Women in Customer Success Podcast

143 - The Power of Layers: Building Bridges, Understanding Finance, AI & All That Jazz

• Marija Skobe-Pilley • Episode 143

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We’re excited to welcome Kelley Turner, whose journey from financial controller to SVP, Global Customer Success at Vitally, defies the traditional career ladder. As she reveals, "My career looked like a squiggle until it all made sense," suggesting that non-linear paths often lead to the richest skill combinations in customer success.

Drawing from her finance background, Kelley shares how understanding the business mechanics—tracing a dollar from lead acquisition through revenue recognition—equips CSMs with the authority needed to advocate effectively for customers. This financial fluency transforms both customer conversations and internal business cases.

In this episode, we discuss:

• Understanding business financials and how money flows through an organization ( & how it empowers CSMs to speak with more authority to customers)

• Building "bridges" by helping customers navigate overwhelming amounts of information by providing guided pathways to success

• AI adoption and why it requires both "pull" (making it fun and approachable) and "push" (leadership expectations and modeling)

• Why diverse backgrounds in CS teams create complementary skill sets that better serve customers

Ready to transform your approach to customer success? This episode is *the* place to start! 

So tune in and enjoy!




💚 This episode is brought to you by Deployflow: https://deployflow.co/


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👉 Follow Kelley: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelleyturner/

👉 Learn more about Deployflow & P-Suite by Deployflow and get a quick squad estimate at: https://deployflow.co/p-suite/

👉 Learn more about Vitally, a Customer Success Platform that helps B2B Customer Success teams better understand their customers, manage their processes, and inform business strategies: http://vitally.io

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About Women in Customer Success Podcast:

Women in Customer Success Podcast is the first women-only podcast for Customer Success professionals, where remarkable ladies of Customer Success connect, inspire and champion each other.


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Host Marija Skobe-Pilley

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  • The Revenue CSM - https://womenincs.co/the-revenue-csm



Kelley:

My career looked like a squiggle until it all made sense, and to me, that's actually what a really good career should look like a bit as you figure out what you're great at, what you really enjoy and where you can make a differential impact based on your skills, experience and just presence in the world. Any customer success funnel sort of is big and small and then big and then small, and then big and small. It's not linear, but I do think, as we get tighter on what true growth activities look like, what true save activities look like, what it looks like to support a customer who is in a good and happy spot in the right ways, there's more we can do as an organization, as a discipline, to get tight on that. One of the things that I've spent a lot of time building more recently is what I call bridges for our customers. So we have incredible online content, our webinars are fantastic, but a lot of times for new customers, that's overwhelming Knowing where to go, what to find, what video to watch, what doc to read, and so how do we build more bridges in the product as well as how do we build more bridges in live events, in on-demand events that can help people feel confident and strong so that they then can take in additional information and in a way that they feel like helps them versus sort of puts more onus on them to continue to understand on their own.

Kelley:

Many customer success professionals are always trying to get a seat at the table. We know that having a seat at the table where the big decisions are made, way before it gets to the customer it might start with what are we going to market? How are we going to talk about pricing? How are we going to bring these customers in? How are we going to talk about pricing? How are we going to bring these customers in? Vs professionals are always trying to get into those conversations early because we know if the decisions are made and they're hard for customers, later we're the ones who will have to figure it out.

Marija:

Welcome to the new episode of the Women in Customer Success podcast. It's an absolute pleasure to welcome a special person today. When I say special person, firstly, it's probably been a year in making for us to have this conversation today, so I'm particularly excited about it. A lady who has done amazing things in her career and currently she's serving as SVP of Global Custom Success at Vitaly. She is Kelly Turner. Kelly, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Kelly. Welcome to the show.

Kelley:

Thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be here. I am so glad we figured out a way to make this happen.

Marija:

I am glad as well, and I'm particularly glad about all of the very interesting things we are going to talk about today AI and all that jazz. But before we go into the main part of this conversation, Kelly, I know people in the audience would like to get to know you a bit better. Can you tell us where are you calling from? Like position us in the world.

Kelley:

Absolutely. I am calling from Boulder, colorado today, the gorgeous Rocky Mountains in the middle west of the United States. It's pretty early today, so it's still sun is coming up, but I'm looking forward to what we call a beautiful bluebird day here.

Marija:

Oh, it is a wonderful corner of the universe, right?

Kelley:

Absolutely.

Marija:

Kelly. What is some of your travel bucket list destinations?

Kelley:

Oh gosh Well. So fun fact about me about me, my husband and I the year we turned 30, I had just finished my MBA and we were inspired by folks in the UK, in Australia, new Zealand, and we took a gap year the year we turned 30. And we went to 52 countries in one year. We traveled about every three to four days and so I got to hit a lot of the early bucket list items For me. Now it's the really challenging one. I have Cuba on my bucket list. I have not been to more of Japan and Korea, china, russia, just because from the US it's hard to do that in a week. I also have a deep, deep, deep love for the Middle East and North Africa, so I have a number of countries there as well. I've had the amazing opportunity to experience the hospitality of that part of the world and just really appreciate the history and the food. I am a foodie, I am a cook and for me, I will take amazing spiced Middle Eastern meat over an open flame any day, all day.

Marija:

Okay, wow, this could be just an episode in itself, because I could start asking about all of the wonderful destinations, especially some of my favorite Japan and South Korea and cooking and your best recipe. Okay, maybe at the end, if we have time, so just to keep myself focused. Firstly, thanks so much for sharing that, and it's absolutely wonderful to take a gap year when you're 30. Amazing. And now, as you came back from the gap year, take us a little bit through the journey of what happened between that MBA and how did you enter customer success?

Kelley:

Absolutely, I will say, and my husband says my career looked like a squiggle until it all made sense, and to me that's actually what a really good career should look like a bit as you figure out what you're great at, what you really enjoy and where you can make a differential impact based on your skills, experience and just presence in the world. So, coming back from the gap year finishing my MBA, I was in finance, so I was in financial planning and analysis, internal finance. So a lot of spreadsheets, a lot of quarterly planning and a lot of what do we think will happen. And then what, reconciling what actually happened after that and I did quite well in finance by the end of my time in finance, I'd become the controller of a multinational corporation. I actually flew to India to stamp the books closed with the local magistrate, because at the time you were actually required, there was a stamp and a signature and I learned what it meant to close the book because that stamp was complete and I did it and I did it quite well and, quite frankly, I was tapped likely to be the CFO next and I had a moment with myself where I said do I love this?

Kelley:

Because a CFO is not a small job. It is an important job. Is it a critical job? But I was feeling this sense of this isn't quite me. This isn't quite what I want. Besides the fact that most CFOs wear khaki pants and I have never looked good in khaki pants, I also have never looked good in a polo shirt. It's just not my look.

Kelley:

I thought to myself I'm spending all my time on the outside of the donut of a business. I'm predicting what's going to happen quite well. I'm reconciling what's going to happen quite well. Can't want to be in the middle where it actually happened. And so I took a wild chance and I went to my CEO at the time and I said Mark, I love the company, love being here. I am not your next CFO and, quite frankly, I don't want to be your controller anymore. I will help you find another person. I'm all in, but I think I need to go find my next adventure. I'm all in, but I think I need to go find my next adventure.

Kelley:

And, to his credit, he said well, kel, I get it. I support you. The only thing I don't want you to do is leave. So what would you like to do instead? And I said I want to work with customers, and so I went from being the controller of the company to a frontline first-time CSM Wild transition.

Kelley:

But within three years I went from being the frontline CSM to the vice president of CS, because I had a couple of really core skills already in my toolkit which helped me move quickly. Number one I understood the business, and when you understand the business, you can speak with authority, you can speak with conviction, and that is much more compelling to a customer. Number two I knew how to speak to executives, because I had operated as one, and so I could come into a room and very naturally be part of the conversation and help drive it where we needed. And number three I have always, always, always, oriented myself to invest in others, whether it was my own team, whether it was my peers and colleagues externally, and I was able to take that same commitment to investment and genuine curiosity and care into my customer relationships so that it felt authentic and real. And so it was a truly fantastic transition, but one that really only made sense at the end.

Marija:

Okay, wow, from the brinks of being a CFO, going all the way down to the front lines into the trenches of CSM and then again building yourself up Incredible story. And I love how you started talking about so important skills that CSMs or anyone working with customers should have in order to be really successful and progress so quickly as you did. Now, for kind of mere mortals like me and so many others who didn't have that like MBA and financial background, how can someone who maybe followed a bit I'm not even calling it traditional, maybe more just a different path into customer success and doesn't have that vast financial knowledge, which is incredibly useful, what would be your advice for them to develop those crucial skills to progress really fast in their career?

Kelley:

Absolutely, and I will say before this too, I firmly believe the F-Canon should be one of the most diverse teams in the company, especially in background, because there is so much to come. When you come to building a CS team, it's about building a complementary set of skill sets, and so folks who come out of marketing have a wonderful skill set. Sales have a wonderful skill set, operations, revenue there are so many spaces where people can bring their history to make team and their customers so much richer for it. When I think about how to sort of know how your business works, I think about a session I did in a prior organization and I did a session on tracing $1 through our organization when does $1 start and where does $1 end, and the different stages of $1 and understanding the challenge at each stage.

Kelley:

So if someone had an opportunity to make a friend in finance and have a conversation, understand what does it take to get a first lead in your marketing funnel. Then what does it take to actually sell it, what does it take then to book it, to collect it and to recognize it All three of those are completely different stages for a dollar and then understand where are you spending it as well, because if you can understand that about your business, then when you say, have a product question or a feedback request or something that you feel like is a place where the business should invest, perhaps it's for your customer, perhaps it's for a new set of customers that all of a sudden you're getting excited about, or a new service or support that you feel like could really change the churn rate of your customer. If you understand what went into making that dollar that you're proposing then to spend on XYZ, you also can come with an understanding of what it took, and so your business case can be so much richer. It can have so much more context on why this actually makes sense in that context of how that dollar goes through the business that it will generate more dollars.

Kelley:

One of the things I think that has been really beneficial for business understanding of customer success in the last couple of years is that it takes so many more dollars to make $1 in new sales versus $1 in expansion sales. The cost of acquiring new customers is not insignificant, and so it puts a really strong importance and value, I think, in CS in our work to renew that and our work to continue that revenue from that early investment, but also for businesses to recognize if you invest in those customers they have such a stronger propensity to grow and that growth can really change the trajectory of your company, not just incremental. And so I think both of those things have been really exciting in the business as we better connect the final results to the input put in at the beginning.

Marija:

And how important it is for CSMs to not shy away from thinking about the revenue, thinking about where the money goes, how the money gets into the business, and just be aware from every single stage of that lead, as you said, and just understand financials. And, yes, be a friend with your finance or go online, just learn about it, because no matter what you do and what is your vertical as a CSM, this is going to be extremely useful to progress in your career, absolutely. I have one more question for your days in finance, before we move on more properly into customer success. Okay, if khaki pants were not the best attire for you in those days, what do you suggest as a greatest attire for customer success?

Kelley:

Let's see. I think customer success does well in layers. Anyone who has gone to a customer meeting Tell me more. Anyone who's gone to a customer meeting knows you have to be prepared.

Kelley:

In the days before AirPlay on TV, you had to make sure you had all of the dongles, all of the plugs. Make sure your presentation is there. To make sure you had all of the dongles, all of the plugs. Make sure your presentation is there. Make sure it's saved so you're not dependent on any Wi-Fi issues. Maybe even make sure you have a backup copy with someone else. And, by the same token, when we go into other organizations' offices, we're a guest in their home and we don't necessarily know what their air conditioning or heating, or whether you're going to walk six flights up to your conference room or have to run three flights down because there's a fire alarm in the middle Been there. So I recommend layers. Cute sheath dress with a little blazer, maybe a sweater. Cute pants, a top, a sweater, a little blazer, something that's cute on the shoes you feel good at if you're standing in front, but you can also run in if you need to.

Marija:

I go layers beautiful and I love how blazer was the part of your suggestions. Excellent, kelly. So as a customer success leader in a blazer currently you're leading global customer success team at vitally would you like to tell us a bit how you transition from you know, from the finance to getting into customer success and then you know securing a role at Vitally? And then what is some of the most common or major trends that you are seeing currently, as you're working with so many customers who are committed to serving their customers through the platform, so you have even bigger responsibility of serving customers who are customer success professionals. Sorry, that was a long-winded question.

Kelley:

For anyone that doesn't know, vitally is a customer success platform, aka a CSP, and I would say the responsibility of being a CS leader at a CSP is unique, special, amazing and an honor I take very seriously. Many customer success professionals are always trying to get a seat at the table. We know that having a seat at the table where the big decisions are made way before it gets to the customer it might start with what are we going to market? How are we going to talk about pricing? How are we going to bring these customers in? Fias professionals are always trying to get into those conversations early because we know if the decisions are made and they're hard for customers later we're the ones who will have to figure it out. At Vitally, I have the opportunity not just to have a seat at the table, but I am the prototype economic buyer and customer. Seat at the table, but I am the prototype economic buyer and customer and so I have an amazing opportunity to give feedback on the product as we're building it.

Kelley:

Just the other day I sat down with one of our product managers and he walked me through some very cool forecasting capability we're buying, which we all went through. My finance background is very near and dear to my heart and we talked about how I think about a forecast. Do I think about open and close deals? Do I think about churn and expansion? How do I build sort of the triangle or the pyramid of a forecast? What's the basis Then? Where do we dive? Deeper and deeper, and deeper? And I got to say I actually would think we would move this here or we change this here, or the naming convention you used distilled to me, not CF, and I really appreciate the opportunity to say that, so that when I go to my peers and go, we just built something amazing. I can't wait for you to check it out. I truly believe that in my heart.

Kelley:

For me, coming to a CSP was an amazing change. I had actually worked as a head of customer success, vp of customer success in multiple marketing organizations marketing software as well as one ed tech organization. So I had had three roles in a row as a VP of customer success before I moved to Vitally. And for me, I am a huge believer in bringing the best of other disciplines to bear in customer success, because customer success encompasses so much in terms of the customer experience. So for me, when you think about the trends, both sort of how I've come into customer success and how I've grown. I learned a lot by being in a marketing operations company Because marketers number one have a defined funnel, much like sales has a defined funnel.

Kelley:

I believe in the next X number of years the S will come up with a more defined funnel. We are always I don't want to say struggling, but working to be able to identify to our leaders, to our CEOs, to our board members, where customers are and how we're working with them, based on their segment and their status. So as we think about marketers, they do have a more defined funnel. They have prospects very early, all the way to the final stages. Fun funnel they have prospects very early, all the way to the final stages.

Kelley:

What we know is any customer success funnel sort of is big and small and then big and then small and then big and small. It's not linear, but I do think as we get tighter on what true growth activities look like, what true save activities look like, what it looks like to support a customer who is in a good and happy spot in the right ways, there's more we can do as an organization, as a discipline, to get tight on that. The other thing I learned working in marketing is they very much operate at scale with the goal of every touchpoint-feeling individual, and when you ask about trends, I continue to see more and more companies looking to do what we know more with less, which looks like very scaled CS. Very scaled CS works if the very scaled CS touchpoints, outreaches and motions feel honest, feel relevant and feel helpful to the customer. Mass blasts don't do it anymore. It is so much more important that you understand the data about your customer that you're really able to send something, do an outreach, have an engagement or an opportunity that meets them where they are, both in your platform, both in their own maturity and their discipline, as well as where their industry is going.

Kelley:

One of the things that I've spent a lot of time building more recently is what I call bridges for our customers. So we have incredible online content. Lots of folks have taken advantage of our. Webinars are fantastic. We've got great content. People can go, but a lot of times for new customers, that's overwhelming Knowing where to go, what to find, what video to watch, what doc to read, and so how do we build more bridges in the product as well as how do we build more bridges in live events, in on-demand events that can help people feel confident and strong so that they then can take in additional information and in a way that they feel like helps them versus sort of puts more onus on them to continue to understand on their own.

Marija:

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Marija:

I really like what I'm hearing. In a way, you're creating almost a guided journey for customers. Yes, Not to go from one to ten and be completely overwhelmed, or actually wanting to be ten, thinking that's where you want to go next, rather than going every step on the way because that's where you want to go next rather than going every step on the way because that's where they are. Not everybody starts with one or zero. Some start with five, so it's easier to come to 10. But I really like that analogy because transforming organization and transforming customer success comes with certain maturity which very often we all probably felt overwhelmed by everything, by content and amazing content, but not knowing what are your next best steps to start. So it's great to hear that you recognized that as a problem and as a need for customers and you are building experience where they can really feel confident from one step to another and knowing they're doing a good job. I agree.

Kelley:

I also am seeing a fair number of when companies consolidate, when they have to reduce their overall staffing. I do see some leaders coming in from other disciplines as first-time leaders of customer success, because perhaps they have consolidated customer success with another team or another organization, and so these folks often come in with great knowledge bases. But the fine tuning element of, well, how do we do this? What do I do as a head of customer success that I didn't as a head of whatever other discipline I was in before, and I will say one of the joys of my time at Vitally so far is I've just been able to do some one-on-one mentoring sessions.

Kelley:

I had a conversation last week with a new gentleman who was in CS for the first time Great, great background but truly just hadn't led this team and for 45 minutes I just answered questions what is the segmentation? How is it different from sales? How do you incentivize a CSM? What does a CSM career path look like? Because a lot of times folks will come in and go. I know what a good customer experience looks like. I know how to show up for a team, but there's so many little things I don't know. I love that opportunity to help them grow and feel really confident, so that they can convey that to their teams, who also then can convey it to the customers.

Marija:

And, as you said, what a wonderful and honorable opportunity to be in the spot where you have a chance to mentor people who are really appreciating it and who really need that at the moment, rather than all the bells and whistles of an amazing platform that they can use, but they need the soft element of it as well. Okay, kelly, I need to ask a question. It's not the elephant in the room anymore, but it is an elephant in the room everywhere, and that's AI just being everywhere. So obviously, as you as Vitaly is a CSP customer success platform, you have AI in your product. Ai is everywhere. How do you, as a leader, work with your team, with customer success managers, to even start using AI and to adopt it and just to make them comfortable because it's everywhere? It seems like no matter where you go, you're missing something out because somebody else are already doing more advanced things. How do you make them feel comfortable and knowing when to use it for what to see real benefits of it?

Kelley:

I think, as CS leaders, we are fortunate to be operating in a very exciting time and an interesting time where we have to look at ourselves. We have to look at how we think people should operate and what good looks like on a team constantly, and we have to challenge ourselves. We have to challenge our own assumption that this is as good as it can be because, quite frankly, things are moving quick enough that it probably isn't. Not that it's not good, but it could be better. And so I think, much like any other change, you have to think about change management. There's two elements to change management. I see it when it comes to any major process, any major, you know what we call sort of foundational shifting revision of the market. There's a push element and there's a pull element. When you think about the pull, the pull is how do you create CSMs, individual contributors, managers and leaders in your teams that want to learn AI? How do you make it feel like something that isn't a punishment, isn't a fear space, but is something that will help them succeed? So, quite frankly, we started with a little bit of fun in play. There's been all sorts of different fun things you can do with ChatGPT Just as a starter. We went through and this is a little bit silly, but it got people kind of excited. We went through the how do you turn your profile picture into a Muppet? People loved it. You traded pictures. You're like, oh, I love this. And what it started to do was teach people how to do some prompt, because prompt writing is going to be important I think it's going to be less important than we thought but the ability to break down a need into its composite parts and say this is what I am looking for. These are the components. This is what I am not looking for. This is the format I need. It's actually more of a thought exercise, I would say, than a writing exercise. They're teaching people a little bit how to break down from the. I want a spreadsheet that tells me this what does that actually mean? So we've did the pull piece. So how can people get excited about it? And, quite frankly, it's been so successful that I now have CSMs writing their own GPTs writing their own agents One of the coolest things in Vitally, besides the fact I'm just going to say this as a humble brag I have never sent a spreadsheet to my CSM team in my entire time in Vitally.

Kelley:

This is the first time, the first organization I have ever been able to say that, even after I was on other CSPs I don't have to use spreadsheets, it's in the platform and I get to operate truly from that elusive one pane of glass with my team, with my team. But as part of that, one of the very neat things in Vitaly today is we have formula traits so we can really do some pretty extensive calculations whether it's forecast, whether it's expected outcome, whether it is success metric. But formulas are complicated and they take a lot of thought in terms of the language in writing. One of my CSMs started writing an agent to say here is the language we use, here is the structure we create for formulas, here's what I want to do. Write me a formula for this. And it took some runs at it. It probably took four or five, six runs until it started to get there. But the fact that she felt confident, excited, but the fact that she felt confident, excited and supported to try it and know that the fourth, fifth run is not a failure but a learning, that's a method of pull. So now she feels confident, the team feels confident to start doing more and more of their own agents. We're doing more and more in that of call transcripts, more and more of that of email sentiment, so I think there's going to be a lot of power there.

Kelley:

The other end, though, is push. Change management requires some desire from the front, from the folks who are going to be going through the change. It also requires expectation setting from leadership that this is important, and so, by modeling it, I did the first AI chat, gpt training for my entire CS team, because I wanted them to know it mattered to me. We've done more of it. We're doing cross-training, we're having the team share what they're learning, but that element of we're in a culture of an expectation, of a time of learning AI, implementing it into every touchpoint, not just the ones that somebody says that is the other element of the change. So I'm really excited by that, and the reason I'm excited about it is because Vitally is coming out hard with AI functionality this year, which I'm so thrilled about.

Kelley:

And besides sort of that, the thing I think that AI has a really unique opportunity to do, especially with CS, especially in vitally or other tools, is not just to have static information on the customer. Hey, this is what the customer said. We think they're mad, sad, happy, bad, which pick one. But to turn that into action, we have seen so quickly the power of agentic work, of having agents that can say if this, then that. Right now, so much of the CSM work is if this, then that. If you see this, run this play, if you see this, do this thing. And if we can have AI drive that more, so that it is surfaced to the CSM as real, valuable information and not just another step to take another task to check off, that's when I feel like we're going to really elevate the business and elevate the discipline overall.

Marija:

Wow, so many questions or even comments on that. Firstly, what an amazing example you've been setting to your team by running that first AI for CS workshop. Yeah, because they observed you taking on something completely new in the world, meaning completely new for you Horrible scary.

Marija:

Not waiting yeah, scary, very scary. Not waiting for, you know, data engineers or machine learning scientists to teach them, but like you, taking that on for yourself and providing the example with a. I'm sure you've been preparing for it, but there was surely an element of this is what we've got so far. This is what we know. Let's figure out together. So I just applaud you and I think it's such a wonderful example for all the other leaders of how to take on something that is scary. But when you want that little push to change management, like you, have to be vulnerable and open enough to do it. Yeah, amazing, well done for that.

Kelley:

Well, I think also, it modeled that it's not going to be right the first time, and that's OK.

Kelley:

And so the concept of you know, learning something is hard, learning something is scary. You're not going to be perfect at the first time. I do think at CS we often have a propensity to get perfectionists in our mix, because we're planners and we like to make sure, whether it's walking into a customer's office for the first time or presenting a QBR, that we have every single thing buttoned up, because we know if we are more buttoned up, then if things change in the moment, we'll be prepared. That could also make us afraid to try something new, and so I think modeling that those two things can work together and that they don't have to be opposite is really important in this time of transition bits.

Marija:

You spoke about the agents and how they are now able to be trained properly to predict. You know when this happened then, which is incredible for customer success. I wonder what do you see as the kind of most impactful AI capability for the CS in the coming years? Is it that element of prediction, or is it all of it together, allowing CS to see the data, to predict and then to act upon it immediately, like?

Kelley:

what is most impactful To me, everything comes down to the ability to take action. So I think there will be different emotion and value elements depending on persona in CS. So when I think about the individual CSM, the ability not just to see here's a summary of your call but here's how our prediction of the renewal likelihood and their overall sentiment changed by adding this call to everything else that we've had before. Is it consistent? Did something change? Can we start to see, as we have more online industry et cetera, searches, when stakeholders are changing, when there's market information and being able to bring more and more into educating, a really thoughtful analysis and understanding of that customer? I think that will be enormous.

Kelley:

I think at the macro level as well, when we start thinking about AI more for leaders, how can we bring in different cuts of data, different views, different visualizations based not only on just the sentiment and the details we know in the platform?

Kelley:

But what else can we pull in from the wider business market, from things like business reports, stockholder reports, et cetera?

Kelley:

Right now, that's always been very separate, and so how do we build more and more of a 360-degree view that, at the individual performer level, tells them about their book and, I think, does what the next action needs to be.

Kelley:

Once again, we talked about much like customers. Csms always want to get their customer to the perfect promised land we all do. But what that next step is based on where they are today, that can be hard, that can be hard to know, and so the more we can say this is the next step, or three-step, let's go and here's everything you need for it, and perhaps maybe even the CSM does step one and four, but we can run two and three with AI. It moves that customer forward and helps them more quickly realize value At the leadership level. Then, as you look at your market, your book of business, even your potential markets, more and more of that analysis of data versus just data points, I think can once again speed decisions on where do we invest in CSMs, do we need to think differently about our segmentation and support models, and where perhaps have we not tapped in yet? That could be a moment of delight for a customer and we've missed so far.

Marija:

I'm really incredibly excited about those times and where the industry is going, as I work with different CS teams and I've been working with them in the past few years. You know we all had a problem with data at some point and then after that, we all were happy yes, now we have, you know, different systems, different data points. And then we become even more overwhelmed with different data points because we don't know what to do next, what to do with all the data. It's now way too much data that we are working with, especially CSMs sometimes, you know, checking data through many different systems that they're using. So I'm really excited that the technology is going in direction to just aggregate it all together, like data is not an issue anymore. It's all about what do we do next? What is the next back step? What can you do differently for?

Kelley:

your customers.

Marija:

So I wonder do you have any kind of daily prompt, let's say, for people who may not yet have all the nice AI capabilities in their systems, whichever they're using, not even CS platform, but just in general, what would be some of the ideas that they should go to AI and to start thinking about their customers differently, based on those different data points they're having? What have you seen working really well with your team?

Kelley:

And I would say there are so many great prompts out there LinkedIn I regularly copy and save for myself and then share out. I would also say for leaders as you see something, send it to your team. Say, try this today, everybody, maybe you or try this this week, or try this by the end of the month and let's have our next conversation be about what you learned. For me, one of the simplest things that I do before any customer call and we're actually doing this more and more invitally, I did it before in ChatGPT was give me a quick summary of this customer's financial health, current business objectives and any recent stakeholder changes in their executive suite that would advise what they're focusing on today, suite that would advise what they're focusing on today and give it to me in two paragraphs or less. And for me, when I go into meeting anyone new especially if it could be a customer who has a challenge, it could be a customer who's excited about something and wants to see how we can partner with together I want to come in as ready and, more than anything, just show to the customer that they matter to me enough, that I've done the work. I don't want them to have to spend the first five minutes explaining what's going on. I want to be able to come in and go hey, I saw this happen. This is really cool. How are you thinking about this? How can we put part of this together? So I think that's one very much. Just a quick summary of where things are.

Kelley:

I use it also a lot for looking at firing. I can get really great consistent trends if I have the same criteria using AI as I'm interviewing new folks. I am a huge believer that it's important to be able to have a very fair landscape for new hires and sometimes, depending on the conversation, you might go in different directions and you could miss out on a really good nugget of this person or this candidate. And I use AI to say hey, give me the summaries, give me the key nuggets in this so I can make sure I don't forget. So it's helped me in hiring.

Kelley:

I would say for CSMs, especially if you're in a new industry, if you're getting to know a new industry, hit your GBT, hit whatever you're using whether it's Microsoft, copilot, whether it's Cloud and say tell me about the top three things facing this industry today that are a challenge, and what are the top three things companies this industry today. That are a challenge, and what are the top three things companies are tackling to be able to grow? Much like a customer base, which you're always looking, who is growing and who are we doing need to help to retain, to continue getting value. Businesses and industries are the very same, so it's a very good way to start yourself in a foundation of knowledge that is not something that overwhelms a customer, but lets them know you care enough and that you want to be a partner to them in a way that drives their business goals, not just your checklist.

Marija:

I really love your examples, kelly. Thanks so much because you are just showcasing how, basically in less than five minutes, you can master the skills of getting your business acumen that you need for customers and, as you said, just show that you care enough to have a good background, have a good content and then start conversation, not asking them always to tell you basically the same things that people very often are asking for.

Marija:

Those are some very, very great prompts that you shared with us. Thank you for that. As you're wrapping up, I wanted to ask something that I was hoping. Sometimes it can be funny, you never know. But now just imagine that you were the CEO for a day. Which is the untouchable customer success practice that you would immediately get rid of.

Kelley:

So I've thought about this here and there and actually there is something I would want to build instead the customer success practice. I think that we hurt as a team today is trying to figure out what good looks like through the fact Mm-hmm. If I ruled the world, every team, every product, when they released a new product, would say this is how we're going to measure it and this is what good looks like. I am a believer in benchmarks so much, not just because they push people beyond, perhaps where they would want to go before. It provides motivation, it provides incentive oh, I want to win. We all have FOMO, we all get a little bit competitive, but it also it is a really good way to be able to encourage people as well.

Kelley:

And so what I find sometimes is we do a new product release and this is actually probably more in prior roles than today and we do a free to release and it's super exciting, and we spend all this time and effort and we market it like crazy.

Kelley:

And then we go to the CSM and go how's it doing? The CSM goes well. What am I measuring? Is it usage, is it runs, is it edits, and there are so many different points. And I think if, as organizations, as CS teams, as product teams, as companies that I'm the fictional CEO of, we sat up front and said if we're going to build this, this is what we're trying to see in behavior, this is what we're trying to try to see in outcome and results, you can get to those benchmarks so much faster. You can get to those encouraging data points, both to challenge and congratulate your partners and customers, and I think that would make the investments that we make to our products so much more valuable, more quickly and with the understanding of the customer of where they're winning and where they can continue to grow.

Marija:

I would definitely work for you if you were a CEO of something like that. I love that. I love the analogy, especially as all the products in general are becoming so much more faster and smarter and have so much more capabilities for doing you know their core work, plus millions of other different things in every product. We are overwhelmed. So, just yes, please give me the benchmark, tell me what I should be doing and where I can go. What can I achieve like? Give me one path, rather than me thinking of a hundred different ways and then again being blocked by overwhelm simply because there's way too many things that I could do. So I really love that analogy. I hope CSMs will also find it really useful, because that is the way of them looking towards their customers and ways of helping them just to get them to understand where they are at the moment, but where they could go, showcasing some you know examples of other customers or other companies that have achieved it just by doing. You know X, y, z steps in between.

Kelley:

I am a big fan it's I joke, I'm a simple human of letting the easy things be easy so that you can focus on the hard things, and sometimes simplicity is what makes things easy. And easy, of course, can be many things, but more remove complexity if it's not needed, so that when it truly is complex, a completely new business motion, complete new markets, a wildly rethinking perhaps something in your product. You want that creative energy there versus complexity that may not be needed, and so that's something I always have my eye on as well.

Marija:

Oh, I love that. Kelly, thank you so much for joining me today. It was an absolute pleasure to learn about ways how to be awesome leader by providing your own example and giving us very interesting and very useful prompts for AI and LGBT and how CSMs can really be better and work on their business acumen skills and just understanding their customers' video use of AI. It was a pleasure. Thank you for coming to the show. Thank you so much.

Kelley:

I really appreciate the opportunity.

Marija:

Thank you for listening to today's episode. I really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you for listening to today's episode. I really appreciate you taking time to learn something new and propel your career in customer success and beyond. If you like this episode, share it with your colleague, with your team member, with someone you know needs to hear it today. We appreciate your support, so please follow us and subscribe to our channels so many more women can hear about this.