Speaker 1: 0:31

This might be a bold statement, but I'm going to say this there should never be a customer anywhere, ever, no matter how big they are, that has no automation, no digital strategy.

Speaker 2: 0:41

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 and resources in it go to digitalcustomersuccesscom For now. Let's get started.

Speaker 2: 1:21

Hello and welcome back to the Digital CX Podcast. I'm Alex Terkovich. It's so great to have you back this week and every week as we talk about all things digital in CX, it's December 10th when this is dropping, so we're getting a little bit closer to the holiday, a lot of people prepping for some time off, maybe some family visits and whatnot. We have one more guest coming next week and then we're taking a couple of week break, but we'll still be publishing for those two weeks. Got a little bit of something special lined up for those two weeks, so stay tuned for that.

Speaker 2: 1:47

But for today I am pleased to share a conversation that I had with Marlee Wagner, who joins us with a massively rich marketing background and a lot of experience in digital digital automation, marketing automation, those kinds of things. Now she leads her own consultancy, marlee Wagner Consultancy and focuses on digital CS. I had the great pleasure of hanging out with her a little bit at Churn Zero's conference a few weeks ago, which was awesome, and she was a speaker there as well did an awesome job. But today we talk about some of her work in digital CS and how she advises some of her clients around that topic as well. We talk about some of the interplay between marketing and CS, because there is a lot of overlap and a lot of folks have a hard time navigating that. So we definitely get into that and I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Marlee Wagner, because I sure did.

Speaker 2: 2:47

Marlee, I want to welcome you to the show. Thank you so much for taking the time. We've been talking about it for a bit, but I'm glad we made it happen. Yeah, and there's so many things about kind of your history and your background and what you do today that A makes you an appropriate guest for the show, but also is just fascinating right Now. Are you originally a Minnesotan or did you just go to school in Minnesota?

Speaker 1: 3:16

I grew up in Minnesota, school Vikings. Oh yeah, I hope, when this warning comes out, they're still undefeated.

Speaker 2: 3:25

Yeah, for sure. Okay, so you did the Minnesota thing, and then, at what point did that take you? Did you head to Colorado?

Speaker 1: 3:34

soda thing. And then, at what point did that take you? Did you head to colorado? Yeah, I've been here since 2017. We came out here for my, my husband's job. At the time he he worked for zoom and, ironically, in 2017, to work at zoom, you had to physically be in their office so so funny. Yeah, here we are, but it's home now. I love it.

Speaker 2: 3:54

Yeah, now I remember us talking a little bit about your husband's experience with Zoom pandemic. All that kind of fun stuff Must have been insane.

Speaker 1: 4:04

It was a ride, for sure, for sure.

Speaker 2: 4:08

And so you know, you've kind of I guess I was going to say woven in and out of marketing and customer and marketing customer, but it's really just been. I mean, you have a really strong foundation in marketing and that naturally lends itself like really really well to especially digital customer success. But customer operations and whatnot. Do you want to talk a little bit about that journey?

Speaker 1: 4:34

yeah, absolutely so. You know, I, like you said, I was marketer for a long time. I marketed to I won't even go into the list, but a long list of different audiences in a long list of different industries, well before I had ever even heard of customer success, let alone digital customer success. And then, back in 2017, I found myself running marketing for a company that did customer success as a service. I liken them to a customer success agency, if you will. And suddenly, yes, I'm doing marketing right To a B2B audience, to a tech audience, to customer success leaders. And customer success is a world and an industry that, once you get exposed to it, I for one found it really hard to not be fascinated. Number one Yep.

Speaker 1: 5:30

And found it really hard not to sort of connect those dots of what I had been doing in the marketing world to the.

Speaker 1: 5:39

You know the needs and the challenges of these customer success leaders, our clients.

Speaker 1: 5:43

So very quickly, again, sort of by accident, ended up living in both worlds, still running marketing go-to-market digital website, social media, ads, trade shows, blah, whatever right but then also trying things with our clients saying, hey, this really works in the marketing world, this really works when you're acquiring new customers, let's think through logically how we can tweak those strategies to make sense for your existing customer base. And got to do that with so many really amazing clients, amazing people, really fascinating companies, and really loved living in that duality of doing both. Again what we call traditional digital marketing, if you will, with acquisition of new customers, and then the digital CS world. And they're different, right, they have their differences, to be sure, but as I've transitioned out of that role and into my own consultancy and fractional space and freelance space, I still do both right, and I think I shared with you before I have certainly had my fair share of unsolicited advice that I should pick one or the other, but for me the reality is that Doing both, and sitting in both worlds makes me better at both.

Speaker 2: 7:07

Yes.

Speaker 1: 7:08

Right, because they are so related, they're different Again, nuance, for sure you got to your communication style is different with prospects versus customers. But I also think so many companies really struggle to connect those two organizations marketing and customer success and the connection between them is so, so important to the. You know the actual life cycle right? Marketers like to call a life cycle like a lead gen Of course yeah, lead funnel. And customer success. People like to call a life cycle. You know what happens post-sale. It's all of it together.

Speaker 2: 7:40

It is.

Speaker 1: 7:41

It's so important and so many people like kind of suck at it. So that's why I'm still sitting one foot in each world and I love it.

Speaker 2: 7:50

I love it and I think that makes you know what you offer extremely valuable, because you know, it's no secret that there's like this you know CS kind of bubble, right when, and it's very easy to just get stuck in the CS bubble.

Speaker 2: 8:06

But there's you. But the marketing world is A way more experienced, longer thread of kinds of things that we use in digital CS are pretty much there for marketing as well. And what marketing uses on a daily basis kind of we get our blinders on so much that we miss the opportunities that our friends in marketing have been using for ages and take, as you know, for granted that that we're just like. Oh, you can do that. I'll give you one example and then I'll let you talk.

Speaker 2: 8:57

I promise it is somebody they successfully used linkedin advertising as a method for engaging their existing customer base and specific personas. And it makes complete sense because you can, if you like most of us are sitting on really not so great customer data guess what? Linkedin knows what people are doing, what their roles are, what their seniority level is, what all that kind of stuff is, and you can really target people at your customer's company via LinkedIn. And I was just like it blew my mind, but then immediately I went to like yeah, duh, why didn't I think about that? So I felt that was an apropos example of stuff we might be missing out on in CS. Do you feel like you encounter those kinds of things all the time?

Speaker 1: 9:50

Yes, totally, I think. Number one I want to know where they got the idea, because, kudos to them, did it just pop into their brain? Do they have a background in marketing? Did they make friends with somebody in marketing? How did that come?

Speaker 2: 10:02

to them.

Speaker 1: 10:03

And yes, there are things like that everywhere, and in reverse, too, there are things that are happening in digital cs that marketers should be using also. Yep right, more human language, more like less salesy right less like gross sales marketing language. All that kind of stuff marketers can learn from cs too. So it's not one directional by any means, but yeah there's. There's like missed opportunities like that just everywhere.

Speaker 2: 10:33

Yeah, for sure. And and you know it's I find that a lot of CS leaders, when they start to really invest in and know get into the world of digital, a lot of times they're met with objection or friction or whatnot from other departments like product or marketing or whoever, because you know the initial, I think, knee-jerk reaction is like well, that's what I do, like don't don't do that that's what I do, but in reality don't don't do that.

Speaker 2: 11:06

That's what I do, but in reality it's like we're trying to work together and I think you painted the beautiful pictures like marketers think of it as the funnel and we think of it as a lifecycle. But it's all one timeline. Why can't, you know, one org kind of manage the front end of it and the other org manage the back end of it?

Speaker 1: 11:22

And the reality is sometimes it sits in lots of different places.

Speaker 2: 11:28

Yes.

Speaker 1: 11:28

Right, like. You probably hear this question all the time of like, where should digital customer success live? Right, who should own it? Yeah, my answer is actually I don't care, right. I don't care if it lives in marketing, I don't care if it lives in digital or if it lives in customer success. What I care about is that those orgs, plus product, plus whoever else needs to be involved, have come to a mutual decision together yes about where it lives and who owns what and where the lines are and where it starts and stop.

Speaker 1: 11:58

Yeah, to your point like right, maybe there's a handoff digitally, just like in customer success. We talk about handoffs all the time, yeah, when we when we're talking about one-on-one. Okay, where are the digital handoffs?

Speaker 2: 12:10

Right, yeah, exactly, and you know, I think that points to one of the things that if you out there are hiring for, I would say, especially a digital CS leader or somebody to you know to head up digital or build a digital program, something like that man I got to tell you. I think the number one thing you're looking for is somebody who can collaborate like crazy, because there is there is really no other role or function that I can think of where that collaboration is so key, because you are taking ownership of the customer experience, in essence, with you, know, but you're going to have to do it in product and you're going to have to do it with email marketing and you're going to have to do it in all these different ways, that kind of potentially step on other people's toes and whatever. So the coordination is real y'all it's huge.

Speaker 1: 13:08

Yeah, I totally agree. Even think about okay, you may need to do it like in somebody else's system, right, there are plenty of digital cs leaders who don't have a cs platform that they can run automations out of right, so they're like all right, what does marketing use? What does product use? What can I borrow from them? Literally, you rely on them, those other teams, those other departments, to do your job. So, yes, number one collaboration, absolutely.

Speaker 2: 13:39

What's already there. Not long ago I compared digital CS people to the MacGyvers of CS, just because a lot of times we're duct taping stuff together to make it work.

Speaker 1: 13:53

Also 100% of the time, if you're that new digital CS leader coming in, or just a CS leader who's like, hey, I'm going to start a new digital program program.

Speaker 2: 14:11

100% of the time there is more going on going to your customers already from lots of random teams and people than you think, yep, and it all looks different. It all has a different tone of voice. The template's completely different. There's four different versions of your logo Like it's real.

Speaker 1: 16:26

It's scary.

Speaker 2: 16:28

For sure. And then it becomes a question of how do you wrangle all that in, you know, and is it something where you offer to take ownership of stuff, or is it something where you're just, you know, collaborating on things and you know other questions like do you rely on your marketing organization to do that design for you, or do you take it in-house? And I mean, you know, the variables just start to stack up like super, super quick.

Speaker 1: 16:54

Yeah, I've been using the word nuance a lot lately when talking about digital customer success. There's just so much nuance. Such little tiny differences in your org structure or your product or, you know, your customer profile can make such a huge difference in those little things that you need to do. In those decisions you need to make right, whether it's where digital CS sits, who handles which tasks right, how much you rely on marketing, how much you rely on product right. Let's say you're using Pendo or something right the product was already using like, how much are you relying on them versus how much are they granting you access to that system? So much little, tiny nuance in those decisions.

Speaker 2: 17:41

Right, yeah, and nuance extends into you know, I would say you know there's. There's emotional intelligence that lives under all of it, or should ideally, especially when it comes to the nuance of which persona are you speaking with? Because the way that you're going to speak with your executives and the way that you're going to speak with your admins and your end users, you can't be all the same. It has to be different.

Speaker 1: 18:08

Yeah yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:10

Okay, awesome rabbit holes we got down here. But yeah, I mean, look one of the things that you're doing now. So you are, you've set up a consultancy, you are essentially a fractional CMO, but you're also consulting a lot about digital CS. What kind of things are you working on in the digital CS front with clients?

Speaker 1: 18:36

Yeah, that's actually where a bulk of my work is. In the digital customer success consulting side of my business. I'm a fractional CMO also, like I said, keeps me on my toes, keeps me better. But most of my clients I'm working with are in that digital CS space, I think, because, I mean, you and I both know it's like this thing that has been sort of a nice to have for a long time and all of a sudden like kind of you know, post less than ideal economic scenarios, people are like, oh crap, like I need this. This is not a nice to have anymore, it's absolutely a must have.

Speaker 1: 19:17

But there are so few of us out there who have ever built it or done it or seen it or experienced any of the pitfalls that can help you avoid those. I think a lot of companies are just like, oh my God, what do I do? So a lot of companies are just like, oh my god, like what do I do? Right? So a lot of my time is spent with with companies like that who are like, hey, I need to build a thing. We've never done it like brand new.

Speaker 1: 19:41

My cs leader is freaking awesome at one-to-one engagement, but like they're just not like a technical person in that way, right, like that's totally cool, like that's okay, right, there's nothing wrong with being a customer success leader who's like really focused on high touch, right. Then I get to come in and and do really fun stuff and see what's working really really well in those like more enterprise white glove interactions and figure out, okay, how do we automate that? How do we, you know, how do we automate it for lower tier customers? Right, if you will. But also, how do we automate some things for your CSMs so that their lives are easier and then they can have those more strategic conversations with more customers? Yep, right, I think you know. Another rabbit hole we could go down is like the whole like digital is for small customers thing. I'm just mad at the anti that.

Speaker 2: 20:42

So you know it's interesting about that. I've I've this has occupied probably more brain space than it should in my brain as of recent, because I don't have much space up there right now. Beside the point, the whole digital CS is a strategy, not a segment thing. Yes, total strategy, not a segment, but it is a segment. Like you know, it's so funny because we've kind of gone this guardrail to guardrail type situation, which we love doing in CS and other orgs as well. But like, yeah, it's a strategy and not a segment and I totally agree. It is a holistic strategy. It needs to encompass both customer facing stuff needs to encompass internal automations to help your csms be more efficient, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, there's a swath of your customers who aren't getting shit, so like, and the only people there to cover it is your digital cs team. So, yeah, you are covering a segment but that's part of this strategy.

Speaker 1: 21:48

I think you're spot on Right and I'm with you Right, like I I am. Yes, it is a strategy, not a segment, right? I think what's missing is it's a strategy, not just a segment.

Speaker 2: 22:02

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 22:03

Right, it's an and proposition, not an or proposition, you know, and whether. Whether it's like hey or proposition, you know, and whether it's like hey, you're starting with the proof of concept with just your smallest customers, cool, would I recommend a proof of concept, maybe in a different, with a slightly different audience? Yeah, I would, right. I would probably recommend like hey, let's do an onboarding proof of concept for all your customers, right? Rather than just your teeny tiny SMB friends. The reality in a lot of businesses to your customers, right, rather than just your teeny tiny SMB friends. The reality in a lot of businesses, to your point, those teeny tiny businesses like that's all they're getting, right.

Speaker 1: 22:38

So I like to think of it as like a, a sliding scale, right? Yeah, it's like a teeter totter, just the balance is different depending on what segment or what tier we're talking about. And yeah, it's like fully weighted digital with the smallest of your customers and heavily weighted, not digital, with your biggest customers. But guess what? There should be still some level of digital. This might be a bold statement, but I'm going to say this there should never be a customer anywhere, ever, no matter how big they are, that has no automation, no digital strategy.

Speaker 2: 23:16

Totally, totally. I completely agree with that. I mean, if you're not automating something, then you're missing the boat on a lot of you know a lot of goodness that can be had and, quite frankly, it's expected. You know your customers sign up with you. They're expecting some kind of automated things to happen. They're expecting a kickoff email, they're expecting login, you know whatever that is like. They're expecting something and when they don't get that, then that's problematic. And I'll add to that and say that I also feel like that every digital motion should be accompanied by the ability to engage a human, if you need to.

Speaker 1: 24:04

Yes, yes, that's all I'm going to say, gonna say about it. Yes, you're right, shows over, see you later folks no that's it.

Speaker 2: 24:15

No, yes yeah, I mean, and it doesn't have to be elaborate. Like you know, a lot of times what I like to do in an email is include a booking link to to the pool team's calendar or a specific person or you know, office hour or you know, whatever that is, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 2: 24:35

It can be any number of like 20 different things, but your customers shouldn't feel like they're being pigeonholed into a digital motion and that's all they have. They should feel like, okay, this is great information and this is how you can engage the team if you have other questions.

Speaker 1: 24:55

Right, Exactly. Yeah, I think about this a lot and I talk about this a lot and I'm actually I'm doing a presentation in a couple of weeks. It may have already happened by the time this airs but, at Trend Zero's conference.

Speaker 2: 25:08

Bob conference zero. I'll see you there yes can't wait, or I saw you there I saw you there.

Speaker 1: 25:16

It already happened, right, what is time? I don't know. So bob london is a is a listening expert, right and strategic conversation expert, and I'm automation expert. Those things seem, on the surface, like total opposites.

Speaker 2: 25:32

Not at all.

Speaker 1: 25:34

We're going to talk about why they're not and why you need both, and how to use automation to make more of those strategic conversations happen. That's awesome. That's the kind of connection that I'm really passionate about in what we do, right? It shouldn't feel like icky and disconnected, right? It should make you feel more connected. It should make you feel more engaged. It should get you what you need faster, whether that is, you know, a self-service portal where you can answer your own question, or access to a real person.

Speaker 2: 26:10

Right, yeah, exactly, that's huge. I'm looking forward to that talk. I mean I really enjoyed that talk.

Speaker 1: 26:18

Thanks.

Speaker 2: 26:20

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 love, likes, follows, subscribes, comments, all of that kind of stuff. So if you get value out of the content, you listen regularly and you want to help others to discover the content as well, please go ahead and follow the show, leave a comment, leave a review. Anything that you want to do there really helps us to grow organically as a show. And while you're at it, go sign up for the companion newsletter that goes out every week at digitalcustomersuccesscom. Now back to the show. So I want to shift gears here a little bit, because one of the things that I've talked a lot about is measuring digital CS.

Speaker 2: 27:09

And this is something that a lot of people struggle with and I actually, I mean I take a overly simplistic approach to it, maybe to my detriment, I don't know. But fundamentally speaking, like you've got, on one side, you've got traditional customer success metrics, your NRRs, your GRs, your renewal rates, your churn rates, all that kind of stuff. On the other side, you have marketing campaign metrics, open rates, click-through rates, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I think the magic, in my opinion, really happens in that attribution of we did this campaign in this cohort of customers that engaged with it. We saw a reduction in whatever it is you're trying to do. Right If it's an increase in adoption of a specific feature, or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But is that am I? In your opinion, and in the conversations that you've had with your own customers in your consultancy, are you advising something similar? Are you advising something different in terms of how those companies should measure their programs?

Speaker 1: 28:17

Yeah, very much something similar, right? I always like to remind people that those more traditional CS metrics we're talking about retention, churn, nrr, grr, blah, blah, blah those are lagging metrics, right? So it's going to take a while for you to see an impact on those things, whether you're tackling those with humans or with automation, mind you. But particularly we're talking about automation, like hi doing an onboarding. You know, automating your onboarding process is not going to like magically fix your turn rate, because those customers don't have the opportunity to turn for like a year, yep.

Speaker 2: 28:55

Right, right, exactly.

Speaker 1: 28:57

So I think it can be really hard for people to like be patient and wait to see those results. So the other thing, sort of in between the two, that I really like to recommend is hey, what are the sort of intermediate metrics for your customers, your business? A lot of times it's product usage, right. That's a really important one because I think, to your point, that attribution is pretty easy to follow of, like, hey, this cohort of customers, just like you said, we sent them this thing, they did this thing and now, look, they're using XYZ product feature way more than they did before, right. Other metrics that are kind of intermediary things, like time to onboard or time to value, can be really really valuable A lot of times. I recommend running a proof of concept with digital when it's new, and those are the things that I recommend you measure For a proof of concept. You're not going to be able to wait to measure retention.

Speaker 1: 29:54

It's unrealistic wait to measure retention, right, it's unrealistic, nope, right. So, yes, measure opens, clicks, unsubscribes, etc. And then product usage. And then what like? What other metrics can't number one can you measure with your systems and technology and the like? But what, like, what else is relevant to your business and what else have you already figured out correlates to higher long-term metrics later down the line, right? We know typically, on average, things like quicker time to onboard and quicker time value correlate with higher retention rates and higher growth rates and all of that. So what are those in the middle things you're like you can measure along the way, because it's just too damn hard to wait a year.

Speaker 2: 30:45

It really is? Yeah, for sure it is, it is, and even things like you know NPS very kind of laggy and you know you shouldn't wait six months to get an update. Blah, blah, blah, blah blah. I'm fascinated at um you know by how many digital motions I've seen in place that really don't have metrics on the back end of it in other words.

Speaker 2: 31:14

They're not. They're not really tracked, like a lot of them are just kind of put in place. Okay, done, move on to the next one. Right, which? Okay, you know, if you're trying, if you're trying to go do a bunch of stuff, I totally get it right and you're, you're strapped, you're, maybe you know, maybe you're. You are a csm and part-time digital person at your company. I get it. You got to build and move on. But if you have the means to go measure the efficacy of one of your motions, ideally a really solid onboarding flow would reduce your time to value over those that didn't get it and those kinds of things. On the flip side also, you want to know when stuff isn't working so that you can fix it, because there's nothing worse than having stuff out there that is just ineffective and noise and is just whatever um is there. Is there um a process or kind of a methodology that you recommend your clients follow, when things might not be working correctly, to analyze what needs to be fixed and then do another iteration?

Speaker 1: 32:24

Yeah. So first of all, I call that scenario we're talking about where it's like there are things happening but we're not measuring. I call that random acts of marketing.

Speaker 2: 32:34

Oh, I love this.

Speaker 1: 32:36

And it's like you said, it's really common, right. It makes me kind of sad, but, to your point, sometimes that's the reality. Things should not be set it and forget it. They shouldn't be one and done, but, like sometimes they are right. So if you're in that scenario, like I, I feel your pain, I see you, but let's try and measure right. Like let's try, and really even more than what we just talked about of like yeah, proving that's working. Like yes, what can we fix, what can we make better? Right, what's like maybe it's kind of working, but like we'd like it to work better.

Speaker 1: 33:17

I don't know that I have like a really specific methodology that I use in that regard. I think you know the reality is, like you said, it's kind of situational, like how much time and effort you can spend there. But number one I always recommend, like you said, just measure everything right. Whatever data is available to you, keep track of it, right? Maybe you're really only looking at it once a month or even once a quarter. I'd like to see it more but if that's the reality, like, okay, that's fine, set aside that time to do that. And then not only do you want to compare sort of one message or one campaign or one initiative against another right, but you also want to compare it to itself over time. I think that's one that people really tend to miss right, where maybe they're measuring a lot in the beginning. When they first build something, they're like, oh, it's working, we're done now.

Speaker 2: 34:10

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 34:11

Right, and the reality is that that's never true right. Your business is evolving, your product is evolving, your customers are evolving, your competition is evolving and therefore your messaging needs to evolve with those things Right. And that doesn't just mean like, oh, we need to change this thing. When we had a big like product release, yeah.

Speaker 1: 34:34

Again back to you know, everything is nuanced. There are, there are smaller shifts and changes and whatever where you might want to revisit the language of something or the timing of something, or or the channel you're using to send a message, whatever it is right. So I really really like to remind folks to just make sure you're measuring over time, right, like something that worked really well when you first launched it, six months later, two years later, five years later, guess what? It might not work so well anymore. So what did those discrepancies in those, like you know, leading metrics engagement metrics, opens, clicks, blah, blah, blah. Leading metrics, engagement metrics, opens, clicks, blah, blah, blah? That's like your first clue, obviously. Or you can do it in reverse, right, like, oh, shoot, are we seeing like a really big, you know, drop in NRR or a really big spike in churn with this cohort of customers in this time period? And then you can go like backwards and be like, okay, what was the process that they went through and was there, you know, was there a drop off in usage somewhere? Was there a drop off in them engaging with our stuff somewhere? That's the other thing. Like you don't just have to look at it forward, I think looking at it backwards can also be super, super helpful.

Speaker 1: 35:53

And then I'm all about testing too, right, when you're like, well, I'm not sure, like okay, no, this isn't working. But I'm not sure, like what about it isn't working Right. Like, is it the channel, is it the language, is it the subject line? Like whatever, it's okay to like, be like okay, we're going to see if a different subject line changes over here with this group, with this cohort, and we're going to see if you know different call to action or a different whatever. Just like more human again, more human language. Maybe that makes a difference, less formal, and we're going to try that over here with this cohort. That's okay to be like I don't know what, what the like very specific problem is, and to test, to see what it is and see where you see improvement yep, it's all incredibly valid things.

Speaker 2: 36:43

A couple things that kind of came to mind as you were chatting about. That is especially if you're doing like email mark, you know email campaigns and those kinds of things. I guarantee you if you're doing some email campaigns and you have a system that does some email campaigns for you, I guarantee you it will have some analytics available out of the box, and if it doesn't, you need to change platforms because it's like that's not cool.

Speaker 1: 37:09

That's not even like real email campaigns if it's not giving you metrics back.

Speaker 2: 37:15

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1: 37:16

Like a mail merge, come on exactly so.

Speaker 2: 37:18

It's like there's almost like no excuse to at least measure are people engaging with your content? Are people looking at it? And if they are looking at it but not clicking into it, that that means that something wrong with the content. And then the other piece. That again is an example of where marketing things haven't quite carried over to CS as much as I feel like they should. Is this notion of AB testing. I mean, that's what marketers do constantly, especially on, you know, landing pages and things like that, but AB tests some campaigns and see what works better and what you know what doesn't, and tweak it over over time.

Speaker 1: 38:00

And you're. You know, whatever system you're using. If you're using a CS platform, that capability may not be, you know, natively built in. Right, it's not hard to duplicate the campaign. Tweak something over here, tweak something over here and then customize the audience and exclude the other audience, right. Like okay, maybe it takes like an extra hour. Like it's not that hard yeah.

Speaker 2: 38:23

You know, and not to get into the weeds, but you know you, you you add a number, you know a field with a number one to half of your customer base and the number two to the other half of your customer base and go yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, super cool, super cool. Are there digital motions that you have either been involved with or that you've seen in the wild that you're like really excited about because it's unique and new, like I see stuff in B2C all the time where I'm just like wow, why aren't we doing this in B2B? Are there things like that for you that that stick out?

Speaker 1: 39:03

Oh, there are so many B2C examples, I think I mean I'm going to tangent for a second before.

Speaker 2: 39:09

I actually answer your question.

Speaker 1: 39:10

Because you know we were talking earlier, customer success can learn so much from marketing, right. B2 success can learn so much from marketing, right b2b can learn so much from b2c, especially when we're talking about automation. Right like I posted about this on linkedin recently, I had a like consumer experience from southwest airlines, but it's actually not my airline of choice, right like I don't fly them that often but I did. And our wifi sucked on our plane and I was pissed because I was really trying to get work done.

Speaker 2: 39:43

You knew you had that hour and a half flight and you were banking on using that time to like get this deck done Exactly.

Speaker 1: 39:51

Literally yes, and I paid the $8 for wifi or whatever and it like it did not work. And I paid the $8 for Wi-Fi or whatever and it did not work and I was really irritated. But an hour after I landed I got an email from Southwest being like we noticed that your Wi-Fi didn't work. We're really sorry about that. Here's your money back.

Speaker 2: 40:08

Super smart.

Speaker 1: 40:09

Right and it wasn't anything complicated. Their system told them that the Wi-Fi didn't work. Their system told them that I was on that flight and I bought the wi-fi and it automatically sent me a message, simple message, like you know, couple paragraphs, not even like very short, short and sweet. They didn't give me anything extra, they just gave me my money back, right for the thing that I bought that didn't use, sure, sure, but the like, the thoughtfulness of that, I'm like that's massive. Because guess what now, next time I fly, whether it's them or another airline, really, how much more likely am I to like try buying the internet again, even if it doesn't, might not work?

Speaker 2: 40:51

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's so fascinating because those kinds of things my brain immediately goes to like okay, what was the person or the group thinking that built that automation Guaranteed? They were reacting to a high number of support tickets that came in because people were complaining that the Wi-Fi didn't work and wanted a refund. I'm sure they get flooded with those things on a daily basis.

Speaker 1: 41:16

And so like, and the Wi-Fi really never works on plans, let's do well.

Speaker 2: 41:19

Right, I know. So that's like a prime example of where you know that is a extremely effective ticket deflection which helps your teams, but it's also just extremely effective triaging and being proactive about potential issues and really monitoring your business and getting your business. That's awesome.

Speaker 1: 41:40

Yeah, and just creating a positive experience right. They turn something negative, something crappy, into something that I'm talking about right now On a podcast.

Speaker 2: 41:50

Yeah, on a podcast, there you go. You're welcome Southwest.

Speaker 1: 41:53

I do want to answer your actual question. So the thing I'm seeing the most right now, that I'm, like, the most excited about, is automating qbrs because, honestly, everyone hates qbrs.

Speaker 1: 42:05

Like correct vendors hate them, customers hate them, everybody hates them. No one wants to sit through that meeting and their freaking time sucks for everybody. So much prep that goes into them from the vendor side, like the CSM and their leadership and their team, and blah, blah, blah. Getting the deck in order and presenting and whatever. Getting everyone on a call Like there's such a big time, huge, yeah, huge. I hate it, but they're also like an expectation, right. Huge, I hate it, but they're also like an expectation, right. So I'm loving this new trend of automating. Your qbrs cast app is the one that I've seen the most. I think there are one or two others that are starting to get into the space as well, yep, but you know it does require a pretty high level of like back-end data sophistication, right, right, or at least access.

Speaker 2: 42:57

Totally.

Speaker 1: 42:58

So I acknowledge that it's not necessarily like a today possibility for everybody, but cleaning up your data should be on everyone's to-do list, so hopefully it's a future possibility. And you literally just like send the customer the QBR and it's a cute little like cartoon that tells you what your CSM would be telling you in the meeting. And then you don't necessarily not have the meeting, but you can have a meeting to actually talk about helpful things.

Speaker 2: 43:29

Yeah, right.

Speaker 1: 43:31

Yeah, right. Or to your point, with those smaller customers, you don't automatically schedule the meeting, but maybe if they have questions, there's a link for them to schedule time with somebody. Right, that's right. And then you can talk about like actual value and goals and aligning the product and their usage to those goals and like just much more useful things than like.

Speaker 2: 43:54

Yes.

Speaker 1: 43:55

You said you wanted this number of users to use this feature and we only got to that Like Just way more valuable stuff, right? Not only?

Speaker 2: 44:05

that, but the QBR should not be used to talk about support tickets, bugs, just that's completely. Nor do your executive people, who probably don't want to be on the call to begin with. Care, you know, care, they don't care. They care. Is the money I'm spending here worth it and where are we getting the returns that we need out of? You know, this investment. And then how can we optimize the investment? I don't care about bugs, you know I don't care about.

Speaker 1: 44:39

How does that align to like my bigger goals? I feel like that's often the biggest missed piece. Right is like okay, yeah, like is it worth it? Like in this small white, whatever team is using the product or whatever initiative you're using for, or whatever. But then like, how does that impact company strategy? How does that impact company-wide strategic initiatives or mbo's, or like what you know, whatever your company uses? Yeah like, yeah, csm's use the time and talk about that. Don't like read stats at them.

Speaker 2: 45:13

No, have a cartoon, do that totally way more fun, way more fun to engage with. Yeah, I mean, there's a couple things that I really want to play with that I haven't really found the right opportunity to do it, but, like again the executive persona, for instance, I would love to just be able to send them a text message every quarter or so with like three lines. It's like your team did this well. We're on track here. We need your help to push this, otherwise, blah, blah, blah. Like three, four lines done. You don't have to go to a qbr. The qbr is reserved for your administrators. It's reserved for, you know, your champions. It's reserved for maybe some power users who actually have, you know, are are in the weeds working on the thing you know. I just I don't know it. There's so much room for us to like reimagine what that is, especially with technology, like you pointed out, like cast app is awesome, barry is awesome, people are using matic really well these days. Like there's there's there's no shortage of things that can help us do this stuff.

Speaker 1: 46:24

It's just still kind of like this mystery black box situation yeah, and I know there's a lot of controversy over like using text message and slack, sure, in b2b, but I'm a I'm a proponent. I think it needs to be used carefully and selectively.

Speaker 2: 46:40

Right, you can't be blowing up your they need to opt in absolutely or you know. Give them the choice. Would you rather hear from us through your email or sms or whatever? You know? Give them the choice. Would you rather hear from us through email or SMS, or whatever?

Speaker 1: 46:50

You know it's like yeah, yeah, I really like Slack for that though too, because it is it feels like a little less invasive for some people than text right SMS, but it's still like a quicker communication channel.

Speaker 2: 47:03

Yeah, totally, that's awesome. We are woefully running out of time and I'm sad because I feel like we could keep going. Um, we could keep going, but, um, that's right. Well, we could. We could meet up um at zero in and uh live from zero in chat about each other's.

Speaker 1: 47:25

We could criticize each other's sessions kind of like when you have like a cat gpt destroy your that's right profile or something we could tear each other's sessions up.

Speaker 2: 47:37

Yeah, a couple things I always love for my guests to provide the audience with is, first off, what's in your content diet? What are you paying attention to?

Speaker 1: 47:47

yeah, so, um, I'm woefully behind the times in reading the gainsight digital customer success book. I'm part of the way through it right now making my way through. Next on my book shelf, um is mastering customer success by my wonderful friend, peter armily. Totally mar, I'm excited to get to that one because I just think peter's freaking smart I. What else do I love to listen to? I mean, I'm a little like everywhere, right. I'm a little like what? What looks interesting today? I don't know that there's any like newsletters or podcasts or anything that I'm like. I read every single thing or listen totally, there's no way yeah, there's no way.

Speaker 1: 48:33

But it's like hey, who's on alex's podcast today? Hey, there's a new podcast called the customer growth podcast. What's happening over there? Like the they said podcast, even though it's not necessarily always customer success, they have some really interesting stuff happening over there. Sometimes I like to kind of pop around and just keep an eye on what everybody's doing and take note of who's interesting and what topics are interesting. And yeah, that's my strategy, because there's just too much.

Speaker 2: 49:05

One of my goals is to put a chatbot on the website where it'll basically scrape the transcripts of these shows. And yeah, you see where I'm going. Do you know this book, the New Automation Mindset?

Speaker 1: 49:23

No, what is that? Should I be reading that, alex?

Speaker 2: 49:25

No go get it. It's really really, really, really, really really good. Dan Ennis first put me onto it. A bunch of people have been reading it or whatever, but it's really about the automation mindset that should exist cross-functionally within a company to survive basically Love that.

Speaker 1: 49:53

Any kudos or shout outs or anything that you'd want to give? Oh, I mean, dan, who you mentioned, is always doing really cool stuff. What was I just having a really interesting? Oh, I was just exchanging really fascinating linkedin comments and whatever with Kat, brigham and Carissa. Parrish about digital campaigns for your like gold star customers. Cool Right, we focus so much on like who's struggling, who's not on the right path, Like what do we do about those people who were like, yay, how do?

Speaker 1: 50:23

we celebrate to them. How do we celebrate them? And they're both working on campaigns in that regard that I think are amazing, and you've got to have already done some serious work to get to a place where you can tackle that. So kudos to them for making it there.

Speaker 2: 50:41

That's awesome. I love that. That's great. That's great. Yes, we've got to celebrate our customers. Where can people find you? You know, give you a shout out, engage with you, all that kind of stuff yeah, fine, man, linkedin I'm.

Speaker 1: 50:56

I'm around, um, you can check out my website, marleywagnercom. Shoot me a message. I always love to just I mean clearly, since we're like way out of time, I love to talk about this kind of stuff, so would love to chat with anybody who who is nerdy like us in this.

Speaker 2: 51:14

Yes, digital CS nerds Sounds good. Well, thanks for the time. Thanks for joining me, thanks for the laughs and the insights and really looking forward to getting this one out there. But thank you for your time.

Speaker 1: 51:28

Thanks, alex, good to see you.

Speaker 2: 51:33

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. 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 Strickovich. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you next week.