“Customer Success connects why customers buy your solution with what your customers get using a proactive and prescriptive customer management approach to reach both your customer and your company’s goals.” - per ChurnZero’s CEO and Founder, You Mon Tsang. 

In this episode of The Revenue Engine podcast, serial founder and entrepreneur, You Mon Tsang, shares how to best leverage customer success to drive customer satisfaction, leading to customer retention and better revenue outcomes.

Take a listen and learn how to optimize the end-to-end customer experience.

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What is the definition of customer success? Customer success connects. Why customers buy your solution, their purchase intent with what your customers. The realized value and outcomes using a proactive and prescriptive customer management approach to reach both your customer and your company's goals.

So this is the definition of customer success from ChurnZero.

Today's podcast is sponsored by Outreach.io. Outreach is the first and only engagement and intelligence platform built by revenue innovators, for revenue innovators. Outreach allows you to commit to an accurate sales forecast, replace manual processes with real-time guidance, and unlock actionable customer intelligence that guides you and your team to win more often. Traditional tools don't work in a hybrid sales world. Find out why Outreach is the right solution at click.outreach.io/RevEngine.

In this episode of the Revenue Engine podcast, You Mon Tsang the CEO and founder of ChurnZero shares his thoughts on customer success and how organizations can unlock the power of CS to help their customers be successful, to find value in your offering and ultimately lead to better revenue, retention, and revenue.

So please take a listen to this serial entrepreneur with multiple successful exits and learn how to drive a better end to end customer experience. So super excited to be here today with you Mon saying the founder and CEO of ChurnZero. At ChurnZero is the real time customer success platform that helps businesses understand how their customers use their product, assess the health and likelihood to renew and provide the means to automate and personalize that customer experience through timely and relevant touch points.

So welcome You and thank you for joining me. Thrilled to learn more about your backstory and just learn from you.

You've had several successful exits by the way, I'm still looking for one , but serial, you know, several successful exits in a variety of different industries, right. Leading up to. ChurnZero. So maybe before we dive into what you're doing today, can you share maybe more about your backstory and just your career journey?

Right? So marketing, marketing analytics, and now customer success you know, probably the backstory. The most interesting thing is, you know, and you and I were talking about this before the podcast started was, you know, we're both you know, sort of children of immigrants. And you know, one thing I think about is my world view was actually fairly narrow when I was growing up.

Right. You know I was gonna be a banker or a lawyer or something like that. And that was, you know, incredible thing to do. That's the biggest I ever thought about. And, you know, one of the great things about sort of getting into the entrepreneurial life and. Those of you in the audience, who's interested in it.

You'll, you'll find that, you know, what you can do cont you know, expands, right. And you, and what you like my first company was, was kind of a small one. And then the second one was bigger and the third one was bigger and just, I just kept expanding my world view. And I think for those of you who are sort of, you know, grew up a certain way you know, my encouragement to use is like just, you know, just, just think big, right?

Cause cuz it's possible here, especially in the United States. So, and I just, you know, a little bit of my backstory, I can go into the details of each each company, but I think that's, you know, the lesson I've learned from starting so many companies.

So was this sort of the aha moment that led you to starting the company? Or was it something else?

And when I was a CMO, I had that all, you know, I, I just knew everything about my prospects, you know, what emails they were looking at, you know, did they come to my website? Did they attend my webinar? I just, you know, and I knew how to score them. And, you know, they became customers. And then, and then all of a sudden the tech all went away right.

For our CS, poor CSMs had no tech to, to manage it. And it was, and I was very, of course, In some ways that was a super scary, obvious aha moment. Like of course we should be supporting our customers better than even we, you know, support our prospects. And so it was, it was definitely an aha moment. You know, when I, when I started looking into it, probably the one thing that scared me the most is like, well, why, why aren't people.

They were building it up for the first time. And so there really was a, you know, budding movement around customer success, serving your customers in that way, and that sort of you know, allowed for tech to come in. So I think, you know, a little bit. You know, starting a company oftentimes is not only a good idea, but our, how good is your timing?

And I think for us, the timing was also good because customer success was really growing as, as it did.

Because you know, you mentioned customer success was sort of just kind of starting out. You know, obviously it's exploded as well.

Right. Mm-hmm in the beginning you had a theory. You know, as you sort of go into what you're like, you're, you're massaging, massaging, massaging it. And then all of a sudden it's slightly, it's either slightly different and sometimes completely different. And that's okay. Right. I mean, in fact, I think that's sort of the journey that entrepreneurs take.

But then sometimes, you know it doesn't change at all. So for ChurnZero, You last year, actually, we had a big annual conference and I went back to all my very first slide deck for ChurnZero. And I looked at it and I'm like, well, I could, I could give this today. Right. And basically the, the premise was that, you know, we wanna make sure that your, you know, that your customers are engaged, they're successful, they're renewing, and they're expanding, you know, their business with you.

They're looking for that real partnership and a lot of value, right? Value driven relationships where organizations can, you know, really help them be successful. And I think that's why we've obviously seen this huge rise of customer success, or it's a term of customer success. Still think that people still confuse the term.

Right? Sometimes they think it's oh, is that customer support? You know, is that just service? It's like, what is that like a help desk it's like, which we know is very, very different, you know? And on your website, I saw your definition around customer success as you know, customer success connects, why customers buy.

Your solution, right? Their purchase intent with what your customers get that realized value and outcomes, you know, using a proactive and prescriptive customer management approach to reach both your customer and your company's goals. And I love this, you know, I think I, I thought that was just so great.

I'm definitely gonna be using that and hat tip two had tip to your company, but, you know, can you share maybe more about your philosophy when it comes to customer success and then how this philosophy has really helped you, you know, retain revenue and also. Revenue growth.

We've actually been thinking about this ourselves a little bit, you know you know, in the marketing team, you know, sort of look back on, you know, a lot of what our customers have said about us and then, you know, what then how we sort of build our product and the, and the way we think about it is, look, I mean, if most of the, most of your listeners are probably the SAS world, right.

And mm-hmm and so. If you are delivering a SaaS service, a SaaS product, you're really thinking about your product and your service, right? So your product and your service, and then your, you know, the partnership that you have with that customer now. You know, for companies like ChurnZero, we really lean on both.

Right. So we have, you know, you have to have a really good product that people use. But you know, we actually have a platform, right. And so our CS team also helps, you know, with best practices, onboarding, integration and getting all that data in there, which is, you know, sometimes easy sometimes not.

And it's really the combination that a product and a partnership that is super important for success. I think that really describes probably. You know, 60 to 70% of all the folks out there now, maybe the other 30%, you know, maybe the product is very inexpensive, right. And you can't afford to say, you know, have.

You know, you can't, you can't really have a huge customer success team. So you maybe have your product be self served. You know, you push as much customer success in a product, super easy to use. And then, you know, customer success teams are there, you know, in case you need it. Right. But the product comes first and then there's some companies where, you know, it's almost all it's service first.

And so you really focus on delivering service and then, you know, the product helps out with that. So it's really a common, you know, if you think about your own, you know, customer success, Think about your product, think about the partnership and what do you need to invest in both? And I think that's, you know, a good philosophy to have, and, you know, your mileage will vary depending on what you sell, how complex your product is.

But that's really sort of the, what you're selling to the customer, right? Your, you know, their success will be a combination of the par the product you have and a partnership that you build.

Right. And I think more than ever customer retention, customer satisfaction, it's really at the heart of success of every business. You know, you're in an interesting space you talked about because you actually enable organizations to do this better. So maybe what are some of the things that. See organizations, you know, doing really well, like what are they doing?

Right. And maybe some of the things that they're doing wrong too, when it comes to their customer retention efforts.

Right. And you know, you think about growth. You think about new sales and only like recently, you know, with the sophistication model you realize, oh my goodness. Like, like retention is, is so important. Right? And, and it feels super obvious, but for those of us in those software space, that was kind of a slow changing thing.

It used to be that, you know, I don't know if you remember these days, you sell them software. They paid all up front. Yeah. If they used their or not, eh, you know, it didn't really matter. Right. Cause they paid you already of course now with subscriptions, you can't do that anymore. Right. And so there really has been a, a, a real change.

So in terms, you know, so basically you, you know, instead of just worshiping on the alter of, of new sales now, now you have to really think about that revenue retention, gross revenue retention. That's really important parts now, what are people doing? Right. And what are people doing wrong? I do have a piece of advice.

If you. You know, if you, if, if you're having trouble retaining customers the first place I always have people look is on onboarding. I mean, that's really the first place you really need to get that, right? Because, you know, as you know, the first impression is important, the most important, and you can survive a.

Bad onboarding. Right? You can definitely get out, you know, if, if it onboards incorrectly, you can survive it, but why not get that right in the beginning? And, you know, so if you're trying to figure out, Hey, you know, my gross revenue, retention's too low. What's going on. I would say, you know, look at onboarding first, right?

Because if you get the momentum, get it right. You, you, you are really ahead of the game. That's number one, right? Just you know, if there's, there's the focus point on what you're doing right or wrong. Now, some people, you know, can look at the data, can see exactly where people fall off onboard correctly, but they don't get engaged.

They get engaged, but you know, they, they, they don't stay on. Right. So there's, there's, there's a lot of reason if you have the data, but if you don't look at them onboarding, the other thing I, I think is also important is don't confuse happiness. with success. You know, some of your most successful customers are probably your most cranky customers, right?

So they're probably not always happy, but then, but you know, they, they're getting something outta your, your product and some of your happy is customers won't renew. And so I think, you know, a lot of CS teams really confuse happiness with success. Right. So happiness would. Oh, I had a great conversation with them.

They gave us a good NPS score. But you know, maybe they're not using, you know, the features that you want them to. Maybe they're not getting the value you want. So, so make sure you, you know, when you think about the health of a customer, you know, the happiness certainly matters, right? Cause the relationship matters, but are they getting.

They expect out of the the product and service delivering and that combination of the relationship and the value. Right. That's success. Those two things together. Yep.

Like, do you, are you seeing any kind of trends or, you know, what are some predictions that you might have?

All the ops you know, one of the things that we see is that, you know, often data is just so bad actually, you know, everyone, you know, , I mean, it, it, by the way, it's, and it's no one's fault, actually. It's just, it's just tough to get data. Right. There's so many systems that January, so much data. But if you can get control of your data, right.

And if you sort of think about it from the very first time someone generates a piece of data and goes down a funnel all the way to sale. If you can kind of get a hold of that, that becomes a real weapon, you know, for you. And even in the last seven years, you know, at ChurnZero, you know, they're, you know, everyone's data is, is, is really, you know, well, they all have some problems.

I think people now really understand that they have to fix it. Right. You just simply cannot run a world class, or even though even world class, like, you know, even like a good SaaS company without getting your data. Right. So that's number one data. Data's not only, you know, it it's really a weapon in, in order to compete.

And then I think the other thing is. You know, I it's, it's a little bit less concerning now, but last year, the last 12 months, you know, it's was so hard to hire people. You know, everybody just was just struggling to, to support their customers that, that I think the sort of extreme digital transformation was happening.

Right. And I don't know if you've, you know, you know, go to restaurants these days and I'm, you know, I, I certainly love it when. You know, pay be it a QR code, right. It just seems weird that someone brings over a check for me, for me to put a piece of plastic down for them to go away and swipe it and bring it back to me.

Like you can think about that as a small digital transformation. That that was accelerated by the pandemic. Right. And I think a lot of those things are happening in all sectors, including SA right. All the things that you were doing in CS that, you know, had a human touch, you know, let's just look at all those, you don't, humans are harder to get.

They're more expensive. You know you know, it's harder to hire them. How. Do extreme digital transformation. So those are two things that I think about data and then, you know, just sort of really accelerated extreme digital transformations things. I see.

Right. And I, I, 100% agree with you around just like, even if you're data, I guess if we were to survey nine, you know, 10 companies, I'm sure nine out of the 10 are gonna say their data's not great. Right. And there might be the one that says it's great. You know, it could be better. It could be better. It can always be better.

Yes, exactly. Right. It can always be better. And I'm actually really surprised because from a rev op perspective, I'm always asking folks, you know, Hey, what's your data strategy? You know, what is your data governance model? You know, things like that. And they're like what a data strategy. And I remember asking this in a, in a forum with about a hundred people and we're speaking on a panel about it.

And I said, well, how many people have a data strategy? And there was literally one person who raised their hand and one that kind of. Way raised his hand. Right. And it was like, you know, people don't really understand that, Hey, data is not just a commodity, right. This is like one of your biggest assets in your organization.

And as you said, it's really the weapon for you to really, you know, monetize and not just accelerate growth, but just to maintain revenue and do it better. Right. And provide a service to your customers

You know, You know, you know, sort of when cracks happen in, in your business, right. Mm-hmm , you know, early and if something bad happens, you know what happened? Like sometimes you can't avoid it. You're like, oh, I know that's gonna happen. and the data's gonna show me that it happened, but at least like, you know what happened?

And, you know, it's, it's no longer a good excuse to say, well, I don't know, like why, you know, a lead dried up, you know? Well, you know, be, if you had all the data, you would know that the conversion rate between here and here was your problem. Right. Or your close rates went down. Right. And if you had all that data, oh my goodness.

You know, it, it, you just run a much better company know doubt about it.

Empower the revenue engine. So maybe from your perspective, like, you know, what are the top couple, maybe two or three things that you think, Hey, all CEOs should really be thinking about today to really help grow and retain revenue.

When it's, when there's uptime, the economy's booming and you know, you you're really driving a lot of volume in your leads. You know, you're really focusing on like, getting that, your share of the volume, you know, are you getting it right? And you're just like doing all you can to like, you know, get the top of the funnel.

And, and, and it feels like it's, it's all about getting as much as you can. Now in down times when that kind of dries up a little. , you know, then you focus, you have to optimize on conversions, right. So losing less and less at every, you know, part of the funnel, if you will. And that's because you're just not gonna be able to you, you, you know, in up time she can kind of like, okay, let me just spend a little bit more, do another webinar.

And, you know, leads will come in or whatnot in down times, you know, they're just not quite there. And so you really do have to focus on conversions. So for me up, you know when things slow down a little bit down times, that's really a good time for you to focus on sort of, you know, the, all the little conversion.

Methods, you know, in all, all parts of your, your pipeline. So I really do focus on that. I just, in general up time to down times, I always, you know, love to invest in what works, right? So every time you look at your budget, you know, these are the things that work, you increase it, but you always have to have several experiments.

Right. And this is in every department it's in marketing, it's in sales and CS. Like every year, let's try a few. We know, maybe at least half of 'em, if not more will fail. Right. But if there's one thing that's interesting, you know, you can go ahead and, and, you know initiate that for the new year.

Right. Cause you're always, you know, most companies are looking for growth, most companies looking for optimization. So I do find that if you don't plant those experimental seeds, like you just never, you're always gonna do the same thing over and over, over again. And sometimes it's not working and you're like, okay, what happened?

You know, you just really need to in, in experiment and then, you know, just selfishly, I, I think you always have to find opportunities in your customer base, especially in the downtime. And so your customers are, you know, even in an uptime is always. It's always cheaper to sort of find opportunities within your customer base, but in the downtime, you know, when top of the funnel dries up, you know, it becomes even more of an imperative.

So, you know, those are three things. One, you know, just, just focus on, on, on sort of all the conversions and optimization and down times. Run experiments all the time. I think that's always important maybe 10 to 15% of your budget, especially on the marketing side on experiments, and then also find opportunities in your base.

Right? So these are things that would focus on.

and then I think, you know, the, the testing, I love that because I think people forget to do that. You know, I was talking to a marketer Marketing leader the other day. And we were talking about how you should always be AB testing things, right? You should always be trying out, even if it's small, but even being able to try some, I love that guidance of sort of 10, 15% of your budget, because otherwise, how are you gonna be innovative?

Right? How do you know what's working? And what's not, if you don't try new things and then of course, you know, run your customer. I. There's so many opportunities that, you know, I think go to market leaders miss by not really spending enough time with their customers. You know, we think about even for customers who leave you really understanding why did they leave?

You know, why did they buy to begin with, and why did they leave? Like what could we have done differently that could have saved this customer? And then be able to feed that information back into your top of funnel, right? So then you bring. Customers that are the right, right ICP, the right fit for you, that you can really drive the value.

And to your point earlier about making sure that they have the right onboarding experience and, you know, just the entire process. I think we don't spend enough time, a lot of organizations talking to the customers and learning from them. So I love that.

And that is why, this, why now? Right? Mm-hmm and. And, you know, cuz you, you, in a lot of decisions will come. You'll have, you'll have a lot, you'll have a lot of investments to make. People are gonna ask you all the time, Hey, we need to do this and this and this. And these are all good things, right? You should sort of embrace that.

But when you're thinking about, you know, whether you're starting a company, like, well, why this company and why now. You know why me? Right. That would be questions you, you have to ask or you, you know, you know, your CMO comes to you and says, Hey, I wanna invest in this new, you know, software. That's really expensive.

It's like, okay, well, why this, why now? And what it's gonna do. I think if you ask those questions especially the now question, I think those are really important questions to answer you, answer them wow. That you can feel confident in the decision. You're making.

One, like, what is the one thing about you that others would maybe be surprised to learn? And two, what is the one thing that you really want everyone to know about you?

Cities, I love, you know, sort of the, the sort of the interactions between people, instructors and infrastructure. It's all a big part, but you know, what I hated about planning was that planners don't actually do a lot. Yeah. You do a lot planning, but like the politicians do all the doing right. And you're like, and it was, and it was.

Very frustrating as a planner. Even though it was intellectually interesting, but you know, it just wasn't for me and I, I went to the opposite. Right. You know, startups are all about doing, it's all doing, doing, there's some, there's a lot of planning, but it's mostly doing. So I went the opposite way so that you know, most people don't know that about, about my history and I what's that what is one thing somebody wants?

Okay. So I , I tell people this, but so my first product management job, so I. You know? So my, my career was, I started as a product manager. I had a product called data pivot. And do, are you an Excel user Rosalyn

Right? Right. Guess what Microsoft stole that feature from, from, from us? They, I mean, they, and by the way, I can say, and the reason, you know, we stole it was because when they released it. It was on a cover of a magazine called PC week. And if you took a look at, you know, so when they announced it, we, we saw.

ex you know, Microsoft just copied our feature.

It just a great product. I, but look, I love the love of pivot tables, you know? But that was. You know, I was just really proud of our product. It was such a great product. It was very successful, was successful with the company. But now, now go on. Now it's gone on, you know, with Excel and Google. It's just a great, great idea.

Oh. You know, put Merlot in. And you know, how many Burlo units you had? It was, it was, it was, it was funny. It was no, I mean, it, wasn't funny at the time in retrospect.

So having you mentioned there's, there's nothing more important for SaaS companies. So thanks for having me.