#TDSU Episode 152:

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:03:15 - Customer success meets frustration

00:03:55 - Tough analogies: the CS cultural struggle

00:05:00 - Entitlement or incentives? Picking a culprit

00:06:48 - Junk drawers of the workplace

00:09:28 - QBIQ: framing feedback with finesse

00:11:53 - Hot potato teamwork and ownership fears

📺 Lifetime Value: Your Destination for GTM content

Website: https://www.lifetimevaluemedia.com

🤝 Connect with the hosts:

Dillon's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dillonryoung

JP's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeanpierrefrost/

Rob's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rob-zambito/

👋 Connect with Duane Hutchison:

Duane's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/duanehutchison/

[Dillon] (0:00 - 0:40)

This is our first ever guest who has listened to every single episode. I just want to call that out. Thank you so much.

You are the definition of a lifer. I love it. And you do know what we do here.

I say this for most, and I don't think they know. What's up lifers and welcome to The Daily Standup with lifetime value where we're giving you fresh new customer success ideas every single day. I got my man Rob with us.

Rob, you want to say hi?

[Rob] (0:40 - 0:41)

What's up y'all?

[Dillon] (0:42 - 1:02)

And we have Duane with us.

Duane, can you say hi, please? I'm a peacock captain. You gotta let me fly.

I don't know that reference. So tell me in one second. I am your host.

My name is Dillon Young. In your introduction, Duane, please explain that reference. Go.

[Duane] (1:03 - 1:10)

Oh, that reference is from The Other Guys. It's one of the most quotable movies ever. Dillon, let's go. That makes me sad in my heart.

[Dillon] (1:11 - 1:46)

So my problem is I love movies. I love storytelling.

I'll watch them. I think they're fantastic. And then they leave my brain like 48 hours later, which is both great, but terrible because I don't get to play the social game of repeating lines, unless it's like Wedding Crashers.

It's got to be like that level. But it's fantastic because then I get to watch the movie and I'm like, dude, this is a great movie. I totally forgot.

Yeah, you have to homework now. That's for sure. So I apologize.

I digress. Duane, can you please introduce yourself properly?

[Duane] (1:47 - 2:03)

Yeah, I'm a husband and a father. That's the most important thing to me. I've been married 17 years.

I got four kids. I live in Phoenix, Arizona. I'm a gym rat at heart.

I love team sports, starting with my sons, starting the NBA season. So I represent the sons. I've been in CS for 17 years, 13 of those years in leadership.

[Dillon] (2:04 - 2:07)

Very cool. Very cool. Four kids.

That's crazy. What are the age spans?

[Duane] (2:08 - 2:16)

I got a daughter who's going to be 16 in about a month and a half. So she'll be driving and I'll have more gray hairs than I currently do. I got a 14-year-old son and 10-year-old twins.

Boys.

[Dillon] (2:18 - 2:30)

Twins! Boy, twins, 10 years old. Dude, do you have to like handcuff them to their bed so they're not like jumping off the back of couches and like surfing down the stairs?

Some of that.

[Duane] (2:30 - 2:43)

Yeah, the surfing down the stairs is an actual real thing that has happened. But no, my boys are pretty top-notch. They are really good listeners.

We have a super close relationship. They are my little road dogs. That's awesome.

[Dillon] (2:44 - 3:14)

That's awesome. Okay. Duane, you know what we do here?

This is our first ever guest who has listened to every single episode. I just want to call that out. Thank you so much.

You are the definition of a lifer. I love it and thank you so much. You do know what we do here.

I say this for most and I don't think they know, but we ask every single guest one single question and that is, what is on your mind when it comes to customer success? In 17 years, you better have a good one, Duane.

[Duane] (3:15 - 3:35)

Yeah. So actually this is inspired by episode 52. So if you haven't listened to that one, let's go back at your BS and CS episode.

It's my favorite thing that you guys do. As I was listening to that episode, I wrote this down and I wrote down, customer success is not the prostitute to be pimped out by other departments within the organization tasked with turning tricks for the customer because nobody else wants to.

[Dillon] (3:36 - 3:41)

And let me guess, this wasn't LinkedIn appropriate, so you saved it for us.

[Duane] (3:41 - 3:42)

Yeah, maybe.

[Dillon] (3:43 - 3:54)

We'll call it that. We didn't say that, did we? No, we would not have said that.

I read this topic ahead of time and I was like, oh, this is spicy.

[Duane] (3:55 - 4:58)

So elaborate, please. In my current company, I have a sales leader that I work with and I love the guy. I actually worked with him at a previous company, but regularly he'll email me and be like, Duane, can you handle this for us?

Our team is super busy and we are trying to hit a number and I just need you to take care of this for us. We're all busy. No, we have a job to do.

That's why we have a job. That's frustrating that people say that. And so we are not here to just sweep up everybody's nonsense and bull crap that they don't want to do.

But instead, there's a very real aspect of what customer success is there for in terms of helping to retain customers and grow accounts and really deepen relationships and get more value out of the product. And so just like this idea that, hey, I don't want to do it, so you guys go do it. Go on the corner and start turning that trick or go on that corner, start turning that trick.

It is so frustrating to me and I hate it. I hate it. So I have to go to people and I've told my leadership and I've gone to people say, look, we're not prostitutes and you're not the pimp.

And I've had to have that actual conversation and tell them that. It's not fun. They don't love it, but it hits home, which is why I use that analogy because it's not forgettable.

[Dillon] (5:00 - 5:11)

If you had to distill this down to one sentence, ideally one word, because I know I have one in mind, what do you think is at the core of why that behavior persists?

[Duane] (5:14 - 5:37)

I think it really has a lot to do with entitlement is probably my word that I would use. I think that sales feels like they're entitled to, they're the king of the castle in a lot of ways, in terms of revenue. And so they feel like they're entitled to push things off that they don't want to do.

It's not just sales. I'm not picking on sales, but there are other departments that do it as well.

[Dillon] (5:38 - 6:28)

I was going to say incentives. I think there's overlap there in that sales is not incentivized to clean up the BS. They're incentivized to go out and find new people and acquire new customers.

And so anytime that a task, you can't draw a direct line between those two, they want to hand it off. And understandably so, you are taught that from the very beginning as a salesperson, that that's the way it's supposed to go. So it's not even us dumping on sales in that regard.

And I think conversely, CS is often their purpose and their mandate and their incentives are not so clearly and rigidly defined. But I want to give you an opportunity to respond to that. And then Rob, you can take it after that.

[Duane] (6:30 - 6:40)

Dillon, you're absolutely right. If the money is not there, people aren't going to do it. That's really the thing.

We're not paid to do this, so we're not going to do it. And that's a direct quote. It happens all the time.

[Dillon] (6:43 - 6:47)

Who's the prostitute now? Rob, you go ahead.

[Rob] (6:48 - 9:28)

You know, I'm thinking about the conversation I had recently where to turn the mirror on us as customer success professionals, how do you think RevOps people feel about customer success and how product people feel about customer success? I started researching this a bit and I found out that there's a lot of that same sentiment that we have towards sales that they then apply to us. Product is like, why are we just the junk drawer of what customer success has as leftovers?

And RevOps too, RevOps I think gets at some of the worst because anything that involves data cleanup, it's often not pretty. And RevOps is like, why is everyone just giving me all their junk work? I want to work on strategic work, that kind of thing.

I want to build cool stuff. I want to build big stuff. I want to measure the impact against revenue.

But cleaning up data, the revenue impact is often so many steps removed. I feel like we're not alone in this. And I also feel like it's funny because when I started hearing these stories, I was like, wow, you sound a whole lot like me in the past.

If I could share one useful framework, I don't know if you guys have any good frameworks for sharing feedback. I just listened to a webinar by Life Labs Learning. I don't know if you guys know them, but they do a lot of really good work on leadership.

And one of the frameworks I learned from them is how to share feedback. My gut reaction when I want to share feedback dates back to my days working in restaurants, where you're going to have to bleep this, but I'm like, what is that? Send that back.

We're not sending that out to our customers. That was my gut reaction and the habit I had to unlearn when it came to people putting junk on my plate. I was very reactive.

But I learned this method. It's called the QBIQ method, Q-B-I-Q. It stands for question, behavior, impact, question.

And it's just a much more polite way to provide feedback, which means you start with a question like, is it a good time to provide feedback? Do you have a second? Do you mind if I share a comment on that?

And then the B is behavior. You point out, here's the behavior I observed. You put this on my plate, and this is not technically part of what I do day to day.

Impact is I. The impact that has is now I have to create a trade-off where I'm not saving this customer's revenue. I like this.

I like this one. Good. The impact this has is I can't retain this customer because I have this other work that you just put on my plate.

And then the last Q is question again. What can we do to prevent this moving forward? Or what do you think about that?

Or can you stop? No, don't do that. But it's a much more polite way to go about it.

[Dillon] (9:29 - 10:09)

I want to go back to the original point you made, Rob, which was this idea of marketing feels this way about us or product feels this way about us. And if that's the case, if it feels that systemic, then it's really a cultural issue, right? Where ostensibly leadership is not doing a great job of creating, you could call it swim lanes or racy charts, but ultimately it's this level of accountability for each group and a clear understanding of what they're responsible for.

Would you guys agree with that? Or is it more nuanced than that? I'm a pretty black and white guy sometimes.

So it feels like that to me.

[Duane] (10:10 - 10:49)

Duane, what do you think? Yeah, I think that it's one of those things where everybody wants to work on the A-plus problem in the company and different departments can define it different ways. And so if they feel like they're doing anything other than the A-plus problem that they feel is the A-plus problem, they're going to feel jilted or slighted in some way.

And so I just think that it's going to be one of those things where we all do need to be willing to take on a little bit of somebody else's junk. It's just a matter of saying, have you even tried, in my opinion? Are you even attempting to make sure that the customer taking care of is where I tend to fall and be in my feelings about that kind of thing?

And so that's where I think, yeah, we all want to do the big thing. How would we define that?

[Dillon] (10:51 - 11:52)

Yeah, it feels very ego driven. And for me, the black and white piece comes back to, but if we all work on it together, then we all get the kudos. But if we all drop the ball, if nobody wants to catch the hot potato, then we all feel that pain too.

It just feels so, like I'm not always a very team oriented person and I'm not a very patient person. And I'm very black and white when it comes to like, but bro, that's obviously your job. But at the end of the day, I do find satisfaction if we all get together and say, okay, we're going to work on this as a team.

We're going to continue to iterate to get better. Maybe I got to take the potato this time. But what I want is the ability to offer ways that we can improve this process going forward so that this hot potato doesn't happen again.

And that's another piece. You don't typically see either one of those occur. And I think that probably comes back to culture and the ability to speak openly and work towards a greater good reaching across the aisle with these teams in that way.

[Rob] (11:53 - 12:21)

I feel like it's since we're on the topic of sports before, it's like a zone defense, right? Occasionally, someone's going to run between zones and they'll be able to slip free because we're not sure whose responsibility it is. And what you hear is like basic leadership training is even if it's not your zone, you should be like, I have to do better.

I have to own up to that. That's my responsibility. And if the worst thing that happens is someone says, well, that's not even your zone.

You're like, all right, cool. I took responsibility anyway.

[Dillon] (12:22 - 13:01)

Yeah. And I think where people get scared and I have in the past is if I always speak up and I'm being a good leader, team player, whatever you want to call it. And I keep saying that's on me.

There's this fear that then people start to believe it and people start to put the onus is always on you, good and bad. And people don't see it as you being a good team player. They see you as being the buffoon, right?

That's always the fear. Now we know that's not typically the case unless the culture stinks, right? We can have this circular conversation for sure.

But yeah, I think the problem becomes if your counterpart isn't on the same page of saying, yeah, I could have done better too.

[Duane] (13:03 - 13:12)

Well, and that's a great point, Dillon. You're talking about like a slippery slope. You keep being the one that always says, yep, that's me, or I'm going to do that.

All of a sudden you'll be more and more of that work.

[Rob] (13:12 - 13:13)

It's a whole cultural thing.

[Dillon] (13:14 - 13:26)

That is our time. We can't go too much further guys. Duane, absolute pleasure to have you on number one lifer.

Being able to reference episode numbers.

[Rob] (13:27 - 13:31)

Carolyn, remember Carolyn says she listens to every episode too. So we got.

[Dillon] (13:31 - 13:34)

But that was a while ago. Maybe she fell off.

[Rob] (13:34 - 13:39)

I'm giving it to Duane. Carolyn, if you're listening, you're all, you're tied. Yes, yes, it's fine.

[Dillon] (13:39 - 13:52)

It's fine. Anybody who listens to a single second of our content is fine with us. But Duane, serious pleasure.

Would love to have you back on in the future. But for now you do have to say goodbye. Thank you guys.

Appreciate having me.

[Voiceover] (13:56 - 14:27)

You've been listening to The Daily Standup by Lifetime Value. Please note that the views expressed in these conversations are attributed only to those individuals on this recording and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of their respective employers. For all inquiries, please reach out via email to Dillon at lifetime value media.com.

Find us on YouTube at Lifetime Value and find us on the socials at Lifetime Value Media. Until next time.

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