Customer success best practices and methodologies

NOTE: The following transcript has been edited for clarity and content where necessary to improve readability.

Andrew Marks: Hey, everybody. Welcome to the CSM Mastermind, our last one for 2021. My name's Andrew Marks. I'm the co-founder of SuccessHACKER and our SuccessCOACHING training program. We're back for our monthly live webcast today, talking about Customer Success etiquette. This free earning event is brought to you by SuccessCOACHING, the global leader in Customer Success professional development training. Now, with more than 10,000 students globally.

Our virtual 3-Day intensive bootcamps run monthly. Our 12-week live coaching cohorts start up again in February. and are now being delivered under the University of San Francisco School of Business. We're super excited about that partnership. We have an accredited online CSM certification program, growing number of standalone courses, all taught by industry experts. You can find out more at successcoaching.co about our training programs. Ashli will drop a link into the chat right now.

For those of you new to this series, this is a live and unscripted discussion where we dig into a single topic that is relevant to Customer Success. This opening is the only scripted element of the webinar. Everything else is a free-flowing exchange of information, ideas, stories, examples, and best practices. We aim to pick topics that are going to be practical and useful to the broader Customer Success community. So I encourage you to suggest topics or panelists for these events. We have come up with our 2022 topics. And if you'd like to participate as a panelist, Ashli is going to drop a link in chat again, where you can express your interest.

The schedule for our upcoming events can also be found at successcoaching.co. Click on the Events tab at the top of the page to find out more. As always, we'll post a replay of this webinar, along with a transcription on our website early next week.

Now, there's a lot of thought leadership out there along with a lot of theories about how to deliver Customer Success. The Mastermind series allows us to focus on the practical and give you real-world advice, best practices, techniques, shared experiences from those out in the wild, practicing Customer Success on a daily basis. To do that, we invite three panelists to join me for a roundtable discussion. These are people who are great at their craft, and we ask them to share their experiences and their perspectives.

Now, this learning event is for you. And we will be taking questions, so get ready to use that Q&A functionality at the bottom of your Zoom window to ask or upvote a question. We're also broadcasting on LinkedIn Live and monitoring that thread. So any questions posted will be relayed to us as well. Also, please remember to use chat for commentary, not for questions.

Now, without further ado, I like our panelists to introduce themselves to y'all, talk a bit about who they are and what they do. So let's get started as usual in alphabetical order with Courtney.

Courtney Larisey: Hello, hello. So happy to be here. Thank you for having me, Andrew. My name's Courtney Larisey. I am a Customer Success Manager with Pendo. I'm actually coming to live from our User Conference, which we did in person. So hopefully, you can hear me okay. And maybe we'll get into that as a piece of etiquette that I may have messed up on. So hopefully, I'm not starting that way.

I have been in Customer Success for several years. I started in Sales, although I think the type of sale was always Customer Success. So I learned consultative selling. That's more of my style anyways. So I feel like I've been doing this for a number of years, that I don't want to tell you because then you'll know how old I am. But I work with Pendo. We work with product teams and we also work with CS teams. We're all about trying to improve the customer experience by understanding how your users are using your customer platform. So, looking forward to getting into it with everyone. Thanks again for having me.

Andrew Marks: Awesome. Thanks, Courtney.

Courtney Larisey: Oh, and I'm based in London.

Andrew Marks: Yeah, it's based in London, and so it's late for you. So we very much appreciate you making time, especially during Pendomonium. And we're huge fans of Pendo, so I appreciate you making the time. Awesome. Jeremy, you're up.

Jeremy Donaldson: Hey, everybody. I'm actually calling in live from Charlie Brown's living room, by the way, in case you didn't notice. But yes, Jeremy Donaldson. I actually just recently made a move. I joined to Totango last week. I'm on day eight. So I'm a team lead for their small enterprise Customer Success group. So I'm still learning a lot, but I've spent the last seven or so years in various CS roles from renewals, to Customer Success Management, to major accounts, and digital segment. So, super passionate. If there was one, we'll call it, blessing of COVID is it really allowed me to tap into things that I'm really excited about and want to share with others. So I'm very active in this CS community. And I also serve on the board with Gain Grow Retain. So it's been a wild ride the last almost two years of being a part of this, but I couldn't see myself doing anything else.

And on a personal note, they won't be crashing the party today, because they're all taking naps, but I do have three kids, a four-year-old, a two-year-old and a seven-and-a-half-month-old. So when I'm not doing anything Customer Success, they are my customers within my house. So thanks for having me, Andrew. And I'm really looking forward to the discussion today.

Andrew Marks: That's the right way to approach it, Jeremy. Congrats on the new role. And yes, thank you for your contribution to the community. And you know we're huge fans of Gain Grow Retain as well. Definitely one of our closest partnerships. So thanks for making the time. And finally, Jon, from sunny southern California.

Jon Johnson: Sunny southern California, yeah. And based on that introduction, Jeremy, sounds like you're successful with your customers if they're napping right now. I can't get mine to sleep to save my life.

Andrew Marks: I am so far past that, so thank God.

Jon Johnson: I love it. You're you miss it though, don't you, Andrew?

Andrew Marks: Not at all. Not at all.

Jon Johnson: My name is Jon Jonson. I actually had a customer this week asked me if my name was real. It was great because they thought it was coming from a fake spam account. So that's always a fun way to start the week off. But I work currently for PayPal under a sub-brand recent acquisition called Happy Returns. I've been in Customer Success for 10 or 11 years. My first business was music. I actually transitioned out of a career in music, into working with customers. And I haven't looked back since.

I think the thing that I love the most about what we do is the ability to connect across the entire world. Courtney's in Europe right now with technology, with these tools that solve incredible problems. And we get to work with passionate believers in our technology. And we get to build those relationships and find that energy. I think those are some of my favorite moments is when you, when you get that switch of, "Hey, I bought your service, but now I love your service." We all get to do that in various factors and various segments. It's what gets me up in the morning. It's what's kept me in this industry. Was that all of it?

Andrew Marks: No, yeah, no, that's awesome. That's awesome. I feel the same way, man. I feel the same way. There's something incredibly rewarding about people getting value from what you have to offer. It's just personally. It's not about the financial reward. I'm talking about the personal reward. That personal satisfaction that you get from helping people move the needle. So, no, I totally get it.

But Jon, I think I love the lapse back into your singing career, your musical career at our party that we threw with GGR and ClientSuccess during SaaStr. Thank you for breaking out the guitar and playing some tunes.

Jon Johnson: Yeah, it was great. We actually have another event with ClientSuccess coming up in February. So you want more CS and then the emotional guy with an acoustic guitar singing in the corner, stay tuned.

Andrew Marks: Are you going to be in Sundance?

Jon Johnson: I am.

Andrew Marks: All right. Awesome. We're there. We're platinum sponsors. We're there.

Jon Johnson: I love it. Yeah.

Andrew Marks: Awesome. All right. Well, look at that. Everybody's learning something. All right. Once again, we appreciate your time today. Let's get to the topic.

We talk regularly about how important it is to employ the empathy component of our EQ. Well, the social skills component is just as essential in any customer-facing role. The message, the tone, the content, the delivery should always be thoughtful, refined, optimized to deliver the best possible customer reception and experience.

In addition, understanding the proper etiquette and how to approach customer conversations will help you provide positive interactions and elevate that trusting relationship that we all want to achieve with our customers. So let's talk about etiquette. For example, one of my hot buttons is using your personal Zoom Room as a customer meeting room, right? Have you ever had a situation where you've dialed in, you found out this is the personal meeting room, and you get on and there's something happening?

Jon Johnson: Andrew, honestly, this has actually happened recently. I was interviewing and I jumped on another Zoom interview. And it was the most awkward, like, "Oh, oh, we'll be with you in a moment." And it's like, "Well, I know who the competition is." It helped me because I did some research on their LinkedIn. So it was pretty great. But it's so awkward. You have no idea, right? How many times have you jumped on a meeting, and there's another customer, there and you just don't know what to do. It's so awkward.

Andrew Marks: Actually, taking that a step further, for Zoom etiquette, for example, you should be showing up early, right? Which means that you are making that time, that controlling your calendar, controlling your schedule, so that you can show up early to these meetings. Especially, I mean, every customer meeting, you need to figure out how you show up at least five minutes early, right? It's bad enough if you're disrespecting your peers within your organization and showing up to their meetings late, but sometimes stuff happens. But you have to architect for that.

Jon Johnson: Yeah. And I think that speaks to the theme. When we were talking about this in general, I always try to think of, what's the one general theme that I believe about this topic? And for etiquette, it's into intentionality. You have to ... It doesn't just happen. And you're right. Making space for these transitions, from one meeting to the next. Just like you need to make space for taking notes after your meetings. But making sure that every single customer throughout your entire day, no matter how busy, feels like you are there for them. They're not being rushed out of one meeting into the next, and then, "Oh my gosh, I got to hurry, and hustle, and go to the next one."

That actually shows a pretty poor time-management skill on a CSM if that's the vibe that customers are getting. We can do so much better. I'd actually love to hear any other thoughts from Jeremy and Courtney on this as well.

Courtney Larisey: I mean, I think a lot of this, and Stella has noted in the chat, we can use products to help us with this, right? That's a Zoom setting. That shouldn't happen. There's a lot of tools that we have at our disposal to help prevent that. So I think that's a nice start on those types of things. But I think you're right, Jon. It's also coming at it from a bigger ... Having some intention around how you want to present yourself, present your company, meet with your customers. And then, I think that's a big piece of it too, is really ... I think a lot of it has to be meeting your customer where they are. So matching their communication style. If you can do that, I think that's the best way to have a good sense of etiquette and communication with the customer.

Andrew Marks: I love that, the matching the communication style. I have a client who's a Chief Customer Officer. And I discovered early on in our relationship that I could email her, I could call her. I would get a response at some point, but I knew that if I texted her, I would get a near immediate response. She would be responding to texts to me. If she's listening, she knows exactly who this is. She knows exactly who I'm talking about. But she would be responding text me during board meetings. She was feeling the B-O-R-E-D of the board meeting. Jeremy, what do you think, what do you have to add to this?

Jeremy Donaldson: Yeah. I love the idea of matching, right? And I think maybe I grew up a little old school in business, right? If your customer shows up in a T-shirt, show up in a polo. Have that kind of sense to of one above, right? That's just my mentality that I go through this, but how many ... I was going to say listening to all of this, that one of my biggest pet peeves ... And I'm a guilty of this at time, right? I'm crucifying myself a little bit here ... is, how many meetings have you walked into where somebody drops 30 minutes on your calendar and gives no purpose? And gives you no heads-up of what the meeting's about. They just want to meet with you.

And then, you get 10 minutes into the meeting, and they drop a bomb on you and say, "Hey, we need to talk about this." And I'm like, "You could have prepared. I could have come prepared to talk to this. We need more than 30 minutes of conversation," right? And around that expectation management, it's probably the one thing that I consistently see over and over again is, people are very free willing about setting up meetings. But oftentimes, don't give a lot of context to what they want to meet about.

And so therefore, I have the wrong expectation of what they want to talk about. And then, we end up 30 minutes into a meeting having wasted that time. And then, have to come back again later in the week or the next week to iron out what we missed. So that's probably my biggest pet peeve is, if you're going to schedule time with me, I don't care if we run long. Although I like to manage my time, I do want to know what you want to talk about so that I can come prepared for it.

Andrew Marks: Well, two best practices for that are, number one, to always set an agenda yourself for every single meeting, with a purpose, right? That's something that you have to be in the habit of doing. And number two, decline all those meeting requests until they provide that.

Jon Johnson: Yes. I'm a big proponent ... I'm aggressive. If I get a meeting from somebody and I ask, "Hey, let me know." I won't just blind decline things. But if something comes in and there's no agenda, "Hey, let me know what this is about." And I'll set tentative, "Yeah, I'm going to come, but I need you to let me know." And if they don't respond, if there isn't any importance. And if there isn't anything in the back of my mind as the CSM knowing, "Oh, this is actually a red flag. This is what we're dealing with, with this customer." If there's no context, it's very hard to have those meaningful moments.

But I actually wanted to challenge that a little bit, Jeremy, because I do think that there is a balance, right? When you're new. When you have new accounts and you don't really know your customers, I feel like we got to set boundaries. We got to teach and train our customers how to communicate best with our brand. How do they get the best out of, not just me, but my team and the organization that I'm representing?

As you go two, three years down in the relationship, that's a very different etiquette. And I'd love to hear some conversations around that. Man, day one, it's like, rigid, regiment. I need the agenda. Show up on time, match, all that kind of stuff that is so incredibly valid and valuable. But once you are the trusted advisor, I think that's when it gets fun, right? And that's when you can really explore, and test, and figure these things out. Courtney has an opinion, I can tell.

Courtney Larisey: Totally. We talked a lot about this previously. With a lot of my customers, I do feel like I'm at that level now, which is wonderful. We have a relationship over a few years. And at this point, if I came on with a very tight agenda, that would be abrasive to them. They're like, "Whoa-"

Jon Johnson: "What's going on?"

Courtney Larisey: "... are you mad at us?" So I do think it's ... But as we discussed, I couldn't do that right at the beginning. And I couldn't do that in a business review. I wouldn't show up in business review and just be so casual. So I guess maybe there's a time and place. And I think a lot of this always comes down to the audience too. So yeah. If I know some customers would try, I probably would.

Andrew Marks: The whole point of this is, let's put a stake in the ground on how you should be thinking about this. How you should be approaching this. But of course, just like everything else, your delivery is going to adjust as your relationship adjusts. The way I dealt with Wells Fargo at the beginning of my relationship with Charles Schwab, the beginning of my relationship, very different than when we were parting ways, right? We had established this rhythm. We knew each other, right? But this is part of getting to know each other.

Jon Johnson: That's good. How do you do that? How do you get to know your customers? Even on those new ones, when we're sitting in Zoom calls now, we get to see the pictures on their back wall. We get to see all of these different things that we didn't used to see when we'd just sit in a conference room or an office when we're meeting in person. What are some of the things that you do? And legitimately, etiquette-wise, without going too far or too less, to build that with your customers.

Andrew Marks: One, the things that I did actually was something that I started when I would walk into their office. The first thing I would do every time I'd walk in somebody's office, a new customer, is, I'd scan the room. What am I seeing on the wall. Oh, hey, this person is clearly into golf. He's got the golf successories posters and he's got clubs in the corner. "Oh, hey, I'm going to jump into asking some open-ended questions, practicing some active listening, talking about golf." And we talked about golf for 45 minutes of the hour that we had together. And then, 15 minutes we talked about business, and the deal was done.

Jon Johnson: That's good.

Courtney Larisey: And I think now, we have so many resources. You check their LinkedIn profile out before you get on with them. You should know those basics. And that's going to tell you, oh, you went to college in California or whatever. There's always something that you could pull in, again, to just start that conversation. And then, you read them as you start just having a open conversation and relating.

Andrew Marks: Yeah, know your customer. That's great etiquette as well. It demonstrates a level of respect. I respect you enough right out of the gate to actually do a little research.

Jeremy Donaldson: Yeah. And I would add to what Courtney says on the research piece too, right? Leading by example, right? We should be the one setting the tone for the conversation. Not that we shouldn't be very active in listening, right? Once we set the tone, we need to step back and let the customer speak about what's important to them. But setting the tone, right? If we want the customer to be more open, then we have to be more open about who it is that we are. How do we operate? What do we like? What's going on in our worlds, in our life? That's why I shared, not just professionally, what I do at the start of the call, but what's going on in my world, right? What is happening when I turn this camera off and I walk out of my office, right? What's the world that I'm walking into?

So if I want to know Jon, or Courtney, or Andrew better about what's going on, I've got to be willing to be vulnerable and share part of my background. And find the balance of what's appropriate and what's not, because there are things that do cross the line. And once you cross that line, it's really hard to get that back. But there are basic stuff that say ... That's why called out my Charlie Brown Christmas tree back here, because I'm a big Peanuts fan, and grew up with that.

So from that regard, thinking about how can you weave little things that you get excited about into the conversation based on that research nugget that Courtney shared. And how can you marry the two of those things together to really blossom that conversation, because once they owe open up, Andrew, to your point, they'll be much more willing to talk about anything. Even difficult things that they may not know the answers to.

Andrew Marks: It's that search for achieving that trust, the trusted advisor status that we're always seeking out in our customers to whatever degree that makes sense. For somebody to trust you, they need to understand you. Need to understand that personal side a bit too.

Jon Johnson: Yeah. And I think one of the things ... I do this with work, if they're talking about milestones or any big products business-wise. My notes are my lifesaver. Keeping notes of what's coming down the pipeline. I do the same thing with personal stuff. If there's something they're like, "Oh, me and the wife are going on vacation to Hawaii in a month." So that when they get back, I'm setting my calendar so that I look ahead. And I say, "Well, this customer's out in six weeks. So let's look ahead so that we can actually reschedule these things." But also, when they come home, I want to hear all about that trip. I want to know how it impacted their mental health, and what the weather was like, as boring that may sound. But those are the types of things.

And it does something psychologically. If somebody says something, "Hey, I'm doing this." And then six, eight weeks later, maybe you haven't seen me. Maybe this is our bi-monthly sync. And I'm on the call. And I go, "Mike, how was Hawaii? You just got back." "Oh my gosh, I lost my baggage." It opens up and it builds such a level of trust that this person, while we are taking notes and that might water it down a little bit, you're still wanting to have a meaningful conversation. And you want to make them feel like you value, not just the key strokes in their email, but also the way that they view the world, because that is how we get really in depth with our customers.

Andrew Marks: Well, you're practicing active listening, right? You're you're demonstrating that you heard what they had to say and you're repeating it back to them. Even though it's six weeks later, they're like, "Oh, wow. Jon remembered. That's cool. Yeah. I want to talk about my vacation." Hopefully it's not about getting bags lost. It's about something fun and positive, right? But that's a great practice, right? I also recommend you're writing down if they mention their kids' names. I've had a couple of sharp CSMs ask me in follow-up calls, about my daughter and her soccer. What she's doing with soccer this year, and those types of those little things can help. You establish that connection with someone. That's awesome.

What are some other best practices? They don't need be Zoom or what have you, I mean, we talked about a bunch of things. What other things come to mind?

Jon Johnson: I mean, I think, for me, especially with this digital world, I'm often sitting on meetings with five or six people. And maybe there's somebody who doesn't have a camera on and you don't know who they are. I'm such a big fan of just the introductions, but also the roles. What do they do? How do they interface with whatever we're working on? So I spend a good amount of time, on almost every meeting, making sure that if there's people in the room, everybody knows who this person is. So that questions don't just come out of left field, like, "I don't know why this ... Who is this guy? He's asking me questions. I've never met him before." And that also helps with updating records in Salesforce. I'm such a clean freak when it comes to data, that as soon as a new name is, I want it added to our Salesforce record, or Catalyst, or Gainsight or however you're managing your customers. Names and roles, while it's nice on the Zoom call so that people know where they're at, there are so much data that can be used for that, for your contacts.

Andrew Marks: You mentioned cameras, right? Cameras on versus cameras off. So let's talk about that. I think, even if you've got a customer who refuses to turn their camera on, you need to be on every time.

Jon Johnson: I agree with you, Andrew.

Andrew Marks: Unless you have some sort of connectivity issue, you need to have camera on. You need to be dressed and prepared for being camera on. And encourage others to turn their cameras on.

Courtney Larisey: I go back and forth on this. Okay. Yes. I think that we should have cameras on-

Jon Johnson: Challenge us.

Courtney Larisey: ... because if they turn their cameras off, I go to my point of meeting them where they are. And so then, I just feel awkward being the only one on camera. So if they're off, then I go off. Maybe they've been on Zoom calls all day and we could just be talking.

Andrew Marks: Well, wait a minute. Now, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Are you truly respecting or are you just looking for an opportunity to turn your camera off? I'm going to challenge you on that one.

Jon Johnson: I want an honest answer.

Courtney Larisey: If they're, on, I'm on.

Andrew Marks: Whether you are on or off, how does that affect them?

Jeremy Donaldson: I would add to Courtney's thing too, right? Depending on the industry that you work with, I think also lends into that, the camera-on, camera-off piece. I came from cybersecurity. Nobody in cybersecurity wants their camera on. Nobody. So it's one of those things where it is meeting them where they're at, but that's literally what all of my customers did. It's not because they don't want to interact with you. They're just semi-paranoid people about their privacy on the internet. So it's one of the things where, as I'm working with Customer Success professionals now, I anticipate a lot more people being on camera and that being a normal part of my life. But when you're working with people in different parts of the business that just don't want to do that, at some point, you can fight it or you can just go with what's going on there.

But I would say for me, the one thing that I do ask, for cameras on when you're doing executive business reviews, program reviews. And it's usually when we're doing introductions. I say, "Hey, come on. Do introductions. If, after introductions, you want to turn your camera off, that's fine. I'm not going to have you on for 30, 60, 90 minutes and have to have your camera on the whole time. But when we are meeting new people, I'd like you to meet them, see them face to face. I'd like to meet you and see you face to face. Since we can't be in the room together." I haven't gotten a lot of pushback on when asking it in that context.

Jon Johnson: Jeremy, that's awesome. I'm taking notes on that.

Andrew Marks: Hopefully, if you do it well, the next time, they're more apt to turn the camera on and leave it on for the entire meeting, right?

Jon Johnson: Yeah. Well, I learned this from Andrew actually, just in emails, and prep, and in agenda. Saying, "Hey, I'm going to have my camera on, so that you guys can see me. No pressure to put it on, but the importance of it for me, this is why I do it is so that you can tell that I'm paying attention. That you know that I'm here with you, for you." And I'm a big fan of looking at the growth. And if the first six months of your relationship, they don't have their camera on, part of that EQ of a Customer Success Manager and that health score should be, you know what? Four months in, and they have their camera on and they're engaged. And they're listening.

Andrew Marks: Great ... I like that.

Jon Johnson: And you're seeing that. And you're using that as a metric of however you build your health scores. But that shows engagement. And that shows trust and growth. And yeah, maybe they're concerned at the beginning. But then, you know what? It's getting a better relationship. And it's just a trigger point for me to say, relationships is changing. And what is the reason for that? And that's how I feed into that health score.

Andrew Marks: I love that. I love using the camera on as a metric. "Hey, the camera's finally on. Awesome."

Jon Johnson: Yay. Or, "Oh my God, turn it off."

Andrew Marks: Right? The relationship health is improving, right? How often is the camera on?

Jon Johnson: But if you have babies, and cats, and dogs, we all want to see those. That is not a reason to turn the camera off. We all love it.

Andrew Marks: Actually, I look at that as just having stuff behind you, getting people to ask. I mean, it humanizes you. I don't necessarily even like the blur thing. I want to be able to see. I mean, before we moved into this place, people would see all the sports memorabilia on my walls when I had conversations. And that led to so many openings in these ... Exactly what you wanted to do is that small talk about something other than business that gets you to connect with someone.

Oh, there you go. Look at Courtney.

Jeremy Donaldson: Courtney felt convicted by what we were talking about.

Courtney Larisey: Made me feel guilty.

Jon Johnson: Oh my gosh.

Courtney Larisey: I'm in a phone booth, a literal phone booth in this conference area.

Andrew Marks: Oh, that's awesome, you got a phone booth. That's cool. Look at you.

Jon Johnson: Good old London.

Courtney Larisey: When I had it off, people were walking by.

Jeremy Donaldson: Agatha called it out. Very TARDIS.

Andrew Marks: Very TARDIS.

Jeremy Donaldson: That's awesome.

Andrew Marks: Anybody else want to jump in on either a best practice that you've been thinking about since we've been talking or an experience that taught you more about etiquette before we start taking some questions?

Jeremy Donaldson: This is a really minor comment about on the camera piece. And this will be my closing comment, is, I was not a big believer in ring lights prior to being virtual. But after one too many meetings where either I look like I'm a masked individual on a call. Or I've been on a meeting and you can't see their face. You know they're there. You see the outline, right? It's like straight out of a CSI scene, right? I'm a big proponent. If you're going to be on camera, you're going to make the investment into it. Either get a camera, that's got a built-in light into it, or buy better lighting, or move your desk so that they can see your face. It's a really minor thing, but it goes a long way. So people don't have to guess if you have facial hair, you're bald, right?

Jon Johnson: I think you're right.

Andrew Marks: You need to have a good mic too, either built in to the camera, or ... I mean, you don't have to go this fancy, this is what I do for a living. But you should have a good mic because it's just as good etiquette to allow people to actually hear what you have to say.

Jon Johnson: Well, I'm with you on that, setting the stage. I'm an artist as well. There's a guy in the chat, Francis, who does filmmaking or something. And it's like, I love finding people that do things outside of work and then how they apply it to work. And you get in and you ... I'm in a garage right now because we're moving. But I had like three different lights with a key light in the back, and then you have the microphone, and then you have to stand. And I spend so much time on it. And people always comment. They remark on it. It's like, "Oh, your audio sound, I can hear you clearly," or, "I can see the depth," or whatever it is. And people care. They like it when people care about what they're doing. And I think that's one way that we can put our best foot forward in a digital way is to say, "You're going to be staring at my face. And you probably have Zoom fatigue from squinting at dark rooms and trying to turn up the mics. Let's make it easier on you."

Courtney Larisey: Yeah. I mean, at this point it just should be part of your office equipment. You get your laptop and you get your light. We're all on Zoom enough. You could see, I even brought mine to the conference there.

Andrew Marks: Oh, you do you.

Courtney Larisey: I try every time.

Andrew Marks: I love that. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. All my stuff is still boxed up. But the plan for the barn is to build out an actual studio because people are seeing me a lot on video. And you might as well make it as nice of an experience as possible. But it doesn't require a studio, to your point. Just even a simple ring light. Whatever it takes. Whatever it takes. All right. Cool. So, let's-

Courtney Larisey: Wait, can I air my grievances?

Andrew Marks: Oh yes. Air your grievance, Courtney, and then we'll jump into questions. Please. Is it Festivus? Is it Festivus?

Courtney Larisey: Yep.

Jon Johnson: It is. The airing of grievances.

Andrew Marks: There you go. All right? The airing of grievances.

Jon Johnson: Everybody gather around the Festivus pole.

Courtney Larisey: Okay. So mine is all about, well, working internationally. I moved from our San Francisco office to London. And a lot of things start coming up with that. When you have a distributed team, which a lot of us do. Globally distributed teams, globally distributed customers. And my biggest pet peeve is when people send an email and they make them convert the time zone. Your recipient should get your request in the time zone that they live in. Don't make them do the calculation.

And then, also put the dates. So the date format, 6/7/21. Is that July 6th or is that June 7th? Depends on who you're talking to. Unless you just say June 6th or 6 June. And was a big deal that came up for me. We had a customer that was ... It just kind of elevated. They had a big problem that we were working to solve for a long time. Our engineers developed a great solution for them. Wrote up a white paper. It was amazing. We're so excited to send it to them. This was in December. So I think it was dated 12/3. So I sent it to it and I'm like, "Yes, we're going to turn them around. This is so exciting." And two days later, I get an angry email. "How could you have held this from me since March?" That hurt my relationship, actually, just that little piece. And I didn't catch it either. I should have caught it. But that is etiquette and how a very small thing can actually be a big deal.

Andrew Marks: Yeah. It's a good learning moment there for you and for everybody else. Be cognizant of who you're dealing with wherever they are in the world.

Jon Johnson: Yeah. Folks have brought up matching in the chat quite a few times. It seems so easy, but it's one of the hardest things to do, because you're right. We have customers all over the world, and culture, and communication. The way that you write the date is different. That's probably the hardest part. There's a lot of tools that make that easier, right? And I'm a big fan of setting time zones and stuff like that. But what do you do? Courtney, specifically, when you're dealing with a French customer who has a person in the US that has to be on the meeting at the same time. And how are you navigating, and communicating, and aligning things in a way that makes sense for everybody?

Courtney Larisey: Well, I think then you give their time zone, and then you give the next person's time zone. And you give it in the format that they understand. So that might be, whatever the time zone is...

Jon Johnson: Jon, look at this one. Courtney, look at this one.

Courtney Larisey: ... slash, whatever that would be. Probably 8:00 AM, California. If the French person is the stakeholder, then also write California, because they might not know what PST means or PDT.

Jeremy Donaldson: Yeah. I was going to even add too, if you think about working with APAC customers, using UTC, right? I just got into the habit, anybody that was west of the United States, I just did UTC plus whatever in the email, which is not normal, especially North America. Nobody uses UTC in North America. But if you do work with those customers or are going to work with those customers, that's probably the easiest way to convert the time is just saying, "Hey, you're UTC plus eight, and that would be that we would meet." Europe is a little bit more forgiving just because a lot of them, that if you're working with Europe, they have US counterparts as well, more than likely. But APAC is a little bit trickier because they don't necessarily have the naming convention like we do here in the States.

Andrew Marks: All right. Learn your UTC.

Jon Johnson: Yeah. That's the takeaway. Learn UTC.

Andrew Marks: They're learning UTC. There's the takeaway.

All right. Let's get to some of these questions. Remember, please ask questions using the Q&A button at the bottom to your screen, or look at what's there and upvote questions that are already sitting there.

So let's see. The question that's bubbled up to the top, we're going to tackle first from Justin. "What is the etiquette when a client wants to pivot to different feature during onboarding, but you know it's important for them to move through a process in a certain order?" Is it really an etiquette thing or just a, "Hey, guy, you got to do this first, in order to do that," right?

Jon Johnson: Well, no. I mean, I think this comes down to expectation setting, right? I mean, most of our customers are coming out of the customer's always right, and into a service-based industry, right? So a lot of times, they're like, "Just do what I tell you. I'm paying you." We still see that, right? And I think we are so in key, and keyed into our methodology and our process. We've got a playbook and we've done all of this work that the customer has not seen, right? And so I think it's important. You can beat that initially by saying, "You're going to want to jump ahead. You want to jump to the end?" But this is the process that we have seen. My title is Customer Success for a reason. My job is to make customers successful. And I think setting the tone and saying, "Take all the notes that you can." Yeah, address the point positively, but say, "This is when we're going to get to it. We'll get there on Thursday or on our next scheduled meeting. Hold tight, because all of this stuff up here leads into the success of what you're talking about."

Andrew Marks: You have to explain to them why we do things the way we do things.

Jon Johnson: Yeah. There's a reason. Yeah.

Andrew Marks: Yes. Yeah. This isn't Wild Wild West.

Jon Johnson: Yeah. And just empathy, because they just spent tens of thirties, of hundreds, of thousands of dollars, depending on the software. They want value that's their job is to extract value from this. So every customer that I worked with is like, "How can we push," right? "How can we get this done faster?" That's always the question.

Andrew Marks: That's what we want to do. It's all about fast time to value, right? We're motivated as well as you are, but this is the way to fast value, right? So it's educating them on that, and then setting those expectations. And following through with those expectations. Courtney, Jeremy, anything to add?

Courtney Larisey: I mean, I think you just pivot it. You acknowledge, "Oh, I'm so excited that you want to see that feature. It's fantastic. But look, for you to get the full value here, I want to take you through this process, otherwise it's just not all going to come together. So just hold onto that. Love that you're thinking this." And then, work through it.

Jeremy Donaldson: Yeah. No, I don't have anything to add on this one, Andrew. It's great.

Andrew Marks: All right. Good. All right. We got 1 of 16 answered. Hey, thanks, Justin. Yes. Ryan asks, "How do you handle staying in your lane? Not taking on support issues and passing the client off to the support team, so you can focus on being a CSM?"

Jon Johnson: Oh, you tell me, Ryan. You can host that next one.

Andrew Marks: Oh, wow. That's just got upvoted. Four more asked that question.

Jeremy Donaldson: Wow. Yeah. I think it's organization-size dependent too, right? I think if you're in a smaller company-

Andrew Marks: And maturity-

Jeremy Donaldson: ... it's really hard, right? And I'm working for a smaller company, right. That's going to be really hard. There's going to be overlap of responsibilities. Although there are some things that you can delegate, right? When you're one-person crew or you're very small group of people, you just have to come together and make things happen for your customers. When you're with larger organizations or at least organizations that are more mature in how they have the department set up, it's about figuring out that balance, right? If you're have a customer, and I can think of one that just a couple years ago, constantly dealing with. He would always come to me, right? I would be the first point of contact for support stuff. And I asked him why he did that. Why did he keep coming to me as a Customer Success Manager? And he basically was like, "Well, you're more responsive than support is."

Jon Johnson: I knew that was the answer too, Jeremy.

Jeremy Donaldson: Yeah. And I said, "Well, you do understand when you come to me first, I now become the middle man between you on our technical support team. And therefore, it takes two or three X longer to get the information you need to actually be successful, right? The better way to do that is, go to support first and set the expectations around our SLAs. What's the response times around that?" Every time he would come to me to support case, I just started saying, "Hey, you need to open it here. You need to open it here." And I was consistent for about two months until he finally got it. And realized that I wasn't going to answer the question directly for him anymore. But when he felt that it was outside of our SLA, or it was urgent, I said, "That's when you bring it to me," right?" That's where I can be the business escalation for you, because "For me to be valuable to you, I need to understand what your goals are you're trying to accomplish. And if I'm constantly in the weeds about functional technical issues in our database about data or how you're pulling stuff out, I won't have any time to help you actually achieve your goals and where you're trying to go."

So for me, it's just about getting in repetitive behavior, right? Setting that expectation, and then doing it. And don't waiver from it, right? Continue to come back to that because eventually, either your customer will train or they're not going to be happy. And maybe you're the wrong CSM, and ask somebody else to take over at that point.

Andrew Marks: And it's something that also, it's an expectation you want to set from the get-go as well, right? It's one thing you definitely need to inform and send them off. "This is where you need to go first. And then, if it needs to be escalated, if we miss an SLA, then send me the trouble ticket ID. I'll be there for the. But this is not ... " Like you said, this actually is taking you longer. It's taking us longer to address this.

Courtney Larisey: I think that's the key. You have to lead with the benefit to them. Just be straight, like, "Listen, you're not going to get what you want from me as quickly as if you just go to support. And so it's better for you. Trust me. You'll get the answer quicker."

Jon Johnson: Yeah. One of the things that I like to do, I'm a big fan of post-mortems. Not necessarily on every single ticket that comes through. But if there is something that is elevated, that is escalated, that's important. Getting everybody that touched the ticket, that got everything on working as the air traffic controller to say, "This was the problem. This was the expected outcome. This is what happened."

And then, looking and matching it with SLAs. We're talking about etiquette, right? So it's like, you don't want to be the guy that's yelling at support, like, "Answer the ticket." There's a really good way to bring up these problems in a way that is not accusatory, because you just don't know. It could have been a bug. It could be stuck with product. You just don't know, right? Support is this kind of nebulous black hole of stuff. And they manage so much stuff, right? So getting the team, the folks that worked on it. It's like, "Hey, this ticket was 24 hours outside of SLA. Walk me through what happened. Walk me through that process. Where's the hole and where's the gap?" And looking at as a constant need that will eventually trickle down to the customer.

But never a pointing fingers, or accusing, or just getting to the heart of the issue of saying, "Yeah, this was a bug. And the ticket got submitted and it got delayed." And we didn't communicate that with the customers, like, "Great, there's a hole. We can fix that." So that the next time a customer has a problem, they won't come to me because we're patching these holes as we go along. And if we're constantly, as CSMs, turning a mirror to the process that is affecting our customers, not only are we an effective external Customer Success Manager, we're also an incredibly effective internal stakeholder for our customers, because we're supposed to be advocating for them. We're supposed to be the guys and the gals that are saying, "Things aren't working. How can we fix this now? Can we make it better?" And we get into that constant state of upgrading, and changing, and growing, and new processes.

Andrew Marks: Because Customer Success is evolving. Constantly evolving.

Courtney Larisey: It's such a big piece of our role, that it's not only the external are we having etiquette with our customers, but it's how we can coach the rest of the organization to make sure that all their interactions are satisfying our customer too. So yeah, I think that's a great point, Jon.

Jon Johnson: We're the ones that handle customer experience. I know that's not our title, but how the customer, not the buttons and the widgets and all that kind of stuff. But how they experience Pendo and how they experience to Totango. We're the ones that get that feedback of saying, "Sales guy was awesome. Your support's not good. Your product keeps telling ... "

Those are all pieces of information, and you don't have to take them personally or as an accusation, but as data points. So that when you're in that meeting, and you're advocating for your customer with your managers and your executives for your customer stories or use cases, you actually have a very good perspective of saying, "Yeah, you've got this guy. He's 100% with a health score. But I know for a fact he's pissed at our product team because they promised him this feature that got delayed as they always do," right? It's all a part of that. And it all comes down to how you build that rapport.

Andrew Marks: Well, once again, back to your point, it's your responsibility, right? It's not your responsibility fix everything, but I think if-

Jon Johnson: It's why you have a job.

Andrew Marks: This is part of what your role is. Those post-mortems are super important, right? Customer Success is a team sport. Not just the Customer Success team, the entire freaking company, right? And if there are deficiencies in what we are doing, then we need to highlight those. So that we can either address them or can reset expectations with our customers. So that those deficiencies don't cause problems, and heartburn for them, and slow time to value. And all of-

Jon Johnson: If one customer's feeling it, you know that there's hundreds that are not talking about it.

Courtney Larisey: Yeah. I ran into that again with the international issues. So I was getting a customer, overall their account was very happy, but he was so frustrated. Because every time he would submit a ticket, the next step to troubleshoot would be like, "Let me have access to your account." And it was the wrong ... It was not the European. It was the US. And so anyways, it took like three extra days for that. It's such a simple, silly mistake that our support team just didn't realize because they have a lot to do. So I brought that to the team and now there's an automated thing in the product. If that comes in, there's a alert that comes in through Zendesk. "Please note this customer is in XYZ"

Andrew Marks: You developed a rule to address that particular situation, right? You saw a hole in the boat and you patched the hole.

Courtney Larisey: Yeah.

Jon Johnson: Yep. I love that.

Andrew Marks: All right. Ryan, thanks for the question. All right, that's two. We got two and we have 20 left.

Jon Johnson: Plenty of time.

Andrew Marks: Juliana asks, and I would love, Juliana, if you could provide some examples, "How do we deal with trouble customers?" I mean-

Jon Johnson: I think we all have examples.

Andrew Marks: ... that's really open-ended question there.

Jon Johnson: It's empathy.

Courtney Larisey: Jeremy reassigned them, right? Isn't that what Jeremy did?

Jeremy Donaldson: No. Actually, no, the story is that I got all the trouble customers. In every role that I've ever been a part of, I seem to attract that. That I think just maybe it's my natural tendency to want to take on a challenge or something. But no, it's when I ask for those customers to be moved, if they've moved out of that phase or out of that challenge. That's usually where I run into problems.

But yeah, I think the answering the question around, how do you ... Every trouble customer, in my opinion, has been ... I don't like using the word trouble customer. They've got process limitations, they've got people limitations, or they've got knowledge limitations. It generally falls into one of those three buckets when they come to you. And they have the wrong expectation, how the ease of your product is to use. They thought they had processes built internally that they don't have, or they bought it for a specific purpose that's not supported. And so for me, whenever I get handed a customer that's escalated, that is the first thing that I like to start with, with that customer is, I go into the meeting. And I said, "I came with my notepad. All I want you to do is walk me through what your challenges are. From the front in the very beginning, all the way to the back, I want you to ... " And sometimes it's just an unloading session. Sometimes it's just them to air their grievances, right? It's their Festivus, so to speak.

Andrew Marks: It's their Festivus.

Jeremy Donaldson: But I have found, over, and over, and over again, when you give the customer the space to share what's going on and the challenges, sometimes it is our product stuff. Sometimes it's external stress to them that they're taking out on a lack of knowledge of the product. Or the product's just not where they thought it would be for that point in time, or they didn't understand the process. But once you can do that, right? Giving them as much space as they need to air that out, then you can go deeper. Ask clarifying question, and then you figure out ... Then, you can really hone in, right?

I think actually challenging customers can be quicker to build trust in. Especially, if you can learn that stuff up front and address it quickly, because they'll be very honest with you. What's going on and what's wrong and doing that. But I would say don't treat any two trouble customers ... I would to actually stop using that word altogether, right? Your challenging customers, right? They're going to challenge you to mature as a CSM. They're going to challenge your organization to mature as a CSM, right? But if you go in with the mindset of, "I know there's challenges. I want to partner you with you. And I want you to tell me everything that's going on." And then prioritize this and go back. That's the way that I would approach it. Jon or Courtney, I don't know if there's anything you would want to add from your perspective on that.

Jon Johnson: And my dad always called it a hot air balloon. You can't fill a hot air balloon that's full. You have to let all the air out before you can put anything else in it. I mean, I follow the same practice. I love what you said though. The most difficult customers are the best when you win them over.

Andrew Marks: 100% agree.

Jon Johnson: I'm sure we all have those examples, but they're some of my favorites. I'm like you. I get a lot of the difficult customers. And I think people look at my experience and like, "Oh, this guy can handle it." And I'm like, "I just didn't want people to be mad at me." But there's so many examples where you get on a call and the customer's hot. And you take note of that. And going back to the health scores of looking at the incremental growth over time. You have the problem. Most customers don't tell you their problem. They're happy and they're cheery on it, but you don't know. Something's kind of burning in the background. You just don't know. I love customers that are vocally angry, because they tell you what's wrong and they tell you what you need to fix. And you have a very clear path forward to say, "No, I can't do that for you," or, "Actually, yeah, let's fix this," right? And then you're good. You just move it down the line from milestone and goalpost to goalpost.

Andrew Marks: And I just want to make ... It's going beyond just, "Hey, I'm a hero. I saved the day. I solved this problem."

Jon Johnson: It's like, they found value in the platform.

Andrew Marks: Right. And then, they found value in all that stuff. But back to what you said, that they can become some of your biggest or most trusted relationships is that process of you sitting down and letting them air their grievances, right? And asking the open-ended questions and practicing the act of listening. And restating what they're saying, because they're like, It's not just that you're there with your notebook and your pen. You're actually listening to them. You're processing this. You're attaching that emotional element to it. They feel like you are listening. They will get connected with you, right? They're like, "Hey, this is somebody that I think I'm going to establish a better relationship with."

Courtney Larisey: I love everything you guys said. Plus one, the only thing I would add is, remember you're not alone. So when you do get in these situations, it shouldn't be just on you, the CSM, to repair this relationship. You're representing the company. And so that means you're bringing in either leadership or product. You don't have to do it all on your own.

Andrew Marks: Very true. Very true.

Jeremy Donaldson: And be vocal, I think, as a CSM, right? If we're talking about etiquette, it's your job to be super vocal about your customers and what's going on with your customers. And if people aren't getting behind you for that, that's where you use your director, your VP to help you manage that in that process, right? But I think, Courtney, that's a great point about you win as a ... I know it's cliche, right? You win as a team, you lose as a team, right? But it really is true when it works with customers. Don't try to bear all that weight yourself because that's how you learn lead to burnout is, you try to do it all by yourself.

Jon Johnson: Well, and that's when things break too. The single point of failure. To both your points. If you lose a customer and you report that churn up to your VP, your head of CCO or whatever you're reporting it to, like, "What did you do?" "Oh, I did it all by myself. I tried everything." And it's like, "I've got 27 other people on your team from product to all of these people that we could have helped you with. Is there a path here?" You want to make sure that you're exhausting all of your options and speaking. I love vocal. Oftentimes, I'm too vocal.

Andrew Marks: No.

Jon Johnson: No. Me, no. But you have to be because the customer isn't meeting with the CCOs or the VPs or all of them. They should be meeting with some of them. But yeah.

Courtney Larisey: And they probably didn't come into the company just by one person. Think about sales process. How many people are involved to bring them in as a customer? So you-

Andrew Marks: You get no points for trying to put it all on your own back and doing it by yourself. Go figure out ... It's one of the first things when you join a company, you should be figuring out. Okay, who are the people that I may need to depend on in order to get this stuff done? So Juliana, thank you. Thanks to the question. Great question. Let's move on.

By the way, just a reminder, we're going to keep going here until 15 past the hour. And it looks like we're going to need every minute of that because we still have 22 open questions. So we'll go till 15 past the hour, so you can stick around.

Lauren asks, "Someone mentioned time management and the etiquette around managing your calendar. How do you deal with a client that continues to ask questions, make requests when you've advised that you have a hard stop? What is the best etiquette to complete that meeting without making them feel as if they aren't important?" I actually set-

Jon Johnson: I think the etiquette comes before that moment.

Andrew Marks: Yeah, for sure. I actually set ... For half-hour meetings, I make them 25 minutes. There's a thing in Google Calendar. So I do 25-minute half-hour meetings. I do 50-minute hour meetings. And that gives you that buffer, I've found. So you know at that 25-minute mark, that should give me enough time to wrap things up.

Jon Johnson: Yeah. I think there's going to be those examples where that customer needs attention though, to be honest. We've all been in that where you've got a hard stop. And you just uncovered something. And you found that thing that you've been looking for. There's going to be a time in your life, in your professional career, where you have to say, "I got to ignore my hard stop. Hey, give me a minute. I'm going to push this next meeting."

And there's an etiquette there that doesn't happen in that moment. And that's what we're talking about. This whole building up of trust, and value, and all this kind of stuff is if you haven't put any money into that bank account, when you say, "Guys, I'm so sorry. I know this starts in a minute. But I got to push."

If they don't have any deposits in that bank account for them to withdraw on, they're going to be pissed. And they're going to feel pushed off. But if they know you, if they have that relationship, Courtney, that you were talking about, then they're going to be like, "All right. Look, my girl's got me. We'll free up your time. We'll find another time."

But it all starts on day one when you meet the customer and setting that expectation. And building that trust and that etiquette so that when you have to break etiquette, because you will always have to, you'll always forget something. A meeting agenda will get missed. A bullet point will get dropped. A report won't get sent. If you've done your job well. And if you set the processes of all of these things that we're talking about, when that happens, it's not a red flag. It's not a fire. It's a-

Andrew Marks: You've established credit with the customer, right?

Jon Johnson: Yep. But that's a tough one.

Andrew Marks: It's setting the right expectations, managing those expectations. You establish that good will. So that when that type of thing happens, you can adjust. Because the example that you gave though where you basically have a Black Swan occurring, right? You know what I'm talking about with Chris Voss's Black Swan, right?

Jon Johnson: Yes.

Andrew Marks: You get a Black Swan occurring, that is definitely something where you're like, "Okay, I got to push off this other meeting." And that's where that credit occurs. But those Black Swans, at the end of a meeting, I mean, we're talking about something that's a bit fringe. But it's a good example of how following some etiquette and that credit that you've built up in the bank with them pays off.

Jeremy Donaldson: Courtney, I don't know if there's something you're going to add. I was going to comment on Jon's.

Courtney Larisey: No, go ahead please.

Jeremy Donaldson: Yeah. So I think, from my perspective on this, I think I agree, right? I like what you said, right? There's going to be moments where you're going to have to break typical etiquette in a meeting. And I think that it's spot on, right? It's not going to happen often, but do the things that we talked about earlier, right? Building buffers into your schedule, right? Setting expectations, right? That should avoid a lot of that.

But I was thinking too. And in the beginning of the meeting, when you get in. And you sense that this conversation might go long, or it's a customer that you know always runs up to the end of the meeting. Just set the expectation to say, "Hey, look, we've got this hour. We will get through all that we can within this hour around the topics that were preset. If we get to the end of the hour and we haven't covered everything, the action item is, I will set up another 30 minutes with you before the end of the week, or," if it's on a Friday, "early next week. And we will close out the items that are on this agenda." So that you keep your customer on time. You're not having to push stuff out, right? And it values their time. And if you set that ... That's the way I like to start. It's like, "Here's the agenda. Is there stuff that you want to add? By the way, per our normal meeting cadence, we have the stop at the half an hour. So if we need to go long, we'll take that last five minutes. And we'll coordinate a time for us to meet again within the next few days."

And then, just set the expectation. And just make sure you take your notes to that second meeting to say, "Here's what we talked about last time. Let's pick up where we left off." If you can do that, that's what I would recommend. But if you can't, do your best to buffer in extra time in your schedule between meetings. So that if the customer wants to go long and you can go long, you can accommodate that without having to push anybody off.

Jon Johnson: Yeah. And I think, just to state the obvious, and then you got to follow up on that. That's where that trust comes from. You do that a couple of times, the third time or fourth time that happens, that customer's like, "Oh yeah, no worries. He's going to schedule. We're going to get these questions answered." I like that.

Andrew Marks: Awesome. Lauren, thanks for the question there, and all the upvotes. Okay. The next one comes from Gilbert. "How to politely handle clients that need to meet repeatedly. I share my calendar link with clients, so difficult to stop it from happening in the first place." So you got a customer that just, "Hey, I want to be you tomorrow, and the next day, and the ... " They're meeting with you a lot more often than you'd expect. Any of you ever have that challenge before?

Jon Johnson: I mean, I love to talk to my customers, but I get what he's asking.

Andrew Marks: But I'm thinking what we're talking about is the same customer over, and over, and over again in subsequent meeting booking a lot of time on your calendar.

Jeremy Donaldson: I'll keep this as short as I can. I inherited an account about a year and a half ago from the CSM that was leaving. And she met with this customer an hour a day, every work day of the week. So she had five hours of meetings scheduled. And when I took over, it just was not realistic. Or my plate was already full enough. And so my first meeting, I sat with them, like, "I'm not this person, by the way. I know you were meeting with her five times a week. Can we have a discussion out what was in that agenda that was so valuable to you that you needed to meet five times a week?" And in a 30-minute conversation, I got him to go from five times a week to two times a week. And those meetings often were 15 minutes or less and those two meetings that we had. And it was just all about ask the question of, "Do we really need five meetings a week? And what's the value that you're getting out of it," right? "What's the purpose of these meetings?" And so it was ... I had to have that really difficult conversation because I was stepping into expectations set by somebody who walked before me.

But out of result of that and getting fewer meetings, we were able to increase the value per meeting. Which then, it got to the point where he stopped showing up. We were meeting two weeks, and sometimes he wouldn't show up to one of the meetings. And he'd be like, "I know the things are covered. I know things are taken care of. I don't have escalations to bring you." I'm not saying that's a perfect scenario and everybody's going to walk into that, right? It's not going to all be all rainbows, and flowers, and butterflies.

But sometimes you got to ask the difficult question of the why. My four-year-old daughter asks me, "Why?" about every little decision I make in our entire life and our family. So sometimes it's good to ask the why question. "Why are we doing this, this way? What's the value you're getting out of it?" And then if it proves itself out, then figure out how to continue it. If it doesn't prove itself out, take the opportunity, especially if you're a new CSM, to hit the reset button.

Jeremy Donaldson: I don't think you're going to get a better time to hit a reset button than when you are brand new to an account. And you can take that time to ask that up front.

Andrew Marks: It's an opportunity to reset expectations.

Jon Johnson: Well, I feel like that's a big thing with CS ... Even outside of management, when you're an IC, you're going to be getting a lot of transition accounts. People are going to leave. They're going to get promoted. There's going to be reshuffling of books, new regions. However you want to break it down.

And getting that handoff between CSMs, like, "Oh, I ran a meeting five days a week." Why did you do that? It's such an awesome opportunity for customers to have different experiences with the brand. But also for you to try either matching what was done before, if it works. Or trying something new from your toolbox.

Courtney Larisey: Yeah. And I love just getting to the heart of why. Why are we doing this? I mean, that would be my question. Back to Gilbert, why does he need to meet repeatedly? Does that mean he needs more of a technical session? Do we need some service? What's going on that you need to meet so often? If that's not the norm with your customer base?

Andrew Marks: And then, conversely to that, "How do you handle clients that don't respond to your emails?" Also, another question from Gilbert. I had one where, if I didn't get a customer to respond to me after three emails to them, for whatever we were talking about, my fourth one was, once again, something out of the Chris Voss book about, "I guess this isn't important to you right now. Why don't you let me know when it is, moving forward." It was something along those lines, right? Respectful, but kind of put this on them, right?

Jon Johnson: Yeah. I follow the same ... Actually, we're under a big project right now where we're trying to capture some data from all of our customers. And the rule is, how many follow ups? And I think the rule of three follows my methodology where, if they don't respond, it's been three weeks and I've sent ... I mean, I know how email works. I know you saw it. You're staring at that inbox all day long. So it's not important. And so we prioritize that. But the key to that ... And I think this comes to internal etiquette and this is, I think, a topic that maybe we haven't talked about as much. But if your bosses and your bosses' bosses, if this data or this information that you need is required. If they need it and you're not communicating the steps that you're going through to capture that data, I think you're missing something. Because you also have to show the value up the chain internally to say, "I have tried." And that's when you can say, "Hey, Boss, how about you reach out this time? Let's have the manager reach out if this is required." But it's going to him off if Jon just emails him 10 times in a row, right? And that's kind of where we're at. It's like, "Okay, I tried." He didn't respond. He didn't respond. They're going to see manager in the title next. And then, they're going to see director in the title next. And however that chain works until, if it's a required information, if I need this data to be my job, to do my job. Or for you to do your job, there's going to be those escalation points. I think you're right. I think, it's not important. If it's not important to you, how do we make them see it as important because of the value that we're trying to extract from this?

Courtney Larisey: Right. I would question what is ... Maybe it's not important to them. So do we need to recraft the message? They're not seeing value in this. Then, I think you just have to get creative and change your messaging, or change your strategy, or think about, do you actually need this from ... Are you just trying to get a meeting with them just to talk to them and-

Jon Johnson: Check a box.

Courtney Larisey: Yeah. But it's December and they're going to be leaving anyways. Stop pressuring them unless you have something.

Andrew Marks: That's a good ... Remember, just because you think this customer's disengaged doesn't necessarily mean that they're disengaged, right? But I loved what Laura put in the chat, which I think people forget that this thing works for phone as well as email, okay?

Jon Johnson: Could you explain that to me, Andrew?

Andrew Marks: It's called a smart phone, okay? If they're not reaching out to, if they're not responding, you pick up the phone and call them. Leave them a voicemail. Sometimes we forget about that. We have that in our toolbox. So, good call out there, Laura. We only got a few minutes left.

Jon Johnson: That makes me anxious.

Courtney Larisey: You know what we used to do a lot of the time?

Andrew Marks: You're such a liar, Jon. You're such a liar. "Do you have any etiquette tips for people that are only speaking to their customers through emails or messages?" If you're asking for your customer to do something or it's a particularly challenging situation that you're addressing, I think you need to step away. And then, come back and reread it. And be thinking about it from, how is my customer going to respond to this?

Or it doesn't even be your customer. It's business or it's personal. How is the person ... From what I know about this person that I'm sending this to, how do I think they're going to of respond to this? How are they going to read this?

Jeremy Donaldson: Yeah. And have somebody ... Right? If you're not confident in yourself ... And I'm really glad I worked for somebody early in my CS career that was very supportive in this regard. But if you're writing an email, any written communication, he would offer. He was like, "Send it to me. I'm happy to be a second pair of eyes," right?

Don't even have to be your boss. It could be a peer, who's senior to you, who's been doing this for a while. They can just provide a ... And they can call out the sharp corners in your messaging, that they can soften it, right? They can change the word.

Jon Johnson: I love that.

Jeremy Donaldson: They can be putting back on message. Yeah. I would say, I'm thinking about ... It sounds like you have a digital-touch-type engagement with your customers too. So it's really important that you map out what that journey looks like too, right? Not just sending arbitrary emails or answering their questions as they come through. But being very targeted from the daily onboard to the day that they renew. And what type of communication, how you want and it communicate it and what that looks like. And that may be above and beyond just what you're doing with those customers. And may require other people in the organization to help you. But don't just answer the questions, but see how you fit into the larger communication strategy for those customers as well.

Andrew Marks: Yeah, marketing. Leverage marketing with copy. Review all that. Have them review your copy. Make sure it sounds good, looks good. But also, once again, especially with the ... Even high touch when you automate, right? Make sure that you are reviewing the stuff that you're sending out with an ear of the customer, right? Thinking about how you think the customer's going to interpret from what you know what you're saying.

And with that, we've run out of time. I can't believe we only answered 6 of 19 questions. This was a popular one. We should probably do this again next year, I think, yeah?

Jeremy Donaldson: I'm game.

Andrew Marks: Yeah. Well, we're at the end of the webinar. I think it went well. But it's not what I think it's what all of you think. So please let us know by posting your feedback on LinkedIn and tagging either myself, any of my great guests, and, or SuccessCOACHING. And I want to thank my amazing guests for spending this time with us. And for the ideas, the thoughts, the insights, and the best practices that you shared.

Happy holidays to all of you. I wish you the best this holiday season and a great New Year's.

One final note, great CSMs know that they don't have all the answers, but they know where to get them. That's why we created this Mastermind program to harness the knowledge and experience of the community to help improve everyone.

So we'll see you again next year with our first Mastermind event of 2022 on January 19th, when we'll discuss being the first CSM in an organization. Once again, until next time, happy holidays to you and yours. Have a great rest of your day, week, and year. Stay safe and stay healthy, everyone.