Kermit Randa on the Importance of Customer Success in Driving CX

Kermit Randa on the Importance of Customer Success in Driving CX

Welcome to be customer lad, where we’ll explore how leading experts in customer and employee experience are navigating organizations through their own journey to be customer led and the actions and behaviors of lawyers and businesses exhibit to get there. And now your host of Bill’s staikos.

[00:00:33] Bill Staikos: Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another week of be customer led. I have a really amazing guest for you all this week. Kermit Randa is a results driven CEO. Now Kermit has a ton of experience, not only just driving transformation, but also in creating cultures of accountability, creating cultures that are high-performing and in a profitable way, driving profitable growth.

I know that these are kind of three, four things. All CEOs can do and focus on, but, Kermit has a ton of experience in this space, Kermit, so happy to have it on the show, really excited to get into how customer success drives customer experience. Thanks so much for joining us

[00:01:10] Kermit Randa: and thank you. It’s great to be here.

And this is a terrific service you’re offering

[00:01:14] Bill Staikos: everybody. Hey, thanks so much. I appreciate that. So, one of the first quite well, the first question I ask every guest. tell us about your journey, right? W what do you think were the differentiating factors to help you achieve, where you are today?

You’re a CEO, you’re an advisor to other companies. You’re, you’re dealing with a lot of high level strategic and a lot of high level strategic conversations. Tell us how, like you.

[00:01:39] Kermit Randa: Yeah, I think it’s, essentially pretty simple. I’m a blue collar kid from Ohio who, has just been really lucky to have some great mentors along the way.

And I think that that, growing up that way is given me sort of this,born into this Midwestern, just get it done, whatever it takes kind of attitude. And a while that may sound a little pie in the sky and maybe a little too homespun, but I think this notion of things being rooted in a three yards and a cloud of dust mindset, shares through to other employees and shows through to customers, and that gives everybody comfort and competence.

And, that mindset set has led itself well into change management consulting work. I did, after school, when I went into sales, which is all change management and then into various leadership positions, which again is all change management. All of that together. Just being able to push through, see the vision push through and do it with teams.

I don’t know that I’ve, accomplished anything on my own, but it’s been working with unbelievable teams. Who’ve taught me more than I’ve taught them. For sure. So, no, no, that’s a good answer for you, but, a lot of focus on just execution and working with really grateful. So two

[00:02:52] Bill Staikos: things. So one, I don’t know.

I mean, we hooked up through fast company, but I didn’t know that you’re from Ohio. So I’m a huge Ohio state fan. So I don’t know if you are as well, but, I was so excited for them to, to, to have won the rose bowl this year after, their last two, to Michigan. But, the one question I wanted to ask you, just like you said, something really interesting, just kind of struck a nerve with me really quickly is before we get into like the media part, So sales has changed management.

Yeah. You’re the first person I’ve ever heard to describe sales, change management. Just describe

[00:03:22] Kermit Randa: what you mean by that real quick. I think I’ll use the context of software because they do a lot of SAS work. but if you think about it, when you’re selling a software, something, but he’s looking for a software they’re really doing re-engineering it’s called pack.

what we used to call package enabled. Re-engineering you doing something maybe by hand, right? Yeah. And you’re going to change that by using a system or some sort of automation to get you into a different place. And so as you do that, it’s, re-engineering everything around it. The people’s jobs have to change, reports have to change and so on.

[00:03:53] Kermit Randa: And I think what made me an okay sales rep was that I wasn’t really focused on sales. I was focused on how do we get to a better place leveraging technology as that fulcrum. And so when you think about it and it’s all changed, Yeah, I

[00:04:08] Bill Staikos: love that answer. So we’re talking about customer success today, and for those listeners who maybe aren’t in a SAS business, or maybe in a software business, they may not be totally familiar with the role.

Certainly customer success, let’s say over the last five years has really come up the curve in terms of importance in an organization, certainly in the U S also in other. How do you define customer success in that role? And what are, do you think, when you’re running your businesses and your head of customer success, like how do you define customer success and what are the key responsibilities, particularly from your seat as, as a CEO

[00:04:47] Kermit Randa: to, yeah, I think that’s a role that you couldn’t be more right.

That is exploded over the years. And to answer your question, it is set back just a little bit. I think about client expectations and how those have changed over time. No consumers are used to getting better service across the board with globalization and what supply chain issues. Aren’t the problem.

they’re used to getting a better service right now across the board. And the competition that we face as providers of any service SAS or not, is not just our direct competitors, the people we might be worried about in the boardroom. It’s our, our customers are comparing us against every service experience that they have.

[00:05:29] Kermit Randa: Right. So it might be, if you’re a, if you offer some sort of software, they may be comparing you to how easy it is to book a hotel on an app, or it looks something up. And so what’s happening is your consumers are getting smarter. They’re getting more demanding because they’re have other options now. And that’s where.

The customer success really comes into play because, it gets to a point where we’re starting to anticipate that our problems better understand their workflow and so on. So customer success, hopefully that’ll make sense. KA customer success then, it used to be, maybe we can try to be polite when someone calls a little more polite when somebody calls with an issue, or be just a little bit better on our support times.

Now it’s about how do we proactively maximize the value of a client gets, from our product or service. And to do that, you have to understand what the client is actually going through. You need to know their space, their process, how they are, or not using your product so that you can bring their value to their day to day, and that takes a lot of thought and design work, especially if you’re in an expert system, where there’s something that it’s not just a, it’s a point solution that solves a very specific problem.

I means you have to have knowledge about how to use their world and not right. Generic answers.

[00:06:53] Bill Staikos: That’s such good advice. I mean, particularly, one, I think the, the point around as consumers, we are comparing every brand we interact with and like these 15, second kind of snippets of journeys that we go through everyday.

number one, but number two is particularly in the software side. Very very different. If you’re selling software to a CFO organization just to manage the books or something like that, versus, I’m, I’m in customer experience management, which really can touch, almost the entire organization in some cases, very, very different role.

[00:07:28] Bill Staikos: The complexity really does vary a tremendous amount. When you think about that, particularly as we’re now starting. The new year, Kermit, what are some of the key way and like in retention’s a big part of this role and you put some, you put some, a thought piece out there, which is really, really interesting.

And I loved it. What are some of the key ways that customer success teams can start thinking about and focusing on retention? Because that is a big part

[00:07:52] Kermit Randa: of the. Right. If I, if I could have filled it in the last point just a little bit before we jumped there, I think that, and I thought I’d share a story.

I love surveys. I love data. My last last company, we have, we collected around 200,000 data points in a year of different surveys and stuff just to guide us. And if you’re going to be an expert system, like whether it’s what you do or other companies, I mean, when that person logs in, you literally know what their job is, what their role.

[00:08:20] Kermit Randa: And if you’re going to be an expert system, right, you pretty much have it’s your burden to know what that person’s going to go through. And I can tell you that every survey we’ve asked a couple of questions over probably the last decade, decade and a half, just consistently. And the number one response to a question, that we’ve asked every, in many industries is.

What value can you bring? Or what do you want to hear from us? And without reservation? The number one answer is always, how can you make a difference in my day-to-day not what new features coming up, not where are you going to be in five years, Mr. Vendor, it’s going to be, how do you make a difference in my day to day?

And that’s, that’s very key in this customer success. Versus just putting out a really great product. You have to understand that component because we need to get that locked down. Then, then retention becomes easy, right? When they feel that you’re making a difference in their day to day,

[00:09:22] Bill Staikos: I think that’s a really important point in terms of, what do you do?

Like you’re, if you’re buying from a company, the role of that organization that you’re, you’re selling, you’re selling, let’s say. Your role is to make sure that that customers is to your point, getting value every day from what you’re, what you’re providing, but also be able to have people in that organization create value for the client every day as well, and be creative about how you can solve their problems and make them more successful.

Not only for the software that you’ve got, but just kind of given, the space that you’re in as well. I think. Those conversations. Absolutely tapping. I love your point around, like, if you’re doing that retention is just, it’s not a question, right. It’s going to happen. It’s kind of okay.

[00:10:09] Kermit Randa: Yeah. It falls off the back.

And the other thing is you’re going to get ’em, you’re going to get ’em, that, that part doesn’t go away. Because if you look at any company, look at any one individual, pretty much anywhere in the world, right now, how you buy stuff and how you are integrated into the. commercial ecosystem or whatever you want to say.

It doesn’t look the way it did two and a half years. There’s not a company that buys or uses software the same exact way they did before. Right. And so, when you start talking about making a difference in people’s day and doing all this, then this transcends how people use the software and what happens is you become truly that partner.

And that’s an overused word is, a valued partner. all of those words are good words, but many times they’re overused. But when you kind of focus on that and understanding utilization and how they use it and how they’re going to use it, that really opens up a value that creates more opportunity for references out on.

So on. So you asked the question about customer success. So I think it starts with having the right. So making sure who you’re selling to that might not be a classic retention move, but certainly you, if you’re, if you’re trying to sign up the wrong kind of clients, that can benefit from what you do as only going to turn into problems and retention issues.

Right. So I think number one is customer success starts with having the right customers. That’s where the retention journey begins. Second is really understanding your customer segmentation. So every company has a brain of users from basic to super power users. And so if you haven’t used your knowledge.

About how clients work to build categories in terms of how, where they are on your journey, in terms of, intro to superpower user, and then understand how they’re getting value. If you haven’t done that and made a very discreet set of second. Well, then you have no way to figure out how to help people move from one part to the next wouldn’t, which case is, you’re going to have a retention issue.

And then, you had asked, I think, the determine the value of a consists of a customer success manager. Now it could be retention like we’re talking about, but it could also be ad-on or momentum sales. It could be how to improve sales productivity. It could be escalation, whatever that is for you, you need to understand it and do the cost and benefit.

And my sense is that too many times right now, companies don’t dig into this work and do like a CFO level full on business case to understand the benefits so that they can invest accordingly. I think too many times it turns into. Well, we’ve got five people doing this today and they’re super busy. So let’s add a six, certainly a reasonable perspective, but I don’t think that that can really create the most value for the company versus really getting in there say, well, why don’t we need 20 of these?

Right. and, and work the case backwards. Cause I promise you, you almost uniformly need more than you think you do.

[00:13:24] Bill Staikos: Such a that’s really important advice, by the way. How do you as a CEO and as a divisor current, how do you, like you mentioned like retention some and, and kind of momentum sales set are like, do you have any kind of like favorite metrics that you’ve used, currently are in past lives.

You’re measuring the success or the performance of that customer success management team or CSM

[00:13:49] Kermit Randa: team. Yeah. for me being in the SAS world, my primary objective is all about retention, right? so you can look at retention, you can look at annual increases, you can look net, net and gross retention.

For me, that’s the most important part, but at one company, whereas at, and it’s very subjective to what your business is right at one company. one of our board members told me, look, statistically, your retention cannot be anything. Which is great. We had a great product and happy clients, but what we realized is we’re missing the opportunity to provide even more education that would have yielded out on sales and certainly help even more with the references.

Right? Like now that we understand how you’re using the part where we’re great, you’re happy with us, but boy did, you can get 20% more value just by using these features that you weren’t using before. That creates a lot of goodness in the system. And generally, people, happy clients buy more stuff.

They want, they want more of the value. So, they’re, add on sales would have been a really good metric, but whatever it is for you, retention lead gen for software increased hours of selling time services. it needs to be quantified and measured. And I think until you really figure out quite what that is for you, like I said, for me, it’s retention first and foremost, but until you really figuring out what that is for your business only then can you kind of determine the people you need to source the program?

[00:15:14] Bill Staikos: So I, when I think about software, I think about addictive usage of the software, right? Like how do you really just get people just using this? Like, that’s the one piece and they want to grow the relationship. You mentioned something in your, in your answer there that really struck a chord with me.

And it kind of started to work towards customer successes, role in driving better experiences for the customer. Right. Like a lot of times from a customer experience or experience management perspective, we think about design. We think about research or insights and analytics, but that customer success manager really taking a fulsome view of, of their client or customer and figuring out ways to your point to like help them solve problems.

Use the platform in a much better way that in itself creates an experience.

[00:16:08] Kermit Randa: Yeah, absolutely. It’s enormous. they see the experience, but they also often see the pain that the client goes through. Right. Whether it’s how the system works itself or how the company and the client communicate, or the future needs of the client and where the product roadmap and they sit inside of all of that.

And so I think that internally the role sort of internally and externally, internally, They can see everything and they sit inside what I call the product wheel. And again, this is going to be a very software second answer. But if you think about how the software world works, it starts with the product product tells engineering what to do engineering.

It gives a product to marketing, marketing, prepares the market for sales sales, then hands it off to implementation. And then it’s supported it’s back into the product. They sit in every part of that and they see the total client experience. And so that to be one of the first stops of any, any improvement effort are those folks.

And then from an external perspective, they bring the company’s actions to life. they, they, they have to translate that down to the client or customer or whatever would you use? it helped them in their day-to-day understand what do these big storing statement mean? Or what are these new products mean?

They have to have an internal role and an extra role. And it’s, it’s absolutely critical to, to thoughts just,pumped into my head. And, in my past life, I remember a client saying to me, Kerm your sales reps. can tell me up down left right inside, outside about. They just can’t tell me how to use them, you know?

And another one of my mentors today, that friend told me. Yeah, roughly on, that you have to understand what we do as a company. Like what our products do otherwise, you can’t get excited about the improvements we make and both of those apply to everyone in the company. However, customer support. it managers, they directly impact the client’s experience by being in the hub of both of those things.

They have to tell you how to use it, but they also need to tell you where we’re going and why they’re excited and why a client should be excited about where the company’s going. And that happens in just a little bit different experience than a sales. Right. Or a support person or an implementation person.

So it’s a unique and unique job. And the role is absolutely enormous in terms of what you can learn and what the clinics and game

[00:18:40] Bill Staikos: totally agree, as a CEO, I mean, outside of, of customer retention, I’m sure. you have to focus a lot on employee retention and just given, given what’s happening all around us with a great resignation, even in chocolate, what do you think leaders could be doing better?

More of less of whatever that is to, to, to think about employer retention, maybe.

[00:19:00] Kermit Randa: Yeah. Well, I think the first is to be really serious about getting feedback and then acting on it. so often there are companies and I don’t do 3d will heal well, but they collect their information, but they just don’t act on it.

And I can tell you that employees feel it. They know that they’ve said something and they can’t hear it. So number one is to make sure you’re collecting information in a way that’s a really thorough number one. Number two. Is I think to make sure that there is a definable north star, that everybody understands where we’re working toward and not just where we’re going, but here’s our measurement on how we’re going to get there because employees want to feel great.

Or at least the employees that you want to have, want to feel great about the progress we’re making. you go back to. Patrick, Lencioni’s humble, hungry and smart as attributes of an employee, right. They want to know where are we going? And are we on time and am I making a difference? So first, listening and acting on it, second is making sure that you’re really talking about the direction.

And third is what I think is going to become a huge. And I was talking to a colleague yesterday about this, and I didn’t have the word for it, but a old school word would have been ramp rate. but now because we’re in 2022 there’s cooler words and he called it the knowledge transfer cadence and, which is way cooler than my word.

but I think that, What that is about. And I think everybody’s got to be really focused on the CEO on down. We all know that onboarding is essential. I mean, lots of studies show us that the quality of onboarding directly translates to employee retention. But I think now with all of the changes you mentioned in the, in the resignation, all these people that are moving, and then there was just a couple of papers yesterday.

[00:20:50] Kermit Randa: It says, this is going to go on for a while years. And so now, even if you have a great onboarding, which is essential, it’s how fast can we get those employees up to speed? it’s always been important, but I think now it’s going to become like, even more of a focus. So really digging in and understanding, what are we doing to make that, that cadence of getting up to speed even faster is going to be absolutely critical.

[00:21:16] Bill Staikos: Curt, one question for you in terms of. just thinking about what leaders should be doing. Why do you think it’s so hard? I guess listening to employees is relatively easy. Why do you think acting on feedback is hard and not a lot of companies do that

[00:21:31] Kermit Randa: today? Yeah, I think they try. I don’t, I don’t think it’s, intention.

I think that leaders in the company I know truly want to invest in the culture and the experience. I think it’s the, the, how beyond the monetary incentives think that after, like we just talked about, you define a vision and show the path and show a progress. It’s about the clarity of communication and then the management development.

[00:21:53] Kermit Randa: So two components to that. One is communication. I think so often employees find themselves having to work too hard to get clear. I don’t know if you hear that a lot, but, they hear one thing from the CEO, another, from their functional manager and another, from their direct manager. And even if those messages are 4% off, that just creates that energy and distrust.

So I think that, companies really need to focus on communication. I think they assume that the, the communication paths are going to work. The other one is I think there’s an assumption that managers are, Are doing things uniformly to get a repeatable result at the employee level.

And so what I mean by that is, there’s not a company that I can think of that doesn’t need more investment in their managers, particular their first-line managers. so that they have the discipline to have focused meetings, to prepare and not canceled their one-on-ones, which we all know are the easiest meetings to cancel, the soft skills to bring out each of the, the best out of each employee and a commitment to knocking down walls.

By at the same time, realizing as a manager, your job is really to be working with all the other managers in the company to achieve the goals. The company is not trying to, the company’s trying to achieve you’re job is not just to drive your team forward it’s to move the company forward. And so, I think that there’s a, there’s a bunch of training that could happen across the board.

Communication and management training that would go miles for employee experience. And then also they’d be learning and figure out ways to, improve the, the client experience or excuse me, employee experience through whether it’s process procedures and so on. Those are the two big areas for me that tends to fall down.

Now you’re, you’re talking to folks all the time. Yeah. what, what do you think? What are your thoughts on listening and acting on employee feedback? I’ll turn the, I’ll turn the mic on.

[00:23:50] Bill Staikos: Thank you for doing it. so a couple things, one it’s relatively easy with today’s technology to capture.

Feedback from your employees, right. There’s so much technology out there to do it. I mean, even you can do that through Microsoft, frankly, right? I mean, just applications you’ve already got, in your organization. so that’s one, I think, where it gets really difficult where the F a lot of times companies are just asking this, like, one-off like every once a year versus a best practice.

How do we just turn that feedback channel always on for our employees? So they’re constantly talking to us through different channels, not just through their direct line manager and up the chain. But through different channels anonymously and, they can let who they are too. So we can just, we can treat our employees like an innovation center and be able to go back to them and say, we heard you here are the key themes.

Here’s what we’re going to do as a leadership team or as an organization. And by the way, you all had some great ideas about how to drive our strategy and just being very open about that and treating people like professionals. The action part for me is, is I see a lot of companies. This is the hardest part for them, because they’re so busy with like everything else going on in the organization.

Sometimes it’s just tough to prioritize, especially if folks are coming up with big ideas and that can be really challenging, but you really, as a leadership team, you really need to be thinking about, these are great ideas. If I don’t act on these, I could lose that. And if that works right, like what’s the opportunity cost of losing really great people with great ideas to drive this business versus me not figuring out how to activate this.

[00:25:31] Kermit Randa: Right. Well, Hey, it’s going to happen. You’re going to lose great people. Right. Which stinks. But that goes back to that, how fast can we get other people ready to go? Right. But there’s going to be some level of that happening, but obviously what you don’t is you want to engage those people like you’re saying.

And, I, I’ve seen amazing things when people feel like they’re being heard. That they understand the direction. They can actually be heard that they will go through walls and it’s not work. It’s not just, grinding harder at the, at the wheel it’s they want to do it. And there’s more energy and more exciting.

I could tell you why we were sidelined, you know, during, basically a full on year with no in-person meetings. I, I was lucky enough to work with a group of talented people that did amazing things, and we didn’t have one single in-person meeting and many other companies did it too.

[00:26:20] Kermit Randa: This is just my experience. What was amazing was people kind of got where we were going and they jumped on and just things happened and it happened faster without all of the normal stuff. So it’s there. If you want it, you just gotta really want it. And I think, that notion of how easy it is to cancel the one-on-one meeting because you say, Hey, are you good?

If you’re good, I’m good. Let’s just talk in two weeks. That’s terrible. Right? It’s so easy. And so seductive that the person’s good, but if you don’t sit there as a first level manager or whatever your management role is, and really spend time to dig in. and maybe there’s not a lot there one week, but there’s always something going and they always have a value to add.

And so that’s where I kind of come back to that management training, because everybody’s looking to get a half hour back here or there, but you have to put that first. Those are your big.

[00:27:12] Bill Staikos: I got to tell you, I’ve been guilty of doing that myself and I kind of watch out for it and make sure that it’s not happening.

That’s such good advice. Hey, there are two questions. I’ve two last questions I’ve got for you. And frankly, I love asking CEOs folks at your level. These questions. One is who do you look up to? number one and number two is where do you get your inspiration? I probably

[00:27:33] Kermit Randa: don’t have a great answer for you on who, who do I look up to?

Because you know what, there’s so many people that, kinda, as we started, there’s so many people that I’ve been able to learn from, I’ll give you the classic answer. Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Edison, you know, these are heroes of mine, Daniel Burnham, the fam Chicago architect. but maybe it’s a little topical right now.

Nick Saban and Kirby smart, you had mentioned the college football, right. And look at what these folks have done in terms of leaders. And, I saw a great post the other day. I said, well, maybe I hate Nick Saban a little less right now. And it is after they had this loss and their, his, his primary offensive, defensive player in the press conference.

[00:28:14] Kermit Randa: And one of the press people told them, you can go down. He said, no, no, no, sit down. And, his answer was, look, these two boys got us here. They put us in this game, this national championship game, and they have nothing to feel bad about, and, everybody expected them to win, even though the odds were a little bit different, but seeing what these coaches do with these kids and, create energy.

It’s just, to me, it’s amazing. And, I would say. The other element of that is that, I’m lucky enough to have a personal network,folks that are just truly gifted people. And it’s amazing that I can call people that I know so well, and they can come up, I can call them up and say, Hey, I need to talk to you about, dot, dot, dot, whatever it is.

And I could really use your perspective and they’ll have a totally new perspective that I never thought for thought about before. And so it’s, it’s a gift that I can call people that I know and be vulnerable. And ask and still be surprised with some of the answers they’ll have. I think it just got to know that it’s okay to ask people and sometimes we don’t want to do that.

Love that of course is a great inspiration.

[00:29:16] Bill Staikos: Absolutely. I’m not a huge Alabama fan. obviously given my affinity towards a lot of state, but,but nonetheless, that was a great moment for,for Nick Saban, certainly. And, totally agree though, those, those two guys, they, they, I mean, they laid it out all field, so, yeah, can’t can knock come from that current.

This has been a great conversation. Thanks so much for your time. thank you. It’s a pleasure to have you on and, and enjoy the weekend and, hopefully we can, have an opportunity to connect with again some time.

[00:29:41] Kermit Randa: Absolutely. Thank you so much. All right,

[00:29:43] Bill Staikos: everybody. Great show, current Rhonda, what a lot of just creative advice through, through this conversation.

another great week. We’re out. Thanks

[00:29:50] Bill Staikos: for listening to be customer led with bill staikos. We are grateful to our audience for the gift of their time. Be sure to visit us@becustomerled.com for more episodes. Leave us feedback on how we’re doing or tell us what you want to hear more about until next time we’re out.