Speaker 2 (00:00.152)
This episode is bought to you by RevUp Academy. RevUp is my signature coaching program for customer success pros who are ready to elevate their careers and become more strategic, commercially savvy, and confident in driving growth. If you're stuck in reactive mode in customer success, constantly putting out fires, running to check in calls that go nowhere, and feeling unsure on how to actually move the needle with your customers or your career, you're not alone.

But imagine a world where you're seen as a strategic partner, where you're confidently leading revenue conversations, landing expansions with ease, and getting recognized by leadership for the impact that you're making. That's what life looks like when you're a revenue generating customer success manager. And that's exactly what RubUp Academy helps you become. RubUp Academy is my complete coaching program designed to help customer success pros turn into confident, commercial,

customer success managers who can drive growth and get promotions faster. Now, full transparency, doors to the program are currently closed, but because the last cohort was such a hit, we're bringing it back one more time this year. So if you want to be the first to know when enrollment opens next, head to thecustomersuccesspro.com forward slash rev up and join the wait list today. Go to the customer success pro

dot com forward slash rev up to join the waitlist today. Hello, everyone. I'm your host, Anika Zubair, 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.

Speaker 2 (02:21.772)
Some weeks I'll share my own insights and best practices from working in CS over the last 13 years. And once a month, I'll bring on expert guests to dive into the most relevant and pressing topics in customer success today. So if you're ready to level up, hit subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you tune in. And let's make your CS journey a little bit easier together.

Speaker 2 (02:52.494)
Welcome back. Today's episode is all about one of the most common, but also most misunderstood transition in our field of customer success. And that is the shift from customer service to customer success. If you've ever worked in a support heavy environment and wondered, how do I move the conversation from reactive to proactive? Or if you're leading a CS team where your customers still think you're there just to fix bugs,

or reset passwords, then this episode is for you. Joining me today is Lena Therese Zimmerman, Head of Customer Experience at Do Instruct, a fast growing compliance tech startup. Lena brings over eight years of SaaS experience and has led CS teams across the Doc region and Bellinux region. And what I love about Lena's approach is how she balances structure with empathy and turns customer success into a real growth engine.

even when our customer base is a little bit more traditional or just starting to embrace digital transformation. In this conversation, we are going to unpack what it actually takes to evolve from a support function into a strategic customer success partner and why it's just not a mindset shift, but also a tactical shift as well. So whether you're just starting out in customer success,

leading a team in transition, or trying to scale meaningful process in a change-resistant industry, stay tuned as Leina is bringing the playbook and how to move from customer service to customer success. So let's dive in. Welcome, Leina, to the podcast. I am so very excited to chat with you today and talk about a topic that I think is super relevant for a lot of my listeners and a lot of people who work in SaaS and

are maybe transitioning into a new world of customer success. But before we get into the juicy part of our topic, it would be really great to get to know who you are. So can you please tell my listeners a little bit more about yourself, your current role, and maybe your team and what they do.

Speaker 1 (05:02.22)
Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to chat with you today. I'm Lena. I'm head of customer experience at Do Instruct, a company here in Berlin where I also grew up. So I'm Berlin based and originally from here. Yeah, my team, we're doing customer success. We are eight CSMs and we also have a support team, which is very exciting. And yeah, we're on a

a scaling journey, which is super interesting. And before I joined Doinstrock in December, I worked for a few years or actually quite a few at PLEO, a leading fintech in Europe. And where, yeah, I saw a lot of the scaling journey and the impact of customer success.

Yeah, I love that. Also as a PLEO user, I love the tool. It's really easy to use, especially for a lot of people in Europe. It's just so much easier to deal with business expense with PLEO, but also cool that you're a Berlin original because as someone who used to live in Berlin, there's very few actual Berliners, which

The translation doesn't make sense if you know German, but there are very few Berliners and the same in London, actually. I find that there's so few people who are from London who actually still live in London. So you're super cool that you are an original Berliner and you actually still live and work there. That's awesome. Can you tell us a little bit more about your team and the type of customer success you guys do? Because it sounds like it's a growing team and it sounds like you guys are going through a lot of change, but what is it?

Do instruct do in customer success and what are you guys actually responsible and for customer success?

Speaker 1 (06:50.476)
Yeah. To give you some more context, Do Instruct, we're in the field of education tech and compliance tech. So we help our customers to educate their frontline workers to do their job right. so all those people that produce our food or work in logistics, for example, there it is crucial that they're trained well to not, you know, harm themselves or to harm the products.

And this, especially in Germany, it's in the field of German Mittelstand. So you have the customer base exists of customers between a few hundreds to a few thousands employees in total. So fairly big organizations, but the mindset is more like a family owned or driven company. usually the management is, or there was a founder that was the father and then

They grew this like small operation like from back in the days and now it's large organization. And those companies typically they're not as digital natives as we are in SaaS and in startup world. So it is quite interesting to work with those customers.

Yeah. And also, like you said, in a very traditional or maybe old school mindset of compliance and logistics and just in a space that probably a lot of people, even if it wasn't family owned, have hundreds of years of previous ways of working and now moving into SaaS and digital, it's probably a big transition for the business. But like you said, they come from family owned businesses that probably have a very

for strict mindset of how to do business and how to work with customers. And that's probably a I don't know, struggle point for you and your team when it comes to making that mindset shift with your customers.

Speaker 1 (08:51.192)
Yeah. That is one reason why we decided that we don't have separate teams for onboarding and adoption. We try to be as relationship and trust building as possible. So what we do is we have the AE closing the deal. And then for bigger accounts, we even bring on the CSM also in the pre-sales process to increase the...

need or feeling of safety. It's like, hey, we are taking care of you. Like, this is not just a transactional thing. We are here. This is a traditional business relationship. You are not just a number. We take care of you, your processes, and that we transform your process together. And yeah, then we start the onboarding and then it goes seamlessly into the adoption phase and renewal.

and then even upsell and then we bring in the AE from the beginning for the commercial discussion itself for the negotiation. So we have as little as possible shift of phases in between for the customers.

I love that. I love that everyone is working so closely and so much throughout the entire customer journey. It's not just sale closes and then customer success or, you know, only sales until the contract is signed. It sounds like everyone is really working together to see success of the overall account, which is really powerful. And I think as you go through transition and teams that are going through transitions as well, it's probably really, really helpful to have so many people across the business.

working together. But before we were getting so into the topic and I'm getting excited to ask you more questions, I want to know a little bit more about you. You made the transition from individual contributor into a leadership position in customer success in a quick amount of time, I would say, but it's really awesome that you went from individual contributor to leader and now running your team as well. For anyone who's listening who maybe wants to make a similar transition, what are any of your like?

Speaker 2 (11:02.2)
tips or tricks from moving from individual contributor into a leadership position in customer success.

Yeah. My tip would be that you start the journey by curiosity and the willingness to learn. For me, it was never a thing that I entered and was like, okay, I to be a manager. It kind of happened because I was very interested back in PLEO to work with the bigger customers. And that was a new segment for us back in the days.

We started this inofficial task force. It was during lunchtime where we met. It was someone from the AE team, someone from the product team, someone from partnerships. And we were just discussing our observation with working with bigger customers and how they need to be taken care of. that's how I learned about this new segment. And then I was someone that had this knowledge. And once we established this

designated team of mid-market, how we call it, I had kind of an advantage. And once the position was open, I was able to apply and have a good record of reasons why they should pick me over external candidates. So I think when you have this willingness to learn and just be curious, I think you should use it because then the opportunities

will follow and it will all make sense in hindsight.

Speaker 2 (12:37.9)
Yeah, definitely, definitely. And you've been in customer success for like seven, eight years now. What made you actually want to start working in customer success? I remember when I had a job in customer success in Berlin, now this is 10 years ago now, going on 11 years, it was just unheard of. was really just, as much as I think SaaS is pretty big in Germany, it's still very much customer service mindset, not necessarily customer success. And again,

I'm sure we'll dive in deeper, but what inspired you into customer success instead of more of a traditional support or service background?

It was, I would say around five years ago, I worked previously at a management consultancy and I thought about going into marketing more. So that was kind of my lens. knew about consulting, I knew about marketing, but while I was looking for jobs and taking on interviews, I realized who I think I don't know what else is out there. I should maybe take a step back.

and reflect and not be so focused on titles or roles I already know because maybe there's more. So I did an exercise of listing all the activities I enjoy doing and where I have this like natural thrive where it's like everything is aligned and I'm just, you know, really good at it. I have a big impact. Impact is a big motivation for me. So that's always something that's very powerful for me and my motivation.

So I listed those things and it turned out I would be interested in working closely with a product team, closely with customers and a consulting role. So I started actually looking up a partnerships role.

Speaker 2 (14:32.174)
Interesting. yeah, that could be a great route for people who like conversation and building relationships. That's partnership can be a great route.

That was kind of the only term that was somewhat familiar for me. It's like, yeah, that makes sense. And while I was then having interviews, I stumbled upon the first, I think, customer success term. And then I found it like super interesting, bought a few books, took a Udemy course. And I was like, my God, this feels like this is kind of made for me. This is like perfect.

Yeah.

So I started applying and usually they were looking for people that have experience in the field. But yeah, I prepared and then eventually I landed the job at FLEO and there it really felt like, okay, this job was not just on paper perfect for me, but actually also in the day to day.

Yeah, I love that. I think what you just said that really resonated a lot with me is the word curiosity. And I think you've said it a few times when describing, you know, your roles in customer success, but also the move from individual contributor to leader to even landing your first job. A lot of it came down to you being curious to do more, to do something different. And I think that that's such an important word that

Speaker 2 (15:51.776)
a lot of customers class professionals don't really live it. They say, be curious. They say like, do all these things to really understand your customer. But I don't know if we're always living truly being curious and like really exploring what more we can do or how much more we can help your customer. But I think it's such an underrated skill or trait, I should say, in customer success because it is something that drives you well beyond your customer conversation. It drives.

for you, particular, your career direction, but it also drives for some people career promotions, which again, you've done as well. think curiosity is a trait that as a customer success pro, we have to remember it kind of fuels so many things that we do. So I love that you've shared that. And as you were speaking, I was like, yeah, Lena's so curious. She has so many things in her career that she's been curious about, which is really cool. But I think the thing you're doing right now, which is really

is coming back to the types of customers you serve. They're very traditional in mindset and they might not actually be as curious, maybe as you or your team is. And they're probably very much stuck in a world where they think they're dealing with a customer service rep for you and your team. But I know that you guys do tradition or the new age of customer success, the way SAS does customer success. So...

When you first joined, I think you mentioned your team was super reactive and they were focused more on support tasks. And again, pretty reactive like probably most SaaS companies are when they first land customer success. How did you go about transforming your team into being the more strategic consultative customer success managers that you guys are today? How did that start?

Yeah. Yeah. When I joined there was no support team. There was the success team that was taking care of the customers and they did an amazing job. Like the amount of praise they got from customers were like overwhelming. They were the definition and still are the definition of extra mile. I would do whatever the customer was asking for. And even to the extent that the customer would

Speaker 1 (18:11.15)
call them or write an email about the changes that need to be done in the product, like in the settings. So something the customer could do themselves, but they would do it for them because it was their center of excellence of being always there for the customer and going the extra mile and always saying yes. Which is I think like a good start because when you have a customer base, the customers

are happy having a good experience. But of course we wanted to just take the next step. the first of course was for me to align my role and my targets with the leadership, with the investors. Like, hey, why did you hire me? Why did you hire me? What do you want to see? And the answer was NRR, NRR improvement. Yeah.

So for me, luckily in this reality of where we have very little churn, that means growth upsell and successful renewals with eventually a price increase and so on. then it came down, so we have the KPI. We now need to align the strategies across departments. We need to make sure that the ownership is clear, that we are responsible for the customer to make them.

and not happy but successful.

Yeah, and growth, like you said, growth is the underlying thing that you've said a few times. It's growth for them and growth for Do Instruct as well.

Speaker 1 (19:47.298)
Yeah, exactly. And that also needs to be clear internally. So we can't focus first on the customers and be like, hey, this is how we do it now. It needs to start internally with the, yeah, with the perception, with the ownership, with the alignment. So it needs to be clear what we do so that no one is just putting a weird random task on the table of the CSMs. Like, yeah, take care because you are the making customers happy role.

We are on a mission here, so let's keep us focused. Yeah. And then yeah, on the more granular level, of course, having processes in place or at least frameworks, best practices, what we want to do, what we want to do less. And then of course, training and coaching the individual CSMs on a one-to-one basis.

I love that. I love you said so many things. my gosh, I can have so many follow up questions. But one thing you said was there was a lot of internal alignment on that you're not just here to make customers happy. You're here to facilitate growth. And I think a lot of misconception happens in customer success where people think growth is happiness or happiness is growth, whatever the

the thinking they have, the mindset is that they're naturally linked. But you know, and I know that that isn't naturally linked and there's a huge shift in the way you work and the way you deal with customers in order to make growth happen. It's not just about, okay, give me a 10 out of 10 on the support ticket feedback. It is about like helping them or guiding them to the next step of their usage of your product or the next growth or milestone within their business.

But a lot of that's really tough to do, especially if you have an existing team that has a way of working that's more about happiness or customer service, right? It's, oh, let me get a 10 on my CSAT or get 10 on my feedback from this customer support ticket. That's probably what most people think when they think of, oh, customer is happy and if they give me a 10, they'll grow. But there's a huge difference. And also there's a huge mindset shift that needs to happen when your team starts to move from that

Speaker 2 (22:09.742)
customer service, customer happiness department into customer success. So it sounds like you first had it very clear from your leadership team that, okay, net revenue retention and growth is the focus of our team, but you had an existing team already that probably had more of the mentality of customer service. How did you get them to move from happiness to growth? You mentioned coaching and enablement, which I think is super powerful, but for

leaders that are listening to the podcast, need to help their teams. How did you actually start helping your teams move from happiness to growth?

I like to work with pictures or self perspective or perception and sometimes even make it very clear. And I keep saying to my teams like, are not a spa. I don't want to just hear that the customer is happy. I would rather not have a happy customer, but a successful customer. And to be sometimes a bit dramatic and be like, yeah, I don't care if they're, you you have a nice chat and they're

maybe a bubbly personality that is sometimes more dangerous as someone that is more direct and challenging in their communication because they're working with you. So being like here is like, this happiness aspect, as nice as it is, it is the cherry on top. This is not your role. You don't need to make the customer, have you know their feel good manager.

Ooh, I love that. You're not a feel-good manager or you're not here just to make them happy. You're here to see them successful. It's so good. I love all these things. But yeah, feel-good manager. We're not feel-good managers for anyone listening. I love that line.

Speaker 1 (23:53.078)
Yeah, because in the end it is true. then oftentimes you need to have like set expectations clear in the beginning and have rather like small on inconvenient conversation in the beginning. Be like, Hey, this is the boundaries and actually the decision you see you're making, I would advise you not to do it. I would advise you to do it X, Y, Z how my other successful customers are doing it rather than.

being the yes-sayer and be like, you know, it's good. And here let's have another, meaningless, nice chat and coffee talk. And then down the line, you see not the, goals that they desired or, the milestones they set. And then you have the real uncomfortable conversation. So I would rather have like the clear alignment in the beginning that at the end, you can have a chit chat. You can have.

you know, the goodie boxes and also don't get me wrong. I love to be nice to my customers and spoil them, take them out for dinner sometimes. But this is always the add-on after or with the successful collaboration. And when it comes to the actual work of like onboarding milestones, kind of this execution part, need to be very, very frank, very direct. I mean like, hey, this is a beta.

feature, for example, like those are the limitations, don't do it or hey, you are asking for too much. Like this is not realistic. That is important. That is as well.

I love that. I think we could name this podcast episode, We Are Not Feel Good Managers. We're here to see you successful. I do love that, but it's so true. it sounded like it started from the top for your organization, meaning the leadership team really understood that business growth is customer growth or NRR growth, as you said, was your North Star metric. And then you went and helped your teams really understand that in simple terms. Like you said, you said,

Speaker 2 (25:58.188)
Listen, I don't have any issue with you, you know, taking your clients to dinner, but that's not how we start. We start by driving success for them and being consultative and being strategic with them. And then there's nice to have a coffee chat after, which is really great. So we got the leadership on side and now you have your team really understanding the difference, but you work in a very traditional setting in compliance and logistics types of customers that

again, come from a very different background. And I know when I worked in the industry with the auto industry, everyone was very traditional in the way they work, and they never understood what a customer success manager even did. They thought the title was really, really funny, actually. So how did you go from working with customers that are used to customer service? How did you educate your customers?

on this new role and direction of a customer success team rather than a customer service team. What did you have to do to kind of change their perspective and really make them see you as strategic business consultants and not just support?

I think it's like four pillars almost how to tackle that. The first being that you need to set the stage right. Right from the very beginning you have your kickoff meeting. That's also something we changed right when I started. In the beginning we had the onboarding kickoff before they were explaining the tool and like right jumping in.

And now we're focusing at the kickoff, just explaining the journey ahead and aligning and making sure we have all the stakeholders either in the call or at least mapped for the later journey. We need to know the stakeholders, also maybe other milestones hurdles. But to come back to the topic, what we also do is we have a good chunk of the time is we're explaining what we do.

Speaker 1 (28:09.914)
And then there's the second pillar, not from our perspectives, like not as like, Hey, I'm Lena, I'm customer success manager, but like, I'm here from your perspective. I'm here to serve you in XYZ. I'm here to help you to reach XYZ. So it's not, I want you to perceive me as how I want to be perceived, but I'm helping you to see me how I want to be seen.

So that you understand that the people you're talking to, the person you're talking to, more often than not, you are their first or maybe their second SaaS tool ever. So there's usually a lot of fear, fear of change, fear of doing a bad job, not be able to do as good job as they used to do with a new tool. imagine you are...

48 and you worked for 20 plus years at the same company doing a really good job. You have like a really good image doing your job well with the tools and processes you are used to. And now there's a new tool. course, that's kind of frightening. like, will I be as good as I was before? And to establish right from the beginnings, like, I'm here for you to be successful.

I'm your consultant to guide you through this process during onboarding, also beyond. So that you are the best version of yourself with a tool and we don't have anything away from you, but enable you.

Hey, CS Pros, I wanted to quickly jump in and let you know if you're enjoying this episode but wondering how you too can become a revenue-focused, strategic customer success pro, then I have the answer for you. If you are stuck in a reactive customer success role, constantly firefighting, running to check-in calls that don't drive outcomes, and wondering how to actually show your impact, I get it. I've been there too.

Speaker 2 (30:17.176)
But imagine becoming the CSM who leads strategic conversation, drives expansion effortlessly, and gets recognized as a revenue generating powerhouse. That is exactly what RevUp Academy is here to help you do. It is my complete coaching program designed to turn customer success pros into confident, commercial CSMs who grow accounts and grow their careers. Now,

The doors are currently closed, but because the last cohort was such a success, we're bringing it back one final time for 2025. So if you want to be the first to know when enrollment next opens, then head over to thecustomersuccesspro.com forward slash rev up to sign up for our wait list. That's thecustomersuccesspro.com forward slash rev up.

to be on our VIP wait list. I'll see you there and now back to our show. I love that you really sit into your customer shoes and explain customer success from their perspective because I think this is something that we naturally tend to forget. As much as we say we're here to serve you, as humans we tend to think of us. It's just natural, it's human nature to think of yourself first.

how we continue to survive and live, but it's very scary for some of our customers, especially if you deal with traditional customers that don't work in technology or digital tools all day. So your customers are like, I don't know, 20 years of maybe, I don't know, writing in a notebook. And now suddenly they have a CRM tool that they have to put everything into a digital format. And that's scary. That's overwhelming. And you probably feel like,

Why should I use this tool or talk to Lena when I'm used to working in this way for 20 years? And I think when any company or team is moving from the customer service or support mindset into success, you have to sit in their shoes and understand how scary or overwhelming or exhausting it can be to bring on a new tool and that you are there to guide and, and

Speaker 2 (32:33.026)
strategically help them figure out how to use this tool appropriately and make sure that they understand that this tool isn't here to replace them in any way. It's here to enable them for further success, but they probably don't get that. And I know that's probably a lot of what you mentioned about setting the stage and really making sure your client understands what it is you are there for, which is super powerful. And I was just thinking about how a lot of customer success professionals are scared of AI.

replacing their jobs. And that's probably how a lot of your customers, if you're listening to this and you feel that AI is here to take a customer success manager's job, it's not. I hope you realize it's not. But it's scary. It's unknown. We didn't have AI a few years ago where they was doing our email follow-ups and building these templates for us. And it feels like it's replacing us. And it's probably what your customer is feeling when they are moving.

from traditional tools into your new SaaS software, and you need to really help them on that journey, which is, again, a tough conversation. But I think setting the scene early, like you said, can be super, super powerful. And I'm sure you've had tough conversations, though. I'm sure not all your customers are super keen or excited to make the transition. How does your team deal with those tougher

customers that are more resistant to the change.

Yeah. Luckily our product is super strong. after the first hesitation, they're very happy because they're seeing the results fairly early on in the process. One hurdle we're seeing is they overestimate the effort it takes to set it up. So we often see procrastination a lot. So interestingly, we need to think almost like...

Speaker 1 (34:32.909)
school teachers with our customers during onboarding. It's like, how do we communicate so they don't procrastinate this project?

They do their homework.

Exactly, to do their homework and not post us and like being like, no, don't look at me. Because they might have had one SRPA project back in the days that took on months and months and they needed to hire special consultants for that or they never had experience with with a SaaS so they don't know what to expect and if they're able to lift it.

They often put it on the back burner and think, well, I don't want to look at this topic. So there we are having not really like challenging, there it's the, the emotions are not in any negative way. It's just interesting that how we balance our communication, how much we go hunt them and call them, or if we should leave them back, we're experimenting there a lot. But we had other or have other.

harsher conversations. I'm thinking of one example, very concrete example. We have a bigger customer that is not really used to software tools and they need a feature that's still in the beta phase. And I would say historically we were a bit too nice to them. So right from the beginning, we apologize whenever there was a bug. And now I need to come in and explain like, no,

Speaker 1 (36:09.376)
We are not apologizing because that's by design and this is a better feature. And I had to explain the other day, which was very interesting conversations for me, explain that the bugs are not made today because they were writing emails to ask me like, hey, please concentrate for the next two weeks because we need the tool for work for two weeks without any interruptions.

That's not how a bug works or how a feature release works, unfortunately.

You know, but you know that and I know that, but that was kind of a good reminder. like, they don't know how bugs works that in this better feature, they're already in and we need to find them. I'm always kind of happy when I find a bug or when a customer finds a bug, because then it's like, nice. And then afterwards we have an improved feature and then yeah, of course, while then it's, it's shiny and there are no bugs anymore. Yeah. You go through that painful phase and for them it was more like, Hey, please concentrate.

my goodness, could you imagine? Could you imagine knowing your engineering team as for releasing something? Please concentrate. I think they would laugh saying like, no, I mean, of course we're going to concentrate. But the whole point of new versions and releases of a product is that you iterate on the mistakes or the little bugs that come out of those versions. But it's so interesting that you just said that you had to course correct. You had to, you were willing to say no to them, basically.

They didn't understand. I think a lot of times people think, especially when you work in customer service or support, you can't say no. But I think an important thing that you just said in customer success, you are not the yes person. You are allowed to say, no customer, that's not right. Or no customer, this is not exactly how a beta feature release works.

Speaker 2 (38:06.018)
Sometimes we have to be the voice of reason with our customers. We have to show them that, I'm here to advise and guide you, but I can't always just say, yes, are you happy? Because that's not how software or SaaS works, but it's also not how this relationship works, which I think is super powerful because I think we get very stuck. Even if we say we're customer success managers, I've seen it time and time again that we become yes people. We become how can we

say yes to our customers. But sometimes we do have to have those tougher conversations and we have to direct our customers to success through a different route that maybe doesn't seem super clear or easy of a path. So I love that you've pointed out that you had to tell them, no, this is not how a beta feature works and explaining it to them. I'm guessing eventually they, do they understand and do they now get it that beta features might have a bug?

Yeah, they took it and then afterwards I also sent them a food goodie, like a deli box. So it was kind of harsh truth. Yeah. You just swallow it. You know, we're still your friends. Yeah. But yeah, interesting. Also again, this like setting the stage there, the stage wasn't set right. And then later on you have like the conversations go tougher and tougher and tougher. If you're not honest with your customers, like in the end, it's a partnership on eye level.

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:33.474)
And even if the customer has a very different lens on than you and have a very different context, you need to explain them so they get the picture and need to know what they need to know. It's like you would hire someone, like a life coach. You would also expect them to be honest with you and saying more no actually than yes, because otherwise you could be yourself.

your own guide and that's not really the point.

Yeah, exactly. You don't hire a coach or a personal trainer to just say, okay, you do what you want, Lena, that's fine. They're there to challenge you. They're there to hold you accountable. They're there to make sure you succeed. And that's exactly what we're supposed to be doing in customer success as well. But you mentioned that you set the stage and it sounds like you have to set expectations early and often with your customers. And I know we talked about this earlier where

the customer success and sales team work really, really closely when it comes to driving up sales and renewals. And it's not just one team or one person that owns any part of this. It's the full company by the sounds of it. And it's really important that you set the stage and have good handoff and bridging gaps. But that's not always how a lot of teams see how sales and CS work. What are some of the either

challenges or successes that you and your team have seen happen from working so closely with the sales team.

Speaker 1 (41:08.834)
Yeah. luckily we have more good examples than, than bad ones. No, that's good. But I, course also at PLEO, where we worked at a bigger scale with more customers, bigger sales team, there, yeah, we had more negative examples as well. but reflecting on, on why it works so well at, at Do Instruct at the moment, it comes down to that the leadership.

is aligned and that the incentives of the team are aligned. That there's not, you know, the sales seem incentivized to cross boundaries of the CS team or to oversell, for example, or whatsoever. That we both always win both teams. And then in everything it makes so much more sense and is so much easier.

And when you have both teams, yeah, not naturally then working together and, and, and driving land and expand initiatives that go over months and months and are very successful and rewarding for both teams.

Yeah, I love that. think that we forget we're all in the same company. We're all working for the same product, same customer base. It's so important that you work together across sales, but I would say also marketing product engineering. think sometimes it becomes very territorial. Like, no, it's my product. I'm building this product. Well, it's building for the customer. And then the salesman is like, no, that's my customer. But

the customers, everyone's for this product and the company that we serve. And I think when you get territorial like that, it doesn't serve anyone. It doesn't serve you. It doesn't serve the sales team. It doesn't serve your company or your customers. And I think it's important to remember that we are here to serve all of us, no matter your role or title is to see our customers successful and make the business or the company we work for successful as well. So I'm so glad you said that because sometimes there's so much, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (43:15.03)
animosity or competition or just unrest between sales and CS. I'm not in CS. I'm not in sales or that's a sales job or that's a customer success job. No, it's all our jobs no matter how big or small company you are at. So I do love that you guys work so closely in that way. But Lena, we could keep talking for ages, but I want, have a few more like very important questions that I think my listeners would want to know is.

If they are currently in a company or a team that's more in support or customer service, what's your advice you would give them on how to move and position themselves as a strategic advisor or consultant rather than support? Because this is something I hear so often from everyone. It's like, oh, everyone just sees me as a support person. What advice do you give them to move to trusted advisor?

Here I would advise that you start with yourself and your own perception and ask yourself, if you want to be the strategic consultant, what does it mean? Like how should I prioritize my weekly schedule? What tasks should I do? What kind of activities would I do? How would I speak in a customer meeting? How would I...

you know, prepare the agenda, all of that. Like do this mental exercise of like almost taking on a different persona that is maybe even more extreme than the version you want to actually be. And going through that, like in reflecting where you need to shift. But also once we have done that, or maybe at the same time, you also need to check with your leadership and making sure that they're supporting what you're doing.

and talk about the impact and that once you are going more into the strategic consulting role and you want to drive more growth and more upsells, for example, that of course they are benefiting, but they need to be aware that you are doing that. Otherwise it becomes or can become quite frustrating if you're doing a really great job, but no one is seeing it or acknowledging it and still perceiving you as just support or service.

Speaker 1 (45:35.924)
And because then you will be pushed into this corner again and again, and we'll get less of opportunities, less seen, less rewarded and so on and so forth. So balance this internal work, improving yourself with the external communication internally with your leaders. And then, yeah, once you show the behavior, you also have a good advantage of then communicating with your customers. What's your role is because.

Your behavior is also like speaking louder than your words. And when they're seeing what you're focusing on, the topics you're talking about, for example, like milestones, checking in on their customers' KPIs and how they're doing and what else we can do where you see opportunities, they also perceive you as someone else, even without the explicit communication.

I love that there's such a huge mindset in that by the way, a mindset shift that you have to do as an individual and you have to believe that you are in a strategic consultative position as a customer success pro and then once you understand what it is you do, you then have to do two things. Like you said, I think it's so important and I think we forget this and this is what leads to frustration. Like you said, you have to know and convince your internal team, so your leadership, your wider team, the other

marketing support, whatever other teams you work with, and then you also have to convince your customer. I think a lot of people think, if my customer sees me as strategic, that's great. But if you do all the strategic work in the world and your leaders just don't understand what the difference between customer success and customer support, you're not going to be happy. You're not going to have career progression. So it's so important that it starts with you and then you convince your stakeholders both internally and externally.

to really understand what it is that you're doing and then again, what it is you're not doing as well as a support person. So I love that you shared that. Looking back at all of this, by the way, and all the milestones and activities and everything you've done, what is something that you've say was your biggest lesson from moving from service or support to success? If you were to do it all over again, what's like your biggest lesson or learning?

Speaker 1 (47:57.262)
that's a tough question because for me it was so clear what my mission here at the Do Instruct is. like turning this office service and like going the extra mile team to a revenue function. But I would say is being very clear and open of what you're doing and even sometimes a bit harsher, for example.

When leadership, now for me as a leader, is asking me to do certain things, I'm very strict, like, no, we're not doing it. Or I don't want to look at NPS, for example. Like, this is always my biggest thing. I won't, to be honest, I'm not as strict with NPS. I don't hate it. I always say,

that I hated because this is very easy topic when you're not in customer success.

It's the number one metric that companies track for some reason. If we have high NPS, we have great customer success. Exactly. Let me be clear, NPS is a vanity metric. It is only good for yourself. It's really not telling you anything about your customers at all, honestly. And it's such an old metric too, I think. I think it's just something that needs to die. like you said, companies just adopt it and use it and think that that's the metric.

Yeah, exactly. maybe I was a bit all over the place with my answer, but my tip would be if you as a leader want to transform from more service oriented to a revenue org, be very clear where you want to be measured or how you want to be measured. And things like NPS can steer you away from this revenue mindset because this is, you said, it's like it's a nice indicator, might be an input metric.

Speaker 1 (49:56.526)
But it should not be your focus at all. It's just the, maybe the cherry on top, or it could lead you to a customer that is unhealthy or in a way she should have a conversation, but not on a strategic level. You should look at it. You should look at the successful growth rate, the NLR and so on and so forth. Maybe even churn if churn is a big topic for you. But yeah, NPS is definitely something that is distracting you when you want to shape.

the function from service to revenue.

Nah, I love that. I love that you are also saying no to your leadership team as well. That's maybe the underlying theme is like be more of a business leader and direct with both your customers and your executive leadership team of exactly what customer success is doing. And if you are trying to be revenue, NPS is never going to lead you to revenue. Because as we said earlier on in this podcast, happiness does not equal growth.

there's a very different way of getting growth rather than happiness. So I love that you shared that. Thanks for sharing that. Okay, Lena, we're at the point of the episode where I challenge all of my guests to the quick fire questions where I am going to ask you the next few questions and I would like you to try to answer them in a sentence or less. Are you ready? Okay, let's do it. The first question I have is if you could predict the future of customer success,

What do you think it'll focus on next year?

Speaker 1 (51:28.952)
think next year customer success will be a full cycle customer success owned journey, customer journey, with of course like the power of AI. I think we definitely need to set up with the AI game in customer success.

Okay, love that. Amazing. Next question is, which app or software do you use every day, either on your phone or laptop? It can be customer success or not, but which is something that you use every day that you can't live without?

I love Notion. I document everything on Notion in my private life, but also of course in work. For work, I also love Loom. I love sending for hiring purposes short Loom videos, but also to my team when I don't have time to sit with them one-to-one, but I want to be more personal than a swag message.

love that. Usually you hear CS people use Loom with customers, but I love that you use it internally as well. That's really cool. And I also love Notion. I don't know what my life was like before a Notion database existed now. For those people who are either Notion lovers, you know what we mean. But there's also lot of people who are Notion haters, but I don't know what my life would be like without Notion. So I love that. Awesome. Next question is, if you could change one thing about customer success, what would it be?

I would say the perception of customer success in the SaaS startup world, also beyond.

Speaker 2 (53:13.013)
Yep. Yeah, I think so too. I think as someone who's been in customer service now 13 years, I feel like this is something that we've been trying to work on for quite some time, but it's taken some time. So I do hope with the introduction of AI and being more revenue focused as teams that maybe the shift is coming soon. I hope so. Amazing. My last question for you, Lena, is who should be my next podcast guest?

I love to chat customer success with Heike Neu and Wiener Wissam.

I've been actually talking to, okay, good. I will invite them on the show. Thank you so much for your suggestions. And thank you so much, Lina, for being so gracious with your time, with your knowledge, and with all the tips and tricks that you shared with my listeners. If anyone has any further questions or wants to follow up on this episode, what's the best way to get in touch with you?

I would say via Lincoln.

Awesome. Amazing. I'll make sure to link Lena's LinkedIn down in the show notes. And thank you again for coming on the show.

Speaker 1 (54:21.848)
Thank you so much for having me. It was a lovely chat.

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,

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