Speaker 1 (00:00.216)
This episode is sponsored by PlanHat. PlanHat is a customer platform built to acquire, service, and grow lifelong customers. Every year, PlanHat hosts an event called PlanHat Open. PlanHat Open is not your typical conference. It's much less about sitting and listening to presentations all day and way more about ticking things off your bucket list, like surfing or sailing while making lasting connections in a beautiful part of the world.

Last year it was in Malibu, California, and this year they'll be choosing somewhere new. A little birdie told me that it might be in Stockholm. They are giving away a free trip to their next PlanHat Open for one of my lucky listeners. You can enter to win this all-expense paid experience by signing up for a qualified demo at planhat.com forward slash giveaway. Hello, everyone.

I'm your host, Anika Zuber, and welcome back to the next episode of the Customer Success Pro podcast. I'm a Customer Success Executive Leader, award-winning CS strategist, CS coach, and Customer Success fanatic. I help CS leaders and CSMs build and scale world-class CS processes and teams. I'm a strong believer that customer success is not a destination, but a journey. And it can be a tough journey, but don't worry, I'm here to help.

This podcast was created to help make your CS journey a little bit easier to navigate. Join me every month on this podcast where we will dive into the hottest topics in CS, the newest strategies and the best practices in customer success so you can make your CS journey a little bit easier. Make sure you subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts so that you can continue to learn on this CS journey that we are on together.

Speaker 1 (01:52.472)
Welcome back. Today's episode is a master class in daily customer success execution, the kind that actually drives value and sets the stage for expansion. I'm joined by Melanie Fay, a rising star in the CS world who recently transitioned into an enterprise CSM role at Goldcast after supporting mid-market customers at Keeper App. Melanie lives on a small island on the East Coast of Canada where she somehow balances back-to-back customer calls

trail hikes with her Labradoodles, Charlie and Lottie, and driving outcomes for her accounts. In this episode, we're diving into the very juicy topic of the anti-check-in. This is Melanie's approach, transforming those just checking in calls into strategic outcome-driven conversations that actually move the needle with her customers. We will cover how she structures her day with up to eight customer calls and how she's helped her team build a framework to have more impactful discussions.

and her mindset around natural non-salesy upsells. If you're managing a large book of business and wondering how to keep it all straight while still driving results, Melanie drops some seriously brilliant tactics you can start using today. So let's get into it. Welcome Melanie to my podcast. I am so, so honored to have you as my next guest. You've come highly recommended to chat to, so I'm just...

super keen to jump into today's topic, which I know is going to be a hot one, but also just to get to know you a little bit more. But in your own words, can you please tell my audience who you are, what you're up to, how you started in customer success, and yeah, just give us a little bit more about who you are.

Yes, okay, I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to chat about customer success. And so I'm Melanie, I'm an enterprise CSM at Goldcast. And I've been in CS for about just coming up to four years now in different roles, different industries. So it's been kind of an interesting learning curve over the last four years and just seeing how customer success has evolved. I got my start in tech

Speaker 2 (04:06.286)
after working in higher education for a few years running a continuing education department for adult learners and decided to pivot into tech and got my start with Hopin, which was a digital events tech company that kind of boomed during COVID and took on thousands of new customers and was a really exciting time.

And so I got my start there as a CSM just because I had previous events experience and digital events experience.

Yeah, I love that. Wow, you're part of the Hoppin' Boom. I didn't even know that about you learning so much. This is so awesome. Hoppin' definitely had a boom during the pandemic and just, like you said, digital events helping scale that as well. So that's really cool that you were part of that. And I think you've transitioned quite a bit now from the sounds of it. I also really love that you come from higher education. I feel like there's so many CS pros out there, at least in the last five, maybe 10 years now that have definitely transitioned from

teaching, education, even events into customer success. So there's definitely transferable skills there. But you've definitely changed roles though, recently you've moved from like Hopin, which is like probably dealing with hundreds, if not thousands of customers. And then you were, most recently at Keeper, but now you're at Goldcast. And can you tell me a little bit more about kind of the companies and teams you've been at? I guess your book of business, cause that's changed as well.

Yes, that has changed a lot. So at Hopin, I had about a hundred accounts that I managed. And so it was more commercial or mid-market clients there. And kind of interesting to see like when I got hired, I think we were still unsure what customer success was. And so we worked really hard at, it was a very large team. And so all of us had access to courses. We went through Winning by Design, some other sales courses.

Speaker 2 (06:01.368)
So that's really where I started to build the skills, I think, for different CS roles. After I was impacted by the second round of layoffs there and moved into an HR tech company, which was quite a bit smaller and had a very small CS team. And that was a very much, much more strategic role with a very small book of business. I think I had about 30 to 40 clients at that time and then was impacted by layoffs there and moved over to Keefer, which was...

a completely different, very new to me book of business because at sort of the highest point I was managing about 250 accounts. So very, very different going from 30 to 40 up to 250 and then trying to build a strategy around what that was going to look like and how to engage all of those customers.

Thank you so much for sharing all of that, especially that your role was impacted. Cause I think a lot of people listening probably feel the same or have been in the same shoes. I've personally been impacted by layoffs multiple times in my career. And I'm happy to hear that people are normalizing the conversation around it. Cause you're thriving Melanie, at least what I can see and what you're doing and everything you're doing, but you didn't let a layoff or your role being impacted really slow you down. Cause you really have gone.

from strength to strength and I think it's awesome because you've really, again, worked in so many different industries, but also with different books of business and types of customers and strategies behind customer success, which is awesome to see. what actually inspired you to make the jump into customer success? Because higher education can be a great career route as well, but why CS? What made you move over?

Yeah, it was a great career move. I had run my own business prior to getting into that university setting and I was hired to bring that department online. Like they were manually mailing invoices to students to pay their bills. They were not using a registration system. So once I completed that, for anyone who's worked in government or institutions, you probably know that there's a lot of red tape.

Speaker 2 (08:06.956)
you know, requires a lot of different approvals and processes just to get something done. So once I had sort of completed what I set out to do there, I knew I wanted to move into something a little bit more fast-paced. Okay. And had heard about customer success. So once I started doing a little bit of research and then I realized, okay, I can do this. I've got these transferable skills that can easily move over. And that's with that event background that I had, that's what kind of got me into.

into that customer success space. So transferable skills, but I think a lot of it was timing as well.

Yeah, makes complete sense. And I think a lot of people I've talked to before have similar paths where it's like just made sense in their career trajectory to make a decision to move into tech or something different. like you said, there are lots of transferable skills that come from a different background that fit really well into customer success, which I know we'll talk about a little bit more into this podcast, but you've made leaps and bounds in the last four.

coming on five years in customer success, multiple companies, multiple aggressions. And I know that you're a stellar CSM from what I've heard, but you obviously probably have a career dream or ambition in customer success. So I'm so curious to know what's kind of the next or big career dream. I know you've just transitioned into a new role, but I guess looking into the future, kind of what is your big career aspiration? Yeah.

I think I love the idea of building and creating processes and structure. And so I always am kind of looking for little projects that I can work on in roles. Up until recently, thought, I think a lot of us in CS are looking, we're trying to figure out what the next step is, rather that's whether that's moving into a different role in the same company or.

Speaker 2 (10:00.952)
progressing into a manager role. And up until recently, I thought that's definitely what I wanted to do was lead a team, be in more of a manager role. But having this new role at Goldcast where I've just started and taking on enterprise clients, that's a whole new challenge in itself. And I came from working with a lot of mid-market clients for the last couple of years. So for me right now, I think this is a really good next step. And just to sort of...

build skills around working with these enterprise clients and really getting to know them in a more strategic way and helping to expand the account. So I'm really excited about learning more about that and kind of mastering that side of things.

love that. I also love that you highlighted that there's so many career trajectories that isn't just moving directly into leadership and management, which I say that, but that's exactly what I did. But back when I did customer success 12, 13 years ago, the only trajectory was be a CSM and then move into manager, head of, team lead, whatever the title was. But I think there's so much more these days, especially as

customer success becomes more focused on delivering value and outcomes for customers. It's no longer just CSM or a leader in CS. You can be enterprise, you can be a strategic CSM, you can even be a renewals manager. And there's so many different avenues that CS.

individual contributors can move into and I'm loving that you're highlighting that as well. Listen, Mally, before we jump into the topic, which I know is a juicy one, I know you have a podcast as well and I'd love to give it a shout out. So for my listeners that maybe don't know that you're a host of your own podcast, can you just give us a little spiel on what it is you talk about on your podcast?

Speaker 2 (11:44.11)
Thank you. So I co-host with Everybody Knows Dino, head of customer success at Whale.

And Ustino was a guest on this podcast just a few months ago.

So we co-host a podcast called, sorry for anyone that doesn't like swearing, but we fucked up so you don't have to. And where we talk about our mishaps or missteps in customer success, what that looks like, and then how we kind of fix that so other people can learn from our mistakes and don't need to go down that same rocky path that we did.

Yeah, I love your podcast. It's truly very raw, very honest, and I love listening to it because it's the truth. It's like, hey, we definitely messed something up and this is how you can learn from our mistakes, which I think is how we grow in general as human beings. But I love that you guys have focused it around CS. yeah, thanks for sharing. think it's a great podcast for anyone who wants to check it out. I'll link it in the show notes. But let's talk about today's topic, which I know comes

a lot from your previous roles. And I know can show value even in enterprise clients that you're going to start dealing with. But the topic is the anti check-in really. And the reason why I want to talk about this is I am sick of hearing everyone saying, oh, I just need to have a quick check-in with my customer or let me just call or email my customer for a check-in. And I think in 2025, in the era of customer success that we find ourselves in, check-in is no longer applicable.

Speaker 1 (13:13.612)
be able to actually showcase value to your customers. And I know you have a number of tips and tricks that you've developed at Keeper, but also throughout your career. And you have more or less the anti check-in. And I know you deal with a big book of business, yet you're still able to deliver value to your customers daily. So let's actually start by telling us about kind of the book of business you were running.

at Keeper and how many customers you manage on a day-to-day basis? What were you doing with your book of business for midsize customers that you were dealing with before?

Yeah, so my book of business, would say, was heavily weighted towards customers that I had actually onboarded. So throughout the couple of years that I was there, I was hosting onboarding calls, and then they would become part of my book of business, and I would sort of manage that customer journey. But a lot of the accounts, maybe the other 25 % of accounts, were inherited accounts. So they were a little bit different. I did not meet them.

hadn't had the chance to meet them at that point when I inherited them, there was no sort of handoff. They would just flow into my book of business and then I would see these new accounts come in and then, you know, start this outreach to try and get them on a call, learn a little bit more about them so that I could become more strategic with them. But managing a very large book of business, so I think I mentioned I had at one point around 250 accounts. That becomes a challenge. We were

Like part of our priorities as CSMs on that team were to have calls with these customers on a regular basis. So ideally we were meeting with 50 % of our book of business on a monthly basis, which that translates to a lot of calls. Like sometimes eight calls a day, back to back calls where having a check-in was, that was the easy thing to do, right? Like you have minimal prep, you're getting on a call and saying, okay, how are things going?

Speaker 2 (15:16.426)
And I just did not see value in that. was hard to even get people interested. Everyone's busy. They have multiple softwares that they're using. They're getting these requests from so many of their CSMs. Like I just, knew I needed to provide a reason for them to get on a call with me. Where were we going to show them value on this 20 or 30 minute call? And so that became sort of like the trigger that

was actually getting these calls booked, was having them intrigued about something where I could show them value and that's how I would meet them for ones I hadn't previously onboarded, or continue getting these customers that were now in the adoption phase of the customer journey interested in continuing to use it and think about different use cases for how they could use the software.

Yeah, my gosh. You were just saying those numbers and I was just doing the math in my head of like 250 accounts. How many times do I have to talk to a customer in a month to make sure I'm talking to them at least once every three to six months? Like that's a lot of calls. And you just highlighted too, you mentioned eight calls a day, back to back. And I'm just thinking, I'm tired. Like when I have to have a book of business, I'm tired with like three, maybe four calls a day and prepping for those calls.

making sure you're showcasing value, sending an agenda out before. That's a lot of work. Like, wait, like, it's just a lot of work. How were you managing, like, what did your typical day look like? How did you structure or approach those customer interactions? I'm so glad you mentioned that value was not being delivered and it was just a tick box exercise. It was just to say, hey, I talked to my customer, but how did you make sure that value was actually being delivered in those

eight back-to-back calls that you were having.

Speaker 2 (17:06.766)
That's where, this is not ideal. I would not recommend this strategy for companies for their CSM. Like it's very exhausting having that many calls a day. But when you are making progress with the customer and you can see that their engagement is up, their usage is up, they're actually getting in there because of these one-to-one calls and that's making a difference.

It's on one hand, it's hard, on the other hand, you're actually seeing in real time what these calls are doing for the customer relationship and the relationship with the software. So structurally, need, like you have to be really good at time management. So I would log in, look at all of my calls, whip up my notes. Thank goodness for things like Fathom, know, call recording, because I could just glance up my notes from last time.

They have actually a really cool, for anyone that doesn't use it, they have notes where you can actually turn on customer success notes. you can see what they're... love that. I know, me I love it. That was a lifesaver because I could see what the challenges were, the successes, the goals. I could just, you know, glance at that all beforehand. But I needed to pick at least one thing before every single call where I could see, okay, this was a priority in their onboarding. They're not using the feature. Let's chat about it and see how we can get there or...

I would make sure that I had a story that I could tell from another customer interaction that I knew would sort of ring a bell with someone. So there was always something that I knew I needed to have rather than just going onto these calls and saying, are things going? Or why aren't you using this feature?

Yeah, I love that. You're just so keen right there with storytelling, but also adding value. So how did you go about making sure you were clear on the value points? Because customers can change, things can change. And if you're having eight calls a day, that's quite a few customer calls. How did you stay up to pace with that and make sure that, you know, you actually knew your customer's goals?

Speaker 2 (19:07.15)
That was the hard part. For the clients that I had not onboarded, the ones that I was inheriting, it was piecing together notes from a previous CSM, trying to look at onboarding notes. many cases, just hadn't, the CSMs were trying to keep their head above water and onboarding so many clients at a time that it was a bit of a puzzle. So it was really important to even just have this intro call with the customer where I could ask all of those questions upfront.

and try to do a little bit of homework beforehand. But really where I got the key info to then start building the relationship with them was having these intro calls. Because otherwise, I just did not know enough info about who the customer was, why they were using the software, what the journey had looked like so far. So it was a matter of having really strategic questions before I went on to these intro calls to try and capture as much info as I could.

then start delivering content to them through these calls or emails where I knew that that would matter to them.

Yeah, and that's so, so important, by the way. I think you just highlighted something that a lot of us take for granted in customer success. So even if you onboard a customer or you're the actual CSM that the AE hands the client off to and you actually have a handoff with sales, which I know is becoming even more rare these days. But even if you're that CSM, there's still so much more discovery that you have to do to really understand your customers and your accounts. And yes, it can be done on a call, but

I also recommend like Google your customer, set up Google alerts to understand when there's like a company wide change at, especially with a publicly traded company. But like in general, if your customer puts out a PR release that they hired like five new senior executives, you should know that because that means their business is growing and changing. And I think a lot of times CS professionals, especially CSM struggle with really taking that next step of discovery and making sure that

Speaker 1 (21:13.004)
you really know your customer. Because I think that's really key, Melanie, and I think you're going to highlight it too, is that you can't move beyond a check-in call until you really understand what your customer goals and outcomes are. And you can only do that when you take the time to do it, which you did in an intro call, which is awesome. But I know a lot of CSMs really struggle with moving away from a check-in call, because it's almost like an eight. It's our nature to do that.

type of call. So how did you work from making your customer conversations more value focused and driving outcomes for them rather than the original check-in call that you were doing that was exhausting you?

Yeah, okay. And one thing, going back to your point a moment ago about researching your customer before you even hop on a call with them, what was interesting, and I've talked to a lot of other CSMs about this too, is that a lot of us have customers that are very small businesses. The people that I was onboarding were actually the firm owner, the accounting firm owner. They're the ones working with the clients. They did not have other employees. So they're doing everything.

you know, no online presence, no LinkedIn presence, like very difficult to find out information about these customers in advance. that was a whole challenge in itself because it was really a matter of having to get them on a call or one other thing that I found really helpful and for anybody that I've preached this so many times before, but having access to a customer community where customers are posting in there and you're able to get little snippets if you haven't met with them yet, that was a really good way for me to find out

little information points about the customer so that I could bring those onto calls with me too. That was really helpful.

Speaker 1 (22:54.616)
I love that you're basically a detective. Yeah, exactly. Investigate. Take some time. You're like, please let me keep digging up where I could find more information about my customer.

Thanks

Speaker 2 (23:05.314)
Yes. And so that was one thing. So then once I had these little bits of info, or again, with some clients I just didn't, it was just a matter of testing. Like what was working with some clients does not necessarily work with other clients I found. So I sent out a survey actually that was super helpful to the side of the book of business that

was not booking calls with me or that I just could not get these one-on-one calls with. And so I asked them four simple questions. What their goals were with the software, they had multiple choice where they could select one or several of those answers. How they wanted to consume content. Was that in one-on-one calls with me? Did they want video content? Did they want a lunch and learn or a webinar format?

and a couple of other questions. And what came back was so interesting because this survey went out to probably a hundred plus customers and most of them took the time to answer it, which was great because it was a very fast survey, but nobody wanted one-on-one calls. Zero. No customers.

Yeah, because they're all busy. We're all busy. Like if I think about my tech stack and my CS, like if I had to have a call with every tool my CSMs are using, my whole week would be filled with CSM calls.

See how cool-

Speaker 1 (24:32.334)
Not for 30 minutes of

So it came down to, okay, nobody wants to have these calls. I'm obviously still trying to get them on calls because that's what I'm measured on. But then it became a matter of providing value in a bit of a different way. So I started to create video content. Keeper had great webinars with some of our power users or legacy clients who had been using the software for a while. So I started to edit those down into little clips and send those out to say,

if this interests you, book a call with me and let's jump on a call and I'll teach you how to use this. Or just where someone was really excited about a feature they had just discovered, know, things that were going to make the user intrigued enough to get on a call with me to figure out how they could do it themselves. And so really testing that out, whether we used outreach to send out these sequences, but I could see open rates and I could see, you know, who was actually looking at that content and who was booking it.

calls with me just from clicking on those emails. So it was a lot of trial and error, but I found that providing value in that way was actually getting those calls booked so that I could then continue those value-driven conversations.

love that that survey idea is brilliant. And I think that it's amazing that you got such a huge result out of it. Because I think that some of us are always really afraid to ask these types of questions. But like you said, your customer answered because it's the way they chose to work. That's what they found meaningful and valuable. And then you took that data and then decided to approach it differently. Because like you said, most customers did not want a one to one.

Speaker 1 (26:13.826)
check-in call. They wanted something that was more impactful, more value driven in a different format. And it sounds like you had to be marketing and a data analyst and so many other roles to really figure that out. do you still send that survey out to all your customers to like, let's say if there are new customers onboarding, do you still ask those typical questions to figure out how to work with your customer?

Yeah, that was one thing that I personally did in my onboarding calls, just to say moving forward, how do you like to meet? Because with people's schedules, and the other thing that I would do once I knew that info, if they did like those one-to-one calls, or if I felt like, you you get a read on your customer while you're onboarding them or while you're meeting with them and you can see, are they comfortable with the software? Are they tech savvy?

So picking up on those little cues, were some that I knew were going to need more time. So I would just automatically say, okay, let's book our next three calls so that we had something on the calendar. But yes, I would always ask, do you like the video content? Do you like the one-on-one calls after we get past this implementation period? What do you want that to look like for you? And yeah, for the most part, people kind of, I think a lot of people don't like to be rude and they just don't want to say no, no one-on-one calls. So they'll schedule them.

But a lot of us know that, you know, they'll look at their calendar one day and you see those invites start to shift, right? They're rescheduling meetings or they just don't have time for them. So rather than forcing them to meet with me, if I start to see those reschedules happen on a regular basis, that's when I said, okay, I need to engage them in a different way.

love that. I love that. And it's so important to meet your customers where they're at and what they need because you could deliver eight one-to-one calls, like you said, a day, but if they didn't actually move the needle or help your customers in the way they need help, it's never going to serve. It's never going to help you. Like, you can have all these calls and then you're wondering, why did that customer churn or why did they leave her for a competitor? Well, they weren't getting value in the way that you showed up as their CSM.

Speaker 1 (28:18.336)
A lot of ways to drive value outside of a check-in call is, like you said, figure out the way they want to meet or they want to consume content. And again, come back to that discovery of what their outcomes are and what goals they actually care about. Because again, if you could talk about feature A, B, and C until you're blue in the face, but if they don't care about feature A, B, and C, you're just literally talking until you're blue in the face and exhausted.

Listen, it's 2025. We've got so many things to do as CS professionals. Let's not add to our plate by talking about things our customers don't care about. So I love that. I love that. Hey, CS pros. I want to quickly jump in and let you know if you are enjoying this episode but wondering how you too can become a revenue focused CS pro, then I have the answer for you. Some of you might not know this, but I run a cohort based coaching program that walks you through step by step on how to align customer success strategies

with revenue. CSM RevUp Academy is my complete step-by-step coaching program that helps you elevate your skills and mindset to focus on driving revenue for both your customers and your customer. As this is a live coaching program, we only open doors for enrollment a few times a year. So if you are interested, go to thecustomersuccesspro.com forward slash revup to sign up for the wait list. Noni, you mentioned at the very top of our call that

your team has been trained or you built more structure around these customer conversations. Can you maybe share with us a little bit more about the frameworks or the approach you guys develop? Because it sounds like you have a framework, because there's no way I can imagine having eight calls a day without some sort of framework playbook, yeah, follow-up sequence that you are following. But how did you guys manage this? How did you train the wider team on this?

Yeah, I think one of the things I started noticing was that we were using the term check-in in our stand-ups and just like in other ways. I started to think, is everybody on the team having these check-in calls where none of us are providing value? Like we really need to just focus on that. And so I spoke with our head of CS and said, can I just do like a little training on...

Speaker 2 (30:30.804)
Mapping the, so we knew, I think we were all really comfortable with what the challenges were that the customer was experiencing, why they were coming to the software in the first place. So mapping that to the challenge, to the feature that they were going to use to sort of alleviate the pain point. And then what that was going to look like in the measurable outcome. That's, think, where we were not good at trying to say, okay, well, this feature is going to get you to this place.

And then we'll work on being a little bit more strategic once you've started to save time or you're seeing these outcomes happen. So we did training on that and we were able to map all of the features to outcomes. think monitoring them or figuring out how the customer was actually getting there or if they were getting there was another sort of challenge that we needed to focus on. So at first we were just...

taking all of this info and saying, let's start to incorporate this into our calls. We were using a software called Scratchpad. I don't know if you're familiar with it, but. it was kind of handy for customer notes. So I would have access to it before a call. I had the customer goals at the top of the notes. I could just access it anytime. So I knew exactly what I was going to speak to them about, what to focus on, what outcomes they had already achieved, and then what we were still working on.

never heard of it.

Speaker 2 (31:55.906)
So that became sort of the call structure.

in a tool essentially? Exactly, yes.

Yes. So that was really the focus of all of the calls is shifting from check-in where we're talking about features, like you said, that don't make sense to them or just are not important to them and focusing on, how come we're not using this feature when we know that this is important to you? What needs to happen? Talk about any blockers, that kind of thing where the calls just became much more focused on providing feedback to the team.

and being able to recognize the direction that we needed for the customer to be able to use those features.

Yeah, I love that. Two things there, Melanie. First of all, I love that you stepped up as a leader when you're an individual contributor. I think a lot of people listening are like, how can I show leader strip skills if I don't have leader as my title and I know you want to be a leader? And I think you've just demonstrated how much of a leader you are because you realized that there was something happening or a gap within your team and you were figuring it out on your own, but you wanted to help up level.

Speaker 1 (33:04.62)
the full team, which is awesome. And I'm sure your leader, by the way, fully appreciated that you wanted to step up in that way. Because as a leader, I love when my team steps up and is like, hey, I have a great idea and it's worked. And I think we can do it across all our customers because at the end of the day, I could use the help every leader can. And you definitely stepped up, which I think shows again.

clear path to leadership. It shows your leaders that you are ready to lead, which is awesome for your big career goal. But the second thing that you mentioned that has me all fired up and super excited is basically using a success plan in every call with your customer. I find it really strange that we spend so much time as CS professionals mapping accounts, figuring out what goals are for a customer, figuring out what their three, six, 12 month...

plan looks like all this time and these beautiful success plans, right? Usually they're in slides, which if you have your success plan in a slide, please stop. But that's just like my real pet peeve because a success plan is a living, breathing document. And it is something that should be shared all the time with your customer. And it sounds like with Scratchpad, I've never heard of it, but it sounds like that is exactly what you are doing to drive outcomes in every single call that you are having with your customer, which is

chef's kiss. I'm so excited that you're doing that on every one of your calls. And I personally think when you do that, it leads to natural upsell conversations or just natural transition into renewals or upsells or anything that means expansion of the account, which I know you know, but a lot of people listening expansion is, the reality of customer success in today's world. And I know that you work.

across the full customer journey, including upsells and renewals. So how did you start to use those impactful discussions with success planning and instead of a check-in call, how did you start to transition towards more upsell conversations with your customers instead of check-in calls?

Speaker 2 (35:06.178)
Yeah, I think one of the things I really focused on was getting down to what's working for them right now in their business and maybe what's not working and how the software can help them with that because so many customers I realized don't know everything that the software can do. So it's our job to educate them in a way that's not salesy. We're not pushing them towards anything. We're guiding them to...

help them see the software in a different, I mentioned this earlier, different use case where they maybe didn't realize that the software even did that. They don't know what they don't know. They don't have time to be reading our newsletters that are going out every week, joining webinars.

They don't look at your case studies. They have no idea. They are very focused on their business and it's your job to educate and help them understand how much more they can use your tool or software.

Yes, 100%. So I think sending out those little clips or telling those stories, I found to be so helpful because it really resonated and getting those calls booked meant that I now had the chance to ask questions and say, you know, have you considered this or tell the story of another customer that started using this feature and this is what it did for their business.

And that I think is so much easier for a CSM because a lot of us don't aren't comfortable with sales or we don't consider ourselves salespeople. So just having another way to guide the customer through, keep saying storytelling, but for me that really works so well because I can see the light bulb go off. I can see them get excited about something and say, like, let's try it and see what happens. I'm a huge advocate for piloting something and see if it makes a difference in the business.

Speaker 2 (36:49.464)
for the customer and having them fully understand the impact that it's going to have. Is it going to save them time? Is it going to save them money? Is it going to change their business in some way that financially it makes sense to them?

Yeah, I love it. I love it. You just mentioned something that we're not naturally salesy or quota driven people, which I say probably pretty normal for most people in CS because we've probably come from either like some sort of support or professional services or account, like account planning, mapping, something like that, but not necessarily holding a quota. But like we talked about, it's here to stay whether we like it or not. Like CSMs do influence revenue and

we do have some sort of quota to hit, whether it's net revenue retention, reducing churn, all of that is a revenue quota, even though we don't like calling it because again, we don't like the salesy side of things, which is fine. how did you make the transition? Because you didn't come from a sales background, but you make it sound supernatural, super value driven to these conversations that made it easier for you to have that natural next step.

with your customers and make those upsells. I know storytelling is super powerful. Is that your key to really feeling comfortable or is there anything else that you're doing to make those, I guess, upsells happen?

Storytelling is key for me, but also being, I think once you get to a point in the software where you can call yourself an expert and being so confident about how the software can solve their challenges, I think that's where it'll really shine through and help the customer understand. it goes from a sales pitch to, I keep saying guiding, because I really feel that that's so important.

Speaker 1 (38:37.262)
I agree. I totally agree. We're guides. I think we're guides. Like if you can imagine, like you can go on a vacation and just walk around a city and you'll see a lot of things, but imagine if you had a guide, you'd actually see, you know, the most amazing, beautiful locations and you wouldn't have known that unless A, you did the research, which most of our customers aren't doing the research, but B, like you're probably not going to see the ins and outs the way the guide.

would actually understand it. And like you said, you know your software and use case best and you're able to guide your customers. So I love that. That's music to my ear. Sorry.

So I think just having the confidence to share and not be afraid of what we call an upsell, which is maybe for a customer just teaching them about how something is going to benefit them and then having it kind of be a natural progression into them growing with the software.

love that. I love that again, guiding them to their next step, not feeling like it's forced or it's salesy or because it's not really you are there as a CS professional to help your customers business grow using your software or or services. And if you're not helping them, you're actually causing their business to decrease. And you don't want that business growth equals sales, equals upsells.

renewals, all of that is business growth. And that's what you're here to do is to guide them to that natural next step. So I love that you storytelling because I advocate for that so much because your customers really don't know. They do not know how your other customers are using your software tool. They don't know the case studies. They don't have the time to read all the newsletters or the product updates and all this stuff. You are their Sherpa or their guide or whatever you want to call it. And you need to remind them, which I love. I absolutely love. But

Speaker 1 (40:33.25)
Melanie, you've taken lots of leadership steps in your career without being a leader, which I absolutely love for you, because I think you're going to be a stellar leader when that time comes. But you were able to really take ownership and make positive change, not only for your book of business, but for other customers within different CSMs books of business. How did you go about doing all this stuff without needing approval from above? Because I think some people feel like they need to run everything by their manager.

before they start doing things or doing all the testing and discovery and detective work that you've been doing with your clients.

that's such a good question. Because I think when I started as a CSM, was used to, you know, coming from this university setting where like you're asking permission for everything and everything kind of needs to be granted for you to start on a project or take ownership of something. And so it took me a while to figure out, OK, I can do this on my own. And I think really key is if you're going to try something, have the data to back it up when you do take this to leadership or when you do

want to present this and say, think we should all be trying this because this is the success that I've had with it. So testing, trialing, piloting, whatever you want to call it, but definitely having the results, the successful results that you can share, or even if something's not working, say, here's what I tried, this didn't work, but then I tested this out and here are the results from that. So I think that that's been really key is just having the confidence to try something, but then always being able to speak to it afterwards and

not being able to or taking risks and then being able to pivot, I think if something doesn't necessarily work out.

Speaker 1 (42:18.51)
Yeah, I love that. I love that you have taken those risks because they have paid off and you won't know. That's thing. You really won't know until you try something. I mean, a huge risk is you even trying customer success, right? You pivoted in your career, but you tried it and it's worked out. And I think with CSMs that I coach or work with, I always say like, are the CEO of your book of business and I can guarantee that your leader believes that too.

they know that they've put you into this role to really own that book of business and how you decide to work with that book of business, how you drive success with that book of business is totally up to you and your trial and errors. But if things are going really bad, like you should pivot, like you should definitely pivot. But if it's going really, really well, I'm telling you right now as a CS leader, I would be over the moon if all my CSMs were like, yeah, we came up with this new tactic or strategy on how to manage

large customers that are in this segment that are feeling this pain point. I would love that because it means that you've done your homework and really owned being the CEO of your book of business. So I love your answer too, though. Like really try something. You won't know until you you take that risk. Thanks for sharing. Yeah.

I've heard you say that before about being the CEO of your of your book of business. I love that. I think it's so true how you handle your book of business. Yeah, I think and sharing the successes with the team so that everybody has that knowledge and they can try to implement I think is also really key.

It is, it is. You really know the most and like the CEO of any business, mean, great CEOs really know the most about that business and they need to lead and share and show examples and also take ownership if things go poorly or go really well. And that is exactly how I see CSMs is as little CEOs. They're basically mini CEOs in my head. So I love that. think that, cause again, you guys are, we're doing marketing every day, data analysts.

Speaker 1 (44:14.358)
like you're selling to some degree like we've already talked about, that is basically being a CEO. So I love that you agree to that and that you own your book of business like any CEO would. Yeah. But listen, Melanie, we could talk about this topic for hours. Auditfully, I could probably ask you 50 more questions on this, but I have a few more super good ones that I think anyone listening can take away is

You manage a really large book of business and you've come up with really creative ways to handle like identifying risk, upsells, delivering value on a consistent basis on an anti-check-in call. For anyone listening that has, again, hundreds or maybe just more clients that they can handle right now, what are your creative tips on ways that they can manage the data?

today? Yeah, I think it can be really overwhelming for someone who doesn't necessarily know where to start. That's where I was in when I started that role. And so what I found most helpful was just segmenting, picking little not knowing the book of business makes it little bit more difficult to segment based on what their goals are. So until you start having those conversations, I started to segment by, OK, how big is the company? Is this just a solopreneur? Is this a firm that has employees?

So segmenting by the business size, segmenting by who's got a renewal coming up, like who do I need to strategically really get in front of right away, and then segmenting by their usage. So are there people who are paying for this subscription and not utilizing the software at all? Where are people using the software? What are they maybe not using that I can try to get on these calls and just...

get a little bit more info out of them. So I think thinking through how you can segment those accounts and then start proactively reaching out to them that way makes a big difference in just think of it in chunks, how you can break down that really large book of business and start to make an impact on a smaller scale first rather than thinking about it as a whole.

Speaker 1 (46:20.366)
I love that, like divide and conquer essentially because we only have so many hours in a day and no one's working 24 seven or at least I hope not. And we all want to have our nights and weekends to ourselves. So literally segment, divide and conquer because it's, it's the only way I think you need to, you need to decide where your time is most valued and which customers are most valued as well. So thank you for sharing that. Listen, as we wrap up.

One more question about the anti-check-in, because that's what we've been talking about this whole time. What is your biggest for anyone listening for the anti-check-in call? If there's one thing, if people start to transition to anti-check-ins, what is the one thing that they should take away from this episode?

Okay, biggest thing would be as you think about reaching out to the customer to get them on a call, think about how you can position yourself as showing them value even from the email. When they open that up, we want them to say, okay, I need to book a call. So how are you going to do that in a way that is going to make an impact? And don't be afraid to try different things. You're maybe not going to have success with the first.

way that you send out an email. So don't be afraid to just try different things and maybe something's gonna work with one segment of customers. Maybe you're gonna need to try something completely different with another segment. So I think just get creative. Don't think about this in a way that you just need to get these emails out as quickly as possible. Personalize where you can try and provide as much value as you can, even if it's like a video clip, like I said earlier. Start sending those emails and then see what's working.

Love that very tactical practical advice. Thank you so much, Melanie. But listen, we are going to move into the quick fire questions part of the podcast, which if you've listened to them before, I like to challenge every single one of my guests to try to answer these next four questions in a sentence or less. I know it's tough, but are you ready? I'm ready. OK, amazing. The first question is, if you could predict the future, what do you think customer success will focus on next year?

Speaker 2 (48:25.05)
I think customer focus, customer success is still going to focus on value, driving value for customers. And I think that still needs to be the focus next year.

Amazing. Love it. Great start. Next question is, which app or software do you use every single day or every week? And it can be on your phone or your laptop. Doesn't have to be CS related and why.

Okay, CS related, I use Loom. I love it for sending quick videos over to customers. Instead of sending out this long detailed email explanation, send a video.

Love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. I also love sending a quick video or a voice note. I love Slack. Amazing. Next question is if you could change one thing about customer success, what would it be?

The thing would be for leaders to listen to your success team. think, ooh, spicy.

Speaker 2 (49:26.274)
go into more detail, that would be what I think needs to be the biggest change or focus.

gosh, that could be a total topic of another podcast. I love that. But it's really true. think sometimes as a leader myself, I can say that sometimes we get so caught up in the business strategy or the overarching metrics of how our team's doing that the answer could be in how your CSMs are actually working day to day. So it's a good one. That's a very spicy answer. I love it, Melanie. Okay. Amazing. Last question is who should be my next podcast guest?

I recently met Bianca Schwartz. Have you heard of her or met her? No. OK, she's an enterprise CSM, so another IC, but she was just made head of CS at the company that she's working at. And she is amazing, a bright light in customer success. So I've had a couple of calls with her. So knowledgeable, super friendly, very well-spoken, and very passionate about customer success.

No buts.

Speaker 1 (50:28.398)
Amazing. Bianca, if you're listening, I would love to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for your recommendation, Melanie. And thank you for being so generous with your time, your tips, your tricks. I got so much out of this call. I know my listeners did as well. But if they have any follow-up questions or if anybody wants to continue the conversation, what's the best way to reach out to you?

Yes, please find me on LinkedIn. I'm pretty active. So connect with me, send me a message. I love chatting with other anybody else in tech or in customer success. So I look forward to connecting.

amazing and I'll make sure to link everything on Melanie down in the show notes including her LinkedIn including her podcast and how to get a hold of her but thank you so much Melanie I love this conversation.

Me too. Thanks for having me.

Thank you for listening to the Customer Success Pro podcast today. I hope you learned something new to take back to your team and your company. If you enjoyed today's episode, please can you take one minute to give me a positive review on Apple Podcasts? It takes a lot of time and energy to create an episode and I want to continue to create more for you. But it would be great to know that you are enjoying these episodes. Also, do not forget to subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts as I release a new podcast every month.

Speaker 1 (51:47.468)
And if you have any topics that you would like me to discuss in the future, or you would like to be a guest on this podcast, please feel free to reach out. All my contact details are in the show notes. And if you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to share it because sharing is caring. Thanks again for listening and tune in next time for more on customer success. Cheers to your CS journey and catch you next time.