In this episode, we were joined by Kevin Scheper, who is currently Vice President, Customer Success at Drift. Kevin shared some fascinating insights on his experience leading teams in Customer Success, Professional Services, Customer Engagement, and Voice of the Customer functions. Here we discussed how CS teams should be structured to drive outcomes, as well as the role that Drift is playing in driving Conversational Marketing.

Creating Customer Success

Creating Customer Success - Episode 23: Kevin Scheper

In this episode we spoke with Gemma Espineira who is an experienced Software Executive, skilled in building and leading global post sales teams (Customer Success, Success Planning, Insight and Education services) with a focus on driving gross retention, product adoption and customer advocacy. Gemma believes that customer success is a way of doing business and is the fastest path to sustainable growth for software companies. Gemma currently leads global Customer Success teams at Decibel where she built Customer Success programs supporting the company's growth from 10-150 employees and raising of $54 million in funding. Having lived in Spain and the UK, Gemma now calls Boston, USA her home.

Creating Customer Success - Episode 22: Gemma Espineira

In this episode we spoke with Sandra Guadagnoli who has over 25 years of experience in customer success, sales, financial alignment and operations. She has partnered with large, international customers to set up, implement and execute a variety of programs, products and solutions.  As well as designing and delivering the CS function within organizations to transform the organizations landscape to meet the needs of the every changing environment. Sandra is an avid New Yorker, and spends her free time traveling and exploring new food destinations with her husband and two daughters all over the world.

Creating Customer Success - Episode 21: Sandra Guadagnoli

In this episode we were joined by Peter Cohan, author of the book, Great Demo! Peter founded Great Demo! in 2003 to address the challenge of bringing a method for consistent success to the process of creating and delivering software demonstrations. Prior to this Peter enjoyed over 20 years in senior management, business development, sales and marketing roles. This episode is one not to be missed if you want to gain practical advice on how to deliver better product demonstrations to your customers.  

Creating Customer Success - Episode 20: Peter Cohan

In this episode we were joined by Jake Dunlap who is the CEO of Skaled Consulting, and who was previously the Vice President of Sales at Glassdoor, and Head of Sales & Customer Success at Chartbeat. Jake is shaping the future of modern sales and marketing with some of the practices that he implements across organisations. We took this opportunity to learn more about these and how to implement them across Customer Success. This episode is full of great actionable advice and new ideas. 

Creating Customer Success - Episode 19: Jake Dunlap

In this episode we spoke with Nick Mehta who is the CEO of Gainsight, the Customer Success company that helps businesses improve customer retention, accelerate expansion and capitalize on customer advocacy. Nick works with a team of nearly 700 (affectionately nicknamed) “Gainsters.” Together, they've created the customer success category that's currently taking over the SaaS business model worldwide. Nick has been named one of the Top SaaS CEOs by the Software report three years in a row, one of the Top CEOs of 2018 by Comparably, was a finalist for EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year, and holds one of highest Glassdoor approval ratings for CEOs. Nick is the co-author of two books “Customer Success: How Innovative Companies Are Reducing Churn and Growing Recurring Revenue,”  and "The Customer Success Professional's Handbook: How to Thrive in One of the World's Fastest Growing Careers-While Driving Growth For Your Company". 

Creating Customer Success - Episode 18: Nick Mehta

In this episode, we spoke with Paul Henderson, otherwise known as the Outcomes Guy. Paul founded and runs a company called Outcome Leaders, who lead organisations to outcome-based Customer Success. Before founding Outcome Leaders, Paul Henderson led the Asia Pacific region for a mid-sized enterprise software company. He had 200 people across nine countries supporting 800 enterprise customers. For the last five years in this role, he led the design and running of an outcomes program across the whole region. He learnt what worked and what didn’t across diverse cultures.  At the end of that five years, Paul realised that lots of other technology vendors were struggling to deliver real success for their customers, and with over five years’ experience, he thought he could help them. Paul also really cared about customers achieving the outcomes they bought software to achieve. Paul then left the software company, spent one and a half years researching and writing, and published his second book; The Outcome Generation: How a New Generation of Technology Vendors Thrives through True Customer Success. Paul’s practical experience and his research for the book underpin the Outcome-based Customer Success program.

Creating Customer Success - Episode 17: Paul Henderson

In this episode, we spoke with Jeanne Bliss, who is the Founder and CEO of Customer Bliss.For over 35 years, Jeanne has led companies to earn business growth. As the inaugural Chief Customer Officer at Lands’ End, Coldwell Banker, Allstate and Microsoft Corporations, she led the achievement of over ninety-eight percent retention rates. As a strategic advisor, she’s guided over 20,000 leaders on using her 5-competency framework proven to achieve customer-driven growth. As a keynote speaker, 1,500 of the world’s largest companies have asked her to address their audiences on how to elevate their position with customers and in the marketplace.

Creating Customer Success - Episode 16: Jeanne Bliss

In this episode we spoke with Perry Monaco, who is the Head of Customer Success at LinkedIn across NAMER. Perry has a wealth of experience in CS and offers a great perspective on how you should be thinking about the experiences which you have with your customers. 

Creating Customer Success - Episode 15: Perry Monaco

In this episode we spoke with Jay Nathan, who is Founder and Managing Partner of Customer Imperative. In 2016, Jay founded Customer Imperative, a purpose-driven company focused on helping B2B SaaS retain customers, grow revenue and scale customer success. Across the years and a number of different functional executive roles, Jay has developed a customer retention and growth methodology for building, managing and scaling tech companies serving a wide range of end-markets and customer sizes.

Creating Customer Success - Episode 14: Jay Nathan

On this episode we spoke with Peter Majeed who is the Head of Customer Success for EMEA at Qualtrics. Peter has previously held roles at Delphix and SAP, and has over 20 years of experience in solution selling and Customer Success within the Data Platform and Cloud industries. 

Creating Customer Success - Episode 13: Peter Majeed

On this episode we spoke with Kate Forgione who is Head of Customer at Service Rocket and also CEO and Founder of the Customer Success Network. Kate has also held previous roles at Microsoft, Yammer and KPMG. Kate is passionate about imagining, designing and transforming the future of work to create engaged and productive workplaces and her passion for Customer Success is truly inspiring. 

Creating Customer Success - Episode 12: Kate Forgione

On this episode we speak with Anika Zubair who is the Global Director of Customer Success at ZAP. Anika is responsible for a team of Customer Success Managers in EMEA, APAC, and North America that are driving value, adoption and ensuring customers continue to see success with the ZAP product. Anika and her global team of 3 CSMs and 7 on-boarding consultants are responsible for over 400 customers. Previous to ZAP, Anika was the Head of Customer Success at vzaar (now DaCast) where she built customer success from the ground up. She was responsible for creating customer segmentation, on-boarding playbooks, and continued renewals from vzaar’s 2000+ customer base. Prior to vzaar, Anika was at Vend POS where her one to many customer success journey began. Aside from a career in customer success, Anika is also passionate about customer success in her free time. She is one of the co-organizers for CSM LDN a monthly meetup group that brings together like-minded professionals once a month for the last 2 years. https://www.meetup.com/CSMLDN/

Creating Customer Success - Episode 11: Anika Zubair

On this episode we spoke with Lulu Dermeche, the Head of Customer Success for HowNow (an innovative integrated learning platform). Being comparatively new to the field, she brings a refreshingly novel perspective on the challenges and issues faced by people in customer-success roles. In sticking to the ‘two C’s' of customer success - care and curiosity - Lulu believes that the secret is to keep it simple. Drawing on her past experiences in people-centric roles, she recognises the importance of building an environment of trust, respect and mutual understanding. In stripping back to core values, Lulu gives a thoroughly fresh look on all things CS!

Creating Customer Success - Episode 10: Lulu Dermeche

On this episode we spoke with Violaine Yziquel who runs the EMEA Customer Success Management team at Box, a cloud content management platform that helps organizations and people transform the way they work. Violaine is very enthusiastic in articulating product value back to the customer for them to achieve their greatest ambitions, as well as passionate about scaled and no touch programs. As the co-founder of the EMEA Customer Success Network organization, she believes best practices sharing and learning agility are the best way to evangelize and make CS a great place to work! 

Creating Customer Success - Episode 9: Violaine Yziquel

Welcome to the Creating Customer Success Podcast series, hosted by Daniel Cattini and Alex Truman. In this series, we interview CS leaders to learn how to build and run the best CS teams.

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Creating Customer Success

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