How to CSM When Your Product Sucks: 'As the World Churns' Episode 1

"As the World Churns" podcast Episode 1 transcript, featuring guest Jared Orr:

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Host

Lucky you. You stumbled on our very first episode.

You know there's a plethora of challenges you face as a CS person: Expansion goals, making smart decisions with the data you have, getting the same recognition as sales and marketing. But how do you do this when you have bugs or poorly-baked features or not the right features? How do you CSM when your product sucks?

Jared Orr, a senior CSM with IT outsourcing company Electric, a New York-based startup, will help us answer that. He's the host of the Founders and Mentors podcast, operates the Customer Success Whisperer blog, and even has a book on networking for success. Oh, he's also a 2021 top 100 Success Hacker customer success strategist. Welcome to the show. Jared, super, super excited to have you on.

Host

Let's get into it. So what is it like CSMing, when there are a lot of glitches in your product, how do you do this?

Orr

I'm sure most CSMs have this experience and it can be difficult to take the heat when your product is not doing very well or not performing the way it's supposed to or your customers aren't finding value that they thought they would get because you, as the customer success manager, have to take full ownership of your customers because they're not gonna complain to the product rep. They're not gonna go back to the sales rep and complain. Maybe they will, but usually they'll come to you. So you gotta be the one to have that communication with product, with marketing, with sales, whatever, to ensure that the product is being sold and pitched correctly and also performing in the way that our customers expect it to be. And if it's not, for whatever reason, then you need to make sure that you are offering workarounds or solutions. And at the same time, communicating with these teams to ensure that the processes are in place or improvements are being made so that customers, your current and future customers can get the value that they, that they need out of it.

Host

So you personally, if you run into this situation yourself, what did you do then? Say one of your previous jobs, what would you do now differently in that situation with a buggy product?

Orr
Well, the first job I had in customer success was at a social media marketing company. And we had a ton of products all with different levels and different features for each level. It was, I was really baptized by fire in customer success when I got my first job. And with that came, you know, bugs and things that constantly needed to be worked on. And as a new CSM, what I would do is I would tell my, my client, I would say, Hey, listen, you know, even though our product, isn't doing this for you, I can make sure it does this for you to try and kind of deviate from the bug and not really like try and beat around the Bush the best I could. And if I could go back and do anything differently, it would be to really address the bug head on, help them realize, like, look okay, I understand that you're not getting the value that you thought you would get.

Here are some things that we can do to address this bug. And also here are some things that you can do right now to get some more value out of the product. And then I would also kind of avoid conversations with product and support cuz I was a brand new CSM. I just didn't really know how to address it. So I would talk to my manager, maybe complain to other CSMs, but instead of just addressing it, head on with the client and with the correct teams, I guess that's definitely what I would do do differently now if I was in that situation again. 

Host
Why wouldn't you deal with the team that's maybe responsible for fixing said bug?

Orr

That's a good question. I started doing it later on at that job, but like at the, at first I'm like, I guess I should just tell my manager, I guess I just should tell the CSM next to me. Hey, what do I do? Or what's going on here? Oh man, this stinks what's happening. And over time I would get guidance and on how to address it as a CS, but I don't think I was ever really told, Hey, go to the product team, ping them and tell them, cuz we didn't really have that communication in the, at the company at the time. So communication definitely helps.

Host

Sounds like you guys were operating in silos a bit.

Orr

A little bit. Yeah.

Host

OK. So you got a buggy product or maybe just a bad product. How do you communicate with the customer when you know it's bad and they know it's bad, how does that dynamic look like and how should it look like?

Orr

If the customer knows it's bad, it just means they're not getting the value that they, that they want out of it. And as the CSM, the best thing that that I could do is ask them like, you know, how they're using the product, what they want to get out of it. And if they're not utilizing certain features or not utilizing just to its full potential, I can offer that training and that development on how to sometimes unfortunately if they're not sold correctly on it, or if the CSM doesn't do the best job at onboarding them and making sure that they're ramped up and getting the ROI as quickly as possible, sometimes it's just I don't wanna say lost cause, but sometimes it's just, okay. I mean, we didn't do our job and or the product just wasn't a good fit at the beginning. So that's when churn happens, it stinks, you know, as a CSM, you don't want that to happen, but sometimes when things aren't done correctly at the beginning, then later on down the road, it's almost inevitable that they will churn.

Host

You said something that piqued my interest and that was the sales team selling a bad fit. How do you deal with that? How does a young CSM, or even an established one, how do you deal with a sales team that is frankly rewarded for making as many sales as they can?

Orr

Well, this goes back to communication, communicating this to your manager, to your customer success manager, to the head of customer success, hoping that they can communicate that to the sales managers and the head of sales. Because honestly, I, I been at a company before where if a client churns in the first three months, then the commission is redacted from the sales rep in some way.

Host

Work's that's a good thing, right?

Orr

It is a good thing because it helps the sales team sign better qualified customers or really put forth some effort when onboarding a client, whatever the case may be. So really just comes down to communication. If, if you see like a, a common theme that certain bad fit customers are being signed on, bring that data to your manager or just bring it directly to the sales team, if you want, if you wanna be bold that way and say, Hey, listen, this is what I'm seeing. This is the problems that it's causing. Here's the data to prove it. Let's see if we can work this out.

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