GSD Podcast - Onboarding, CS Ops and making it happen with Dana Soza
This week we are joined by Dana Soza, of customer everything.com. Dana is an OG in Customer Success, and was named a 2021 Top 100 Customer Success Strategist. We talked about doing CS before CS was even a thing. Some topics we went over were:
Creating tech and templates out of thin air
Streamlining the Onboarding Process with CRM Automation
Increasing Adoption by 900% (!!!)
Creating a process from scratch from presales through renewal
Using data to retain and upsell customers, even if they were in danger of not renewing
We also talked about Dana’s passion for helping new CSM’s find jobs, and then coaching them through all aspects of their careers.
You can listen to this podcast here.
Transcript:
Jeff 01:14
All right, so we're good. So Dana, thanks for joining me. So everybody, I'm here with Dana Soza. And so quick, no, I had not met Dan, before we were on I was on a there's a couple slack, CS Customer Success communities. And you had posted something about an interview you do these breakfast clubs, right? Like, yeah, and it was on CSR ops, and I'm like, so just totally being transparent here. I feel like I knew nothing about CSR ops my whole life. And now and now I'm reading quotes on LinkedIn where people are like, that needs to be my first hire before I hire any CS people. And I'm like, Okay, I need to kind of get up to speed here. And so I reached out to Tina, and which is really great, because we're both some lifers that did a lot of this when there was no instruction manual. And in there to Dana, introduce yourself, how you doing? Everything's
Dana Soza 02:10
good. Yeah, my name is Dana says that I am CEO and CCO customer everything and and then also, Dana says the customer solution. So I help CS core newbie newbies breaking into this late into the space climbers, trying to, you know, get that next promotion and help them on the job, do their job the best they can and then what I call ces pressures, which are those people trying to build ces from the ground up. So excited to be here. Oh, and I was named a top 100. SEO strategist. I am really proud of that. Let me tell ya.
Jeff 02:53
That's it. That's awesome. Yeah. So well, congrats on that for you. That's awesome. Yeah. Furthermore, that you're the person for me to chat with about here. So. So there's a lots of different areas, we go down and we chatted about some of the things that could really help people. Remember our core audience is hearing you talked about with CES, everything is maybe some people here who aren't exactly been living and breathing ces for the last. God knows how many years and want to get up to speed fast, or also a lot of people I know. Some that listen here. Maybe they were running a full department. And then they got ces popped into it. Like they were running professional services, or support. And now they're like, Hey, can you take over the whole thing now where they got promoted? And now they're like, you know, sea level, and they're running the whole group. So they're this sort of a, hey, what do I need to know about this? And things like that. So yeah, that's so so let's get into some of your. So when I first started talking with Dana, she was just kind of talking about, like, something was needed. And she just kind of had to create it out of thin air, which is just awesome. And now all the stuffs out there or anything. So I think it was was it? Planets? Yeah, I'm trying to think of the one before that. Oh, macro. Macro. Yeah, yes, definitely. That one.
Dana Soza 04:19
Yeah. So at macro, we realized that we're going to have to onboard a lot of customers in a really, really short amount of time. And I was having to onboard people multiple times because you get a whole company, right. And you had to onboard every all those people. And it was becoming really unruly. And so I had a directive from the CEO to you know, just build this, you know, education platform, you know, to be able to help streamline the onboarding process. And I called it Omokri University and we were in the music product space. So Oh, I had these I had these little gifts and stuff, but people wouldn't guitars, you know. And they, it was this whole gamification where it was like, I would say, what I ended up doing is I created a mapper University, it was a way to onboard a lot of people. So we had to create a ton of videos, to tell them, Okay, the first step, do these things, right? And then I would check in on them, you know, I'd get a little ping saying, okay, they did this one part of it, then I would ping them and say, Hey, did you finish that first part? I looked in your account, everything seems good. You ready to move on to the next? He said yes. Right. So it was like building profiles. And it was about inviting everyone from their network, because it was a product sharing network. So then I created another program called share the love. And that was where we created a bunch of templated Word documents, that they could email to 200 of their manufacturers, or retailers or service reps or anything like that, and just last them with, you know, joining this joining macro, because that's where they're sharing all of their product information, then, you know, there was that then there was like, uploading their products, all of those sorts of things. So this is
Jeff 06:23
crazy. By the way, I just want to jump in before you went even further. Because there's there's multimillion dollar companies out there building platforms that that do this now, right like this. That's true. Yeah.
Dana Soza 06:38
Yeah, I built it out of the CRM, we use Zoho. We use Zoho and I built that full automation through first through Zoho.
Jeff 06:52
Great, yeah, we're talking about onboarding ramping people up, checking where they are, so that they can move along. So eventually, like in today's terminology, so they're getting fast time to value and making sure that cleaned up and everything, to the whole influence influencers and champions, which I still haven't seen, like, a great way of doing I mean, I'm just might not know, well, like an onboarding platform that also helps you now get, you know, all these other people into the program that, you know, I call them influencers and champions, you see these a lot in, you know, I, I was working with a company and they did. Large, you know, they were converting large freight fleets over to an app. So instead of like, Yeah, I know, that route now doesn't work that way anymore, you got to do what the app is telling you. And because they were working, like early mornings, and there wasn't like a centralized location, they had to use an influencer program like this, of getting like champions up to speed. And we're talking about like, also, like, posters in the break room, like stuff like that, like, the same concept, right? It's like, you know, get on board use this thing. And yeah, that's all. Yeah.
Dana Soza 08:04
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, so it was, you know, just kind of this guided self help. It was about as close to a tech touch model that we could get at that time. And, and it really helped. I mean, you know, yeah, that time devalued have to I have it on my resume, but there was like, a really huge increase. And in terms of adoption, it was like a 900% increase in, in adoption of the platform by by doing just that. So we had, you know, and then there was also all macro clinics and stuff where I would schedule big group calls to onboard people. And so that would be like maybe more like a mid touch motion. And it really just depended, you know, on the company, if they weren't really spending much money, then it would be more of the the tech touch or if they were like a brand, you know, like big brands, like Schecter guitars, or USC or friend or then we get, you know, we would roll out the red carpet and they say,
Jeff 09:18
Absolutely, no was Was there a big because the 900% is like a massive improvement that would get you hired anywhere, but was there? Was there a was that a problem beforehand? Or was this something where you just said, Hey, this would make things better, or Yeah, it wasn't,
Dana Soza 09:35
there wasn't a problem. You know, my, my CEO was really somebody who saw the writing on the walls, and he knew that we were going to scale quickly, especially with the share the love program, and so he wanted to make sure that we preemptively took care of what ended up having the having been an issue which was, you know, and Lots of people and having to try and get them all on board. Because when we got, you know, Bender, and Roland and all those people, oh my gosh, they have so many retailers and service centers and all of that distribution and stuff like that. So it ended up being needed, but we hadn't even really scaled. Yeah, we just preemptively did it, and then scaled, which is kind of cool.
Jeff 10:26
I didn't know that's awesome. And was this SaaS? Or was it pre SaaS? Or was it like?
Dana Soza 10:30
No, it was SaaS? Oh, cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then, then I went to Planet DDS. And there, you know, we didn't have any kind of, like, standardized anything. When I came on board, I was the first hire as the director. And so the CEO there gave me the first directive of finding out what the How are, how's everybody on boarded, you know, from the time and, you know, from pre sales, all the way to, you know, adoption and retention. And they were in this really high growth phase of the business, because they had just bought the business from a different owner. And so, you know, they had, you know, angel investors to make happy and all of that. So, I just went out there. And I just started interviewing the sales people and the onboarding folks and the support and just documenting on Word. In a Word document, you know, how it is that we're, we are onboarding these customers, and providing a process to make sure that we optimize that. And then, and then there were some other things we used to obtain go also. So I was able to create some automation in there, too. Oh, I know, it was partners. So I was really in charge of growing us for our partner program. And so there was, you know, standard operating procedures for how to, you know, engage with them. But what is known as like standard operating procedures, or is now CSR.
Jeff 12:08
We'll get to that one second. I'm just curious on the partner stuff, was it because I see usually two things here, it's getting partners up to speed on how to use and interact the product, or then it's also getting partners up to speed. So they can basically be like a reseller. And then they're onboarding people as well to, which was a was a one or both of those
Dana Soza 12:32
aspects. Yeah, well, we had, we had one where it was a BI tool that we had white labeled. And so that was a big seller. So I was really focused on growth through this tool that we had. And then there were others where it wasn't white label, but there was like, a particular type of agreement where you there was like a shared rev cost. And so I developed a way to kind of prove out that model where I had done this ringless campaign with them, and found a health care company that was a dental office, actually, that was interested in proving out the model and, and we ran that and they got, you know, a huge influx of new clients through this program. And then they became customers are a lot of a lot of different things back then that I had no idea what CSR or customer success. I'm just doing stuff. And I didn't know that there was a name for it.
Jeff 13:39
Exactly. And we were talking about this before we started hitting record, but they were just, and I'm so glad you mentioned pre sales through retention, because that's how I view everything. It starts in pre sales and doesn't end but you got to focus on
Dana Soza 13:51
it doesn't end that's right.
Jeff 13:55
Where, where, back in the day, it was just doing all of that and just making sure you the salespeople, you help them sell it. And then you made sure that they got on board in in live and they're got value out of the products. And then making sure that in Regardless, this is even pre SaaS it just became really accelerated with SaaS, but making sure that they liked the product and everything like that. And it was a lot easier to renew back in the day, especially if you were like on their servers, and they it was just a huge pain in the butt to replace it. And now, when SaaS came around, it's like, we need to do all this other stuff, because people can just say, I'm gonna go put my credit card in somewhere else and use that product or something like that.
Dana Soza 14:37
Yeah, yeah. Well, and that's true, right? Because I worked at ifs, they were going through digital transformation from on prem to SaaS, and manage cloud also for those people that kind of, you know, needed the best of both worlds. So yeah, there's a lot of digital transformation going on, you know, to get away from from, but you're right. I mean, it does absolutely make it easier for people to leave. Although, with enterprise software, not so much, because there's integration to all the rest of your business, so are kind of like, not stuck. But they absolutely still can leave because it's not hardware, you know,
Jeff 15:18
100%. And I don't know about you, because, you know, we talk we have some of our customers have the same profile, but it's when they start selling into the enterprise that they realize they kind of really need to up their game in terms of like, their pre sales. What is that onboarding experience look like? If they're going to be doing integrations, like you just said, because once you integrate SaaS products, it's like, that's, that's not something you want to go back and swap out and a year later or something.
Dana Soza 15:44
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.
Jeff 15:46
So one of the one of the other things we're talking about, and it gets into that, that CSR? aspect is that like, we You didn't call it I didn't call it that. But it was just going through the usage and going through the numbers and kind of like, knowing what that health score was, and everything. Can you remember, a lot of you know, if you're a lot of people listening here, might not have opps, but they know that they need it. And what were some of the things that you were doing to make sure that you at least had that view of the customer that you know, you needed to have?
Dana Soza 16:18
Yeah, well, you know, when I worked at Dun and Bradstreet, it was a data data and analytics company. And so I needed it turned out, and it was actually hard to get data out of there, they didn't make that available to the CSM much, which is understandable, right, because data is power. That's what they sold. But I had a client that was up for renewal, and the salesperson actually was the one that would be in charge of selling it. And I was there to support him. And I worked with an account manager and we saw, okay, so this company isn't even utilizing like 25% of their lights and says, so they're going to downgrade majorly, or they might just cancel. So we have to try and figure something out. And we brainstormed and we came up with the idea of interviewing the users. So I had to pull data from places I had to start asking everybody, how can I pull this data? Where can I see this, you know, and the numbers and the information for the users because I wanted to interview them. And so I did, you know, I had to slice and dice the data in Excel. And, and try and figure out, you know, I needed like three segments of customers, I needed the kind of the champions, right, the super user and ask them questions, then I needed the people that kind of logged in some time, then I needed the people that never logged in, and some that, you know, did a lot in the beginning and then weren't doing as much. So I created a standardized set of 10 questions to determine what the problem was, and how we could, you know, mitigate the risk of them churning. And I learned that it was really just a lack of training and awareness. That was really all it was. So when we went in for the renewal conversation, me and the salesperson went in, and I had it I had this great PowerPoint with like, the glow with like, actual quotes for people like Dan, Denmark and India, right made it really fancy and fun and interesting. And he was just the client was glued to the screen and was like, this is such great information. And I said, this is what we recommend this customized training program, you know, and then we also have this kind of Self Help Portal, all of this. And he said, Let's do it. He said, I want to do it globally. And so we ended up getting, I don't know, it's like a $300,000 training package or something to be able to train them globally. So we had to deal with time zones and all of that. It's going to be a whole customized training program. So that was really exciting.
Jeff 19:07
New days too. So it was super hard to arrange those times back and forth. By the way, this is the one podcast where I wish we did the audio, a video podcast because you're as animated as I am with the hands so this is so it's funny because these are all super high level things right. That was going through and doing a full on user profiling. You had your segments going on there Yeah, not in some people they just do that like that's a job like segmenting and tearing right in and did some some like root cause analysis of of well usage and found out what those were and then you guys were able to pivot and then instead of taking a loss, you got an upgrade out of that again. Yeah, So I'm getting out of this 900% upgrade and that first thing that you talked about, and then it's max. Here. Yeah, so higher Ghana, actually.
Dana Soza 20:10
Ah, yeah.
Jeff 20:13
So let's let's turn this into, you know, helping out some of my core customers like if they're, you know, you know, we talked again talked a little bit about this beforehand. There's lots of great thought leaders out there. And they talk about concepts like hiring ces ops first and these big platforms use and things like that. A lot of the people that I worked with and talk with series A Series B. CES is a little bit of an afterthought. I think now, actually, I think a lot of the boards, and investors are really making people focus on this earlier, which is great. But people are like, Okay, we've got to CSMs. What do we do next? Right. And you know, the CSMs are, they're doing Zendesk tickets, they're onboarding people. They're trying to renew people. They're training people, and just doing all the stuff that you just talked about, and everything. Yeah, yeah. How do we get a group like that? You know, if you're, if somebody was to say, like, this is my problem, and I want more insight or usage and some of the concepts that you talked about? How would you go about addressing some of that?
Dana Soza 21:23
You mean, like, kind of dig in a little bit more on how like, did with the?
Jeff 21:27
No, no, I was thinking a little bit when we were talking about like, hey, instead of hiring a dedicated CS ops person, this is
Dana Soza 21:36
how, yeah, oh, yeah, you I mean, I have heard from CS ops people, that, you know, you should be doing CS ops, like number one hire, but I wouldn't, I wouldn't agree with that I, when I, but I have actually, I've, I've interviewed on some people about CSR. And there was a misunderstanding because that when they say, a higher CSR, they're not necessarily talking about a dedicated CSR ops person, they're talking about having somebody who is still there optimizing processes, trying to do some automation moves, trying to be able to do some reporting, and analytics to find out ways to kind of optimize the customer lifecycle. And your CSM can do that. I mean, you could have an account manager do that, if it's like your first if it's the first time that you're hiring someone, that see whoever you end up having, as a CSM can do all of that, and you can train them to do all of that. When I was doing it, I didn't know what I was doing, I just kind of, you know, was, you know, flying by the seat of my pants, and I had figured it out. And, you know, in any anybody can, you know, there's so much out there, you know, Gainsight platforms, other CMS platforms out there that can help with that CRM that you use. And you just have that as part of the job that the customer success professional does. Because you you're not having a scale yet. Right? You're still in the, you know, you know, the iterating phase really to try and find a way?
Jeff 23:23
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That's great. We're looking at it. So let's, um, I think this is a good probably a good segue into the thing that you just super passionate about, which is customer everything. And in the skills that people need, what are people did? Are they typically at a college? Are they transitioning from a different gig? Or?
Dana Soza 23:49
Yeah, so they're, they're transitioning, right? They're pivoting? There's so many people after 911? Or excuse me, 911? No, sorry. COVID. Like, we've had one catastrophe after another. No, but since COVID, people are, you know, reinventing themselves, they're realizing that their jobs maybe that they're not really happy in. And a lot of people love customer success if there's a real human centered approach to it, that I think speaks to a lot of different people. So the newbies out there that are looking to pivot into customer success from account management or sales are people I'm really I care about deeply because I was one of those people who, it's not that I don't have CS experience. I do. But back in the day, I didn't have a college degree for the first 10 years of my career. So it was really, really hard to get a job and I got really creative on how to do it. And so I wanted to be able to share that and so there was this whole process that I went through with my team on being able to help them because it turns out I love The biggest newbies the most, but, you know, they're pivoting career, they don't have a lot of money that, you know, the big boys have, you know, the corporations and the startups. So I needed something that was a tech touch model, you know, and create some sort of motion that allowed me to really help them without having to be involved in the day to day. And so I use a platform called podia, I use templates, you know, and I created this whole learn your ABCs process 10 steps to landing your dream CS job. And then we had to, you know, I worked with Christina, She is like my CSS ops person. And, you know, she and I worked together to implement the software to configure it the way that we needed it to be configured. And we're right now learning, like what the platform can do the reporting we can get, so that we can make sure that all these people that have signed up, stay in in the in the, in the membership, you know, that they don't, they don't leave, like they don't download all the templates, because I'm making them available all at once. Oh, yeah, that wasn't the best business decision. But I just care, I care about that, you know, I have to work really hard to keep them. And so we're thinking of a lot of different risk mitigation strategies, you know, to keep them on, I'm going to do, I'm going to start a bi weekly call, where we have someone who has the same passion as I do, who's going to be doing almost like the like the GGR office hours, right, she's just there to moderate and keep the conversation going. So that it's like I'm calling it newbies helping newbies call, they can get together and help themselves. So couple of different strategies like that. But that's really the tech touch model that we've been creating. And it's had a lot of great success.
Jeff 26:53
I love it. Because you're using you know, it's like a mirror in a mirror looking at each other because you're using a CSS platform, and CSS sort of learnings to get these people onto the platform to to learn about their CSS, they stay on CS stuff and everything. So yeah, I think that the you know, having them create these bonds is what's going to gonna be really just awesome for them. Because it's in those conversations, I've been in those GGR. And I do feel for some of the, the newbies who pop in there, and then you get some grizzled veteran like me is like, Nah, they're not gonna listen to you. And they're like, you know, so it's a place where they
Dana Soza 27:35
get results come on. energetic and lively professional.
Jeff 27:41
These are last lines, I swear. So, but that's awesome. Well, that's, that's there's a lot of stuff we just packed in, in a short amount of time there. So it's just like diluting. So what's next for for you? Like what's your Are you putting together your, your 2020 plan and the big things for you?
Dana Soza 28:02
Yeah, absolutely. So I have plans for the second level of being able to help ces career newbies, and it's going to be more would you say, more detailed templates, a lot more of them along with like really detailed instructions for all of them. And, and then the third tier will actually include, you know, coaching a coach coaching session with me. And so that'll be kind of my whole tech touch model, really three tiers that they can be able to buy into in that kind of tech touch model. And then that will allow me to focus more on my climbers and my crushers and then next with my my climbers is actually to do not a tech touch model but more of a guided self help so to speak, they're really kind of my my mid touch client. So guided self help through that same platform to be able to give them the templates that they need but get really hands on one to one instruction with me and then that allows me to then you know, streamline those whole whole processes by not having to reinvent the wheel with those clients. I already have a standardized process and then I'm allowed then to really focus on my my crushers you know, the people that are needing to build yes from the ground up customized programs and that's really where you know, the money is I got I got to read the market you know,
Jeff 29:46
no, that's great. It's I just am so like blown away because it's just hearing how you're implementing concepts like high tech low attachment you know, and those things for this thing for us yes community which is just awesome but like because you can tell like if you if you've got one of those custom things, and then you notice you do it three times over, it's like, oh, maybe this can be folded into a regular template that people use and stuff like, yeah.
Dana Soza 30:10
Oh, that's great. Yeah. And you can't do that until you've had all of the experiences and gone through all of that, you know. So, luckily, I've been able to leverage, you know, seven plus years of CS knowledge along with my sales, you know, my sales career experience, which is way, way too long to even mention.
Jeff 30:33
The best salespeople are the ones that had that sort of empathy, right? That and that's where is we know, the empaths are, because we said, as I said, when we first met, the hunters are in CS. And for that, you know, if you want the customers to do well, like that's where that, that that's the one thing when people ask, like, what's the quality you're always looking for? It's like, you need the empathy, like, anything else. And so that's great. So awesome. We'll just, uh, we'll hold on for a quick second. So we can do some recap after this. But thanks so much for joining. Where can people find out about what's the website for?
Dana Soza 31:11
Yeah, so if you go to customer everything.com, that redirects you to Dana soza Customer solution, but shortly I'm going to be redirecting it to my customer everything club. But you can also get to the customer everything club through. Let's see C club.codea.com. Yeah, I've got I've got it on, on Podio. Or you could go to Dana. So the.com to and I got lots of lots of goodies, free ebooks and stuff like that to help people. So you know, they can reach out anytime. Email right on my website, they can reach out.
Jeff 31:53
That's great. That's awesome. And I'll put your LinkedIn profile. Hopefully you won't get too overwhelmed by connection to request, but
Dana Soza 32:01
I would love it. I would love it. I love being connected. I'm a community junkie. So.
Jeff 32:07
So that's great. Well, Dan, just hold on after this. And thanks again and we will talk to you soon.
Dana Soza 32:14
Thank you Okay, bye