#TDSU Episode 189:

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:01:53 - The challenge of customer centricity

00:02:28 - Why most companies aren't truly customer centric

00:05:27 - The balancing act of customer needs

00:07:29 - Avoiding the reactive CS trap

00:09:45 - The urgency of customer feedback

00:12:34 - "Good enough" is not good enough

📺 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 Ragna Ghoreishi:

Ragna's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ragnaghoreishi/

[Ragna] (0:00 - 0:23)

A major issue that customer experience programs have in general, they can't prove the value and the impact that they bring on the revenue. So as long as you don't prove that actually that makes an impact, that you have a higher customer retention, that you have more spent by the customer, you're always at the risk to be dropped for another project that shows more the impact on the bottom line.

[Dillon] (0:31 - 0:42)

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] (0:43 - 0:43)

Huddly doodly.

[Dillon] (0:46 - 0:50)

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

[Mickey] (0:51 - 0:51)

Hi, everybody.

[Dillon] (0:53 - 0:59)

As a co-host, not as a guest, and we have Ragna with us. Ragna, can you say hi, please?

[Ragna] (0:59 - 1:01)

Hi, everybody.

[Dillon] (1:01 - 1:17)

I'm going to just feel so self-conscious about not being able to say it perfectly correctly, but that is the disgusting American in me. And I am your host, disgusting American, Dillon Young. Ragna, thank you so much for being here.

Can you please introduce yourself?

[Ragna] (1:18 - 1:41)

Yes. So my name is Ragna Ghoreishi. I'm located in Europe, in Vienna, and I was lately a VP customer success.

I have a long career in corporate around specifically digital sales, customer experience, et cetera, a global one. And then I joined a startup where I built up the customer success team and the two customer support teams.

[Dillon] (1:42 - 1:52)

Very cool. Well, Ragna, you know what we do here? We ask one simple question of every single guest and that is what is on your mind when it comes to customer success.

So can you tell us what that is for you?

[Ragna] (1:53 - 2:15)

Yes, of course I can. So one thing that I'm absolutely passionate about is how you build customer centric organizations. Whoever has tried to do that already knows it's difficult.

So my topic in my mind is how do you build a customer centric organization? Where do you start and what are the main ingredients that you need for that?

[Dillon] (2:15 - 2:26)

Ragna, I don't know what you're talking about. Every company I've ever talked to claims to be absolutely perfect and fantastic at customer centricity. So tell me why you think it's so hard?

[Ragna] (2:28 - 5:25)

Well, what a question. Well, it starts with what actually is customer centricity. And when I talk about customer centricity, I don't mean that you say yes to everything as a company.

What I mean is that you listen, that you try to hear what your customers are telling you and that you start a conversation. That for me is customer centric. So I think that's super important to distinguish because very often you get a lot of pushback.

First of all, saying, so what is customer centricity? It's super fluffy. It's used by everybody.

As you said, everybody says they're customer centric. When you look at the reality, very often it's not the case. So it's not about saying yes to everything.

And specifically in customer success, a customer requests a feature, you say yes, even though it doesn't fit into the roadmap. This is not what I talk about. What I talk about is that keep your customer in the center and not just for those customer facing teams, but you really try to have the whole organization getting proximity to your customers.

So how can you do that? For example, you can pull in people that normally don't talk directly to customers into meetings so that they have a chance to hear the customers are actually sharing and where they're coming from. Because we all know that you can talk about theoretically about the customer.

And then when you actually start talking to a human being on the other side, you realize what the customer's colors are, if you want. So where they come from, why they're asking for this, that they are potentially not trying to make your life difficult, but there is a reason behind it. They might have not understood how to do certain things or they really have a point or they are completely off track, but it's a discussion that you have to start.

So I think it is a super hard thing to do. And it starts with what you do with those organizations that were actually built a different way. So they did not put the customers in the center of what they do.

So it's a huge change program. And we all know change is super difficult for people. They don't want to change.

So having a company that has always been perhaps the market leader, because the product that they had was so dominant that they never really had to listen to customers, but everybody wanted to buy their product. That happens. And that happened in the past.

And then suddenly you have competition. Suddenly you have to actually fight for getting new customers or fight for keeping your customers. So you have to really change the attitude.

How do you do that? Super difficult. And you can only do it by actually getting this proximity to the customers and trying to get pull in people as long as much as you can.

Now I stopped for a moment because I see your face.

[Dillon] (5:27 - 6:02)

The way I typically try to reframe customer centricity is the answer to every question your company has and every person in your company has should in some way be answered by the customer, like what the customer wants or needs. And that is not the customer is always right. There is a balancing act between what the customer needs and what you're capable of providing or where you want your roadmap to go.

But every answer should be in some way related to your customer. Every question, every decision shouldn't in some way be answered by your customer. Mickey, why don't you jump in?

[Mickey] (6:03 - 7:21)

Man, Ragna, that is good stuff. I was going to go a different direction, but I want to build off of what you said, Dillon. I really like what you said.

Every question your business has is going to be answered by your customers. And I think that ties in to what you're saying, Ragna, in that you need your entire org to be close as possible to your customer. There are practical limitations.

I'm a product manager, I'm in finance, I've got other things I have to do to help this organization. But if we're just operating under the premise of, is it better to be closer or further away from your customer? Is anybody going to argue that further away is better?

If they do, then of course that's big red flag number one. But Dillon, I like the framing of your point because the answer might be this customer, this request, this time is not the right one. And you need to tell the customer that.

You don't have to be mean about it, but you could say, we've heard your request. It's something we have considered. We aren't going to do it right now for X, Y, and Z reasons.

Let's work together to find a path for you. Even if that path leads you elsewhere. Scary, scary thought, but- No, it builds trust.

Exactly.

[Ragna] (7:22 - 7:25)

Yeah. And credibility. Absolutely.

I agree.

[Dillon] (7:26 - 7:29)

Rob, how about you? What does it make you think of?

[Rob] (7:29 - 8:43)

I'm thinking of, you guys know that Henry Ford quote, right? If you ask people what they wanted, they would have said- Yeah. No, they would have said a Ford F-150.

So I'm thinking of that quote, which sits in the back of every product manager I know's minds. And not enough customer success people's minds, right? I mean, a lot of us have kind of like, frankly, I think what you said, Mickey, is really good.

It's a really good point that every company wants to be closer to the customer. And Ragna, I think I said that right. I agree with you.

Everyone wants to be there, but so many of us fall further away. And the question is why? And the reason is that it's just so tempting to fall into reactive mode.

We can spend all day on LinkedIn. Subscribe. We want to be proactive and strategic advisors.

But a lot of times at the end of the day, for whatever reason, maybe it's the way our roles are set up or our orgs are set up or whatever. We end up just falling into reactive mode and we're like, look, honestly, I just got to get stuff done around the house. And I just need to respond to the reactive stuff, be done with my day.

And when it comes to doing things like deep customer discovery, that sounds like a nice to have. It sounds like it sits in the important, not urgent category, the Eisenhower matrix. Understanding your customer?

[Dillon] (8:43 - 8:44)

No.

[Rob] (8:44 - 9:44)

When we get around to it. I guess that's a nice to have. But look, I'm guilty of this too.

I used to feel this way. And one of the turning points in my career was I finally saw a panel where somebody from Toast, Emmanuel Scala, she's based here in Boston. She's a brilliant customer success mind.

She was talking about how they built a customer success or sorry, a voice of the customer program at Toast. And it was so well articulated where she went through, this is how we did customer surveying. This is how we did sentiment analysis.

This is how we did customer advisory boards. And this is how we built a whole team and function around this. So it was like an evergreen program.

And it was the first time where I went from being this naysayer who was like, yeah, okay, voice of the customer. Yeah. When we have time for that to then being like, oh my God, this is actually maybe a little bit more urgent than I realized.

So customer centricity is such a good topic. And I'm really excited to hear how you're building it out at your org.

[Ragna] (9:45 - 12:34)

And you've raised a very good point about the feeling of relevance and urgency that you sometimes don't have when you're in the middle of your day. And I think that's a classical disease that you see or an issue, a major issue that customer experience programs have in general. They can't prove the value and the impact that they bring on the revenue.

So as long as you don't prove that actually that makes an impact, that you have a higher customer retention, that you have more spent by the customer, you're always at the risk to be dropped for another project that shows more on the bottom line. At the end of the day, I think, and what I could face in a couple of organizations that I've been working with, very often there is that temptation to say, why are they making it so difficult for me? Why do they ask?

Why don't they just leave it like it is? It's good enough. And that for me is the line that I keep on trying to have in the back of my head, which is good enough is not good enough, because good enough is mediocre.

It needs to be, and I'm not talking about this wowing and et cetera, but you need to deliver on what you actually promised. And this is very often not the case. Of course, a lot is promised before the signature of a contract.

And specifically in the SaaS area, we know that there's one element, potentially, that there is a certain thing that is sold. And sometimes you suddenly discover that the perception of what was bought was potentially something different compared to what they actually get at the end, for whatever reason. I'm not trying to put fingers on anybody.

Sometimes that can happen. It can happen when you're not clear enough. It can happen when in these classical communication issues that someone hears something that the other one has not said, et cetera.

I don't want to touch on that. But the fact is that very often you have, after this excitement of having signed that contract, suddenly the wake-up call where you realize that's actually not what I wanted, or not necessarily giving me everything that I needed. And how do you manage that then?

And what you said, Miki, before, I think is a very, very valid point. You can only create trust when you actually say the truth. I think authenticity and honesty, even though it might not be the nicest conversation when you have to confess certain things, I think they're super important.

And then you potentially manage to keep customers that are, even when they're not 100% happy, but when they see that you try to find a way how to deliver what they actually expected that they get, you find a way when you actually talk about it and really actively talk about it.

[Dillon] (12:34 - 12:45)

That's great. Good enough is not good enough. I love it, Ragna.

That is our time, but you ought to come back and let's dive a little bit deeper. But until then, we've got to say goodbye.

[Ragna] (12:46 - 12:50)

Yes, and it's a pleasure talking to you. Bye-bye.

[VO] (12:55 - 13:26)

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.

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