Rebuilding Customer Success Teams

Krissy: Hello and welcome to another episode of the talent GTM podcast. I’m your host, Krissy Manzano. And today

Krissy Manzano: we’re talking about rebuilding customer success teams with one of my favorite people to do that with Gina Patel. Gina, welcome.

Gina Patel: Thank you, Krissy. I’m glad to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

Krissy Manzano: yeah, I know. So excited to have you just to kind of give our listeners a little bit of a background on Gina. She has over 15 years of experience in customer success leadership with a really strong focus on SaaS and subscription based businesses around the mid market and enterprise customer space. And throughout her career, she’s really built and led high performing customer success teams that drive. satisfaction, retention and revenue growth. And she’s very strategic and, and her operational expertise has really kind of enabled her to achieve that high customer retention and, and revenue growth, right?

Krissy Manzano: That NRR, those metrics that we all are looking at, through great experiences. And at her last two companies, she excelled in developing and implementing customer success strategies, KPIs, and processes. So can’t think of a better person. To talk about during, not just with this topic, but during this type of market shift land with the landscape that we’re going into in tech in particular, and how we look at our go to market teams, right?

Krissy Manzano: Customer success being 1 of those part of the 1st line team. So welcome. Excited to have you. And I know that people are going to be able to take so many nuggets.

Krissy Manzano: Away from this conversation, but starting off, can you share a bit about your journey into leadership?

Gina Patel: Sure. so the, the start of my career was really in management consulting. And I think that’s really been the driving force of how I ended up not only being successful in customer success, but establishing a lead leadership roles. I, I joined my first tech company back in 2011. And. I came in as a senior CSM and I think that was a kind of a great place to start and not just go straight from management consulting into managing a team because it allowed me to leverage the skills that I had from my consulting days, but also showcase some of Management skills that I do have to lead a team and also be an IC.

Gina Patel: So really kind of understanding from the lens of a true customer success manager, what it means to be a CSM. that lended itself to, working for startups, you get to wear multiple hats. And if you stay long enough with one, you do get to prove yourself and then take on more leadership opportunities.

Gina Patel: And so I was able to do that with. I got promoted a couple of times with the first tech company I was at called Decision Lens. And then following that, took on a role managing a team in North America for a tech company called Tubular Labs, and then led my first VP role at Pathmatics, and then stayed as a VP, moved over to a company called Sensor Tower, which acquired Pathmatics.

Gina Patel: So, I think the, the journey has been one where I’ve. to various different leadership positions as I felt my experience aligned. I’m a strong people manager and that’s really largely because of my, my personality, the fact that I really are empathetic with people. I love, I love engaging with customers, but I do think that my time at Booz Allen, which is where I did seven years of management consulting for the government space, I think that really lended itself for those strong management skills.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah. No. And I, you talk about, starting also in the CS side as an IC, an individual contributor. And I think that’s something that is so valuable more than ever today where you’re supposed to do, More with less, right? And I, I think that folks that. I mean, most people have had that experience to some extent, but it might have been a lot shorter, depending on when they started.

Krissy Manzano: Right. And not really understanding the role that they’re managing. I find, can be really challenging, especially in the market that we’re in where. I look at all of these director level roles that we’ve hired for, and they, they used to be 2nd line. Leadership roles, and now their 1st line. Where they’re wanting you to manage the direct team and even you be a part of, some more player coach roles are popping up than I’ve seen in past. So curious, your, your thoughts on that.

Gina Patel: it’s interesting that you say that because some of the observations over my tenure in the SaaS space have been observing. Managers, either my manager or other managers in the space that haven’t necessarily, or leaders, I should say, not just, not managers, but who haven’t, who haven’t been in IC. And so really understanding what it’s like to do the role that you’re asking your team to do.

Gina Patel: I’m always putting myself in their shoes and understanding the capability, what the breadth of what I was doing when I was in that role. And I think it really, That makes me really, a strong leader because the team, the team understands that I, I’ve been there and I, I am saying a lot of the challenges that they’re facing, but I’m also trying to work with them on how can we address these challenges and provide a solution to our customers.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah, no, excellent. Excellent points.

Krissy Manzano: What are some key signs that a customer success team is in need of a reboot? as we talk about. having folks potentially, even in there that are managing folks that haven’t been in the role, but just in general, how can you kind of identify. These issues before they escalate.

Gina Patel: So some of the things that I think when I look at a CS team and I come in, I ask, do you know the pain points of your customers? And if they can’t tell me that, which oftentimes they can’t. I, I asked, okay, well, what are our engaged? What is our engagement look like with our customers? What is that customer journey?

Gina Patel: Are we, what, what’s our approach with our customers? And so one of the things that I think is really important is understanding, do we know what success means for our customers? And usually oftentimes when gross revenue retention is not as high as it could be and our growth numbers, our NRR, net revenue retention, isn’t, isn’t as high.

Gina Patel: Very strong as well. it usually aligns with the fact that we don’t know what our goals and objectives are for our customers. What does six, like, how do we define what success is? What are the challenges our customers are currently like mid cycle? If I were to ask like, Hey, can you tell me the top three challenges your customers are going through within your book of business, if they can’t answer that, it’s usually telling that we’re not asking the right questions and understanding our customers to a point that can help us.

Gina Patel: Drive those numbers and everything is metrics based. So when you come in and you inherit a team that may not have the greatest retention numbers and the greatest growth numbers, I usually do dig, dig deeper into, okay, well what’s the customer experience look like? And just as I recap right now, if the things that I’m not seeing are there, it does really drive for reboot.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah. Do you find that people are open to those types of reboots or, we have a team and they already feel overwhelmed or maybe not appreciate it.

Krissy Manzano: How do you kind of approach. phase 1 of of of looking to make those changes or. Reestablish. Yeah,

Gina Patel: I highlight the fact that, hey, this might be overwhelming. Change takes a while to adjust to. There’s a lot that I am asking of you, but I promise that, as we make these changes, it’ll make your life better because you will be more successful in this role than you otherwise have been so far.

Gina Patel: Just, you can do only so much, but if we’re not doing the right things and I say this a lot to my teams, I’m like, let’s, let’s work, smarter, not harder. So how can we make those numbers better without having to do. Like 2x the work. That

Krissy Manzano: yeah, it’s, it’s interesting to me. You would think it would be so common to explain the why, why you’re doing things in this change. But I find that so often, I’m sure you’ve seen this. People don’t explain that. Why? Because they feel it should be. Evident, right? But giving folks the why and how it’s going to help them to get that buy in is so, is so valuable.

Krissy Manzano: So great advice on, on that front, kind of switching gears and going into a question I have, that semi, controversial, but I’m curious your take on it.

Krissy Manzano: So SAS churn, just in a lot of industries, right? I won’t say all, but, but most is on the rise, right? Especially after this. 2023 into 2022 was just brutal for the tech market. we saw 2024 have repair, and some growth to it, but there’s still some hesitation. You’re still seeing churn. You’re still doing again. The more with less, what do you think is driving that trend? And what role does customer success play in that issue? Are they part of the problem or are they part of the solution?

Krissy Manzano: Yes. Yes. Take it

Gina Patel: volume of questions.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah. Yeah.

Gina Patel: So, yeah, I think Churn, we, I think a lot of things have changed since COVID, so during COVID, we all know that in the SaaS space it was growth at all costs. I think people were making investments, maybe taking a risk because they have the liberty to, and when I say people, I mean, or companies were taking, making investments that were nice to have, not necessarily a necessity.

Gina Patel: So, as, as things have changed and the tech industry has been hit, I think we’re trying to run, companies are trying to run more lean. And as a result, there’s a couple of things that are happening. One is the churn is, is rising. the CS team, there’s more pressure on the CS team to, stop the bleed, so to speak, stop the churn, but also expected to grow existing customers that are not churning because they don’t want to put more people resources against them since companies are trying to be more lean.

Gina Patel: So. I think there’s a lot more expectation of the CS team to, to stop the bleed. I like, I kind of like saying stop the bleed because I think churn for some companies was significantly larger than others. and so that approach has to shift. It’s not, you can’t be, you’ve really got to understand your customers and their pain points going back to like, what does success mean for them?

Gina Patel: If you can drive value and value piece is key and align it to how it’s, how it’s, how it’s helping them get to that success, it’s really going to ensure renewal. I think. we need to focus, there’s, there’s some key metrics in the CS space when we think about like usage, as really a big one.

Gina Patel: And I, I, and I think usage is obviously important. Everyone needs to, if we’re, if our customers aren’t using our product, then that’s a pretty big red sign that they’re not going to renew. However, if they’re using it, it doesn’t always. Ensure that retention is going to be high. I’ve, I’ve seen, I’ve seen softwares where software companies where we’re checking that usage is great.

Gina Patel: Usage is great. The, the, the, NPS number, your, our net promoter score, that user experience is great, and yet they’re not renewing and why, because we’re not tying why they need this product to the outcomes for their customers, for their companies, for those customers that we have. And what success means for them.

Gina Patel: If we can’t do that, then we can’t articulate the value proposition for why they need to continue to retain us.

Krissy Manzano: That’s so interesting. You say that because I would think if you have a high NPS score and high usage, right, that you naturally would renew. But in your experience, you’ve seen that that’s not the case. The past two years, I’m seeing it change a little bit, but if I was to look at the go to market, departments, right, sales, marketing, and CS. CS is the one that I’ve seen just almost kind of vanish from the hiring field. Like it was just so much lower. And I’m just curious your take on why that is, is it people not appreciating the value that CS brings, or is it again, not to, not to beat a dead horse here, but we have to do more with less. So I want sales to, manage. What I traditionally had CS managed because I need, and, they’re doing the SDR all the way through, the entire life cycle of the customer journey. Curious your thoughts on that.

Gina Patel: So I, I, I don’t know if it’s vanished. I think, customer success is now a much larger umbrella of roles and responsibilities. I think, if we think of during, COVID and, and, and even Earlier on, cause I’ve been one of those pioneers in CS. So really CS focused on retention. And now the expectation is you’re, you’re, you’re retaining customers, you’re growing customers, you’re doing it all your, and, and as a result, it means that someone who might’ve been the sales person who’s supporting that account no longer exists to drive the growth piece.

Gina Patel: the titles can be also different account managers. I’ve often heard, for a role that I see as a customer success manager. So sometimes those are interchangeable. I see that oftentimes, so I don’t know if I see less of it. I see sometimes the titles being different.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah.

Gina Patel: Yes, I do think that like, instead of maybe three people supporting five accounts, you’ve got one person supporting five accounts, so I do think that there are less.

Gina Patel: I think it also depends on the time of the year. So right now, just to be, you and I are chatting in December and I haven’t seen a whole lot of, job opportunities in the CS space for the latter half of this year, and in particular in Q4, but I think that that’s usually a time where what I have been seeing is a lot of sales opportunities, available and open.

Gina Patel: And, I think that’s, Sales is where tech companies usually focus on for end of year to kind of set themselves up for the following year and that sales side is something that they’re going to start to really, looking for, especially where they have gaps, or, and also just to see how their quarter closed for Q4 and what, their pipeline looks like for, for, for the following year, they’ll start hiring for that, for those roles, for the CS roles in Q1 and Q2.

Gina Patel: Okay.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah. No, that, that makes sense. It, it’s funny. You say some of the titles can be AM, because I’ve, I’ve seen in the past on, on the sales and the CS side. Yeah. Everyone get very specific on, no, I’m not, I don’t do sales. I don’t do sales. I manage the customer journey. I help, Q T up, upsells and all those things. Do you think that’s evolving on the CS side? As you mentioned, you’d be one of the pioneers and then now kind of where it is, where you’re now seeing the CS positions potentially titled AM, right? Or things of that nature and CS taking on, the bigger umbrella, taking on more of a sales responsibility than even previously.

Gina Patel: Yeah. so I definitely think they’re taking on more responsibility in a sales capacity that they weren’t accustomed to. and, but as a result, I’m also seeing some, common mistakes that software companies do as they shift the, what they’re defining as that post sales role in support of customers.

Gina Patel: it’s no longer about retention. It’s also about growth and what they’re not doing as they make this shift is. They’re not doing, they’re not providing a lot of sales training. So when I think of sales reps that come into tech companies, they usually get like the sales one on one training, like what’s the value proposition, who are the competitors in this space, what different, what differentiates us and makes us superior in the marketplace, so, like going through all the, the sales training that one gets, even as an account manager, they get that.

Gina Patel: And then in this new role, I don’t see CSMs getting the same type of sales training that an account manager formally let, historically an account manager or an AE, an account executive would get, that’s focusing on purely growth. And as a result, I think it’s doing, it’s doing the CS department a disservice because it’s not helping those CSMs get, be set up for success.

Gina Patel: And we really want them to focus on being sales minded, which by the way, retention to me is. because it’s revenue generating and it brings, money to a company. We’re all in sales is what I’ve always said. However, if we really want to hone in on those negotiation skills to really get us like, let’s say 10 percent more, 20 percent more pitch a product that they don’t have, I think it, it’s really understanding sales skills and techniques.

Gina Patel: That can really help us elevate and have those difficult conversations that a CSM may traditionally have been uncomfortable with.

Krissy Manzano: Yep. Nope. That makes sense. And kind of going back to where you talked about how customers aren’t renewing, right?

Krissy Manzano: Even with that high NPS score, even with that high usage or, acceptable usage, how can, and you talked about this a little bit, how can organizations align their CS teams with the broader business goals in general?

Gina Patel: Yeah, I think, what I’ve seen oftentimes is, KPIs are not aligned. So, just recently I spoke to a company and they said, Hey, we still have the, account executives supporting the CSMs for growth, but we can’t really seem to flag the growth opportunities. And so if we KPI, let’s just say like, historically speaking, we didn’t, we didn’t, they’re not, let’s just say we, we, right now we don’t have them fixated on growth, but how growth is something that every company should, it’s top of mind, right?

Gina Patel: It’s going to be their, one of their targets, right? It’s, it’s new business. And then it’s growth with existing business. Right? So with the growth with existing business, what about KPI ing the team and the individual contributors to, upsell signals, right? so you have, you have, you’re flagging and you’re being KPI’d against that within our, your, your book of business.

Gina Patel: Where are the signals that for opportunities for growth? I also think comp structure is another one. I’m not saying CS comp structure is aligned with the expectations that our companies want. So they want high and net revenue retention, high gross revenue retention. And yet the comp structures contradict the goals of the company for what they’re striving for.

Gina Patel: I’d also say, it’s really important. I know like sometimes people say, Oh, we emphasize business reviews. I think business reviews and kickoffs are really crucial to a customer experience and also for us to better understand, What’s going on with their, with our customers, things might have shifted, strategy might’ve shifted the business that might not be doing well.

Gina Patel: Where, where’s product opportunities. Maybe we can upsell them on something. And because we’ve been on this journey with them and know where their struggles are, maybe there’s another product line that we could suggest knowing kind of where their challenges are. If we’re asking the right questions and being.

Gina Patel: consultitative, anyone who’s heard me speak before, and also knows my background knows that I really am in the CS space because I do think of customer success manager as a consultant and as a, and a trusted advisor. So someone, customers who’ve worked with me directly as someone who’s been in IC really knows that like, I’m, I’m only looking out for their best interests.

Gina Patel: And so organic sales is quite easy for a CSM. If they’re one. equipped with the right training to help them have the right tools to have those conversations and to understand what’s going on with their customers throughout the year or, multiple years that they’re, they have a contractor.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah, I mean, there’s so much that you said there that

Krissy Manzano: as those are listening, I mean, a great area to maybe rewind and listen to again, because

Gina Patel: being

Krissy Manzano: comp and the right KPIs drive behavior. And so make sure it’s the behavior that you want, right? And that it’s aligned. Some of those things that it seems like table stakes, right?

Krissy Manzano: Of course you would comp and set those things up, but oftentimes that’s just not the case. And so great time of year to be looking at that.

Krissy Manzano: What, what skills and competencies are going to be essential for future success on the CS side as people are looking at rebooting their teams that are restructuring right on the customer success, Sector.

Krissy Manzano: What are some of those key skills that are going to be needed?

Gina Patel: being able to

Gina Patel: Sales skills, like generally speaking. So all the things that you could think of negotiation skills, presentation skills, being able to, I think some strong people skills, which is a basic skill that you need in the CS space. But, I, I do think not having, having lack of sales skills when it comes to serving your customers, supporting their, their success with our product is.

Gina Patel: probably going to be much more crucial than it ever was before. I’m a little bit old school and I, maybe I shouldn’t be saying this, but I really think let’s put ourselves in our customer’s shoes. I always try to put myself in their shoes. Like, okay, I, I don’t understand this product. So how can I expect my customers?

Gina Patel: So like,

Krissy Manzano: 100%.

Gina Patel: right. So like, I’m not going to pitch that because I don’t even understand what it does. Or I’m not going to pitch that because. There is no need for that, for that customer. So just kind of really honestly, I always think put yourself in their shoes and what would they want to hear? And sometimes what do they not want to hear?

Gina Patel: We’re not here to just please our customers. I really think that customers admire when you can, when you can politely contradict their opinions. And I, and I say this like one example I can give you because this might sound very like hostile and it’s not meant to be, but. I’ve had lots of customers really respect me because I’ve pushed back on them.

Gina Patel: I’ve challenged them. I have said, Hey, you’re doing something one way with our product, but I really think that you could enhance your experience and get more outcomes out of our product. If you did X, Y, and Z. and they, they respected, they actually really appreciate the fact that I’ve given my opinion and it’s coming from a good place.

Gina Patel: It’s because I want to set them up for success. And so I’m not always trying to be the yes woman, like, Hey, yep, we’ll do it that way. Yep. We’ll do it that way. I do try to challenge my customers, and there’s a right time and place for that. And also I’ve developed some rapport before I’ve gone ahead and made some suggestions that they not may not may or may not always appreciate at the time.

Krissy Manzano: That you saying that brings me to a point where I think the number 1 thing that we’re missing. Is active listening, you cannot challenge a customer. Sector. You cannot challenge anybody or be valuable and help them if you’re not listening. If you’re just looking to take down whatever they say and try to, I, I think a lot of people confuse relationship building by making, by thinking, I’ve got to make you happy, but you can’t make someone happy unless you understand them.

Krissy Manzano: And unless you also, ask questions to make sure you understand and work with them on what does success look like. Right. And so I think a lot of people. Confused that with how do I make you happy? How do I say yes? How do I check these boxes without really having dialogue with you and hearing what you’re saying? So I just think that’s an excellent point that you highlighted, and, and kind of how to get there.

Krissy Manzano: you’ve you’ve given a ton of great tips today, kind of in summary, and you’ve already mentioned some of these things, but just to, to kind of recap, what, what’s the quick low hanging fruit if someone’s coming in Hey, I’ve got to start to reboot.

Krissy Manzano: What are the three to five things I need to really focus on, for, for phase one to try to start implementing today.

Gina Patel: So, I would say easy, quick wins is KPIs. Are we flagging up sell signals or associated KPI related to upsell signals? And that might just be a net revenue retention number. Are we, do we have business reviews set up? Are we, logging success stories? So are we asking the right questions to capture the benefits and the, the, the larger company outcomes that are driving success for our customers?

Gina Patel: I would say if just those little things, which sounds, kind of simple, Oh, we logged a success story and we’re starting to document that, that helps marketing, that helps sales, that helps you. In those renewal conversations come, three to six months before, a contract is coming up for a renewal to basically say, Hey, look at all these success stories that, we’ve had conversations centered around that have really drive in, success for you.

Gina Patel: So I think just, simple KPIs, it doesn’t mean that you have to have a whole platform set up if you don’t have a CS platform set up, there’s ways to log things, in a simplistic fashion to just get us going. So we start to capture some of these things. I think upsell, upsell signals, if you’re not held totally accountable to growth numbers, that’s an easy, quick win for me.

Gina Patel: I think like that’s something that sales teams can kind of run with once a CSM has flagged that, but really understanding like. Are we, and then talking to our customers, touch points. So that can be reflected in your KPIs. how many business reviews are you doing? How many upsell signals have you logged?

Gina Patel: How many, success stories have you logged? Those to me are, are pretty, are, are easy, quick wins that obviously will take time, but they’re, they’ll make a quick impact. Even within a quarter’s time.

Krissy Manzano: Yeah, no, great advice.

Krissy Manzano: Um, that’s all the time that we have today. Who knows, we might have to do a part two because I’m sure there’s so much more that we could dig into. Gina, where can people find you if they want to reach out to you for just questions or your wisdom on the CS side?

Gina Patel: Yeah, I’m, I think I’m pretty accessible. So my information’s available on LinkedIn, but my email address is ginaPatel80@gmail.com. So feel free to reach out to me directly. I’m, I’m usually very quick to respond. and if I’m not, it’s usually because I’m out of the country on, on vacation because those who do know me know that I like to travel.

Krissy Manzano: Awesome. Well, thanks so much for being on another episode of the Talent GTM podcast listeners, you can find us on Spotify, Apple, or any other. Podcast platform, including our website at blueprintexpansion. com under the talent GTM podcast section. That’s all we have for now until next time. We’ll see you later.

Krissy Manzano: Thanks, Gina.

Gina Patel: Thank you.