[Stino] (0:03 - 0:33)

All of these playbooks in your CSP, they return all of these data, like click rates, open rates, unsubscribed rates, health scores going up, going down. That segment returns a lot of one, product data, second, what they're doing with your digital playbook, like, what's next? I think that is something that we abandon quite often.

We're content with the playbook being built and then we're like, okay, and now? What's at the end of the rainbow? It's not a pot of gold.

I can tell you that.

[Kristi] (0:34 - 1:20)

It never is. There's never gold. Hello guys, and welcome back to season two of the Customer Success Hotline.

You've got Kristi and Stino back for episode two. We've got lots of questions teed up. We're so excited to be back.

We've got lots of questions and I will tell you, AI is dominating our queue, which is interesting, but lots on scale, lots on how do we continue to do more to support our customers in creative ways. And so we've got a lineup of questions that we're going to try to dig into today, try to get to at least two of them. So Stino, let's kick us off.

What do we got today?

[Stino] (1:20 - 2:45)

Let's open up the letterbox. The first one is from Alex. We are rolling out digital success playbooks for our SMB customers, but the adoption is low.

Any hacks to make self-service feel less like a chore, but more like a win? But also I hate the word digital CS. It's like digital CS, no CS, then CS.

There are so many words for it. Last year, it literally pisses me off. Because the thing is, it's like yet another buzzword, but we're doing it already for the last couple of years, right?

I've seen people talking about it on LinkedIn, how to crack the code on digital CS. It's nothing new under the sun. We've been trying to do cracking the code for already, I think, five years.

For me, building digital success playbooks is nothing new under the sun. It's like you can have a segment that completely falls under that digital success playbook, but it's not that it's something new. I think the first time that I heard about it, like hear about it, it was like a no CSM, CS structure, but that is already, that is not a new kid on the block.

So please, people, can we just acknowledge that we've been trying to do this for the last couple of years?

[Kristi] (2:45 - 2:50)

You know, stop shaming our people who are asking questions. Let's help them. Let's help them.

[Stino] (2:51 - 2:55)

It's not to Alex, but just in general, like all these self-proclaimed...

[Kristi] (2:55 - 3:00)

No, I'm just kidding. We're here to answer questions. It's not going to Teo Gent.

Maybe that's a private conversation.

[Stino] (3:00 - 4:41)

I need hacks to make self-service feel less like a chore. The reason why, because you're not seeing your customers. Like a wild love CS strategy or having human touch points, quote unquote, feels more like win because you see someone sitting in front of you.

Having digital success playbook covers so much customers all at once. And the data that you get back from it is also like this one big number that represents like, let's say, 100, 200, 500 customers. Indeed, it sometimes doesn't feel like a win because the win is hidden in the data.

If you would pick like one or two customers that are in that group, they would see them individually and you see them grow individually. That would be a win. But building such a playbook that caters to a large segment of your customers will, to me, always feel like a chore because you're not hearing the feedback.

You're not jumping on calls one-on-one with them. I think any hacks to make self-service feel less like, it will always be a chore for me. But if you want to make sure that it feels more like a win, go beyond the average number that that playbook returns.

Also check on individual customer level. Keep tracking there as well to get some wins out of it. Because if you're just having data high level on the click rate, the open rate, maybe it's low.

But having a couple of customers that opening up every email, search for those customers as well if you want to feel like a little hit of dopamine. Because they are great people in that group.

[Kristi] (4:42 - 7:33)

Yeah, so this is an interesting one for me because what I see so many companies doing is like, these playbooks, again, feel very one-sided because it feels like we are pushing things to them and that there isn't necessarily a pull of what's happening for the customer to engage. So for me, there's depth in the data that you could be analyzing here, which is, are we actually achieving the objective that we set out to achieve? If you have a playbook that is intended to help your customer do X, are they actually getting to X?

Because the communication is one thing, right? Are they engaging with the communication that's being pushed out to them? Fine.

But I've actually even seen some ability to engage with these actions and the automations that are going out. And then ultimately getting to a place where your customer is achieving the outcome or the objective of that playbook, right? So if it's intended for your customer to go and log in and build something in your product, what percent of your customers are logging in and building that thing?

And then once they build it, what is happening, right? I feel we stop at the data that we're analyzing and to your point of going deeper, we can actually take this down a rabbit hole and say, really think about it as true marketing analytics, but what is the true funnel look like? Where's the drop-off?

Where are we losing people? And then how do we go and modify this so we can drive different behaviors? To your point, who are the customers that always do what we tell them to do versus who are the customers that never do what we tell them to do?

Then go analyze them from a persona standpoint. Is it a certain user? Is it a industry?

Is it a certain level, right? There's so much information that can be garnered from how our customers are engaging with the things that we configure and set up. It could also just be your playbook is shit, right?

So if we're spending a lot of time on these things and we think that they're great, and then we're blaming our customers, well, our customers just are not engaging with it. What are you going to hold up a mirror and say, maybe it's not them, maybe it's us. And so for me, I'd pick up the call.

I'd pick up the phone and be like, Hey, listen, I would call 10 customers who have not engaged with any of your playbooks and been like, Hey, listen, as you know, part of our experience is more of this automated one. But looking at the data, I've noticed you guys haven't engaged with any of this and maybe pull them into a cohort, get them together on a workshop and say, listen, we've invited you here because you guys have obviously not found value in what it is that we've been putting out there. And we want to optimize for that experience and do a feedback session with them as a group.

I mean, I think that there's so many cool things that we can learn and action from the ways that our customers engage with us. And that I think is model agnostic, whether you're digital, whether you're white glove, it doesn't matter, right? I think that we need to be leaning in to learn more from our customers.

[Stino] (7:34 - 10:49)

But that's also a thing. I think when we're building playbooks, like you mentioned, we always look at the end results, right? Like we build a playbook with like 10 steps, 20 steps, 40 steps.

And we're only looking at the end result, like to decide if the playbook is successful or not. So the playbook is intended to get the health score up to 70%. Customer is at 60%, playbook failed.

But that doesn't necessarily mean that your playbook failed. You indeed need to check like, okay, they were good until week four. Fine.

After week five, maybe need to tweak something. I thought you were going to say something. Modest as you are, you gave me the best piece of advice.

And then Melanie mentioned it to me as well. Beginning of the year, you did a post on LinkedIn. And I don't know if you remember that, but you did a post on LinkedIn saying, you need to stop building digital playbooks with empty emails.

If you're one to scale your digital playbook, you need to first ask on how they want to be in that motion. You said, just send out a quick survey. If it was, do you want to have more webinars?

Do you want to have more video material? Do you want to receive these emails? Send out that survey and then decide which digital playbook that they need.

And then Melanie mentioned to me that she tried it as well because she was also like, my digital motion is failing. And then she sent out that survey and she was like, I had a response rate of 70% that was worth the actual fuck. So I tried that out as well because also my digital playbooks were like, it was good for the first half and then afterwards, I was like, what is happening?

Did the exact same survey. And then we switched the route because most of the people just wanted to have webinars or occasional video university kind of stuff. So we heavily focused on webinars.

The first webinar that we did after that survey had a 200% attendance rate comparison with previous webinars that we've done. Just a tip from Kristi, even that she didn't mention it. Ask your customers what they need.

Don't make freaking assumptions on what you've read on LinkedIn or a course that you followed or a convention that you did where people are preaching on like, this is the path to digital strategy. Digital CS doesn't mean more emails. I can't with more emails.

So also if you want to have a win, if you're doing a webinar and you have an attendance rate that is higher than a previous webinar, that is a win. If your video content is watched more, who cares about click and open rates? Try to be inventive as well.

And again, grab to things that are maybe not used very often because webinars are maybe done by the product team or done by the marketing team and video material is something that support needs to take care of. Who said that we can't use that stuff as well? Because that is also part of your digital motion and can equally feel as a win and less like a chore because you are not using AI to crank up a zillion templates that you want to send out to a customer.

Nowadays, everyone gets so many emails, send a letter. We tried sending out letters as well as part of our digital motion. Worked like a chore.

[Kristi] (10:50 - 12:59)

That is so funny. The lost art of anything at this point. But to your point, it's not enough to just continue to hit your customers up the way that you think that they want to be.

And I talk about this a lot. And a big part of this is also I'd focus on diversifying how we connect with customers through EBRs, QBRs, which I absolutely hate. And this was the impetus of that was saying we assume that our customers want to give us 60 minutes of their time and talk about things that they may not care about.

And so it's true to be said for everything. It's not just about the what, it's the how. And so I'll tell you, there is just a huge shift from our customers even just wanting short form video content.

They don't want long form. I don't need to be on an hour long webinar. But if you're able to give me two minute long video clips, think about it like TikTok style.

People's attention spans right now are that of a gnat. Nobody, nobody. It's like, what, what, what, what?

Everyone's just onto the next thing. Nobody is paying attention to you at all. So if you're forcing long form content, yes, for some people, they love that.

Give them slow instructional videos. Okay. But the problem is that we assume that everybody learns the same way or everyone wants to engage the same way.

And that's just not true. For me, I'm one of those gnats. I don't have an hour to pay attention to you.

But if you give me like a two minute long video with like one thing that you think is gonna be super powerful, I'm gonna watch that video and I'll go do that thing. And so if you give me three little videos a week, I've done three things. If you gave me one long video at the beginning of the week, I'll do nothing.

So you need to consider the learner. And I feel like that is a lost art on a lot of people. Everyone's learning style is different.

Everyone's bandwidth is different. Everyone, you know, prefers something the way that they prefer it. So to your point, you can survey them.

You can give them options, right? Let your customers choose their own venture, put it in front of them and say, do you want to read this thing? Do you want to experience this thing?

Right? Like short form, long form, written form, what do you choose? And let them consume things the way that they want.

I guarantee you'll have a level of engagement that you didn't anticipate.

[Stino] (13:00 - 13:14)

Yeah. But I do think that making it more feel like a win is indeed like going back to the stuff that we know, giving them options. I think that will switch the game from making it feel like a chore to making it more feel like a win.

[Kristi] (13:14 - 14:12)

And I think the other thing, I got to get one more thing. Tell them it's a win. Celebrate it that it's a win.

So here's the other thing. People want to feel successful. So if what they did was a celebrate them, send, send something, right?

Maybe send a little video like, Hey, Bob, Mary, Joe, this was amazing. Congratulations on completing your integration. It's all set up.

Now here's the five things that you couldn't do before that you can do now. I just want to celebrate you. I know you've got a lot on your plate.

Like you can create a video that has that same level of empathy and enthusiasm. And guess what? You create it once and send it out every time the thing happens.

So let's not reinvent the wheel. Also guys, please, you do not need production style video content to go send these out. Make a loom, make it on your phone.

It does not matter. We overthink some of the most basic things. Who gives a shit?

Record the video. People want to feel connected to you. They want to feel celebrated.

They want to feel acknowledged. Just produce it, send it out. It's going to be okay.

[Stino] (14:13 - 14:15)

Yeah. People are got that.

[Kristi] (14:15 - 14:18)

Stino who's next in the hopper for us?

[Stino] (14:18 - 14:26)

Carl, sorry. The R for Belgium. We have the French R on her.

Oh, I can't get that.

[Kristi] (14:26 - 14:32)

Your R is weak. You have a soft R.

[Stino] (14:33 - 15:31)

Yeah, we have the French one. We do it French style here. We got a ton of data, but struggle to turn it into actionable insights.

What's your take on using data to actually drive customer outcomes, not just report on them? That links up to indeed having, I think, all of these playbooks in your CSP and they were short all of these data, like click rates, open rates, unsubscribed rates, always linked to health scores, health scores going up, going down. I think I have to actual this problem as well, because that segment returns a lot of one product data.

Second, what are doing with your digital playbook? Like what's next? I think that is also something that we abandon quite often that we're content with the playbook being built.

And then we're like, okay, I know. What's at the end of the rainbow? It's not a pot of gold.

I can tell you that.

[Kristi] (15:31 - 15:33)

It never is. There's never gold.

[Stino] (15:34 - 15:36)

It's a last breath from Satan's mouth.

[Kristi] (15:36 - 15:40)

Let me ask you a question. How are you guys using data? Like what's the type of data that you guys are using?

[Stino] (15:42 - 17:08)

Literally, we have access to so much data that I block an entire day to dive into reporting and I'm building out reports and cranking reporting left and right. And then a week after that, I'm like, okay, I had a good idea, but how do I enter? From building out those playbooks, I keep a scorecard for me and the team and also for the leadership team with click rates, open rates, and then linking it back to people that are getting into risk because they're not doing the playbook or getting higher health scores because they're doing the playbook.

And then also link up and pulling parallels between like products, metrics, like people that are logging in are using this feature more or this feature more. And if they're using this feature more, they're also using this one as a next step. So I have this insane spreadsheet with all of the data that comes from our CSP tool, but indeed sometimes having too much data and then a month later, I'm trying to trim it down and trim it down, but I'm still outside the screen when it comes to my data.

So I'm struggling as well. This one is all you because I'm struggling here to have actionable insights. Sometimes I get it, but I'm still after a year, I can't, I still have not found the data sets that I maybe wanted.

Maybe I do, maybe I don't. I'm still struggling on that part.

[Kristi] (17:09 - 19:47)

Okay. So here is where I love the creative use case of anonymizing data and using chat GPT or any of these. So what I do to anonymize data is I replace every customer's name and any identifying information with something.

So everyone is, I replace the name with a letter or something that represents who they are so I can map it back when I get the results back. And so I anonymize the data because I don't want to be putting my customer's information into any of these systems, but I also need the insights, right? So getting that level of data and then being able to upload it into some of these tools and then just ask it thoughtful questions, right?

And then keep asking it questions and then keep asking it questions. That level of data analysis for me, because I'm not a data scientist. I like, I don't know how to like go build all these cool, crazy things in Excel.

I have to play to my strengths and that's not my strength, but I still need the answers to these things. And I have found that there is a ton of creative use cases I can use AI for, and it could be themes, it could be behaviors, right? Help me understand where our customers are falling off or like what industries aren't doing this, or if customers do this, what is the probability that they're going to go do the next thing, right?

So just whatever data you have access to, I think this is where AI can really be a big, powerful use case. I don't know to the extent of how much data it can process. I don't think that I have put any data in there that has broken the system that they're like, Oh, this is too big.

Break it down if that's the case, but I've always been able to, at least the data sets that I've ingested into these tools, anonymize, been able to ask it really creative questions. And like I said, it's not just the first question, it's the multitude of questions or it's the prompt. And so being able to just write out and honestly, you don't even need to write it anymore.

People go hit the little microphone button on the chat GPT and talk to your chat GPT. Me and Chatty had a great conversation yesterday. It's like therapy, honestly, I'm like, this is my problem.

This is what we're struggling with. Here's how you can help me. Can you help me figure this out?

And it came back with an entire plan and it made it a PDF and I sent it off to somebody and I was like, here, problem solved. Go figure it out. Use this.

So I think that's really cool power around how we can be thinking about AI because analysis paralysis, and if you don't have access to a data scientist team, which I think majority of us do not, for those of that you do, good for you. Congratulations. That's nice.

But for the rest of us that don't, I think this is where AI becomes like a super, super powerful use case.

[Stino] (19:47 - 20:19)

Yeah. I try to use AI on those spreadsheets that I've built, but I think I just got a little bit lost in prompt building where it's easy for me to build an application from scratch with Chatty. Chatty sometimes feels let me down when I try to do these analysis, but also to your point that we've mentioned in previous episodes as well, I didn't know what I was looking for.

So my prompt writing and my questions were bad. I gave it up. I gave up after two questions because the stuff that Chatty was returning to me, I was like, what?

[Kristi] (20:20 - 21:26)

Right. Right. And so this is to your point, the prompts need to be stronger.

And then the follow-up question, like you have to be able to sit with it for a while. I will tell you like sometimes it will take me like an hour or two hours because it's like the, I have a lot of questions and follow-up questions. Right.

Or it's like, no, that's not actually what I was looking for. Here's what I was actually looking for. Here's our hypothesis based on what you returned.

You have to be able to commit to this. Like you can't have a generic insert, upload the data and expect it to come back to you with all of your answers. That's not how it works.

Not yet. Anyway, it'll be mind reading soon, but right now it's not. So I think the time you spend on the prompt and then the time you're investing in the follow-up and the back and forth you have, that makes a big difference.

And then sometimes I have to come back to it, to be honest with you. Sometimes I just have to be like, you know what? We're not there yet.

My head is not there yet because we have just been in this for so long. I need to remove myself. I need to come back to you.

I'm gonna come back to you tomorrow and ask, because I will have time to process what was returned and get clarity and then come back. And like, sometimes that's what it takes.

[Stino] (21:26 - 21:54)

And I think I need to try that as well because sometimes you're so deep into it where you're like, okay, actually the answers that you're returning, I can't process them even. And that is a great point where you need to be like done. So no, indeed.

I think we answered your question Chet, GPT and having like a long therapy session and having follow-up questions. That is something that I will take away from this so much because just like you're talking to your data analyst. Right.

[Kristi] (21:54 - 22:09)

And that's exactly it. Imagine you're speaking to somebody who doesn't live in your head. You have to be able to do this.

They don't know what they don't know and they don't know what you're thinking. You could just talk to the system and it's going to come back, right? So it's the same dialogue in the back and forth that you're going to need to have.

[Stino] (22:09 - 22:12)

Awesome. So did we crack the code on digital CS?

[Kristi] (22:12 - 22:15)

Definitely not. But maybe we got like a centimeter closer.

[Stino] (22:15 - 22:40)

Yeah. We got a centimeter closer. That is maybe the thing that we got out of this episode.

Guys, thank you so much again for listening in for the, not the new thing that's called digital CS, but basically what we've been trying to do all these years. If you have any more questions, the form is as always linked in the comments and we can't wait to see you and hear you on the next episode of the Customer Success Hotline.

[VO] (22:50 - 23:08)

You've been listening to the Customer Success Hotline produced by Lifetime Value Media and a member of the Lifetime Value Media Network. Visit the show at lifetimevalue.link slash CSH for links to each episode, show notes, and instructions on how to submit your burning questions.