#TDSU Episode 200:

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:01:34 - Psychology’s role in customer success

00:05:07 - Business-oriented empathy explained

00:06:25 - The hidden power of reducing friction

00:08:27 - Psychology and personal motivation

00:11:31 - The mere exposure effect in onboarding

00:13:20 - The three-step strategy for success

00:14:21 - Wrapping up

📺 Lifetime Value: Your Destination for GTM content

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🤝 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 Rachel Provan:

Rachel's LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/rachelhprovan

[Rachel] (0:00 - 0:28)

Especially right now with CS being so salesy. I love how everyone's like, it was always like this. No, it was not.

It was more retention focused and retention is revenue, but it was not so upsell expansion focused as it is now. You can't expand what you can't keep. Getting that outcome is table stakes and the outcome is not installing the program.

They have to get some sort of measurable result and you have to confirm it with them.

[Dillon] (0:37 - 1:03)

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 wanna say hi?

What's up people? And we have Rachel with us. Rachel, can you say hi, please?

I actually can. Hello. And I am your host.

My name is Dillon Young. Rachel, thank you so much for being here. It's been a long time coming.

Please introduce yourself.

[Rachel] (1:04 - 1:32)

Absolutely. So I'm Rachel Provan. I run Provan Success, which teaches struggling new managers to become confident leaders.

I've been in leadership for 18 years now and most of that was in customer success. So I do have a lot of specialty in that, but I have broadened up to working with all new leaders now. My specialty is really using psychology to become an effective and authentic leader.

[Dillon] (1:34 - 1:54)

And anybody who doesn't know that, that means they don't follow you on LinkedIn, but we're gonna school them today. Because, Rachel, 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?

I get the feeling it's gonna be related to psychology. Why don't you tell us?

[Rachel] (1:54 - 5:06)

You're psychic then. But that won't be the topic today. That's for another day.

No, I would love to actually bring it back to psychology because I think psychology tends to be the best way to get things done. I think that, especially in CS, we're in a very tricky position because our job is very much aligned with how humans work, right? Humans hate change, completely hate it.

And the job that we're in is really change management. So we're trying to get people to adopt a software, you know, start using something new that's different from what they were doing before and whatever they were doing before hasn't gotten them fired yet. So there is going to be a natural resistance.

They're probably not the ones, you know, the end users are probably not the ones who bought the software, but the tricky thing that we have as leaders in this space in terms of defining our value is that especially if you're in a startup or you have like a founder CEO, they think like a computer. A plus B equals C every single time. It's going to be the same.

Yes, no, everything is mathematical. Yes, no, zeros and ones. And humans are the exact opposite of that.

What works one day might not work the next. Just because you want a solution and you've bought a solution does not mean you're going to implement it. I talk about this all the time with like me in the gym.

I can't tell you how many gyms I belong to. I've gone to probably three, like three total times. I hate it, you know, but I keep every damn January.

I'm like, this is the year that I'm going to be a gym person. Yeah, yeah, new year, new me. And I hate January and I don't know I would ever do that to myself.

But so you're not necessarily dealing with logical beings, but try and explain to a founder that yes, they bought the product, but there's still a lot of work to be done to help them get the result that they're looking for. To help them understand that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with their product. It's that they have to deal with humans.

They probably hired you so that they don't have to deal with the humans. But that really is what we're battling against, especially right now with CS being so salesy. And I love how everyone's like, it was always like this.

No, it was not. It was more retention focused and retention is revenue, but it was not so upsell expansion focused as it is now. And what we have to remember is that you can't expand what you can't keep.

You know, getting that outcome is table stakes and the outcome is not installing the program. They have to get some sort of measurable result and you have to confirm it with them. Even if you have a way of doing that, that is mass and it's at scale, you're saying, well, they've done X, Y, and Z and that means they've gotten value.

That means you've checked off things on your checklist. Whoever you're dealing with, whether it's a customer, whether it's a CEO, the very first thing you have to do is check in and just get really neutral and ask yourself, what does this person care about? What is important to them?

What will get them a promotion or not fired?

[Dillon] (5:07 - 5:16)

Do you know what that is called? What? That is called business oriented empathy in my mind.

I just made that up.

[Rachel] (5:16 - 5:17)

I was gonna say, I haven't heard that term before.

[Dillon] (5:18 - 5:29)

That's the empathy we actually need and not, well, I just really like helping people. I just really like taking people out for drinks when I travel.

[Rachel] (5:29 - 5:34)

But that's not, empathy is not taking people out. Empathy is not about like just making someone feel good for the hell of it.

[Dillon] (5:34 - 5:36)

Rachel, you don't gotta tell, hey.

[Rachel] (5:36 - 5:36)

I know, I know.

[Dillon] (5:36 - 5:41)

Tell that to all of the people trying to break into CS thinking that that's what we do.

[Rachel] (5:41 - 6:24)

Oh, I'm like, why? Are you sure right now? Now you wanna do it?

Yeah, no, I love CS. It's my baby. These are my people.

But I think we're uniquely positioned to do that. Even though we do tend to be empathetic people, we just have to take a step back from ourselves and our own fear. Everyone's just walking around terrified all the time.

They're gonna get fired and they're gonna lose everything they have. That's evolutionary science. We're all just kind of panicked at all times that we're gonna get eaten by a lion, aka fired and end up living under a bridge.

You have to allay those fears before anyone's gonna listen to a word you have to say. You have to say, I'm not a lion. It's cool.

Maybe say it in a different way.

[Dillon] (6:25 - 6:55)

Rob, I want you to get your chef's hat ready because I'm gonna let you cook, baby. But the thing I wanna say first is the gym analogy is so fantastic because I used to be the same way until I really took the time to understand where the friction was for me. Yes, yes.

You mentioned it and I don't even know if you recognize it, but you said you hate January and I'm guessing it's because you've got to walk to the gym or you've got to go outside to travel to the gym.

[Rachel] (6:55 - 6:57)

I gotta walk a mile to the gym. Screw that.

[Dillon] (6:58 - 7:21)

And that is the worst amount of friction. And when I learned like, oh, my big problem is I will find every reason not to get in the car and drive to the gym. Like that's a long drive.

I gotta get dressed or I don't really like being around people while I'm exerting myself. And so I started running because I knew I wanted to exercise, but I wanted the thing that was like, when I'm ready, I can just strap on some shoes and go.

[Rachel] (7:21 - 7:58)

Yeah, I would say the hardest part is getting my shoes on. Like that is literally the heaviest thing I have to lift is my shoes because it's the initiating the action. But that's why I'm a huge believer in environmental design to remove as much friction as possible because I have zero willpower.

I will tell this to people all day long. I am not relying on motivation. I'm not relying on willpower because mine sucks.

Like I'm out. I'm busy raising kids. They have taken up all of my energy and willpower.

I've gotta have like Twizzlers waiting for me on the floor to do a sit up for one. That's how it's gotta work.

[Dillon] (7:58 - 8:26)

I ran 500 plus days in a row. Wow. And the way in which I did it, my number one secret weapon was putting out running clothes the night before, waking up and immediately putting those on so that wasn't even a friction point.

So it literally was, as soon as I'm ready, just hit the door, but remove as much friction as possible. All right, Chef Rob, get in here.

[Rob] (8:27 - 8:35)

I'm gonna need more time on this one, man. You know how much I love this topic. Rachel, I share the exact same penchant you do.

[Rachel] (8:36 - 8:36)

Psych nerd, woo!

[Rob] (8:37 - 9:16)

Oh yeah, big time. So I actually started studying psychology my freshman year because I actually wanted to study philosophy. What I found in philosophy was that it didn't give me a scientific enough framework.

Sorry, Dillon, I said framework, to view the world. And so I was like, how can I take these big existential questions and all my personal angst and combine it with a scientific structure that I can view the world? And I came across psychology and fell in love.

And so I spent the next four years having extreme privileges to get to see talks and get to even sometimes meet folks like Danny Kahneman, who's a behavioral economist.

[Rachel] (9:16 - 9:20)

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm obsessed with him. You will hear me quote him frequently.

[Rob] (9:20 - 9:58)

Yeah, same. And Nassim Taleb and some other brilliant thinkers. I didn't know how good I had it.

But my point is, it actually was intriguing because I then started using myself as my own test case for different psychological phenomena. Hate him. And the gym example is interesting.

So actually 10 years ago, I used to weigh about 60 pounds more than I did. And I was really disappointed with myself. And so I set a bet with a friend.

I was just mad one day and I grabbed my wallet and I said, Chris, my roommate Chris, like Chris, you get all the money in my wallet if I don't work out five times a week. And he was like, okay, indefinitely.

[Rachel] (9:59 - 10:00)

Yeah, that's amazing.

[Rob] (10:01 - 10:06)

Yeah, and so now 10 years later, I've maintained that bet of working out five times a week.

[Rachel] (10:06 - 11:31)

There are carrots and sticks, that's a huge thing. And they find sticks are more motivating. Like having to contribute $10 to like a political party that you hate.

But I will like, I'll do the same things I do with my kids. It's like, no, you don't get your phone after eight o'clock. If that isn't done, I will give myself the same punishments.

But yes, like for me and for most people, and I tell people this with CS too, with onboarding or trying to get somebody to start something. We're trying to motivate these people to go to the gym. This is what we're up against.

People like us. And by the way, I still don't go to the gym, but I'll get there. I'll get there by doing like a sit up a day.

But that's what I recommend with onboarding. Be like, make it such an easy win. Have them do one thing that's gonna be such an easy win.

They can't fail. And then make a huge fuss. Like, oh my God, you did it.

You signed your name. You're amazing. You've got it.

But we all need more gold stars. Like we all need more external validation because we're starved for it. We are all being asked to do too much with absolutely no recognition most of the time.

And if someone gives that to you, even if it's just like, yeah, they really appreciate how hard I work. I should be given that kind of, thank you, you appreciate me. All of a sudden you're filling that need and they see you positively.

And I know it seems kind of like dark magic, but really we're hurting no one here.

[Rob] (11:31 - 12:29)

I'll give a quick example just from my own. So like, after I moved into SaaS and I started applying these principles to my world that was at that time onboarding, I actually read a study about something called the mirror exposure effect, which you might be familiar with. The quick and dirty summary of that was there was an experiment where they took subjects in.

They showed them an array of Chinese characters that the subjects could not read or recognize. They let them go home for a week. They brought them back a week later and they showed them a new mix of Chinese characters.

They didn't recognize which ones they'd seen before and which ones they hadn't. And then they asked the subjects to pair the letters or the characters with different words. Some were positive words like happiness and sunshine.

And then some were negative words like darkness and death and whatever. And what happened was people implicitly started pairing the words, the characters they'd seen before with the positive words and the negative. And the words they hadn't seen before were the negative words at a level of their consciousness that they couldn't even access.

Like they didn't even know.

[Rachel] (12:30 - 12:50)

Right. So much of this is completely unconscious, but your brain registers it as this is safer. I've seen it before.

And therefore it's more positive. That's the best we can understand. That might turn out in like 15 years.

We're like, we were stupid. We didn't know anything. Like our brains, the ocean and outer space, we know nothing about them, but we like to pretend we do.

[Rob] (12:50 - 13:19)

I just want to say it's not hopeless because when your customers have the mere exposure effect and they want their prior solution, which will happen, particularly in onboarding, you can create an incentive, a reward. And this worked for me. I created a reward for customers that finished onboarding.

Similar to what you said, Rachel, certification or a financial reward. I've gotten a lot of things done with Olive Garden gift cards. When you're here, you're family.

There are good strategies to overcome our psychological tendencies.

[Dillon] (13:20 - 13:46)

Well, so I'm going to bring it home even further because there's like a three-step process that I'm going to way oversimplify, but it's understanding the path that your customer needs to take based on what they want to achieve. Remove as many, if not all of the obstacles you can to get there and then celebrate the out of them once they get there. Fair.

Yeah. Yeah.

[Rachel] (13:46 - 13:51)

And you get to make your little empathetic heart happy because they're going to feel good about themselves.

[Dillon] (13:51 - 13:54)

I don't have that. My empathetic heart is the Grinch heart.

[Rachel] (13:55 - 13:56)

Your heart is filled with hate. It's okay.

[Dillon] (13:56 - 13:58)

10 times too small or whatever.

[Rachel] (13:58 - 14:01)

No. I'm just cranky.

[Dillon] (14:01 - 14:05)

I'm just cranky. Yeah. Yeah, me too.

Well, it's the Brooklyn. It's the Brooklyn.

[Rachel] (14:05 - 14:12)

I kind of have to be. I can't be all sunshine and showers. I'll get my asket.

Yeah, I know. I know. This is a very bright color.

I think you should be very proud.

[Dillon] (14:14 - 14:17)

For anybody who's on audio, it is blue.

[Rachel] (14:17 - 14:21)

Navy. I'm wearing Navy and it's like neon to me.

[Dillon] (14:21 - 14:28)

Rachel, that is our time. Thank you so much for finally gracing us with your presence on the show.

[Rachel] (14:28 - 14:31)

Oh, let's do it again. Yes. Anytime, anytime.

[Dillon] (14:31 - 14:33)

Until then, we've got to say goodbye.

[Rachel] (14:33 - 14:34)

Okay. Bye.

[VO] (14:39 - 15:10)

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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