Growing Big People, Service Recovery & The Human Side of CS with Rob Zambito

Are you feeling disruptive? Okay, rebels, we are back in the studio today with none other than Rob Zambito. Hi, Rob. Hey, how's it going, Dana? It's good. Thank you so much for hopping in the studio here with us on this Fun Friday. Despite my internet outage and my running to a café, if us customer success people know anything, it's how to pivot. I'm gonna be honest, in my head, I, I went to that Friends episode that I always watch whenever, like, I'm feeling cringe. When I watch that episode of that old, like, when they're pivoting with the furniture and they're like, pivot, pivot. That's what was in my head when you were like, hey, we'll get on when we can get on. I'm running to a cafe. I'm like, you know what, Rob, I love it. And then you weren't even late. You weren't even late. So yeah. Well, fun fact, guys, he was on the sidewalk. So if you get any background noise. Then, uh, the, the sweet sounds of South Boston will hopefully be something you enjoy, particularly with me wearing a Knicks hat right now. I think I'm gonna get yelled at. You're wearing— yeah, I'll get yelled at a few times. So fun fact, I loved it when I actually came and you hosted Collective, Collective out in Boston. It was a great time. I got to see your library. I also almost died in your traffic, Rob. I learned Dana does not drive in Boston. Okay. Yeah. No one drives in Boston, at least not in any legal sense of the term. But yeah, you, uh, that, I think that means you got the full experience. People come for the lobster rolls, they stay for the traffic. I was like, what is going on? I was like, what is happening? I had to turn on like a Martha Stewart podcast and like get in. I was like, I was like, if I listen to any of like my normal fantastic rap or like hard rock in the background, like, I don't know, I may actually get into the vibe of the music and completely drift out. So I had to like turn something on I could like zone out a little bit on and actually focus because every time I would turn somebody was like suicide diving at me. Yeah, that's, uh, sounds, sounds fitting. You know, some people go to amusement parks for the thrills. Some people drive in Boston traffic. Some people just go drive in Boston. Yeah. Well, so thanks so much for hopping on today. You know, I mean, so the first thing, first of all, I wanna say like I started this podcast obviously, um, I guess it's been 4 seasons ago now and you're gonna be episode 2 of season 4, which I'm really excited about. So thank you for talking with us today. And actually, to be straight up, I got a lot of criticism when I first brought the show on because it was less about products and models and more about people. But really, I think— well, I think the people and success are probably really freaking important. 100%. So tell us about you, like your backgrounds, because I mean, obviously you share so much of what you learn with your businesses and things and what you're doing with your clients and your work online with all of us. But like, who What do you do when you're not working and how did you get here? It's heavy, right? Really, really. Yeah. Really good question. I'm asking myself how many layers of the onion you want me to share. Let's see, where do I start? So it's probably everything traces back to being the middle child in an Italian family. No, I mean, that is true, but no. So, so I mean. The long and short of it is I'm the founder and CEO of Success Scaled Consulting. We're a growing team of consultants who are doing 3 things really. We do customer success consulting, typically for early stage CS programs. Doesn't have to mean early stage companies, but early stage CS programs, sometimes later stage CS programs that are trying to retrofit new models onto the old customer success programs. You may have heard of this AI thing that's going on. Anyway, so, so 3 things. We do customer success consulting, we do CS recruiting, and then we do CS ops as well as a service. That's where a lot of our AI initiatives come in because we get to install cool new tools. The recruiting side is cool though too, because I like to say it's the only part of the business that makes people cry, but I mean like tears of joy, not like that. So anyway, so we do those 3 things. As far as other things about me, I've built and scaled 3 customer success teams from scratch. I think you remember the first one. I was literally living in our first customer's basement because he was like, he was in Boston. We were in San Francisco. He was like, how are you guys going to learn my company, my product, my people, my workflows? You have to be here. And we're like, we can't pay for a hotel all the time. So he was like, well, come stay here. Like, where? Like, here at my house. Like, that's a little creepy, but we'll do it. And it turns out it's in his basement. Anyway, um, but it's funny because like, that was, that was like major identity crisis moment, which everybody in customer success has had. So true. Particularly because like my, my background would have. Pointed me more in the direction of academia. My studies were in psychology, behavioral psychology, judgments and decisions, consumer psychology in particular. Um, and so the last thing I thought I'd be doing was working in something I'd never heard of called customer success in some space that I never thought I'd work in called tech. Um, but yeah, lo and behold, that company, the basement company became a unicorn. And the cool thing was most of our revenue came from customer success. We had a really efficient upsell motion, which was cool. Um, a lot of learnings from that. And then I built and scaled with my team, new teams, two other customer success teams. And then when the last one started running out of a little precious thing called money, uh, I've been there, friend. Been there, friend. Yeah. And it's not all, it's not all sunshine and rainbows in the startup world, but when the last one started yeah, uh, tapering out and eventually exited, I started, well, that's when I went full-time into consulting. I had already been consulting for 3 years on the side, but I went full-time early January '23. And yeah, it's been so cool. I mean, we've built a team now. We've got, got these different service lines and fortunately most teams we work with see improvements in their NRR and frankly just see improvements in their day-to-day workflows where they're not firefighting as much. They're, believe it or not, becoming proactive and many people call strategic. So it's been pretty fun. That's awesome. Yeah. And the thing that I love is like, it seems like you're busy all the time. And I think that we were chatting, just connecting a while ago and it's like, I'm like, so tell me about how, what is it, what's your day like? Like how, and you, and you tell me, you're like, I'm, I'm really busy. And like, I feel that in your heart. Like, but that's a good thing. Like I can tell you're also this human as a leader, like As you're building your team, I can tell you're really into like the whole mechanics of, and maybe it's your psychology background, of building these people up and working with these different people in these companies to get them to this. It's, it's not just like, I feel like there's a problem solver somewhere in that Nick's hat, Rob Zambito persona. Is that, is that right? Or am I off? Trauma does interesting things to a person, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think the connection that you're seeing, the through line is like, like I've always been fascinated with people and in a way where like to this day I'm so fascinated. Sorry, you might be hearing a dog. He's just saying hello too. He's happy to be on the pod. It's good. I'm also realizing that the, the recorder's picking up the wrong mic, but whatever. Look, we'll get there. It's fine. All good. Regardless, welcome to Boston. Welcome to Boston. Talk about being human, right? Human. So, um, yeah, the thing I've been really fascinated with lately is good discovery. Good discovery. And that's where I think there's a— Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you're talking about this right now. I'm so glad. It's so apropos. Keep going. I'm gonna be excited to hear why. It's so apropos. So what I've learned now, mind you, I'm also married to a psychologist. I didn't know that. That's cool. Cute story. We met in college. She stayed the course and I went to, you know, down this weird customer success path. But, um, but regardless, in psychology, what they call motivational interviewing is largely what we call discovery in Sales and customer success. And it involves, involves using the most strategic, thought-provoking questions that you can think through to drive value to your client, whether that's a client in SaaS or it's a client in a therapy room. And it's so much fun. Like, it is so fascinating. And no matter, especially now, like, obviously with the world of AI coming in, uh, and taking over. The one thing that's really fascinating is there's, there's no real good discovery I've gotten from AI. It doesn't match like the level of deep human connection that you can attain with the right discovery questions, whether that's in a kickoff, whether that's in an upsell, a renewal, a new sale, even an exit interview with a customer. They've already churned. Like, why would they waste their time with you? It's really cool. Okay. I'm gonna ask this because I feel like you probably have 10 ways to do this. How do you get a customer, an exit interview customer, right? If, if you're being told, hey, they're not gonna talk to us anyway, they're mad, they're frustrated, they're going out. Like any triggers you can offer there just off the cuff, or where does your head go there if you're trying to get someone to, to engage on the exit interview stuff? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, the question has to come down to what would make it worth it for them, right? So sometimes what makes it worth it? Yeah. I mean, the behaviorist in me just only thinks about incentives. So are those incentives a matter of setting them up for success in a world where they don't even use your products? That's what I've, that's a line I've actually authentically used with customers. Customer success to me is setting you up for success, even in a world where you don't use our products. Now granted, I personally think that you're most likely to be successful with our product, but at the end of the day, my job is your success. And so I have to walk you out the door properly. But sometimes that's enough of an authentic incentive. Sometimes it's a matter of facilitating their migration. Sometimes it's a matter of connecting them with other like-minded business owners or people like them who might be a value add within their network and their initiatives. And I mean, I have seen times too where it's like, oh, we'll offer you a gift card, we'll buy you dinner or whatever. And like, that's cute too. Sometimes it works, but you know, it's probably more of a last resort in my mind. Got it. Okay. And while we're at it, I've got to ask this too. Now, first of all, and I'm sorry, I know our conversation is everywhere, but I also know, I feel confident you're going to ping with me. Okay. So I'm going to go to CSAT for just a second. I know, I know, but I'm curious of your, like, so you mentioned incentivizing, and I know like the hype 2 or 3 years ago was, hey, you can sweet stick someone into possibly filling out a survey to get engagement up, 'cause we all know engagement's crap on surveys. But like, first of all, I guess let me break the question back. How do you feel about CSAT? Does it matter anyway? What's your opinion about that? I'm just curious because you see so much at the macro level and I have to ask, it's like I'm fangirling over that. I wanna hear that from you. And then I'd love it if you'd share with us like, How do you feel about incentive, the cute little incentives for stuff like the CSAT, the exit, like since you brought that up, I love it. Yeah, there's actually conflicting literature on the incentives part, but I'll save that for a bit later. As far as my view on those surveys, yeah, especially considering that the response rates are usually pathetically low. Oh yeah. It's, it's, it's more of a good trigger than it is a good signal. Agree. Yeah, I love that. Like if, if NPS, like people hate NPS, for example, and the reason they hate it is because they're like, well, this doesn't actually predict churn, but that's not necessarily the framing you have to go into it with. It could be just that those who fill out your NPS survey are those that you can have a meaningful conversation with to gain insights at scale. Same, same for CSAT. I mean, CSAT often works reasonably well with support teams, but again, you're only getting kind of like the extremes usually. Sometimes for onboarding programs too, but it's, yeah, it's, it's just a good, it's a, it's not something I would ever like comp somebody on. 100%. 100%. It would be a good signal though for me to learn where I, not just where I need to do deeper customer discovery, but where I need to provide coaching moments. With my team. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I love that. And I would, I would say totally agree on everything that you said, oddly, strangely, and amazingly. Question on, 'cause we talk a lot about positive rebellion obviously on the show. Like, what does that mean for, for you? Like, I mean, you've built this, this, this em— you're building this empire with 3 different service lines. You're, working, let's be honest, all the time. You're doing it with a smile on your face and you care enough about other people that you do things like return people in the community's calls, text people, and even apologize if you mistakenly like butt text somebody. That didn't happen to me, but you know what I mean? Like where, what is rebellion? Like what's that whole SaaS rebellion stuff to you? And obviously you're an innovator. And you're a founder, so I love asking this question to people like you. So no pressure, but what does that look like for, in your opinion? Positive rebellion. Such a thought-provoking concept. For me, it consistently roots back to the same reasons I'm in customer success to begin with. And the reasons I'm in customer success to begin with, there's a few reasons really. It's, it's partially the fact that I find The framework's the most fascinating. I mean, a, a, a well-cultivated customer base feels like, makes me feel like a chemist in a lab with a Petri dish where I'm like fascinated with what's going on inside this little ecosystem that we've created. I think it's also the biggest, it's the biggest sleeper on revenue that most teams have. So that's exciting to me, but regardless of all those things, the thing that motivates me most. Is just the ability to work with some of the craziest people, most unique, these, these one of a kind individuals that I've met. And you know, whether I've lived in their basement or just gotten yelled at on a call, you know, over and over again. It's the same thing that, you know, when I was a teenager, I waited tables at a diner, the graveyard shift, and like, you see some crazy, crazy things. You know, it took me a minute to wrap my head around this concept of positive rebellion, but I think that the positive rebellion in my mind is reconnecting with just the core humanity at a time when this world is changing fast and sometimes misguided and mis— and pointed in the wrong directions. I'm seeing things get automated that should not be automated. And I love the ingenuity. I love the inspiration. I really think that, you know, This is the most important trend being AI that we can focus on in this era. But at the same time, the positive rebellion in my mind is staying rooted in the fundamentals of the humans we work with. Yeah. No, I love that. And so I'm curious then, because you've alluded to it a lot just in things that, you know, we've chatted through in the conversation so far, but You know, thinking about AI, right? So, I mean, it's obviously everywhere. It should be. It's doing some amazing things. Like you said, fast evolution, enablement, all the wonderful things. But you mentioned a couple of things about leaning into like core humanity and seeing it maybe implemented in ways maybe that maybe is not the best idea. Maybe it's not ready yet, or maybe it's just not implemented and orchestrated perhaps in a way that is efficient and useful. I'm curious, like, at what you're seeing kind of across your base. Can you share with us a little bit about what you're seeing? I know you're a story person, which I love. Tell us the story or talk with us a little bit about that whole leaning into humanity stuff and why we probably should, you know, I'm not gonna say be leery. We wanna make sure we walk the line and learn, evolve, love AI enablement. But like, when is that line? Where's that line at, Rob? And like, I can't help but go there, right? So it's a good question and it's making me think of something that happened just yesterday. And this is my first time sharing this, but it's been rattling around in my head. Yeah. Uh, this is my first time sharing this. So somebody said to me yesterday, if it weren't for our relationship, I would have terminated. Dang. I was like, whoa. Now, quick backstory. We messed something up, me and my team. Not a big deal, but enough to really upset one person. Yeah. Our champion. And there's something, something called the service recovery paradox. Have you heard of this? I actually have not. Do tell, do tell. It's just this, this, this paradox that's been researched in service industries that it's not whether you mess up, it's how you recover from it that matters most. Ooh. So, like, actually, some of the most durable customer relationships come from where the vendor, the provider, messed up and then recovered, and that's net stronger than where they never messed up in the first place, which is crazy. Now, I'm not telling everyone to go mess up, but I am telling you to have graces. And here's why that's crazy in the modern world. That I've been thinking about, like, oh, how do I automate my consulting services? How do I make an AI? Version of our consulting services, that conversation that happened yesterday would've clearly been a churn, clearly been a churn. Yeah. If it was AI that messed up and not me. Wow. Me who's, you know, friendly Rob, who's built a relationship for years. Yeah. That's been, that's been on my mind. That, okay. So what's interesting to me, and you probably saw my eyes do the thing that they do where it's like, Yeah, no, totally. And because you're in, you've got this behavioral psychology background and because of the way you read people, I know you got what I was thinking probably already, but I'm just gonna say it for the sake of everybody watching. Like I've been in that same scenario, not to, you know, and, and so it's so cool to hear somebody who sees the level and breadth of clients that you help, right? In your world that you're seeing and feeling. That, and like you said, not just seeing it, but also seeing it in this time and place in this world where I don't think that our consumers and our clients, especially not like your champions in these accounts, I personally don't think at least what I've seen, and you correct me if I'm wrong, 'cause you see frankly more client Brits than I do, but like, it's like, do we still need relationship? We still need people. We're still selling to people, I think. And because of that, they want those relationships. They want the smiling human Rob on the other side of the phone and the person sometimes even sleeping in their basement. And I love agents. You and I love to build stuff. You know, we, we love to, to build stuff and share it with the community and all this and stuff. But like, I haven't seen anything yet that can do that, that very human piece of what we do. Well enough to avoid what you just said. Yeah. Yeah. There's a certain bedrock that often has to be established and what's working in my world is the tools that augment that relationship. But with, with mechanically, repeatedly, consistently, more consistently putting a human in the loop than those that fully remove the human in the loop. Take something like NPS, for example, like imagine, great, we built some, now obviously NPS workflows have been around for a very long time. They're rules-based no matter what a lot of companies might tell you. It's very deterministic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's regardless. I mean, take that, take that as an example. Yeah. The interesting example is like, you know, if, if the customer is to have a follow-on conversation about the score they submitted, uh, with, with a, an agentic model, then it's not going to extract nearly the same meaning. And so that's a model where it actually is net inefficient for the company, the vendor rather, and the customer to even try setting something up like that. At least currently, there are some very, very persuasive deepfakes that happen sometimes. But like, that's, that's a model where like using AI to remove the human and the human in the equation is, is not the right strategy. Instead, I look at the fact that, look, I filled out a bunch of NPS surveys in my time as a consumer. And part of me does it every single time I do it. I ask myself, is anyone going to follow up with me about this? I just gave them a 4. Do they care? And of all the times, dozens, maybe hundreds of times I've submitted an NPS survey, do you know how many times a vendor has contacted me? Even for like expensive enterprise products? How many? Where I'm the buyer? How many? Zero. Zero. I've never had a single vendor say, hey, you seem upset. Like, can we talk? Give me something. That is so weird, isn't it? And in these cases, a lot of these cases, like you said, you're buying, this is not going and getting a cup of coffee. Coffee at the cafe, right? I mean, this is, I mean, you're building a global business with multiple service lines and you're that economic buyer and you can't get people to call you back. That is interesting. What a weird and interesting piece of information. I mean, I'm a little weird with it cuz I like, I like to turn the table here and there and just say like, I'll sometimes say to a vendor, it's funny. I'll be like, I would like to cancel. I'm curious. I'm just gonna be honest. And I like, I like pull back the veil all the time. Like, I'm just curious, like, what does your cancellation playbook look like? They look at you like, huh? Yeah. They're like, what? Like, you know ball? Like, um, or like I've had great experiences too where I'm like, I need to ask because this has been a delightful experience. What CRM are you using? Cool. Let's— what workflows are you using? And they're like, I, I don't know. So I've, I've had it for better and for worse. I mean, I've had, I've had vendors. There's one vendor, uh, I canceled with and they called me for 5 months at— I canceled with because they completely screwed up a big thing for my business. Yeah, of course. Yeah. And then they'd call me for 5 months after trying to upsell me. I was like, do you know that I canceled? I would, I would literally ask, I was like, I'm sorry. I want, I want the best for you. Do you have notes on my account? You're the third rep who's called me after cancellation. Do you have notes on my account? And they're like, well, uh, uh, maybe, uh, maybe I can pull them up. Or like, I don't have access to that. And I'm like, this— I'm on. There's a phrase that I heard, like, don't let your customers feel your org chart. You ever heard that? I have heard that. A phrase that I just thought of in this very moment is don't let your customer feel your systems. Oh, that's huge. Don't let your customers feel your— oh wow. That is huge. I think the best systems are invisible to the customer. Yeah. It's interesting. So because we're, because we're at story time, I'm gonna talk about Taco Bell. Rob, do you know how I feel about Taco Bell? Have I shared that with you ever? I don't know, but I gotta tell you about Taco Bell too. Go, you first. Okay. Hey, I've always had a slight obsession with Taco Bell. I went to school as well for something that I do not do. I have a master's in public government. Have I ever been a city manager? Hell no. Rob Zambito. Never. Right. Anyway, I ate way too much Taco Bell in college. I ate way too much Taco Bell as an adult. Okay. It's 5 minutes from my office now. I go every day. I'm not even gonna, but so I went, I wanted to get my grilled cheese burrito with steak. It had to be mine. I had to have extra sour cream. I get there, this delightful human gets on the line, right? And is talking to me. And when I tell you that this is the best customer service experience that I have ever had in my entire existence, Rob, this guy is straight singing to me the menu. Okay? This guy says, I just wanted to know if you wanted to do an upsell to Bookbag Buddies. I mean, he is like— That's so funny. I get up there, he's doing a dance, he's handing me my food, he's telling me to have a great day. Then he hands me my receipt and he says, if you don't mind, ma'am, fill out the survey. I'll be happy to take your feedback. Do you think I filled out that survey? Yes, I did. Do you think I normally fill out surveys? Heck no, I don't. Okay. So it's like, man, it's interesting because like the survey in that moment plus the fact that I had my taco and I was pretty darn hungry. All of that together was a thing. Anyway, tell us your Taco Bell thing. I wanna, we wanna hear, we wanna hear. No, I wanna reflect on that because yeah, so when I, so between my college years and the basement years, I started a food business where, yeah. What? So I started, long story short, I started a food business called Fruzee. Fruzee was like a, imagine a froyo made only out of frozen fruit., but it had the texture of ice cream. Like people thought it was ice cream. They swore there was dairy. There was no dairy, no ice, no sugar, no nothing. Just literally just fruit. It was this fruit alchemy that, uh, delicious that I, I made. And I started it with a guy who had a restaurant. We partnered the two together. We scaled the restaurant to 4 locations. It was madness. I was wearing an apron. I was running deliveries. And then I could run back to his spreadsheet to try to update the sales forecast. And it was absolute chaos. And I was working 106 hours a week, no exaggeration. And that was before AI enablement or assistance. Oh yeah. And so I strive for that, to provide that experience to my clients. Clients, you know, you don't think of your average restaurant-goer as a client, but I did. And I do. And, but the funny thing was like my business partner and I, we'd work from 6, 7 AM to like 11 PM. We'd drive home and you know where we would stop on the way home, despite the fact that we had our, our best food in our own restaurant, we would stop at the 5-star Taco Bell on the way home. And it's not just a Taco Bell. It is the 5-star Taco Bell in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. I think it was Bala Cynwyd, Marion Station, something like that. Anyway. The best. We would stop at the 5-star Taco Bell because they would always provide this crazy experience, just like what you had. And the funny thing is, like, you see that in cases like, you go to like Trader Joe's and you're like, what are these people taking that is making them so pleasant? I actually asked a guy at Trader Joe's that once. I was like, how do you, like, how is everyone here So happy. And he is like, it's really easy. We don't hire people who know how to bag and teach them to be happy. We hire happy people and teach them to bag. I was like, oh, that's good. That's cool. So the, the interesting economic theory behind all this, I've been researching this lately, is that like when automation arrives, it, it often splits industries. It like bifurcates industries into the human service side becoming more of a craft profession. Starbucks, people can make coffee at home. People could have made Fruzzi what I made at home too, if they knew how. I was going to say, but can they really? I mean, I don't know. They could, they could. It's not that it's that easy. I'm sitting here wondering how to do it right now. I may do 3 tries this weekend and take a picture of failed attempts. I'm just saying. You could try. Point is, point is people can do a lot themselves, but what happens in, in most like craft industries is there's a, the humanity part, the service part becomes a premium on top of the run-of-the-mill service that you can get from a more automated solution. So that's to me where, if history tells me anything, things might go, but who knows? We're all just guessing here. So weird you said completely, well, slightly related. When I got, when I got laid off the first time, the thing I did to survive was I went to Trader Joe's. And I would walk in the mornings through there. I would interview, I'd get up and I'd, I'd do my interview task list, my calendar list, and then I would go and I would smell the flowers when you walk into Trader Joe's. And to me, Trader Joe's is like Disney. I always joke, have you been to Banana Day at Trader Joe's? Like the banana thing where they give the, like, I have not heard of Banana Day. And one more thing. Not only is Banana Day awesome, if you haven't checked it out, go do Banana Day, guys and girls, and promise. The other thing is, if you have kids or if you have dogs that like to do fun, itchy, kitschy stuff, there is also Carrot the Parrot who is hidden around Trader Joe's. So every time my kids and I go to that part of town, they want to go to Trader Joe's. Why you say, Rob? Because they want to find Carrot the Parrot. Because if they find Carrot, who's often hidden up in the rafters in the meat department or around some of the delicious bakery affections. Then they can take the stuffed parrot up to the front, and one of the wonderful happy people in the floral shirts give them a prize bag. Completely free value add for parents, right? Plus, it's smiley people that make you feel happy, to your point, just for kind of going there. So I totally get where you're coming from, and I think it's so interesting because people are keep saying like, CS is in this identity crisis. I know you've heard all this hype about that, like And it all comes back. I think, I so think that where you're driving here and what you found in your research is so true. And I'm sure you find it as you're navigating your client base as well. For your team, it's like working with people and doing it well and having those soft skills and being able to solution and kind of be a little bit of a nerd and be excited about going to solve problems for them and giving them advice and benchmarking, consultative advice that leads to real outcomes. That stuff still matters. And it's hard to build an agent that does that. In the same way, I think. Yeah, I agree. I think the way this was showing up for me yesterday, I'm looking at my, my notes. I was working with a team coaching them on— Yeah. These are, these are my, my notes from a client yesterday. I was coaching them on how to do really good discovery that provides a really meaningful experience in their customer kickoff. Because nailing that kickoff has a highly predictive effect on the rest of onboarding, which has a highly predictive effect on the rest of retention and expansion. So the questions we came up with, these are some good ones folks can use if they're listening to this today. This is exciting. Ooh, okay. Okay. So the first one, it's counterintuitive. Let's imagine this project fails in 6 months. Why would that happen? Customer's like, why are you asking me about failure? But they're like, oh, you know, that's actually a really good thought, because guess what? We forgot this person's going out on leave. We forgot to tell you that. We forgot to tell you that we're changing CRMs and that might have an adverse effect. And we forgot to tell you that Joe in accounting hates change. Joe does not like change. So maybe we should build some custom training programming for him. That was the first question we came up with. Can I give you another one? Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm just over here like, oh, I love that. Okay. Yeah, please. So another one was, okay, let's imagine you didn't work with us. What's your next best alternative? That is strong. That is so wicked strong. That one comes up in moments of escalation. I've had customers absolutely tear me a new one. And I had a funny experience once where I learned a couple sales skills by accident. I was baffled. This angry customer wouldn't— he would call every day and yell at my team, curse at us. And I was so fed up with him once that I unintentionally used a sales technique here where I was like, dude, why don't you just— like, why are you still with us? Why don't you just leave? And I was like, oh my God, I can't believe I just said that. And I went silent. And what I didn't know is that I used 2 really good sales techniques there. Because guess what he said? He said, I can't leave. You guys are the future. I was like, what? Can I like capture that? We didn't use to record calls back then, but I was like, can I, did you just say that we are the future? The future. That was the reason why he wasn't leaving. So what I didn't realize is I did 2 things there. I used what's sales teams sometimes call an anti-sell or an unsell or a takeaway where I'm like, why don't you just leave? And what I did is I forced him up against his alternatives and he was like, this is still the best for me. And the other thing was because I like was baffled by the fact that I accidentally just said that I went silent and I didn't realize that silence is quite powerful, quite powerful. Yes. And sitting with silence was a, was a cool strategy I learned that going back to our point before, I'm not seeing any AI to sit with silence very well. If anything, you're like refreshing the page, like, let's go. It's so funny. It's so funny and fun that you mentioned the whole silence thing. I still remember the first time silence ever got dropped on me. It was when I was in a, a conversation around, it was a a gentleman who had said, hey, look, I'm leaving. I don't want to stay anymore. And I was having an exit interview. We were chatting and I was explaining all these great things that, hey, we're willing to do this. Let's talk about this. Trying to really investigate with them, figure out what the systemic causation was, all that fun stuff. And then also try to give him some incentive to stay. And we had a great relationship, so it really was not great. I didn't love it. It didn't sit well. I knew why he was leaving and he did something I wasn't expecting and that was he just looked at me. Me. Now, you know I'm an extrovert, Rob. You've known me long enough, and you're in behavioral psychology, and I think this is how you kind of see the world and size up people. I don't know this about you, but I'm learning about you, and I think that's how you see the world as, as a leader. So it's like, that made me so uncomfortable. I was like, in my head, I'm like, ooh. Um, and before I knew it, right, rookie me took a step back. And do you know what I did? I gave that guy a 5% discount. And you know me, I'm not a discount girly. I did it because of that silence trick though, dude. It's crazy powerful. Crazy power. It's crazy. Okay, I know we're coming up to— you're on the side of the street in a cafe. We've had some wonderful dog in the background saying hello to all of us, and I'm so thankful for that because, you know, we love our, our dog Rebels too. Tell us, wrap us out, tell us like everything, I know it's a heavy thing for a Friday, but I'm gonna say this and I'm not meaning for it to come off as butt kissy. I'm just gonna be real. Like if I think about people that I really look up to in professional life, the hustle, the drive, the kindness, it's you. You know, have you ever, did you ever watch, did you ever watch, my head is blanking now, Mr. Rogers? Growing up at all? Yeah, for sure. Okay. So I distinctly remember growing up watching Mr. Rogers and I would sit there and eat my box mac and cheese because that's all I really knew how to cook growing up. And my mom delivered babies, so I made dinner a lot for me and my, my little brother. And it was basically like box mac and cheese, like whatever we could find. My dad could cook two things, smoked sausage sandwich and an egg sandwich. Amazing. Amazing. Whole nother story. We'll talk about that later. But what's important about this conversation is Mr. Rogers would say, look for the helpers. I feel like you're a helper, you know? And not everybody is, right? And, and I'm curious, like everybody listening to this, do you have any kind of advice you would share? I mean, all the way from all of it. Think about the onions, all of it, the academia, the basement. Now a global leader building this wonderful thing to continue helping people? Like, what do we need to know? First of all, thank you for saying that. That means a lot, especially coming from you, because that's how I feel. You've been such a great connecting presence in the community, and it really helps keep the, the humanity in what we're doing and what is frankly a very— look, there have been a lot of hard times. Yeah. I've seen in this space. These are hard times. What stands out to me, there's a phrase that I used to use with my team, which is the only way we're gonna grow a big company is by growing big people. And I know that sounds a little cheesy at first glance. No, I might actually cry right now. I am so that, that is so Hallmark-y and love it. I love it. That is strong, Rob. No, that, I love that. We stood by it too. Now granted, we had the growth to support it, but I hired at that company, we hired I think there were 72 people we hired to our support team in the time that I was there, around 3 and a half years. All of them, almost all of them got promoted in my tenure. It was, it was remarkable. People and people got promoted to different teams. They got promoted to not just CSM roles. Our QA team was made up of former support people who showed up, who showed up proclivity for the technical side. Of, of our work. Our, our sales team, our sales engineers were former support people. Our product team was made up of people from our support team. And it was fascinating to see that we could transform. I mean, there were people who were literally making 3 to 4 times what they came in making because we tried to live by that philosophy that our default is always going to be building people up internally. If that weren't our default, Hell, look, if I were at any other company, I don't think I would even be, I wouldn't have even grown through the ranks cuz I think a lot of people took chances on me when I didn't deserve it. But that's what's coming to mind for me. I love it. I love it. All right, rebels. Well, thanks for joining myself and Rob Zambito, um, on the side of the sidewalk in Boston in a Knicks hat. We had fun. Thanks for accommodating my Wi-Fi issues. No problem at all. No problem. Of course, please. Rob, how do we find more of you? Obviously all over LinkedIn, right? Yeah. Yeah. I, I, uh, anyone listening to this, including my family, if they ever hear this, should know that LinkedIn is half satire for me, half community, half satire. But yeah, LinkedIn's easy to find me. I post a lot of content that just random things that I find insightful or interesting. And I've been doing different series lately on like a, uh, I started a series on customer onboarding. I'm going to do a series on customer health. Customer churn, renewals, expansion, customer advocacy. Like I'm just gonna keep, keep these series going until I run out of things to say. Yeah, no, I love that. Yeah, that's an easy way or email hello@robzambuto.com. It's the easiest way to reach me. Okay. Well, Rebels, until next time, do it big and do it different. And Rob, we'll catch you later. Thanks, Diana. We'll talk soon. Bye for now, everyone. Bye.