Value Relay: Tracking Customer Value from Pre-Sale to Post-Implementation
Unlock the full potential of customer value tracking across all stages of the lifecycle in this dynamic session. Discover proven strategies and innovative tips for implementing a value relay that spans from digital-only customers to large enterprises. Whether you’re in the initial stages of creating a value relay or seeking to refine an existing process, this session is your gateway to fresh insights and practical solutions. Join us to learn how to effectively measure and enhance customer value, ensuring every interaction counts.
Hello, as you guys are taking a seat, I'm just going to start doing some house
keeping
if you are not familiar yet with the Pulse app.
If you go on the home page, you can go on track to and have your questions
portal.
So as the speakers will cover the session, feel free to put on your questions.
We're going to have 10 to 15 minutes of Q&A at the end.
Very important if you see a question that you like upvoted because we are going
to prioritize
questions that we see are of interest.
I am, George, I'm part of the customer success team.
Sorry, I didn't introduce myself, but you're not here for me.
You're actually here for our next speakers.
So the session that we're going to hear right now will focus around value and
we'll know
how important value is.
Like, if you are just starting on your customer success journey to set up the
best practices
for your team and organization, if you're a mature customer, that's a good
thing.
That is trying to document and collect and leverage the type of ROI that you're
delivering
to your customers in the right way to also boost expansions and helping other
teams achieve
in the same sense.
Carefully challenge our speakers and ask really any questions you have.
But for now, I would like to introduce Lloyd Vidal, Head of Customer Success
for Benchling
Emia and Chaturica, apologies.
Chaturica Jayadeva, Solution Strategy and Value Management Consulting for Bench
ling for
their session on value relay, tracking customer value from pre-sales to post-im
plementation
to the stage.
[applause]
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you very much, Jojo.
Welcome everybody to Amsterdam and to Pulse.
Today, we're very excited to be able to talk to you about something that is
very passionate
to us and that's probably going to be very apparent very soon.
We'll do a bit of a presentation about us and explaining a little bit why that
topic
is super important for us.
We are what sits between you and your lunch as well, so we very, very well that
we're
going to make it very interesting as well.
And hopefully, we'll have enough time to spend to answer all your questions on
the Q&A.
But if not, you can always grab us later and have a conversation definitely.
So, I enjoyed the new topic.
Thank you, Lloyd.
Hello everyone.
My name is Chatur Jayadeva and I lead the Business Value Function for Benchling
in
Emia.
I've spent over a decade in the tech strategy space, mostly aligned to life
sciences and
the biotech industries.
But for a majority of that time, I've been in value consulting or value
engineering
roles.
Essentially, in pre-sales, it's translated to measurable outcomes throughout
the customer
journey.
So, essentially, our function bridges the pre-sales with the post-sales and
enables CS
teams to be really concentrating on delivering those strategic values and
support them through
that function.
Thank you, Chatur.
So my name is Lloyd Vidal.
I'm heading the Customer Success Team in Europe for a company at Benchling.
I have a success base in particular for about a decade as an individual
contributor, manager,
leader, and what's always fascinating to me is the power of the answer to the
very simple
question to ask, but very difficult to answer, is, do you really understand the
value your
customers are getting out of your platform and can actually prove it to them?
The power of the answer to that question can drive anything that we do in
customer success
from the renewal, from community, from advocacy, from expansion as well.
So that's why we're very, very passionate about this and want to talk to that
for the
next 30 minutes.
But first of all, I would like to interwe are a vertical SaaS company working
very much
in the R&D space and life science R&D.
So typically, our mission is to fuel the digital transformation of R&D labs.
And our customers range from the small company with two scientists and some
equipment to
the top 20 farmer that are, you ought to work with a mission driven company
that really
helps our customers tackle the world's biggest problems from the food we eat to
the machine
that we take.
And we have over 1,200 customers globally, and we've been in the European
market for
about three and a half years as well.
So yeah, that's about it.
Okay, so I'm going to start with the end.
It's a bit weird.
But sort of that session, the key takeaway that you should have, you know, that
you should
have learned today is first of all why value is so important and the impact
that it has
across the organization.
So the whole organization that you have, at the end I'm going to give you some
tips and
tricks as well as how we did it eventually using Gensite as well, which could
be useful
for some of you.
But the most important element is what, you know, ensuring that you build that
value framework
is linked to your ability to work cross collaboratively and also have a
leadership mandate.
So those are the elements as well as it's as one thing that you should take
away from
that session is it's the importance of the cross functional collaboration and
the senior
leadership mandate.
Okay, so let's start by saying, okay, why value is so important?
You all know that value is important, right?
But why tracking it across the whole journey, you know, when I started, as I
said, you know,
it was like a decade in customer success.
And when we started, it was very much to ensure that we have the ability to
have a finger
the pulse on the biggest chunk of money that the company gets, which is the
existing customers
and ensure that we know what the renewal rates are going to be.
So we are here to ensure that we know that the customers are going to be
renewed as a
very, very key part of our job.
And I would argue that the conditions have never been harder.
It's funny because Nick actually mentioned that in his keynote this morning as
well.
So that's not you, you know, we've always been in the SaaS business compared to
the on-premise,
the ability to switch very easily from provider to provider has always been
there.
So again, nothing new here, but depending on how you could do that pretty
quickly.
What's really new is that over the last four years, especially we've had a lot
of events
that have meant that the markets are very, very, in a very difficult space.
Some are pro-economics are never-in-verse.
We've had the biggest pandemic of the last hundred years.
We've had sadly two on quinoa.
We have info, which means that there's not a lot of money out there.
And when you do that, basically companies are looking more than twice as to the
spend
to ensure that they're spending the right amount of money for the right tools.
And as a result of that, there's a lot more eyes in the renewal space now.
So, you know, but when the past you would only deal with teams.
Now everyone is involved, right?
And that doesn't only mean that you're going to have more conversations simply
by the number
of conversations that you have.
It also means that every person in the room will basically have a different
view at what
value is.
So you're going to have to create a lot of different more playbooks.
She's going to take a lot more time.
And it's funny because I was talking to another CS leader recently, who was
telling me that
they are treating the renewal basically as a new sale, pressing as well.
So the conditions have never been harder for us to do our job as CIC in the
renewal space.
I wanted to know what the biggest cause of churn in 2024 for the SaaS
businesses.
So, obviously I've asked ChutGPT.
I've checked that information as well.
So it's correct, you know, to some degree of information.
What's really interesting is that the biggest cause of churn is, as you can see
, typically
the lack of perceived value, which is exactly why we are here.
That's what we're talking about, right?
Now, my argument is that a big part of this pricing concern could also be in
the same bucket
at lack of perceived value.
And to expose that, you know, try to think that you've had a lot of income or,
sadly,
you've lost reposition.
What you need to do is you need to cut.
What you will cut is on this basically the discipline type of expenses.
You will cut on what is you don't see any perceived value out of.
The things that, you know, don't bring a lot of value to you.
And businesses are doing exactly the same thing.
The cutting of the non-essential, or the things that are not pursuing value.
And actually to expose that, think about it.
You've got a TV subscription of 20 euros.
That you can cut anytime if you need to, right?
If you have your phone is costing you 80 euros a month, you're not going to
touch that because
you see the value that you get in that.
You might try to get a different provider to get less money, but you will still
maintain
that because you see that as an asset that brings you a lot of value,
demonstrated value.
So your mission is to become the phone of your customers almost, right?
On top of that, the other thing I want to mention is the narrative change as
well.
I don't know how many of you are involved in the renewal process as such.
Some of you in organizations, CSE, response professionals, others, it still
sells, but
the renewals, basically the CSM is bringing a lot of, and what we see now is
there needs
to be a change in the kind of the narrative that you have.
Imagine that you come into the renewal conversation and you have a cost element
, you have what
your company generally brings for value for other customers, but you do not
have any
information about the value that you got to that particular customer.
And it's like going into a football game, being too near down.
You can still win, but that's going to be a tough one, right?
Imagine on the other hand, if you come to that renewal conversation, not only
with a
cost, but the value that they received over the last 12 months, the verified
outcomes
that they have and no star, the metrics are shows it.
So you go from a conversation of course, a conversation of this is a
partnership that
we've achieved so far.
This is what I'm proposing for the next few years as well in terms of more
added value.
How much more, the oldest tool, how are you going to reinvest that in your
business?
That's basically going into the football game, being too near up.
You can still lose, but that's years to lose value.
So here we talk a lot about renewal, right, and post sales.
But actually the argument is that if you know all the different value pillars
that your
customers can get and the framework is going to be expected customers can get
from your
platform, then that's going to benefit the whole ecosystem all of your other
teams.
Because again, as Nick mentioned, it's very important to be cross collaborative
and to
bring everyone as well in the conversations.
Imagine how your pro team will love you.
If you go to see them with a document that says those are all the different
values that
my customers are getting and those are all the features of functionality that
enables
that, right, of information about which features and functionality to
prioritize depending
on the value that you want to message as well.
So this is going to be amazing for them as well.
I hope that most of you are doing success planning with your customers.
If not, you should start.
But when you do success planning, basically you create a document joining with
a customer
to ensure that you can answer the very difficult question as to, okay, that in
order to achieve
your verified outcomes.
Well verified outcomes are linked to the value that they're getting and you can
link that
bad to the pillars.
And I'm going to show you in the last section how we've done that at a bench
link.
But value is a key element as well of the success planning element.
Marketing is a huge friend of customer success.
And if you still have achieved this particular value and those are the verified
outcomes
that you can actually then use to drive your content and your key messages.
So if you want to push some messages, if you want to push some branded option,
if you
want to do some market penetration, you can leverage all those information, all
those
success stories as well.
Again, that's a link to the value that you're getting from the tool.
All customers will have a dedicated CSM, as we know.
A lot of them will be through the digital and actually you can argue that you
could do
exactly the same thing.
Imagine if you have, again, your value pillars that are completely defined,
your feature
and functionality that are pushing and are helping to drive this value, how
that can
influence your customer education or your digital program so you can actually
push the
right customers to use the right feature at the right time for them to be
successful as
well.
Last but not least, imagine that you can come to see your pre-sales and your
sales friends
and able to actually provide a list of all success stories and value real
izations that
you have achieved with your customers, depending on the industry, the jail, the
virtual customers
and tell to your teams, you can leverage that to actually present that to a
prospect or to
a customer that you're currently selling to so that they can hear basically the
value
they are trying to achieve from someone who is very much like them that will
just speed
up as well the time to actually close the deals.
So all of this tool is very much a, you know, for the lifecycle, it's important
, it touches
all the different points, it's really important to be cross collaborative and
to work together
as much as possible in order to achieve this.
And for all of that, to be done, you have to have a value framework built and
for that,
I would like to chat to explain to you how that's done.
Thank you, Lloyd.
Right, so we're going to spend a little bit of time looking at why it's really
important
to have a cross-functional approach and also a C-level mandate in place.
So imagine an organization where the CS organization does not have that exact
mandate, does not
have the support from a C-level.
What would happen?
So the data shows that the actual net revenue retention can decrease up to 40%.
But what's the flip side?
If the organization's CS organization does have that support and the exact
mandate, it
actually has a can go up by about 20%.
Customers are engaged, they stay, and they have a much better relationship with
you.
Not only that, the probability of increasing ACV almost doubles.
Why is that?
Because you're no longer just putting out fires as a CS organization, you're
going to be doing
proactive things and leveraging your ability to strategically engage with your
customers.
And I think the most, the annual recurring revenue can grow up by about 25%.
I mean, this is one of the greatest kind of data points from any SaaS
organization.
So the data is from Mackenzie, but I think what's really clear in looking at
this is that
a leadership mandate does give you that extra momentum as a CS organization.
It does give you the ability to get access operationalized your strategy into a
well-oiled
execution.
And in order for you to truly grow and retain customers, you can't just have a
seat at
the table as a CS organization.
You need that top-down mandate and be a strategic partner with your CS strategy
really going
across all of the organizational strategy and not being a silo.
I know that we heard this in the keynote as well, but this is really what we
wanted to
highlight in our conversation here today as well.
So you've got your C-level backing, you've got that sponsorship.
How does that extend then on to those cross-functions?
Not going to go into a lot of detail here, but just going to call out a couple
of things
for each of the functions that might be touching your customers' value journey
throughout
the lifecycle.
The first of course is the tip of the sphere which is sales.
This is the team that's really having conversations.
What are their pain points?
What are they trying to solve?
And of course, this is really important because this is how you then ensure
that your product
is positioned in a way that is appealing to those customers or prospects at
this stage.
And of course, then comes your solution consulting teams who will then leverage
some of that
information and ensure that the solutions that are demonstrated are requesting.
Now, all of this may seem really obvious, but often what I think would happen
is that each
of these functions does operate in silos.
And it's easy to forget that you do need to have this seamless handoff of
information,
especially in light of what a CS organization does because they do need that
information
around what matters to the customer.
How do we then track this impact and not be handed a blank piece of paper as
you come
on to take on those customers post-implementation?
The next team I just wanted to call out is essentially would be common across
all organizations.
But when you do have it, what it helps you to do is essentially be able to
seamlessly
capture some of that pre-sales content and wealth of information and hand that
across
to your post-implementation teams.
And essentially avoid what I just said about CS or services teams being handed
across the
blance sheet of paper and are being asked to enable and track value for your
customers.
So all we really wanted to highlight here, not an island, for you to truly be
able to
strategically partner with your customers, your internal cross functions need
to collaborate.
Your internal cross functions need to be speaking the same language, the same
value stories,
and essentially share the same metrics as well.
And that's what's really going to give you that added boost to grow and retain
your
customers.
Oh, that was the placeholder slide.
So if you could maybe launch the poll, please, XmU as well.
So maybe take a moment and let us know what your thoughts are.
Okay.
So I feel validated that this wasn't just a challenge.
You know, each of these functions have their own mandate, their own priorities.
So it's not easy for us to have that collaboration.
And this is where it goes back to my first point, which is that if you have
that C-level
mandate, it's a little bit easier to get your cross functions to prioritize
your CS strategies
as well.
So yeah, I think, you know, Lloyd, you and I have been through this journey a
couple of
times now.
It is challenging, but it can be done.
And really sort of, you know, the takeaway, which we will come back to on
multiple locations,
is really start with these two elements, because it will help you to be more
successful.
Right.
Oh, we're going to spend the next couple of slides looking at strategies to
measure.
So again, not going to try and give you a whole kind of operational strategy
around
CS here.
All we wanted to do is call out a few tactics and tools that speak to the two
areas that
we just highlighted, which is that the C-level mandate is key and you need that
cross-functional
support.
So why do you need that?
And I'm going to talk about that leveraging the use of value framework as a
tool.
So most of you would be using a value framework in your CS organizations.
Why do we say it's a custom-evaluated value framework?
Because it's really important that when you create your value framework, it's
addressing
what's most, you know, in benchling.
For customers who are biotechs, their mission is to take life-saving medication
to patients
as quickly as possible.
So from our perspective, the value framework is really anchored around
accelerating time
to market.
So all of our value pillars and the capabilities that we have underneath that
value framework
is geared towards demonstrating that.
And the set of metrics that we have are also geared towards demonstrating that.
And again, it may seem obvious, but I think looking at a layer down, it's also
then important
that you actually ensure that your value framework is applicable for your
smallest SMBs.
Why?
Because I think as a CS organization, you could very easily be versed in
various versions
of the same framework.
But if you think about your cross-functional teams who do also need to speak
that same
language, be able to, you know, speak to some of the metrics and the impact,
that's where
it's really important that you have one key value framework that's consistent
across
all of your segments.
Of course, when you operationalize, you would be taking different lenses.
But it's important that you start with one consistent core value framework that
's common
across all, easier to get adoption internally and drive through that change
management for
your cross-functional teams to be supporting you in your mission.
And then the last one there is, of course, it should be measurable.
So there should be a set of metrics that is there.
But, you know, not to kind of harp on the obvious.
I'll say why that's important here.
Because again, it's that cross-functional approach.
And if you don't have the same set of, well, not the same set of metrics, but
if you don't
have your teams aligned across the metrics that you have, you're going to be
talking
in a disjointed way.
So it's important that all of your team and then the customer-centricity.
It's, and I touched on this already as well, but it's really important that you
're looking
at it from what is it that we're helping the customer to achieve.
Of course, we have our own priorities internally, whether it's renewables or
whether it's growing
our revenue, but if you're really focused on helping your customers get to the
outcomes
that they desire, then all of those internal KPIs could be met more easily as
one here
is continuous feedback loops.
And this is mostly referring to the value framework.
It's important that we keep updating the value framework on a continual basis.
So in our case, it's very much a live document.
We have surveys that we do with our end users that helps us to update what we
capture in
that framework.
We do an annual, essentially, kind of a set of interviews that we do with
industry leaders
across our customers to get what's the latest perspective.
And I think that's really key, especially kind of looking at some of the topics
we're
talking about today.
What matters to our customers will also change.
So it's important that the value framework is updated, and you have the means
to bring
that insights from outside in.
And that will not just be in your hands.
This is again where your cross-functional teams will be supporting you, whether
that's
sales, whether that's marketing, or even a value team.
And then the next couple of things I wanted to highlight, level support.
I know I'm sounding like a broken record, but it is really, really important to
have
that continued sponsorship in order for you to make sure that you can be
successful, not
just at the launch, but throughout your customer's lifecycle.
And finally, a single source of truth.
Because, okay, so you have your backing, you have your cross-functional teams
aligned,
but how do you now operationalize it, especially in a very complex, multif
unctional environment?
It's really important that you have a -- and this is where tools like GainSight
can really
be a benefit and an enabler.
And Lloyd, you're going to speak a little bit about how we're using it in bench
ing.
Before we get there, I do have one more poll for you.
I promise it's the last one.
Why is there already a response?
[laughter]
Someone is very fast.
How did you get to the answers even before I showed?
Okay.
You don't have that.
And again, I think similar to the earlier one, this is not something that's
unique.
It's a really hard thing.
And especially, I think in our case as well, when you go into an organization
that's scaling
up, there's so much competing priorities and CS may not be top of mind.
And it's not an easy thing.
So it's really important that you advocate and then also then ensure that you
can get
the resourcing across your cross functions as well.
So I'll hand across to you, Lloyd, just to share some of those tangible
examples.
Thank you very much.
Yes.
So I want you to finish off by showing you a few tactical examples of how we've
done
that at benching, just to give you some ideas.
So we've done all of the above that I just talked about, which is a shootable
of effort.
And then we validated that as well with our customers.
So we keep validating that kind of framework on a regular basis.
And we came up with typically like a-- we are leveraging the customer goals
objects
in GAN sites.
And we value that to the 360.
So that's we are able-- the CSMs themselves, I will just speak and choose which
, after
the conversation, the customers which value they're trying to achieve as well.
They can track that through timelines as well.
They can link that to various different objects in GAN sites.
There's a lot of visibility as well in there.
Very easy to do to be doing that for the CSMs.
And for the leaders and the managers, it's also very great to be able to
actually see
that.
On the lower screen, you can see a link to our value framework.
So you can see here that they can select the customer goals, one too many,
depending on
where we are on the journey.
So it's very easy as well to tag CTA's and objects as well against them.
So it's really easy for our CSMs.
And what we've done, we've got very different-- like everybody, we've got a lot
of different
segments as well for our customers.
And for some segments, we've created kind of out-of-the-box success plan
templates.
So CSMs only selects one of the values that the customer is trying to get.
And we've built over time a build into a success plan template.
So typically the CSM only has to pick the value that the client-- his customer
is trying to
achieve.
And then the system of credit automatically success plan with all the CTA's
linked to
all the best practices as well.
The CSM can just leverage straight away in the interactions with the customers.
It has been proven very, very successful.
The object tip is actually to close verified outcomes, which is basically the
north top
what we're trying to achieve.
And then once you've done all of that, which you can benefit from is what I was
talking
about earlier with regards to the loop and how all the other teams as well
within the
organization can benefit from it.
This is a screenshot of eight particular segments that we have of our customers
And you can see which values they each trying to get.
This information is absolutely key to all the other departments for marketing
products,
et cetera, as I was mentioning earlier, or caring about and are trying to drive
today,
which has a direct impact into our strategy as to pro roadmap and conversations
as well.
So hopefully you can see how that's been very, very helpful as well for us.
We're still in the journey.
We're not complete yet.
And I think as Chatu was mentioning, it's continuous loop.
So it almost never ends because you can always get better at things.
But yeah, we've done all the work on that.
And for the closing slides, I'm going to hand over to you.
You can hold on to it.
Yes, it's no more sense after.
Yeah, so I think there's no surprise that this is, I think, as I said before as
well,
Lloyd and I have been in two companies in very similar roles consecutively now.
So we've essentially charted this journey twice.
And we've seen the challenges, but also the successes as well, and can speak to
what does
actually have an impact.
And yeah, I'm glad that some of it hoped it would be very easy to get that
mandate top
down, even though there is an appetite and yes, CS is defined as a core pillar
in an
organization.
It's not always translated into what that means operationally.
It's not always that you get all of the resourcing and the backing that you
need.
But unfortunately, if you were to take away one thing from this discussion, it
's in fact
that leadership mandate really critical for you to be successful because you
can no longer
be an island and work in isolation as a CS organization to be truly successful.
And you do need that cross-functional support.
You do need to leverage those resources.
And in order to access those resources and compete with their own priorities in
their
each vertical, it's important that you have your sea level support.
So that's really our takeaway.
So to truly unlock your customer's success potential to grow and retain
confidence and
maybe some ideas around advocating for that sponsorship in your organizations
as well.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
Super, super.
Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Chateau.
Thanks, Lloyd.
So we'll have about 10 minutes or a bit more for quite a few.
So we're going to have a few questions.
We're going to read the questions from the slide-up also.
So the questions that you put in the chat, if you have them to really open your
app,
go and upvote the question.
As soon as you're ready, perfect.
So I'm going to read the question and then whoever want to take it.
First question that has a lot of app votes here.
How can you show value, and now I know why, how can you show value that's not
directly
measurable from our product and customers have goals that cannot be direct from
the
products?
Should I take that?
You can take this.
Right.
You've given me a hard one to begin with.
I have had experiences in the product not being able to actually track and
demonstrate
the value because we don't have it set up to track some of that.
And also what additional problem is it's not easy to retrospectively go back to
your
product teams and hey team, can you now build in this coding so that we can
track X, Y,
Z in order to show the impact.
So we've leveraged a couple of things in this scenario.
One is to use some subjective data points or things like surveys.
And it was interesting to see low value adding admin tasks that are CS does
today versus what
they could be doing with the support of AI.
We see that with scientists.
Of course our end uses are scientists.
And when we've captured data with surveys, we see that 50% of a week's time is
actually
spent on low value administrative tasks around data management.
But we have also shown that down the line, that time actually reduces by almost
up to
45%.
So yes, it's subjective data.
And yes, it is dependent on what mood your and respondents are answering those
questions
in.
But we've captured more than 2000 data points across various end uses.
So one way to address it is to leverage subjective data like surveys.
You could be doing interviews with subsets of your customers.
But the holy grail of course is to be able to track in the product.
But that again goes back to then maybe having that right level of sponsorship
from top down
so you could work on having those metrics in place.
I think for the companies that I've been in, it's been a retrospective effort.
But we have always come to that realization that it's really important to be
able to track
in the app.
So we've started to make those efforts and have the data being tracked in the
app.
So that's one part of the question.
I think you're also asking if it's not directly relatable.
That one I think unfortunately is it's interesting that this is so common.
But usually you would expect that when a company is creating a new product, so
you should be
able to be able to speak to that.
But it's not always the case.
So here's where again you need to really partner with your cross functions,
with your marketing
teams, with your product teams, with strategy if you have that in place and
start to figure
that out.
And that might actually change with time as well.
Yeah, I'll question.
Okay, great.
We have a question about success plans and I know, Lloyd, you shared a screen
shot as
well.
But maybe digging a bit deeper here.
Can you share what your team success plans look like?
What does your team track to highlight the value?
Maybe as an example, something practical that you've seen picking up quite
nicely with you.
So we have different, obviously, segments.
So some of the CSMs are talking to a few customers, others are talking to a lot
of customers.
So we have to take that in consideration.
We've got different type of templates and different strategies for different
segments.
But typically what we try to do is ensure that the help they need and the
guidance they
need in order to create a success plan, maybe be completely out of the box.
And the idea is that the success plans are a set of CTA's basically right in G
ensite,
very tactical, in terms of it has a CTA objectives.
And then underneath that we have tasks that are already created and we measure
it at the
objective level.
We have a measure of success criteria as well of each of the success plans as
well.
But to highlight the value is very much on a customer by customer basis.
So even if we had the out of the box which I presented earlier, you can give
that information
and they will be able to see with the best practice that generally they should
drive
and they should strive towards in order to get some value.
So if you have a custom, massive enterprise customer, you have really a custom
success
plan, then you can go a lot deeper into the value that they are getting.
And you can customize the value to some extent but still leaking back to the
pillars.
And that's what I think is very specific.
But if you peel down very much what they are doing, you can always link it back
to a general
pillar as well.
And we've done a lot of education with CSM's and Playbooks around that as well.
Okay.
Another couple of questions here.
So who hasn't been in a situation where their own customers didn't know what
value is for
them?
So how, do you have any advice on handling or supporting customers who don't
know what
value means to them?
Yes, 100%.
So this is very common, absolutely.
So what we did when we started the success plan initiative more than a year ago
now is
CSM so that they have enough material and enough top track to go to those
customers without
being just not knowing when to answer almost.
But the customer is not sure of what the value means or what the value of
pillars.
We've kind of armed the CSM's with documents with all the different value
pillars that
we are, you know, scientific productivity, data quality, et cetera.
Examples of how other customers are doing it also that can also help them if
they see
that what other customers are actually measuring as well, as you have the
permissions to do
that obviously, or you can analyze the data.
But giving some examples and also going deep into the platform.
So if they're not really sure of what that means, you can say, hey, customer X
has been
doing, has been driving that scientific productivity.
They've used all these different features and this is the outcome they have.
That might already start to spark the conversation.
The other thing that is super important as well is especially for the bigger
customers
is are you talking to the right stakeholders?
Because sometimes you talk to a set, you know, an admin who might not have the
information.
So you might want to actually get higher into the organization in order to find
that information
and work again cross-clarity with your sales teams that might have more
contacts into your
organization, into your customer's organization in order to get to the high
level, to the right
level that has that answer.
So those are two things that we've done.
If I may add just one more thing to that.
I think there's also a need for the CS organizations and across the board all
functions to be up-skilled
on being able to speak to value and what it means.
Because I think what we struggle is we often get stuck at that feature
functionality level
and what we need to do is elevate the conversation.
So there's this theory around jobs to be done which is leveraged in pre-sales
and it's essentially
this concept that, you know, your customer is buying the experience of like
skateboarding.
They're not buying the skateboard itself.
It's that experience that looking for, right?
So they're trying to address a pain or a challenge that they're facing.
So one way, and therefore when you speak about feature functionality and the
value of your
product, it may not always resonate unless you're using that language in a way
that is
applicable to them.
So I think from our perspective as well, we've been doing quite a lot of up-sk
illing internally
to be able to be doing value selling and to speak in a language that is more
relatable
to the customer.
So that's one other way that you could consider as well.
Good.
So you spoke about having leadership buying into this and actually being on the
forefront
and leading.
So how do you justify CSM role in front of unconvinced senior leadership?
I wish I had a playbook for this.
It's really sort of, you know, trial and error because of course it's dependent
on senior
leadership to begin with for this.
But what's worked really is to leverage data because that's not subjective.
So most often, even though I kind of sit more earlier on in that journey, like
pre-sales,
I've partnered very much with the CS organizations and we've leveraged data to
show the impact,
whether it's even if it's N equals one.
You know, when you've done an intervention, what has been the impact with
enhancing the
or reducing the renewal timeline or the conversations that lead up to it, what
it might be capturing
as much data as possible to the impact that you're creating and leveraging that
data is
one way to have a meaningful conversation because it's not an easy one.
I don't know, Lloyd, if you have more thoughts on that as well.
I have lots of thoughts.
Because I'm talking to a lot of leaders who are common answer to that is it
depends where
are you sitting in your organization, right?
Some CS organizations are sitting under cells, others are sitting under product
, others are
sitting under CX.
You've got to ensure that you have a measurable way.
Everyone knows that CS is super important and is paramount to the success of
the company,
but it's how you prove it, you know, how you show it.
The KPIs are super important.
So my advice is to ensure that you can freely measure.
So for example, if you're linked to the renewals, show the segments that have a
CSM that are
dedicated and another segment you don't have is CS dedicated, what are the
different
and energy for example, you know, that could be, but you have to have really
hard metrics
to actually show that there's a lot of way of doing it.
We run out of time, but I'm always happy to talk about that.
A lot of different ideas on how to do that.
Thank you.
Yes, we're out of time, we don't want to keep you from lunch, but there are a
lot of really
good questions that I'm reading on the screen, so we'll make sure that with our
teams at
Slido, we get them collected.
We'll have, lo, if you're not in our Gainsite community yet, definitely join in
and have
a look at the rest of the questions.
All the slides in terms of PDF will be available to you in post library in a
couple of weeks
and also the audio of the presentation, so you won't miss too much.
But let's have another round of applause for our presenters here.
And we'll see you all after the lunch break.
