Revolutionizing Digital Customer Experience with Micro-Learning and Ed-Tech with Jen Jackson of Litmos | Episode 013

Speaker 1: 0:25

If you have a customer that is like consistently finding bugs, like if you need a quality person, try to go recruit whoever is breaking your software.

Speaker 2: 0:35

And, once again, welcome to the Digital Customer Success Podcast. I'm, alex Turgovich, so glad you could join us here today and every week as I seek out and interview leaders and practitioners who are innovating and building great scale CS programs. My goal is to self educate and bring you along for the ride so that you get the insights that you need to evolve your own digital customer success program. If you want more info or you need to get in touch or sign up to get the latest updates from us, go to DigitalCustomerSuccesscom. But for now, let's get started with today's show, and welcome to episode 13 of the Digital CS Podcast. It's so nice to have you back.

Speaker 2: 1:14

This week I got a chance to sit down with Jen Jackson, who is a customer experience leader at Litmos currently, so she spends a lot of her day focusing on education technology and its place in the world. Jen has a ton of experience post-sale, specifically in support roles, brings that expertise to her role at Litmos and also to us here in this episode, where we spent a lot of time talking through what she's doing to build out her digital motions at Litmos and also how her customers are integrating education technology into their own digital flows. We talk a little bit about micro learning and how that can be a part of a digital learning and performance support strategy. We talk a little bit about career progression and how support has essentially become the new mailroom as a starting point for growing within a company, and we spend a little bit of time talking about data and utilizing data for insights. Specifically, she has some really good insights into scoring off of support metrics. So I hope you enjoy this conversation with Jen Jackson. I know I sure did. This is for those of you listening. This is going to be our second slash, third attempt at recording this due to technical difficulties, so hopefully we'll get through an entire episode this time.

Speaker 2: 2:38

I wanted to welcome to the podcast Jen Jackson, who is a fellow Texan based not too far from the Austin area. I'm in the Austin area, so we're enjoying the summer heat at the moment. Jen, you've got a long history in post sales roles and we're going to get into all of that. I'm excited to have you on the podcast because you're currently SVP of global customer experience at Litmos, so you're kind of combining the best of kind of two of my passions, which is customer experience and also customer education, so I'm really excited to get into the weeds with you on those things. But first, jen, welcome to the podcast. Would love for you to give us a little bit of your background, your CS origin story, and tell us a bit more about yourself.

Speaker 1: 3:33

Yeah, absolutely. I always like to start with. I grew up in the contact center and I realized that I like solving problems for people and talking to people, so that kind of morphed into this career, and definitely older than customer success as a name, not a practice, and really, really excited about digital customer success. I think I'm a little bit of a nerd, so bringing in systems to help us do a lot of the pro activity and help drive some of the same outcomes is really exciting to me.

Speaker 2: 4:08

Go figure, we actually use the systems around us to help us out, right?

Speaker 1: 4:12

Yeah, that's crazy talk.

Speaker 2: 4:13

Yeah, exactly Now you, you know I mentioned your fellow texts. You're actually a native text in which I think is a rarity these days, correct?

Speaker 1: 4:26

So in other states they use terms like unicorn, but in Texas we use armadillos. So yeah, I'm an armored opossum, which is an armadillo, so born and raised.

Speaker 2: 4:37

That's amazing. That's amazing and you know you said you kind of grew up in the context center. Talk to us a little bit more about that and what kind of roles you had there, and then also kind of how those inform your life today and your role today.

Speaker 1: 4:54

Yeah, Well, I was fortunate enough that when Mr Michael Dell started building in Round Rock, a bunch of us high schoolers kind of got scooped up to try some programs and so I got to do a little bit of an internship on the support floor and then I liked it and so I ended up coming back to it after school. So I was a tier one agent, worked in their consumer and in their business, and so I got the challenge of helping. You know, folks find the power button and understanding the criminals is actually not the thing the cat chases, but it has buttons on it and all those kind of things.

Speaker 1: 5:35

And you know also the working with the IT veteran who'd been doing it longer than I'd been alive and was really shocked to hear a female voice on the other end of the line it was a huge learning curve, but I will tell you that I think my approach to solving problems and everything that I kind of use to tackle problems probably stems most from those times, because there's no screen sharing, there's no going to the house, it's you and this person on the phone and we can either work against each other and build a wall between us, or we can work with each other and end up, you know, virtually shoulder to shoulder, tackling the problem together. So I had to get really creative when trying to solve things with no eyes, virtually.

Speaker 2: 6:21

Yeah, I'm sure I too spent a short stint a short five-year stint at Dell, not in contact center and not in support. But it's staggering how many people knew that work, that I worked at Dell, thought that I could solve their computer problems.

Speaker 1: 6:41

Oh, absolutely Like when we started the contact center and kind of transitioned to India. I went to India and spent quite a bit of time there and like the transition from the mentality that like you work at Dell, you must know all the answers, kind of in the US, to going to India or they're like this is very exciting and you know it's a very at the time was a very like sought after role and people were really kind of enamored by just a much different culture. But I was fortunate to get to learn and everything that I could in the center and then in India help cascade that and help build out some of the center. So I consider myself really fortunate. I was at Dell at the right time.

Speaker 2: 7:26

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's great. We alluded to it a little bit, or you alluded to it a little bit in your kind of introduction. I will say about what digital customer success really is, and I like to ask all of my guests you know what their definition of digital CSS? And you spoke a little bit already about you know actually utilizing our tools to make our you know, the folks we have on the team a little bit more efficient and driving efficiency. And I love that you're focused on the internal answer first, but, you know, would love kind of you expand a little bit on that and tell us you know, in your own words, what is your definition of digital CSS?

Speaker 1: 8:13

Well, I think I start from a place of what are the most meaningful engagements in the relationship and life cycle of a customer and what are the things that absolutely need to be Engaged by a human, driven by a human. And then what are the things that we can supplement the experience with strong technology to potentially deliver the same outcomes, like do I need a CSM to send an email or can I use a tool like GainSight to do a lot of proactive Notification, studying of use cases, things like that? And can I, can I use those programs so that the times that we are spending with customer are the most meaningful and the biggest thing for the buck and the value? And I always come back to it when I think of myself as a consumer.

Speaker 1: 9:02

Very rarely do I have an hour to give to a vendor. More than likely I have 30 minutes to give to a vendor and if they only get let's, you know we've got Introductions and closure right. So when you get down to it, you probably have 20 minutes at most. Like what are the most important things? You're gonna tell me in those 20 minutes that you couldn't have delivered it in the other way, and so when I approach it, I think of it very supplementary, very assistant, like how can we enhance the experience? And I think, with the tools that we have today and with the evolution of AI and all of the Things that we are doing to help digitally, I just think we can make things so much better. So I think for me it's just the next net, the next Logical step in the experience right.

Speaker 2: 9:47

I love what you said about really making those, those live encounters that you have with your customer I won't say in person, because what is in person these days, but you know that, like the, the actual encounters you have with your customer making them as valuable as possible. So you're not wasting time on the fluff, you're actually, you know, using the information that you've gleaned from the customer in a productive way and making them feel seen and heard.

Speaker 1: 12:45

Yeah, I think. I think that's a it's a, it's a good point. Human to human is Much different than what it probably was a couple years ago, but I think you know we promote very much a remote culture and so I love that we can do that with our customers and still provide the value, and I mean it's not just Productivity, but it's also furthering of education. Like you know, part of the things that we're taking into our digital experiences Isn't just how do I ensure you're realizing value, aware of changes, but how can I educate you and how can I help you educate who you need to, whether internal, because a lot of times with SAS it's B2B With a C somewhere in that right whether it's an internal customer, an external customer, so it acts very much like B2B to C. So I'm always thinking not only what can we do to help you as an organization reach that value, but how do we help you cascade that beyond, because very often there is a beyond right.

Speaker 2: 13:41

Yes, why I hope there's a beyond. Yeah, yeah, and this you know you were at pulse this year as, I think, both a vendor and just a, you know, an observer, if you will, and I know that your pulse was very, very focused on, on digital, where in past years it's been a little bit more focused on, you know, csm, efficacy and those kinds of things, and I was curious what, what your Kind of takeaways were from attending pulse. You know, baby, both as an observer and a vendor.

Speaker 1: 14:18

Yeah, so I I love pulse. I have tried to go to every single one that I can go to and I think I've been to a significant amount of them. Obviously, none of us went the the year of the plague beginning, but my two takeaways were Definitely leaning more into digital to help me scale and to scale at the rate I need to to facilitate the growth. The other part is the utilization of AI, not as a Replacement, but always as a supplement. How can I do more?

Speaker 1: 14:56

In my mind it's how can I use the information available, be available to me to do better, to know our customers better, to you know, understand their use case and make suggestions or features or recommendations that align with where their business is going? How can I enable that CSM to have the most amount of information available to them with ease so that they can make the most out of those Interactions and they can know what they're talking about and things like that. And so you know, really, in my strategy and kind of what I'm doing for Planning this year, with rolling into a new digital program, I'm looking a lot at what can we do with the data available to us, and I think probably I might have been thinking about that prior to polls, but not to the extent I am now, so for me, it's were probably the biggest takeaways.

Speaker 2: 15:47

It's cemented, it's almost like validation in a way, like hey, we've been dabbling in this stuff for, for you know, a few years now and everybody kind of is kind of like. It's kind of like a line in stand has been drawn. It's like, okay, we gotta go do this now for sure, for sure, you are currently at litmus, I I think in in our previous chats. One of the things we have in common is that you know, I've implemented litmus before in a previous professional life. You did some litmus Implementations before. Actually, you actually use those litmus implementations to get you a gig, which I am envious of. But you know, you see, you're at litmus, which is which is a is a great LMS. For those of you who are, who are listening, you know a lot of cool kind of customer education features and whatnot. But I'd love to know you know what? What are you doing currently to build out your digital, your digital programs at litmus? And also, maybe, how are your customers using using litmus as part of their digital engagements as well?

Speaker 1: 16:54

Yeah, I think so. I am a former customer, so I do think that fits me at a greater advantage, because, as a Customer leader, I not only need to be responsible for making sure my internal teams are moving as fast as engineering and product Understand what's coming training, onboarding, those types of things but our customers as well, and so that's why I've brought it into my organizations in the past. What I'm doing differently here, as I'm building it into the digital experience, meaning, you know, you don't have to Attend a webinar, a group training schedule, something like that. I'm really trying to bring the training into, you know. Oh, hey, this trial was great, and now I want to extend this. You know, let's say, I've purchased it, whether it's like an e-commerce model or, as you know, either way, right, the two models you have either a salesperson is selling it to you or you're clicking through one of the two.

Speaker 1: 17:49

But what I want is as a part of the, the purchase process or whatever that is. Let's just focus on like an e-commerce model. Let's say I, I built this magical machine where you did a trial. It was amazing. You want to just turn that into a purchase.

Speaker 1: 18:05

What I want is for, as a part of our learning system, to say, like, okay, here are the how do I get started, what are the first three things I need to do? How do I do this? And like step through with the education and the content right there as a part of your process. So I'm not going to a different screen, I'm not going somewhere else, I'm not signing up for six hours of training, very Manageable, very kind of micro experience. Give me what I need to keep moving on the path to get to where I need to to solve the problem. And, you know, as I'm moving further into it, tell me about content or training that I can take, whether it be, you know, collateral, that I could read through really quick two minute video. You know something like that. And so we're really focusing on what I categorize as micro trainings. How can I learn on the fly while trying to solve a task? And, yes, we still after, like you know, traditional. You can kind of pop out and say, hey, I want to take, you know, an in-person training, or I want to do like some group sessions.

Speaker 1: 19:08

But when I'm thinking about the way people work today, we've got remote workers, we've got deskless workers, we've got people who are moving on the fly all different verticals. Everybody uses training in some capacity, whether it's complainants or Regist. You know regulations for their vertical and things like that. And so I'm trying to think, with our evolving workforce, how do we take continuing education and critical education and build it into the workflow, versus making a separate stream? And so, in talking to some of our customers, this is really attractive to them because not only are we remote, but our customers Are making that transition or have made the transition, and they're trying to figure out how to keep, you know, in compliance for security and you know regulatory things for health care and you know. Let's just think about nurses. We know that nurses are always taking continuing education. That is a part of their career. So how do we work with them?

Speaker 2: 20:00

micro learning- you know, as, as a, as a former I guess Once a learning nerd, always a learning nerd. But you know, I spent, has spent, a long kind of period of my career in learning and development. It was always the focus, you know, was always on. You know, your e-learning modules and your instructor led modules and those kinds of things and it started kind of morphing into let's make our content more modular and smaller and bite-size. And you know, I love where you're going with it in terms of like making it even Even smaller, even more digestible and and part of that natural digital journey to where Doesn't really, maybe it doesn't even feel like you're learning. You know you're, you're just it's, it's learning combined with performance support, maybe something like that, but I love that. Well, think about it from this perspective. In this generation, this age a lot of us have or do play video games.

Speaker 1: 20:56

What happens when you get to kind of next level? They don't pull you out and do a whole new tutorial, like when you come up to that action, they're like, hey, press up, if you want to jump, press, you know, you get it in the motion. In that they're not pulling you out to do a tutorial, and kind of. In my mind I'm thinking about it like that. So if I'm going to perform an action, it's a new action, I've never been here before. Why not walk me through it as a part of it? Versus, you know, saying, hey, you can't proceed until you go Complete this, you know, whatever the course looks like. And so I think that's kind of the mentality that I'm trying to bring into how we do things, because me, I will tell you, I am a very hands-on, I want to understand my technology, I want to dig into it, and if the answer To solving for something is I get have to go watch a 45 minute video, I will never watch the 45, yeah.

Speaker 1: 21:52

Yeah, yeah, anyone who will yeah, and so if you, however, have a pop-up or like a 15-second video that's like, go here, do this. If you need more information, go here. I am all in on that and I think most people are.

Speaker 2: 22:06

I think so too, and and I do think that there are a lot of orgs that are focused on things like that. Like you know, you're you're in product, you know guides and those kinds of things that that kind of have been a staple in sass for quite some time. But you know they're also focused, you know, on email campaigns and those kinds of things as well. But, but I do feel like there's probably some missed opportunity that you have insight to. With regards to the utilization of ed tech in in digital it, are there some specifics that you can kind of point to, where you you're often Like looking at other platforms and how they're doing it and wishing that they were doing something different, or or or some Some utilization of ed tech in a way that that most people just don't really think about.

Speaker 1: 23:02

Yeah, you know it's interesting. I had a good conversation when I was at Pulse. I love like the roundtables when they kind of bring people together and you know the the passing periods were all just like randomly sitting at tables talking. And the one thing that stands out to me is I Don't think that people consider ed tech or continuing education or you know Knowledge as a critical part of the business. I think very often it's. It's classified as oh, that's the system we take security, oh, that's the system we take our hip-hop training. You know what I mean? And yeah, people don't lean into the actual and I mean you could say this about all softwares, but people don't realize the actual value of you know ed tech type systems. I mean you can take your ed tech system, pull it into your onboarding, attach it to your HR system and it tracks all of your Training, your skills, your career path thing, all of that. Like I, I use it twofold one for Making sure that we all have the knowledge we need. But the second layer, internally, is that I use it for skill set tracking and Evolution of the development of the folks in our organization. So for me it's a critical right.

Speaker 1: 24:17

I have way too many people in my organization to be able to track it myself at a granular level, and you know very often I'm my I have to levels of leaders.

Speaker 1: 24:29

You know one's focused on the day to day, one's focused on, you know, kind of a little bit higher level.

Speaker 1: 24:34

And so having a system that can do that, when we get to that time where we're looking at growth, we're looking at performance, things like that, like like I've probably said 10 million times, I consider it critical because it does that for us and I don't think people know enough about that. I think, like I said, it gets simplified as just the compliance system. And so what I always like to tell leaders is if your organization has an EdTech program, you know, a litmus, an LMS, whatever you call it get with whoever owns it and see what other kind of potential it has, because more often than not the software you're searching for your organization already possesses. You just don't realize that you can do that, and so I generally encourage leaders, you know, if you don't have the time, but if you have an operations person or even a leader that's a little bit more on the tech savvy, go get exploratory with the software that you have, because you can probably bring in a lot of benefits. I was going to say bonus and benefits together. I think I'm creating one.

Speaker 2: 25:41

Yeah, I like it.

Speaker 1: 25:43

Yeah, but you can use it for yourself and you can use it for your customers, and so for me, I think it's kind of like a win-win and I just it's changing the mindset and changing the culture of not only using it for, like your must have, but creating that culture of learning. We all say when we're hiring, we want people who are curious, we want learners. Curious is another way for you know to say, basically learning, and so when you bring people in that are curious, you need to have a system that is helping them expand their knowledge and learn, and I think that's where EdTech comes in.

Speaker 2: 26:17

I couldn't have said that better myself. I you know. I do think that the internal enablement element is so often overlooked, where you know we spend time building out modules and flows and all that kind of fun stuff for our customers, but we don't necessarily put our internal folks through that and and nor do we maybe educate them on some of the things that we are doing that our customer facing, and so you know folks will get surprised on a QBR that something is the way it is or something like that.

Speaker 1: 26:49

So I think I think, because I come from like I say my, my, I cut my teeth in support. I think you know there's sometimes an old contact centers of past days there was that mentality of just being in support, like it's just a support job, there's no like next steps. And I've always thought that you know, in the 50s or 60s you would start in the mailroom and you would get to know the company and the process and the product and that's how you know mail folks would go from the mailroom to executive leadership. And to me, I think tech support today, the support organizations, the service organizations, are like that for for companies, and so I probably focus a lot to make sure that everybody in the customer organization from services to success to support, knows the value of them in the business and knows that they have next steps and that we're actively working to create that next step.

Speaker 1: 27:43

And for me, ed tech is what does that? I'm able to say, hey, listen, here are the skill sets, what are some things that you're interested in? We can go this way or that way. And for digital CX it's even more critical because we're bringing in folks who are supporting a large subset of customers in a one to many, and so for them to feel valued in the organization and not just a cog in the wheel, having that next step to say, okay, you can go from a CSM you know a digital CX person to an SMB CSM, or you know, you can move into services, you can go into support, and this is how these skills map out so that people feel engaged and are really, you know, interested in caring for their large book of business and still recognizing that we're growing their skill set so that they have long term potential, I think is is honestly critical, especially today, so career progression and to get to your next role?

Speaker 2: 28:45

no way, speaking of kind of innovation, we all get examples of people who do cool stuff, you know, and we like to highlight cool stuff and we like to highlight things that have gone well and, I think, the examples of that over the last few months, especially as there's been a hyper focus on digital. But I'd like to highlight maybe some things that people you know, orgs don't do well on occasion, because you learn almost as much from those instances as well. I'm curious what are some blunders that you see happen when folks are trying to, you know, get their digital motions up and running and I'm sure you've seen some some of this among your own customer base when they're trying to implement, you know, ed tech and into their orgs and even customer facing stuff. What are some typical blunders that you've run across there?

Speaker 1: 29:52

I think we think digital CX and we think, oh wonderful, this is going to be an operational savings, it's going to be a replacement to my staffing needs. When you come at it from that perspective, you're solely focusing on the economical benefits of you, the organization, but you're not thinking about the customer experience. I guess I have a footnote. Yes, as leaders of customer organizations, we are always thinking efficiencies, economics, how can we do more with less? How can we get better? But I think the blunder is thinking of it as a replacement, much like people get really excited about AI as a replacement, when really it's a supplemental, it's an enhancement, it's a how-to-do-it-is-better Right, exactly. I know I've seen and to some extent I've done it even myself is coming at it from that side. Instead of starting with okay, what's the experience? What do we want? The experience? Let's define the outcomes that we want and then that's worked backwards a little bit. Yes, there's going to be some economical benefit, but that can't be where you start or you're going to miss the most important part, which is the customer. At the end of the day, our job is to service and care, retain and grow our customers. We have to come at it from a different perspective versus just budget, I would say. The other part is not collaborating both internally within their business. Marketing generally has presence in SDR and BDR and chat and things like that, and so chat bots, and so to some extent, they have a little bit of a digital experience already built in.

Speaker 1: 31:41

I found great partnerships with CMOs that I've worked in in the past and just understanding what that digital engagement looks like with customers, things to stay away from. You don't want to over script, you don't want to over complicate. If somebody has to go through seven steps to do a thing, they're probably not going to do the thing, and so we have to think about that when we're thinking about what we're asking our customer to do, what their experience looks like, and then, like I said earlier, you need to define your outcomes. What do you want this experience to be for them? Is it proactivity and understanding about features coming? Is it solving a certain amount of problems on their own and making it simple?

Speaker 1: 32:27

You really have to approach it from that, and then I would say and I say this for every new thing that comes out there are so many different people who have tried and exactly what you said, failed and been successful at digital. You know I love when I see on LinkedIn customers or peers or connections in my network saying, hey, I'm thinking about doing this as anybody tried it and if you ever read the comments like it is the most beneficial I have ever, like it is my go to, like I love I'll search for a question on LinkedIn Somebody's probably already asked it and just reading through the comments, it's an incredible wealth of knowledge and I would say like I think we get so much in our heads trying to solve a problem we forget that other people have done this too and we should ask that question out loud.

Speaker 2: 33:15

It's so true. I mean, when you really think about it, linkedin is a giant knowledge base of you know, of things that have been done before, in kind of people trying to do what you've done before. Yeah, it's so true. And, and, and you know, the power of the comments section, especially on quote unquote, viral posts, is tangible for sure.

Speaker 1: 33:41

Yeah Well, and the other part, too, is you know if you have, if you've been on LinkedIn for any amount of time, your network is probably substantial and you don't see every post from every thread and tell you search. I'm connected with a lot of really amazing customer leaders who have been there and done that, and they have done everything that I've tried to do, so I use that as one of my treasure tools.

Speaker 2: 34:06

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The algorithm gets us though, man.

Speaker 1: 34:12

They do technology huh.

Speaker 2: 34:14

Exactly. I love everything that you've just brought to the table because there's there's some, there's some really valuable nuggets in there and and and I think you know, the spirit of this whole podcast is is to learn from each other as much as possible and learn learn as much from our failures as are or you know from our failures as our successes. So I appreciate you highlighting some of that, some of that as well, and speaking of kind of resources and education and what, not what, what's in your content diet, so to speak. Like, what are you paying attention to when it comes to books, podcasts, youtube and all of that to keep yourself fresh and engaged?

Speaker 1: 35:03

Well, first of all, I am that nerd that always has a stack of books on my nightstand and on my desk and I'm constantly reading. I'm always looking for books on different perspectives of service engagement. So I try to broaden it a little bit and not just look like for support success things, just service interactions. I love podcasts also and I am always listening to if I, as a matter of fact, I stopped a podcast to to do this but for me it's podcasts and books. I I'll be honest, I haven't got much into YouTube channels. That's probably an opportunity for me, but I have a couple of books that are kind of like my go to. I think I've shared a link with you. It has like the majority of them on there.

Speaker 2: 35:58

Yeah, and we'll put that in the show notes for sure.

Speaker 1: 36:01

And you know same thing with, with, with podcasts I've got. So I I'm like threefold, I'm like a people leader, a customer leader and I'm very operational. So I really like there's this podcast by Heather, our younger leadership with her. I like that. I listen to that a lot and I also like the game grow routine like that started when the pandemic started and I was kind of like in the beginning of that and I still use that. They have community, they have people, kind of same thing, and they kind of crowdsource topics to talk about, which I think is is important Because you know, one day we're talking about Sharon, the next day we're talking about scale, and it doesn't matter which element you're talking about in kind of the customer success arena, we're all figuring out how to digitize as much of it as we can. So I think it's it's relevant.

Speaker 2: 36:56

I haven't listened to a session where I've been like mm right and I was talking with Jeff the other day and it dawned on me just looking at the game grew retained podcast how much it's almost like an encyclopedia, if you will, because there is such a variety of topics On that, on that show, that you can really kind of get a taste for just about anything you know customer success or really just customer related. Yeah, I'm ready for your podcast.

Speaker 1: 37:29

I'm really excited to hear what other people's elevator pitch about customer success, digital things that they're doing, because every time I think that I have done as much research to where my brain is just full of whatever I find a conversation or content and somehow I find something that I've not even considered. So I'm, I'm, I'm ready to listen, I'm looking forward.

Speaker 2: 37:57

Yeah, it's, it's been interesting so far, you know, because everybody has a different, different flavor and comes comes to the table with a with a different set of experiences, backgrounds, and, you know, a set of challenges. You know there's there's been a couple of folks on that share a challenge that I have as well in in operating in a non SAS on-prem environment, which is a whole another set of challenges. You know, it's just like there's all these different angles that come to the table. So and and you know, I entered into this with the spirit of learning as much as possible, and so I'm super stoked to share it.

Speaker 1: 38:35

I think it's a good reminder too, though, that there still is a lot of good reminder, too, though, that there still is on-prem out there, because everything that you see is so geared towards SAS. It's almost like we forgot that there's another way to use software, and so I think it's a good reminder of that.

Speaker 2: 38:53

It is, and I actually think that generative AI is going to push us a little bit more towards on-prem, because there's a lot of data privacy concerns and so you know, we're going to see some local installations of you know, yeah, large language models. It's gonna be. It's gonna be interesting to see what happens, that's for sure.

Speaker 1: 39:15

I mean, if you'd asked any of us six, seven years ago if we thought we'd be fully remote and doing what we're doing, not one of us would have said that. So Never gonna happen not one of us would have predicted this, not even in a million years. So I think like the anything is possible.

Speaker 2: 39:34

Yeah, I totally agree. Um, who? Who would you want to give some kudos to and shout out to that's doing really cool things in digital CS right now?

Speaker 1: 39:45

so I Really enjoyed a vendor that I have not spent much time with and tell I went to pull support logic I. The one of the things that I love about support the most is the amount of data that you can get from it. Because you know rule number one and support system needs to be up. Rule number two you measure everything and and because you have so much data available to you, you're not always able to Curate it, cultivate it, use it to the fullest extent, because unless you've got a team of data analysts that can do nothing but geek out all day and I have yet to find a Peer that has that you don't have the ability to take advantage of the saw, the data that comes out of support that you want to. We all do the same Things. We look at top 10, we look at you know Trends, things like that.

Speaker 1: 40:32

But when I was walking through support logics demo and they were kind of showing me a different perspective with the data, I mean I Can't lie, I wish I had more budget this year because I Probably would have spent a little bit more time. But they're on my list for next year to kind of circle back a little bit once we get into that, because I've got good process, good data, good Utilization and decision-making from service data and success data, and you know I've got what I consider your core foundational from support. But I'd love to see what other information I could get out of that. So I'm definitely gonna explore that. And I say that's just because I like Tools that can take data I already have and help me make decisions not necessarily spit out a report and then I've got to go decide what to do about it. Right, things that can look at that and make recommendations. What I consider smart Software that helps me drive me in a direction is is really what interests me.

Speaker 2: 41:35

I would actually love your your insight on something quickly, because you know so much of the common thread that we have in tackling digital customer success problems is Data. You know data lies at the core of the analysis behind it and how we reach out and who we reach out to and and and who we engage with, what content, etc. Etc. Your, you have such a rich history in support and call center. I would, if you were going to build out, you know, a customer scorecard With support metrics, what would you focus on? You know, would you, would you be focused on? Obviously, the classics such as ticket volume and, like you know, escalations and all that kind of stuff or other other kind of cheat codes that you would put into your scorecard.

Speaker 2: 42:29

That's a good question put you on the spot.

Speaker 1: 42:31

Sorry, no, it's good, but it's actually something I'm talking about right now in my own business Because I'm building my health scores, because we're implementing, can't say so, and so I look at it a little bit differently. First of all, I like to Do a study of the customer segmentations, because I I think grouping by size helps a little bit in segments, because the way an enterprise software versus an SMB Engage will support it's gonna be different. One has an army to support it. One has Joe who stops in twice a month, right, like we have a couple of things to deal with there. So what I like to establish is kind of our baseline of communication.

Speaker 1: 43:12

Um, you know, obviously the first 90 days somebody goes live, it's a little bit different. You know, when you get into what I consider stabilization or cruising altitude with your software, I Want to know, like on a regular basis, how are we interacting, and so I'm not just looking for that to increase, but I'm also looking for that to decrease, because that could either be they are really getting solid in the software and they have less questions, but it could also be they're frustrated and they're not engaging anymore because I'm not stinging right.

Speaker 1: 43:43

It's not getting them what they need, and so I look at that. I also look at the types of questions that they ask. So if we're in like the how-to in the process and Understanding that, then I like to come in and say you know, can we do some training, can we do some supplementary there? Right, how can we help answer these questions? Maybe at a larger scale? Can we give you some content and help you drive that like your champion kind of help adoption throughout the business? Or Is it product use case that's a little bit different, outside of what we consider standard, and if that's the case, I want to get that information to product. I want product to understand the different ways our customers are using it, because there's the way you write it, the way you concept it and then the way our customers actually use it. And so I'm looking at the types of questions, the way that they're engaging.

Speaker 1: 44:36

Obviously, ticket volume, close rates, escalations those are important, but I think Probably less utilized is the actual use case and the types of questions they're asking, just as the product. Now, fine, if I'm releasing a feature, a new feature, every six weeks, then I'm probably always gonna have to write, but I think it's digging into more the why. I'm very interested in the why. That's what I look for, kind of, in health scores. That's probably a little different.

Speaker 2: 45:08

Yeah, that makes sense. I'm curious because we're retooling our health scores. We speak to one of the things I'm tackling this support metrics. So that's great to have your insight.

Speaker 1: 45:16

Thank you well, the thing I would tell you to is the support tickets that can't be resolved in support. So the ones that go to engineering or product, those are probably the critical ones, because those are the ones that you're gonna find the parts of the product that the customers are struggling with the most.

Speaker 2: 45:33

And if you have the highest predictor of churn too, I would imagine that's right.

Speaker 1: 45:36

And if you have a customer that is like consistently finding bugs, like if you need a quality person, try to go recruit whoever's breaking your software. Yeah, no, I, we also track. You know, the the issues we can't solve and support and then the resolution of those, because they, they definitely are indicators. You know, if people think that enhancement requests or bugs are going to black holes at some point or another. That's gonna be a discussion during renewal.

Speaker 2: 46:09

Exactly, yeah, absolutely Absolutely cool. I love it. I love it. Um, I I fully recognize that I am the thing that's standing between you and time with the kids, so I think what we will probably do is is wrap it up, but I really appreciate your time and I'm glad we could you know, third time's a charm and glad we could make it work this time. Where, where can people find you and engage with you?

Speaker 1: 46:35

Oh gosh, uh. Linkedin is probably the best source I I am as the worst About going you know two or three days and then I obsess and I'm on it like solidly, you'll see, like post after post for me, and then I'm quiet for a couple days. It's just a, it's a thing. But that's probably where I do the majority of Learning, conversating, networking, kind of looking for for things like that.

Speaker 2: 47:01

Thank you for joining me on this episode of the digital customer success podcast. If you like what we're doing or don't for that matter, consider leaving this review on your podcast platform of choice. You can view the digital customer success definition word map and get more information about the show at digital customer success calm. My name is Alex Turgovich. Thanks again for joining and we'll see you next time.