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Speaker: Anita Ganti Maximizing ROI with AI in Customer Support Team A Guide for Heads of Support Speaker: Anita Ganti April 10, 2024 Previous Item Next Item This video is a must-watch for Heads of Support in medium to large enterprises considering AI tools. Discover expert insights from tech executive Anita on maximizing return on investment (ROI) with AI tools. Anita, with extensive experience in various technology companies, shares invaluable tips for evaluating AI tools, securing funding, and ensuring project success. The key takeaways include: Understanding ROI is critical: Quantify the potential risks and costs associated with AI adoption. Focus on specific use cases: Identify areas where AI can deliver the most value for your support team. Transparency is key: Be upfront about costs, risks, and timelines when presenting to stakeholders. Maintain strong relationships: Build trust with vendors and stakeholders to ensure continued buy-in. By following these steps, you can ensure a successful AI implementation that improves your support operations and delivers a strong return on investment. Anita emphasizes the importance of building strong relationships and handling challenges effectively for project success. Don't miss out on these valuable insights for maximizing ROI on AI tools in your organization. About Speaker : Anita Ganti , an Executive and Independent Board Member at Technology Companies, possesses unparalleled expertise in maximizing Return on Investment (ROI). She served as senior vice president of product engineering services at Wipro Limited, a leading global information technology, consulting, and business process services company. Previously, she held roles as vice president of global technology at Flex Ltd. and Business Unit General Manager at Texas Instruments. Currently serving on the boards of directors of Power Integrations, Inc., Exro Technologies, Inc., and Silvaco, Inc., Anita combines her extensive experience with an MBA (Finance Major) from The Wharton School and an MSEE from Virginia Tech to deliver exceptional value to organizations.

Speaker - Karpagam Narayanan Creating Knowledge Magic with Salesforce and Slack Speaker - Karpagam Narayanan November 11, 2022 Previous Item Next Item Slack is emerging as a key collaboration tool, internally and with customers. Learn how to use everyday interactions, to automate creating knowledge, and spreading knowledge to help colleagues and serve customers efficiently. Utilize knowledge objects in Salesforce to be able to bring value in Slack.

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Explore how cultural shifts are reshaping customer experience (CX) in Africa, focusing on proactive service, innovation, data protection, and cultural understanding. Cultural Changes that we see within CX in the African Continent | Transcription Kay - Welcome to the experience dialogue. In these interactions. We pick a Hot Topic. That doesn't have a straightforward answer. We bring them. Bring in speakers who have been there, done that, but approached it in different ways. This is a space for very healthy disagreements and discussions. But in a very respectful way, we have been justified by the nature of how. We conceive that we will, you will see the passionate voice of opinions, friends, having a dialogue and thereby interrupting each other or finishing each other's sentences. We wanted to make sure at the end of the dialogue, our audience leaves with valuable insight and approaches that you can take. Try and take in your workplace. We have been having deep and long conversations for the first time. We're going to be having a short and sweet discussion. And the topic today is primarily around cultural changes in the African continent. And with that there. Is so much that Covid has brought out in various ways. Except for the globe. There are individual differences that have been there in various continents and we want to focus specifically on the African continent and see how we'll see as different in Africa and then dive into it. And we cannot find any better speaker today than Ifeanyi Welcome. Welcome to the show. Ifeanyi - Thank you, Kay, for that introduction. Kay - The main reason why it was very interesting to have you in the show. If only is, you have to the success just for you, but you're also bringing other people along with you and bringing you into it. So that was excellent for us to be able to Showcase that in.our webinar, sopost quickly, we can start off saying, I would love to be would love to hear what are the actual cultural changes that you see within the African continent that people outside of it need to be mindful of. Ifeanyi - Thank you for that question. So when in terms of cultural change, right? As you love us might be, you know up, you know from my interactions with folks in Europe and Asia, you know, I've had you know interactions around what you know CX means, you know to Advocate General African consumer and you know, a lot of folks believe that when it comes to customer experience people generally here. In Africa, I would expect, you know, Quality Service. They would expect time to their queries. But, you know, a lot has changed in the last 1 - 2 years, especially with the Advent of covid, right? consumer customer expectation, you know, I would like to highlight, say, if you so in terms of, you know, customers Expedition generally, so people here in Africa now don't just rely on reactive service. They expect, you know, brands of businesses to be proactive with the savings. Not necessarily waiting for them, you know, to reach out to the bronzer. Say he looks, we have, I have a problem, they generally expect. You know, Brands to be Innovative and intuitive with the approach to support and, you know, trying to identify areas where they're having challenges and you know, practically resolving those issues and also in terms of, you know, the customer Journey customers expecting sort of like it connected Journey map in terms of you know, how it dissolves ax approach, right, you know, it's no longer or you just use spoken to our sales department. Okay, Our customer success department will return as it is divided, you know. Which to customers, you know, trying to, you know, ensure that businesses can break, you know, that silence in between their process and show that, you know, clients have that seamless experience throughout their journey with the brand. So these are some of the expectations of customers and then when it comes to,you know, that Choice point, you know, customers also expect personalization, right? Is not just one General approach to, you know, reaching out to customers throughout select torture. you know, send a blast email to every customer. Say, look, we have this update, you know, trying to personalize interactions from support to General Communications, making sure that customers feel valued, making sure the fuel value. Because people here in Africa tend to say I want to speak to people from my country. They tend to appreciate, you know, Brands when they recognize their look and Mr. Social, so I am this,so they would appreciate bronze, you know, try to personalize the approach to Interactions. And also one interesting thing. I also found that you know, customers. Also, you know, expect customers are Brands to be Innovative and you know, too fast thinking in terms of their product to services and support. Not just, you know, deployment program Series where we are and will continue to improve and then they are not seeing Improvement. Do we want to reach out to you? To see? Look, I've seen such also in Social business. So in a social environment, why not have this right? Customers now come to you to tell you, Look, we need this. They know what they want and the demand for it. So they expect Brands to be very Innovative across their product offerings. And then one last thing in terms of data protection, right? We've also seen interesting historical data. We are customers, you know, from the force sales Soviet 2020 customers. Now expect, you know, you know, expert Brands to protect their data. So for us lie to us as payment, Payment Integrations. I've seen scenarios from, you know, consultation experience, with startups. I've seen scenarios where customers feel hesitant to, you know, use their card, their cartoon mobile apps, or maybe your web application because they are scared of losing their money. So bronze needs to, you know, sort of enhance their, you know, their approach in terms of, you know, making customers know thatof their, there they are on top of data. Protection policy, ensuring that they are keeping their data safe. And that any information entered in the system. I kept seeing the need that you need to know that, you know, that you need to end that trust. now, we are browsing to antitrust. Some customers and you do what is required at different points in time? A day. I think these are the key five major cultural changes. I've observed during my interactions with Brands and customers and also from, you know, so very portable so saying Kay - yeah, thank you for that. Couple of things that I'm noticing from what you just said, value. Bringing people value.um Bringing customers value seems to be Global. um, The second thing that you mentioned is also, that being proactive is something all customers are expecting right nowbecause part of it is an instantaneous response that they get in everything else in their lives. They wanted to see proactive outcomes within their customer support and customer success team. So, I think that's a global phenomenon where I see that the Africancontinent is evolving from what you just said, it seems to be around data and protection and all of that. So in terms of,if prime, a, CSif I have a serious, Global operation. And if it's any scale, Global serious leader, when they Bri have teams to see what Kind of things that they should look for from an employee experience perspective. Ifeanyi - So when you say, what should they look for you, talking about, know, characteristics of the employee or the skilled trades. So what are you Kay - I am primarily talking about? How, what is the? What are the things that leaders need to do to make sure that their employees are well? Sustained from within the African continent. Is there anything else? That's culturally different, that support leaders need to do Global support. It does need to be done specifically for their African employees. Ifeanyi - So yeah, I would say yes. Why? Because you know, when you say Global sales operations, you talk about, we talk about, let's talk about Africa and India Normandy. So Africa is a regional culture. We have to serve a diverse culture. We have diverse cultures and we have people from different countries, including South Africa, and people from Nigeria. And you know, and we call today Petitions. In terms of interaction with Nadia various companies are also different because what they expect, how they expect to be treated also differ by for instance, in Nigeria out, speak from my own experience working for an international organization. I would expect that, you know, sometimes in terms of update timing by climbing to work, how many hours should I do? I need to work, you know, in other countries like in the example United States people work shift different tasks. Slightly in Africa, different people value their religion, right? People to remember, you might want to deploy to enforce new corporations. And then someone would say, look more on today's Sunday. I have to be in church. I can't afford to, you know, to, you know, to leave my religion and be at work, right? They value religion here, people, take it that seriously. And so if you, even if it's a global sales operation special needs, use to consider, you know, treats that they need to put in place then it will be around, you know, ensuring that. No, the Devalue the loop in between the look, the above the contents process and also look at the current environment, you know, and ensure that the ability to incorporate, you know, what people believe their lives of all these I can for instance and idea we have a lot of worries these you need to be able to appreciate how you know, give run this and make sure, you know you are taking note of that. Kay - let them honor the local cultures and local things while providing Global support, right? So let me also add this recently. Ifeanyi - I was talking to a Founder in Newfound of the West part of Nigeria and was helping to set up the sales operations and then because there are too many holidays in Nigeria. And how can I keep my Customers and say, look, this exists? This is what you should be looking at in Nigeria. And this is what is obtainable you have to key in? Otherwise, you'll be employees. Because people want you to recognize that today's a holiday and you have to grant that, right? And if you need to have someone, you know, it has to be that has to be open. Thinny shouldn'tbe something that you have to foreign Force, right? We should have the choices. It looks, I'm going to walk you're pay me extra for today. And you know, all those things that no matter to ensuring that you're able to keep your employees are motivated and engaged. Kay - Yeah, so there is actually a follow-on question from our previous comment that you made, concerning proactiveness. So, I would love to, you know, like to just bring that question up now rather than later. So in terms of being proactive,what are the things that support leaders need to look for? And you can answer it generically and you can call out something very specific to the continent itself. Ifeanyi - So, in terms of proactive, proactive, Outreach or proactive strategy in terms of the engine supporting your customers, I would give one good example, right? So let's come to less constant support. So you need to do it as a business leader. You need to be able to level data. Because from CRM yours, if you have a walk-in too well, automated you have all the trigger setting the right properties and you all constantly update those properties and ensuring that you're able to make sense of the coming in, right? I'm sure you would get a login. Inside. So you need to pay attention, you know bees are leaders who also need Keen support in looking at what the data is saying on a week-by-week basis. What are the top trends? What are the top issues and challenges? Our customers are facing user experience issues. It could be, it could be poor support, you know, from the dissatisfaction Matrix. It could be, you know, it could be product stability. It could be anything, right? So you need to, constantly, look at your data and see what data it is telling you, and then we'll take it back internally to meet with your engineering and product team and see. Here's something that you can resolve internally and ensure that you know, the custom expenses are smooth. So I'm pretty much sure that data will give little insight into you know. Go ideas of productivity and then the second part would be around the customer success approach. Like when you have died in the service business world, where you have a CSM, managing an account and then, you know, perhaps, they are different users, you know, currently using the particular, you know, a particular software and maybe they are some set certain goals that you have. You put it as a benchmark to see that within this given time. Different users should be able to have achieved ours and accomplish different tags. And then after me, You one week or two weeks that you have said and you go through the profile on the portal those and you're just to have to elect review of what the performance of your customers, and then you realize that your customers are performing today represent below what your, your actual expectation? Then you have to be proactive, you need to, you know, engage, you know, you need to further engage your customers and see new ways to understand why they haven't changed at any challenges that you have been and see how basically help them to achieve, you know, achieve those tax. And that way they will Be able to achieve their objectives. Kay - I love how you tied in the proactiveness to the value. You know, part of being proactive is not just, you know, providing that value. So, you can take anproduct, a little girl to a customer LED growth. So, right down there. um, Do you see any differences between B2B b2c andin this area? Ifeanyi - Sure, because when you talk about B2B and b2c, you know that they are different personalities like business, you know, your approach to supporting consumers, who, because early is different from one when you're supporting business businesses. So I'll also speak from my experience working at this half. Our Solutions are C customer success specialists where you know, I have to interact with decision makers, you know, senior managers and you know, ensuring that we can deploy our solutions to meet their daytoday operations. So the Expeditions are usually different from the way the expertise to support them is quite different. From the way customers expect you to support them. So, in terms of business, businesses are looking, at know, the listicle to their business.And, you know, customers are looking at, you know, what do I get right now? How do I have you? Make this happen? Right? But businesses are looking at, how can you, how can you, how can you drive value Falls in on a long-term basis, making sure that our own business, you know, not just supporting us making sure that we are also achieving their desired outcome of, you know, subscribing to your product, right? Not just some tiny thing. Perspective. But from a broader perspective. So when you are talking about the support approach, it has to be like an animalistic strategy like a bigger broader plan strategy to assure them that, you know, you can effectively engage different channels and ensure that they canmeet up with their own business demand. Then when it comes to customers, you know, the Apple 2 would be different because, you know, when it comes to customers saying no, it depends on your business model, right? So if you are looking at say regular or toxin, We'll talk like a regular customer, you know, it's just like taking a total purchase, engaging and interacting with them. And then, everything you know, in technology to ensure that you can keep the interaction going, but if you are talking about, you know, High net worth individuals, or you know, key accounts or, you know,High Revenue customers, then you upload to be different because you have to come up with an personalized approach, like, you know, having like it CS a is CSM, you know, engaging that that customer to ensure that they can get there. Observed outcome. Kay - How do you know there's a lot of discussions around see us being responsible for Revenue, right? So growth through supporters who are how we call it, right? So, where do you go? You see that phenomenon happening in Africa? Ifeanyi - So, yes, when it comes to revenue rights, the expectation is that customer success owns revenue. And also from my experience. Stations where sales will say they are also part of their revenue generation team and then it becomes like a one-sided thing. Maybe they take a few thousand customers and then CS 50%. But ideally, I would say that customer success operations or team wins Revenue. Why? Because they are the ones, you know, you know, after let me, let me, let me take it back. So when your cells bring in you, do the customer success, I expect to provide ongoing support and also, You know, ensuring that you are able to manage that relationship because and by managing the relationship, they are saying historical Behavior pattern that the CSM understands about the customer. And the third point from the service. Might, you know, maybe the last time, this salesperson reached out because it was the last time they requested for a renewal, or they wanted the invoice, but the CSM was a customer. Success managers keep abreast with customers and understand the customer and there has been no, there's been a relationship, you know, you know, in terms of the Of times, they've been with Equity, understand the customer better. And also, you realize that within that experience, you know, people might have changed how you manage it. You know, when you come to change management, people might have cleaned. And then the person who has the buying decision, the decision-making power might have left and if someone else and maybe the CSMalso developed an approach to managing that place on ensuring that you can retain the person. So I would say that the CS team needs to continue managing the relationship anyway. , When it comes to revenue and ensuring that you are able to renew their contract, then you can leave you at the admin lot in the long run bringing a sales team, you know, when they are, you know challenges with you know, baleen, Etc. Kay - A lot of support leaders underestimate the amount of change management that's required. So, you know, I'm glad that you called it outum the other, you know, if you think about the flywheel, see, as kind of comes in the middle. You are tying into sales. We just talked about it, right? Marketing, product development. And I think you did mention on the product development where you talked about the data where we can, we have to harness the key issues that come out and provide it as feedback back into the product. So we have that continuous innovation Loop coming in from support to product. So we talked about that, it would be wonderful to where you think that flywheel is moving towards the continent. When I'm talking about the flywheel. the flywheel of Cs being in the centerand all the other teamstying in into the CSS teams. And recognizing that support is important for the growth of the company, right? So that's the flywheel I'm talking about. Ifeanyi - So, I'll say that. We see a little bit behind from my experience, especially with you, with your new startup. you know, in Africa. So they still believe that you know, more of that, more of the, you know, that up is no Sport and in an customer retention lies with, you know, products, you know, having a great product, having a great marketing team, having a great still stream, right? So but, you know a lot of love of effort for the with love, being made to ensure that, you know, Brands understand the importance of support and you can see that you know, in terms of what I do personally as customer success and failure is I try to talk about about the importance of customer support and raising their awareness to the startups. Can start leveraging understanding the importance of customer success to business and how, you know, how to ensure that, you know, customers are retained. I often give this as an analogy to starting herbs. I always know when I meet with them, and we have this like argument, there's always fallout. And then I make him understand that you know, I look at the customer phone like a basket. It's just like you have the sales. the marketing team bringing customers into your bust into the basket and you don't have any protection on them. Customer success is that protection that keeps your customers and ensures that the engagement is ongoing. Interaction is smooth there getting the prompt service and, you know, they're getting everything that they need to, you know, too, be do remaining loyal customers and also make them, you know, and advocate of the brand. Kay - So, there are a lot of Youth Watching this because you have beaten their leader, and I'm sure,You know, they want to hear the words from you. um, What advice do I want to rap with this question. What advice do you give to those who are aspiring to get into customer support and customer success? Ifeanyi - Yeah, so from experience, you know, I'll take it back to the business and the industry generally, right, you know, customer experience. Most expectations are constantly changing. What you used to know yesterday, might not be what's obtainable today? So you have to keep updating yourself, you know, keep top of the, you know, current industry strengths. Not just saying. Oh, I just got fired yesterday. And now it's 256 presents tomorrow. What, you know, yesterday might be obsolete today. So you need to constantly, you know, engage with cs folks, you know, out there on LinkedIn and ensure that you know, you join those workshops webinars, you know, try to learn new strategies, new approach to CX and keeping yourself. If up to date as to, you know, what happened in the field of customer experience Kay - be they're being proactive to that's what you're saying. So sure that you get to see us so you can be proactive with your customers. So Ifeanyi, It's a pleasure to have you in and share your here, your background, your experience, and get a glimpse of the African. Tenant, super excited to have you on the show. Thank you for your time. Ifeanyi - Thank you so much for having me today. I really, really appreciate this time. Looking forward to more of these conversations.Absolutely by now. So can we confirm that the light is starting? Yes, it is. Okay. Soif I only thank you so much. I appreciate the time you took. Previous Next

Discover how to transform your customer service into a profit center. Learn about the CX Maturity Model and strategies for making support proactive and revenue-generating. Gain insights on tailoring your pitch to different decision-makers and measuring ROI. Turning Customer Service into Profit Centre | Transcription Kay - Welcome to the experience dialogue. In these interactions. We pick a Hot Topic. That doesn't really have a straightforward answer. We then bring in speakers who have been there and seen this but approached it in very different ways. This is a space for healthy disagreements and discussions but in a respectful way. By the nature, of how we have conceived, this, you will see the passionate voice of opinions. Friends having a dialogue and thereby even interrupting each other or finishing each other's sentences. At the end of each dialogue, we want our audience to leave with valuable insights and approaches that you can try at your workplace and continue the discourse on social media channels. A little bit about Ascendo, it is addressing optimization of support to operations within enterprises so that they can serve their customers better. We enable enterprises to optimize workflow for the agents and provide dashboards for insights on risk, churn analysis, and visibility for senior managers. We are revolutionalizing support ops in the same way DevOps and RevOps have transformed other areas of the business. In the last three years, we have created a G2 category and are ranked #1 in user satisfaction. We are very proud to be loved by our users, and now with the topic Turning Customer Service to a Profit Center. For most companies, customer service is still viewed as a cost center and with the increasing and ever-changing customer demands, this perception is further strengthened. However, when utilized correctly, customer service could be one of the biggest revenue generators in your entire organization. Now it’s a pleasure to introduce the speaker, Jonathan Shroyer, Chief Customer Experience Innovation Officer at Arise Virtual Solutions Inc. Arise .has been following a customer experience maturity model that can help you turn your cost-center service team into a profit center. We will be talking about each phase of the maturity model and how to make a support center proactive and profit-oriented. Jonathan, a pleasure to chat with you. Thanks for the opportunity to come on the show. Jonathan - It's really great to be kind of in the catalog of great shows that you have and has the opportunity to share a little bit more about the views of turning customer service into a profit center, so I appreciate the opportunity, Kay. Kay - And, what is interesting about your background, Jonathan, is. You've done various types of companies, from security to, you know, office applications to Autodesk and Kabam fully in the gaming space and now you are in the gaming space. So, it's fabulous to see the entire customer success and how it has been, it's rare to see people who have had decades of customer success experience.so it's wonderful to have you at the show. Jonathan - Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. Kay - So let's start right there. Actually, since having decades of experience, Jonathan, tell me a little bit about how you have seen customer service change over time. Jonathan - Well, I think it's interesting. So when we go back to the 1980s, there was this very kind of brick-and-mortar viewpoint to services. It was in the early times when we started to see the kind of technology morph to where contact centers or call centers, started to come about. Then you go into the nineties and that that infrastructure at the the kind of the boon of the internet at the end of the nineties enabled. That type of capability to be serviced outside of the local country, whatever the local country was, right? I was in the United States and they were fast, quickly. The 2010s in it and, and we went from, Hey, we can contact to, all of a sudden there's text, there's email, there's chat, there's Facebook, etc. I mean, there are all these different ways that customers can access brands, and what changed at that moment was this concept where brands now could hear from their customers more often, understand their customers more and the customers had a lot more information and data to make better choices, and they started to make different choices based of how brands started to treat them and then as we fast forward, you know, up through the 2010s into now, into the 2020s, we're noticing that customers are making choices based off of how brands treat them in their customer experience, and they're making their choices with their feet and with their money. So it's been an interesting transition of where, and how consumers and customers make their business and their brand choices based on how they're treated. Kay - it's fascinating that you brought in the data, and evolution along with the customer service evaluation when you answered this, Jonathan. So one of the things we say is metrics are good, but metrics don't say a story, data does. Do you actually see the way brands are relating to customers and the amount of data that they are using more and more and, how do you see the data transition also over the years? Jonathan - Well, I think what's interesting is, data is like super important to companies. I think consumers don't always think about it in as in that valuable sense, right? They think of, oh, I'm not a member. You know, I'm a person, treat me individually. Customize it for me. But the reality is, for companies to be able to deliver that optimum service, that best-in-class service that drives stickiness, loyalty, and so forth, they have to have the data to understand, what the customers are doing with their product inside their product and so forth. And so I think that over the years, one of the things, you see happen in the early 2010s, this idea of a unique identifier that could identify a customer across an entire company or entire product suite, and the reason why a unique identifier was created partially was for security reasons, to protect the customer, protect the client, the business and so forth. But the other component of it, which people didn't realize at the time, was and enable the company to be able to correlate. Data between different parts of the company. So for example, it allows this correlation between customer experience and profitability as an example, right? Or like adoption and usage and different product suites or different product features that come out. A company can now say, feature X, and based on what all these key clients are telling, Based on using it and loving it or not loving I, that tells us whether the product feature was a good product feature or not, in addition to, anecdotal feedback from the market or from the individual customer. So I think, the transition and maturation of going from very lean to data in the eighties to big data in the 2020s have been just as important in this framework of creating profitability through customer experience as it has. As, the actual activities or the processes that a customer experience team does to drive that profit. Kay - Arise has been actually following a CX maturity model and I would love to understand how you see that model will make support, proactive and how do you see that transition from cost center to profit Center. I know that's two different questions, if you wanna split it and answer, that's fine too. Jonathan - So to give a little context, I invented the maturity model called the Service Tech Maturity Model at the time and trademarked it, but the idea was when I started Officium Labs, I had been working in large enterprises in startups and gaming companies for some time and what I realized was that there wasn't like a simple, easy-to-use framework or model that you could go and join a company and all of a sudden look at like, based of this model and this framework, I have all the features necessary to create profit and to communicate profit, to the power cores of the company in a way, they understood it. And so what I thought I would do is, I said, what if we treated customer experiences if it's a product? So if you create a product, what you tend to do is, create a framework of what the product is going to be. And inside that product framework, you have pillars that we'll call major feature sets. For each of them in your feature sets, you have feature components that build that feature area, right? So for example, if you're building a Microsoft Office product? They have seven or eight different types of feature sets, and then they're like, well, we wanna add this, or we wanna add that, and the same thing with the video game, the same thing with any type of product, right? So I said, let's build a customer experience product or let's at least think that way, right? So change the mindset and say, what are the pillars that we need to have inside of this product? And then what are the features inside the pillars? So for example, workforce management, learning, and development, interactions, products, those types of things, right? Quality, operations, those types of kind of pillars. Okay, so those are the pillars. And then what are the features that need to exist? And, so we build them out and we said, okay, these are the basic feature sets if you wanna run the basic operation. So, when we use that word, basic was a, had a different meaning than it does today. Basic has a very different meaning, The urban definition of it and whatnot. But generally speaking, the next one was, what's the standard look like? What's the next feature set? And then what does best in class look like? And then, you know, what is the next generation look like? So we build it that way for the users, but the idea was that if you build a customer experience with the product mindset and you have these features, then you can help companies understand, where are they at in the maturity model or where are they at in the customer experience product to be able to mature to a state where they can deliver a profit? And the outcome is if you're in the best, if you have the best in class features or the next generation of features of the maturity model, we can 100% show you how to correlate the work you're doing in customer experience. Kay - I love it because suddenly when we treat it like a product, what happens is, it enables the entire company to become a customer-oriented, customer-obsessed, customer-focused company, right? So it's easy for all the teams within the company, within the organization to tune in to the customer very easily because then there is a framework that enables a company to tune to that and say, okay, marketing, this is what I need to do. Sales, this is what I need to do, product, this is what I need to do. So I love that. So, can you summarize the eight pillars, and then we can dive into at least a few of them? Jonathan - them? Yeah, for sure. I mean, so when we look at the pillars, You, you've got, uh, the interactions and interactions really include all of your technology, so it's the non-human facing interaction component, like everything that sits behind that makes the interaction possible, whether it's AI, technology, CRM and so forth, then you have kind of the operations piece, and this is really about all the different processes and how to Interact and engage, you know, with that human being on the other side. Do you use vendors? What are your frameworks of success, your methodologies, and those types of pieces? Then you have the quality piece, which really looks at the overall experience and what type of quality experience you're delivering, whether you look at quality from customer effort, customer satisfaction, NPS, whatever it is, you know, it has that piece. Then you're looking into the learning and development piece, which is how are you training, onboarding, and equipping your people to be able to talk to the customers, engage with the customers, and then be proficient. In that piece, the next one you have is, we call it content management, but it's really looking at your knowledge base, the knowledge that's out there, whether it's through self-service or you know, whether it's through using social channels like Discord or other components and pieces. The next one looks at the product itself, which is like we, we firmly believe that when you design an experience for a customer, you design it at the development table. You don’t. The product's launched service go, make the customers happy like that's old school thinking. So inside of it, we have this whole concept of product liaisons that need to sit as in the experience design piece, design it, and develop it and then you go to beta or alpha, then you go to beta, and then you launch it, right? So there are some key components overall. And then, and then we, then we kind of then look at, you know, what's the rest of, you know, the tech stack that looks that supports the organization, that doesn't really have to do with it. The interactions themselves, cuz there are a lot of techs inside of the experience side, right? And then you look at kind of the pillar with looks at the customer journey, looks at the journey mapping and all of those different components and pieces, so really kind of, it sets up these different overall pillars that which is a little bit more complex for someone that's trying to follow along to what I'm saying now. so we can share a visual of it later. But the most important thing is, what are the features that you have today? So how do you assess against that? And then what are the key features that you want to add over the next 12 months? And so every company's gonna be a little bit different in that, in that component. Some companies wanna invest in interactions or AI, some companies don't have a quality program or WFM program, and they're gonna wanna invest in those things first, right? And so it's gonna be different by company, but the goal is how do I create ROI? How do I create profit? And then once you have the unique identifier set up and you have the correlation capabilities. The maturity model is then doing A/B testing and proving out, what correlative values, and a correlative profit look like for your business, because it's gonna be different for gaming, which is the hat that I'm wearing, right? We have gaming clients, healthcare clients, finance clients, and clients all over the world. Tech clients, it's gonna be a little bit different, like how you drive profitability or correlation of profitability, in what tests you need to do and so forth, so that's doing the assessment, understanding the model, but then actually putting the model into the application and driving it as a business strategy. A business transformation is just as powerful and having the mathematical data to verify and validate the work that you're doing has an impact, that's kind of the soup to nuts. Yeah. Kay - So what is interesting for me is when if you look, you know the model that you're talking about, if you take the interactions, right? So the interactions are actual ones that is there in the system. The second one you talked about is the activity that is happening with the customer and if I tie in with the unique identifier, what are the existing regards with this unique identifier? I know. What are the interactions or the activity that are happening in any channel, that's happening with the customer? And then I can start correlating saying, how is this Piece of interaction that's happening right now with the customer, with quality, with learning and development, with the product and all of that and suddenly you have a nice flushed-out full interaction where you have the intelligence built-in and then you take, you know, thousands or 10 thousands of several of those interactions and then look at the patterns and the anomaly of those interactions, it becomes a beautiful, intelligent player that's more customer first. Did I give the same view of what you mentioned, but more from a data perspective, but does it? Jonathan - Yeah, I mean it totally does and I think the reason why I create the maturity model is cuz what I found is that there's a big disconnect between how people at companies that make funding decisions and the services team themselves and so it was a big frustration and a big tension between the services teams and the power cores as it were at a company that is making these investment decisions and so what I thought was important, how can we talk in a language that will help the power cores in the company understand the importance of investing in the customer experience side? Right? And that's where the money comes down to like that was the simple question. I'm a big believer that simple questions lead to the next generation of innovation. And so that was the simple question, asked me and then I was like, okay, well in order to do that, it's this, and it's the maturity model and the application of the transformation but the most important piece is, then how are you communicating back to the power cores of the company. The impact, and that's what, where one of the biggest things that the power cores have to get over is investing in the unique identifier, because most companies, they'd be like, we've been over for 30 years. A unique identifier across 45 databases is gonna be really hard. Yeah, it's gonna be really hard, but it could also drive 10 to 20 to 30 million of future revenue for you as well and so helping them understand and correlate is super powerful and then demonstrates the impact of like, hey, you gave us a million dollars. We protected, or we created 4 million or 5 million of revenue based on that a million funding that you gave us, and that conversation is just as powerful and important to the overall success of the services team, creating a profit center and communicating then the framework itself too and so I think that's important to note. Kay - I love, how you mentioned the power cores, who make the decisions, so let's talk a little bit about the various people who are making the decisions for this funding and the kind of roles and how it differs from your experience. Jonathan - Well, it's super interesting. So I think there's like four or five cores inside of a company and in any company, it's never the same group of people that have the actual power versus the perceived decision-making and authority and so you look at IT, you look at finance, you look at marketing, you look at sales, and then you kind of look at the executive team and product, so those are kind of the six-ish power cores and in some companies, product drives everything. Like product is the power core, right? And you see this a lot in startup companies. You see this in companies, that are more tech, you know, industrial companies, but then you go into other companies like financial or healthcare companies that have been around for 30 years and I find that oftentimes finance and legal are the power cores in the companies, which is super interesting to me cause it's different than, a product power core company or a finance power core company. I think the most important is to understand here, doing an analysis on who actually makes the decisions in your company, and then what's the decision process that they go through to make decisions, and then how can you speak in that language? And I think that's the most important thing to think about. Like, I was with a gaming client two years back and it was clear that finance was like a power core in their company and so the way that I pitched the maturity model and the value that it could provide was a little bit different than a gaming company where tech was the power core. Right. And so it was much easier to get tech to do the single identifier than finance, and so you had to talk in a different language. Like as example, tech was like, yeah, it makes sense, we should do it. Then we were ready to go and they're like, yeah, let's do BDI, Big Data, and let's do this and they were ready to invest much faster, whereas a finance company or finance power core was like, well actually, what's the ROI? Take me through these five presentations to convince me and prove to me, and then I wanna follow up every week afterward so in one way is not bad or, or right or wrong, but they're just different and so it's important that as you start to think about, how do I talk about profitability. In the customer experience area, you just have to know who your audience is and what's important to them, and then how you can frame the language to help them get value out of it. Kay - there are a lot of people watching this, who are from the support background, and one of the biggest things that they are asking is, how do I take this argument to the decision makers? It's changing a little bit with the chief customer offices themselves making those decisions, but they have to work with the rest of the company, so I think what would be wonderful for this audience is let's take it through these examples that you talked about. Let's talk about stories that are wonderful, Jonathan. For example, this finance, and how did you do it for the finance, with the CX maturity model? Jonathan - Well, I find the easiest way to start with any power core is to start with, its magical word, which I love, it's called a pilot and most power cores are willing to take risks on a pilot, but they might not be able to be willing to take risks enterprise-wide, right? or company-wide and so what I end to find is it's really important for the customer service team to identify a group of customers, whether it's a product, whether it's a delineation of customers inside of a product or, whatever it is. Find a group of customers, you believe, as you have a hypothesis like, Hey, this group of customers will definitely be able to demonstrate a profit. We have a hypothesis in video gaming as an example, a mobile game company that we worked with, the top 2% of their customers generated 80% of their revenue, right? And so for us, let’s focus on doing a pilot for the top 2% of these customers, let's identify, what we're going to change for this 2% of the customers versus the rest of the customer base. You can call that an offering, right? What's the pilot offering going to be? What are the pro processes, the methodologies, and the policies that we need to change for this pilot, and then what's the data that needs to be recorded or adjusted in order for us to be able to demonstrate whether the pilot was a success or not and then, what's the key success measures of that? So you build all that and then you take that presentational proposal to the power core. In this case, it was the finance team and then for the finance team, and it was really important for them to understand how this impacts the bottom line. So we built the entire presentation to do all of that, but then also talk about, like this is going to be an investment of X, but it's gonna deliver an ROI of Y and we're gonna be able to get it. Know that the ROI was delivered within eight weeks or 10 weeks, right? You give them a timeframe. And then you set up the meeting to talk about this, the success or the non, the findings of the pilot, and then from there, you know, the findings statistically significant enough to scale it, or do you need to elongate the pilot for another six weeks or eight weeks to get that statistic significant? We presented to them and so forth, and in this case, we were able to present it. For the pilot, we scaled it enterprise-wide based on the fact that they saw the ROI, they saw stickiness and retention numbers. They saw the stickiness and increased revenue attribution and so we were able to do it right, but that's the most important thing is to start with the pilot experiment, have a hypothesis, prove your hypothesis, and make sure you think through all of it, the processes, the policies, the methodologies, the data structures, the technologies, all that build up a bit, right? Put it together and then proposes that and then make sure you have your finance number of what you need for funding versus what the output is going to be and then you can attribute what the success of the pilot was or not. Kay - That's, you know, essentially, a full framework for the proof of concept, right? So that's essentially right from the planning all the way to the measurement, the proof of concept too, so in the end, there are no questions about, was this even successful? It is very clear what that success metric would be, so in the end, the decision-makers can participate in saying, yes, this made sense. Now how do I, we go and deploy and in what stages do we deploy? That's very good. Would you like to add anything else with respect to the framework, if it was a different decision-maker? Jonathan - Well, I mean, I think that like, if you're talking to like a technology or product power core, they're interested in the ROI, but they're also interested in what could we change in the product in addition to what you're doing in an experiment in the service? It's like, maybe like after the beta test, we like that, we'll just build it into the product, right? And maybe we'll just become part of the product and it could drive that attribution, so they just, they just have it. It's more of a like, Hey, how can we use this next? Yeah, give us data online, but then let's build in the product so we can scale it and it's not a manual process and then they tend to think, you're a creator as well. I know that you think this way too awesome, but how do we build the product so we don't need so much manual intervention? We retain the customers earlier in the cycle versus later in the cycle, right? So a product like something like that, somebody that's in, from a legal standpoint, but are we getting away? Is there any risk or, like, are we gonna lose all these other customers because we're doing this thing for this customer? or what about the data? Like, is this data, is it gonna be GDPR? Is it those types of things? Right. You have to go through all that for power core, but those are kind of the questions that they'll want to have the answers to. Right? If you talk to an executive, maybe an executive that's more high level, they'll be like, I don't even know about anything. All I wanna know about is what's the service metric, what's the ROI metric and gimme a weekly update. Right? So it will just depend on who the power core is and how invested or interested they are and how you make the sausage versus the sausage being made for lack of a better metaphor versus the sausage, how well it tastes, and how much customers love the sausage and all that jazz. Kay - Yeah. So, essentially in that group of concept, the ROI is the metric for the finance person, and that metric changes if it is a product person, marketing or sales person, or something else, that's kind of how the metrics tie back to the profitability of it, so at this point, you don't know anything about your customer experience of the product, but here it is, when you tie all of this together, you have real-time feedback on how customers view the product and what changes you need to make to the product and that is the driving force for turning it into a profit center. So, the CCO drives who the decision-maker is, and what is the metric that's going to resonate with that decision-maker? Jonathan - I think that as you do that, create that decision maker and help them become a sponsor and that will be the next powerful thing, you have these conversations cuz if you have a sponsor, you're good, that's outside of CS. If you can get an executive sponsor that has influence in the company, then we're not only gonna be able to try this first pilot, you're gonna be able to do other experiments. There's, a Nelson Mandela quote I love, “I never lose, I only win or learn.” that's a very iterative way of thinking, which is like, either I won or I learned something and now I'm gonna go try something new and I'm gonna win at that which tends to be more stereotypical of a product or, or a tech power core, but in essence, I think any company that wants to be successful, they have to try this. Long ago, the waterfall was the way that we did project management. Hopefully, that's gone because it doesn't allow for iteration. It assumes that you're having, this is the product and we're delivering the product. Let's see what customers think. You know, it's a very risky way to do it in my viewpoint, but it's an iterative way and I think that if you can get a sponsor and they'll be okay, what's the project that we're gonna do? what's the next experiment that we're gonna do to drive stickiness and retention? and then what you'll find is once you prove that pilot out, you'll get another PowerPoint. Be like, wait a second. Like how are you doing that? Oh, wait a minute. I wanna know how can you help me think about that for marketing. Or how can you help me think about that for sales? You know, how do we drive that same mentality? Maybe the framework is different, but in the customer journey, how do we drive a mentality of experience, design, and retention proactively rather than just reactively? so then you look, then you start to give this interest across the entire customer journey. Kay - Yeah. I know we are running out of time. I wanna squeeze just one little thing into the conversation. How do you create urgency? The easiest is to create that urgency to make this happen. Jonathan - You show the amount of money that is being lost because of it, like that's the other important piece is like you when you look at the industry data and you know, I have industry data, I could share that. Maybe each particular customer experience person has their own data, but essentially I always like to do an analysis, a simple analysis to do this is all open source, right? Give it away. So, but a simple analysis, what is the revenue generation of customers that never contact support versus the revenue generation of customers that do contact support, do that analysis and full stop. 99% of the time, what you'll find is that customer service or customers that contact support is stickier. They drive greater revenue, and they have more of an impact on your future and so that revenue difference is saying, hey, all these customers that never contact support, they just left. They don't have a good experience, they don't care about the brand, and they don't care about the product. That's money that's on the table, that's lost. That's how you create a sense of urgency. Usually, in large companies, that's millions of dollars. And that starts to speak. Kay - people. Yeah and then you can start showing urgency on what are the brief thoughts, right? So then you need to get to it now, to make it important and I like that metric. Anything else that you would like to add that add to it? Jonathan - I mean, I think that as you think about it from a high-level standpoint, I always think about two words. How are you protecting your customer, but how are you optimizing the experience? And so that's, that's those two words are kind of what helped us build the maturity model because different pillars in the maturity will protect the experience. Different features and other features will optimize the experience. I think as an example, like, protecting the experiences is really understanding who the customers are, and how they want to be engaged. Meeting them where they are, as an example versus where you want them to be, but optimizing is looking at, how does AI help my customer have a better experience versus human-to-human engagement? Encourage better experience. so those are just very simple examples of how you protect and optimize. But as we built out the framework and we built out the maturity model, that's how we thought. Kay - Excellent! Protecting the customer versus optimizing the customer's understanding, how to create the urgency around, how many you know, revenue generated with customers who reach out to support versus not, and then building out that, a framework for the proof concept to make it a reality and then driving from the proof of concept into the entire deployment to make this a customer-wide phenomenon, so thank you very, very, very much, Jonathan. I think you have given a full framework. It feels like there is a lot we covered in a short time and it feels like there's still more we will certainly bring you in for a further conversation, but I really appreciate the time that you took today. Thank you. Jonathan - No, thanks for the opportunity. If anyone has any questions about it, they can reach out to me on LinkedIn or you can find me. I'm a Chief CX Officer on TikTok on the instant, a variety of other places, and YouTube. So, thank you so much, Kay for the time, to share my thoughts and add to all the wisdom that you know, that your podcast and your life have. Thanks for the opportunity. . Previous Next

Speaker: Jeb Dasteel The CCO Playbook Unlocking Customer Experience Leadership Speaker: Jeb Dasteel March 27, 2024 Previous Item Next Item Buckle up for a deep dive into Customer Experience (CX) leadership! This podcast explores the experiences of Jeb Dasteel, a former Chief Customer Officer (CCO) at Oracle, who now coaches other CCOs. This episode dives into the key challenges and insights for CCOs, aiming to improve customer experience (CX) and drive business growth. Why CCO Coaching Matters Jeb emphasizes the importance of knowledge sharing and mentorship for CCOs. A standardized playbook for CCOs is crucial, as the role often lacks consistent approaches. Balancing Customer and Employee Engagement Striking a balance between customer satisfaction and employee engagement is a major challenge for CCOs, especially in complex industries like healthcare. Optimizing Internal Handoffs CCOs play a critical role in ensuring smooth handoffs within organizations. This ensures a seamless customer experience, where transitions between departments are invisible to the customer. Strategic Planning vs. Day-to-Day Operations Finding a balance between daily tasks and strategic planning is a significant hurdle for CCOs. They must be proactive and focus on long-term goals while managing immediate demands. Key Takeaways for CCO Success CCO Playbook: Develop a standardized playbook to streamline the CCO role and empower new CCOs. Balancing Act: Prioritize both customer and employee engagement, acknowledging potential conflicts between these groups. Seamless Transitions: Ensure efficient handoffs within the organization for an invisible and positive customer experience. Strategic Focus: Balance day-to-day operations with strategic planning to be proactive and achieve long-term goals. Knowledge Sharing: Collaboration and knowledge sharing among CCOs is key to overcoming challenges, improving CX, and driving business success. By implementing these insights, CCOs can navigate the complexities of their role and become strategic drivers of customer experience and business growth.

Speakers: Emilia D'Anzica Customer Playbooks When is it useful and how to create one that evolves Speakers: Emilia D'Anzica June 28, 2022 Previous Item Next Item Customer Success Playbook is a series of actions that are meant to be executed by customer-facing team members to achieve a desired outcome for your customer. A series of tasks can be delegated to a group of users at different measures for their customer journey to help them adopt your product successfully, but when is a customer success playbook useful and how best to create one that is evolving? This is a space for healthy disagreements and discussions but in a respectful way. Just by the nature of how we have conceived this, you will see passionate voices of opinions, friends having a dialogue, and thereby even interrupting each other or finishing each other’s sentences. With this Experience dialogue you will learn about - We talk about enabling more channels. How support metrics are tied into the playbook. Customer journey and why does it matter. Discuss about Change Management. If a series of past events can be delegated to a group of users at different measures for the customer journey to help them. When we talk about the channels, one should start raising channels as soon as possible. It means ensuring that your product team, customer success, and support are aligned. So once you create a Customer Journey that everyone adheres to, and thought that is the customer Journey because remember it's not like this, it's not like this, it goes up and down all the time. So it's really important that you identify the key opportunities to engage with the client throughout that journey and understand what is the best channel to meet that client. Sometimes it's customer success with the more proactive and sometimes it's customer support and that is often reactive. Always making sure product operations, success, and support are continuously aligned with the Customer Journey, especially when you're making any product changes, communicating with the clients, and how you're servicing them. If there are any changes you need to ensure that first, your internal team feels confident to speak to those changes and then notify your customers proactively, especially if it's a massive change, you can't just announce it. You need to announce it leading up to that change, so it won't be a big surprise when the change comes. xc Before building a Playbook, you need to ensure that you understand the company, the company culture, who is serving the client, and then the client's needs. And if you're building a customer success Playbook, without looking at the customer support experiences, you're missing out on the key moments in the customer's Journey because a customer's journey is not just adoption and growth throughout the customer's experience. When you're Building A playbook, you need to understand the employee experience of the product. Experience and the customer's experience and build a Playbook to enable all three to work together seamlessly. Customer Journey building for clients is when we bring them together, bring together leaders, and map out the customer's journey including the employee. What does it take from a product? Whether it's a technology or a human touch with the client and what we have found over and over again. Are there a lot of crunchy conversations between product sales marketing, customer success, and support before we can build that Journey that everyone will align with so it isn't it is not a one-time Workshop? First, survey all of the employees that are engaged in touching the customer experience. Then gather that data and present it to the executives to mentally prepare them for building that customer Journey from there. Collaborative Workshop, It can last anywhere from two to four hours depending on the complexity of the product and then from there go back and gather all that data and create a beautiful Journey for them with steps for churn opportunity and growth opportunity. From there present it to them and start building a Playbook. One should always reflect on the customer journey in the playbooks on a quarterly Cadence. When we look at the product map and what's changed? We look at the support tickets where they're the most challenging with the product, where's The NPS CSAT, wavering, and from there update the Playbook and get feedback from the teams as well. Because maybe rolled out a new way to do an executive Business review and it's at an earlier point in the customer journey. The new questions were asking them to use or to feel comfortable role-playing with any rub Junctions to the new pricing So, at least quarterly Cadence is the Playbook the customer Journey, supporting the customer experience and the company's revenue goals. Ascendo AI is also to this point, NPS has been a very long-standing one. It is that you don't want the feeling of the moment, you want to collect the feeling of the customer. So, Ascendo has Modeled, which detects that type of sentiment continuously and also on an aggregated basis. All these things are automatically done and it's given as an alert so that people can take action. Customers are loving it, and it's just taking the whole voice of customers to the next level. Change is something that is hard and companies invest Millions or Billions of changes sunsetting systems, implementing systems, only to experience failure. And so, transformational change with products is really hard because we're humans, we like habits, we like safety, and we fear whether it's our jobs that will fail using the new products, it may feel uncomfortable, it may not feel like it's the right decision. So prepare employees for change management things and explain what's in it. It is really important to hire a change management person.Letting people talk about the change in their fears, what they understand, the change to be, and then really ensuring that they understand what's in it for me. Because again, as humans we not only fear it but we want to know why are you doing this? So, being able to give people time to absorb the changes is a really important part of transformational change. So basically it's all not just about learning, it's also putting the things into practice. And that's exactly what we worked with Ascendo AI. We bring such metrics that make it easier from a support perspective for customers to see them right on the leaderboard and the execution of the operational theme so they all can make those changes. Emilia D’Anzica is a management consultant, board advisor, author, and educator, partnering with companies to create scalable growth & metrics-driven customer programs from onboarding to adoption, renewals, and advocacy. She is also the founder of a management consulting firm.

Speaker: Ashna Patel Deepdive Voice of the Customer Playbook Speaker: Ashna Patel June 10, 2022 Previous Item Next Item Voice of the Customer Playbooks provide step-by-step guidance needed to have standard ways to respond to specific customer journeys . 👉Using Voice of the Customer (VoC) data to enable understanding the customer journey. 👉facilitates the ability to keep customers satisfied and to retain them. 👉To avoid losing customers, customer service standards need to be set up such that it will guarantee support quality, which comes through the VoC Playbook system. Voice of the customer covers everything from hand-off from sales, onboarding, kickoff, and measurements through renewal. This webinar is a space for healthy discussions and disagreements but in a respectful way. Just by the nature of how we have conceived this, you will see passionate voices of opinions, friends having a dialogue, and thereby even interrupting each other or finishing each other’s sentences. Let’s understand the dynamics of the VOC playbook to define joint success with customers. When we talk about what the customer Playbook, it's about, it's really about capturing those feedback, capturing those moments from the customer set, those expectations with the customer, and then having your processes built around. So as part of your customer Journey which again was the customer placed throughout your customer journey. As a part of your Customer Journey, there are many different areas now, every part of it, there's Playbook. But then there's Playbook Within the and these playbooks are processes and the way that voice of the customer plays around is in each of this area of your Customer Journey. How are you capturing information from your customer? So to answer it means there are different parts but one can start with the onboarding, There are multiple different playbooks that we can talk about. There's the kickoff, there are sales to see as Playbook. And then, as we progress with the onboarding implementation, configuration, and pushing the customer to long-term success. So, throughout that Journey, the voice of the customer plays, because you're capturing data from your customers, you have your processes built out so that you can Capture that data, and then you react against it. The success of your customer starts at the very beginning and also, and We see it starts when customers are knocking on the door . And we want to make sure that everybody, all parties involved, all stakeholders involved are on, they understand that structure. Make sure that everybody's kind of on the same page. That's something that even we have done quite a bit of work to implement and we continuously revise and redefine. What we have done is particularly different for a larger scale of the largest customer so Enterprise Sheedy, customers and then also different for SMB, mid-market customers, the handoff and then the playbooks that we created there are a few changes. But the sales to CS are about who's doing what during this cycle, CS playing some part of it, CSS playing some part of it. Success is handling so onboarding to up, to Renewal to some part of it. So, we make sure that as soon as a prospect becomes a customer the end, CSM is a sign that to onboard that customer CSM and sales members are coming together before connecting with the customer. For the midmarket and smaller team, it could just be book questionnaires that salespeople can answer for the CSM. What we recommend with the Strategic Customer because a lot is involved, there are a lot of stakeholders. We recommend that you take that 15- 30 minutes on your calendar and have that proper hand-off between Sales to CS. So it's a knowledge transfer session that happens between Sales and CS. So that when they do get on that kickoff call, which is the next Playbook after that, they are prepared, they're confident and they know exactly, you know, how to get to the next stage. Help scores could be different from company to company, business, or business. The way that we have it is we have a higher Health score defined and then lower Health score defined and it's just the criteria that we have included in the health score includes all sorts of it, not just about CS it is, It's also about you knowing those support areas to you because the customers getting support from all parts of the business. Renewals are also really important because and you're going to capture a lot of, a lot of information from your customer whether they're renewing, whether they're churning, whether they're reducing, whether they're, expanding whatever that may be at the time of renewal, there's going to be a lot of data that is going to be captured from the customer. That's going to Define how your relationship with the customer is going to progress going forward. So at the end of the day, support and success professionals are the ones talking to customers. They are the ones who know the gut of the customer. As we already have a different set of customers that you can work with. And the way that, if the health score is low, I want to Target them at risk. And then we're tracking those separately and we're targeting those separately already. So there is a whole different Playbook that we played with that customer ahead of time. As we know hardware upselling was always with a lot of benchmarks and with a little more value-driven even decades ago, but now software is also getting more value driven because at the end of the day we know gone are the days where you're just buying it for a workflow like buying a database or something. So here it is to understand that value-driven aspect in every step of the way in a customer's journey and the customer and the transparency right to be able to do that. Ashna is a Customer Success Influencer . In addition to his accolades in CX, Ashna is an emotional intelligence coach with knowledge of relationship building.

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Learn how Noelle Jones-Ramzy advanced in tech leadership using entrepreneurial thinking, critical skills, and AI-driven support strategies—success without a degree. Leadership, Growth, and Success Without a Degree – Full Conversation Transcript with Noelle Jones Ranzy Welcome to the experience dialogue. In these interactions, we pick a hot topic that doesn't really have a straightforward answer. We then bring in speakers who've been there, seen this, but have approached this in very different ways. This is a space for healthy disagreements and discussions, but in a very respectful way. Just by the nature of how we have conceived this, you will see passionate voices of opinions, having a dialogue, and thereby even interrupting each other or finishing each other's sentences. At the end of the dialogue, I just want to make sure our audience leave with valuable insights and approaches that you can take it to your workplace. And of course, continue the discourse in social media channels. What I wanted to have is there is so many other events and stuff that we will be having, and we will be actually putting that down in the comments section so that you can be engaged in. And welcome to our guest, Noelle. Noelle, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me. Noelle, a brief introduction of yourself would be awesome, both from a professional standpoint and a personal standpoint. Well, my name is Noelle Jones-Ramsey, and I am currently living in the East Bay Area by way of Arizona. I spent 20 years in Arizona. Before that, I spent 20 years in Utah. I like the sunshine. So the relationship brought me to California, which I love very much. And I have been in the corporate leadership space for probably 20 years now. I guess it's 2025, so about 20 years. And I am so excited to be able to just meet people like yourself that have the experience and the connections and the insights of the industry that I'm a part of and actually aspire to have the curiosity and aspire to be a part of. So I'm really looking forward to our discussion today. Yeah. Noelle, what's your job role right now? I currently work for a SaaS company as a director of customer support. Excellent. So you're always talking to customers. And I noticed that you pulled in, you know, in one of the previous interviews, you talked about hiring people and what kind of leader you want to be. And you mentioned, you know, you would like to just take the ball, hire people who like to take the ball and just run with it and come up with an entrepreneurial spirit, right? So what does it mean by entrepreneurial? You know, there are so many different backgrounds and levels of experience that I get to talk to when I'm hiring for a role, specifically leadership roles, just because of the position that I'm in. And I really look for people who talk about, you know, I like to ask things about ambiguity and how, how you, how scrappy are you when you don't have the resources or the support that you need to be successful? And when I hear things like, well, I just go to my leader and I tell them that I need help, which is fine. That's what your leader is for. But also how creative are you in those roles? What, what in your entrepreneurial mind comes up to say, if this was my business, this is how I would solve this problem. And those are really things that I, that I look for. I never stayed in my lane, which is why I think I've gotten to the role that I've gotten. And I love it when people just say, hey, I have an idea and it's, it's, it's somewhere completely different from support. Do you mind if I float this by, by you? And I get so excited about people like that. Yeah. And in a way, support itself is such a very creative role because you are never going to face the same situation because of the human element you are dealing with. So every time you're trying to be creative to address different things for the different personalities, even if it is the same kind of technical issue. So I totally get that. And what you're also talking about is that creative thinking that people have to have and critical thinking, I should say, critical thinking that people have to have. So I love that. And another thing that was very interesting for you to have as a guest here is normally in the Bay Area, especially I see people constantly, the Stanford, Google crowd, et cetera. But here you are, you have actually been a very successful executive after getting a GED. And right now you have enrolled in college and you are making honor rolls while you are preparing to weddings. Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about, you know, how did you get here with the GED and then now your journey? I think it's two different questions, but yeah. Yeah. You know, thank you for the acknowledgement and the reminder that I should be going gray and a little nervous right now. You know, I got my GED in 2016 and I was already in a leadership role. I was a manager, a site manager for a contact center. And I wanted to go to Grainger, which is a Fortune 500 company, been around for almost a hundred years. And they have this great reputation and they headhunted me. But I needed some kind of, you know, at least a high school diploma. So as an adult, I was like, oh man, I haven't been in school for so long. And I did, I just, I went, I studied, I got my GED within 30 days and I got hired on at Grainger. And that's when I really thought, you know, I, if people are seeking me out, I could probably go really, really far in my career if I actually had, you know, classical education. But I kept being promoted and I remained successful. And I thought, I don't even, I don't need a degree. And I had these amazing mentors along the way in different places, the VPs and SVPs and one CEO that has amazing TED talk that I watch probably once a month on YouTube. And I remember them saying, you really don't need that degree, but I'll be 50 this year. And it's something, thank you. I appreciate that. It's something that I said to myself, you know what, this is just something that I want to do for me. I've made it to my direct role. You know, hopefully the next stop is, is senior director and VP, and maybe the sky's the limit. But I would feel more accomplished and I would feel better if I got a degree. And my intention is to go all the way, hey, I would love to have a PhD, even if I'm 60 by the time I get it. But in April of 2026, I will have my bachelor's in industrial organizational psychology. So I'm pretty excited about that. Yay, that's wonderful. So just so you know, I have a very good friend. I hope she's watching this, vice president of a very large tech company. She quit her job and went to do pre-med credentials when she was 56. So and then she wants to do medicine. And she has been like me in the tech career for over 30 years. So, you know, anything is possible. It's just a number. So when you're proving that, so that's really awesome. It's a little tough question, but one of the things that you mentioned in terms of your career and differences across the various industries that you have played in, you mentioned that tech has its nuances, right? And because you're here, you are as a person who says, I don't have to be the best person in the room and always bring in the tech person who can talk about tech while you are taking care of that executive presence. But tech always prefers people showing that expertise, number one. Number two, tech also prefers one being technical. So the question is, what did you mean by nuances? That's one. Second is, are you, you know, is that insecurity? Is that imposter syndrome? What is it that makes you think that you're not technical enough? Reality. So I'll say this. I have had, I have felt as a woman of color specifically, you know, living in primarily very conservative states, Utah and Arizona, navigating the corporate world, which is predominantly run by, you know, white men, right? So I have had to become very savvy and have a quiet confidence about myself. Now, obviously, I'm not your conventional suit. You know, you see that I have tattoos and I'm very, very authentically myself when I show up in these spaces. So I have had to learn whether the industry, you know, I've been in water, supply chain, healthcare, whatever industry it is, I have to build relationships. And that is what, that is my superpower. And that's what makes me a good leader is my ability to build relationships. Therefore, I have mentors. I have people that take an interest in me because they decide what they're, there's, there's something there. And I've been fortunate enough to have those people around me to say, I'm going to give you this opportunity. In tech, they do ask you to have, you know, SQL, Agile, you know, have this certificate, have that certificate. And I just wandered my happy self into tech and just thought, I'm just going to show you guys how to do this stuff. And I have, you know, my technical ability is have you turn it off and turn it back on again, right? And that's why, you know, like you mentioned, I had mentioned before, I hire, I don't want to be the smartest person in the room. I do hire people. So while I have battled with imposter syndrome in the past, the fact is I just do not feel that I am technically enough. I'm just technically enough to be dangerous or to carry on a conversation or to be customer facing and inspire confidence and, you know, create that space for, hey, you tell me what you need, tell me what you want, and I'll be able to make it happen for you. But I'm not going to do it. So the way I've navigated the tech space is just by being a very, very strong leader. And I can lead, you know, I've led individual contributors. I now have been a leader of leaders for the past 10 years. And if I can inspire them to do things that I need them to do and hire appropriately, I remain successful. And that's how I've been able to grow in my career. Yeah, so one of the first advices that I got as a manager, this was in the early 2000s, is find somebody else who can do your job better. So you will always find something better to do. That is the best advice that I've gotten. So what you're saying totally resonates with me. But I'm still wondering, how did you navigate that tech career? And is there any advice that you would give for others? When there's so much expectation on tech? Yeah, so I remain curious, as curious as I possibly can be. I dig into cases. I do a lot of, you know, observations. I look at the workflows. I want to see what my people are doing so that I can better understand. And that's what gains me a little credibility, right? So as a leader, if you're a strong leader, you can go into any space. But you might have that respect. But do you have the credibility of, well, does she really know what she's talking about? So coming in green into a tech space, first, my focus was the people. And then once I jumped in with both feet, it really was, let me just tag along. Let me just shadow. Let me just ask questions. And I went to sales. And I went to engineers. And I went to all of my account managers and my customer success teams. And I just observed. And it's a really kind of crude or rudimentary way to be introduced to the tech space. But that is really what gave me a leg up. And right now, our company is providing certifications. And I'm raising my hand. Put me in coach. Because I think with kind of the hands-on and the observation and now the technical testing and assessment piece, I think I'll be in a much better state. You should actually write a blog. I would love to see you write a blog about, here are the things that I learned when I moved to the tech industry. And the lingos and the acronyms and everything that we try and that no other industry thrives in. So yeah. The last question. There are so many mentors who came for you when you talked about them and how they kind of came in at the right step during your career and enable you to rise up or learn or be your sponsor or whatever, right? So what would you do back for the community to be a mentor? Oh, you know, it's something that I do now. Previous Next