#TDSU Episode 170:

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:01:26 - Defining customer success beyond post-sale

00:03:33 - Bridging customer success and marketing

00:05:09 - The fragile yet vital connection

00:08:39 - Breaking silos: marketing as a secret weapon

00:10:25 - Aligning promises with delivery

00:13:10 - Communication: the cure for assumptions

00:14:40 - Silos vs. the customer experience

📺 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 Ashna Patel:

Ashna's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashnapatel92/

[Ashna] (0:00 - 0:11)

I can tell you that all that we say or is in written in books and whatever about, you know, customer success starts when your prospects knocks on your door or whatever. That is the truth.

[Dillon] (0:20 - 0:31)

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, can you say hi?

[Rob] (0:31 - 0:32)

What's up people?

[Dillon] (0:32 - 0:35)

And we've got JP with us. JP, can you say hi?

[JP] (0:35 - 0:35)

Look alive.

[Dillon] (0:35 - 0:39)

And we have Ashna with us. Ashna, can you say hi please?

[Ashna] (0:39 - 0:40)

Hey everyone.

[Dillon] (0:40 - 0:53)

Hey, and I am your host. My name is Dillon Young. Ashna, thank you so much for being here.

As if you need an introduction, I feel like everybody, I say your first, you're like Madonna. I say your first name and everybody knows. But go ahead and introduce yourself, please.

[Ashna] (0:53 - 1:26)

Thank you so much. Hey everyone, this is Ashna Patel. I am currently in marketing, but I'm a former customer success leader, won a couple of awards here and there, been part of customer success, global community.

That's what I'm going to call it, global community. But I'm also co-founder of CS Insider, have done a couple of other projects in customer success. But taking that into marketing in my new role has been actually a highlight of my year.

And I'm excited to talk about that with you all.

[Dillon] (1:26 - 1:43)

I am interested to hear how you thread this needle because we ask one question and one question only, and that is what is on your mind when it comes to customer success? So tell us about what you've done this year and how you've merged or married the two.

[Ashna] (1:43 - 3:20)

Yeah. Customer success. I feel like we often struggle to define it.

I feel like we still do. And what I mean by that is just like we put ourselves in a little box that post-sells is customer success, but especially going into marketing from customer success and bringing in almost a decade of experience into that role. I can tell you that all that we say, or is written in books and whatever about, you know, customer success starts when your prospects knocks on your door or whatever.

That is the truth. And that is exactly what customer success should be. And that's what I've tried to bring to the table in our organization is not just from a customer marketing standpoint, but, you know, just bringing it in that customer experience and what are these customer feeling throughout the rest of the journey post-sales and what can we learn from that and then take it and kind of, you know, figure out the full-on journey about that.

That's what I've tried to bring to the table for the organization. I'm just getting started with it. There's a lot to be done because, you know, I've never had a marketing experience before this.

So I've also had to learn a lot about marketing specifically too, which has been a great challenge and amazing because I feel like I've learned so much in just the, you know, eight, nine months that I've been in this role, but also at the same time, you know, be able to talk about, okay, this is what the customer is feeling, or this is how we should be presenting, whether it's a campaign or, you know, whatever events that we're doing, whatever that may be has been the highlight of the experience that I get to bring to the table.

[Dillon] (3:20 - 3:33)

You're speaking my language. I think customer success touches everything, but I don't want to monopolize the time. I want to give Rob an opportunity to ask questions, clarifications.

So go ahead, Rob.

[Rob] (3:33 - 3:50)

Well, I'm mostly impressed and very curious about this journey, the journey from customer success to marketing, because I actually did something interesting. I challenged myself a couple of weeks ago to go to a non-customer success networking event because, you know, I'm sure we've all been there.

[Dillon] (3:50 - 3:52)

It was customer marketing, wasn't it?

[Rob] (3:52 - 5:08)

No, it was marketing ops, nothing to do with customers, customer success. I got put in a small group and I was like, bring on the imposter syndrome. They were talking about some, I don't know, terms around like contact data lakes and all this other stuff that I've never heard about.

And I was like, I just was straight up and I was like, guys, I don't know why I'm here, but it was interesting because a lot of people, you know, it was a small group. They were like kind enough to lend a hand and be like, well, let's, let's, we don't know anything about customer success. So maybe we could kind of find a way to bridge the gap.

And I was like, there's not enough of that. We're all kind of in our, you know, in our networks, in our echo chambers, and there's a lot of strength and power in that, but there is also a degree of like group think. And there's a degree to which like we don't challenge ourselves enough.

And I think, you know, I sort of reached this conclusion that I think customer success and marketing, it's one of the most subtle relationships that we don't talk about enough in SaaS. And it's one of the most fragile relationships, but one of the most opportunistic relationships as well. If we can kind of not see the customer journey as a cycle from, you know, the whole bowtie model, where it's like, it starts marketing customer success around opposite sides of the bowtie.

But if we can kind of like, no, I don't know, my geometry is going to get all messed up here. But if we could fold that around, yeah, exactly. Make it more of a circle.

[JP] (5:08 - 5:09)

Yeah.

[Rob] (5:09 - 5:11)

And Ascot, maybe it's an Ascot model.

[Dillon] (5:13 - 5:19)

First of all, I want to ask this question to Ashna, do you agree with Rob that it is a fragile relationship between the two?

[Ashna] (5:19 - 8:03)

100%. I'm a newbie in marketing, I'd say. But as someone that's been in customer success for so long, I can tell you that yes, that relationship or that journey, it is fragile.

And I feel like when we talk about marketing, a lot of times we're like, Oh, this is pre-sale. This is all for sales. And that's what...

And I would say the majority of the organizations probably does that too. And I don't want to blame anyone, but I feel like it's evolved so much. Yes, there's a whole customer marketing portion of it.

But if you think about it, it's all under marketing's umbrella. It all comes... If your marketing team has no idea about what's going on in the post-sale journey, then coming up with that sort of a strategy of what that overall experience is going to look like for your customer.

It's just like, how do you define that? You just can't define that. So I agree with Rob, but I also really like the part about let's put that around and make it a circle because it is a circle.

If you think about it, just because your prospect becomes a customer doesn't mean that they stop being your prospect. Your customer is always a prospect. I think that's also another thing that I feel like I learned in a good way.

Because yes, cross-sell, up-sell, or potentially every time renewal comes around. If you think about it, yes, they are customers, but in a way that they are your prospect because we live in such a subscription-based economy right now. So why not use that as in this customer, whether it's based on segmentation, whether it's based on whatever that we've divided, what is that overall experience that they're going to have?

And can we all come together as different departments to define that? One last thing I'd add is that one of the first things that I learned in my role is this. I had this immense amount of appreciation.

In customer success, we always say customer success is in the middle, in the middle of the organization. Everyone needs to do their job for customer success, needs to be successful. For the first thing I learned, that's not just for customer success.

It's for every department of an organization. Marketing is the same way. Product needs to do their job.

Sales need to do their job. Customer success needs to do their job. Even finance needs to do their job for marketing to succeed.

So let's just shift our focus from our department or my job is in the center. No, your customer's experience, overall experience that they're trying to get, that is at the center of the table. So how can we all come together to build that experience?

Those are the things that I feel like I'm learning in this role.

[Dillon] (8:03 - 8:39)

I would say, I feel like I knew that, but it feels revelatory when you state it. I have one last question before I give it over to JP. And that is, have you received pushback as you espouse these ideas within your organization?

This idea of marketing doesn't end when the contract gets signed. Customer success doesn't start when the contract gets signed. It's an ecosystem, guys.

It's all happening at the same time. I feel like it almost must have been Salem back in the day where like, she's a witch. Get rid of her.

That's heresy. You can't say that.

[Ashna] (8:39 - 9:45)

Yeah. No, I wouldn't say I've gotten any pushback. To be honest, I'm still tapping into a lot of these things.

Like I said, I'm really in the infancy stage of my role and in marketing in general and in my organization. But I'll tell you, I love my marketing team because the first thing that they ever said to me when I joined the team is like, you're like our secret weapon right now. And we can't wait to just use it because they were getting someone that had years of customer success experience into the marketing team.

And I think we've seen something opposite in the past probably with marketing people going to customer success or beyond or whatever. And my opinion matters. They do ask me about whether we're planning for events or campaigns or whatever that may be.

But like I said, it's like I can't tell you 100% because I'm still tapping into a lot of the things. Our focus is a lot around customer marketing and whatnot in 2025. But as for right now, it's been great, honestly.

[Dillon] (9:45 - 9:52)

JP, I know you know Ashna personally, so I saved you for last, but I want to give you an opportunity to jump in here.

[JP] (9:52 - 10:07)

Yes, Ashna definitely helped me a lot in my career for sure. So always grateful and always good to see Ashna. And I was thinking and I was going to try to avoid this, but I feel like I have to.

[Dillon] (10:07 - 10:09)

But I'm not going to. But I'm not going to.

[JP] (10:10 - 10:18)

The orange is too juicy for me to not take a bite. I was just sitting here peeling that orange while you were going. I was like, I'm going to have to bite into it.

[Dillon] (10:18 - 10:23)

For those who aren't on video, JP is wearing all orange. That's the point of the joke here.

[JP] (10:25 - 13:10)

So I worked for a startup at some point. It's not going to be hard to find out. But I feel like I learned about the importance of marketing from an ethical standpoint.

If marketing is getting your value prop out there and part of your value prop may be that you are a service for, I'm trying to be delicate here, you're a service for people who are looking to say, build their credit. And so therefore, what you present is actually very attractive to those people because you're sort of positing that there's this relationship between the product and what we can offer, right? And then if you get these people in and you're sort of dealing with this, then things change.

And maybe that value prop is no longer sustainable, but it takes the marketing a while to catch up. You're in customer success. You begin to deal with an ethical quantity because you have people who maybe I believed in that value prop as well.

So I said, oh, we can do some good here. Some folks that really want to build their credit in this particular industry. So I feel like we're doing a good thing.

And then you scooby do it. And it's, ah, surprise. It's that same old business that you expected.

Like, hey, we got to change everything. But I think I learned later that that's because startup life, early startup life. That was really early startup life.

But I think that that's where I really thought about marketing critically, not critically in terms of critical of the marketing department, but critically in terms of like, wow, I think it's important for us to have messaging out there that is consistent with what people are actually getting on the other end. So I think that if the bow tie on one side is polka dot, that other side better really be polka dot. It better not be orange.

You know what I mean? We got to we got to have the same pattern. And I think that, you know, Rob was sort of saying that as well.

You're doing it geometrically. I think just in terms of like find that consistency throughout, it won't be perfect. And in that sense, to your point, Ashna, is true.

That consistency is around the customer experience. That's what they should be experiencing is the consistency when it's lumpy, when it's all order, like that's not on the customer, like that's on the company. So we have to sort of figure that out.

[Ashna] (13:10 - 14:40)

Yeah. I love that. And I think a couple of things I would add into that is that communication is the key in all of this.

It's you need to have those strong communication outlined and built in internally to make sure that any certain changes that are happening in those department, whether you're like, oh, this is not going to affect marketing or this isn't going to product, you know, you may think that, but in the long term, it may end up affecting. So having those open communication, I feel like that is the key. And just, you know, assumption, take assumptions out of the picture.

I think that's the other thing. It's like, you know, never assume that this is, you know, this is how it's going to affect or impact your customers or your internal team or whatever that may be. It's just like, I'd say, over-communication is better than, you know, not communicating enough.

And so it's also kind of like, does your different teams in the organization understand functions that, you know, different departments are playing? So it's like, does customer success really understand what marketing is doing and what they have into their plate and how they're supporting the whole journey and vice versa? Does marketing also understand customer success?

And I think that's where the miscommunication gaps and misunderstanding happens because, you know, we end up thinking that, oh, this isn't going to affect or this isn't the right way. And then it's just, the miscommunication, I think it's just like the, that's what happens.

[Dillon] (14:40 - 15:19)

What this makes me think of is how much we talk about silos. Nobody likes them. Everybody wants to break them down.

But it seems like at a certain point, we run out of ideas for how to do it. It sounds like we all just agree we shouldn't have them. And like, yeah, so figure that out in your organization.

Maybe there is no better reason or tool or weapon for breaking down silos than making the customer experience better. I think there's a thought there. Ashna, this has been fantastic.

We are out of time. You should come back in another couple of months and tell us how things are going, how the relationships are improving at your organization. But for now, we've got to say goodbye.

[Ashna] (15:20 - 15:21)

Thank you so much for having me.

[VO] (15:27 - 15:57)

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 LifetimeValueMedia.com.

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