Hi, good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening to everyone. Thank you for joining this session. Uh It's all about the customer success and um how it helps the organization to change the ways of working before I start the presentation. Um Short introduction about myself.I'm a customer success director based in Singapore uh for software A G. I've been working in the industry for past 18 years uh in various roles. I started my career as a developer and then as an architect uh leading a large uh it team as um also leading a pre research team. And for past 1.5 year, I am responsible to build the customer success organization at software A G uh software A G is a comp product company. We are mainly focused on the uh IOT integration and uh business uh solutions. Um Please feel free to reach out to me and connect with me on linkedin. I would like to connect with all the powerful women attending this webinar. Um Today's session uh is uh I'm gonna mainly talk about what is a customer success driven engagement approach. Uh Why is it important? Why the organi addressing this approach. Um, and what is in it for women? Why it's a great profession for women. So, if I start with the first, uh, topic, which is, uh, what is a customer success driven engagement approach?

Isn't that something all of us are doing all the product and the services company, they put the customer in the center all the time, right? We do the, sell the services for the customers. Uh, we build the products for, for our customers. So the customer is in the center, isn't it? How do we do that? How do we engage with the customers? We have a sales team, they reach out to the customers, showcase all the product features, uh show them how our products can solve their business problems or it problems. Um We once they sign the deal, they write a big check to the company. Um We have our professional services stepping in the professional services team will be explaining them how to configure the software, how to implement the software um going in live in production. And once that Matron is complete, we move on to the next one, which is the maintenance and the support engagement, maintenance and support will help you maintain your software or help you with any technical problems that you have um while uh while using the product and then comes our renewals time where let's say the, the contract that you purchased is maybe for one year, three year or five year duration and then the salesperson would work with the customer to renew the contract.

So that's our traditional approach, right? And what's wrong with that? Nothing because that's something we have been doing for years. However, there are certain challenges with this approach. This approach is mainly focused on the customer engagement based on the milestones.

So sales people or any organization, they are focused on the customers, our own sales KP I and not what customers KPIS are or what customer outcomes are. It's more like a reactive approach. So whenever customer needs a professional services, they reach out to the organization, when the uh organization needs a support, when the customer needs a support, they reach out to the support organization and so on. So it's very reactive approach where we miss out on the early signs of customer unhappiness. And why is it important to understand the early signs of customer unhappiness? Because as the industry is moving to the subscription and as a Biz model where customers have a lot of choice, you know, there are a lot of customers, they can subscribe to the uh size based solution uh where the renewal could happen every month. Uh they pay per use. Sometimes the usage is uh even for free, you know, you try the software for a year, maybe 100 licenses are uh free for 1st, 1st year or maybe for six months depending on whatever the vendor offers to the customer in this kind of a model, the since the customer has a lot of options, they might churn from one software render to another software vendor.

And that will definitely impact the organization's overall revenue, right? And that's not definitely a customer centric approach. This is more like still organization centric approach. So what do we do now? So the customer success driven approach is something that's being adopted by many large organizations sales force is one of the pioneers of the customer success uh driven engagement approach where the focus is all on the customer, what the customer is looking for and what are their KPIS.

So let's look at this. How do we, what, what is it? We try to understand what the customer's business case is. When they purchase a software, there is always a business case around it. Uh There must have been a pain point, there must have been objective why they want to uh particularly uh what they want the product to solve. The problem is in this particular approach, we try to understand what are their drivers? What are their success? KPIS, we engage with the customer proactively um regularly engaging with different stakeholders. We do use analytics mechanism to review their usage and consumption trends. How well they are using the product? Are they using it right away? Are they using all the licenses that they have purchased?

Uh help them adopt the software? Do you know how to use a certain functionality? You maybe you're not using it, but it's apt for your requirement and being an advisor to the customer throughout that entire journey. At the same time, try keeping a tab on what the customer experiences, what are they feeling? Uh what are the pain areas? What is their major feedback for different organization or different organizational uh departments? And why is it important because as we engage with the customer on a periodic basis, first of all, we understand any organizational strategic changes that they have, we would understand that early on. So for example, I came across a situation where um there was a, a customer and they were not very um aptly uh engaged with the organization and a huge uh organizational change on their side, the new CIO S walks in and he says, you know, why do we have this software? Um I can do this using my Excel. I don't wanna pay to this organization uh millions of dollars just to maintain my processes. And that's very easy the customer would show. Is this something that we want? No. So in this particular approach, we know that there has been organizational changes. On the customer side, the new sea level, their direction is different.

They had defined the business case, their priorities when they purchase the software, maybe they have changed during that entire engagement journey, we can understand the early signs of ch and we can try to prevent it at the same time when the focusing on the product usage. So as the customer is using the product more, the more they use it, the more consumption they are having. That means they realize the more value out of our product, that means they will be uh renewing automatically. So the renewal becomes like uh just an activity. It's less like um another milestone in the engagement journey. It's not like uh account executive going in and negotiating the contract. No, it just becomes easy process. At the same time, we focus on the revenue growth because retention is important. Um As at the same time, we wanna grow the account as well. Maybe they purchase 100 licenses in the beginning. We wanna increase that base. We wanna Upsell, we wanna cross sell and this time we are not going to the customer saying that you know what, I have a new product which has 10 features and that will be useful. No, the proposition is based on the value because you have this particular business case. We do understand uh your criterias, your priorities. We think that this particular software is going to solve your problem. So the pitch entire paradigm of engaging with the customer is different.

So how does it look like typically? Uh typically the customer would purchase. So that's what we call the account executive landing and opportunity and the customer success team focusing on the adoption expansion and the renewal. But this is again an internal view. Right. This is for an organization, you're not gonna go to a customer and say, you know what, you landed my uh software last week and I want to do an expansion that's not gonna fly. So what do we do from the customer's perspective, from the customer's perspective, we try to map this entire journey of land, adopt, expand and renewal into your days. So we transform the story and say, OK, now, since you have bought the software, let's sit together and plan how you will be using this particular software. And this is like a joint activity. One person is not gonna do this, right? It's a combined activity. Now who is going to do all this? It sounds good, but we need a dedicated team to carry out this particular activity, right? And that's when a new profession is formed called the customer success managers. What is the customer success manager role, the customer success manager's role is to make sure that you understand why at first place, customer purchase the software. Uh what are their KPIS?

You engage with the executive stakeholders uh regularly to showcase the value that they derive out of the software at the same time, focus on their adoption and the usage. Um Also giving them the industry best practices, giving them customer references because we all know that we our customers like to hear from the industry uh best practices, other customers, right? Who are the pioneers? How has been their journey. What were their challenges? So as a CS M, you will be responsible for that, also defining that entire engagement plan. So you're not leaving the customer alone in that journey. You are telling them that you purchase the software and if your renewal is after one year, what is you will be doing in this one year? So you have a very well defined crafted plan so that you can early on identify any risk that you foresee whether it it's or external or customer related dependency, right? Maybe sometimes customers have outsourced uh their it department to another vendor and there are challenges there.

So at least you are able to identify those at the same on the overall. And this experience is not just about the product, but it's also about the software, uh product, software and services. So basically, you try to understand how the customers holistically the experience has been engaging with different stakeholders within the organization and you try to improve on that experience. So let's say if there is a feedback on the product management, you go back to the product management team, try to enhance your product. If there's a feedback on the support team, you go and work with the support organization and so on the services and so on. So imagine it's like this, I always define a customer success as uh outcome plus experience. So imagine you are traveling in Uber from one place to another place and you travel, uh your driver drives you there, right? So your outcome is achieved. Ok. You have achieved that. But how has been your experience? There is one Uber driver who would walk in and say good morning, good afternoon, ma'am. And they may play your favorite music. Uh They may even greet you when you leave and maybe give you a card and so on. Versus there is another Uber driver who would just pick you up and would just drop you off. Which one would you remember the one who treated you well? Right. So the customer success has to focus on both outcome as well as experience.

Now, what are the skills that that is required? Do I need to be a product expert to be a customer success manager? No. Do I need to be a technical consultant? No, but what I would definitely require is to at a high level, understand what is customers business challenge. What are the technical challenges? How my product will help them address those challenges? You need to have a very good communication skill because you will be engaging with different state, uh different uh levels in the organization. So is extremely important. Sometimes you may have to push back and advise the customer on that certain limitations that you have either on the product side or on the services side. It requires a lot of collaboration uh within the organization. Um Let's say you will be interacting with the marketing team for, let's say you have a good customer reference. You'll be uh collaborating with the marketing team or with the product management team or with the support team, professional services team, account executives. When you see a new deal on the table, you will be talking to the accounting and they will be engaging with the customer on the commercials um and the contractual discussion.

So it's very important as a CS M to have that smooth handover or a transition, keeping everyone align on what the customer has been looking for. Being a customer's uh trusted advisor is equally important because uh you should be seen as someone customer can always rely on um whether you it's not necessary that you always have a solution to all the problems, but having the trust and the relationship with the customers where you believe that a customer would believe that even if I have a problem, if the person doesn't know the solution, they'll definitely help me find a solution at the same time, showing the empathy for the customer is extremely important because I've sometimes seen when as in my role as a customer success director, when I engage with the customers, sometimes they are furious, they are, they are uh frustrated because they don't know how to use the product.

They believe it's not helping. Maybe their experience with other department is not good. So showing that empathy to the customer becomes extremely important, why this is a great profession for women. I personally believe this. Uh it's a whole new uh profession. It's a growing profession.

Uh There are a lot of companies which are adapting to this uh uh customer success driven engagement approach. Uh We all know SAP is one of those. SAP has even a board member, uh who is looking at the customer success as a function altogether. Um And she is leading the, uh the recurring, she's responsible for the recurring revenue uh for all the customer success uh organization. Uh Other companies like Oracle, Microsoft Google, even software A G we are embracing this paradigm shift of uh traditional engagement approach to the driven engagement approach.

So there are not many gender stereotypes available at the uh uh in the in the particular profession. At the same time, I believe the soft skill that you require for this profession is something that the women persisted highly. Uh There is a high degree of uh emotional caution.

The role requires a multitasking some executives in the morning, uh helping a customer debugging some problems in the afternoon or helping them uh coordinating their training schedule or working with another customer and trying to make, make sure that their coli milestones are on schedule.

So there are a lot of multitasking required in this particular role. And that's why I believe uh there is a high possibility of growing through the rank and you have a chance to make a direct impact on the company's top line. Um That's all for today's presentation. Uh I'm happy to take any questions that you may have. Um If not, you can always uh feel free to reach out to me on linkedin and we can definitely connect and have even a detailed discussion if you like. Thank you Rare. Thank you very much. Any questions? All right. Thank you very much. Uh ladies uh for joining the session. It was uh really uh nice meeting you here and I wish you a very nice day ahead. Thank you.