GSD Podcast - Scaling Customer Success for Hypergrowth Companies with Renee Bochman
Jeff is joined by Renee Bochman, VP of Customer Engagement at Salsify.
Discussion on Customer Support, driving adoption, and her drive to create a better customer experience. We discussed onboarding, implementation, and best models for SaaS customers to be successful from the time a customer signs. Success metrics, improving adoption, and testing and learning the best model for success while in hypergrowth mode. We also touched on Renee’s approach to management and finished up with mentoring and meditation.
Transcript:
Jeff 01:14
Hey, everybody, it's Jeff and I just wanted to thank you for listening to Episode Four. With a dear friend of mine, Renee Bochman. We were together about 10 years ago at a company called deca, here in Boston. And Renee has been a great sounding board for me. She's got lots of great experience. She's run support organizations and success and services and is currently in hyper growth mode with their company salsify. And we just had a great conversation, I really appreciate it. It was pretty fast paced. Some some difficulties and scheduling and some things happened in the beginning where we just got on and started talking in a very caffeinated, fast pace. So don't don't suggest I don't suggest listening to this at like 2x or something like that. That would be pretty fast. So we touched on a lot of the things I want to talk about, we'll definitely have a follow up, because we didn't even talk about really support. And we got into how to scale, a customer success organization in a company that's going through hyper growth, which if you haven't been through, it's pretty exciting in Rene is definitely give some tips on the best approaches to doing that. And we just talked about really just lots and lots of different things in the short period that we had. So it was great to do that. I hope you like it and listen for some more. Record. We are recording. All right. I'm here with Renee Bochman, who's a longtime coworker of mine from back in the in DECA days there's a there's a few unicorns in Boston now. And Renee is at one of them. There's toast in there salsify. And then there's nobody else as far as I'm concerned.
Renee Bochman 03:05
I don't care and Decker crew, right.
Jeff 03:08
It's awesome. It's just great seeing all these companies that were sort of founded out of some hard, hard work that I think we all put in and loved. And I'm gonna get into some of that, because I know that we personally sat in conference rooms, like, what the fuck is going on here? And then I you find out later, it's like, no, that's that's what hyper growth startups are actually.
Renee Bochman 03:31
The early days, I thought it was unique. And I was just explaining to somebody that works for me is like a, you know, first second job. And they're like, I don't understand what's happening here. And I'm like, crazy is this. This is awesome. And once you get used to this, you struggle going into a company that's not in hyper growth, because it feels like it's backwards.
Jeff 03:49
Oh, exactly. Yeah. It's so funny, because there's one thing that there's a, there's a line that you hear at every company from somebody. And when you hear that line, you're like, we're in and that line is I just saw an email announcement about a new employee. And I didn't even know the person who sent the email.
Renee Bochman 04:09
The guy who started on Friday and sent a new employee email on Tuesday, and it's like, I don't know what's happening anymore.
Jeff 04:18
Oh, my God, it's crazy. So what's so I mean, you've covered all the bases and everything in which is great. I think it's more than like a trifecta. You've touched all I think the components of the services model, which I want to sort of get into. So you had worked previously before in deca, and I couldn't even remember if that was in a support type of role. But you were definitely like just running that group when I started and your employees loved you. I believe like, everything's hazy. I just remember, you know, the office by now like that's about it. So, kind of walk me through the path that you had it in Stuck on the sort of path you've gotten to be where you are now?
Renee Bochman 05:03
Yeah, so I actually worked in connected which got bought by Erina Mountain, which got bought by autonomy, which got bought by HP. singly, I ended up working with people because Vertica got bought by HP. So like really small world. But I started in support, I grew up in support. And I came to on DACA, as it was, me and Mike McLaughlin were the first to support or an eve, but first to support people and basically had to build out a support organization in an organization that didn't believe that support can be done, right? Because, you know, it takes massive amounts of engineering effort to do any of this. And so
Jeff 05:44
yeah, and I will say, like, the impression I got from you, which now that's the level I hold all support, people just will fight to the death, you don't care about politics. It's just like, don't mess with the customer. Like, they bought us for a reason. I'm not gonna, that's my philosophy. Oh, like, you've always sort of like, I don't care. I don't care who I piss off. Let's fix this problem. Am I over generalizing it? Or?
Renee Bochman 06:08
I've always found the interesting thing about being really good at so far, is it being able to balance both things like what's the right business decision and customer decision, and really being animal about and actually, I think that's true as services run. So
Jeff 06:21
you don't want to set up a subservient relationship, either. You have to
Renee Bochman 06:25
have like, in a lot of people get very militant about the customer. And then they forget that they're actually working for an organization that's trying to accomplish a goal. really challenging organization. But if you kind of like, hey, what's actually the smart thing to do that keeps the business and mine and the customer in mind, but you know, it's a tight rope. But so add, in deca, I own the support organization, we built it to a global organization, then I server account management, we had a once what's called a SaaS, we had a hosting business for a hot
Jeff 07:00
sec, I remember that. I heard about it. I was I was not at the company.
Renee Bochman 07:06
So we had a couple of customers that it was beginning when SaaS was starting to take over and kind of like people were like, are you going to host this?
Jeff 07:13
Oh, no, no, I remember those, perhaps a large retailer that sold a large retailer.
Renee Bochman 07:18
And so we saw I own that group. And they they owned for what would probably now be considered customer marketing. But this was many years ago. So it was called customer success. It was, you know, where we did regional user groups, and we did one to many touchpoints really trying to drive adoption. So and then I own technical relationship managers was me trying to come up with a new title for tam because right over us, even 20 years ago, Tam was overused. And so I had some, and really, the whole goal was to try to create this customer experience. And I loved working in a deck, it was the greatest organization, but it was it was a very mature organization. But at that point, so for me to kind of take that next step. I was never going to URL and services at a DECA it was a huge business out of indica. So I left in DECA and went to a company called exida. To really to really own services. The interesting thing about Ixia was, they were an on prem business converting to a SaaS business,
Jeff 08:28
you know, I know them well. Now they're part of PTC. I know Joe Byron, and some of those guys as
Renee Bochman 08:32
well. Yeah, great guys, right. And when we came on board, it was like 80% of our customer base was on prem, and 20% was SaaS. And then we started to do that conversion. So my, I own the services, the training and the support organization.
Jeff 08:52
Were they so SaaS can also mean two things because some people talk about SaaS, obviously, is where the software lives. And then this is random term that we're not random. It's pretty rapid, but it's the term people use to replace perpetual licenses, right? So you can have a SaaS model and still be on premise. But you're, you're You've got to renew every couple of years.
Renee Bochman 09:11
Yeah, this was actually we tried to take a on prem product and turn it into a multi tenant product hosted so very, very different models in very, very different DNA inside of an organization. If you think about what onboarding looks like, you think about what support looks like, you think about what all the pieces and to try to have the split personality between on prem and SaaS is super challenge,
Jeff 09:39
but it's great that you went through that because that's sort of we didn't actually get there and Indego but because of the way the software works, but that is the classic, you know, you're not sticky as much right? Like you're not like hey, we're gonna go install this thing and and to unbundle that it's going to take somebody like three years to do so we're sitting pretty right now. And as our favorite person dying He likes to say, and then the account rep drives up every three years in his BMW with a contract.
Renee Bochman 10:04
Yeah, yes, yes. Yeah, it's very different when you have that year annual contract. And you really have to understand adoption. And you have to understand expansion. And you have to understand what makes you sticky. And what the use cases are. And it changes your services model, I mean, support obviously changes, because you don't get to pass the buck to them, like, go figure this out, you actually hit Oh, let me figure this out. But from a services model, it's in, you know, when you think about on prem, it's really easy to build a very large business supporting on prem. But that's not why they're building SaaS, and you want repeatability, and you want usability, and they're really hoping that they don't have to hire Accenture and hundreds of 1000s of dollars, they want it to be easy. The misnomer for me is that SaaS is never much easy. It's still something you have to integrate, you know operationalize and you have to think about organizational change. And so there's this, there's this really, last thought about kind of like, Oh, if I just buy a SaaS tool, then all things will just be easy.
Jeff 11:07
You just put your credit card in it works.
Renee Bochman 11:10
Go. And that's not true. For any tool,
Jeff 11:15
I found that the big shift that I saw for services is that there's a big need to create some implementation packages. I don't know if you've gotten into that. But I'd love to hear your experience that'd be talking about mine on that, because it's the base. And I think you might have just had some conversations about that recently, in the last hour or so. But but there's this thing about we need to get these customers up and successful. There needs to be some configurations. It's not people in a support desk. So let's just chat about that a little bit.
Renee Bochman 11:48
Oh, my goodness, yes, the the? Well, because with a SaaS model, obviously. And I'm thankful I don't have a monthly model, right? Because I don't know, I know, people that have a monthly model. And I can't imagine the frenzy of that. Because even on an annual basis, and you know, our product is a platform. So there's a lot to do, there's a lot of complexity. I mean, it's not a hard platform to use, but organizational change all the things right. And so you have to create these packages that will really kind of like be jumpstart them. And it's like, you have to do all kinds of maturity assessments, you have to think about where are they? What kind of resources do they have? What kind of commitment do they have inside the organization, then this really bums sales out because loves the know, it's the easy button, use credit card, and off you go. And so really finding that balance with supporting sales. So you don't drag down the sales cycle, you create friction. But you also don't have sales selling the smallest package possible, regardless of the customer status. And then when they churn like people aren't like, well, what's going on? Like, why is this happening? Why aren't you doing a great job? It's like, well, how do you really find out what your customers need? What they're going to consider as milestones of success. And at the end of the year, even if it's not quite where they want it to be. They know they're on the right path. And what's the right package for that?
Jeff 13:12
Absolutely. Well, it's two things here. You said a great thing, which is milestones for success. And I know one thing that comes up a lot, and I've been asked a bunch is, you know, people think customer says success, and it's like NPS and I'm like no, no, no, there's, if you get to NPS like that's great, because you've done everything right along the way. And so the next question, then is customer signs, right? Contract goes through sales recognises the revenue. And what are the in the customer metrics that you track? In that first year, right? Before you start sending out the NPS surveys? Like I have, I have some ideas, but like, I think it's different in every organization, and what you say might be different than like what Diane says or something? Well, yeah,
Renee Bochman 13:53
and I think you really have to know your product. Know your customers, I think if you're a service executive, and you're not talking to your customers as frequently as possible, you are dropping the ball, you have to understand the pain that your customers in what I find is, the mistake I find often is we think about internal metrics of success. And we don't think about the customers view.
Jeff 14:14
Absolutely. That's that's you have to know the customer success metrics to know
Renee Bochman 14:18
where they're going to drive. And so one of the things we do is like, what are the goals you're trying to accomplish? What does that look like? And then how do we map that to our own product? milestones? Yeah. And I think NPS is a great tool, but it's a tool, and it's a data point. It's a lagging data point. And, you know, it's the highs and the lows always. And we've done a lot of work on a customer health score, which everybody's all hot and bothered about right now is how do you build your house score? And we do we have a four tiered health score. We have a product usage, we have how much they're engaged with, like are they using learning? Are they using support? Are they going to webinars? So engagement score, we have NPS is one of those kind of like how they feel about us. And then we actually how do we feel about them? Like you feel like they're like making progress. They have good goals. And we kind of algorithm algorithm that. And
Jeff 15:13
I'm shocked you guys using algorithms. They're
Renee Bochman 15:16
shocking that we've used data. We're such a, it's such a data shy company, you know, we're run by data lords. Actually, when
Jeff 15:23
I talked to Jason, he said, they were trying to like not even use like a platform, like Dec Gainsight, or anything like that. You were trying to build that all inside your own.
Renee Bochman 15:30
Oh, we built it all. And it's, you know, the thing is gametypes. Great. And it does a lot of things. But until you know what, you don't know what you don't know, right? Absolutely. And one of the things we're actually trying to figure out right now is what is the feature? What is the thing that you can, because you can have your assumptions that kind of prove it out? And if you don't have a huge customer base, you're not talking large numbers. Right, right. We're fortunate we have 600 plus customers, right. But from Patrick's perspective, 600 is a small amount of data point, do you think about vertical and maturity and like lifecycle, like, your signal to noise can be high there. So we're in a kind of like, test and learn cycle? And yeah, I can totally imagine getting to a Gainsight when I feel like okay, now I've got, yeah, right. But
Jeff 16:19
otherwise, you're kind of having to craft your solution into their solution. And it's not just Gainsight. It's just, there's a bunch of ones that's out there. But then it's like, oh, then these, this is the model that I should be looking at. But you're doing the smart thing, which is like, No, we have to make this specific for our organization, because we have our own unique value prop and everything. What's Oh, sorry, go ahead. Sorry. I was gonna say is, there's two points, I want to dig into more on that. First of all, when do you get to I have my own bullies? But like, when you get to those kinds of conversations in pre sales or post sales in then what's the what's the role? Like? Who's the person? How are you hiring for them? You know, hiring traits for those because it's a little different services, you know, get your product project managers get your architecture, developers, QA drop them in, this is a little bit of a different thing, right? Oh, it's
Renee Bochman 17:11
completely a different thing. And it's funny, you know, when you're a startup, you kind of have Jack of all trades people, they do everything, they do training, they do implementation, and, you know, success. We've all been there to grow, and you have more customers, and you actually start to realize some complexity and your product market fits there. And you're like, Okay, now we kind of get to get this engine running, right? Like this really interesting balance between segregating the roles too much. So you have so many handoffs, that you're dropping balls left and right versus right, people write time, in right job. So right now we have things we call Customer champions, they probably be more typically called customer success managers. But I like the word champion, because it's like, what their role is, is to kind of really be there for the customer. We do have them for the lifetime of the subscription, it's
Jeff 18:03
it, or they're responsible, because every time I hear this, this is a while, you know, I'm gonna say there's the one telling question, who gets the commission check on the removal? Oh, I
Renee Bochman 18:11
know, that's the question is because like customer success isn't the most overused term ever. Yeah,
Jeff 18:17
it means so much right now.
Renee Bochman 18:20
All the way to support right, like a whole spectrum of is what they like to say. Now, we are responsible for adoption, we do not own the renewal. So
Jeff 18:29
you take that agnostic, it's not a money relationship, I'm just here for your success. The funny thing is, I do feel that is the correct thing to do. But you know, I just have found and I talked to a dear friend of ours, who perhaps was in customer success that in deca, and I said, you know, you really have to make sure that if things get tight, if you're not aligning customer success with revenue, you might be a little exposed there. It's an interesting
Renee Bochman 18:56
thing, because you do Africa as an organization, because obviously, these kind of roles will then go against your product margin, right? If you start blowing on a team that goes against your product margin, you get a lot of eyes on you and a lot of conversation of board meetings that are not very fun, to really have a scalable model that will work so that you don't drain the success of the company. There's also this view of if your goal is really to move adoption, and you're a true SaaS organization. There's upsell and cross sell. And that's a whole thing. And so, really interestingly for us has been trying to find those lines, like what does an account manager do versus a customer success manager do and we've really gotten to like, the customer champion is really there to make sure that they get the full business value out of the platform, or the account manager is to kind of dive into the account deeper, find more opportunities, a different level. We talked about the champion being aligned to the business owner and the account manager being aligned to the executive owner. That's good. Yeah, hear that you can kind of have this in Ansel escalation path, which is also nice. And hopefully it saves, because how many account managers you know, that are knee deep and support implementation problems, right? They, they can't even find them with a bomb
Jeff 20:15
is dropped on them, right? And I actually uncovered this later on somebody named Megan. But like, I had to create a separate just implementation team at Virgin because the account managers or success people, excuse me, they couldn't even focus on a customer. If they were dealing with a three month implementation. It's just like a bomb is dropped on, like HIPAA and files and stuff, and min is support. It's just crazy.
Renee Bochman 20:40
Yeah, if you have somebody who's trying to form an account manager talking about the potential long term value, and they're actually answering why the support case hasn't been answered in three days, the conversations are just so out of whack.
Jeff 20:51
Okay, talk to him back. I've been there. It's so tough to have that conversation. What's your current? And there's no correct answer on this ratio of champions, to you got 600 customers? Yeah. And so I'm just wondering if you have to do division right now.
Renee Bochman 21:11
So it's really interesting, because we're trying not to do and this is a work in progress, as we all know, in these kinds of organizations, especially hypergrowth, especially, you know, new markets, and all this, you you're, if you don't have the appetite for experimentation, you will not survive, right?
Jeff 21:27
You can't hold on to your thing, like, No, that was my ideal
Renee Bochman 21:33
to be a little fluid, but, um, our current idea about how we're trying to model this, and we don't know, is more on how often do we want to have touch points with customers? And, and then what's our, if you think about it from this percentage, like, I'm going to have more touch points with customers at rest. And then I'm going to have self sufficient customers, and I want the touch points to be there. So if I look at the ratio of risk to self sufficient, and then I map out the touch points that I expect within that, how do I map that way? So the customer ratio may look really high, but it's actually more on the profile of the book of business? Are you looking at a high risk profile? Are you looking at a low risk profile? Or do you distribute your risk kind of openly? And then you often have like, so we do. Our customer champions do not engage in the implementation process, we hand off to implementation. It's kind of like dropping them off at daycare. Yeah.
Jeff 22:30
Exactly. It's the quarterback model, right? It's sort of like they're always there, you know, they might be in some meetings or not. And as I say, it works some book someplace, sometimes it's like, they don't, they don't need to hear some of the way the sausage is being made. Because it'll, it'll distract from there.
Renee Bochman 22:46
Because then they become product project managers. Yeah. And they can't manage the rest of their book of the business. So we have pretty high ratios of our customer champions, to customer, customers. But the reason we do that is because of how we approach the touchpoints. Right?
Jeff 23:05
They're not if they're, if they're not having to deal with that project management of getting a customer off the ground, I feel you can have that higher ratio, because then they're, it's about touchpoints, nice conversations and things like that, versus the, oh, I'm on fire right now.
Renee Bochman 23:19
Not happy with my implementation. So the implementation team owns the success of their implementation. And they also so my implementation leader has like a services number and adoption number for his bonus. So like, he has to have both where my champion leader has, you know, primarily adoption with a little bit of services number so that we stay alive.
Jeff 23:41
Yeah, that's, that's great. And if we circle back to because I'm a big theme I've tried to touch on all of these is what you look for when you're hiring somebody and I don't know about you, but I'm the worst I feel sometimes. But like, I can look at a person I can walk by a conference room and see how they're talking with the person interviewing, like get them out. Go. Are gonna happen. We're not putting this person in front of a customer.
Renee Bochman 24:06
Yeah. Really interesting from a hyper growth like SaaS base, very, we're in a very aggressive company. We're have a lot of smart people, we get a lot of shit done.
Jeff 24:20
We get a lot of shit. GST, right.
Renee Bochman 24:24
For values, and it's really interesting because when you interview people is like, how do you feel about chaos? And how do you feel about you know, and they all answer like, yes, of course.
Jeff 24:34
Challenge. I love it. Yeah.
Renee Bochman 24:36
They give you good examples of like in my personal life, I love to, you know, accomplish things. And it's so fascinating because when I really find his curiosity, and excitement about kind of learning is really almost more key than almost anything.
Jeff 24:55
Most people will say Empath, but I like where you're going because you're in a crate. Crazy hypergrowth startup thing and I swear to God, like if somebody's like, I'm a mom, I've got three kids. I'm chasing around dropping them like, can you give me 30 hours?
Renee Bochman 25:10
Yeah, you really have to for a role like this in if you think of it, so salsify is doing something nascent in the market where there's not a lot of role models. It's not like we're replacing other technologies. This is a new way of thinking of new. So I don't have playbooks. My customers don't have playbooks. They don't even know what to expect, right? I can't hire people that are expecting to come in and say, give me the four playbooks give me the you know, like, the things
Jeff 25:36
yeah, there's nothing I did a code that I also did at Adobe. And now I'm gonna do here like,
Renee Bochman 25:42
it just doesn't work that way. And if you looked at the customer, and it kind of go, Hey, tell me what your business goals a lot of times are deer headlights? I mean, you're just leaving you don't
Jeff 25:51
know what you're trying to get the shit up and running.
Renee Bochman 25:55
Like, no, no, we thought you were going to tell us on how to sell on Amazon. Their software platform right into it just again, just really interesting, like dichotomy of like, oh, we can help you. And see, we talked about prescription and best practices, but we're, you know, is any kind of company like this. You're always learning on the fly. You're having the art industry is changing so fast. Yeah. And you can't even hold on to the thought you have last fall, right? And and so for me, curiosity and desire to learn and kind of like self starter newness is so important, because there are get my mind 14 is being hit with so much information. synthesize it, if you don't have natural curiosity, you'll just drowned.
Jeff 26:39
It'd be that well, I'm not that technical. It's like, doesn't matter. Go look in Right.
Renee Bochman 26:46
And, and I think you also have to, you have to kind of self select into No, no, no, this is interesting. This is interesting. Let me, you know that you know, the five why's is like how you get to like the root cause of something, right? To really care about that second, third, and fourth, why
Jeff 27:03
right? Yeah, the first two aren't going to
Renee Bochman 27:07
know if you just expect to dial it in and like not not be caught off guard or not off your feet. And but Wow, super hard to interview for because everybody will say that's what
Jeff 27:18
they do. Yeah. Which is, which is why the secret back channel network of Boston is so good and right. Like,
Renee Bochman 27:24
it's so I mean, it's so crazy. Yeah, I was talking to a friend of mine who's not in our industry at all. And she was talking about leaving and giving her notice and like what she was gonna say, and I'm like, Oh, my God, I wouldn't like your friends or your senior like,
Jeff 27:38
here's the torch, I'm gonna set this whole thing on fire and walk away. And I'm still, Chris comprado, emailed me recently. And he was like, hey, what do you know about this person? I'm like, super nice, wouldn't hire just not the person you need right now. And he's like, thank you so much. And I'm sorry. And not no offense to that person. But like, if I still remember somebody, I called up on a personal on the side and said, I'm thinking about hiring this person. They're like, absolutely. And one weekend, I was like, I'm gonna kill this guy. He knew exactly what I was gonna get into. But some people are just afraid of not being nice. And it's like, I will never trust this person. I will never buy his product. I will never.
Renee Bochman 28:17
It's really interesting, because I always caveat it with like, look, I worked with them. How long ago people change. Like, I would do deal diligence. Here's the areas I would dig into. I mean, this is I mean, if you, you know, and recently, you know, I had a backdoor reference to it. I didn't totally listen to and, you know,
Jeff 28:38
sometimes I know, because you're in pain. You've got to put this fire out. And sometimes you're like, wow, I heard.
Renee Bochman 28:46
I'm sure it's gonna be fine. And then you're just like, Oh, my God, why didn't I listen to
Jeff 28:51
that first week, you're sending emails to HR setting up the whole 90 day process and everything.
Renee Bochman 28:58
It's really great to have that network. But it's also super important. I don't think this generation that's kind of like, you know, everybody calls them millennials. But whatever this next up and coming leadership generation, I don't think people are talking to them enough about like building that network understanding now network, the impact of your network,
Jeff 29:16
right? That's a good point. I mean, mentorships huge, right. And it's just, and, you know, I think we all share some of the same ones. And I think these conversations serve as mentorships ones as well. I do want to say for anybody listening, like Rene's employees love her and will fight to the death for her. And you've all probably heard some of the reasons why but are there things that you actually work on for that and I some natural things have just come out in conversation that are just you thinking that millennials need mentorship things but like, what are some of those reasons and people you know, they follow you along from company to company, any you know, and also I will say strong, powerful female leader as well. Which is, is very refreshing. shooting, but you never would say that, like, I would never hear you say that. But it's just great to see. So
Renee Bochman 30:04
I think I think when I think about the what makes me what makes me a leader that people either gravitate to or gravitate against, right? There are people that do not enjoy myself. I'm extremely transparent with my team. And I kind of own up to my mistakes, and very clear when I'm like, Hey, I don't, I don't necessarily know what I'm doing. But I'm trying to figure this out. I try to always include my team as much as I can on the process of what I'm doing.
Jeff 30:35
You want to know why, right? Why? In empathy
Renee Bochman 30:39
and to kind of like, you know, it's funny, because everybody's all bullshit about millennials, right? And they're like, oh, they want this, they want that. I'm like, Dude, I want lifework balance. I want mentorship. I want like, you know, growth in my career, I want somebody telling me where to go, like, really awesome things that if I had been their agent, I would have been asking for that stuff.
Jeff 30:59
I'm petting a unicorn, right? You can't see it right now. They're like, Yeah, I would love all of these things. Like that combination of like, empathy, but like, Dude, you gotta get some shit done. Like, it's like that mixture, right?
Renee Bochman 31:13
Well, and that's where it kind of gets a little laggy is a little bit of kind of like, you know, that balance between trying to manage your people and manage your job. If your team isn't in, you know, every there's a million stats about this. Satisfaction actually makes customers satisfied. And unhappy employees, your customers know it, not doing their best. And it's like, getting one of the things that I really drive on my team is agency, you have agency to make decisions you have agency to, to kind of make choices. And be creative. And you have I mean, obviously, within a box, and you don't get to give them a year's free subscription.
Jeff 31:54
Sort of decentralized the command, you're basically like, you know, abide by these tenants. But like, yeah, then just you don't have to, like, I know, you like you don't want somebody running into your office every five minutes, like, Hey, I got an email, and I'm not sure how to like that would probably drive you crazy,
Renee Bochman 32:08
right? At some point, it's like, let me help you figure out how to not have to come back here. Because I want you to feel confident. And, and I do want people to feel like I want this generation to be the next leaders and I want people who've worked with me, I mean, the most awesome thing about my job, you know, when I was a kid, I always wanted to do something like that would change the world. And, like be really, for for the betterment. And you know, what's funny is like this job, even though it's a total capitalist kind of commercial jobs, but like, I have a lot of people that their lives depend on me from a job perspective, from a career perspective. And I have to respect that because that's their livelihood. So I think going in with that mindfulness of it, because you know, I'm a meditator, but going in with that mindfulness and that awareness, of like really understanding the words of impact, they have the transparency of being able to share and own up to my mistakes, right?
Jeff 33:04
No, I mean, and it sounds so natural for us talking about but it's not everybody, man. It's like, there's like, do you meditate you? Do you like think about like, how people perceive how you're talking right now and things like that. So, yeah, so what else is going on? Like, any other industry stuff that you wanted to touch on? I mean, it's so fast moving. It's one one actual thing I thought I'd ask about is we touched on a little bit, you've got customer experience, customer engagement, customer champions, is it all the same? Like, is there any delineation, it is sort of like there's this start of the project, this is getting them off the ground. And then I think there's this like account management slash champion model is that basically what it is when we look at,
Renee Bochman 33:50
I think, ultimately, when I've considered it's funny, because I was talking to somebody else. And he said, ultimately, the job I love to do is figuring out how to make customers successful with my product, right? You can call that whatever you want. And you can create 1000 different roles to do it. And you should drive as much into the product as possible, because it helps scale. But ultimately, you have to figure out what is causing your customers pain and what's causing them not to be successful. And how do you solve those problems? And that's the fun part about the job, right? It's also the real pain, because you have to talk to the last customers, and it's often not what you want to hear. And maybe you create new services packages, maybe you have champions create new, you know, touch points, maybe, you know, new product features. But really, I think the roles that we hold are I told my team this I said, we're at a point, I think most organizations get to a point where the products the product, right, you're you're gonna move incremental features and it's going to be better but they're incremental features. At that point. You've got a core business, and smalls is going to sell because that's what they do. And they got hard numbers too. Don't envy that job, customer success, customer engagement and customer, whatever you want to call us, as our execution is key to any business. And if we don't do this, well, we have the ability to sink or accelerate a ship.
Jeff 35:15
Absolutely, those retention numbers are just very telling, right, especially for companies, you know, moving through the year series and doing stuff like that. It's just, that's just a massive responsibility. And, ya know, it's, it's, it's God's work in the product world. So, yeah. So the other thing, I'm gonna switch over to some personal stuff, I was just absolutely shocked to hear that you moved out to the suburbs, like walking to work and stopping at the curb.
Renee Bochman 35:43
Yeah, I've done it. I've done everything that well I made. So I was out in the suburbs, my kids grown up to two adults, which is
Jeff 35:50
crazy. I'm gonna just refuse to hear that like 20 In
Renee Bochman 35:55
my mind, right, you know, and it's in. So my kids are grown, and I moved in this city. It was great. And then, but my boyfriend has a business out in Worcester. So us to kind of like, be in a place that didn't make him crazy. Didn't make me crazy. We compromised on Newton. That's great. That's the green line. So I still walk to the green line and the green line. And so
Jeff 36:21
it's funny because that's one of the things I was gonna ask was, do you actually, you're not a commuter rail person, because that's that next level of suburbia. Right?
Renee Bochman 36:27
Oh, no, no, no, I wanted my requirements is that I needed the T's were on my existence, which is ridiculous. Because if anybody in Boston knows, like, nobody actually signs up for the Greenline. T. On purpose, but I did
Jeff 36:41
so. Yeah, no, it's it's fun going through all the Boston University stops and everything.
Renee Bochman 36:46
It's it's not a bad commute. I get to listen to podcasts. So in all, probably, yours is one of them. So oh,
Jeff 36:51
I appreciate that. So um, you know, I can't remember because I felt like there was a time where there was like, a lot of like Sparta type races and things like that. And
Renee Bochman 37:00
now I do trail running and lottario. I've done a couple of 50 Ks, and so, me marathons, I have a goal to do 60 miles in October.
Jeff 37:13
That's amazing. By the way, I came out if I told you to go see that AR T practitioner right on, right, and boss ran on Washington Street, but she's a big trail runner, too. She's amazing to connect to you guys like that sort of thing. Like,
Renee Bochman 37:25
yeah, honestly, for me, you know, everybody talks about disconnecting and the ability to have space in your mind. But nature is like, I think you have to find your way, especially when you're doing like this, like constant business multi switching. You know, the reason I love her, I'm slow as fuck. But the reason I love running is I spent six, seven hours in the woods. It's you know, and it's no phones, and it's no anything, I actually don't even listen to music as I run.
Jeff 37:55
It's amazing. I walk every day, and there's this nice pot, wake right near my house and take the dog every morning. And I keep telling myself like, don't plug in, don't take the headphones, I probably shouldn't do that. Because like coyotes are near there. And I should probably look out for them. But I'm still like tunes bland and everything. So I will do that tomorrow when I walk the dog I will I will walk without headphones, there's something very,
Renee Bochman 38:15
it's really interesting. Because what I find is your mind empties in some ways, like your first love depending on your mind, for the first hour, I'll spend like thinking about all the things and then like, it starts to get quieter, and it starts to get quieter. And then when I have I actually found some of my best problem solving as my most creative thought is like during then because like absolutely space in your mind to actually think of something new, you know?
Jeff 38:39
No, I mean, so do you meditate before you go running and stuff like that, because I do that first.
Renee Bochman 38:44
But I meditate every morning. And I am a big believer in it keeps me sane, keeps my keeps me grounded. So in a crazy world like this, who doesn't need a tool to kind of keep you have to find your tool. I don't think that is the only tool but you have to find your ways to disconnect and to reconnect with your with your own present being so
Jeff 39:11
I know we wouldn't have had been having this conversation 10 years ago, or maybe he would have been but I wouldn't have but recently like in the last year or so. And I was talking with someone they're like you just need to slow down. And meditation has been great for that every morning and first it was like I was using an app and then suddenly gets into like 20 minutes and I don't know if you do the transactional stuff but like there's just so many great ways to just, you know, it's just sets your tone for the day. And it really puts things in perspective once you get into work and like shits on fire everywhere and everything like that and it's like okay, so it's there's there's a application on the web that's not working like let's let's not get all you know fired up about that. Let's break it down and think about what we can do to fix this versus the like, oh my God call meeting and you know, which a lot of us were like, kind of like 1015 years ago, so
Renee Bochman 40:00
Well, for me meditation, the thing that builds us muscle to kind of exactly what you're talking about is the ability to have an opportunity to take a breath before you react to something. Because you build this bigger and bigger gap. Because at first when you react, you something happens you immediately react to even like subconsciously react. You're already down the path before you even know anything that happens. Yep, for sure I've meditated, the more I realize that gap grows and grows and grows. So I can go oh, look at how I'm feeling right now. I'm feeling attacked. And so I'm not gonna respond that way. Because that's just me feeling that way. It allows for such a better interaction model. Don't get me wrong, no way. Am I perfect, but at least it kind of it gives me more space to kind of have a response that has more value. So
Jeff 40:47
that's, that's, that's amazing. And it's probably a great way to end because there's so much that can be said after that. You're gonna run to a meeting. So thank you so much for an eye there's probably going to be a second conversation down the road because there's so much to cover in everything but this was great. I'm really glad we we dove deep into the success stuff. I do want to eventually touch on support a little bit more but but I think that this is a great customer success focus thing, which I haven't gotten into yet. So have an amazing weekend. Have a great rest of the day. I'll talk to you later.
Renee Bochman 41:21
Always good, Jeff. All right.