It’s Not So Complicated: Customer Success with Paula Haunit

Paula Haunit: Hi. My name is Paula Haunit. I currently work as the Chief of Staff and Head of Customer Success for Oradian, which is a FinTech that sells a core banking system to emerging markets banks and fintech. Prior to this, I worked as the Head of Customer Success, at Kantox, and other FinTech specialists in foreign currency risk hedging, which was recently acquired by BNP Paribas. And, and then prior to that, I worked in corporate for many years.

Spyros Tsoukalas: Welcome to the Growth Mentor Podcast, Paula. So I’m here to discuss today’s Customer Success. So, let’s start with you, maybe telling us something we might not know about customer success. What do you think?

Paula Haunit: I mean, based on my experience of what people think customer success is, Customer Success is not at all the same as customer service. That’s an entirely different approach. So I would say that upfront. And also, I would say that more and more investors and CEOs really see it as a core function to drive ARR. Because so it’s really something to think about, for founders as an approach.

Spyros Tsoukalas: Okay, that’s really interesting. So, what is really meant when we say customer success? Would you elaborate on that?

Paula Haunit: Sure. So I’ll let me put it this way, a customer success manager is really, let’s say, a customer’s strategic partner in the business, right? So, the role is really to make the customer successful with the solution. So what’s the product, but in a really, in a broader sense, so what’s important is to kind of really understand and design the customers end to end customer journey with the product, and then guide them through it and make sure you know, what are the key goal product adoption, I would say is probably the key goal. And what’s really important also in this area, is to have a strong curiosity about the customers, overall strategic goals, and going a little bit beyond the very narrow focus of the product, or the solution that you’re going to use, you’ve sold them. So in that sense, I guess the classic model before Customer Success kind of was born and developed as a profession related to talking about account management. And just in the way that account management is something, just the wording is very kind of from the cap from the company’s perspective, right from, let’s say, you’re selling software, from your perspective, customer success manager is something where you really make it about the customer. And that really kind of, in a nutshell, describes the philosophy of customer success, as opposed to account management.

Spyros Tsoukalas: And if we focus our discussion around startups, are there any reasons why customer success is important for startups?

Paula Haunit: I think it’s particularly important in models where you have basically a subscription revenue model and your commercial model depends on customers staying with you and renewing every year or whatever the subscription period may be. And that’s especially important for those types of businesses, of course, that have, let’s say, a long sales cycle, where the acquisition cost is relatively high, because then of course, to get your money’s worth out of that customer, you need them to stay with you for as long as possible. And that’s why it’s important.

Spyros Tsoukalas: And are there any priorities that customer success managers should be focusing on? I mean, it could be different from time to time, but like, according to what you have seen?

Paula Haunit: I think, yeah, I would say I would highlight two points that I already alluded to. And so exactly what you do in customer success, how you staff it, and then exactly where you’re operating models will depend a little bit on your product and also your stage, right? But in any case, what’s really important is to map out and understand the customer journey and to enjoy and put yourself in the customer’s shoes. So really understand how are they onboarding. How are they then starting to really adopt the product? What’s the nature of the interaction with a customer service department? What what does this all feel like to them? Right? So, the end-to-end customer journey is something that’s a really good place to start. And the other thing that’s a priority that I mentioned is, really understanding your customer’s goals. So, I had a good experience when I was a customer. And I was, some months ago, I was speaking to my customer success manager at Zendesk. And they basically wanted to know everything about me, my goals in the company, what are my pain points, the department I lead all my different responsibilities. And that when that conversation went well beyond the use of Zendesk, but I think it was really clever approach and understanding my kind of psychology and my goals and discovering new opportunities to help me as the customer. The follow-through after that was a little bit sore. But the approach was something that I really, really liked.

Spyros Tsoukala: So, thanks for sharing all those details. This was a really understandable example. So let’s say that we are starting up and we want to get started with customer success. So how do we get started with this new domain, this new function, or company?

Paula Haunit: One thing, I will just share from my own experience, some years ago, I thought, oh, it’s all about, you know, setting up really repeatable processes fast and scaling fast. And here, I’ve really changed my mind a little bit. You don’t need to scale fast. This is a deep value type function and first, you need to find out what it is that you want to be scaling before you scan it. So, so I would say, step by step, get someone in, or if it’s if the co-founder is still involved in this the way you should approach it’s just kind of start small and get 3d kind of under the customer’s skin and really understand the different phases of the customer engagement that I mentioned. So the handover from the sales, sales team, or sales process? How do they onboard? How do they experience that, who’s champion, like, who’s actually going to educate, the rest of the people in your customers’ organization about the use of your product, so map out, but the customer journey, in terms of how you want that to look, and then and then validate that with the customer. And really, it’s very high touch. So don’t even think about scaling until much, much later. Make it really high touch, and really jot down the customer’s goals, and then think about how you can support them in that, but also map out a little bit of a, let’s say informal account plan. So what do you want to achieve with that customer? Right? And that’s when you have nothing there on the page, and you don’t know where to start. I mean, of course, you want them to renew, right? So it’s that, let’s say with the end in mind, you want them to renew and put that down as your milestone, and then think about, okay, what is it that needs to happen, so that customer will be renewing, and then work your way backward, right? Like, so what are the kinds of positive experiences that I need to deliver, to that customer? So training, for example? What else like do I need to look into, how are they experiencing service offerings? Do they really understand the product? How often are they using it? So really kind of make a bit of a, let’s say, mini account plan, success plan that mentions kind of milestones that are necessary for the customer to have a really good experience and to want to renew with you? And that’s basically I think, a good starting point.

Spyros Tsoukalas: Is there any example like solid? Could you describe a full example of how a customer success team or manager would like, to help the customer along the journey? Do you have an example in mind?

Paula Haunit: So first of all, what’s really, really important is, let’s say the handoff, from whoever does this sale, to whoever does onboarding, how’s that the customer success manager or like a technical onboarding implementation specialist, or another role, depending on the product. So the customer needs to feel like, it’s entirely seamless, right? So they don’t want to spend six months telling a salesperson about all their pain points and goals, and blah, blah, blah, and then come to the relationship with another person feeling like they need to repeat everything. So internally, this is something that’s really kind of a real sort of basic component of starting a customer journey very, very successfully. Then, needless to say, you want to have a good implementation process, whatever that might look like for your product. But I would say what’s true for all products, really think about kind of training and adoption, right? So what kind of training does the customer need in order to successfully adopt the product and that might also involve training the trainer. You will have a couple of counterparts, usually in your customer organization, and you want them to be really good champions of your product or solution than internally. So I think that’s really important. And then once kind of fully onboarded, that’s not I mean, I started this by saying, Customer Success is not customer service. But of course, the customer success manager needs to be aware of the experiences of the customer, with the service team, so that needs to be monitored. So of course you know, that is a really important part of customer success. And then, what’s really important is to just make sure your customer talks to you and you talk to the customer. It actually sounds very basic. But if you ask customer success managers, that’s actually a perennial struggle, just making sure that you know, your customer wants to talk to you, maybe once a quarter or something like this, and then, you know, do a business review. And if you’re starting out, that was something like, this is what we’ve delivered to you, this was your usage of the product, you always want to be able to talk about the value that you’re bringing, right? So that’s kind of what the center is centered around. And then at something around kind of the milestones that I mentioned a few minutes ago. So, what is it that they want to achieve? And how can we support them in it? So really good internal handover, mapping out a little bit of the customer journey from end to end, having a good service offering, and then ensuring you have like a strategic touch point with your customers, ideally, about once a quarter.

Spyros Tsoukalas: This was more than I expected, from how you described yourself, it will say a few touchpoints here and there. So, what are the major differences? Because we’re talking about startups, what are the major differences between customer success in the early stage in the later stage? Did you start earlier? But like, what are the major differences? What would they be?

Paula Haunit: Well, I think in the early stage, first of all, you need to figure out actually what works, customer success it’s like a modular, think of it as building blocks, right? But exactly what these building blocks look like, for your startup, when you add the stage, that will be different, and you for each company, depending on your product, depending on your customer, depending on the types of stakeholders that are involved in the purchase decision. So, what’s different is that initially, you need to actually first define what you want that approach to be. And then you need to iterate a little bit. Whereas if you’re later stage presumably, you already know how your customers perceive you, you know very well what your market is, you should have nailed product market fit, you know, what you are good at, and what works. So clearly, you will have much more kind of repeatable scale processes, maybe you will already be using Customer Success technology. I would say early stage, that’s not so necessary, like, don’t think about buying a customer success platform. In the early days, for example, it’s not necessary, use to be really low-tech, and iterate and kind of find out what works. And then and then scale and think about tech.

Spyros Tsoukalas: And given this pipeline of functions that are related to the journey of a customer, how does a customer success team or department or manager interact with the rest of the company?

Paula Haunit: I used to tell candidates who are applying for Customer Success roles. But I truly mean that customer success, ideally, really sits at the heart of an organization, you know, of a tech company. And that’s very, very true because you will be the voice of the customer in the organization. And you will also be the face of the organization to the customer. And as such, you’ll be basically interacting with every other department in the company, right? So you’ll be interacting with sales, because they’ll be handing over to you. If that’s a separate implementation onboarding team depending on the product, you may or may not have that, then that’s obviously a stakeholder. You should be talking to the product team often, because they will want the feedback that you’re getting, from customers. You’ll be talking to the tech team because you’ll know what kind of problems the customer face. And then yeah, if you had a more sort of, let’s say, senior level, you’ll have a big impact on the company’s commercial strategy. So, it’s a department that should be in close touch with each everyone else.

Spyros Tsoukalas: And the last question for the day. What’s the role of technology in all this?

Paula Haunit: Yeah, so I hinted at it a moment ago. Technologies were really important, but it really depends on where you’re at and your customer and setting up customer success. So, once you have a general idea of how the operating model looks like, the customer journey, and what repeatable activities you want to take your customer through at that point, it can be an interesting idea to think about it as sort of a customer success platform. So, the one Gainsight to Tango, those sorts of organizations, some of them are really expensive, some of them are more affordable. And the nice thing about that is that it’s not only made for customer success, but these guys are also really good at customer success. So they can give you a lot of ideas. I would say though, in the early days, that’s not at all necessary, you can use something different, I think you can even you know, if you really starting out, just make sure you’ve got everything documented in a central place. I mean, that’s as basic as I would say it, the key is that you have to have everything to do with the customer in one place. And that sounds so basic, but I’ve seen this now in various organizations that it actually can be quite a big challenge. So, that’s the thing, that’s really key. And then the early days that can be something you know, I mean, can be any CRM can be something even more simple. So, technology is important, it shouldn’t kind of drive what you’re doing. It should just be like making whatever principles you’re applying. So for example, what I just said, having everything in one place, but a customer and not knowledge distributed across the organization. If technology makes it easier for you, for sure, then you should use it but it’s not the be-all and end-all and then.

Spyros Tsoukalas: Paula, thanks a ton for being here today to share your insights on customer success. And I hope that those who listen to this episode will learn as many things as I did today.

Paula Haunit: Great, you’re welcome.