Data-Driven Leadership in Digital CX

Nat Onions 0:23

You got to get the data . You can't just go to someone and say we should make this change with no base for that . All of these tools that are working in the background to actually present that to us . It makes my job as a leader a lot easier , because I can say this is what I need . Here's the data that backs that . Here's the upside , here's the downside .

Alex Turkovic 0:43

Once again , welcome to the Digital Customer Experience Podcast with me , Alex Turkovich . So glad you could join us here today and every week as we explore how digital can help enhance the customer and employee experience . My goal is to share what my guests and I have learned over the years so that you can get the insights that you need to evolve your own digital programs . If you'd like more info , need to get in touch or sign up for the weekly companion newsletter that has additional articles and resources in it . Go to digitalcustomersuccesscom . For now , let's get started . Greetings and welcome back to the Digital CX Podcast . I'm so glad that you could join me today and every week as we talk about all things digital in CS . This would be episode 78 .

Alex Turkovic 1:29

And we are joined today by Nat Onions , who is VP of CX at Customerio , which is a platform you're probably aware of or may have heard of in passing , but they're really focused on kind of email , push notifications , text messages , in-app messaging , automation and webhooks for customer facing motions . So very , very relevant . Obviously we definitely talk about that in the show . We talk about maybe some you know . We get into some specifics about SMS specifically , because that's a topic that I've been researching for my own usage recently . We also talk a little bit about champion changes and the impacts of those . We spend some time also delving into gender equity as well , because that's a topic that you know . Just equity in general is a topic that we've visited several times on the show , even though it has nothing to do with digital CS , but it has everything to do with digital CS . So , anyway , I hope you enjoy this conversation with Nat Onions , because I sure did . Nat , I wanted to welcome you to the podcast . It's been a little bit coming , but I'm super excited that you're here yeah , me too .

Nat Onions 2:49

Thanks for having me yeah , for sure I've .

Alex Turkovic 2:52

You know . I've seen , seen you around , heard you on different places and I was like you know , let's go , let's , let's talk a little about you , let's talk about a little bit about customer , which is where you're at and your journey and all that kind of stuff . So I think we have some fun stuff to get into .

Alex Turkovic 3:10

Definitely you know , as you do , you do a little bit of LinkedIn stalking and a little bit of research and stuff like that and I noticed that your kind of first professional initial , your initial professional life , was in in like printing and and kind of project management around that . What was that all about ?

Nat Onions 3:31

yeah , so that was a touch of nepotism . My , my father , used to own the one pretty , pretty big design and print studio in nottingham cool from the age of six it was .

Nat Onions 3:45

It was child labor in a loving way I'm just helping him out there and I loved it . I loved being there . And then , as I got older , I you know I wanted to still be involved , but in something that I was actually interested in and could potentially turn into a career . I never had any interest in taking it over from him . I was always set that I was gonna make my own way and carve my own path but , yeah , it was a .

Nat Onions 4:10

It was a great resume piece to have to actually get that experience and it was far enough removed from his job , as , as running the business that I I got , I had a boss that wasn't him , so so that's how it all began , really .

Alex Turkovic 4:25

That's interesting . That's so cool . Were there any particularly memorable projects that came through or anything kind of weird that you worked on ?

Nat Onions 4:34

So one of the biggest things that we worked on there was we did a lot of printing for Carlsberg , the beer company yeah , pretty massive , and they at the time .

Nat Onions 4:44

It may still be , but at the time they were sort of official beer of the world cup and the Euro cup all the football , soccer stuff , and so I got to do , uh , a lot with , with that sort of stuff , you know , keeping on track with what the designers were up to , and a lot of it was very last minute as well of what the designers were up to , and a lot of it was very last minute as well , of course , because you know a team wins or loses a match , and then we've got to get the posters ready in a you know three or four day turnaround to get them to the pubs ready for the next match , so they can start start promoting it .

Nat Onions 5:18

So it was a lot . That's where I think . That's where I learned to thrive in chaos .

Alex Turkovic 5:23

Oh yeah , sure Right .

Nat Onions 5:24

Yeah , we're , we're semi , we're as ready as we can be to go . We will wait the words and that gives us the final instructions and then it is just go , go , go . Everything's got to be done in order and that . So that was . That was pretty , pretty fun . I used to love those . Usually , evenings would be when that was all happening , right ?

Alex Turkovic 5:43

I mean , I would imagine probably barely enough time to let the ink dry , right ?

Nat Onions 5:47

Yeah , yeah . So it was fun and I learned enough about just sort of design and layout and stuff to just be able to put together really good professional looking documents together , really good professional looking documents . So yeah , I mean no way a designer , but it kind of taught me how important it is when you're sending a PDF to someone whether it's confirming their contract or giving them a walkthrough of a concept just really paying attention to detail there . So it's I learned a lot of stuff in that environment that I still carry forward today so yeah , I would imagine .

Alex Turkovic 6:27

I mean you know you probably , that was probably early exposure to you know customer issues and relationships and early exposure to , like content creation to , you know , and those kinds of things . So that's a cool training ground .

Nat Onions 6:42

Yeah , for sure .

Alex Turkovic 6:44

But physical instead of digital .

Nat Onions 6:46

Yes , yes , I mean , it was a long time ago as well . So yeah , the digital tools and producing a physical product as well . It was just limited .

Alex Turkovic 6:59

Yeah , for sure , Sure , and I gather from your background that you are and also the embroidery on your chair that you're slightly a Superman fan .

Nat Onions 7:16

Just a little bit . Yeah , I think people always ask me what made you get into it , and the genuine truth is I cannot remember a time in my life when I was not into Superman . It's just always been something that I thought was really cool and got really excited about .

Alex Turkovic 7:31

So did you watch the Christopher Reeve movies as a kid and all that kind of stuff .

Nat Onions 7:37

Yeah , he still is my favorite Superman . I think he did a great job and as as I've as I've gotten older and had grown-up jobs that that pay grown-up salaries , I've been able to build out a really big collection . I've got a lot of stuff from 1939 , when superman first was launched . So yeah , it's , it's a pretty I guess it's a pretty niche thing , but . But I think everyone knows of Superman . But that kind of collecting and cataloging is pretty dorky , but I mean , that's what we're all .

Alex Turkovic 8:12

I disagree , I disagree . I think it's . You know I've actually worked with . There's one person in particular . We actually used to call him Superman , yeah .

Nat Onions 8:21

Because he's worse . My nickname is Super Nat . That's kind of what they call me yeah , there you go .

Alex Turkovic 8:27

Cool , that's cool . Well , I guess you know , fast forward to today , you're currently leading customer experience at Customerio a lot of customer in there , I guess . Talk to us a little bit about that transition and that journey for you and what led you into that role today .

Nat Onions 8:44

Yeah , yeah , sure . So I actually started Customerio in the customer success team . I applied for a completely different job I think it was on that , you know when they were launching their partnership team a very small company at that time . I didn't get the job , but I loved the interview process so much and I had like with those people and I had gotten to know the products as I was going through that process , that I was just like I'm not ready to give up on this company .

Nat Onions 9:10

So I said to the recruiter what like , where do you think I could fit in this in this company ? You know what , what , what , what can I maybe work on and come back to in the future ? And she actually said well , you know , I think I think you might be a good fit for customer success . It's a brand new thing , we've never done it before . So you'd be one of one of the first , but if you wanted to give it a shot . So I went through that process . Turns out it was the right fit because they hired me for that one um and so I started as one of three csms . We were the first , first ones in the door and essentially kind of built out this cs program . Um , I was , I was . I was a 35th person when I joined and now we're 275 people .

Nat Onions 9:59

So yeah , it was it was I a relatively quick journey into management from being an individual contributor yeah , just sort of went through the leadership and management ranks on the customer success team and then eventually took over the technical support team as well . As our customer base grew and the company's goals pivoted and became more ambitious as well , we built out what is today an account management function . So those are the three sort of main branches that report into me , and I'm also responsible for our email deliverability program .

Alex Turkovic 10:40

Jeez , okay , yeah , that's a lot .

Nat Onions 10:47

That's enough , that's a it's a that's enough I have a really great group of leaders , directors and managers that support me and keep me sane , so I'm well taken care of on that front yeah , yeah .

Alex Turkovic 11:00

Well , you have to , you have to , you have to . I've had conversations on this show with other , I guess , customer-facing leaders of customer success platforms , or CX platforms or whatever you want to call it Platforms that serve the customer experience , and most of them have expressed both gratitude but also added pressure for having to essentially kind of be a role model for your customers on how to run a customer .

Nat Onions 11:37

Or do you feel that ? Yeah , I do feel that , that I think it's always in the back of my mind that you know we've got teams that are going out into the world and they're talking to our customers about here's the right strategy to get your customers talking to you , and here's why we would recommend not over emailing them . Here's our recommended timeline for that type of campaign and you know , I know that at the same time campaign and you know , I know that at the same time we're using our own , our own tool , but we've got our own program that has timelines and you know volumes and stuff and it's kind of we have to get that spot on , otherwise our credibility can just plummet because the customers will be . Well , you know I'm not enjoying the , the journey that I'm getting from you , so I don't really feel like you're in a position to tell the advising me .

Alex Turkovic 12:31

It's always .

Nat Onions 12:32

It is always a small thing that runs through my mind , but I think I think it's also where we thrive and that's from , you know , from management all the way down to our individual contributors , because they take so much pride in everything .

Nat Onions 12:50

You know it's . Our customers ask us a lot and you know we want to know the same . What , what are other people and other businesses like mine doing ? It's great when we can help people make those connections . But when a customer says I really like these messages I'm getting from you , tell me , tell me what you've built there , that is when I see people just kind of like pop out their chest and they're like glowing because they know they , they had a hand in building that and it's really resonating . So I try to lean more into the the positive of yeah , we , we feel really confident that we're doing something good and we're continually iterating on it and making sure that it's still hitting the mark , and so we get to be really proud when somebody asks us for advice or , you know , points out something that they've enjoyed in the content that we're delivering .

Alex Turkovic 13:42

Yeah , yeah , and I would imagine you've probably learned some things from your customers on cool things that they're doing that you've implemented as a turnaround there .

Nat Onions 13:54

Oh yeah , absolutely . I mean , we've worked with some really really smart people , whether that's on sort of a growth marketing role , a content role , even the more tech engineer type roles , the more you know tech engineer type roles , the questions that they ask sometimes , or when we , when we go into their accounts and see what they've built , sometimes it's just this really mind-blowing wow , like they , they did that on their own . We didn't . We didn't tell that they figured out this really cool thing that they could have built .

Nat Onions 14:21

So , yeah , having having our customers create great things and share them with us , but also challenge us , say , hey , I've got this great idea . I'm not sure how to do it in the best way . Can you help me ? There's a couple of missing pieces that we we need to slide into place to make that possible . It's so motivating to to go to a product team and say , hey , if we can make these small changes , this is the kind of use case it would unlock . That's what the product team loves to hear and it's the kind of thing that gets CX really excited as well .

Alex Turkovic 14:57

Yeah , absolutely yeah , that's so cool . Well , I do want to get into some of the specifics of what you guys are doing digitally , but , as you know , one of the things that I ask pretty much all of my guests is if they had to describe what digital is to somebody that doesn't know anything about CX or CS or whatever , I'd be curious to know how you would describe it .

Nat Onions 16:57

Yeah , so I'd probably position it as the the using this ever-evolving toolbox of technologies that allow you to create a scalable experience for customers that's predictable and repeatable . And it's not about replacing humans . It's about creating a situation where you can apply the human touch at the time and place where the most value can be created , and to get there , you need to create some operational efficiency with the help of digital tooling for that lower hanging fruit totally .

Alex Turkovic 17:33

I love that and and you're absolutely right like you , you don't want your human capital wasting cycles on stupid stuff that can be automated or things that are repeated over and over and over again . Exactly .

Nat Onions 17:48

You want them focused on driving value . Right , and it can make the customer experience so much better as well and asking for something that is you know ? The answer is just .

Enhancing Customer Experience With Digital Tools

Nat Onions 18:03

Here is the link to this document . There is nothing that they gain from sitting in a support queue waiting for a human to address that . If it can be automated and delivered to them . Based on you know some keywords or some intelligent doc search , it unlocks them instantly .

Nat Onions 18:19

And you know , I think that's where . That's where I think from the from folks maybe on the outside looking in that are a bit more skeptical about some of these automations , that they're receiving them all the time , and it does make for a better experience .

Alex Turkovic 18:35

It's . It's so interesting that you it's not interesting . It it's , I think , a normal thing that you put the qualifier of it's not here to replace humans in with that definition , because I do it too most everybody I ask does it and and there's this kind of like human nature element of digital that makes us as a species , I think , immediately go towards this is going to replace me and blah , blah , blah , blah , blah , blah , blah . And it's so interesting because all these tools are here to do is to make you , the individual , more efficient and give you the tools that you need so that you're not pulling your hair out getting ready for a QBR or you're not pulling your hair out trying to get the context of the account when you're trying to solve a difficult support you know case and those kinds of things yeah , I mean , you know nobody .

Nat Onions 19:26

Nobody went through , you know , years of of training and climbing a career ladder and doing all of this extra learning to be solving very entry-level questions that are rooted sometimes in laziness . You know they want to be using their brains to to solve complex problems and give real , tangible value back to customers , and I think that's that's the way that I've been positioning things . A lot with our team is . This is all going to make your job a lot more fun right , nobody .

Alex Turkovic 20:01

Nobody is saying man , I really wish I could use a slide rule for this . Like the computer , you know , it's the same . It's the same shit that happened a few years ago . Like the computer , right ? So so what ? What is the ? What are you doing digitally ? Like what ? How are you putting those things into practice ?

Nat Onions 20:21

Yeah . So I say , the biggest thing that we've done this year , that's customer-facing , is actually to launch a virtual assistant in our app . So it's powered by Zendesk . That's who we use for our ticketing system , but we've actually connected it to a backend AI called MyAskAI Absolutely fantastic team . I have to give them a shout out wherever I can because they are phenomenal , did you say MyAsk ?

Nat Onions 20:49

Yeah , myaskai yeah , and so essentially what this does ? It's there essentially as an AI powered doc search . So if you're in the custom IO UI , you can open it up , you can ask it a question . It will search through our docs , it'll give you the response , it'll link you to the relevant docs and if you still are struggling or if you need to ask a question that's very specific to your account , we're careful the AI does not look at it , doesn't have access to your account data . So if that's where your question is rooted , you can ask to be passed through to a human , but it is . It's solving 54% of the questions that it's being asked , which is you know .

Nat Onions 21:33

We're really pleased with that as an initial result Massive , massive , and it's unblocking customers in 20 seconds versus having them wait in a queue for a couple of hours to be sent a doc link because that's as simple as their question was . So that's been the big one . The second half of this year is just focused on improving that , training the model and then working with our marketing team to boost adoption there . So that's the really big one that we've been the most proud of . Then , behind the scenes , we're working on a lot of those operational efficiency , quality of life improvements .

Nat Onions 22:13

So we're going to be working on a ticket summary project . So if you imagine some of our support threads , they are many , many replies long . There's been a lot of back and forth , or sometimes we'll have customers that they always respond to the same email because they just search their inbox and they respond to the thread that they opened a year ago . So what we're implementing is an automation that will actually pull all of the conversation history and give you a summary . So this is who it is , this is what's going on , this is what you said last time and you know this is our score on the tone so far .

Nat Onions 22:51

So I think that one's going to be a good time saver . I think our estimation is that it will save us probably about 80 hours a week of human time when we're looking at the kind of insights that it's going to be able to to pull together right and and gather . So that's going to be a really big one .

Alex Turkovic 23:10

That's huge because , I mean , there's so many times where you are made aware of a customer scenario or a customer situation and you're given these incredibly vague details and you know , I think back to a time , you know , before we had some of these summarization tools in place and those kinds of things . It's like you'd have to go okay , let's look at their tickets and let's look at the csm's notes , and let's look at the sales notes and let's look at let's talk to three different people and by the time you're ready to have a customer conversation which , by the way , they're waiting for , you're like a day or two into it and it's not the best . So I think that's massively powerful . That's awesome .

Nat Onions 23:53

Yeah , so I'm excited for that one . Then we've always been pretty hot on the automations internally , but kind of really leaning into that even harder this year . So things just like escalation workflows . So you need to get the attention of the right people . We now have a command that pulls up a form and that form gives you these fields that you have to fill in . So every escalation that is being sent up the chain to you know our technical leadership , our product leadership , sometimes financial leadership if it involves some customer billing .

Nat Onions 24:34

Everything is very consistent across the board because you are told this is the information that you have to put in so that we can help you out quicker , so that we can get the customer issue resolved quicker . Because I can't tell you how many times I've seen these threads and people saying well , what's the account number , how much are they paying us , what plan are they on ? And if we just front load that with an automation that says here it is , pull it in , we can . We can get a lot done a lot quicker . That's a big one too .

Alex Turkovic 25:04

Man , that's huge . One of the things you said earlier about just summarization or something related to support . I ran across this tool recently which is so cool . I think it's called Ariglad A-R-I-G-A-L-A-D . Have you heard of it . I've heard of that one . Yeah , it's interesting because it basically looks at your support cases and suggests rewrites of knowledge base articles , or or or a gap in knowledge base articles , which is huge , because if you've ever tried to manage a knowledge base , you know what an uphill battle that is .

Nat Onions 25:41

Oh , yeah , such a battle .

Nat Onions 25:43

And then you know you've already created this company tone of voice and you know you've got these marketing boundaries that you need to adhere to and it can be hard to kind of cut through some of that tape .

Nat Onions 25:56

But when you're actually getting this advice of , hey , we're looking at where people are having a bad time , or even going as far as saying we're looking at where people are churning , yeah , this is where you can do better , actually having something quantifiable and saying this is why I'm making this change or this is why we need to reorder things , even it's super helpful . I mean , I've learned from being a very junior person in my early days to where I am now is that you got to get the data . You can't just go to someone and say we should make this change with no base for that . So all of these tools that are working in the background to actually present that to us , it makes my job as a leader for sure , a lot easier because I can say this is what I need . Here's the data that backs that , here's the upside , here's the downside .

Alex Turkovic 26:49

And so , yeah , any any kind of digital tooling that assists with with that side of things as well , is just gold dust do you it sounds like you are you as an organization are fairly open to that kind of thing like tooling . You know , it doesn't sound like you've run into a lot of like roadblocks of like , hey , this is a really cool thing that we should adopt because it'll do xyz and then you don't . Doesn't seem like you have to break like 10 barriers of red tape to get it in right .

Nat Onions 27:23

Yeah , yeah . So for tools like that , where we're looking at , you know , the just creating those efficiencies , especially right now as we're kind of stepping into the AI world , the company is very open to just letting people experiment and pick the tool that they want to go with . You know , we've got , we've got some criteria that we have for , you know , assessing and making sure that we're finding the right one . But ultimately , the more we can test these I mean the market is crazy saturated with this kind of tooling right now so the more we actually get to test by having a single team launch it , that's that's better for us as a business . Now , yeah , you know , a few years from now , I'm positive , we will meet a place where we have to consolidate and shrink up maybe a list of 20 down to a list of three , but for right now it's .

Nat Onions 28:16

It's actually pretty fun to to see which teams are doing what and the reasons why they've chosen what they've chosen . You know we're all , we're sharing each other's assessments and and testing and all of that stuff and it's yeah , it's just interesting to see why or hear why , the tool that I've loved and chosen is not quite the right fit for a different department and they've gone with something else and another team's done the same thing . It's really cool to see how different use cases can be applied in different ways .

Alex Turkovic 28:50

Hey , I want to have a brief chat with you about this show . Did you know that roughly 60% of listeners aren't actually subscribed to the show , on whatever platform they're listening to it on ? As you know , algorithms

Engaging Customers Through SMS Strategy

Alex Turkovic 29:01

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Alex Turkovic 29:30

Now back to the show . Yeah , that's super cool . I love that . It's like a testing ground , so to speak . Yeah , it's been cool to , just over the I don't know year and change , that we've been doing this show , just learning of all the different , you know , tools that are out there . There is a , there's a page on the website where I keep like a tech stack it's called the dcs tech stack , but it's like a just a laundry list of tools , which is great , but also not , because , like , there's a lot of tools on there but you still , you know , still got to do the legwork of like figuring out what what's hype , what's not hype and all that kind of fun stuff .

Alex Turkovic 30:09

So , it's cool that you get to do that . One of the reasons I was excited to talk to you was the fact that you all have SMS capability in terms of engaging customers .

Alex Turkovic 30:25

And that's something that I have been . I don't know philosophizing is the right word , but something I've been thinking a lot about recently in terms of digital engagement because , especially in certain industries , your customers are on their phones . You know they're not waiting by their inbox , they're not like you know they . They they're not chomping at the bit for your next in-app . You know pop-up or whatever they're , they're on their phones and , especially if you're an executive , you're like , you're , you're whatever .

Alex Turkovic 30:56

And and a lot of people , I think , sleep on SMS , especially in B2B . For some reason , b2c , it's , like you know , become more of a thing , but I was curious if you had some insights or thoughts in general on using SMS as part of your customer engagement .

Nat Onions 31:15

Honestly , the key thing that this comes down to is just consent and preferences Offering the customer up front that choice of how do you want us to communicate with you . That's where it's key , because you know I'm going to use myself . For an example , love SMS and , like you said , especially if the service that I'm being contacted from is an app on my phone it's in my hand already I can click from the SMS . It opens the app . I can do whatever I need to . I think my bank does it very well . That's fantastic for me . If I'm emailed , I'm not going to act on it , I'm going to read it . I'm going to think I'll do that later when I'm at my desk , but I'm never logged into my personal email at my desk , so it gets forgotten .

Nat Onions 32:07

So I'm a very SMS preference heavy person for my personal stuff , but for anything work related , for my entire work tool stack , I don't want SMS . I want it to be an email . My email inbox is my to-do list . I've got communication preferences and when I get asked what I want my journey to look like , that's how I really kind of attribute quality and care over the customer experience , because it's letting me decide . It's not somebody on the other side of it running the tool saying I know how you want to be spoken to and so I'm going to choose to build the journey like this . I think that's just my core piece of advice is build a journey that lets people choose and that's the advice that we give to our customers and we are seeing an increasing adoption in all of our mobile channels , SMS included , and I , you know I really think it's because people are being thoughtful and just applying that type of engagement opportunity to choose . Yeah .

Alex Turkovic 33:16

Yeah , it's super smart . I mean , yeah , the flip side of that is the possibility to really spam your customer is crazy high . Yes , you got to be measured . Okay , I'm thinking specifics now . I think it would be incredibly powerful to engage your executive buyer persona with a quarterly SMS that has like three things in it , like adoption risk , roi done .

Alex Turkovic 34:01

You know it's like super quick , concise . It's like the mini QBR , so that maybe they don't have to have a QBR and you can reserve the QBR for , like you know , your admins and the folks that like need the engagement to have the technical engagement to like help them unstick some stuff . I don't know what , like the per persona engagement on things like SMS .

Nat Onions 34:26

I think that's crazy powerful yeah , and I think you know the . The one of the ways I would think about it is , you know , just separating marketing from the more action-based or transactional is not quite the the right word . I don't I don't mean in the in the sense of like a commercial transaction . But you know , if your , if your marketing team has just gone through the , the , the QBR , and you know their results have been delivered and whatever send , you know the , the exec buyer getting that follow up SMS . I think that's a great example that you gave of like yeah , that's , that's a value add , probably just a bit of a quick win at the exec level so that they can run it down . I love that idea .

Nat Onions 35:11

I think it's more of the marketing SMS which is where it gets very risky . Yeah , it's hairy and it's also it's tricky to track engagement there as well . So you know we're very good with email deliverability . We have an excellent email deliverability program because it's easy to see who's opening and where are they clicking and what are they doing with that email and setting up all these filters . But it gets very difficult on the mobile front because if someone has their notification silenced , that gives a completely different engagement stat . That can be a false read , and so yeah , when you so you don't .

Nat Onions 35:53

You don't have that same level of hey , they're not responding to my marketing emails , they're not opening my marketing emails , so the system is set to stop sending . It's a different game when it comes to to sms . So it can be , like you said , easy to go down that spam rabbit hole , and that's when . That's when things get annoying and people get pissed off , and if you're the exec buyer , you're just going to say I don't want this service anymore like they , they don't , they clearly don't know what's going on in our business and who I am , and , yeah , get rid of it .

Nat Onions 36:27

So , yeah , the transactional value add , all about it , but marketing got to be preference based .

Alex Turkovic 36:33

High risk high reward . High risk low reward Maybe .

Nat Onions 36:37

Yeah , yeah , well , yeah , probably a reward with an asterisk . Yeah , like a lot more notes underneath .

Alex Turkovic 36:44

Just don't F it up . An asterisk , yeah , like a lot more notes underneath , just don't f it up . Basically , you were . You were recently on turnfm with andrew which is a great podcast I love . I love listening to that show and one of the things that you were talking about on that show was minimizing the impact of a champion change on an account , because we all struggle with that . I mean , your champion leaves and the red flag immediately goes up because that's the person that you've built the relationship with and all that kind of stuff .

Nat Onions 37:19

I was curious you talked a lot on there about some of the playbooks that you have in place to kind of minimize the impact of that and whatnot , and I was curious if your digital strategy informed that at all yeah , I think one of the one of the things that that really made us think about it is we , we use a platform called plan hats as our customer success tool and they is a picture that , yeah , it allows us to assign a backup csm in that . So it's all fully automated . So if a csm goes on pto , if they're unexpectedly off sick , everything gets forced to their backup csm ,

Building Relationships for Risk Mitigation

Nat Onions 37:59

so that we don't get in that situation where a customer's reaching out and the csm maybe they've . You know , if they've gone off sick they may not have turned their out of office . On those , those communications from customers don't sit there , they go straight to the backup CSM and so we'll , we'll call it's . It's easy to to do that by . You know , what we're doing is spreading , spreading the risk . Basically , we're going from this system where there's a single point of failure in the CSM , to having a backup there .

Nat Onions 38:31

Obviously , we can't build a system of backups within a customer's business , but just that notion of spreading the risk is , I think , the move that we want to be making , and it's as simple as making friends with as many people as we can . So we have our primary user , we have our champion , our power user . But hey , we'd love to see your head of product . Would you mind bringing them along to the QBR ? You know we'd love to get their take on what we're doing . Or , you know , product person to product person , I'll bring my PM , you bring yours . Let's make some connections there .

Nat Onions 39:00

And then for our higher value accounts as well , we've we're really learning the the value in adding an exec sponsor , and not just not just when things are getting a bit , a bit hairy , I think one right from the beginning , because there is a lot of power among the c-suite . And so , you know , if I champion someone that's , you know , maybe a marketing director leaves and we're struggling to find the , the next , the next person that we can work with , then our cmo , who's the exec sponsor , can reach out to the cmo at the customer's company , say , hey , like really sorry to hear that so and so had left . We'd really appreciate it if you could introduce us to the rest of the team . So , yeah , risk mitigation by making friends as possible exec sponsors .

Nat Onions 39:50

And , um , something that we're we're working on in the account management front is getting a relationship with the procurement team it's not going to be frequent where you know it's not something that is going to come up on , like you know , a day-to-day type relationship , but we'd love to get the procurement contact into a qbr . Let them see firsthand what the value is so that when that conversation occurs at the renewal time they're familiar with the tool . They've gotten to know the team . We do really fun qbrs so they are probably already pretty warmed up to us . So , yeah , not always an easy nut to crack on the procurement side , but it's there's just if you can , if you can get them on side early , yeah , it's massive .

Alex Turkovic 40:36

I mean as a , as a champion of a platform myself , like I can't tell you how painful it is to have , come renewal time , to have to internally sell the tool to , you know , the finance team and the procurement team and the support team and the security teams . Like every . There's this whole freaking cycle of sales meetings internally , and so I love that you're trying to make that bit a little bit easier by like being a known quantity . I love the notion of crashing team meetings as a as a .

Alex Turkovic 41:13

CSM or as a customer facing team and I know you know quite a few people who've started doing that a lot more of like hey , can it , you know ? Can I be a fly on the wall in your meeting ? Or can I have 10 minutes or something like that to talk about the new feature release ? Or can I give you these three slides that you can use in your all hands or something like that , like that's , that's so cool because it it does , you know , minimize risk , expose you to more people so that invariably , when your champion goes and gets a promotion or moves on to you know another company or whatever , you still have that contact with the others .

Nat Onions 41:46

Yeah , and that's something low lift that we can do as well . We have a template for some of our onboarding , some of our pitch decks , and we've actually got an automation that drops the customer's name in it , drops their account number in their logo , so it very quickly and easily personalizes that .

Nat Onions 42:05

So , again , tying it back to some of that digital experience and automation , yeah it doesn't always have to be approached as something that's manual and then it gets shut down because it's not scalable . Just think about that from the start . Just just what can I do to operationalize this ?

Alex Turkovic 42:24

okay , I'm gonna bite , because you mentioned um the word qbr and fun in the same sentence . Um , so what's that all about ? How are you ?

Nat Onions 42:36

well , okay , so I'm gonna , I'm gonna , I'm gonna be honest , we don't . We actually call them qscs . We've , we've tried to rein the term . It's a QBR for all intents and purposes , but we call it a quarter success check-in .

Alex Turkovic 42:50

Awesome Love it , yep .

Nat Onions 42:51

So we've tried to shed that long-held kind of like . Oh no , qbr , that's a lot , but something that is an absolute staple in this . Every single time we have some kind of product sneak peek , and sometimes that's an exercise where we'll take customers through a series of you know wireframes or designs and say what resonates with you the most , tell us about it . Let's do a little workshop for 10 minutes . Sometimes it is , hey , here's a feature that we're launching in a couple of weeks time and you're going to be the like , among the first to see it . Like , let me just take you through it and let you click around .

Nat Onions 43:31

But it's not just . It's not just about , hey , look how great we are and look how great you are because we helped you . You know , we don't need to be leaning into that . We want it to be exciting . We want people to see what the content that call is going to be and say , oh , hell , yeah , I want it to be exciting . We want people to see what the content that call is going to be and say , hell , yeah , I'm going to be there and hopefully I'm going to bring some other people from my team too .

Nat Onions 43:55

That's one of the staples is just that product sneak peek . And I think you know the customer success team that we've built . I'm just really proud of all of them . They've got such a sunny disposition and they are genuinely good at building these really good connections with their customers , and so I watched some of them going into these calls and it's very clear that there's a great personal connection there , that they know each other . So you know they are continually and consistently just building up to this feeling of I want people to enjoy this QSC and they do . They're excited to get to hang out with their CSM for , you know , 45 to 60 minutes .

Alex Turkovic 44:41

I dig it , I love it . I mean , you know it's , you don't . I'm not saying you should make like you know it's , I'm , you don't you ? I'm not saying you should make like you know your QSC or QBR or whatever you want to call it like an entertainment show or whatever , but it needs , it needs to have a . There needs to be a draw Like I don't . I don't want to come to your meeting and talk about how many support tickets I've put in over the last quarter , or like what bugs you fix . I don't care , your bugs are not my concern . I want to know what this relationship is going to look like going forward and what we're going to do and all that kind of stuff . So I love that you guys are focused on that . That's great . I've had the great fortune of interviewing a fair amount of women on the show who hold executive positions within companies , you being one of those , and you know it's .

Alex Turkovic 45:32

this isn't this is not digital CS related at all , but I always , I always am curious to get you know these leaders opinions on you know the current state in their opinion of you know diversity , especially gender diversity in tech , because in CS , I mean in general , there seem to be more women in CS , but more on the IC level and still not on the leadership level . So you know , I'd love to get kind of your read on you know what that looks like for you today and also on what that looks like for you today and also what you see kind of going forward , how the industry and how maybe young women or young men in the industry can help to level the playing field .

Nat Onions 46:17

Yeah , that's great , and I love talking about this topic , especially because I do think that across the board , we've we've got work to do , um , to get to that point of equality where , where people do look around a room and they , you know , they see people that look like them , people multiple that look like them .

Nat Onions 46:40

And you know there's I think we've we've we have made progress , but there's still . You know there's , I think we've we have made progress , but there's still there's a long way to go . And I think you know it's important for people in your position to be really driving that with the people that you choose to give a platform to . You know I feel very , you know , very fortunate to you know I've got Savannah , who works on our pr . She's fantastic at seeking out opportunities savannah is amazing .

Nat Onions 47:12

She's amazing , by the way , yeah she's fantastic and but you know she's she's reaching out to people like you and saying , like I want to give nat a platform and for people in your position to say , yeah , let's , let's , let's do it .

Nat Onions 47:25

You know that is how more female voices get heard and more diverse voices is . You know , being on the's , the ic level , making referrals to people in their

Embracing Diversity in Hiring Practices

Nat Onions 47:49

network to come and work in in your business , and I think you know this . This can be a controversial way to look at things as well , but if you , if you look around your business and you see that you know there are not people of color in your business , if you're hiring for a role , then interview the people of people of color . If you don't see enough women , interview the women . You know , I think we're all striving to build a diverse hiring pool , but you know , if you , if you know you need more , more women in your business , seek out the women and make that the hiring pool . That's a great way to make sure that you're bringing women into the , into the story and giving them that opportunity .

Nat Onions 48:36

So yeah yeah , I think it's . It's all just about being willing to step out and say , hey , I've , I've got a voice and I'm going to use it for change and and not sort of saying , well , there's nothing that I can really do about it . There's always something .

Alex Turkovic 48:58

There's nothing worse than like . Complacency in this stuff is like oh , it's just the way it is .

Alex Turkovic 49:02

It's like no , no , it's no , no , it's not at all . And I mean some of the best teams I've been on have been the most diverse teams , because you're getting viewpoints from different places , you're getting different walks of life together that bring kind of the collective emotional intelligence and the collective life experience of the team up . It raises the bar of the conversations that you have in your day-to-day work life and it's so fulfilling those experiences . So I definitely hear you on that . And that brings us to the point in our conversation where we are woefully short on time because we've covered a lot . We covered a lot of territory , yeah , but you know , to close out , I mean a couple of things that I always like to ask is first off , I'd love to know what's in your content , diet , like what are you paying attention to ? Books , podcasts , shows , blah , blah , blah .

Nat Onions 50:08

Yeah . So from sort of a personal development standpoint , I love the CCO human duct tape show .

Alex Turkovic 50:14

Yeah .

Nat Onions 50:14

You know , that's where I want to be . One day I'd love to get that CCO title . So it's great and it's entertaining as well because of the industry that that our tool sits in and what you know , our primary bread and butter , that we were built on . The email geeks community phenomenal really , really helpful people , yeah , um , and I love the the crack the customer code podcast as well . I think that's that's a really fun one . And then a , a book that I revisit probably like every 18 months or so . I'll read Five Dysfunctions of a Team .

Alex Turkovic 50:49

Cool yeah .

Nat Onions 50:50

It's an oldie but a goodie , and every time I sort of just need to be reminded of you know , everyone is facing very similar challenges and just a little bit of a reminder of how to best tackle those . It's just a good read . Reminder of how how to best tackle those . It's just , it's just a good read and I love , I love business books and business theory that are written as an actual , not like a story .

Alex Turkovic 51:15

Yeah , yeah , it's the fun one yeah I love that book because for me anyway , um , that was kind of the first business book that I read that humanized being not quite okay at everything it's like yes , yes exactly this is gonna suck over here and that's okay , but this is how we move through that and this is how we embrace it .

Nat Onions 51:39

Yeah , I love that exactly and and it's written around you know , a female ceo being pulled in to come save the day . So I think it's written around you know , a female CEO being pulled in to come save the day . So I think it was written like 20 years ago or something .

Alex Turkovic 51:50

It was a while ago . Is that Lencioni ? That's Lencioni , right ? Yes , yes , yeah .

Nat Onions 51:58

So that's a good one in today's climate . But I can imagine when it came out it's like oh okay , this is new .

Alex Turkovic 52:04

A little edgy maybe , but why ? I don . It came out . It's like , oh okay , this is new , a little edgy maybe , but why ? I don't know cool any shout outs you want to give that are doing . You know people that are doing cool things in digital or cx yeah , I think I I already called out my ski .

Nat Onions 52:18

I think they're they're my superheroes of the year . They've been so collaborative , they're building something really exciting and they're super humble guys as well . Yeah , just just really great team to work with . So I've got to give them the shout out , and that they're a smaller company as well . So whenever I can give them a platform , I always want to , and I think something that really surprised me not that they need the marketing or anything but disney . I was I've got I've got young nephews and I was just arbitrarily like you know , what would it look like to to take them to disney ? And so I I went on the website and I was just kind of clicking around it .

Nat Onions 52:57

You know , building , building a trip , basically and it's it's really cool their digital experience of how they guide you through that and tell you to think about it and personalize it . Yeah , it was . It was surprising . So that was that was . It was just one that was like wow , I didn't realize that they were quite as in tune on that side of things . I mean , probably shouldn't surprise me that they're giants .

Alex Turkovic 53:18

I mean , they probably had a little bit of a budget for that that . That that's awesome . Yeah , that's cool . I love it .

Nat Onions 53:33

Where can people find you and reach out to you and chat with you and all that fun stuff . Linkedin is probably my go-to . I'm pretty active in messages on there . I love to connect with new people . I know I'm . I'm also very open to jumping on a call and saying hello and exchanging some ideas with people as well . I've people have been very than willing to just give me their thoughts and perspective . They didn't have to do that , and so I want to try and pay it forward and give back as well . So , yeah , linkedin is probably the best way and yeah , any kind of Superman auction online . I'm usually there lurking to see if there's any hidden gems are you so ?

Alex Turkovic 54:30

are you on the superman front ? Are you like into , like the movie memorabilia or the comic books or the you know like ? Do you have a favorite genre area ?

Nat Onions 54:42

the . I think like the , the comic books mostly and the the earlier christopher reeve stuff I've got . I've got this site couple of signed christopher reeve things . Oh , that's cool , yeah . So I got a signed piece of kryptonite and a photo there . I've got a couple of storyboards . I've got a piece of his cape so I've got nifty things yeah that's really cool .

Alex Turkovic 55:06

Yeah , christopher reeve was the man I mean he was , he was like , he was it , he was it . Those movies I mean I haven't . Do they hold up ?

Nat Onions 55:17

I haven't watched one recently I mean , they do that , they're . It's a little . It's a little cheesy , I guess , if you were to compare it to today's yeah , I mean the special effects . For sure it's all like a practical effects , like the effects and the destruction and the explosion . It was this , this wholesome guy just doing , doing good and , yeah , the challenge of , of you know , having having two separate identities .

Alex Turkovic 55:45

That's right . Yeah , well , supernat , we've gone over time , but I've very much appreciated the convo is super fun and super fun and yeah , yeah , I can't wait to share this one with the audience . Thank you so much for joining and and you you know you brought a ton of ton of knowledge and ton of wealth . So thank you , cool thanks , alex . Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Digital CX Podcast . If you like what we're doing , consider leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice . If you're watching on YouTube , leave a comment down below . It really helps us to grow and provide value to a broader audience . You can view the Digital Customer Success Definition Wordmap and get more information about the show and some of the other things that we're doing at digitalcustomersuccesscom .

Alex Turkovic 56:37

This episode was edited by Lifetime Value Media , a media production company founded by our good mutual friend , dylan Young . Lifetime Value aims to serve the content video , audio production needs of the CS and post-sale community . They're offering services at a steep discount for a limited time . So navigate to lifetimevaluemediacom , go have a chat with Dylan and make sure you mention the Digital CX podcast sent you . I'm Alex Trukovich . Thanks so much for listening . We'll talk to you next week .