The Digital CX Podcast: Driving digital customer success and outcomes in the age of A.I.

Digital Customer Success with and Engineering Mindset with Bhavika Kochhar | Episode 032

January 09, 2024 Alex Turkovic, Bhavika Kochhar Episode 32
Digital Customer Success with and Engineering Mindset with Bhavika Kochhar | Episode 032
The Digital CX Podcast: Driving digital customer success and outcomes in the age of A.I.
More Info
The Digital CX Podcast: Driving digital customer success and outcomes in the age of A.I.
Digital Customer Success with and Engineering Mindset with Bhavika Kochhar | Episode 032
Jan 09, 2024 Episode 32
Alex Turkovic, Bhavika Kochhar

Send us a Text Message.

Bhavika Kochhar is one of those amazing individuals that does an incredible amount of service to the CS community and seemingly eats, sleeps & breaths customer success. She's been in the trenches as a CSM and is now pursuing her Masters in Engineering Management, where she is focused on pulling technical prowess into CS.

I loved this conversation with Bhavika because she provided a lot of tactical advice, not only for leaders but also front-line CSMs on the mindset and general operations of great digital programs. Topics in our conversation include:

  • How her love of tech brought her to the Engineering Management Masters program at Duke
  • Even as a CSM - you can go an automate things to make your job better
  • DCS isn’t replacing the CSM - it’s in service of the CSM to make them more efficient
  • The benefit of being technically proficient on your product and your own tech stack/integrations
  • Your customers shouldn’t know that they are interfacing with different teams and systems. It should feel cohesive.
  • Gender and racial diversity in CS and tech
  • Effective cross collaboration with other departments 
  • Asking questions is so important in getting to know other functions - being naturally curious is good

Such great info from such a sweet person. I hope you enjoy...because I sure did!

Bhavika's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhavikak/
Bhavika's Website: https://www.bhavikakochhar.com/
CS Ladies initiative: https://www.linkedin.com/company/csladies/

Resources:

  • Customer Success Mindset: Building Customer-Centricity into the DNA of your Growth Strategy by Jyo Shukla: https://amzn.to/3vtw6N6
  • The AI Empowered Customer Experience: A CX practitioner's guide to the possibilities and risks of AI by Simon Kriss: https://amzn.to/41Ob7R0

+++++++++++++++++

Lifetime Value Media
Lifetime Value aims to serve the audio/video content production and editing needs.

Support the Show.

+++++++++++++++++

Like/Subscribe/Review:
If you are getting value from the show, please follow/subscribe so that you don't miss an episode and consider leaving us a review.

Website:
For more information about the show or to get in touch, visit DigitalCustomerSuccess.com.

Buy Alex a Cup of Coffee:
This show runs exclusively on caffeine - and lots of it. If you like what we're, consider supporting our habit by buying us a cup of coffee: https://bmc.link/dcsp

Thank you for all of your support!

The Digital Customer Success Podcast is hosted by Alex Turkovic

Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

Send us a Text Message.

Bhavika Kochhar is one of those amazing individuals that does an incredible amount of service to the CS community and seemingly eats, sleeps & breaths customer success. She's been in the trenches as a CSM and is now pursuing her Masters in Engineering Management, where she is focused on pulling technical prowess into CS.

I loved this conversation with Bhavika because she provided a lot of tactical advice, not only for leaders but also front-line CSMs on the mindset and general operations of great digital programs. Topics in our conversation include:

  • How her love of tech brought her to the Engineering Management Masters program at Duke
  • Even as a CSM - you can go an automate things to make your job better
  • DCS isn’t replacing the CSM - it’s in service of the CSM to make them more efficient
  • The benefit of being technically proficient on your product and your own tech stack/integrations
  • Your customers shouldn’t know that they are interfacing with different teams and systems. It should feel cohesive.
  • Gender and racial diversity in CS and tech
  • Effective cross collaboration with other departments 
  • Asking questions is so important in getting to know other functions - being naturally curious is good

Such great info from such a sweet person. I hope you enjoy...because I sure did!

Bhavika's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhavikak/
Bhavika's Website: https://www.bhavikakochhar.com/
CS Ladies initiative: https://www.linkedin.com/company/csladies/

Resources:

  • Customer Success Mindset: Building Customer-Centricity into the DNA of your Growth Strategy by Jyo Shukla: https://amzn.to/3vtw6N6
  • The AI Empowered Customer Experience: A CX practitioner's guide to the possibilities and risks of AI by Simon Kriss: https://amzn.to/41Ob7R0

+++++++++++++++++

Lifetime Value Media
Lifetime Value aims to serve the audio/video content production and editing needs.

Support the Show.

+++++++++++++++++

Like/Subscribe/Review:
If you are getting value from the show, please follow/subscribe so that you don't miss an episode and consider leaving us a review.

Website:
For more information about the show or to get in touch, visit DigitalCustomerSuccess.com.

Buy Alex a Cup of Coffee:
This show runs exclusively on caffeine - and lots of it. If you like what we're, consider supporting our habit by buying us a cup of coffee: https://bmc.link/dcsp

Thank you for all of your support!

The Digital Customer Success Podcast is hosted by Alex Turkovic

Speaker 1:

I'm an engineer at heart. I think we're in the 21st century. There's so much of tech around us, and if we can automate stuff, then why not? Because how much can we expect, expect an individual to do things on their own right and if, like machines or the tech thing, they are there to help us, so it's us. We need to leverage that technology around us.

Speaker 2:

And, once again, welcome to the digital customer success podcast with me, alex Turkovich. 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 scaled CS programs. My goal is to share what I've learned and to bring you along with me for the ride so that you get the insights that you need to build and evolve your own digital CS program. If you'd like more info, want to get in touch or sign up for the latest updates, go to digitalcustomersuccesscom, and if you have a question or commentary to be used in an upcoming episode, call us and leave a message at 512-222-7381. For now, let's get started. Hello and welcome to the digital customer success podcast with their action packed, adventure filled episode for you today. That is, if you find digital customer success exciting and full of adventure, today's episode 32.

Speaker 2:

And I am absolutely delighted to share with you a conversation that I had with Bavika Kuchar a few weeks ago, because she is you know she's all over the place in the customer success community. Now, granted and we even talk about this a little bit towards the end of the conversation Bavika isn't your most tenured CS person. You know she's definitely been in the game for a while. She understands the concepts of digital customer success and she's incredibly smart about it and brings a lot of wealth and knowledge to the table. You know, despite her not having spent 20 years in the industry well, who really has and customer success, but some of the things she talks about are really great, especially around mindset. As an example, as a CSM, she was automating things by herself. She's very technically minded, and so I think it's a reminder to all of us that having some technical prowess isn't necessarily a bad thing as a CSM as well. So we talk about, you know, ai, we talk about automation, we talk about, just in general, some of the approaches to digital customer success.

Speaker 2:

We delve into racial and gender diversity, which is something that, you know, I've done in the past as well, with a few guests on the podcast and we really get into the crux of what drives her, which is basically asking questions. She's really good at asking people questions to which she doesn't know the answers to, which is you know why she has such a wealth of information at such a young age. I really hope you enjoy this conversation with Babaka Kachar, because I sure did. Babaka, I want to thank you very much for being on the podcast and being on the show. I know we've talked a couple of times and we've chased each other a couple of times. You spent a little bit of time in India recently, so the time zone thing was a little bit hard, but now you're back state side and I want to welcome you to the show.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much, alex. I think it's a great opportunity to talk to you and, more than just a podcast recording, I see it as a conversation between two friends. So I'm so happy that I'm part of this today with you, and thank you for the opportunity.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, thank you for coming on. Absolutely, I find that your background is fascinating, to put it mildly, because you have not only a rich history as a CSM, right, you've served in the role of CSM quite a bit. You've been involved in a CSM capacity or a CS capacity for quite some time. But now you're getting your master's degree in engineering management at Duke, which is something that not a lot of CS professionals could say. And you know you've interned at FedEx here and there and you're kind of involved in automations and engineering, which is exactly why I'm excited to speak with you today. But I would love for you to kind of give the listener a quick summary of where, what led you to where you are today and what the background is and what your journey has been.

Speaker 1:

Definitely, alex, happy to take you all through my journey. So my journey has been really exciting, even for myself. So I was in India, for sure, before us, and I have been working from last six, six and a half years. I work with different companies and different capacities as a customer success manager. I started my career as an account management and then, slowly and steadily, I moved into customer success and that's when I exposed like I got exposed to the amazing customer success community, also on LinkedIn, and I and this was like, I think, two and a half, three years back, when I started writing content on LinkedIn people started following me and started liking my authenticity, and when I learned more about CS, I felt like, yeah, like, yeah, this is my place. I really want to be in customer success.

Speaker 1:

But then, when it comes to a tangent around my master's degree, so it was always my dream to get my education from the US, specifically my masters from the US, and I was looking at probable roles which can really match with my experience and it's they're not haywire. So and that's when I actually landed on to this course called engineering management, which actually is a collaboration between the engineering school and the management school, and instead of going for a course Management kind of a course where it's all management. I wanted to get into tech plus management because I love tech. I've been a techie all while and I've been like I've done my undergrad in IT, so I love tech. So I was like, okay, this degree is really nice and the like. The outcomes of the degree are also like in line with what I've done in the past, so you can be a customer success manager, you can get into data analysis, product management, whatever you like. So I researched a lot about it. I find this as a great course to pursue and applied to a couple of colleges.

Speaker 1:

And when I got into Duke so I was like, yeah, it's my with my dream school for sure, and let's go ahead. And more than the education I think in the class, it also depends what kind of an ecosystem you are into, and that really helped me understand a lot of stuff about customer success. And then I've been networking all this while since last one, one and a half year in the US, going to pulse, meeting a lot of people, hosting customer success meetups in North Carolina, and I made so many friends after coming to US. So that's my journey. It's like. I come from a background where I was in India, but then it got merged with what I've been doing here in the US, and both of these experiences have led me to this person which I am today. Yeah, I you touched on a couple of things that I think are really interesting and I think I'm really excited for this and I think I'm really excited for it.

Speaker 2:

You touched on a couple of things that I think are really important to highlight, the first one being authenticity and that is exactly what I see from you on LinkedIn and elsewhere is you present yourself and your whole self, which is something that I've actually posted about recently a couple of different times, because people feel like they need to put up a like a veneer or they need to be a certain way, but you're just yourself, which I appreciate, and your involvement in the CS community is so rich. I mean, you know, you haven't just kind of participated in things, you've actually taken ownership of the meetups and I think it was CS ladies as well, and those kinds of things. That's just really cool to see kind of you being an active part of CS and being a leader in that sense. So basically just saying thank you for doing all that. That's great and.

Speaker 2:

I did see that picture of you and Nick made on on LinkedIn as well, so that's good.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that was. That was like I think one of the memories from pulse where it was so difficult to meet Nick, and I just went to the game sites booth in the, in the lobby, and I was like I really want to get in touch with Nick, like I would not leave San Francisco if I don't get a picture with Nick. And then his team was amazing, like they were like we totally understand, he's going to be here in next one or two minutes and they quickly pulled him in and we quickly clicked a picture. So I think it was all possible because of his team, but it was a great moment for sure.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's amazing, that's great. I love it, it's good. Well, you know I am I am purely speculating here but you know you have such a rich history in customer success combined with you know you're, you're, I guess, draw towards tech, as you said, and you know automations and things like that, and I'm curious how that, how you then start thinking about digital specifically. What would be your elevator pitch of digital customer success if somebody were to ask you and you had to give a really quick answer, because I have a feeling years would be unique. I don't know.

Speaker 1:

Sure, alex, I'll tell you Digital CS. We've been hearing a lot about Digital CS, specifically in last few months or a year, and it's pretty much new. But if I talk about my experience maybe four years back, three years back when I was at a company and wherever I am like as a customer success manager, you're not expected to automate stuff right, but I used to go out of my job responsibilities automate things at that time because I know how important automation is for that specific individual as well as for your team. And that's when I used to do a lot of different things. There was a project that I did at Amazon and I used to SQL query to automate the stuff at Amazon, wherein I was rewarded in India by my L5 operational managers because it was a great project. And then, when I moved on to different companies, I used to use VBA, excel to automate stuff, so that, for instance, I'll give you a very small example that I actually implemented in the past and it was like if you need to check an implementation for a customer, because those were the times when customer success managers used to do everything right. Now things have changed. For sure there's more awareness. People know what a CSM has to do. But at that point of time I was doing everything. I was with support as well, I was doing CS as well and I used to check implementation of like it has the customer implemented the script right or not? Now I was like if I have 100 customers in my kitty, it'll take me so much of time to go to their websites check that script and stuff like that. So what I did? I developed a VBA script that will automatically go to the website and give me the status that is it okay or not? So that was really liked by the founders of that company. So I used to do this back then because I'm an engineer at heart.

Speaker 1:

I think we're in the 21st century. There's so much of tech around us and if we can automate stuff, then why not? Because how much can we expect an individual to do things on their own right? And if the machines or the tech thing they are there to help us, so it's us. We need to leverage that technology around us and that's what I feel.

Speaker 1:

Digital CS Now, when we see the term digital CS has come up, where in I was at Pulse, there were so many sessions around digital customer success. So if I have to name a digital CS, or maybe I have to give a little bit of pitch around it. I would say digital CS is something which can help a customer success manager to actually reach out to their customers with lesser effort and more efficiency, so that they spend more of their time into strategic thinking or maybe talking to the customers, building product adoption or stickiness with your customers. But it's more around helping the customer, helping the customer success manager to actually understand the various dynamics of customer success. It's not replacing the customer success manager, it's actually they're a team. And now we see that things like generative AI is into the market and it's blowing off minds where in this, so much of stuff going on. And if we combine generative AI or AI with customer success, I think we'll be on another level altogether.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's so well said and it's still. We've been talking a lot in the industry about how digital customer success isn't just customer facing stuff. It's actually it should very much be internally facing, you know, to make your team members as efficient as possible. And one of the interesting things that I saw recently is there's this new Slack community. I don't know if you're in it. Actually it's DCS Connect, but it's all about digital. Yeah, I'll put the link in the notes and I'll send it to you if you're not in it, but it's cool because it's starting to pick up steam a little bit.

Speaker 2:

And Aaron Hatton, who's at Gainsight he's digital program manager there he's put together this really cool resource that's basically just digital role profiles, digital program manager role profiles, and I think there's like 40 or 50 of them in there. And what's what struck me is that I don't think the industry has quite caught up to that notion yet that digital CS is there to really help drive efficiency across the team and to help make CSMs as effective as possible. It's still very much like okay, you know, you know, figure out when to engage certain customers and personas, and that's still very much part of the thing, like that's part of it, but it's half of the role really, whereas you know and I've said this a couple other times when you go implement a cool digital motion that makes a CSM look really good, I don't want any of the you know of the credit for that.

Speaker 2:

I want my CSM to be as successful as possible and to build rapport and to take as much of the credit for that as possible. So anyway, I thought that was very interesting. When he pulled that together I was like, hmm, okay, that's what's really exciting and I think.

Speaker 1:

I would love to look at that community as well. I think there'll be a great add-on to my knowledge. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

Speaker 2:

It's growing, you know. I think we've got some new joiners every day and it's kind of, you know, growing slowly. So it's pretty cool. So I guess I would love to dig into a little bit more into your graduate work and maybe get a sense from you on what your plan is really Like. How are you going to connect the engineering management bit into what you're doing in CS? And I know you touched on it a little bit when you talked about why you chose that program and why you got into it. But I'd love to get a little bit more of a sense from you as to what your plans are there.

Speaker 1:

Sure. So, if I talk about the degree that I'm pursuing, there were a lot of options to take, so many subjects because they had really great subjects, a lot of electives available. Now, the subjects that you take actually shape your journey as a professional in the future. Right, so I used to always take those subjects which are in line with my domain, which is customer success, customer experience, and what I always used to make sure that, okay, one subject should be something which I'm actually away from, like I'm not, even I don't have any expertise into, because if you're only doing what you know, then there's no scope of learning something new. Right, so that's what I used to be. So the majority of the courses were for the customer success and experience domain and the rest of it like one or two courses I'll take for something which is very much away, something like supply chain management. I have never been into supply chain.

Speaker 1:

I did take this course as a challenge that I would do this. And then, if I talk about the customer experience, of customer success courses, I took courses like using real time data to improve customer experience. Now, this was an amazing course wherein we use machine learning, data science, to improve customer experience. We built a model how to actually improve CX. Amazing professors who are teaching and have been into customer success, customer experience from so many years. Like I took a subject called software business management, which where it's like I've been into SAS. I understand a lot of terminologies of SAS, but that course really helped me understand so many aspects of SAS which I did not know. So it was taught by the chief customer officer at digitalai and he is my professor. He's one of my favorite professors. He leads a team of customer success managers. So I made sure that what I did at Duke was definitely at like it was in relation with what I have done in the past, because I wanted to learn more around customer success experience. It's like you've had great experience on floor You've been into CS but when it comes to academics, it gives you another perspective already for sure.

Speaker 1:

So, for instance, I was having this call with one of our CS thought leaders. His name is Kevin, I'm sure you would know him so and we were talking about the Disney parks Right Now. This was one of our case studies at Duke, right? So how Disney is actually improving customer experience. What did they do? They came up with a magic band. How did magic band help you gain more customers? How did it become easier for your customers? Now, these are very specific things if you see so, but when you come into the specifics of the case studies and you try to see, okay, what has Disney done, or maybe what has some other company done, you would try to understand from that perspective and that's how this is in relation with what I have done in the past or what I would do in the future, because it is what it is. So it's around how you actually build your track with this program. I created my custom track and I did not go with the ones which were already created.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. Do you feel like there is more room for engineering in CS? I know that's a broad question, but you mentioned you just tackled some automations on your own and you're very tech savvy but I think you've probably fallen the minority of CSMs who are that tech savvy, and so do you feel like there is room for integration engineers and those kinds of things as part of ops? Do you feel like that's going to just grow and grow?

Speaker 1:

I think it's very important. It's a good to have thing if you are tech savvy as a CSM. Nobody expects you to maybe code or automate or stuff like that, but if you know such stuff I think it's really good for the team and for yourself for sure. Currently, what I see as the landscape, I think it's not much there. Engineering in CS is not much there. But if engineering gets that exposure where it gets mixed up with the customer success management, I think it can work wonders.

Speaker 1:

Because it's not just about automation but it's sometimes also about understanding the customer. Well, because for instance giving you just an example if my customer in the past was having some doubts with some implementation, and as an engineer, if it's quite easy for me to understand, I would not have to actually raise a ticket to support and then support going to engineering and then getting back to the customer. Rather, I know the stuff and I'm on the call with my customer and I can tell them. So it's like if I know things, it will help me that way and that's what. That's what I. But currently I think the landscape is not more into engineering, into CS. Rather it should be, and that's why I think we are moving towards digital CS.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I agree, I agree, I, you know. I just I'm just thinking about my own team and, and how much I would love to have like a data analyst on the team to really look at the date, you know, the data behind the motions and make sure that you know, do some validation. And I would really love to have an integration engineer who knows what they're, you know, know, knows what they're doing with an API and can really make systems talk to each other, because, at the end of the day, one of the things, one of the things that I feel is very important, is that your customer shouldn't know that they're interfacing with different systems or different teams, whatever. It should all feel very cohesive and I think the way, the way to really go about that is to have somebody who can, from a technical standpoint, really connect that journey.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, because it's us and it's all tech like we are and it's you know what the beauty of sass is like? I wouldn't say it's beauty, but I would also say like it's a. It could be a disadvantage of sass also that people can change in seconds, like you. It's not a physical product, right? I'm on, like, on a sass platform a. Tomorrow morning I can switch my codes and get on to sass platform B. So it's very important to maintain that stickiness and have that knowledge because, like, the customers can switch in seconds.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, amazing. Well, and it'll be interesting to see where we go with, you know, generative AI as part of all these solutions to, and how you know how those solutions will, will talk to each other and, and you know, integrate with each other and and all of that it's it's a little mind boggling. I just picked up, you know, one of my previous guests, simon Chris.

Speaker 2:

I don't know if you've read his book but, it's very interesting because it does give actual practical use cases in CX of different uses of AI. Have you had a lot of experience just playing with AI and in your day to day, and how do you use it in your day to day?

Speaker 1:

So what I do generally when I have some time, because as a grad student, it becomes really difficult to handle the studies also, and then you're building your personal thing on LinkedIn also, and then you are alone and you're managing stuff at home also alone, so it becomes difficult, for sure. But I try to make sure that I sit with myself at least for half an hour or maybe 40 minutes a week and try to see what's going on with AI or the advancements, and then maybe just look at some courses on LinkedIn learning or Coursera and stuff like that, because Generative AI is something which is very new for all of us. We're all trying to do a lot of that stuff. So I try to make sure that I keep my skills updated. But yeah.

Speaker 2:

I don't find much time, it's difficult and there's so many tools out there.

Speaker 2:

now it's just yeah it's a little bit crazy. The landscape is definitely exploded for sure. So, yeah, cool just to kind of switch directions completely here, and this is something that I've talked with a few guests about now. But I think, given that you're so plugged into the CS community and are so active in the community, I think that one area where CS tends to be ahead of the game, at least in my opinion, is gender diversity, because we do see a lot of women in CS, which I think is wonderful, and there's definitely a massive female presence and voice in CS, and I don't think you see that in really other areas of tech. But I do think that CS also still suffers from the same thing that tech in general suffers from, which is just racial diversity and those kinds of things. I'm curious to get your opinion on where things are. Have you seen things improve recently? How does that manifest for you specifically?

Speaker 1:

I would say, yes, women presence is amazing with customer success community. There's so many amazing women doing great stuff. Racial diversity definitely, it is a point for sure. There are different people in the community and they come from different backgrounds, different regions. But then what I also feel is one thing really special about this community is that there are great initiatives where we get connected to people from different regions as well. So something like the top 100 customer success awards right, you are also one of the new congratulations for that.

Speaker 1:

So it's like they actually roll out this list depending upon the region from where you are, and this is the time where you get connected to people in different parts of the world. It's like somebody in India, somebody in Africa, somebody in US and we all get connected and it looks like a festival. So I totally agree. Yes, it's very different and it might take some time to evolve completely, but I think, with the pace that we are going as a community and with the connections because I always say CS community has a heart of gold Whosoever you reach out to, I think rarely it will be someone who would not reply you with that kind of an empathy, or maybe who's not there to support, but mostly, like in most scenarios, people are there to help you. So I think, yes, racial diversity does exist, but it's like unity and diversity and being with each other and supporting each other.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean there's no shortage of helpers in the CS community. I think we tend to be a pretty friendly bunch.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, definitely, and that's why I think there's so many people who also wish to come to customer success domain and want to switch to CS, because there's been people have been helping each other out day in and day out, and there are times when people are doing this selflessly. They're not even like they don't even charge for any call or stuff like that. It's like, okay, just let's just get on our networking call and let me talk to you. But, on a contrary, I am a very curious learner and I know about a lot of other communities in different domains as well, like product management and other kind of stuff, and I know people have actually to get a recording of a maybe a session or a webinar. They'll ask you to pay, and that's not in CS. So that's one thing that I really love about CS, wherein it's not just about a monetary gain but rather it's a community development.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think actually, you just touched on something that I think is also critically important in the realm of digital CS, which is the that interplay between different practices, specifically marketing product sales, obviously, like there is so much coordination that's needed in order to foster a really healthy customer journey between those departments, and I'm curious to get kind of your take on that. And have you seen, you know, have you seen those kinds of things done really well or really poorly maybe?

Speaker 1:

I think. I think, alex, it's a great experience, I would say rather because I've been into that kind of a setup before coming to US. I was working for this company called Algonomy and my manager, like he, was based out of the Bay Area, and I and we used to look at enterprise America's customers together and trust me, like he was from a different region, I'm from a different region and then there were teams here and there's. People were into engineering. Engineering team was mostly into Cali in US. A support team was based out of India.

Speaker 1:

Now, I used to collaborate with all these teams, but what I actually got out of that experience was that it's so great to actually have that kind of like interaction with all your teammates and from different parts of the world, because there are times when you're on the call and you're like, okay, that's happening in Cali, okay, you learn something more about that. Okay, that's happening in India, they learn something about us. So it's like you learn about each other's cultures also and then you start getting interested into knowing more about each other. So I think that has really helped me in the past personally, wherein, if my teammates are in the different parts of the world, it definitely helps me understand a lot about the person, and then I can get connected and then a lot of that stuff.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, I think that you possess something that I think a lot of us kind of as a team aspire to, which is that natural curiosity about what another person is doing. I think I'm guessing that you like to ask a lot of questions, and I think that serves you in multiple ways. One, it helps build teams and collaboration. But two, you just learn a lot when you ask more questions, and I think a lot of people just don't do that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I agree, there's like somebody, like some people also talk to me and regarding maybe mentorship or maybe they want to ask something and I'm like just ask, go for it. Like what would be the worst thing that can happen. The other person will not answer, that's it. You should ask and see that if you get out of it and that's how, like whenever I'm on such trips or whenever I'm on these conferences also, I'm asking questions, asking things because and no question is dumb question like it's good to ask. So that's what I feel and, yeah, this has, of course, helped me a lot to understand more about the people around me and the cultures and yeah, amazing, amazing.

Speaker 2:

Well, I would love to understand what's in your content, diet, what? What do you pay attention to on a regular basis and you know whether that be newsletters or podcasts, or what are you? What are you ingesting to keep yourself on top of things?

Speaker 1:

yeah. So one thing for sure LinkedIn. I think there's so many thought leaders, great leaders like you, who've been writing amazing content, so I am in touch with LinkedIn for sure. Like it's like. It's like Google whatever you search for, you will get it, and people are writing.

Speaker 2:

Such people don't think about LinkedIn as a search engine, but it really is. There is so much valuable content on LinkedIn and a lot of us think about it like, oh, you post and then it goes away.

Speaker 1:

But actually you post and it lives in the record and you can go search for it for sure yeah, if you don't get something on Google and if you just put it on the search bar on LinkedIn, I think you would get something for sure. I think that's one second thing. Apart from that, I think the podcast that I'm following right now is your podcast, digital CS. I think I love and the co-collab between AI and customer success and learning about that stuff. So I follow this podcast a lot and, apart from that, like the amazing people in the community who are writing great books, so they're like great friends, so something like I'm reading this customer success mindset by Joe so she's from Australia, she's one of the thought leaders, and I think like they're great friends, and then they send these books and then you, of course, you, you, you, you get busy reading these great books around customer success. So, yeah, that's awesome, that's great.

Speaker 2:

Is there anyone that you feel is doing really great things in the realm of digital that you want to give a shout out to?

Speaker 1:

I think I would give the shout out to the person whom I am recording this with, which is you. The reason I actually reached out to you because I really love the work that you're doing and, more than the work, also, I think, the personality that you hold, alex and I'm not just saying it because I'm a guest on the podcast, I'm saying this from all my heart that I think you have a great quality in yourself and that is making the other person really comfortable and trying to understand from their perspective, and I've seen that in the previous calls. So I really like the work that you're doing and this specific podcast, because there's so many podcasts. Even I I had a podcast like it's not on, like active right now because I'm very busy but this podcast is something which is in relation to what's happening around us, which is generated AI and customer success and digital CS. So I think I'll give a shout out to yourself that's so sweet.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, I'm I'm flattered. I'm flattered because I see those same kind of qualities in you and you know, I've I binge listened to your podcast as well and and you have that same kind of quality of being able to kind of dig into a person, make them feel comfortable so they could just be themselves cool. Well, as we kind of wrap up, where where can people find you engage with you? I mean LinkedIn, obviously. But are there, you know, other things that you're up to that you want to highlight?

Speaker 1:

so, yeah, if anyone wants to reach out to me, I'm available on LinkedIn, for sure. But apart from that, one thing that I would love to highlight is the CS ladies initiative. So we have rolled out multiple chapters now. So the chapter for Florida, bangalore, delhi, bali they're all out talking to couple of other amazing women from different parts of the US and the world, and there are a couple of me ups that are happening in the coming weeks, so stay tuned. But apart from that, reach out to me, and I'm there on LinkedIn, happy to catch up on a coffee chat or zoom call and whatever you say cool.

Speaker 2:

Well, bobica, I really appreciate your again, your content and the things that you put out there and your, your authenticity about the way you go about it, and I've enjoyed our chat today and, yeah, looking forward to sharing it with folks.

Speaker 1:

But thanks for the time thank you so much, alex, for giving this opportunity to me. I think I loved talking to you on this podcast. Just keep up the great work, I would say, and the way like you are, just be yourself. I think you are. You're perfect.

Speaker 2:

You really don't have to do any improvements we might need to edit some of those things out, because I it's not, me, it's you yeah, it's all that quality, of course, acknowledge what you see.

Speaker 1:

So, yeah, it's it. I think it's a great opportunity, alex, for me, like being on this show and then I know I'm quite like the the, the younger one here in the community also, and stuff like that, but I think you gave me this opportunity.

Speaker 2:

I think this, this is really means a lot you know, yeah, the thing about that, though, is, I don't think I don't think age really matters, because I think it's the attitude you know, because you, you, you, you tend to just like tackle things. You know, like that whole example of just going in and, and you know, automating stuff. It's like you just go tackle things and you get stuff done and you take ownership of stuff, and I think we need more of that and less, less, less of the. You know, just ten years, great, you, you have a lot of experience, but you know when you can take somebody such as yourself and use that as an example of what to do. I think that's important.

Speaker 2:

So thank you for joining me for this episode of the digital customer success podcast. If you like what we're doing, consider leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice. It really helps us to grow and to provide value to a broader audience. You can view the digital customer success definition word map and get more details about the show at digital customer success. Calm. My name is Alex Turkovich. Thanks again for joining and we'll see you next time.

The Digital Customer Success Podcast
Exploring Digital Customer Success and Automation
Engineering and Customer Success Management Relationship
AI and Diversity in Customer Success