Women in Customer Success Podcast

127 - Transforming Customer Success with AI - Nádia Vieira

• Marija Skobe-Pilley • Episode 127

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What does it take to create great customer experiences globally? 

Tune in and hear about the latest innovative strategies that combine AI, automation, and community management from Nádia Vieira, Manager of Global Digital Customer Success at LinkedIn Sales Solutions.

We talk about her journey from aspiring journalist to a key player in customer success, the importance of creating personalised experiences for customers, and the potential of AI in improving customer experiences. 

Nádia shared insights into how her team is using AI to provide personalised recommendations and improve customer engagement, making the digital journey more effective. 

In this episode, you'll learn about:

  • Nádia's transition from journalism to customer success and her path to LinkedIn
  • The role of community management in customer success
  • Scaling customer success through digital strategies and automated journeys
  • The impact of AI on personalising customer experiences 

Tune in and learn how to use AI to create meaningful customer experiences.

Follow Nádia!

This episode was brought to you by Vitally.

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Speaker 1:

This episode is brought to you by Vitally. Vitally is bringing in a new era of customer success productivity. With their all-in-one customer success platform, vitally gives you unmatched visibility into your company's health and success, and now you can measure operational strategies on customer outcomes at scale with goals, directly in Vitally. Exciting news for all the listeners Vitaly are also giving away a free pair of AirPods for all Women in Customer Success podcast listeners when you take a qualified demo with them. If you're in the market looking for a CS platform, make sure you visit vitalyio slash women vitalallyio slash women to book your demo and get your AirPods. And now let's get into the episode. What are the fascinating AI and automation technologies that will keep on driving digital customer success? Join me with Nadia Vira, manager for Global Digital Customer Success for LinkedIn Sales Solutions, as we explore the mature digital success strategies, automation and the implications of AI to personalized experiences.

Speaker 1:

In the last few years, the topic of digital customer success has been one of the most popular topics on this podcast, so I'm convinced that you are gonna love this episode, so let's get into it. Hi everyone, this is Maria Scobepile and you're listening to Women in Customer Success podcast, the first women-only podcast where remarkable ladies of customer success share their stories and practical tools to help you succeed and make an impact. If you want to learn more about customer success, get career advice and be inspired, you're in the right place. So let's tune in. I'm so excited to welcome my guest today. She is a manager for global digital customer success for LinkedIn sales solutions, and she is just an amazing human being. Her name is Nadia Vieira. Nadia, finally, you are coming to the show and I'm so excited about it Welcome.

Speaker 2:

Thank you. It's been a long time in the making, but I really appreciate you, first for the invite and then for allowing me to share anything that I'll have to share today with you.

Speaker 1:

Let's start with some quick basics. Where?

Speaker 2:

are you based? I'm based in Dublin, so in Ireland, but I am not from here originally. I'm from Portugal. I moved here. I think it's going to be seven years, so time just flies, Beautiful.

Speaker 1:

Nadia, one interesting question. That well, I find it interesting and, as I always want to find out where people are coming from, not even geographically, but what are those different backgrounds and different experiences that people had, for me it makes lots of sense to understand you know, what were people doing before, how they were, what were their personalities, and then to see, you know, what are you all today, how is your career? So I like to ask that question about almost teenage years Would the 16-year-old you be surprised to find you in this current job? I think very surprised, because originally I wanted to be a journalist.

Speaker 2:

16-year-old you be surprised to find you in this current job, I think very surprised, because originally I wanted to be a journalist. That was like my dream job ever since. I remember I always was fascinated by, you know, like media and talking Kind of like connected to what I do today. I have to say, like when you're in customer success it's all about interacting and engaging with others and making sure that they're heard and successful. So I think part of me never suspected that I ended in customer success, maybe because I didn't know customer success existed. So I actually went to university and I've studied journalism and then there I realized that maybe I did.

Speaker 2:

I did three years of journalism and then I did my master's in marketing when I realized that maybe I want to do something more like business related and then so my first job was in as a marketing manager, working like internal comms, external comms. But then eventually, you know, after a while I thought you know what I've been in the marketing world for a while. I want to do something else and so I suddenly just bumped into customer success at LinkedIn. I didn't go to like a normal customer success route. I was a community manager, part of the customer success team, so we had a customer community, which was a platform to engage with customers, and that was my first ever interaction with customer success that I realized hey, there's so much more here that I haven't even realized, and I'm glad that I suddenly bumped into this type of role and type of job, I would say. So I'm very, very grateful actually that things just turned out to be like perfect, I would have to say, for me.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh. I want to dwell down on the truths of journalism. I also studied journalism, which probably not many people know, because music was my main degree and then I started, like the second university second degree, at the same time I did three years of journalism and I was always so interested in that and then I made up my mind to not finish it, unfortunately, because I went to do music outside, like internationally, and that was it for journalism at the time. And I think my mom never, kind of I think she's still regretting that I don't have that degree of journalism, you know, because, like, why do you go on college if you don't have finished the degree? But, as a moment, college if you don't have finished the degree, uh, but as a moment I'm I'm kind of telling her you know what? You remember that degree I, you know I studied media.

Speaker 1:

I kind of do it at the moment. We never thought it would happen, but like there used to be radio shows. I have podcasts, it's almost, almost there, but it's interesting. When you said like there is so, so, so many connections and you started with a community, I mean if that wasn't almost like journalism, you know, getting almost interviewing people, understanding what they do, connecting them with others. That used to be like the old style journalism of what we used to do, so this is really interesting, interesting segue into customer success. So tell me more about that customer success journey.

Speaker 2:

So when I joined LinkedIn, I was part of LinkedIn Sales Solutions. So we have for those that do not know, LinkedIn has different lines of businesses we have LinkedIn Talent Solutions that has products like Recruiter, LinkedIn Learning, for those that are also using it. We have LinkedIn Marketing Solutions that it's everything around, like the ads, so sponsored content to promote your business. And then we have sales solutions that has a main product called LinkedIn Sales Navigator, and so that is a platform that allows you to expand your business, to connect to new leads, find new accounts, to find new companies that you want to make, you want to either sell to or you want to like find partners to also like sell your business or sell your products and services. And so when I joined this, LinkedIn sales solutions like the LinkedIn sales solutions org was one of the I think was like the third one to be formed within these three, and so our customer success team was smaller.

Speaker 2:

We had a lot of customer success managers, but we didn't have as many as the other lines of businesses. But we had to scale because we you know we had to do what we could, and so I joined like a team that was called skilled customer success. And so within this team we had myself that was doing customer community. We had people doing like link, like the learning center, so everything around training, the live webinars, you know all of those things as well. And then we have also, like someone else doing more like the campaign.

Speaker 2:

So people that were like, okay, all these customers that do not have a CSM, how do we engage with them? So we have the on-demand content, which was the community and learning center and help center, and then how do we actually provide proactive outreach for those customers so that they know exactly if something is happening or if something needs to be improved? And so I was part of that team and it was really my first interaction with customer success, which was interesting because I didn't follow that traditional like customer success manager path. But I've actually started hearing around like, how do you scale? How do you support these?

Speaker 2:

I don't know thousands of customers that do not have a CSM. They do have an account person more on the sales side, but they need this, like you know, handholding, and how do we do it to align with the service package that they have with the? You know how much they're spending and what they're doing for us as a customer, and so, of course, I was more involved in the customer community side of things, because, you know, I was responsible for the customer community but I was also exposed to these other ways of engaging with customers that not follow that traditional path, which was interesting.

Speaker 1:

Would you like to tell us more about what were you doing as part of one of the first roles within LinkedIn in scale customer success? Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, of course. So I was one of the two global community managers that we had global customer community managers, and so my role was was very, I would say, versatile. So I was just responsible for managing like the day to day. So I was like posting content, engaging with our customers in the community, meaning that could be like answering their questions about the product or answering their questions about like you know how can I be successful using this, which is usually what a CSM does, but on a one-to-one environment and I was doing it in a one-to-many and then also like creating new content that would be more like customer centric. And what I mean about this is, you know, we all have like blogs that our customers, that our companies sometimes have, and we all have like other content available in learning center or in a help center. That it's different in a traditional path, meaning that you know learning center content can be like webinars or like on demand videos that are, like you know, more like feature based type of, like you know, faq, like around, like this is what the feature does. This is how you access the product.

Speaker 2:

The community was more around. Okay, where do you go next? So, for example, for sales navigator, I know that I have the product, I know that I have all these features, but I have this audience that I have to engage with. Where do I start? How do I do it? Or it could be like I've been doing this for a while. I haven't seen the success that I wanted. What do I need to do differently? Or it could be like an admin or program manager responsible for the implementation of the tool around, like I'm having issues with change management or I'm having issues with people actually performing the best practices that we want them to perform, and so it was really that like support that a CSM would do, but again, one too many where your job or my job was also to connect them to their peers. So a lot of the community's benefit is all about like, yes, I can be there and I can answer their questions, but the real, I would say the goodness, the juice that comes with it is when customers learn from each other, is when customers are actually going through each other's questions, each other's like challenges, that opportunities, and they find a common ground of like, hey, I'm not alone. There's other people out there that also have this product or this specific service and they have the same questions and this is what they did to resolve that. So you kind of like guide them and present them to other people and opportunities to help them be successful by learning from others, which is really about like advocacy as well.

Speaker 2:

A part of the community was all about the customer advocacy, you know, and all of that as well, which is a really, I would say, selling point for those that do not have a community like that at that customer advocacy that is, you know, available within a community is so strong, and I always ask the question like what will be more impactful to you, hearing from a customer or hearing from the company? Like the company will always say great things, we will like, of course, um, but a customer saying like, hey, I've been using this for five years and I love it, it's so powerful, and so that's how I really like loved about the community. So it was all about like the interaction within the community. But then there was also like the work behind the scenes of making sure that our CSMs, our sales, knew that there is a community so that they can also understand where I can point customers to these places, and so it had to be around like building trust with our internal teams that this community was being built by professionals and by their customers and they can actually scale and help each other, leaving the CSM or leaving, like the account manager, with a little bit more time to focus on the strategic relationships as well, that are more like around renewals and growth opportunities and empowering customers to actually learn from each other and leverage a community that is available for all of them. So that internal piece was really important.

Speaker 2:

Another part was also like we had an ideation, which we still have, an ideation platform, and so I was responsible for engaging with our product team to make sure that, hey, like we have all these ideas that are being shared in the community, have you heard about them? And also, like, can you consider them for, like, product development? This is again like free voice of customer that we're giving you by those that are using the product and they can tell you exactly what's good, what could be improved, and so that was also like the cross-functional relationship was really important. So I was a program manager, specifically because I was responsible for different parts that were either more like internal facing or customer facing, and so that, for me, was what made it really interesting. It was because I was doing a little bit of you know this and that, and I was also learning from other teams, learning from customers, which was again like another selling point for me as a starting in my career in customer success. I would say I love it.

Speaker 1:

You were never like a CSM, but you were building that incredible ecosystem that was enabling CSMs to be more strategic, because you were catering for thousands and thousands of customers on a scale and then later on digital manner.

Speaker 1:

The thing that I'm really interested in and you touched upon it a bit is kind of providing the similar type of content or experiences for many customers what CSMs would typically do for one, and there is a typical segment one-to-one versus one-to-many, and there is a typical segment one-to-one versus one-to-many. Now, as I'm talking very often with CEOs from smaller companies and startups in my consulting, they are now more and more hearing all about the digital customer success and thinking, yeah, yeah, yeah, we should just do it just straight away right now, without having much of the idea of what it is and what can it look like. And the part that I like is almost showcasing the opportunities, what are available to them to do in digital way what typically they would just think of doing one-to-one. So I wonder from your end, as you tapped more into the whole aspect of scale motions and then even more into the digital, what are some of the first things that you are replicating from one-to-one engagement into that digital and scale motion?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, such a great question because that really evolves into, like my, it evolves with my career in customer success. So then I eventually moved into the digital customer success team. So I'm now leading a team of program managers that are called digital program managers and they're responsible for the entire ecosystem and building the digital customer experience for these customers that can be, or not be, csm served, which means that there's a lot of digital experiences that are for all available right where you can support CSMs and sales to be more productive and effective with their time, and then there's others that are more like tactical for those that do not have a CSM, and so, for example, one of the big things that my team is doing to answer your question is we have specific proactive engagement, so outreach, and by this in this case, I'm gonna give an example of an email campaign that we send that is to alert customers when they're not fully activated or when they are. For example, you have a specific skew which is like one of the segments that you can buy of our product and you have. You can sync your crm so that you can have access to like x number of features, but if you don't sync your crm, you won't have access to those features. Those are the specific conversations that a CSM has with their customers around the value that these are like the two things that you have to do from the beginning, from day one, and so when you don't have a CSM, we built an experience using a very well-known tool that we use in customer success where it's triggered, it's automated.

Speaker 2:

So we have an experience where we know that after 45 days because we have also like digital onboarding for some customers, if you haven't done these things, we're going to trigger a couple emails to you on a specific. So there's like criteria, there's specific things that we follow and we make sure that we're not constantly onboarding, bombarding customers with emails or with anything. But we know that these are critical and we've seen massive success by you know, we've started the automation journey, maybe like around a year, year and a half ago, and we are seeing, like most of our customers that are actually getting these doing the things that they should be doing, which is incredible, because then it leads them to like higher value, which leads to higher revenue as well, because when they do those things, then we also have other things around, like there's onboarding, like I was mentioning to you like. We have a skew of customers again that do not qualify for one to one onboarding, so we built the journey as well for them, where, throughout the four weeks that we have of onboarding, we tell them exactly what they have to do, and again, we're seeing similar success to those that are having one-to-one onboarding as well. So it's great how we are.

Speaker 2:

I think, like we still have a lot to do, but we are looking at the entire ecosystem and the digital journey for customers, mapping out what they need to do as specific moments in times and then building those automated, personalized journeys that we have to make sure that they know exactly what they have to do to be successful. And so we're again on a journey. I have to say I'm really proud for the team and everything that we did in the last year, but there's, I would say, with AI, there's so much more that we can do, and we have one project that we've started around like a year year and a half ago as well, using AI to also provide more personalized experiences that I'm really excited and I cannot wait to see what's going to happen in the next fiscal year. Fiscal year starts in July, so actually today is the first day, and there's a lot that we want to do there as well.

Speaker 1:

We could go now much more into the AI, but wondering, could you give us a little bit of a flavor? In which way will AI really assist to provide even more personalized experience? Because, based on what I'm hearing and hearing you speak in different places and conferences, you're very advanced in the whole digital cycle, so much more than so many companies that are just trying out or starting and starting with the first few digital programs. And you have all of those automated different journeys and then personalized email campaigns based on the triggers and based on the activities that customers need to do. What you as a company, almost established that if they do these different steps and milestones, you know they're going to be successful. So you are very advanced with it. What is next with that AI? How can it unlock even more opportunities? What can you share? I think okay if you can't share a lot, but give us a little bit of a flavor.

Speaker 2:

I can, I could definitely. I do want to say that I think now it seems like we're doing a lot. We started so small, like we started with activation, so that was the thing that we had to do, like user license activation, and we tested and we saw how we went. So I have to say, like for smaller or bigger organizations, just select one thing, like one thing you think it's the most important to you, test and see how it goes. The beauty of technology is that you can stop anything at any time. So we had specific red flags that we knew if this happens, we're going to stop. If this is one problem and we see it, we're going to stop it immediately. So that's something that anyone can do. So just select one thing.

Speaker 2:

On AI, I think the beauty and for us, the next step is really around like, yeah, we can automate and, yes, it can be personalized, but how do we personalize to the level of knowing? Like you as a user, maria, I know that you log in every day at this time. I know that your objective as a customer is this and I actually know that you're using these specific things in the product. Using these specific things in the product, the most challenging thing is like how do you get all that input and produce an email that it's personalized to you, or produce like an in-product notification that it's personalized to you? With AI and Gen AI and specific, like the LLMs, the models that you can use is that you can actually bring all those inputs to produce an output that it's actually unique for you. So we were very lucky. I have to say. My team works a lot with our insights team and our developer, our development team, so our data science team, and they have to say it's like these are like the, the, the three components my team, insights, decision science and all together are using technology that we have access to to be through these models to produce output using the input that we have access to. So that could be from like behavior in the product uh, behavior from what you told us, and onboarding as well, and then from there we are personalizing exactly what we know to say hey, maria, I know that you haven't done this. This is something that you have to think as a next step. So it's that next best action that we're building to the user.

Speaker 2:

So primarily, we're focusing on, like, the program manager and the admin, but we're realizing that on the end user, there's so much more that we can do, and so we were really lucky to have these. You know, three teams working together to that new around technology you have to be fair are learning about how to use this technology and testing it and, again, a lot of work around like testing and making sure everything was working. It involves a lot of like rounds of like reviewing content and making sure that the content is like ready to be put in front of a customer, and so we're now starting to expand this kind of like end user type of campaign and outreach that it's like the next step for you as a user, um, and and we're learning a lot. For example, we're learning that for english. It works really well for languages.

Speaker 2:

There's a little bit more that we have to do with the models, um, but the thing is that technology and ai engineer is evolving like so fast that when a new uh version of, let's say, chat to, to PD or something that you use, becomes available, you already see a lot of improvements there as well. So for us, this has been very successful and, in terms of results, we are really looking in terms of like product adoptions. Are we seeing people using those things? Are we seeing people actually doing what we're recommending them to do? And we've seen, like really great success in terms of, like, you know, doubling down what they're doing in the product, which is great, but a lot of learnings and a lot of, like, you know, pausing and restarting and all of that, and so that's why I'm saying it's been like a year, a year and a half, around using AI, and now we're like looking into terms of like, how can we further personalize what we're doing? And there's more I would say that technology can do there as well.

Speaker 1:

I'm so excited to see that from the end user perspective, when it is all out, I've already you know, I think I know some people who are taking part in some of the testing and people are, in general, very, very exciting. So I'm sure there will be loads of amazing and exciting things to come. What I was wondering from you, especially as you are like, you're not a you haven't been a CSM, one-to-one CSM but you're doing so much for what customer success is providing for the customers. What is it that is so passionate for you about customer success?

Speaker 2:

I think for me, it's really like building an experience that can be very personalized to you. So I always think about like you find someone or a user and I am a paying customer and I'm getting this, would it be valuable for me? Is it something that you know? So how can you anticipate the customer needs? How can you anticipate what their opportunities for growth are, and how do you really excel at engaging with them and knowing that one-to-many approach like touch? So that's really what drives me and I think it comes from my background around marketing and journalism, which is around connecting with people and making them feel like they're being hurt, making them feel like they know exactly, like you know that one, you're paying a lot for this, or you're paying X amount of money, which you know is a lot. It's an investment. So you need to show them the value. You need to show to that user an end user or an admin or an executive buyer that this is what you're getting from that as well.

Speaker 2:

And I think the value piece is like our next step, like our next step is to go further and so, like activation, product adoption, value perception that's where that's, I think, our biggest focus for the next year as well. We have like a few things around there, but a value perception at scale it's much more difficult. It's a much more difficult conversation that we can have with the customer Because you know, maria, you know you are so experienced and you have a lot of proficiency around customer success and if you are a CSM and you have to drive the value conversation with a customer, that's one of the most pivotal moments that you have with a customer. So, having imagining having to do that at scale and through, like digital, you have to really nail down the wording, the metrics, like what are you actually showing to the customer? And, first of all, is that what they want to hear? Is that what matters to them as a paying customer?

Speaker 2:

And so for me, that's like the next big thing that I'm going to be focusing on. But it's about creating that digital experience around, like the most important moments. How do you really help the customer do what they have to do so that at the end, they really realize, hey, like is this something that I want to receive? Is this something that it's going to make a difference to me in my day to day? So I think that premise for me usually just works because you know you have to think about. The most important person in this whole ecosystem is the customer, so you always have to be thinking about that whole ecosystem is the customer, so you always have to be thinking about that.

Speaker 1:

That's wonderful. Thank you so much for providing so many awesome insights into how to think about digital success, how to think about the journeys and the customers. As we are wrapping up, I just wanted to ask you a final question. Seeing such a successful career within one single company, and it's incredible. What was one piece of advice's incredible, what was one piece of advice or what would be one piece of advice for everybody growing their career in such an amazing way, even within one company?

Speaker 2:

I think, to be fair, it's a little bit. I thought about this as well before. So I think I have a few things like find your strengths. Where are you really strong as a person and as a professional? What gives you happiness If you're not happy doing that thing? Like you know, life is too short. I always think about this because it is true. So this is more like a personal level, like personal, like career level aspirations, like your strengths, what makes you happy and you know how and where do you want to go?

Speaker 2:

On the company front is really around. You know where are the gaps and the opportunities within that company, within your organization, and also, how is CS evolving? I think for me, I was already like thinking okay ahead in terms of, like, customer community very new, digital customer success, very new AI, very new. So you almost have to have like, you have to be a step ahead of the game to say what's going to be next, what's going to be big next year, what's going to be a step ahead of the game, to say what's going to be next, what's going to be big next year, what's going to be big in the next six months, and start upskilling, start learning about that I knew nothing, I have to say, about ai and about the models that I was talking about.

Speaker 2:

So I actually did a bunch of courses linkedin courses, a lot of other things as well to learn. I read articles. I asked my team internally, those tech, those more technical teams that we were working with. I see them as like, hey, you're the advisors, tell me, how do I learn, how do I upskill? So upskilling by knowing where the business and where the industry is evolving so that when it does evolve, you're there already or you're quite there, I would say so. It's a little bit of like a combination between like the personal and also like the professional side as well.

Speaker 1:

It's a wonderful advice, and thank you so much, nadia, for coming to the show, because this was incredible value for us today. Thank you, thank you.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for inviting me.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening. Next week new episode, Subscribe to the podcast and connect with me on LinkedIn so you're up to date with all the new episodes and the content I'm curating for you. Have a great day and talk to you soon.