talking with the executives. We should have been doing more due diligence around that to make sure that they were. Was stronger alignment. And honestly, we should have been. We should have brought in the product team to at least like, understand what they were looking for, what those use cases were, do that discovery, and then if it made sense, actually start to slot it out. We just kind of dropped the ball on that one. The second big thing, we never ask competitive questions. Now, I will tell you, this is something now, you will never catch me with my pants down on this one. We will always ask and say, listen, we understand that is your responsibility to, to do your due diligence, right, and to make sure that you have the best solution in place for your organization and for your business needs. At any point now or in the future, do you intend on doing any formal evaluation of our solution against any other competitors or asking them, is there anything you're seeing in the market that you're interested in exploring or things that you're seeing out there that we don't address that you would like to have a conversation with us about? We had not been proactive around asking any of those discovery questions, just being very upfront and saying, listen, it's your job to make sure you have the right tech in place. Can we be a part of that? If you are, are you doing it? Who are you looking at? These are all questions that I'm very, I'm very willing to ask right now. Where in the past I probably were a little bit softer on some of that. Because obviously you don't want to be overly direct. You're trying to manage feelings and relationships and, and not try to be too assertive. But I will tell you, I will never make that mistake again.

Speaker B: 100%. Yeah. And I think those direct questions are super, super important. I mean, I remember even, you know, in my days in terms of account management, we would ask, um, like, hey, is there something that's out there that could solve this problem or similar solution that your organization might already be using that solves XYZ problem. And it would either. One, it's like, okay, do we need to, you know, tap product to say, like, hey, we're not. We're behind the curve here in terms of the competitive landscape? Or two, it's like, okay, well, it's not necessarily. It's more of a nice to have in the future and kind of figure out that prioritization there. But it's. It is interesting, the competitive landscape and calling out that direct question post sales, what are some other signals? Because I think there's. I think there's a lot of crossover on, like, the new business side. But I'm curious, from your perspective, right? What are some other signals? Because this is more so digging, right? Like, this is very. Detect very much detective work. But what are some other maybe signals that might come up, um, and maybe in this deal or others, in just the competitive landscape as a whole, um, that you might see.

Speaker A: So at, uh, one of my organizations, I was the. What they would call competitive overlay. And so what that practically meant is that any deal that was competitive, they would pull me into because I was tasked with just having the strongest pulse on the competitive landscape, which means I was intimately familiar with our competitive solutions. Who was out there? What was the language that they were using in their sales process? What were the terminology? Was the terminology they were using in their product? Right? So people love to brand and label certain things according to kind of their marketing guidelines. Like, I knew all the words, I knew the language. I knew how to position against them. Um, and so that was my job. So I'll tell you, one of the things that I became really good at was just understanding the language that your competitors use and really using that to our advantage. So, for example, and I'll use something very light and easy here. If your competitor calls something Alphabet soup and your customer says, hey, you know, I was reading about something and I thought something was really cool. And I'm just curious, like, does your product offer something to address Alphabet soup? Now, all of a sudden, for me, that is a signal that they are either reading the marketing material that our competitors are putting out, maybe they attended a webinar, maybe they're evaluating the product, maybe our competitors are reaching out to them, pitching Alphabet soup. Whatever the case may be, I now have a signal that our competitor is in play. Now, to what degree, I don't know yet. But now it's my responsibility to ask. So that is something that is really interesting because I don't know that a lot of folks are paying as close attention to that. But you have to understand how your competitors move and what do they do and what do they say and what do they call things. I mean, honestly, it's as easy as going to their website and just reading, right? This isn't even. I'm not asking you to even go do hours worth of research and try to be sneaky and go listen to Zoom or gong calls or attend their webinars behind the scenes. I'm not even saying that. Go to their website. That's it. And I promise you, you will find a ton of information. Now, my other little sneaky place to go is, um, to any community forum. Now, I will call out Reddit just to start because there is an anonymity that exists in the Reddit subs. So if you are not a Reddit reader, um, I would encourage you, if you work in software, go check out the subs. Go find a sub that is correlated back to your industry. So I work in customer success. I will tell you, I'm, uh, one of the few people on Reddit that actually uses my name. I am not like pink elephant234. Um, I do use my name. So I don't operate with any anonymity, which probably hurts me more than it helps me. But I will say I go and read everything. So when I'm in the customer success sub, I will tell you their. There are people out there all the time asking, what technology should I be evaluating? Or they're coming out here and they're saying, I hate XYZ technology. And then you wit to watch all the conversations around it. Now, again, you don't know who's saying what, but the fact that things are being said and understanding what's being said, some people will very clearly say, hey, I use XYZ product. We're not happy. Here's what's going on. Can anyone, uh, recommend an alternative solution? We were considering abc. Now I'm just saying these are great places to start. Now you can go to community forums in your space also, and they're very clearly listing out what their names are and talking also again, very transparently about what their situation is. These are great places for you to get that intel, right? So start on their website because that's easy peasy. Go to G2, go check out, see what people are saying and not saying. Um, even though I still think that G2 is a little curated in my opinion, but still great Stuff, go to a community forum, go listen on these things. So, and pay attention to the pulse of what's happening in your market, in your industry. If you do those things, I promise you, you will learn enough to know when somebody might be looking at something else.

Speaker B: 100%. Yeah, the, uh, actually, it's funny, I've been stumbling upon and keep going back to like the subreddit for, uh, customer success. So, um, it's. It's not, it's not common. Right. Like, people don't really. They probably go, maybe I'm just speaking, you know, my own bias, but I feel like people just like, assume it's for personal use, maybe how to fix whatever it is you're. You name your appliance in your kitchen or house, um, whatever it is that you're trying to solve. But it's, it's pretty active in there and it's a good one to join. Um, but the, the community one, it's, it could be pretty jarring. You could catch some stuff in there in like, you know, whatever the channel is, it's. If it's slack, you know, text, you know, tech stack or whatever they name it. And you could catch some pretty quick, um, red flags I've seen. I actually spoke to a leader in account management the other day where he said he had to kind of tell Steam, like, hey, this is a huge red flag. We need to connect with so and so customer and very similar. Right. Like they're, everything's fine, adoption's great. And yeah, I mean, um, we'll see how it pans out. Hopefully for the best. But yeah, there's a lot of different ways in which you could catch those, you know, potential competitive churns.

Speaker A: Absolutely.

Speaker B: Yeah. Well, tell me about also too, I guess, like in terms of the competitive landscape, um, you know, and there's a ton of tools too, which we didn't even talk about where you could kind of see. Now, I don't know how they do it, but data enrichment tools that will tell you, like, hey, what's part of so and so's tech stack and so on.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Crazy stuff. Now, how reliable? I don't know. But like, sometimes it is. But, um, but there's some pretty, you know, interesting ways in which, you know, your competitors could kind of be quick to the punch. I'm curious as far as, like, you have any stories of where, you know, maybe either you went head to head with competitors, maybe not directly, but. Or just maybe they had some, you know, any shadiness in terms of their practices? I'M just curious. I'm sure you've seen it all, Joe.

Speaker A: The mudsling that happens in the software world is crazy. Um, it brings me back to like the 80s WWF, like style of like, like propaganda, right? Like little videos. Again, I'm dating myself, but if you remember, watch, oh, I remember Snake or Hulk Hogan or anybody Rip but like behind the scenes making their little videos, talking smack about who they were about to go to head to head with, like, that's the vibe, okay? It's like we will say and do everything that we can to make you look bad. And so a couple years ago, I think the worst, the worst situation we found ourselves in is we were, we had like, basically there was one competitor who was definitely gunning for our book because we were the leader in the space. And listen, when you're at the top, trust me, there is a bullseye on your back. Especially when you have some of the logos that we had. Now this competitor, I mean this was the dirtiest thing that had ever been done that I've seen yet to date. I'm sure, I'm sure something will evolve and someone will get more creative in the future. But they literally were going to our customers and telling them, if you don't tell them you are evaluating us and you sign this NDA that confirms you will not disclose that you are evaluating us in a head to head competitive analysis, we will give you your first year free on a two year deal. Wow. Joe, let me just tell you how many. Well, first of all, you know how we found out they were doing this, right? Because one of our customers told us and said, uh, hey, they're trying to get me to go sign this. And so that's how we found out. But we're like, are you kidding me? Yeah, that's so grimy. But you want to know why they were doing that? Because they knew they couldn't win if we were in a head to head situation. Now this is also again, one of those situations where we are very, very well aware of what the competitive landscape looked like. So we knew how to win in our space. But because they would almost always lose in a competitive Bake off, this was their only way around. It was, do not tell them that you are looking at us. Sign this NDA and if you move forward with us, we're going to give you first year free on a two year deal. Let me just tell you, please read the terms and conditions because if something sounds too good to be true, I promise you it is. I promise you it is. They Ended up making up their expense in the second year of that contract when the rates jacked up. So I mean, whatever, it wasn't advantageous for anybody to go and sign with them. They got a lesser solution, ended up spending more money. And honestly, just participating in that kind of behavior says a lot about a person. So needless to say, that was the craziest competitive play I think I've seen to date.

Speaker B: That's. I mean, I was jotting some notes. I mean that's, that's crazy. I mean it's unbelievable because also too. Right. I think what's interesting is how you found out. And I mean, to be honest, I mean that's a very good customer, loyal customer at that, because, um, that's the only way you would really know.

Speaker A: And they literally forwarded us the email, Joe. They were like, look at what your competitors auditor is doing. And we read that and we're like, no way. Maybe it's just this one off situation. And I promise you that wasn't the first and only customer to go and share that with us. At the end of the day, people don't like, like they can't trust that. Right? Like that's like, I'm not, I'm not gonna go and sign up with you. Like this is dirty, bad behavior.

Speaker B: Exactly. And that's the thing, right? Like why would you want to do business with someone like that? It's almost like the age old concept, right, of like the whole like making up a price concept. It's like, well, if you drop down your price so dramatically just to close a deal, right. Like what makes me want to trust you in the future? Right. Maybe there was room to begin with, right. Like this is like the ultimate piece of like distrust. I mean, it's crazy.

Speaker A: Yes. But now, Joe, you just mentioned something, so I got to give you one more story if that's okay.

Speaker B: Oh yeah, let's. We got time.

Speaker A: All right. So you just talked about dropping the prices and how that can actually cause you a deal also.

Speaker B: Sure.

Speaker A: So let me tell you this other situation we found ourselves in. We were in a head to head with one of our competitors. Now they are like our pricing is. There was such a significant delta, typically. Okay, usually. And we knew that. So when we always would come in against them, we would price it at a certain point because we knew it would be advantageous for us. We would usually win because pricing would usually be in our favor. Now in this situation though, they came in lower than we expected and so we hadn't been anticipating that. So the customer base or the prospect actually said to us, we're going to move forward with your competitor, just kind of more in line with what we need and the price and what we're currently at. So what did we do? We said, okay, wait, hold on, give us a shot. We cut the price almost in half. And you know what they said? They came back to us and said, honestly, if you're so willing to drop the price, we're worried about your product. We're worried that you don't value it. And so this was an example of again, being head to head with your competitor and not knowing your value, thinking that the only way to win is price. Now, listen, if you're a good salesperson, you know that price is the last place you win. You sell on value, you sell on impact, you sell an alignment, you sell through relationships. If the only place you think you're going to win is that price, I guarantee you you're going to lose the deal. And so this was a customer, uh, sorry, prospect who came to us was like, no, sorry, that was like a weird, that was a weird move on your part. And we're worried that you don't see the value in your own solution, so how could we. And I was like, you're not wrong.

Speaker B: No, it's, it's, it's unfortunate, but it's true. I see it all the time. And I think, um, they bring up a good point, right? I think, um, it comes down to value, uh, as well. I've seen it with other vendors where they'll, they'll throw in, like, their product they might be experimenting with the past two years. And then I've even been in that situation where I'm evaluating product, and then I found out a year later that the product does no longer exist. And it's like, oh, great. So we love vaporware.

Speaker A: We love vaporware.

Speaker B: Um, no, but this is, this is good stuff. And there's a lot of learnings here, right? And we're talking about, you know, the competitive landscape. And I'm trying to, as far as, like, the takeaways go, there's, there's a lot of pieces here, right? In terms of one, I think what we just talked about valuing your product, um, and understand, making sure your customer understands the value, right? Like, don't, you know, get into the price war, you know, within reason, obviously, shouldn't be really a war. But the point is there's that, and then obviously it's really, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, I guess, like Underestimating the competitive landscape of what they will do.

Speaker A: Yes. Um, you know, and never underestimate your opponent should always be like in sass and war. Right? Like never underestimate your opponent because this is something else. And Joe, like, interesting if you, you've seen this also. But yeah, any deal in its first year I think is at greater risk than any other deal. And here's why. If they were head to head in the initial sales process and you won, your competitor knows your renewal date because they know when they lost that deal. And guess what? Now they are flagged. They're going to be reaching out to your, your customer every single quarter to check in to see if what you thought was going to happen became a reality. And think about that. You have somebody just waiting for you to slip up at, uh, any given time. Not even just at the renewal window, any given time throughout that entire first year. They're just waiting. Is what you thought you're gonna get. Was that your reality? We're here to save the day. If it's not. And honestly, like, don't be surprised because by the time the renewal does come around, they have already had conversations. Now if you're doing your job as a customer success professional, hopefully that nets into nothing. And it's like, thank you so much for reaching out. Thanks for checking in. But we're all good. We're happy with our current provider. But if they are not happy with their current provider, I promise you, at the very least a conversation is taking place.

Speaker B: 100. Uh, you actually bring up a really good point because. And uh, sometimes when you're talking about like these larger solutions where there's many stakeholders, there's many calls, they have access to all that same information. Again. Yeah, it's, it's, yeah. So it's, it's dangerous territory that first year. I 100 agree. Um, yeah. Just thinking, even back on my scenario, I'm like, you know, what has vendor reached out and say like, hey, check in on how my implementation or onboarding is going. But I'm sure it's like, I don't know, you know, you always kind of forget when you're on the other end of the spectrum. Right. Like, as opposed. You know, because I was more on the opposite side. So I dealt with a lot of the contracts. But it's, it's cheeky strategies. Yeah. I mean they have that information.

Speaker A: If you're a good salesperson, you should be doing all the things I've just like, you're crazy if you're not because there's always going to be one or two where the experience isn't what they thought. They're not getting the value. Maybe the it was failure to launch and they're, they're crazy to not take the chance to just check in. Right? What does it cost them? An email, a 30 minute call, a text message. There's no downside for them, there's only upside. They already lost the deal the first time, they can't lose it again. But if you're not doing what you need to, that is all upside. So if I was an ae, you better believe I would be texting, I would be emailing, I would be sending care packages. Like I would be all over that. Because half the time, even though we are so well intentioned on the customer success side, not everything goes right and you only need there to be this one moment where something is going wrong and somebody reaches out. And if that timing aligns, oof. It's real risk for us, 100%.

Speaker B: So all AES listen out there, take this advice. This is great, right?

Speaker A: I'm also like, did I just shoot myself in the foot? Because I did give my roadmap to my competitors now.

Speaker B: No, it's, um, it's, it's, it's interesting because it's true. You, you do, it is like you're trying to make sure again, right on the CS side, you're trying to prove that value, you know, uh, and, well, value slash implementation, depending on your organization, how you define it. But the point is that first six months, it's so, so crucial to getting it set up. And it has to be damn near perfect because they could be biting at their feet. You have no idea. And that's what could be happening in the background. Yeah, well, good stuff. I mean, I think this is some good takeaways here. I mean, essentially not underestimating your competitors, really making sure that you're staying on top of it and also not being complacent, I think is a big piece of it too because as a csm, especially if it's years on in a relationship, you kind of could think that their 10 year old, it is just like, hey, it's golden, it's fine, it's harder to rip and replace, but time is time and if they have the budget already to kind of exit, implement a solution behind the scenes, they might be able to do that. So, um, this is good stuff, I guess. Like Kristi, you, you have a ton, a ton of experience obviously, but I'm curious, you know, customer success, like, uh, even Data myself. I never went to school for customer success. I don't even remember when I went

Speaker A: to school for customer success.

Speaker B: There's no such thing. And even I went for marketing and business management. I mean that was the closest I've seen worse where people go for psychology, et cetera and obviously those are valuable things to learn. But I guess like where do you go for learnings, right? Obviously there's tons of books, podcasts, courses now that are out there. So I'm just curious as far as like what you recommend for the audience or what you've seen to be valuable.

Speaker A: Okay, so if you would have asked me like six months ago, I probably, I probably would have rattled off a list of customer success books that I love. Now, while there are still a ton of wonderful resources in the age of AI, a book published yesterday is outdated, right? So what I'm going to advise you to do in this day and age as a customer success professional, scrap all the customer success stuff for just a minute, put that on hold, go to YouTube. I believe it is the greatest university out there. There is no college that could convince me otherwise. Okay, go to YouTube, go find some folks that are talking about AI. Go all in on learning that go get access to for $20 a month. Go spend, take $100, $100 a month and I'm going to tell you where to go spend it. $20 in ChatGPT, $20 in like a replit, a lovable, something like that. There are some of these like online courses that yes, you have to make a small investment. Go take some of those, put your money there, get your not only your learning, but get hands on experience. So like for me I have create, I have replit and and I have lovable. Those are three tools that I'm like vibe coding the heck out of myself right now. I'm using Those, I'm using ChatGPT. I've got Claude. I've also like I said, got my laundry list of like YouTube videos that I kind of resource. I also love TikTok. Now listen, I'm dating myself. I have no business being on TikTok. But my 16 year old daughter suckered me in because when she was on there I was like I have to go see what you're looking at. Obviously our for you pages are very different but what I do, what I found was a ton of AI creators who are sharing on TikTok. And let me tell you, I have the attention span of a net and I only probably have like five or ten minutes in between. Meetings. This is the best way for me to get little bite size nuggets of real value from real people that are navigating AI. And I'm just watching these videos and I am taking tons of notes. So if I'm giving you any advice right now in this day and age, it is not enough for you to go be a professional in customer success and understand how to do that and what to learn and what to navigate. Sure, follow me. I'll give you plenty of that stuff. You can go follow a ton of people. But go spend the time right now and go all uh, in on AI because that is the disruptor and that is where you need to be focusing 100%.

Speaker B: I couldn't agree more. I mean it's actually fascinating. It's funny you brought up Lovable because I'm still been playing around with it. I mean to the quick how quickly you could throw up a website. Even just like as like a mock up. It's just, it's pretty incredible.

Speaker A: So many neat tools with this. Now don't get me started on the number of GPTs that I've built. I have like eight of my own GPTs that I literally use every single day that save me so much time. But lovable, I've built some tools, replit, create all of these minimal investment, like infinite upside.

Speaker B: What's your, what's your favorite GPT that you created that you use?

Speaker A: I, uh, really they're all private because they're my personal ones.

Speaker B: Oh, they're personal. Okay.

Speaker A: I don't, I don't make mine public because they're my little hacks. Right. I can't give away all. Giving away Nana's secret sauce recipe. You just don't go put these things out there like that. Um, so I'm going to keep my mouth zipped on that. But I do have a couple of things that I will be releasing and I will be sharing on my newsletter and things that I will be making more available on my website so that people can go use and access those at no charge. But I'm working on a couple of things but the ones that I have, oof, man. I will tell you Joe, they're good.

Speaker B: That's awesome. That's awesome. Now I'm always looking for new like use cases to create them, you know, and, and build them out. But um, but I guess on that note, like where can everybody find you?

Speaker A: Two places to please go and find me. One would be LinkedIn. I'm the only Christy Falterusso out there, so you can't get me confused with anyone else. Please go connect with me. I would love to connect, maybe even get on a Zoom hangout. Um, I love actually building real relationships with people. I'm not here to collect followers. That's not my vibe. And if you can or if you're interested, please go over to my website, christyfalteruso.com you can sign up for my weekly newsletter or or just connect with me there. I try to make as many resources I can available there. Again, no cost, but just tons of things that you can use in your customer success career.

Speaker B: Awesome. No, that's good stuff. Definitely. We'll put that, put that in the show notes for sure. Um, but Chrissy, this is an awesome conversation. Love the stories. Thanks so much for coming on.

Speaker A: Uh, thanks Joe for making my failures feel like wins.

Speaker B: Always learning lessons. Always learning lessons. That's a wrap for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening. If you got some value from this conversation, hit subscribe, leave a rating or review and share it with someone who's also out there trying to build a better customer success or go to market strategy, even if it's messy along the way. And if you want more frameworks, tools, automated playbooks, check out Jodo's techtouch.com and subscribe to our newsletter. That link is in the description. Thanks so much for being here. Keep building, building, keep learning and I'll catch you on the next One quick note before we wrap. This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only. The ideas and opinions shared here are of my own or those of my guests and don't reflect the views of any current or former employers, clients or partners. We might reference tools, platforms or companies, but nothing shared here should be taken as fact, endorsement, or criticism. Do your own research and always consult your team or legal counsel when making any any business decisions. This content is not legal, financial or business advice. It's just us, uh, sharing what's worked, what hasn't, and how we've learned from both. So thanks again for joining us. We'll see you next time.