7 Customer Success Secrets from “The Churn Whisperer” Greg Daines

at an intro thank you for having me appreciate patient heal thyself alright thank you for having me it's great to be here to learn about your company to have this amazing view holy cow love Boston lived here for ten years my favorite place of all time actually so you're lucky I got sucked awaited Silicon Valley and never been the same since all right so let me tell you just quickly about my background because it sets up the crazy stuff we're gonna be talking about so actually my pathway to customer success is a crooked road like everyone else's I started out as an entrepreneur I studied economics I created a series of companies all sass all b2b exited those companies for companies and I took a step back at some point I took a year off went to MIT and I started to think about what was it I did that is most interesting to me I would didn't want to just keep cranking company after company I wanted to find out what was my thing and that I figured fifteen years is enough to get a sense of what you like and I realized one thing and that is that the hard problems are the interesting problem so I sat down I thought what was the hardest thing I've done as a founder CEO and you know was it designing a new product finding a new market now that's hard raising money can be very hard sometimes it was very hard hiring people selling it all those things are hard but I realized very quickly the hardest thing I've ever done in business was to make my customers consistently successful with my product it's incredibly difficult and it's different than all those other activities because those are all in activity and fantasy they're an exercise in imagination which I love but reality hits when you get into customer success right you designed it you think it works you think it solves problems this is where you find out if it really does and in my opinion the hard problems are the interestings one so I decided that's all I wanted to do the rest of my career was work on that problem I also believe it's the biggest problem in SAS right everybody's struggling with this and in fact churn problems and issues around this so becoming across the industry now that I'm a consultant I see lots and lots of companies churn numbers they're almost all private companies so it's very hard to get this data and I get to see a lot more of it than most people and it's shocking how big a problem it is I think I'm starting to become aware just how transformative this business model really is SAS is so much different than anything we've done in the past and almost anything we import from the past doesn't work particularly well in SAS so I want to talk a little bit about kind of my journey how I kind of learned some of the things that I've learned and you know it's fair to say the method was the old-fashioned one I made every possible mistake you can possibly make and in the process of doing that confronted some realities which I think are very challenging and and it followed a pattern so I'd struggle with my clients and my customers over different things and I would get to a point where I had to have something new and so I'd go out into the world and I'd look for what people were saying the smart people get the best practices bring it back apply it and it wouldn't work and that happened over and over and over again and it took I'm very dense so it took a long time to get to the point where I understood that actually there's something fundamentally wrong with the best practices the conventional thinking out there doesn't work particularly well it didn't occur to me then but it has since that that's because this is a really different business model profoundly different and I want to make a few points about kind of why that is so I'm gonna do it by talking about some ideas that were sort of counter intuitive to me but now make a lot more sense we're gonna identify some fallacies that are out there in the customer success world and then share some insights from my research I do a lot of research on this so this is the first kind of basic idea one of the things I learned is that if you want conventional results follow conventional practices they'll get you those right that's fine in some cases it gets you a certain amount of basic predictability and performance but it has a really a low ceiling it has a very limiting sort of characteristic there's only so much you can do just touching your customers more just right those things are all good and it's good to get your house in order but you can only get you so far and I want to share some examples and I have many but I'll pick just three today to give you an example of what I'm talking about so here's the first one it challenges one of our most liked cherished core beliefs and customer success that happy customers are the ones who are loyal and renew right and here's a way to to maybe run a little mental test on that so are these customer success managers or a mix of all sorts of things okay well there you go if you're a customer success person or if you deal with customers raise your hand if you've had okay keep it up keep it up if you've had a customer leave but on the way out say very nice things about this company how happy they were about the experience okay raise your hand if you have a customer who's been frustrated and miserable and unhappy but keeps renewing what gives right what's that about what I experienced that it drove me crazy because it challenges something that I just knew to be true which is that satisfied happy customers renew and unhappy customers leave but it hasn't in my experience not in SAS b2b that's an interesting idea let me show you there's some data to back that up rather than just our intuition so this company called CEB they did the Challenger sale you've probably heard of the Challenger sale right great book by the way for customer success even though it's about sales most of the great things I've ever learned about customer success success came from great salespeople so anyway look that group wrote another book called the effortless experience it's a great book for customer success if you haven't read it look at it but in there they report on some research they did big research project hundred thousand data points and they asked this question what's the relationship between loyalty and expectations and we know right that if you exceed people's expectations they're more loyal so when they ask managers what they think it looked like this if you don't meet their expectations you very poorly but if you want to do really well you have to exceed their expectations but here's what the data shows of course you do very poorly if you don't meet expectations but exceeding them doesn't do much better than meeting them what even the authors were really shocked by this they're like well that doesn't make sense but it was a really big study and the result turned out to be very robust here's another way of demonstrating it okay we know that more satisfied customers are more loyal and less satisfied customers are less loyal but here's what the data looks like when they plotted it out there's literally no statistical relationship between satisfaction and loyalty what can anyone shed some light on this what is this think about your unhappy customers that keep renewing someone we wish would cancel right why do they keep renewing I mean they have plenty of reasons to leave that God they've got some of them lists of them what's going on any any insight anybody there must be they don't want to talk about that they want to talk about their complaints think about what a customer is signalling when they call the complaint they're engaged who said it I said to be throwing candy here yeah they're engaged I mean that word actually is kind of interesting it's like being married versus dating right suddenly the flaws matter a lot more if I'm dating just go away and I could be happy about like you didn't say it was a great experience but I wasn't very engaged was I that's the point when a customer's frustrated about something it's probably because it matters and think about those customers who are happy and say oh it was a great experience it just wasn't for us did they ever really get into it they're just not that into you right he looks like he knows what I'm talking about sorry stepped on a nerve we need to get away from this obsession with customer delight no am I saying we shouldn't make our customers happy of course not absolutely we should make them happy and shame on us if we don't but it's not gonna be enough it isn't enough to drive exceptionally high levels of retention year after year after year after year and if you actually make some sense if you think about it our customer isn't a person it's a company now I know they're filled with people and we deal with people but pinning our business model on the emotional experience of a person I wouldn't invest in that business this is actually good news because the thing that does matter we have a lot more leverage against and what is it it was not happiness delight satisfaction what is it thoughts what's the alternative if the unhappy customers staying despite their dissatisfaction why they're getting something from it right companies can't technically experience delight or joy but they are wired to experience something very exquisitely success or failure right they an organization knows when it's succeeding or failing if we can produce that result it almost doesn't matter all the other things we do remember people don't renew because people don't leave because they have a reason to leave they leave because they no longer have a compelling reason to stay and that's more important than all of the mistakes we make so anyway that's one idea here's another one to challenge some kind of cherished beliefs your product does not create any value I can prove it here's a mental test if you turn on your product for a new customer and nobody changes anything and no one does anything else but flip the switch on the product are they gonna get any value I would love to to up to be invested in your company if there's a chance that you get value with making no changes not looking at it not doing anything else you got it the reality is in the vast majority of cases they have to make some change you have to pay attention to it they have to incorporate the data in their decision process they have to use it they have to do something with it right so it matters a lot right that that we can create the value that they are looking for but if the values depend on any level on them making behavior changes process changes then that becomes incredibly important right it's not just the technology I like to say technology doesn't transform organizations process change transforms organizations technology makes it possible and scalable so it's important that we understand if it's not just turning the technology on what other behavior changes are important what process change what workflow change what decision-making criteria what are those other things that have to do in customer success I consider that to be the central guiding factor of everything we do how do we get leverage against the customers behavior it's one of the hardest things to do right down the street there's all these high priced consulting firms with expensive suits that you paid a lot of money to go into companies and help them change change management right it's one of the hardest things to do but we have an advantage they don't have we have software and people in our world in our generation belief software is going to change everything and I don't think they're wrong and so they will turn over their precious processes to a company like this and allow you to have an impact on them ways that consultants never had before so it's really exciting time to be part of the SAS revolution anyway there's another one here's another one oh this is how I basically say it one of the most important things we offer is our expertise about this business another company may come along to offer similar enough functionality to what we do that it looks identical to our customers but they will never leave us if their relationship with us is based on the expertise that they get from us and the way they can expand their success using not just our technology but the benefit they get from in reality we see lots of companies and we can share those those that expertise on how to do their business better with them alright last one your customer doesn't even want your product now this is this one might take a minute to wrap your head around intact we are in love with our products right we're in love with our technology but in reality who here wants to buy technology what company wants to go out and source something and negotiate the deal and set it up and configure it and integrate it and manage it and administer it and I mean nobody wants that they want what your product promises them they want the benefits right someone much smarter than me said it this way people don't want your drill they want the hole right so we're always talking about our drill and it's shiny it's easy to use and it's amazing it has chrome handle but in reality I don't want a drill right I want the outcome we need to always remember how important that is in customer success should we have great technology of course we should and shame on us if we don't but it won't be enough we've got to build a an offering a complete set of services and help to help those companies get the results they want it isn't just enough to say here's the technology you're welcome right all right those are so some some kind of intro to sort of the counterintuitive way that that kind of I've come to see customer success and it's funny because I mean I don't think I invented any of this and I've watched some really phenomenal but he's act like this without really labeling it if you look at the way Salesforce has gotten to this point especially in their customer for life program it's this it's okay that's technology but what are you trying to achieve let's wrap around all of the expertise and help you need to get that result and we're gonna be on your side of the table measuring your success I mean it's kind of ironic actually when we measure customer success what do you measure retention expansion customer sad NPS none of those are measures of the customers success our measures of our success we need to think in terms of the customers results start really getting gauged in the way they think about their success I talked about bonding to me bonding is what you want is customer bonding it means that they can no longer visualize their success without us in the equation it's a critical part of their whole kind of image of where they're going and success right all right enough on that I'm gonna take a quick drink thank you alright three deadly fallacies so this kind of follows on from the last one but I think we sort of think about you know our business and a lot of people think this way and I certainly did in terms of you know we got the solution it produces value for the customer that makes them successful so they were new and I call it the causal chain right that's I mean if we do this right we're gonna get renewal but there's a lot of companies doing this and not getting particularly fantastic renewal and one of the reasons is because there's actually some things missing it's not that it's wrong it's just incomplete okay and the first one I've kind of alluded to does your solution create value not without a commensurate matching level of behavior or process change on the other side you have to figure out how to help your customers get that in fact I argue that the difference between the successful customers and the failed customers as successful customers are the ones that change their process to adapt to get the most out of the solution that you're selling so you've got to have that value produces success well it might but hold on just a second the problem is it depends right customers have a certain there's a certain amount of heterogeneity in our customer base right they don't all think about or talk about success in the same way we need to understand that that's a that's a reality and the producing value doesn't exactly doesn't always necessarily drive success unless they're aligned right I have to say that the value that we're producing is the very one they were expecting that the level of value matches what they were hoping for yeah okay now we've got success at Matt it's amazing to me how many times in my career I've produced value laid it in front of the customer and they're like yeah well wait isn't that what you write we've been doing this a year well yeah kind of but you know we also thought about this oh why did I never asked them in enough clarity so we could get on the same page right that I made that mistake so many times I try not to anymore that's that's an example of being misaligned sometimes it's we think of success differently sometimes is just we use different words frankly vocabulary sometimes gets us all hitched up well isn't didn't you know this is the same thing as this well no we call it such-and-such well we can't have mistakes like that we have to be super aligned so that when we get to the renewal moment it's like yes that's what I wanted that's what I thought I was getting that's the value we were hoping for so you've got to have that alignment I call it use case alignment just think about it as this was our primary business objective and yes you have materialized to me that we're sitting more successful in that dimension and then the last one success you'll renew right sometimes even when we get to there we often lose people why well there's a couple of reasons but let me give you an example if I create value for a customer right and they get it and we acknowledge it and everybody's happy and then I say okay good we're solid then right two years later will they still renew right if we just stay at that same level the problem is companies or I would say it's more of an opportunity than a problem companies evolved companies change they have new priorities a couple years later they have that was enough a couple of years ago or there's a new person and yeah the last person looked like a hero but she wants to look like a hero she's the new VP of whatever we have to constantly be looking for what's next the way I say it is customers don't renew because of what you did they renew because of what's next and they believe in what's next because of what you did right companies that have really phenomenal performance and customer success and getting really high retention are the ones who are constantly building a story about what's next what's coming down the road look at Salesforce again a great example of this every year big news story big party new features new opportunities new use cases you kind of have to own the fact that you are now on a journey with your partner for as long as you want to be on that journey which for us is forever and they're growing expanding and evolving needs or ours so we have to constantly looking for what that next opportunity is and they have to believe in the story about what's coming up there are lots of companies that produce phenomenal value for their customers but it's a temporary use case they got it done it was an audit or it was a project it's done we deployed we don't need that tool anymore it isn't that they don't produce value it's that it's too temporary we have to build what I call velocity we have to constantly have what what's next coming up so that's essentially how I look at this the real causal chain of customer success if you can fill those pieces in you can produce phenomenal results here's the interesting thing all of those orange things really tend to be led out by the customer success group they have to figure out what those use cases are they have to help customers change their behavior and learn they have to share a lot of expertise they have to make sure we're aligned with each customer hopefully we're partnering with sales and marketing to make sure that alignment is built very early on and then we have to constantly be looking for what's next how can I add more value to this customer it isn't always about selling more stuff to the customer although I help sometimes it is because we want to expand and don't forget buying signals are a very precious thing we want buying signals over the life of our relationship with that customer but it isn't always about buying something it may be about noticing an opportunity for them to leverage our tools or our technology or our expertise in a better way in a bigger way to get them more value so velocity that's why I use the term velocity instead of just expansion it encompasses all that stuff you

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Keywords: qualify web leads, sales tool, drift web chat, web chat for sales, live chat for sales, drift live chat, customer success tool, web chat, how to qualify leads on my website, drift messaging, conversational, drift, live chat, web messaging, marketing

Id: BtTvtJwaX-8

Length: 22min 3sec (1323 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 20 2017