Rich Fernandez
Hello and welcome everybody to the Return on Intelligence podcast. I am delighted today to welcome our special guest, who is the Vice President of Customer Experience at ChurnZero, Lukas Alexander. Lukas is a distinguished customer experience leader with over a decades experience successfully building and scaling global customer success teams. Lukas has a profound passion for customer success, so I'm really thrilled that he's with us here today to explain what that means.
Rich Fernandez
Also, with experience in customer success operations and career coaching for Customer success managers, I think importantly, Lukas also stands out in the dynamic realm of customer experience because he is a transformational human first leader. So I'm thrilled to welcome him today. And off we go. Lukas, welcome to the Return on Intelligence Podcast. Great to have you.
Lukas Alexander
Thanks so much for, for having me, rich. Really, really happy to to be here and, to have a really great conversation today.
Rich Fernandez
Fantastic. so listen, just to kind of get, definition of terms, there may be a lot of folks who are listening to this who know what customer experience is or what customer success management is. but it would be helpful if you could perhaps just give us a simple definition, perhaps something that a ten year old would understand.
Lukas Alexander
Yeah. yeah. No, for sure. So I always like to think about, you know, customer success in, in two different, two different, angles, I would say the first being, obviously customer success carried out by CSM, right. Customer success. managers typically it's all about, you know, we hear a lot a lot of this, you know, about customers achieving their outcomes.
Lukas Alexander
But we also talk a lot about, you know what, we're customers how a customer might define value. Right. So in customer success with a CSM primarily aims to do typically with with tech or SaaS based services, it's to really act as the customer strategic advisor to listen, understand, and advocate for the customer's objectives. So what they what they came to the, you know, to your company to to try and achieve and also recommend like what the best path to the success is to really, help achieve those desired outcomes with, with a product or with a service.
Lukas Alexander
so that's typically how I look at, you know, what? and that's done through, through different, you know, different tactics, whether that be through success planning, through driving adoption. and, and essentially that's, that's carried out by the CSM. but also the other way I like to look at customer success is just as a from a business mindset perspective, companies can adopt a, customer success mindset across the entire organization, through the different teams, the different departments and how those departments really, really having a strong understanding how each one of those departments actually, directly or potentially indirectly impacts the, the customer's experience at the end of the day.
Lukas Alexander
Right. And and having that mindset of how all of those pieces in the puzzle and the puzzle. Right. All of those, cars on the train really, contribute to delivering the whole package to the customer. Right. So, so really looking at it from a customer success, like a profession, but also as a business mindset.
Rich Fernandez
Yeah. And it sounds like, of course, there's a lot of customer learning and education and engagement that is involved in this. And perhaps that's a place we can really kind of focus today, because a lot of the people listening to this will be involved in the learning and development space, in the upskilling space. So how to upskill customers, but also perhaps how to upskill customer success professionals to be able to effectively work with customers.
Rich Fernandez
I'd love to focus a little bit on that today, if that makes sense to you. Yeah.
Lukas Alexander
Yeah for sure. And and right customer enablement, customer enablement teams, customer enablement specialists are often a key part of that. that customer success mindset within the organization delivering that area of the, of the customer journey. So, yeah.
Rich Fernandez
And of course, you're are charge zero, you know, which is one of their premier customer success platforms, software platform that that gives that, capacity for customers to really gain insights. And for CSM customer success managers to work with all of the insights from their to educate customers. So, given that, perhaps, maybe the first thing I can ask you, because it's always useful to have case studies.
Rich Fernandez
So what are some of the brands you're working with that have stellar customer success? And what are they doing that makes them so good?
Lukas Alexander
Yeah, we work with so many different, companies, brands of different shapes, sizes, you know, backgrounds. and one of the, the, the one thing at the end of the day that, you know, customer success really prides itself in and has done, has done so, for, for so many years is, the organization and the CSM ability to be proactive, right, and proactively engaging customers?
Lukas Alexander
you know, they don't just wait for customers to reach out with with problems. Right? They, they actively engage customers. you know, they offer their support, offer their guidance. This might include things like, you know, educational webinars or, you know, personalized, training or self-paced training enablement or regular check ins. really, you know, emails that offer, you know, tips and best practices and things like that.
Lukas Alexander
so when I look at, you know, all of the different brands that that we work with, the different companies that we work with, our customers, our customers who are proactively engaging their customers, they're not sort of, you know, on the back foot, you know, waiting for a customer to reach out, with a problem. They're proactively getting ahead of them.
Lukas Alexander
That's the number one thing, you know, that we see with our customers that that really makes them so good.
Rich Fernandez
Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's interesting because I have an experience with that. But of course, our own organization where we have a team of customer success managers. And so it's being proactive, as you said, and what we're finding is things like, quarterly executive business reviews or things like we have something called an insider board where we have our, most prominent and regularly engaged customers coming together.
Rich Fernandez
Share. We share best practices with them. We hear from them. So there's a lot that goes into it. It sounds like.
Lukas Alexander
Yeah, for sure. And and you need, you need you need some type of data to drive this. Right. Like having the right listening posts in place. you get to pick up on the, you know, the behaviors that potentially decrease customer health. So there needs to be the right listening post in place. Now, whether you're doing that through a, you know, a CSP, a customer success platform, or you have other ways of sort of understanding, you've been through, you know what?
Lukas Alexander
I want discussions with your customers, having the right listening post to be able to pick up on, on, potentially, you know, negative behaviors. and, and gives the CSM that sort of proactive edge they need to, to get ahead of customer challenges and ultimately, you know, continuously and proactively removing those barriers that prevent a customer from from being successful.
Lukas Alexander
And it's not just a learning or, you know, playbook triggers, for things like, you know, detractor NPS responses, you know, when a customer starts exporting, you know, a bunch of data from, you know, your system at that point were too late to be proactive. Right? So I really talking about, you know, giving CSM the right mechanisms, whether, you know, a CSP or not to build on those continuously building on those positive behaviors that that make customer successful.
Rich Fernandez
Yeah. So just to get to keep things simple, just to decode a little bit, before you get to what you call the detractor NPS score, what that means is a net promoter score, the extent to which a customer will endorse you. Again, just for folks who may not be familiar with this world and getting ahead of that, perhaps using data.
Rich Fernandez
I love your your, your signpost, your listening posts there and, and a platform like churn zero. Right. This is what ChurnZero does combined with the scale of the the customer success manager. Is that correct?
Lukas Alexander
Yeah. It's in my mind a big part of, you know, what we do, you know, and, and the tools that we can give CSM to do their jobs is all about, you know, understanding data, understanding customer behavior, and, you know, turning all of that into something that, you know, a CSM can take a proactive action on.
Lukas Alexander
Right. the some of the best proactive examples that I, that I can, you know, speak about in discussions with our customers, our different types of events is your customers have, you know, business objectives, right? They have at one of the like I mentioned earlier, one of the core, you know, responsibility of a CSM is to a, listen, understand, help define and help the customer articulate those business objectives.
Lukas Alexander
But once they're defined, right. You know, a CSM might, you know, have a few customers who may have similar objectives, right? So pulling a what I like to call like a proactive trigger here would be, for example, how about we send an email to those 5 or 6 customers in your book of business who have similar objectives and say something like, you know, hey, customer, as you know, you know, a CSM carries a book of business with many customers, and I actually have a few customers like you who are also trying to I don't know, you know, get customers to trial a new product or a feature.
Lukas Alexander
Why don't we all get on a call with, you know, those customers, and talk about, you know, our approach and you know, how we're driving trials to new product features and things like that. The beauty of something like that is that it and not only, not only, you know, the customer are going to feel that proactive engagement.
Lukas Alexander
The CSM is also it's sort of two birds with one stone here, right. Like the CSM is also creating customer community there. So those are some of the, the, the, the the classic examples are the examples of CSM proactivity that I love to hear our customers doing that I will recommend to our customers every day of the week.
Lukas Alexander
Because it it really customers know when they're getting that proactive touch. Right. And that's the, the proactive touch that they're always longing for. And it's the proactivity goes a long way in securing things like renewals and expansions, etc..
Rich Fernandez
So absolutely. So that building on that and you think as we think about the customer experience lands, Cape, what are the most important things people should trade on to help customers?
Lukas Alexander
Yeah. especially as, as a CSM. Right. Like, in a lot of companies, I see, you know, whether the CSM will only, you know, be that, you know, take a commercial angle or a CSM will only take, technical product, angle. I think, you know, companies and, and, companies, you know, CSE leaders need to train their CSM, to have heavy, you know, technical product knowledge as a CSM, one of our main objectives is to to make recommendations to our customers.
Lukas Alexander
And, you know, our customer needs to be able to trust that recommendation. And as a CSM, when you're going into our recommendation, you're telling your customer you should set up, you know, this dashboard. And this way, for this reason, they know that you're coming in with a lot of that experience. You can tell as a customer that, hey, the CSM has has done this several times for for other customers like me.
Lukas Alexander
I should really take their recommendation, seriously here. So I think a lot of, you know, companies need to invest in their CSM technical product, product knowledge, specifically. But also, you know, I think, some of the soft skills, right? The ability to, ability to negotiate, for example, and negotiate. When I say negotiation, I don't always only think about, you know, negotiating a contract.
Lukas Alexander
I think, you know, there's a lot of negotiation that's always in play as a CSM when you're resolving a conflict or something like that. you know, it's all about finding that win win with a customer at the end of the day. And I think that's a big part of what defines, you know, a really strong CSM is their ability to find a mutually beneficial agreement with a customer.
Lukas Alexander
Being able to confidently do that. So, investing in both of that technical product, knowledge, and also some of the softer skills like, you know, negotiation, negotiation for conflict resolution and things like that.
Rich Fernandez
Yeah, absolutely. Which I love to, hey, I have a different take on the skills I like to call the core people skills. Core people skills because there's, not anything that's soft about having a conversation with somebody who has a competing agenda or an alternate set of priorities, negotiations, things like that. So, yeah, that's a really important.
Rich Fernandez
And that you use things like empathy, curiosity, you know, learning mindsets, all these other things that I think are more like core people skills. and than necessarily being what we call soft skills. But, I take your point that it's definitely not just the technical aspect. It's really that combination of both of those takes that drive success.
Lukas Alexander
Yeah. And I think one other thing I wanted to to add here as well around like, you know, when one of the things that often gets gets overlooked, in a CSM sort of tool shed is do we know how to properly educate our customers? Right. Education and training as it, as it's tied to, you know, customer success.
Lukas Alexander
So I really believe that, you know, by aligning, you know, educational efforts with, you know, the, the broader goal of helping customers achieve their, their objectives. you know, businesses can really drive that long term value, that long term loyalty, with their customers, you know, empowering customers with, you know, knowledge and skills they need to, to succeed is, is is, you know, half the battle, right?
Lukas Alexander
It's it's 50% of the customer doesn't know how to use your product. Well, they're not going to, you know, maximize their value. So, I think, you know, the investing in customer success managers ability to effectively train their customers, train their customers at the right moments and using the different tools, like whether that's through an LMS, like absorb, whether that is through, you know, in-app walkthroughs, for example, or you know, through, you know, things like a candidate academies, things like that, those are all things that, that go a really long way and really need to, to gain a bit more, you know, place and real estate in
Lukas Alexander
a customer success manager, skill set.
Rich Fernandez
So, yeah. And then when the customer success managers do offer that kind of learning or educational journey to customers, inevitably there comes a point where there's some fall off. and so in terms of the customer's learnings, what spots do you see the most drop off and what are some of the methods to retain them so that they can continue the process, the journey of engagement as a customer?
Lukas Alexander
I think it depends. There's so many different I wouldn't say there's a there's a common spot, but I would want to highlight a few critical areas I would call them is a lot of this depends on, you know, other variables like, you know, complexity of your product or, you know, size of of the team and things like that.
Lukas Alexander
but I did want to highlight a few, a few critical areas that, that I've seen over the past several years as, being, you know, a common drop off point. and a lot of that starts a lot of it actually starts in, in the, you know, the first 30 days, you know, that the customer has signed up with you, right?
Lukas Alexander
During that, that critical, you know, that critical implementation, phase where, you know, depending on the, the product or service that you sell, you know, implement implementation, onboarding can be action packed, right? It could be a really scary time for, for a lot of customers and a lot of users. So, you know, especially around things like, you know, integrations and setup and bringing in data from different different systems.
Lukas Alexander
So if you're a company that you know, this, this type of scenario resonates with having a learning journey that you know, customers can do on their own while things are being set up, on the side by your admin and with, you know, the implementation and the technical team, being able to be efficient in that way, where, you know, you have a few different tracks, you have an educational track, and then you have a technical track running in parallel that's going to increase time to value.
Lukas Alexander
Right? So so that's one key area. And it's an area that starts. It's it's a part of the journey that that starts right away. And that's that critical implementation period. The second spot that that I typically have seen, you know, drop off, is when it comes to new users signing up after like midway through the relationship, for example.
Lukas Alexander
Right. You're six months and you're seven months into a relationship, with the customer. And they get, you know, maybe they hire a new, CSM, or maybe they hire a new, you know, new team member. And then all of a sudden you have a new user. So, yes, new users can go through the the self-paced courses and, you know, maybe have a session with their CSM.
Lukas Alexander
But a lot of companies don't even ask, don't ask their customers, you know, do you have an internal new user onboarding plan that you're organization. Right. And and I think that's tough because this this this one often relies on the customer to do this in the background. It's something that, you know, as a CSM, you don't really have a lot of control over.
Lukas Alexander
But if companies and if CSM can really give customers recommendations or things like, you know, templates or at the very least ask the question, you know, hey, do you have, an internal, you know, new user onboarding plan? That's something that will cover, you know, a lot of that new user, enablement and making sure that as we, you know, bring new people on board with us, you know, new passengers on board that they're, they're getting that same experience that, you know, passengers got when they left the station.
Lukas Alexander
Right. And then, the third thing is, I like to call it it's the concept of ever broadening, right. Those existing users. So the ones that got trained at the beginning, the ones that were enabled at the beginning, how often do they get, you know, retrained, how often do they get refreshed? If it was a, you know, like a set it and forget it, you're not going to go very far, right?
Lukas Alexander
I think companies need to need to double down on, you know, that ever boarding from different angles, whether that's through, you know, in-app enablement through like walkthroughs, tooltips or, you know, to how a company communicates new feature releases or if you have seasonal customers, right, like edtech, you know, train, train those users at the start of the, the academic year, the school year, or things like that.
Lukas Alexander
So, so really, I would say, you know, customer implementation, that new user enablement. And then that concept of that reporting is something that, you know, companies really, really need to get right. And it's it's not a set it and forget it. Right.
Rich Fernandez
I love it I love that I love that term. I actually never heard that ever boarding. And then it is that continuous process that really keeps customers engaged and all the different things we could do to make that happen. Very, very helpful. So now for the customer success professional. That's a lot, right? That's a lot of ground to cover the Ada Zs of Customer Success.
Rich Fernandez
And I think about customer success professionals, I think about that of my own team members who are on the customer success team, and they have a huge scope and a huge charter, and they can face their own fatigue. in training themselves and the customers with all these tools and processes. So what's something in your opinion, that companies could do to help support motivate their customer experience team?
Rich Fernandez
So that they everyone has a better experience all around?
Lukas Alexander
Yeah. I think it's, a lot of this starts from, you know, top down leadership. But I think this is also when, you know, company culture has, plays a big, you know, role in, you know, avoiding things like, you know, burnout for CSM and, you know, we, you hear a lot of conversation around this on, on LinkedIn and on, you know, different socials.
Lukas Alexander
So, but I think from a corporate perspective, from a company perspective, you know, the ability for leaders are different, you know, people in the business to show, you know, gratitude, to show support, to show, you know, a recognition, celebrate the wins. You know, we see or, you know, here at Churn Zero, we have, you know, we have different slack channels.
Lukas Alexander
you know, we actually have the shout outs channel where, you know, that that that thing is blowing up all day long, pretty much. But there's so much to so much to celebrate. And, and people really get engaged in, you know, after the pandemic, like a lot of companies are still largely remote. I would say, like, you know, we spend a lot of time, you know, in remote setting still, I would say so having having those types of, those types of, opportunities to, to shout out whether that's the leader.
Lukas Alexander
but the coolest thing is seeing, you know, a CSM, two CSM shout each other out. Like being able to promote that culture doesn't only need to be a top down, it can also be lateral. I think those are some of the things as well that, you know, that that that needs to happen in, in an organization to continue to, to motivate, their, their team.
Lukas Alexander
And I'm a firm believer in this, that, you know, the more we the more we we, we take care of our people, you know, the more and the more effective. they'll be a lot more effective in taking care of their customers. So. Right. It is, it is a trickle down effect. So, so definitely, definitely a big part in, you know, motivating our people to to motivate our customers.
Rich Fernandez
Yes. part of our motto here. And, you know, you'll see it like, is, on our website, such as searching inward, leading outward. So supporting yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead please.
Lukas Alexander
Yeah. No. So that was you know, and then and then also I think there's also the concept of offering, you know, professional development, you know, CSM, different people within the organization or even, you know, in, in all departments within a company, you know, are coming with so many different, so, so much, you know, diversity in their backgrounds and, you know, the type of experiences that they're, they're, they're coming on board with.
Lukas Alexander
And so I think the more we can, you know, as a company, you can promote that, hey, I can come to church and zero or I can come to, you know, absorb or, I can I can join an organization and really feel like I can, you know, grow my career here is super motivating for, for, you know, just a, you know, a human being at the end of the day to, you know, who who has a family at home and you know, who's, who's, you know, working to, to achieve some type of life goal or life objective there.
Lukas Alexander
So giving, giving, you know, your, your people, that sense of, you know, I can grow my career. I can be successful here. And offering those development opportunities.
Rich Fernandez
Right. And then also I think about, personal and personal and professional development. So things like empathy or emotional intelligence or, you know, skills that can that can develop and help with life and work. but maybe that's the question I have for you. What role does empathy and emotional intelligence play in customer success teams, and how do you support teams to grow in that capacity?
Lukas Alexander
Yeah. I think yeah. Empathy. Empathy plays a role in in all successful relationships in any capacity. Right? Not just CSM teams. I think apathy plays a role in so many different, you know, parts of, parts of your, your life. but at heart, I would say, you know, most, most CSM are empathetic, right? If you think of it, when I was a customer success manager, one of the things that I loved seeing the most is, you know, going to see on LinkedIn.
Lukas Alexander
And one of my customers got a promotion right now, you know, that it's not you know, you're not the, you know, you probably indirectly or maybe even directly influenced that you're you're likely not the only reason that that, you know, customer got, got a promotion. But I believe that in case. Right. Like, we really have we focused our careers on helping other people succeed.
Lukas Alexander
Right. People want to help. and so I think that, I think that being empathetic, for our customers and helping them through, you know, listening to they're listening to their teams, listening to their issues, you know, being being, with them, you know, every step of the way, and showing our customers that, goes, it goes, are really goes a really long way.
Lukas Alexander
And I think at the end of the day, the reason we do what we do in KCS and in customer success is because we, we are naturally empathetic people and and we want to help each other succeed. And so, so naturally we will, you know, generally be apathetic to customers, to each other, to our colleagues and, etc..
Rich Fernandez
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, we see that all the time. And it's, the good news is empathy and and emotional intelligence. These are skills that are trainable, like all skills. you just need to train on them as well. so I love that. And, maybe that's where we could tie this all together. I really appreciated how you're talking about bringing some of those technical skills together with some of these core people skills like empathy and emotional intelligence for the success of the customer success professionals.
Rich Fernandez
But also, you know, how that translates for customers. So any last things to share with the audience? particularly in the broader arena, customer experience, any, insights? like last sort of words of wisdom as we kind of wrap up here.
Lukas Alexander
you know, I think at the end of the day, the more, whether you're in support, whether you're in customer enablement, whether you're a CSM or whether you do implementation, the more the more you you we treat each other. You treat your customers like human beings, right? We're pathetic. And the more we we strive to really drive and achieve a win win, the mutually, you know, beneficial, you know, agreement with the customer.
Lukas Alexander
That's really what what we'll get, we'll we'll help each other, you know, achieve success, right? Your customer becomes successful. Your company is successful, you are successful in your career, and you can grow your career and get even better at what you do every single day. so the more we focus on those areas, I think, you know, very simplistically and those are those are areas we can focus in at work or even outside of work.
Lukas Alexander
Right. that the more we'll, we'll, we'll be be, be successful. So, yeah, those are, those are really, some of the, some of the things that I like to lead with in my role. And, you know, I would, I would challenge, you know, leaders challenge, you know, customer success managers and whatever, you know, role you play in course at your company, you know, to to take a step back and try and think, you know, how can I actually help a customer achieve a win win situation here.
Lukas Alexander
And, and you know, really, really, really lead with, with humanity.
Rich Fernandez
I love that. Thank you so much. Thank you, Lucas, for sharing your insight and experience. And as advertised, when we introduced you kind of really focusing as well on this human centric approach to customer success. so it's been great to have you here. Thank you again and, much success to you and your team as well. And to everyone who's listening.
Rich Fernandez
Thank you so much.
Lukas Alexander
Thank you so much for having me, which is a really great conversation. And, I hope we can do it again soon.
