Anika Zubair (00:00.194)
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forward slash rev up or check the show notes to save your spot. Hello everyone. I'm your host, Anika Zuber and welcome to the Customer Success Pro podcast, your go-to space for real talk, expert advice and actual insights in the world of customer success. I'm a CS executive leader, award winning strategist, CS coach and customer success fanatic. I help CSMs and CS leaders build the skills and the confidence to become

revenue driving pros and scale world-class CS teams. So whether you're brand new to CS or a seasoned leader, this podcast is here to support your growth. Because customer success isn't a destination, it's a journey. And I'm here to be your guide and navigate every step of your journey. So join me every Wednesday where you'll get fresh CS tips, tricks and strategies you can actually use.

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Anika Zubair (02:25.88)
Welcome back to another episode of the Customer Success Pro Podcast. I'm your host, Anika Zuber, and today we are diving into a foundational, often overlooked piece of the CS puzzle, how to build your first customer retention program. Whether you're scaling a brand new CS function or you're just realizing that renewals need a little bit more than a last minute email, this episode is going to give you a real world blueprint from someone who's done it all.

from zero to full-fledged CS org. Joining me today is Barel Bandari, a powerhouse CS consultant based in Chicago, who's built and led customer success teams from the ground up and now helps companies scale CS into a true profit center. She brings a unique lens, having worked both in large corporations and high-growth startups. And she uses that experience to design CS orgs that are built to last. Barel is a contributing writer at ink.com,

and has a collaborative customer success book coming out this summer. And get this, she's also recently started writing children's book. Talk about versatility. In this episode, we're gonna talk about what actually goes into building retention programs that work. The metrics, the playbooks, and yes, the common pitfalls. So if you're a CS leader or an aspiring CSM who wants to keep your customers and drive more revenue from them, this one's for you. So let's jump in.

Welcome Farrell to the podcast. I am so very excited and honored to have you as my next guest. I know we've been talking about this for a while, so this is just super exciting to have you on this show. But for those of my listeners that do not know who you are and what it is you do, do you mind giving yourself a quick introduction about who you are? Yes, absolutely. Thanks for having me. I am a fan of the previous podcast and also all the work that you're doing now is just so

incredible love to keep up with it. For those that don't know me, my name is Paral Vandari. I live in Chicago. I'm a mom of two. So that's like my full-time job. And then for my career, I'm currently a customer success consultant. As of the last year, I do both consulting and fractional work. I work with companies kind of embedded, and then I do project work as well. I also do a little bit of coaching or mentoring on the side. I started my company after

Anika Zubair (04:51.449)
about 10 years of working in the industry and leading customer success teams. And like many people, I started when customer success, we didn't really know what we were doing. So I got to my first team, I got to build from the ground up and I just absolutely fell in love with the function. And I am really excited about, you know, kind of where we're going and where we're headed in these next years ahead. That's a little bit about me. And then kind of other fun fact is I'm working on a customer success book with six,

CS authors to come out very soon in the summer. Yeah, I love that. I remember when you guys launched that. That's so exciting. It's super exciting. I can't wait for your launch. But you moved from full-time work into fractional consulting. What made that happen? Congrats on one year. That's huge. you. Yeah. Why the shift there? And also maybe can you tell our listeners a little bit more about either the companies and teams you work with currently or maybe in the past? Like, what does it look like, the type of CS you've done? Yeah, absolutely.

the first sales team I ever worked at, I'll tell you the journey, cause I think the journey feeds the why I'm here now. I started as a consultant, doing occupational ergonomics work. So I have like, I think in my DNA, the work of consulting has always been something I really enjoyed. The consulting firm I worked at actually turned into a SaaS startup and that was the first customer success team that I got to lead, but it wasn't a team that existed. So we basically were figuring it out and they're like, okay, bro, go for it. Like build this organization or this department at the time. Right.

So I got my first team, I got the chance to not only be CSM number one, but also build out the full function, put in CS software, and then build a team. by the time we got acquired, we were about eight people. So we went from probably 80 customers to about 500 customers. I think of that as like a pivotal experience for me because I was like, whoa, I really like this. Not only did like CS, but I really loved the build phase. That was really exciting to me.

Once we got acquired, became part of like a larger entity, you know, and that really changed the game. So I learned a lot about, you know, really having vertical based CSMs. We had global enterprise all the way to scale CS and we collectively had, you know, now eight leaders in the, in the team, right. And about 30 CS people all together. So it was a big shift over to like how we worked, how we structured. And it was very exciting. I got it.

Anika Zubair (07:17.648)
good hand in doing organizational redesign, learning kind of some of the ropes of scale. But I also was like, I want to go back to early stage. So went back to another kind of earlier stage startup, and then I moved again one more time and did the same thing. last 2023, it was just a year of transition for me. I, you know, kind of went through, I think what a lot of people went through, which was like, maybe not being in the best sort of fit.

situation, but also being in a tough market, not really knowing what was going to be next. And I had always thought like, loved consulting. So maybe I give this a try and I do it, you know, on my own as a business versus just kind of dabbling, which I had done in the past. So here we are. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I think your story probably resonates with quite a few people listening and people going through similar journeys, maybe not the starting as a consultant, becoming a CS.

leader and all that. But I think what you just said in that last piece where the market is what it is at the moment. I've talked to plenty of people where it's just not the most amicable if you are looking for a change or if you've been recently laid off as well. It's just been a very tough year when it comes to the job market. But I think what I've seen shift and what you probably see in your business is there's a real appetite for fractional customer success. Now, I don't know what that means for the future of customer success, but at the moment,

with the world economy that we find ourselves in and tariffs and wars and everything in between, just feels like, I don't want to get political, but it just feels like fractional is a bit of where we're kind of headed in customer success, which I know there's a huge outtake and a huge part of the market that is doing fractional work. So it's awesome that you are doing it. I think it's a big job to do in general and something that is extremely important.

And you have so many jobs, actually. You have mom, you're a fractional leader, a coach, all these things. You've been a consultant, you've been at startups, you've gone into like big organizations as well. What I guess is, and also I just almost forgot, you're going to be an author. So there's so many titles that you have, but I'm just wondering what is next then? You kind of done it all, but I'm just curious. I always like to ask my guests, what's next in your CS career or what's your big dream or ambition?

Anika Zubair (09:40.77)
in customer success? That's a great question. mean, since I started this journey, people were like, so what's your niche? And I'm like, early stage startups. And what I quickly learned is like, not all early stage startups can afford a convoluted. They can't afford many things. They're starting out, they're scrappy, right? But I think a lot of the fundamentals in kind of our conversation today, a lot of the fundamentals of a really good program are built in those early days. And so what I would love to do is like,

evangelize and be like somebody that helps propel early stage startups to find avenues to drive customer success at a low cost, at a way that they can do it scalable and not have to feel like they're overextending. And yes, when they're ready, they can go into either fractional or having a full time person, you know, but giving them the building blocks so that they can be successful without having to extend all their resources. And I will tell you, that's a hard

to figure out how to scale the work that we do, but I'm hoping that I can try to sort of build some of that. So I've done, through the accelerator that I mentor at, I've done customer success 101, not for CSMs, for founders. So it's like, hi, I'm a two-person company. I have no idea what I'm doing. Let me help you. So those are the things that I think I need to just put out into the broader ether because I haven't really done it. Kind of like, I don't know why, I need to do it. But those are examples of things that can help us.

set that mentality in the very early stage. Because most people are just frankly worried about building a product and selling it, but they don't think about what happens on day one after that sale. And it's so important to think about those things, but you're busy. You're so busy. Yeah. And you're busy. And you can't, like, I remember I did a mentorship for a company that was literally two people, right? wow. They were like, I'm the CEO, I'm the CSM, I'm the operations, I'm the software admin. I'm like, I'm wearing 10 hats, right? So I was like, hey, look.

I built this toolkit. I'm going to give it to you. Right? Like take this toolkit and go and use it and tell me what you think of it. Right. And those are the little things that I think, you know, he was like very appreciative of that. Like the CEO was very appreciative of that because he's like, I couldn't, I know I couldn't pay for it. Right. And so it's making me just think about how to do this. Right. And, and still obviously build a company that's profitable. Right. But also evangelize for this in the, in the long, long term. Yeah. I love that you're

Anika Zubair (12:09.07)
making space for those early, early, like you said, bootstrap founder led organizations that are very busy focusing on new revenue, new sales, net new. That's all that they're worried about because that's how you end up getting your first funding. It's really important to have that new sales flywheel in motion. But a lot of founders, like you say, forget about the right side of the bow tie or what happens next once you close a deal. And then when they go to get more funding,

VCs or PEs or any venture firm is basically saying, hey, you got these customers, but how are you actually keeping them? And sometimes building a retention program early is actually what's going to guide your company and these founders and everyone towards a successful growth engine. But it's often forgotten. Honestly, I think lots of things in CS are often forgotten, but I love that you're paving a path. You're building tool belt tools and just

strategies for these early stage companies. And that's what we're going to talk about today. And I'm super excited to dive into it, which is all around building your first customer retention program. And I think right now retention is everything. Like it is so hard to close a new deal or it's getting harder and you want to make sure you're keeping your current customer base. And that's again, usually an afterthought in most companies. So I'm curious with the extensive work you've done, either consulting or

in in seat, like, can you tell us about a time when you came into a company where there was no formal retention strategy at all? Like, what would be the very first thing if someone was listening would look for or do to build that retention program? Yes. So a couple of startups ago, I landed at the startup right around the time they were starting to have their first renewals come due. That's a pretty common trend. Other CS leaders will maybe feel the same or even CSMs.

You are called in to be CS, you know, leader, a CSU member, and they have, they're like, by the way, this year we have our first renewals too. Hopefully we can figure this out. And you're like, by the way, oh, sure. Thanks. Not in a bad way, but I think it is a problem that comes, you know, people try to solve just in time. And yeah, one of the things I preach is like, we need to be thinking about this way ahead, right? Your renewal program actually starts at the year before your first renewals ever do that you're looking at the data, you're understanding what's to come.

Anika Zubair (14:35.6)
So the first thing I would look at, frankly, is show me all the contracts. In the earlier stage companies, when you're building a new renewal program, you hopefully have contracts, not like thousands. You probably can digest them. But if you do have thousands, hopefully you have other ways to track and measure what's happening. But I want to know what's in those contracts. Because early stage founders, what they kind of do is they give away a lot. They'll give away...

you can have all my modules for free or, you can have unlimited upgrades for free or whatever. Like they'll just kind of build in these packages. And as the person owning the renewal and actually owning revenue growth, right? You're not just owning, hey, this like, this action that needs to occur. You need to also understand like what's at risk, right? So oftentimes, you know, I'll run into contractors that's like, I can't actually price, increase their price because they're blocked into your brain. It's like, no, no, no, we need to work on this. Right? So then it's coming up with.

sort of strategy for each of those different customers, or maybe that's like a couple of different buckets and looking at really how are we going to address them. So that's kind of the first thing I would do is just like show me all the paper. Right? Yeah. The paper trail of everything I have to clean up. But it's so true what you just said, like founders or first sales people or first sales leaders are like, just give them everything and you know, the kitchen sink and

It's okay, we'll just figure it out when the renewal comes. But I think something that you just said is indicative of why customer success is so reactive. And it has to do with the fact that most leadership teams are only thinking of it when, crap, we have a renewal this year. Like we've got to get some sort of retention foundation in place and then, you you're already on the back foot.

I guess starting with the paper trail or at least understanding what it is you're renewing is a great, great first step. But you also said like retention starts at the very first interaction. Like that's what's really important to highlight. And I totally agree. Can you explain what that looks like in practice? Cause again, we have these busy founders, busy startup scale up people that are just focusing on closing the sale. What is renewal at first steps look like? Yeah. I mean, well, I think we all know like,

Anika Zubair (16:50.744)
If you're thinking about customer success, you're also thinking about the full experience that that customer has. And while we want to be the proactive partner, oftentimes in the early days, you're also like doing a lot of administrative stuff. So for an early stage founder, you know, how you are going to set that client up for success at, you know, success plans, right? Like asking what their goals are and actually tracking outcomes sounds like so heavy at that period to do all this work. But if you start it then,

it becomes practice, right? So like every goal that you identify, because in the early stage, you're really after understanding like, what are customer goals going to be broadly so I can define the ICP and I can make product market fit in the long run. You might not have it today and that's okay. Every customer you talk to, you should be tracking those goals. So I'm a big fan of like, put it in your CRM, track it, doesn't matter how pretty it looks, just put it in there. Yes, because your future self is going to thank you so much.

Like so much, like I think a lot of times sales are like, I don't have the time or they're like gritting their teeth. I don't want to do the admin, but you're so right. Just entering in one line, even if it's just one sentence to explain exactly what outcome they're trying to get with your product or service, your CSMs will thank you. Your marketing team will thank you. Your product development team, everyone will thank you if you just take that one little foundational step. so agree. And I'm so glad you brought it up. Yeah. And it's not, it's not.

You know, I'm doing an early stage company fractional assignment right now. We're literally planning go to market. So the product is not even in the market, right? And I'm talking to the sales leader, I'm talking to the CEO, and they're like, customer success is so important to me. They're like, what's really important? You have to nail the handoff. And I'm like, I think I'm in love. Like, you guys are speaking my language, you know? That's awesome. And not to say that sales leaders and CS leaders don't say, or CEOs don't say that. I think you do get bogged down in the busy.

You want to come forward to a customer. You don't want to feel like you're asking a million questions and like, you know, bogging your customer down. But the more prepared you are upfront, the less you have to go backtrack and ask them for that information later. You can actually start to build your database of like, what are going to be the goals that I'm going to try to achieve broadly for my product. And that can help you with future renewals too. So that's the program element of renewals and retention, right? Is like not just looking at one customer at a time, really looking at the like holistic batch.

Anika Zubair (19:16.098)
according to various outcomes, right? So yeah. Definitely important. And I think you just mentioned something that I want to double click on is around you're at a super early stage company that maybe has a little bit of mismatch of either ICP or product market fit, which funny enough, I don't think this is just an early stage problem. think there are plenty of series A, B and larger where the ICP is either

not what they thought or the product isn't fitting the market that they're trying to enter. And I think that causes a huge retention issue, like huge. Like if you're mis-selling or mis-marketing a product, it's going to cause a retention issue. So when you're building the foundation of a retention program, how do you kind of fit in product market fit or just make sure that you're really tailoring to the right ICP? Because I think it's all inclusive, no? yeah, 100%.

I think you're right. It's an ever evolving landscape, you know, at times, especially as your product evolves. But one of the things I learned early from like a VC that had invested in one of the companies I worked out was you have to understand product market fit at every stage that you're working in and with every like sort of level or variety of your customer, every segment of your customer. So they actually provided us with their very standard PMF surveys, right? And they would be like, CS, can you push this out? And I was like,

What is this achieving, right? They were like giving this to me, kind of saying, just do it, right? Because this is a thing to do. And I didn't really fully understand what it was and what it was trying to achieve. was like, can't we just do our own survey? What's interesting is the product market fit like surveys that exists in the market. And you can not go and ask your favorite GPT tool to help you with this too. But they are designed based on like industry standard, like data and questions, right? Similar to like an NPS, which can be controversial.

What they're trying to achieve is, you know, is this customer like gaining value from it? They're actually answering some of the CS questions in a way, but are they gaining value? Are they going to recommend, you know, are they going to be someone that's going to likely to renew? The interesting thing though, in PMF surveys, and when you, when you look at that data, it's a little bit, it's, it's often anonymous. So the hard thing for a CS person is how to like absorb that when it's anonymized.

Anika Zubair (21:37.37)
comes and it relates to your customer. in a way, when we're talking to our customers and we're gathering those goals, outcomes, success plans, we're kind of gathering that insight too and helping to connect those dots. But probably one of the most important, if not, probably second most important relationship is your relationship with your product team. So whatever you're hearing in the ether from your customers, again, making sure that's tracked somewhere, whether it's your CRM or other tool that you like, and that that's categorized and actually prioritized.

That's your contribution to product market fit, right? How many times have we all been in a room where we're like, this customer is not the right customer for the product. We might not say that though, because we tend to be nice and kind and, you know, want to make people happy. Yes. So, but instead of holding back on that, those are also the types of references that we can help our organizations to understand, right? That in the early days we can say, Hey,

I'm noticing this customer is not utilizing all the product. Like you can go and check it in our product, you know, our tracking tool, but I'm noticing they're only really in it for this. You know, maybe we should understand why we're going after customers like this more often. The value we can provide to the organization is so immense, right? When we understand our product, we understand our customer. We actually can really enable a lot of those conversations better. So I think for CSMs and CS teams, it's like when your instincts are kind of going off,

you know, about a customer or a product issue, don't hold back, like track it, document it and communicate it. Yeah. I don't know if I answered your original question. No, mean, it's all about why, what happens when there's no product market fit and how you still build a strong retention program around that. And you're right, if there isn't one, which can happen multiple times, no matter your stage, you should document it, you should highlight it, you should raise it up to the wider team so you don't have this repeat issue happening because

Yeah, one, two, maybe a dozen is okay. You're like, okay, we're still figuring it out. But if you have 50 of your customers churn in the same year for the same reason, because it's not a product market fit, well, you could have prevented some of that churn. That's something that you could have had a hand in as a leader that's building a retention program for the first time. And can I add to that? You as a CS leader or the CS team, you might get the blame for that churn, right? Unfortunately, that's what we all feel.

Anika Zubair (24:05.252)
But if you have been proactive in your documentation and you have actually talked about and understood these concepts of PM product market fit and an ideal customer profile, you are actually going to be a better educated communicator when it comes to why that turn might have occurred as well. So it's like probably going to help you much more than you know up front. And it'll make you a better business leader, which is what I think a lot of times we struggle with in customer success because we are the people pleasers is that when you start to understand.

the full remit of being a business leader rather than just being a customer success leader or CS professional that's trying to aspire to lead. It's just, you need to really think about how is this fitting and growing the whole business from an ICP, from a renewal standpoint, from a churn standpoint, all of it. And that's really important to call out. But you've mentioned a few things here, Harral. You mentioned about making sure that you do retention early, like right from the start, which is really great. Make sure you capture everything.

from a customer outcome perspective in a CRM and then also how to mitigate a bit of early churn with product market fit. But we haven't really talked about metrics. And I think, again, we're trying to be data-driven decision makers. I think those are some of the best decisions we make. But in an early stage, you might not have all the metrics or data or things that you want to track from day one. So when you find yourself at these early stage companies, what's kind of like essential to track from day one?

Well, I mean, that's a great question. Like I'm dealing with that right now where we're like quarter one into our first pilot, right? So it's like pilot one quarter one. I mean, the data is limited. So what I was lucky enough to advocate for right away is the product utilization tool. So they were able to put in like a freemium version of a tool to track usage. have barely scratched the surface of what that data can provide, but we already are hearing from customers like they want it, right? They want to know.

I want to know how much of X percent of my users are doing X behavior. They're already asking in quarter one. So getting utilization information early is important, I think, especially when you don't have like really much more to go on at this point, right? You don't really know what you're looking for. The beauty of that is it just gives you a vast amount of data so you can start to mine it and like, you know, make those tools something that you get familiarized with. The other one, right, and I think this is very important, like in the early stage you often do

Anika Zubair (26:30.266)
pilots or you do these kind of like one year deals or one month deal. I don't know. Every product's a little bit different. I hate pilots by the way. Sorry. That's a side question. A side issue. Side to side debate. But what you're actually working towards is your first conversion. It doesn't feel like it, but that is a renewal. So converting your pilot to full time in the early stage or founder, if you're out there listening, like converting your freemium to full time, those are all your first gates, right? So maybe you gave them access

I'm going give you the access to the platform for free for six months. What happens then? So those are your early renewals and you can start to track those as you would a typical renewal. They're just going to have shorter cycles. They're not going to necessarily have the revenue attached. And then from there, I'm a big fan of GRR because NRR kind of comes later. You might go zero to a lot because you tracked a freemium, you converted a freemium.

That's not really NRR, right? That's just getting your GRR. That's getting your base ARR. So I'm a big fan of like track your gross and track your logo retention. Yeah. I talked to a founder last year. was actually, VC like was like, Hey, bro, you know, we want them to consider help. Can you talk to them? And he goes, Oh, we're fine. You don't need help. have 130 NRR. And I'm like, Oh, that's great. You know, how'd you get that?

And he's like, yeah, we got like a really big customer and they expand it. Okay, cool. What's happening with the GRR? 80%. I'm like, hmm, okay. Like you have a turn problem. You know, he's like, no, we don't. Like the VCs investors don't see it that way. I'm like, you have a turn problem because you're not looking at what's actually happening with your logos. You're not looking at what's actually happening with the revenue that you really need to retain in the short term in order to even call it, you know, a customer, frankly. So.

Those are some of my early metrics. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. Listen, we've talked a lot about like founders and like very small teams. Let's move into like the hundred, two hundred team size, right? Like, so you definitely have more of a go-to market flywheel somewhat going. And I won't say it's perfect because it never is. But at that point, there's definitely an evolution happening in the retention plans. There are CS leaders, there are sales leaders at this point.

Anika Zubair (28:48.996)
their CS teams, sales teams, product teams, you have a more established team, established customer base. Now it's not just your first 10 or 20 customers. We're talking about hundreds, if not thousands of customers. As you evolve in your journey as a CS leader, that's really building this retention plan. Cause I do know that some CS leaders listening to this podcast are at early stage and want to see that growth and they want to take their retention like foundations to that next level, go to whatever the

the evolution is. So what is it the next step that you would recommend to them to make sure that they're evolving their retention program as they grow? Yeah, absolutely. So like I think the early retention program is like retain customers if you can grow them. Right. And you can set it up with pricing, you know, upsells and all this stuff. And you can really be creative if you have the ability to do so. But I really think of the big moves come in your maturity.

Like as you mature as an organization and you have more customers, that's when you really start to understand, what does health really mean in my customer base, right? So you start to hone in on your health score. Your health score really should be a proactive measure, but in the renewal, it's very important, right? If you have like a red customer, should you go and try to upsell them 20 %? Probably not, right? You probably need to think a little bit more logically and you can start when you have that customer maturity.

understand that base and actually start to structure out your renewal program. So typically with like a more mature team, would have like, you know, a early stage we didn't talk about this. You have to enable your CS teams to have pricing conversations. So they should know the SKUs that are available to them, right? Like, what can I do? What's my discount? What can I apply? As you get more structured, that's more important, right? Cause your product has likely evolved. Maybe you have more SKUs. Really understanding and designing what does this end to end look like, right?

pricing, upsell, you maybe you're giving them guidelines, right, based on health, right? So I typically do like a green, yellow, red chart. And I'm like, here's your guidelines based on health. Here's your lowest point that you should go to, you know, if they're absolutely not taking the bait, here's what you can do. You know, so you give people the information because yes, your CSM should be strategic, but they don't have to be a pricing expert, right? You can help guide their hand and the customer maturity will kind of help you get there. then

Anika Zubair (31:14.67)
Like phase two of my renewal program is really like doing the deep dive on process structure, right? Building out the programs. Maybe you build out playbooks, maybe you're out of CSP, you know, and you're actually able to automate some of your activities and things like that. So that's kind of, I would say like what happens in the, second phase of maturity in the eye. In the first phase, it's laying the very early, of like how important retention is and making sure you have a right customer fit.

because again, it's usually probably founders or early salespeople selling. then the second, and it also sounds like you're very focused on GRR in the very first phase, which is like just retain as many of the logos that you can rather than focusing on growth. It sounds like the second phase of retention is not just retention, but how do you sprinkle in growth that makes strategic sense based on, like you said, health scoring and building that out. Do you build health scoring based on

product usage, product adoption, what is, I guess, the green, red, yellow? Because I think sometimes CS professionals can get quite lost in it all. Like sometimes you might have a yellow account, but underneath it, it might actually be healthy if you show value and then you can get an upsell as well, I guess. How do you determine, because at that stage, like you said, you have hundreds of customers, you probably have NRR and GRR goals at this point, how are you making sure the customer team understands the customer sentiment?

while also like understand product changes and I guess pitch or just show value to a customer at the right points. Yeah, I mean, well, I think the ladders like do it all the time anyways, show value, right? Yeah, of course. But yeah, every call, I mean, what do mean? Yeah, I think that like, so everybody has their own like health score formula. Like to me, the formula is a mix of, you know, measures that we can bring in, you know, if

possible. You have like measures that you can bring in that are like outcomes that are actually converted to metrics that you can bring into your health score. Maybe you have, you know, some sentiment from your CSM, right, or from whoever's actually on the ground. And then you have other measures like from the customer, right? So I'm a big fan of like, what my red is like, customer stakeholder change, like an absolute red, right? It's like a big change with the customer that could actually put the whole account at risk, you know, value not being achieved or

Anika Zubair (33:40.346)
Maybe they're not paying their bills. Maybe they're not showing up to things. Like that's a red flag. Like, is there some other force majeure occurring? Right? Those are some examples of where you might have to do something else, then go and try to upsell. At that point, you're probably just trying to save them. Right? I hate to say that, but stakeholder change to me is like one of the number one reasons that companies can quickly turn because the stakeholders like, you know what? I just like this other tool better. I've been that stakeholder. Right?

So those are like save opportunities. So you're not sitting there going like, I'm going to try to like upsell this customer into it. But value can still come, right? Because value could still be like, hey, I didn't know you had this new product offering. And that's something we're interested in. great. OK, let's talk about that. people can upsell a red account if you've delivered what they needed. It can make the account into a red or yellow. I totally agree. That's a huge risk.

But I do think that what's missed sometimes is we don't re-onboard a customer when a stakeholder changes. Cause like you just said, I have a tool that I know that I love and I'm going to bring it in and I'm going to do all the work. But if you really know what the tool is and what that stakeholder is looking for, you could probably redirect the conversation of that stakeholder and say, by the way, I'm going to re-onboard you so you see the value, but also.

moving off to that other tool is gonna spend months, if not tens of thousands of dollars of your time and actual hard-earned money that you're gonna spend re-onboarding onto a new platform where I can show you the value in what you're doing right now, which happens more often than not, like you said, and sometimes that becomes your full retention plan is like stakeholder realignment, re-onboarding, showing value all over again. And I think sometimes we shy away from that because we're like, no, they're a lost cause because the stakeholder has

Changed and now they're definitely bringing on another tool, but there's so many plays for it Like you just said so I guess my follow-up question to this is How do you plan or align? retention based do you base it on customer sentiment or do you base it on like I don't know stakeholder change or is it based on something like a product change or a new product release like how do you make sure your Continuously staying ahead of the the game with

Anika Zubair (35:55.322)
retention when there are all the, because I think at mid-stage companies, this is normal. The amount of change that happens at mid-stage is so, so chaotic. It's a lot for CS professionals or leaders to take on. So how do you evolve retention while everything else seems to be evolving around you? Yeah, that's a great, I mean, that's a great point. So I go back, I lean into the health score, because I know like, I think people are iffy on health scores, but like, if your health score is well designed, you are doing that. Like every day or every week your team is like,

updating it based on what they're hearing. I mean, now we have so much external data, you can link up your, you know, your health score to like zoom info and catch when a stakeholder might have left, right? Like, I think that the interesting thing is that we often don't understand the data that we have on hand, or we don't know what to do. like, I've been very lucky. I've been an early CSP adopter. I love it because it gives us practice. So like what we had in our CSPs for the CSMs I worked with would be like,

every call you do, you're logging information, right? But you're not just saying, here's what I did in the call and they said this. You're actually having like, we had check boxes, like, did you hear of any escalations? Okay, what was it? And then from that escalation, we triggered the playbook. I think the thing about retention is, retention is always on your mind. Even if your contract is five years long, right?

retention is always on your mind and customers may go through a little bit of like a, you know, up and down during that five year period, but everything you're delivering has to be consistent, right? So even with like stakeholder change is a tricky one, right? Because I think like when your top champion changes, it has to be like all hands on deck, re-implementation as you said, right? But there's other kinds of escalations that maybe aren't as extreme that still could put you at risk.

And you have to take that same approach, right? Maybe example is acquisition, right? Merge your M &A activity. lot of this kind of stuff that happens that you all of a sudden feel like it's out of your hands. I think it's an empowering moment, right? For a CSM, think of it as like, wow, I get another chance to wow this customer. I've already wowed them once. I get another chance to sell them on all the value we've already delivered. It shouldn't be so much of a question of how. It should be a...

Anika Zubair (38:16.878)
hey, I've already been doing this throughout their history with us and I'm going to show this to the new stakeholder. Exactly that. I think it's so important. Like you just highlighted something where I find that the more CSMs I work with and coach and have, they get really shy about leaning in to some of the tougher conversations. And I know tough conversations aren't nice. Nobody wants to have them. But like you just said, a merger and acquisition

can be just that. It's a huge opportunity, but it's seen always as a risk. It's like fear of failure, like, no, we're gonna have a merger and then there's gonna be a stakeholder change and then we're gonna have like, you know, 10 more people on the call that are not gonna see the value, but you could also see it the other way. my gosh, merger, 10 no people on a call. That means I have 10 new departments to impress on our product that I know they can see value in. And I get to start what they blank.

slate, by the way. think that's the beauty is you get to start with a blank slate rather than all of the history and mess from the past. So I do see it as an opportunity. And I think we should be reframing our retention strategies and the changes that happen throughout the maturity of the customer as reframing towards a positive retention rather than, no, it's a churn retention issue, which again, just that little mindset shift can be super powerful for everyone that is listening. Hey, just jumping in with a quick

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Anika Zubair (40:37.338)
Just check the show notes and now back to our show. But listen, we talked about small, we talked about middle. I know your framework and the things that you work with companies on also includes like the hyper growth or growth stage as well, where again, at this point you have hundreds, if not thousands of team members, have again, at least a few thousand customers, you're maturing at a very fast pace.

For the CS leaders that are listening today, what would be the biggest surprise leaders should expect in the mature phase of retention? Yeah, I like just candidly, the most customers I've worked with was like 20,000. So beyond that, you know, I think there's another stage, but I have, there's 20,000 still a lot. but you know what I mean? I'm just going to qualify that because I think there's like the net, there's like another phase of like,

evolution probably. Yeah, there's probably hundreds of thousands and like crazy. Yeah, but let's say, okay, fine, tens of thousands of customers, which is still a lot for any one customer success leader. That's a lot of the customer base to deal with. Yeah. So I mean, here's the thing, right? Now you have mature, okay, if you've been around and you've gathered 20,000 customers, unless they came overnight, that's a different kind of story. You typically have gathered these customers while also understanding their journey as mature customers. don't know if you feel this way, but what I used to notice

is that we had these things that repeated themselves. Every three years or so, there would be a new stakeholder, some change would occur, there'd be some business change. I couldn't always put my finger on what it was gonna be and predict it, but I knew that every three years it would happen. And now, to be frank, it's probably every two to three years, right? Now that we look at like kind of the trends happening in the workplace. Your customer every two to three years is gonna hit another level of maturity. If you want someone that's gonna be with you for 20 years, third years, right?

your product has to continue to be exciting to them, for them to come back and use it every day. Yes, there going to be some products, and you're very lucky if you're one of those products that like, it's sticky because they have to use it, right? It's the only way they can get their job done. But for the most bulk of products where it's not a, have to visit you every day situation, you have to create those opportunities, right? So what we often were doing for the later stage companies is creating opportunities to really listen to them.

Anika Zubair (43:05.978)
So this is where you're like, I think like we had customer advisory boards, right? And we had big conferences. What were those? Those were opportunities for us to showcase what we were doing and gather customer feedback. And that really drove the product roadmap, which drove future retention, right? Because they're looking for you to start solving problems that they maybe had a couple of years back that you weren't ready to solve, but they want to see you start to solve those, right? And I think this is where, when it comes to renewal,

your whole entity starts to shift because you maybe started listening to customers in the early days. A lot of companies say they'll be like, I'm product led. I'm like, okay, is that exactly me? Right? When you're in a mature phase and you're keeping customers, you're customer led for sure. And it might not be your earlier new customers that are driving you, but your long-term customers, they are going to be helping you steer the course. Right? So creating like ways that we

can best engage with them and also you don't have to do everything that they say, but like build feedback mechanisms that you can say, hey, we hear you, here's why we're choosing to do something, here's why we're not, right? All of that becomes, think, really, really important. The longer somebody's been with you, you kind of, again, run a risk of maybe they see something cool on the market, maybe they're gonna look for some new functionality that they didn't have in the last like several years. So you have to kind of think product, you know,

What can our product do to evolve to keep them around and keep them growing? I love that because you've just highlighted that retention is not just a customer success problem, which I think is a lot of things we do in CS because we're the heroes and we're the people pleasers is that we try to do it all ourselves. But you just said like seven, eight, maybe 10 years of using the same product, your customer is looking for evolution in order for retention to be.

a no-brainer and that doesn't come from a CSM being a stellar CSM for 10 years, that comes from a product evolving as well, which is so important to highlight. But can you also maybe share a few ways that you can make sure the retention strategy matures as well without becoming outdated? Because again, these customers are going through renewal cycles for seven years, eight years, and maybe every year it's probably not the same, but.

Anika Zubair (45:27.178)
as a company matures and it has a customer base that has had renewals three, four, five, maybe 10 times, how do you make sure as a CS leader that your program and retention strategy doesn't become outdated? That's a great question. So, I mean, I am a fan of looking at your retention program annually. So like, it shouldn't get outdated because you are actually sitting and doing a review. So I'll start looking at like the year

upcoming six months before the first renewal. That's when we'll do like internal data review and actually work on our strategy. But the interesting thing I find with like long-term customers, we had customers with us for like 20 years, At the older company I worked at, because it had been around for 40 years. So if you can keep that kind of customer, that's exciting. They get sophisticated too, right? They're also like, look, we're going to be around. Here's what we need you to do. Right? And they'll be like,

For example, just make up, you know what, like we need this pro platform to be in X language. Okay. Like can we make this happen in the next year? Right. And we'll just build this start to build these things into the contract. Or they'll even say like, Hey, I'm willing to do a five year contract and we'll let's just build in a 5 % off sell. I am not going to do 20. I'm going to do five, but I'm going to give you the five years. So they're going to negotiate harder because they've also built these relationships with you. This is where you, I think.

learn a lot as like a negotiator and a seller of what does a mature relation business relationship look like. It doesn't necessarily look like the same thing that it was in the early days. And I think you can also secure for your company. Like to me, the most valuable thing is if you can get like a long-term deal that's guaranteed ARR, even if the percentage per year is a little less, like that's high value, right? You've just guaranteed your company long-term ARR. So

Thinking a little differently as you maturity can really be a valuable kind of add to your customer's experience, but also your experience. Definitely. I would add as well, like again, had customers for multiple years, same thing. We decided to do a multi-year contract with them instead, offer them a better pricing, but then we're secured for the next three years. I've also introduced professional services, kind of what you were alluding to where it's like, well,

Anika Zubair (47:49.367)
we've been with you for five years and we really, really want to have the platform do X or Y like you were saying. And we would just, again, propose a statement of work that's just for that piece of work that we're doing on top of that then adds into the revenue for that year. Now that's not reoccurring, but at least it's adding some revenue to your customer base or a new avenue of revenue, which I think, again, your retention maturity changes based on, again, how many years your customer has been with you.

I love that you shared that you basically have to get creative as your entire customer base matures and as retention becomes a thing again and again, you shouldn't just try to pick the same playbook. And if there's one thing I've learned in customer success is that there is no one playbook. It's ever evolving. Like customer success is circular because it keeps going round and round and round. So I'm so glad you called that out. But listen, as we wrap up, I have one more question that I think

is really important because on this podcast, we like to be tactical and practical. And I'm sure there's lots of CS leaders out there today listening to this podcast that are building a retention program, whether it's for the first time at a scale organization or maybe a large one. What would your recommendation be that they should be doing this week to really build a phenomenal retention program? Gosh, okay. Well, two things like,

Understand your pricing really well and what leverage you have as a CS team to negotiate and then practice negotiating. Get in a call with your fellow team members. It's going to be weird. It's going to be awkward. Do some role play and practice tough scenarios that other people have heard, you have heard. Get everyone comfortable with, I understand the pricing and I know I can negotiate, but I need to know exactly how to deliver that conversation.

in our CS very friendly way, right? So I think like take that time and like just practice. I it. I'm not hurt. Right. That's amazing. I love it. It's just like, oh, it's so true though. Like retention is a, I'm going to say it, a sales tactic, but it's a CS sales tactic and you've got to get comfortable with it. And if you don't practice something, you're never going to be comfortable with it. Like cringe. If I go listen to my first ever podcast I like recorded,

Anika Zubair (50:10.285)
my gosh, it was the worst. Now I can just sit here and chat for hours and hours and hours, but you've got the practice. And if you don't practice a retention conversation, you're never going to be good at it. So I'm so glad you called that out. But listen, we've got to wrap up. I love this part of the podcast where I challenge each one of my guests to answer the next few questions in a sentence or less. you ready for this challenge, Karl? Okay, let's do it.

Okay, my first question to you is if you could predict the future, what do you think customer success will focus on next year? Training, training, training, training. We're all talking about it. I think we need to see it happen. Like let's actually do it. You know, let's focus on training. know it sounds bad. Are gonna enable our customer success managers to be successful? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I love it. my God, what a great answer. Okay, next question is which app or software do you use every day

on your phone or laptop and why? can be CS, it can be non-CS, whatever you want. Yeah, absolutely. I everyday use Fathom. I know I'm not a promoter of Fathom, I'm just using it, but I think it's like a note taker is so invaluable. find it allows me to just be focused and clear and look people in the eye and have a conversation and I love that. So encourage note takers. Yes, we're in Fathom. Love hearing that.

Twinkle, I'll charred below too, but it's, love Fathom. Awesome. Okay. Next question is if you could change one thing about customer success, what would it be? I think we need to learn how to say no. I think we are so good at making people feel good that we've forgotten how to make ourselves feel good. And if we don't learn how to say no, we will never be able to succeed because our plate will just get more full and we will burn out. like as a function, we have to emulate that.

You know, it's okay. Yeah, I love that. That could be the title of this episode. Learn to think. But it's so important. It's so important in this world where customer service managers are like, handle churn, do onboarding, show value, do retention, upsells. wait, and make sure you're better than AI. Like at some point we're gonna have to say no. So I love that. Thank you for that. Amazing. My last and final question to you, Pral, is who should be my next podcast guest?

Anika Zubair (52:33.585)
that is a great question. you probably know one of my like really good friends, but who I met through the CS communities, Swathi Garg. I designed her to just be an inspirational woman leader. And I think other people would too. So amazing. Swathi, if you're listening to this, I'd love to have you as my next guest. But in the meantime, with my

Listeners want to follow up with any questions or they want to get to know you a bit better or your services. What's the best way to get in contact with you? Yeah, absolutely. I'm active on LinkedIn, so can find me there. But I'm also, you can find my company information at www.customerxsuccess.com. So feel free to find me there. Amazing. I will make sure to link her LinkedIn and her company website in the show notes. But thank you so much, Marl, for your energy.

for your enthusiasm and just sharing all your insights. I really appreciated this conversation. This was fun. Thank you so much. Thanks for tuning in to the Customer Success Pro Podcast. I hope you picked up something valuable to take back to your team. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world to me if you took just 10 seconds to leave a review on Apple or Spotify. It helps more CS pros like yourself discover the show.

And creating new episodes takes a lot of work, so leaving a nice review keeps me motivated to keep creating. And don't forget to hit subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcast episodes. I drop a new episode every Wednesday packed with practical tips. And if you've got a topic you'd love for me to cover or want to be a guest on my show, send me a message. All the details are in the show notes. I'd love to hear from you.

And hey, if this episode helped you, share it with a fellow CSM or CS leader. Remember, sharing is caring. Cheers to your CS journey, and I'll catch you next week for our next episode.