Business Development vs Customer Success | Ep. 28

Summary

In Episode 28 of 'Let's Talk BD Podcast,' Jonathan Greifs from Agrea CS shares insights on navigating the interplay between business development (BD) and customer success (CS). He outlines the development and application of customer success, how it differs from customer support, the potential impact of AI in the field, and the ways both functions can align towards strategic growth. Greifs also discusses his background and journey into customer success, and Agrea's role in training and consultancy. The conversation delves into various aspects such as prioritizing customer communications, AI integration, strategic account management, and evolving industry perspectives on customer success roles.

Highlights

• Jonathan Greifs discusses the term 'customer success' and its nuanced interpretation in business environments. 🤓
• The shift from transactional business models to customer-centric approaches has amplified the relevance of roles like customer success and business development. 📈
• Jonathan shares personal experiences transitioning from customer support to customer success, highlighting the evolving nature of these roles. 🔄
• Agrea CS employs training and consultancy to embed a unified framework for customer success in diverse business sectors. 🌐
• The potential for AI to automate manual processes in customer success could lead to a more strategic focus in the role. 💼

Key Takeaways

• Business development (BD) and customer success (CS) are fundamentally intertwined, each contributing to strategic relationships and long-term growth. 🤝
• Customer success focuses on proactive relationship management and delivering visible benefits, differentiating it from reactive customer support. 🎯
• AI's potential in automating repetitive processes could reshape customer success, enabling professionals to focus more on strategic tasks. 🤖
• Frameworks like Agrea's can guide customer success practices towards aligning support, usage, ROI, and feedback, ensuring comprehensive service delivery. 🛠️
• There's an emerging discourse on whether customer success roles need to evolve or integrate due to overlapping functions with BD. 🚀

Overview

Jonathan Greifs from Agrea CS joins The BD School's podcast to explore the dynamic link between business development and customer success. In a vibrant discussion, Jonathan explains how Agrea's innovative framework brings cohesion between customer service aspects, aiming to establish robust strategic relationships. His insights stem from years of industry experience, transitioning from customer support to leading customer success strategies, offering a unique perspective on both roles' evolution.

The dialogue delves into distinctions between customer success and customer support, emphasizing the proactive versus reactive approaches in managing client relationships. Jonathan explains how customer success aims to deliver quantifiable benefits, a departure from mere problem-solving typical of customer support. Additionally, the conversation touches on current industry debates about the relevance and future of customer success roles, considering the overlap with business development and emerging AI technologies.

Jonathan highlights the challenges and tools for effective customer success, including Agrea's comprehensive framework focusing on critical aspects like ROI and customer feedback. He also underscores the significance of teamwork between customer success and business development teams, advocating for shared goals and strategies for optimal business outcomes. The conversation paints a vivid picture of the evolving landscape of customer success, spotlighting training opportunities and sector-wide debates on its integration with business development.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and Guest Introduction The chapter, 'Introduction and Guest Introduction,' starts with the host welcoming listeners to the 'Let's Talk BD' podcast, powered by the BD School. The host introduces the episode and the guest, Jonathan Griefs from Agria CS, who is an expert in customer success. Jonathan joins the conversation live from London, expressing his excitement about the discussion, which will focus on the intersection between business and customer success.
• 01:00 - 02:30: Intersection of Business Development and Customer Success The chapter discusses the convergence of business development and customer success, exploring what can be learned and adapted from this intersection. The speaker introduces their company, Agria, which was established based on their decade-long experience as a customer success manager and director. They note the similarities in roles and functions between business development and customer success.
• 02:30 - 05:30: Definition and Role of Customer Success The chapter titled 'Definition and Role of Customer Success' explores the varied interpretations and roles of customer success within a business setting. It recognizes a disconnect between what business development (BD) actually is and its application, particularly in startups. The discussion highlights the broad ways customer success can be defined and understood: as customer satisfaction, revenue generation, and customer support. The chapter underscores the complexity and multifaceted nature of customer success in business.
• 05:30 - 09:00: Differences between Customer Success and other roles The chapter discusses the distinctions between Customer Success and other roles. It addresses the usage of buzzwords related to Customer Success and the necessity for a recognized framework for its operation. The role is not limited to businesses and their customers, but also involves wider frameworks and networks.
• 09:00 - 10:30: Origins of Customer Success The chapter titled 'Origins of Customer Success' delves into the foundational aspects of customer success and how it differs from customer service. It emphasizes the importance of understanding the interconnections between various players in the field. Through consultancy, alignment, training, and service provision, different strategies are explored to enhance customer success. The chapter also touches upon common misconceptions that equate customer success strictly with customer service or business development, instead of recognizing its broader implications and integrations.
• 10:30 - 14:00: Strategic Role of Customer Success The chapter titled 'Strategic Role of Customer Success' addresses misconceptions about the field. The speaker is frustrated when people equate business development with sales and similarly with misconceptions in customer success. It's often wrongly described as merely making customers happy, finding new revenue, or delivering value, but it encompasses more strategic roles.
• 14:00 - 18:00: Differences Between Customer Success and Strategic Account Management The chapter discusses the evolution of business environments, highlighting the transition from a transactional era to more complex relationships involving customers, sales, and support. It emphasizes how historical business practices from the 1950s and 60s have influenced contemporary strategies, particularly in the realms of customer success and strategic account management.
• 18:00 - 23:00: Framework and Training in Customer Success This chapter discusses the evolution towards more customer-centric business models where customers are increasingly empowered with their solutions and services. It highlights the integration of business development and customer success functions as a means to bridge the gap between sales support and the customer, and indicates that these roles continue to evolve.
• 23:00 - 27:00: Client Types and Operations of Agrea The chapter discusses the impact of technology and AI on business operations at Agrea, particularly in automating processes traditionally handled by people. It highlights that these technological advances have necessitated the creation of new roles within the company, though these roles lack a universal definition. The conversation reflects a consensus on the significant influence of the current technological environment on these developments.
• 27:00 - 30:00: Training Approach at Agrea In this chapter titled 'Training Approach at Agrea', the speaker reminisces about their initial encounter with the concept of 'Customer Success' while working at a SaaS company around 2017-2018. At the time, it was a novel job title that had just started to gain recognition. The speaker recounts how their colleague, Simona, transitioned from a role in Customer Support to become their company's first Customer Success Manager, marking the beginning of their journey in exploring and understanding the nuances between these two roles.
• 30:00 - 35:00: Collaboration Between Business Development and Customer Success This chapter explores the distinction between customer success and customer service. Customer service is described as a reactive process that deals with issues or requests after they arise, collecting information and evidence to address what's happened. In contrast, the focus is on the proactive elements of customer success and how it differs conceptually and operationally from traditional service approaches.
• 35:00 - 39:00: Should Every Company Have a Customer Success Manager? The chapter discusses the importance of having a Customer Success Manager (CSM) in a company. It highlights the traditional issue where lack of customer support led to customers taking their business elsewhere. The role of CSMs is to be proactive in reducing this risk by ensuring satisfaction and retention.
• 39:00 - 47:00: Changing Dynamics and the Future of Customer Success The chapter discusses the importance of delivering tangible benefits to customers, particularly in the context of a SaaS company. By implementing software, companies can reduce costs and enhance efficiency, turning previously manual processes into streamlined automated ones. The focus of customer success is highlighted as providing direct and visible benefits to the customer, emphasizing the need for clear and measurable value propositions.
• 47:00 - 55:00: Impact of AI on Customer Success The chapter discusses the impact of AI on customer success. It emphasizes the difference between customer success and customer support roles, focusing on productivity. The narrative explores how customer success teams can take a proactive approach in managing their day-to-day tasks. This includes deciding which customers to prioritize and how they engage with them effectively.
• 55:00 - 59:00: Prioritizing Customer Communication The chapter "Prioritizing Customer Communication" focuses on the strategic role of customer success. It highlights the importance of viewing customer success as a separate and strategic role compared to others. The chapter emphasizes managing a list of customers as if running a miniature business. It discusses the significance of demonstrating value to high-value customers.
• 59:00 - 65:00: Closing Thoughts and Contact Information for Agrea The chapter explores the strategic decisions businesses face regarding customer retention and development. It contrasts the potential benefits of engaging with larger clients who might renew their business for multiple years against developing smaller clients to elevate and grow them. The discussion highlights the overlapping roles of customer success and business development in cultivating client relationships and advancing business objectives.

Business Development vs Customer Success | Ep. 28 Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 welcome to let's talk BD podcast powered by the BD School welcome everyone to a new episode of let's talk BD podcast today with me there is Jonathan griefs from agria CS hi Jonathan how are you today hi this here great to be with you today so um I'm speaking to you live from London and um yeah they're really excited to have this conversation with you today awesome very good so actually Jonathan is an expert of customer uh uh success and that's really what we want to talk about today really the intersection between business
• 00:30 - 01:00 development and customer success and of course learn a little bit more about this word and what we can take uh from it and what we can copy in business development so I would say probably just uh uh maybe you can tell us a little bit more about your company what you do and then we take it from there absolutely yes so um agria was recently founded um off the back of my experience as a customer success manager and customer success director over the last 10 years or so and we were speaking um previously about how there's actually a similar
• 01:00 - 01:30 kind of origins in terms of our two companies in that you recognize that within BD there is a sometimes a disconnect between what BD actually is and how it is actually applied and I think um more so I think it in particular with the case of startups and I found um in particular with customer success there is such a broad definition of ways that customer success can be interpreted sometimes I've heard people say it's about keeping customers happy sometimes I've heard that it's about generating new Revenue sometimes it's about support in customers as well so
• 01:30 - 02:00 lots of buzzword that are kind of applied to um customer success which I think we'll um touch on as it were so one of the things that I sought to do with AA is to try and have a recognized framework in which um customer success can operate but also understanding that customer success is not just within the gift of the businesses and the customers that um use customer success but also the wider Frameworks as well and wider networks that touch this as well so it's
• 02:00 - 02:30 very important to understand um how these interconnected players um work together so that's the premise of agrea and we do this through consultancy alignment and training providing Services as well a that's very good actually you mentioned something that kind of triggered me uh which is you know how people um consider customer success maybe I think sometimes to be more customer service or sometimes you know there is a bit of confusion around that and I know that for me when it comes to Business Development there is that there is one thing that really
• 02:30 - 03:00 annoys me which is when people say that business development is basically just salves and it's just a glorified term for sales is there something like this for you in customer success that you know also like annoys you so much like no it's not this one stop saying that if yes what is it yes absolutely I think um so so the thing I mentioned as well I talked about the definitions that I've heard said to me about how customer success is about making customers happy or it's about finding new revenue or deil deling value lots of different
• 03:00 - 03:30 buzzwords around that and the research that um I did around this as well and I think that um you might have also seen as well is that a lot of this I think stems from the business environments that have evolved over time um back in say like the 1950s or 60s as it were we were we lived in a very much a transactional um era as it were in terms of business relationships where the Three core players were the customer the sales and the support sometimes um interconnect but not so much but what
• 03:30 - 04:00 we've seen over um these periods is the shift to more customer Centric models where the customers are more empowered um with their Solutions or with their services so how do you make that connection as well so I think what's generally happened over time in summary is you've got these functions Business Development and you've also got customer success that have almost been overlaid um in between these to try and bridge the gap between sales support and the customer um and but then this obviously is then evolving even further
• 04:00 - 04:30 particularly with the advances in technology and AI automating a lot of the processes that we would um typically be responsible for um and so I think it's it's very much um a product of our environment that actually we we almost have um had to put these roles in but without actually having a universal definition of those as well so that's I think where it comes from I I think I don't know if you would agree with that totally totally and actually because
• 04:30 - 05:00 well I remember the first time I heard about customer success um I was working for a SAS company and it was really a new it was really a new job title it didn't really exist before and I'm talking more or less about 2018 2017 2018 uh so it was really something new and we just started it I remember my friend Simona became our first customer success manager uh whereas before she was in Customer Support so we were kind of navigating a little bit the differences between the two um can you tell us a little bit more about really
• 05:00 - 05:30 what is customer success in essence and then how it is different from customer service yes absolutely so in many ways um if we talk about the difference first between service and success um what we typically Define as customer support or customer service is very much a reactive um process whereby something happens and then Gathering the evidence and the information about what's happened be it a service request or an issue then this is then investigated retrospectively and
• 05:30 - 06:00 in reaction to that um that point what the knock on effect typically and traditionally used to be of that is that if the customer was not supported in in a certain way then there would be an increased chance that they would just take their business elsewhere so what customer success I think tries to do in that regard is to be proactive about that and remove that and lower that risk of customers moving moving their business elsewhere um but moreover as well it's about um delivering direct and
• 06:00 - 06:30 visible benefits um to that customers which they can see tangible value from as well so if if it's a um let's say it's a SAS company the implementation of that software could be the direct benefit could be a reduced in uh cost to that particular Department it could be much more efficient processes that previously would be much more manual as well so really a customer success in that sense is about delivering um direct and visible benefits to um that
• 06:30 - 07:00 particular business unit that has bought the product service or offering that that they have acquired there mhm right so it's really more about uh let's say the productivity right that customer success people have versus uh uh customer support and and like you know how would the typical day look like for someone working customer success so if you have to be proactive and so on like how do you choose which customers you should talk to how to prioritize them and really what it is that you do with these customers as well that's a very good question actually I think actually
• 07:00 - 07:30 that boils down to one of the key words and why um there's a distinction I think between customer success and other roles is it's a strategic role and ultimately it's about being um able to look at um your set list of customers as a typically the way the customer success organizations are looked at and run them almost like your own miniature business as it were and looking at the list of customers and understanding okay if I were to be able to show the value to this high value customer
• 07:30 - 08:00 um over a period of time would they have a higher chance of renewing for two to three years of business or would there be more chance of me building a higher use case um with a smaller um player in the in the in my field to try and Elevate them and grow them as it were so very in very in many ways there's almost a crossover I guess between the definitions if you like in in terms of what a customer success would do to where a business development person will take tasks and processes to develop and
• 08:00 - 08:30 Implement um growth opportunities in in a more sustainable way so this is very much there's there's almost like a if you like um crossover almost like a bit of a twinning as it were between the two functions as it were so what's very interesting I think and telling about that is that and I talked about the segmentation between transactional models and more integrated models is why do we Silo those those two as as distinct as well are is there crossover and also is there areas where there there they're more
• 08:30 - 09:00 distinct very good and you know like how did you end up in this field of work right because again it's a let's say relatively new job right so what was your background before uh working customer success certainly so I actually started u my career in the support side of things so um as a linguist um a graduate so I did French and German at University um I was hired as a customer support agent in English French and German and I got got promoted then into
• 09:00 - 09:30 the sales team of that organization as well where I was effectively a customer success manager and they called it various different titles at the time so there was a account development executive was one of the titles that was attributed to it at the time so in many ways what that gave me was actually a little bit of um a flavor of both sides of the coin where you had the supportive side but also the the Strategic business side and bringing those two together was how um I ended up doing a lot of the function of customer success even though
• 09:30 - 10:00 it was it customer success in orbit name at that time and then fast forward only four years was when customer success as a title came about I think when in in certainly in um the UK markets where where I was working as well so that was really the origins of it as well and how that there was that crossover between doing support and success um sorry support and um sales as it were and from that that sort of grew into to a customer success per um role as it
• 10:00 - 10:30 were all right yeah and that's a bit the case also that I mentioned right about my friend she was us in customer support and then she became customer success but you know like it seems like um customer success and you mentioned that you know in the in the way your job title was approach right there was strategic account management and so on and I do see some similarities actually in the what we would call like more traditionally strategic account management and customer success right so in what way are they different if they they are or is customer success is
• 10:30 - 11:00 customer success just another way to call that yes so this is the the interesting debate because often what I had since found in my experience is that you'll do a lot of the traditional customer success activities of trying to um develop an existing relationship bringing value to that particular customer um and making sure that they are in a position where they are um ready to grow as it were what I find interesting as well is that you've got two scores of thought one is that um the
• 11:00 - 11:30 growth of the of a particular customer should exclusively belong to sales as it were or in some cases what would be called Business Development where customer success manager would bring in a salesperson to close the short-term deal um in my in my experience though I'm I always wonder whether we could almost Miss we almost miss a trick a little bit in allowing customer success um Executives to actually develop their own business and be able to go out and
• 11:30 - 12:00 sell because often they are tied to sales organizations um I've for one had numerous um rounds where I was part of a sales team and had sales training but of course the responsibility of the sale goes to the account development executive or the or the account manager per se so in many ways it's it's up to organizations to and their discretion to how they want to to manage it but I think typically what you find is obviously you'll have dedicated sales teams to have individual comp plans
• 12:00 - 12:30 versus customer success who is more organizationally focused as well and work work in as a team so in many ways I think there's an open question in that sense about um should should we be almost um keeping customer success within a certain parameter particularly with the um you know the Crossovers that we're seeing not just within Cs and BD but also within kind of the support sales the operation that's becoming more and more integrated and particularly more and more complex should we be
• 12:30 - 13:00 allowing more freedom I guess is a question I think to ask to customer success professionals yeah and that's a very good question to us right because it seems like uh I mean it is different from customer support because in indeed customer support is really about you know solving issues right when the customer has some and is very much reactive and so on but then if customer success people are really supposed to be in proactive and talking to customers and discovering more needs and trying to upset crell and so on seems to be maybe there is a little bit of lack of uh uh
• 13:00 - 13:30 training especially because it looks like many people that work in customer success they actually come from customer support so they don't really have this uh commercial uh training or background if we want right really more sales oriented um is there a challenge uh in that sense and if so how would you fix that well most definitely and this is part of the reason that um the agree was set up actually was because whilst there are organizations that do dedicated customer success certification and
• 13:30 - 14:00 training as it were there isn't a kind of universal way of um that or Universal recognized framework of what customer success is and does you go to one organization and it will be more support focused you might have some teams and this is the case where where I have seen as well where the customer success team will have one operative who is more focused on the technical implementation one success operative who is focused purely on support and one who will work as an account manager as a across different different accounts one that
• 14:00 - 14:30 will work with within with the renewals and Commercial um others that might work across the feedback side of it so this is part of the the the framework that we created as well within agrio is um which we call SF so it focuses on four core competencies of success support use return on investment and feedback which are the four elements that are key indicators and leading indicators really not just for the customers that are using the product and services but also
• 14:30 - 15:00 on the the the vendors that are providing them as well are they giving the right support are they giving um the good um means to use their products and services and are they delivering return on investment and giving the the feedback from that as well so these these the kind of four things that I think um are often missed because um like you say there is a sort of a a if you like a green field of what could be class as customer success or what could be class as as business development in that sense so that's where I I think the challenge lies very good and you know
• 15:00 - 15:30 talking a little bit more about agrea right and what you do and now just explained us this framework but how do you operate and first of all what type of clients do you work with and then what do you do for them because you do both consultancy and training obviously uh being from the school I'm more interesting on the training side right but uh uh tell us a little bit more about agree and how you operate it yeah absolutely so AA actually in many ways is a bit of a um a bit like the customer success um uh organization as it were is
• 15:30 - 16:00 very much a green field in terms of who can access that that kind of service as well because customer success um can be is obviously it's typically and traditionally found within SAS companies but the customers of those are very much multi sector so I've worked with um major major financials uh corporates governmental organizations um some small and mediumsized businesses um and even some sort small retailers as well sort of far and wide as well that uh or sort of been more uh remote um reaches as
• 16:00 - 16:30 well so so the the idea of the of it is that um the the customer base can be is very very broad broad spatter but the application um can be more specific depending on the specific um alignment that is required between customers and also between the um the actual vendors Sal so that's one of the the ways we operate is that we recognize that it's actually important to have uh um strategic alignment between customer
• 16:30 - 17:00 vendor and also the third parties so hence why we do an alignment um sort of workshop and dedicated kind of follow-up services and sort of a consultancy based um approach as well where we come in and we act as a dedicated partner to build a customer from just a um a sold customer to a partnership and then obviously training around that as well which is actually seeks to recognize and identify where we've come from um and this is part of the agree train courses well so where you have um the transactional
• 17:00 - 17:30 relationships we talked about how we've evolve to a point where we need to actually have some sort of unified framework around customer success and and business development in as well so that's that's where it comes from big and how does your training works so is it really customized to the company or is there let's say an off-the-shelf course that people could take to learn more about customer success how does that work yes certainly so there's an off the Shar course um that is this the entry point as it were so to to enable
• 17:30 - 18:00 people to um ascertain firstly the the understanding of where we've come from and where we're going and then the training of of the the initial framework but then um that can then be um brought out and scaled up to organizations that want to um have wider training for their for their groups um so then and then this can Fe be then FedEd into a broader Alignment Service where customers can look at their um strategic relationships across their customer bases and understand where there's strength and where there's potential opportunity and
• 18:00 - 18:30 then building that up into a consultancy service so it's a tiered approach as it were right FR down end user who can sort of get a a little bit of a an insight into what it's like to do customer success and how to apply the uh the rationale behind customer success and then uh build it up into something more tangible as well perfect and you know like if we think a little bit more about the relation between Business Development and customer success right so obviously there are a few things that I think kind of overlap a little bit uh
• 18:30 - 19:00 I'm thinking specifically for example if you're a business development Pro in a small company and then and you are the only Business Development Pro or you're the founder well obviously you're going to be uh working on the entire workflow right which means really from generating awareness up to really uh building relationships and maybe upselling CR selling and so on um so what is really this relationship between Business Development and customer success in a bit of a bigger company right where actually there is more of a split of
• 19:00 - 19:30 responsibility and you know everybody's doing their little part how do they collaborate together yeah absolutely so I think really um what and what we Advocate as well is that it's got to be um have it got to be kind of unified in terms of what Frameworks you're working towards as well so ultimately customer success can be seen as an Business Development they're not just roles but there can also be philosophies as well so when you're in when you're talking in a bigger company as well um you have to
• 19:30 - 20:00 decide as as a company is this a job a philosophy or a role that I'm applying for for those and it can be all all of the above as well so and when there's Business Development and customer success to working together you'll find that there is business growth that that's the ultimate goal ulate so I think within a large organization um first you has to Def you have to define whether there is that um you know that segmentation between philosophy role and job apply those jobs and roles then
• 20:00 - 20:30 within the organization but then if you have a unified framework in which BD and uh customer success can work towards um for the benefit of that particular customer that's all C group of customers or SE or industry sector then from that then what you can see is more tangible results and more long-term results and I think this is what's key and to not is that it's got about it's about um putting in strategic long-term um measures that can help with with the
• 20:30 - 21:00 growth in the long run so I think also um in and then the the key thing there as well that I touched upon as well is do you want to Silo these different functions that ultimately have been trying to achieve the same thing or it can fre to cross them over does the the job title of it as it were of customer success and BD have the opportunities for crossover as it were so one of the things that um previously I I've looked at as well is the idea of um vendor customer ecosystem management as well
• 21:00 - 21:30 somebody who's overseeing not just the customer to vendor relationship but the whole system in in which it operates and so does everyone feed into to that sort of system um I also wrote an article um entitled The Comedian job um and it's touches on some recent discourses around how customer success May in some in some quarters is is having um almost a shelf life as it were in terms of it its function and whether it's the modernization needs to to shift on there
• 21:30 - 22:00 so I think really there's the organizations um need to be cognizant that yes there is still a place in for these these separated in disting distinct roles but they have to be mindful that as time progresses they're going there going to be more and more crossover um and so more scope for them to marry up of those roles as well which will ultimately incre lead to increased efficiency within those organizations and customer success is it just a ro you know for Tech comp specifically SAS because that's pretty
• 22:00 - 22:30 much the use case I know and that's also like the first time I heard about customer success it was really in that environment so is it really prerogative just for tech companies or do you think every company should have a customer success manager at the very least one well I think in many ways um you could apply customer success to many principles and and sectors as well um I also I would go even further to say that the principles around customer success could you could apply to other other sectors as well so could you have let's
• 22:30 - 23:00 say in a public sector domain could you have public success management where um somebody oversees the implementation of Public Services very um in an effective way using some of the principles of customer success so there is a very much and again this is where I think actually there is a bit of a ubiquity around customer success that has come about the other thing I would also caveat as well is that in response to customer success one of the things we also seeing is vendor success management so the the
• 23:00 - 23:30 management of customer success the other way whereby vendors can so easily chop and change between service providers um not just uh from the perspective of SAS companies but also from the other kind of IT solutions in particular but they can they look at that and they say well what's the value that I'm getting back from that and what can I do to manage that so so in many ways what's happened is is that you have customer success management is being vendor success manager and vendor success manager is
• 23:30 - 24:00 being customer success manager and you have this sort of ping pong effect that comes into play so in in to come back to your question about whether everywhere could have customer success yes should they is very much Up For Debate and I think the discourse suggests that given that some organizations are talking about moving away or evolving away from customer success it seems unlikely that that's going to happen but there's no there's there's something that says to me it could happen but in a in a different guys going forward and that's
• 24:00 - 24:30 interesting I didn't uh hear well obviously I'm not really that much into customer success I do have a lot of friends actually that work on it they're part of communities and so on obviously I know you but I'm not really that much into this field so what's the story that you know some companies want to get rid of it in favor of what if they get rid of customer success absolutely so in the turn of the Year there was a debate online and um you can look it up by Maple um and it had the founder of gainsight uh Nick meta um was one of the
• 24:30 - 25:00 participants there and he was um on there debating um about whether in customer success um has had its time as it were so there was a for and against debate uh that we're seeing that in many ways what's probably happened in in some respects is the the application of customer success has been typically looked at through the prism of metrics and looking at um you know key in performance indicators whether a customer has a health score an NPS score
• 25:00 - 25:30 of an eight or a 10 or if it looks green and then questions are then ask why then why is it that um a customer who has an MPS score of 10 or a nine or eight is still churny well it's got nothing to do with the budget that that particular customer has um the analogy I like to use about that being a bit of a sports fan is it's a bit like um let's say your team is uh going for the trophy they win all their matches but they so does their rival but that rival scores one more
• 25:30 - 26:00 goal or one more basket let's let's just say so there's no guarantee of winning or win of or gaining success in that regard so that's why I think it's become such a competitive field um to to to deal with really pain that's interesting I'm going to check it out I'm uh I'm always up for some uh good gossip and pmics online so I'm going to look for that but moving on a bit on another topic which obviously is uh I mean it has an impact on every aspect of Our Lives professional or not and it's
• 26:00 - 26:30 obviously AI so how do you uh how do we see AI impacting customer success how it is changing this field as of today it's the impact is massive and I think like many sectors um the purpose of AI I think is going to lead to higher degrees of automation for a lot of the manual processes that often used to traditionally um take up a lot of the customer success resource so that would probably involve some of the initial
• 26:30 - 27:00 Handover as well so in terms of onboarding customers and S of you know there's obviously a degree of automation that already exists in terms of um of video content and automating um uh the the onboarding process and sending sort of in uh informed information to that but I think also um when you look at one of the the key roles that customer success is supposed to do is which to ascertain value by conducting business reviews that could be on a quarterly or monthly or sort of um in-person basis I
• 27:00 - 27:30 think there will be more automation that will um take over that as well whereby the qbr if you like becomes almost um an automated bulletin as it were that it get sent is and then dis discussed um at length rather than a kind of formalized meeting where everything is looked at retrospectively so many ways I think it has huge potential to make the role more proactive than it already is and certainly replace some of the elements
• 27:30 - 28:00 to it but obviously there's there's a long way to go before it's replacing some of the CRM systems that are vital really for for understanding um where the customers are because let's let's not forget it's it's one thing to have the CRM systems that um sometimes will have all the data sometimes won't but I think in many ways we need to see wait and see what happens in terms of how the CRM systems and the AI speak to each other MH mature that becomes I think will be a real determinant of where we
• 28:00 - 28:30 go as as a as a function very interesting yeah and because well obviously you mentioned right on boarding is uh uh probably like there was a lot of potential right to to make that and make it a little bit smoother as a process right because I remember when I was working in this SAS company it was always a little bit of an issue you know like you had this client and I was like okay but when do we pass it over after they sign the contract or should they go earlier and then are we sure that the customer success manager is talking to them and you know then
• 28:30 - 29:00 they always have these problems and they there's a back and forth you know so I do think that definitely AI can solve like uh some of these issues but really if we look at the let's say the top true responsibilities of customer success managers um how do you see AI uh working together with the Cs managers on these top three top five responsibilities yeah absolutely so I think um like I say I think there will be higher Automation in terms of um being able to better
• 29:00 - 29:30 understand the data points of a particular Customer because I think one of the things that we haven't um necessarily cracked but in some we have is the this idea that more usage for example of of a SAS product might lead to higher um chances of renewal and it doesn't necessarily have that into play so I think where the AI can come in and help is actually bring in that broader picture as it were so in so bring bringing in for example wider media
• 29:30 - 30:00 sources or you know Financial results within um the metrics of uh the individual use of that particular customer or that that particular um product or service as well so I think there's there is an element where it can UMO you know broaden the scope a little bit of of what um that capability is um I think also um when we talk about kind of the Val the sort of generating more value I think which is one of the key pieces um AI can certainly help to
• 30:00 - 30:30 alleviate the the workload of a customer success professional to enable them to focus more strategically on those particular accounts um rather than be bogged down in sort of General admin task um but obviously that's going to evolve as well so I think in in many ways there's potential for an AI uh capability that can give predictive analysis about whether it's uh customer will or W renew and whether it's worth pursuing a certain strategic angle who who to contact as it as as well so this is the other thing and then if you take
• 30:30 - 31:00 it from the the vendor perspective as well I talked about how they are also vendor success managing in in in all well what's to stop them applying the similar principle whereby they are saying they they could even do it today where they could go into an a about say tell me the top 10 providers of this particular service that I'm most interested in tell me why this one has the benefit of ease of use why has this one got um better support and all of those kind of things as well so really it's it's about not just um embracing
• 31:00 - 31:30 the AI technology but very very much you have to be be mindful that the venders will coton on to this as well and will leverage more and more of the AI capability themselves to be able to get deliver better um you know implementations as well from from their perspective yeah yeah very good and actually you touched upon a topic which I think it's super relevant for business developers as well which is really uh the how do you prioritize customers right and I think it's in particular
• 31:30 - 32:00 about those Business Development Pros you know that work in smaller companies so they're actually responsible for the entire workflow no and sometimes it's really difficult to balance you know looking for new business working with partners and you know doing 10,000 other things and of course also follow up with your customers make sure that you are in touch with them and so on now when I think about it and my advice for students is always to obviously focus on uh the bigger clients and the ones you know with the highest potential let's say but sometimes it's not the right
• 32:00 - 32:30 strategy either right so how do you um maybe you have some tips you know based on your experience on how to prioritize customer uh communication basically so how often should you contact them for example if you want them to renew just as an example yes that's right I think it's and and it's it's kind of like if you if you will it's almost like a a million dollar question in some to some organizations this this idea of high touch versus low touch and some people you it's often the typically the case
• 32:30 - 33:00 where you find the high touch customers will want to be low touch and the t low touch customers will want a bit more care and attention as it well so I think in many P practices you have to um apply best judgment as to in terms of what the the the like the need payoff is between um the investment of time and that's I think this is one of the things that is really crucial actually is um balancing the investment of time given given to a specific customer versus the amount of
• 33:00 - 33:30 time you have to build that relationship so I think one of the key metrics that's often overlooked is not just not just the the metrics of are the customer using it or or they happy or they support it it's how much time they've got left in the relationship so if they've got if you got a customer that is low touch but they've got two months left to run of their contract and you don't know whether they're going to continue business with you I would say there are higher um priority in many cases than a you know the highest value
• 33:30 - 34:00 contract that you might have that's got two years left to run so you still got two years of of of Runway to to to that so this is why um um as part of the framework that we we adopt as well is the return on investment as well and looking at um so how long have you got within that um time frame to deliver that return on investment that can bring U more tangible results and I think obviously then when you prioritize it in that way you you um you then can have a plan as it were and you almost have a diary and you can and you can even bring
• 34:00 - 34:30 in some AI take take capability to that as well if you want where you're almost diarising the interactions you have with a particular customer where you can say right this High touch customer I'm going to speak with them on a weekly basis for the first three months of their relationship and then I'm going to breach this to two weeks and then bring it as a on demand to just make sure that they're they're okay and sometimes they become self-sufficient because the ultimate go I think is to if and and what matter as true customer success is
• 34:30 - 35:00 if the customer is successful without your input almost that you feel you that's when you know you've done your job to the the vest capability and if you go over and above that they're fantastic but obviously you have to be careful not to um as it were pester um certain customer for want of a better word um because then they might just see they might see through that as okay they're pestering me because they want more business or more from me um and so you have to be you have to be conent of that that you know like I say there is
• 35:00 - 35:30 also vendor success management that goes the other way from customer success management as well very interesting and um well I'm I have to say I'm very happy because all our guests they're very talkative and uh I could have like 10,000 questions as well but I noticed we're almost on the one hour mark so that's uh that's good of course for those of you listening if you want us to keep talking more just let us know in the comments and then we get Jonathan back again but just you know to uh finish on a nice note you know what do
• 35:30 - 36:00 you think are the top three things that business development Pros can copy from customer success managers and vice versa yeah absolutely so I think like we T touched upon I think um in many respects There is almost um no distinction I think between the the goal of business developers and customer success to develop and build relationships that are long-term and strategic and ultimately lead to more business so in many ways I think if you are a dedicated BD
• 36:00 - 36:30 professional or a dedicated customer success professional I would actively encourage you to speak to each other about what you what synergies you have within your role it's a huge development opportunity for both sides as well to be able to understand where one can develop um understanding of maybe more traditional closing techniques or perhaps more kind of strategic relationship building techniques and prioritization so I I think absolutely you know see yourself almost as two sides of the same coin in some respects or maybe even um you know one side of of
• 36:30 - 37:00 of of of a point it's it's is I say there is very much um the opportunity to grow from there but I think also recognizing as well that you and you Al as and I say when I say you BD and customer success you all play a part in one organization success and also so be mindful of of that and actually um Advocate and Champion that um your Mutual success will lead to your growth and your business success so that's something that's a really strong
• 37:00 - 37:30 powerful case to take to leadership to be able to um you know not just develop your career but also to develop the relationships you have with your customers and also um you know and and the final tip I would also say as well in kind of the automation say is both of you go and see your customers and go to go collaborate and go together as it were so because because then you both can get the Insight that you both need and you both to both um do your jobs really effectively um and I think only any growth can come from that really
• 37:30 - 38:00 great Jonathan thank you so much uh personally I learned a lot and I'm sure that also our listeners uh feel the same now obviously our mission at the B school is to um help more people get into business development but maybe after this conversation some people want to give a try to customer success so let's say if someone wants to learn more and wants to get in touch with you what is the best way for them to do that absolutely so they can go to um www. agrea cs.com um and they can um fill in
• 38:00 - 38:30 the train uh form as well so they can sign up to agreer train um to get a taster or a flavor of customer success practice in terms of and this looks at the traditional kind of pathway from um the transactional relationships to the the world that we live in today and how you can navigate that um that process um and then if you're wanting sort of further advice I also offer dedicated um Training Services as well for those who are looking for coaching or mentoring within the customer success domain as
• 38:30 - 39:00 well um and obviously be happy to um refer those as well to looking to cross over into the BD sector as well because I think ultimately um like I say our mutual success um is is is key so I think ultimately um feel free to go and do that as well absolutely so for those of you who want to switch from CS to Business Development do check out the BD school for our business development certification program Jonathan thank you so much this was fun and uh well as mentioned I hope to have you again in
• 39:00 - 39:30 one of our conversations or maybe on a webinar so very happy to do that thank you so much again uh and well I'll see you soon everybody listening thank you so much for staying with us until the end and of course next week we'll be back with a new episode so just make sure to subscribe and activate the notifications so you won't miss any of our future episodes everyone thank you so much bye Jonathan thank you L see byebye subscribe and listen to more episodes of let's talk BD podcast