Matik's Scale + CS Virtual Conference: https://bit.ly/scalecs-aturkovic

In this special edition, Alex sits down with Stijn "Stino" Smet, Head of Customer Success at Whale.io, the host of *two* customer success podcasts, and all-around loose cannon. He joins Alex (in his studio!) for a very special joint episode of their podcasts to discuss career journeys, getting started with a digital practice, and more.

The “more”:
00:00 - Where to start with digital
03:35 - Your First Digital CS Experience
07:12 - The Core of a True Digital Team
10:44 - Meeting an “Idol”
14:15 - Transitioning to Digital Customer Experience
18:03 - Quick Wins in Digital CS
21:28 - Being Ahead of the Curve with Digital Customer Success
25:11 - Stino’s Famous Playbook
28:38 - Achieving Revenue Growth
32:14 - “Light” Success Services
35:40 - Creating and Tracking Campaign Metrics
39:04 - Reviewing and Iterating on Strategies
42:36 - The Sweet Spot
49:48 - Laser beams and confetti
53:40 - Shout Outs

Enjoy! I know I sure did...

Stino's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stijn-smet-%F0%9F%90%B3-330435a9/

Shoutouts:

• Kristi Faltorusso: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristiserrano/
• Erika Villareal: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erivillarreal/
• Anika Zubair: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anikazubair/
• Diana de Jesus: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianadejesus/
• Dillon Young: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dillonryoung/
• Prashanth Jothi: https://www.linkedin.com/in/prashanthjothi/

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This episode was edited by Lifetime Value Media, a media production company founded by my good friend and fellow CS veteran Dillon Young. Lifetime Value aims to serve the audio/video content production and editing needs of CS and Post-Sales professionals. Lifetime Value is offering select services at a deeply discounted rate for a limited time. Navigate to lifetimevaluemedia.com to learn more.

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Support the Show.

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

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

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

Thank you for all of your support!

The Digital Customer Success Podcast is hosted by Alex Turkovic

Link to Matik's Scale + CS Virtual Conference: https://bit.ly/scalecs-aturkovic.

Today, I'm joined by Jeff Heckler - a CS veteran with a lot of wisdom to share around the state of the industry, the AI tools with the most promise, and Slack overwhelm.

In this episode, we cover a wide variety of topics, including:

• 00:00:00 - Welcome To The Digital Customer Experience Podcast
• 00:01:31 - Join The Matik Conference, Earn A $20 Uber Eats Gift Card Giveaway
• 00:02:56 - Introduction
• 00:04:21 - Leaving Business Intelligence & Falling Into Software
• 00:10:17 - Digital Customer Success Since Covid-19
• 00:11:43 - The Rise Of QR Code
• 00:13:19 - Contraction In Headcounts And Budgets
• 00:14:51 - The Economics Of AI And Tech’s Current Struggles In Today’s Economy
• 00:16:26 - The Most Prominent Digital Trends In CS
• 00:19:36 - Leveraging Ai Chat Bots For Support Ticket Deflection, Among Other Things
• 00:20:58 - Communication Overload And Digital Emotions
• 00:22:29 - Optimizing Digital Workflows And Tools
• 00:23:58 - The Stickiness Of Tools
• 00:25:34 - Learning From Mistakes And Cross-Functional Allegiances
• 00:27:05 - Setting Up A Cadence For Product Sales Marketing Support
• 00:28:20 - Shifting Mindset For Customer Success Managers
• 00:29:36 - The Importance Of Cross Collaboration
• 00:31:01 - Shout Out To Dickey Singh And Cast.App

Enjoy! I know I sure did...

Jeff's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffheckler/

Shoutouts:

• Irit Eizips: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eizips/
• Dickey Singh of Cast.app: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dickey/

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This episode was edited by Lifetime Value Media, a media production company founded by my good friend and fellow CS veteran Dillon Young. Lifetime Value aims to serve the audio/video content production and editing needs of CS and Post-Sales professionals. Lifetime Value is offering select services at a deeply discounted rate for a limited time. Navigate to lifetimevaluemedia.com to learn more.

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Support the Show.

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

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

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

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

Thank you for all of your support!

The Digital Customer Success Podcast is hosted by Alex Turkovic

Jenelle Friday of Forecastable and the Customer Success Collective’s “CS Leader of the Year” for 2023 is someone who is easily liked. She's hyper-in tune with what makes people tick, and is even the author of her own framework on emotional intelligence in customer success.

In this wonderful chat, we talk about:
00:00 - Caring for your customers
02:27 - Being Authentic in Customer Success
04:41 - A Journey to Customer Success and Emotional Intelligence
06:53 - The Importance of Being Human in Business Relationships
09:11 - Being True to Yourself in Business
11:19 - Acknowledging Fears and Embracing Imperfection
13:29 - Emotional Intelligence and Self-Awareness in Customer Success
15:37 - The Importance of Work in Relationships
17:42 - The Importance of Human Interaction
20:11 - Elevator Pitch for Digital Customer Success
22:25 - The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Digital Communications
24:39 - Using Emotional Intelligence for Customer Engagement
26:47 - The Importance of Social Awareness in Decision-Making Process
29:06 - Cultural Differences in Customer Success
31:21 - Building a Customer Community
33:33 - Coordinating Communication Across Departments
35:42 - Understanding the Customer Perspective
38:01 - Living Boldly and Courageously
40:26 - Developing Soft Skills in Business
42:27 - Fostering Emotional Intelligence in the Workplace
44:51 - The Importance of Emotional Intelligence in Digital Customer Success
46:54 - Book Recommendations and Finding Normalcy
49:04 - Soft Skill Development and Giving Back to the Community

Enjoy! I know I sure did...

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This episode was edited by Lifetime Value Media, a media production company founded by my good friend and fellow CS veteran Dillon Young. Lifetime Value aims to serve the audio/video content production and editing needs of CS and Post-Sales professionals. Lifetime Value is offering select services at a deeply discounted rate for a limited time. Navigate to lifetimevaluemedia.com to learn more.

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

Support the Show.

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

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

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

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

Thank you for all of your support!

The Digital Customer Success Podcast is hosted by Alex Turkovic

As we pop the champagne on our 50th show, a heartfelt thank you is in order for every listener & guest who's joined me on this wild ride through the evolving world of digital customer interactions. It's a transformational moment for the show as we shift from focusing on 'Digital Customer Success' to encompassing the broader 'Digital Customer Experience', ensuring we capture the essence of every digital touchpoint. As such, we are changing the name of the show to 'The Digital Customer Experience Podcast'!

In this episode, I'm going through and answering some of the most frequently asked questions that I get on a regular basis, which leads to the following topics:

• 00:47 - New Podcast Name Announcement
• 06:34 - What is Digital Customer Success
• 07:38 - Digital vs. Scaled
• 09:49 - Where to start with Digital Customer Success
• 11:52 - Commonly overlooked vehicles for digital motions
• 13:13 - Building health scores without product telemetry
• 14:31 - Identifying user personas based on their activity within your resource
• 15:05 - SaaS economics and how they impact the proliferation of digital
• 18:43 - Measuring the success of digital CS
• 21:54 - Team structure for digital cs
• 26:54 - Technology recommendations
• 30:45 - Outro & Thank you!

A couple of links from the show:

• Website & Newsletter signup: https://digitalcustomersuccess.com
• Digital CS Definition Word Map: https://digitalcustomersuccess.com/digital-cs-word-map/
• DCS Tech Stack: https://digitalcustomersuccess.com/tech-stack/
• Cover Your SaaS Course by Jeff Bruensbach & Jay Nathan: https://growthcurve.io/cover-your-saas

Support the Show.

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

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

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

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

Thank you for all of your support!

The Digital Customer Success Podcast is hosted by Alex Turkovic

Kari Ardalan of Qualtrics is a staple in the CS community and has been leading scaled motions for YEARS - which is sometime that not a lot of people can say. She also sits on Gainsight's Digital Advisory Board - so yeah, she's qualified to talk about this stuff. :-)

In this fantastic conversation, we talk about:

• Building digital first with humans coming in off of the back of those motions
• The evolution of ‘scaled’ from just email and outbound events to a push to come inbound
• Building one place portal where customers can go for everything and where CSMs can interact with their customers
• How Digital is structured at Qualtrics across various departments
• Internal cross-collaboration on digital motions
• What to look out for in a digital leader - specifically cross-collaboration and a varied background
• Focusing on Support deflection metrics and areas to automate
• Other interesting metrics in use at Qualtrics: % CTAs launched, penetration rate of closed success CTAs (conversation), Monthly Active Users, Monthly Active Customers, Flow Completion, % of Renewals Not Assisted by Humans
• Balancing being tactical and strategic as a leader
• Using special interests among the team to drive career growth and creativity - including Hackathons
• Cool examples of digital motions including customer-facing scorecards, micro-learning, AI and self-serve portals.
• AI bot & recommendation engine implementation at Qualtrics
• Letting data tell you who the customer personas are
• The dependency on operations work streams to get things done

Enjoy! I sure did...

Kari's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kariardalan/

Link to Kari's post about the qualities of a Digital CS Leader: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/kariardalan_digitalsuccess-leadership-recruitment-activity-7175101395631570944-qujn?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

Shoutouts:

• Delores Cooper (Zendesk): https://www.linkedin.com/in/delorescooper/
• Austin Kwon (LinkedIn): https://www.linkedin.com/in/austinkwon/
• Kelly Bray (MongoDB): https://www.linkedin.com/in/kelly-bray-1684166/
• Rimple Patel (Eightfold): https://www.linkedin.com/in/rimpledpatel/

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

Support the Show.

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

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

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

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

Thank you for all of your support!

The Digital Customer Success Podcast is hosted by Alex Turkovic

Christine Raby, Founder of DeliverDelight, brings the heat in this episode where we cover off a very wide range of topics - some CS related and some non-CS related. Christine's background is absolutely fascinating and I've been a fan of her presence both on LinkedIn and TikTok for quite some time now.

This episode is full of practical examples and advice for both ICs and leaders alike as we talked about:

• How CS is now experiencing similar maturation to what marketing experienced a decade+ ago
• Leaders need to be super focused on the benchmarks and metrics vs. how they ‘feel’ things are going
• The opinions of whether CS should own revenue or not is completely irrelevant as the goals are similar, the team should be united and therefore measured (and compensated) on the same/or similar metrics
• Hyper-personalization together with client success stories is a powerful combination for New Logos and expansion alike (N&E)
• Test your "ways of working" in an unscalable manner first and then figure out how to automate & scale it up
• AI is a tool - not a replacement for you role - it needs to be leveraged in order to help you get out of reactive mode and into proactively growing your account
• Current state of startup economics and how that relates to Customer Success within these businesses
• The trend towards de-centralizing CS into a strategy instead of just an org
• Taking lessons from B2C
• Transitioning PS from a cost center to a revenue center
• Equality and Equity in the workplace

Like I said, a wide variety of topics. Enjoy! I know I sure did...

Christine's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christineraby/
DeliverDelight: https://www.deliverdelight.xyz/

Shoutouts:

• Sara Roberts (Bayview Talent): https://www.linkedin.com/in/saralynneroberts/
• Jess Osborne (GoCardless): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessicareserosborn/
• Diana De Jesus (The Customer Success Project): https://www.linkedin.com/in/dianadejesus/
• How to Break Into Tech: https://howtobreakintotech.com/
  • by Charlotte Chaze: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlottechaze/

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Support the Show.

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

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

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

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

Thank you for all of your support!

The Digital Customer Success Podcast is hosted by Alex Turkovic

Irit Eizips has been in and around CS for a long time. From being in on the ground floor at Gainsight to running her very successful consultancy, she has been a staple in the CS community and consistently produces fantastic content that we all benefit from!

In this episode, we get into:

• Irit’s days at the early-stage Gainsight and the culture of startups
• Her home in consulting (CSM Practice) vs. being a full time employee
• Being part of CS from the ground floor
• The advancement of CS to where certification and degree programs have enabled college grads an entry into the field
• Digital motions should support the work of humans in CS
• Implementing too much digital without touchpoints along the way can actually have negative customer implications
• Identifying risk in customers who are disengaging with digital programs
• Over-use of email via redundancy and simultaneous emails from multiple organizations
• The use of avatars in digital for communications to make things more fun when appropriate
• Protecting revenue and expansion via process automations to flag risk early before renewal and even close it early
• A few examples of great digital motions and practical advice around designing them
• Designing digital-first motions with client outcomes & a customer journey front and center

Loads of great info in this one. Enjoy! I know I sure did...

Irit's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eizips/
CSM Practice: https://www.csmpractice.com/
CSM Practice YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/CSMPractice

Resources:

• Seven Pillars of Customer Success by Wayne McCulloch: https://amzn.to/3TLXYog
• CCO Playbook by Rod Cherkas: https://amzn.to/3TLXYog
• Onboarding Matters by Donna Webber: https://amzn.to/3TRk9cu

Shoutout:

• Yair Bortinger: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yair-bortinger/
• Yair's episode on CSM Practice Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4pwj634-qu0

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

Support the Show.

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

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

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

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

Thank you for all of your support!

The Digital Customer Success Podcast is hosted by Alex Turkovic

Maarten & Michiel Doornenbal are not only brothers, but also co-founders of Churned! They join me this week for a fantastic conversation about the platform they've built, AI, scorecards and more!

Unfortunately, my audio/video didn't record - so you'll here me narrating the episode - but it's kind of fun to switch formats up here an there.

In the episode, we talk about:

• Their history as brothers and how they work together as co-founders today
• History of Churned and what they do
• Using machine learning models instead of rules-based scorecards to create health scoring and to predict customer churn
• Part of the role of a CSP is to highlight were data cleanliness issues exist
• Verifying your churn risk alerts by back-testing the data against historical churned customers
• Personalization based on user-personas
• AI is not just Gen AI. The future of AI in CS combines predictive, descriptive and generative models to auto generate content to free up time for CSMs.
• What the human involvement will look like with these future AI models

Enjoy! I know I sure did!

Maarten's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maartendoornenbal/
Michiel's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michiel-doornenbal-98710067/
Churned: https://churned.io

Resources Mentioned:

• The Big Exit Show Podcast: https://peak.capital/the-big-exit-show-podcast/
• Customer Success Snack Community: https://customersuccesssnack.com/
• Customer Success Connect: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cs-connect/
• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell: https://amzn.to/3VN2cP7
• Scaling Up Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/394xlIBALeAPMEeq1EvJPt

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Support the Show.

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

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

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

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

Thank you for all of your support!

The Digital Customer Success Podcast is hosted by Alex Turkovic