For the past few months, we’ve been shouting from the rooftops about our first-ever in-person event at Customer Success Collective. Last month, on June 23-24, we flew into Las Vegas to meet up with 80 of you wonderful people at the one and only Bellagio Hotel.
While our virtual online events aren’t going anywhere, we can’t lie about how good it felt to be mingling and putting faces to online names.
We couldn’t have put this event on without the unwavering support of the backbone of the Customer Success Collective, our esteemed community members. As a ‘thank you’, we’re giving you five key takeaways from our Vegas event pro bono, on the house, fo’ free. 👇
What is customer success?
In her presentation titled ‘Accelerating customer success: Fuelling the next generation of growth, Harini Gokul, Head of Customer Success, Amazon Web Services, succinctly described customer success as follows:
“Start with how the customer defines value, not a product or a service definition. Think like an owner. Think like you are a shareholder, a stakeholder of the customer to earn trust to get the seat at the table.”
Customer success drives value from within
In his presentation, ‘The next stage in the evolution of customer success’, Edward Chiu, Co-founder & CEO at Catalyst, gave a fantastic piece of advice for promoting CS value from within your company:
“You want [other teams] to see your value, your work. Don't be afraid to amplify and advertise the work that you're doing. You want the engineering team to know how good you are. You want [them] to know that the customer you just saved from churning is paying for their next paycheck. You do it in a subtle way, of course, but you want them to know your value because you're setting the stage for the next CSM that joins."
Customer success is central to all business operations
Colby Teller, Head of Customer Success, Strategic Accounts at Adobe, gave a stirring talk, aptly named ‘Be the symphony, not the noise’, which brilliantly delineated customer success’ position as the backbone of a company:
“Regularly drive accountability. We always say under-promise and overdeliver. It's not just a cliché. If your peers can always depend on you, holding them accountable becomes even easier. Be collaborative; give and take, but never be a doormat.
“Reinforce your role in value with the team and with sales and show them that your seat at the table is critical to the customer relationship. It's not accidental. We're not earning a seat at the table."
Reflect your international audience with a global customer success team
Scott Dzialo, VP of Customer Success at Braze, gave all-important advice for recruitment in his talk about ‘Building and maintaining a global customer success team’:
“Start to bring in talent that's reflective of the cultural nuances and distinctions of the various business units of our different accounts.
“This is really important, especially when you consider the fact that selling a hamburger in Japan is functionally different to selling a hamburger in the US. It allows us to have expertise that goes quite deep and reflects back the incredible global nuances of each one of these businesses.”
Be thoughtful and selective with your next hires
In her presentation, ‘The fundamentals of customer success at different company stages’, Bridget Barrot, VP of Customer Success at Chainalysis, provided sage guidance on the dangers of over-hiring for companies in a late-growth stage with the ambition of scaling up immediately:
“[Whether it’s customer onboarding, or renewals] chances are you can't do it all yourself – nor would you want to! While it’s important to start building out the team, I think one of the biggest mistakes that I've seen people make during this stage is that they over-hire.
“There's money in the bank. There's a lot of excitement. There's a lot of momentum. You’ve got salespeople everywhere and you overhire. Unfortunately, we see how that could potentially end, and the winds can very easily change, and you don't want to end up in a down market when you've over-hired.
Testimonials from Customer Success Festival Las Vegas
We’ve given you a sample taste of some of the electric presentations from Vegas, but what did people on the ground have to say about our event?
Here are a few testimonials from our superstar speakers, straight from the horses’ mouths:
Did we whet your customer success appetite?
The talent and insights provided by our speakers are entirely unparalleled, helping inspire customer success professionals from around. We’re in the business of helping CS practitioners level up and leave our events galvanized, ready to help customers reach their outcomes.
And the best news? We’re only just getting started! If you couldn’t make Las Vegas, or even just fancy round #2, the next stop on the Customer Success Festival tour bus is: San Francisco on September 7-8 2022!
Buckle in for a whole new line-up and more ground-breaking approaches to how CS drives value from within.
If you’ve got FOMO and want to see more of our incredible presentations, be sure to check out the array of membership plans we offer. In each plan, you’ll get exclusive access to the 16 presentations and panel discussions recorded from our Las Vegas event, plus tons of templates and frameworks to action your newly-learned insights.
