The Customer Success Playbook
Welcome to “The Customer Success Playbook,” a fresh podcast initiative spearheaded by Kevin Metzger and Roman Trebon. Immerse yourself with us in the dynamic realm of customer success, where we unravel the latest insights, inspirations, and wisdom from recognized leaders in the Customer Success domain.
Our journey began with a simple yet profound belief: that meaningful conversations can significantly impact our professional trajectory. With this ethos, we’ve embarked on a mission to bring to you the voices of seasoned and revered professionals in the field. Our episodes have seen the likes of Sue Nabeth Moore, Greg Daines, Jeff Heclker, James Scott, David Ellin, and David Jackson, who have generously shared their expertise on a variety of pertinent topics.
We’ve delved into the intricacies of Profit and Loss Statements in Customer Success with Dave Jacksson, explored the potential of Customer Success Platforms with Dave Ellin, and unravelled the role of AI in Customer Success with all guests. With Sue, we navigated the waters of Organizational Alignment, while Greg brought to light strategies for Reducing Churn. Not to be missed is James insightful discourse on the Current Trends in Customer Success and Jeff’s thoughts on Service Delivery in CS.
Each episode is crafted with the intention to ignite curiosity and foster a culture of continuous learning and improvement among customer success professionals. Our discussions transcend the conventional, probing into the proactive approach, and the evolving landscape of customer success.
Whether you’re a seasoned veteran or a newcomer to the industry, our goal is to propel your customer success prowess to greater heights. The rich tapestry of topics we cover ensures there’s something for everyone, from the fundamentals to the advanced strategies that shape the modern customer success playbook.
Our upcoming episodes promise a wealth of knowledge with topics like CS Math, Training, AI, Getting hired in CS, and CS Tool reviews, ensuring our listeners stay ahead of the curve in this fast-evolving field. The roadmap ahead is laden with engaging dialogues with yet more industry mavens, aimed at equipping you with the acumen to excel in your customer success journey.
At “The Customer Success Playbook,” our zeal for aiding others and disseminating our expertise to the community fuels our endeavor. Embark on this enlightening voyage with us, and escalate your customer success game to unparalleled levels.
Join us on this quest for knowledge, engage with a community of like-minded professionals, and elevate your customer success game to the next level. Your journey towards mastering customer success begins here, at “The Customer Success Playbook.” Keep On Playing!!
The Customer Success Playbook
Customer Success Playbook Podcast S3 E52 - Katie Smith - From Stagnation to Strategy
This episode of the Customer Success Playbook podcast is a breath of fresh Livingston, Montana air. Kevin Metzger sits down with Katie Smith, fractional CMO and founder of Wild Path Consulting, to unpack how strategic marketing and proactive customer listening can transform customer relationships and drive sustainable growth. Katie dives into tactics that ensure continuous customer engagement, especially in volatile markets, and shares actionable insights on how aligning customer feedback with marketing can unlock next-level success.
Detailed Analysis: Katie Smith's marketing philosophy is simple but potent: Always keep your ear to the ground. As a fractional Chief Marketing Officer, she specializes in building scalable strategies by embedding listening loops throughout the customer lifecycle. In this episode, Katie unpacks the critical role of subtle, continuous feedback gathering—from onboarding questions like "What are you most excited about?" to reflective prompts such as "What has changed the most for you?"
She emphasizes integrating these questions into everyday interactions rather than relying on clunky surveys. It's about embedding marketing intelligence into the customer success function. And here's the kicker: Katie makes a strong case that the insights from customer success should be fueling marketing strategy just as much as sales data does. That shift in mindset helps brands stay ahead of the curve—adjusting messaging, realigning offerings, and reinforcing value in real time.
The conversation also touches on the broader organizational alignment between marketing and customer success teams. With fast-moving market shifts, this collaboration isn’t just beneficial; it’s essential. Katie leaves us with a compelling preview of part two, where the focus sharpens on co-owning long-term value across departments.
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You can also find the CS Playbook Podcast:
YouTube - @CustomerSuccessPlaybookPodcast
Twitter - @CS_Playbook
You can find Kevin at:
Metzgerbusiness.com - Kevin's person web site
Kevin Metzger on Linked In.
You can find Roman at:
Roman Trebon on Linked In.
Customer success. Hello and welcome to the Customer Success Playbook podcast, where we bring you actionable insights for creating meaningful customer experiences. I'm your host, Kevin Metzker. Unfortunately, Roman's unable to join us today, but we're excited to welcome someone who lives and breathes adventure, both in nature and in the world of marketing. Our guest today is Katie Smith, the queen of the customer journey, and founder of Wild Path Consulting. From her scenic base in Livingston, Montana, Katie transforms stagnation into static strategic success by aligning businesses with the right customers and share customers and shared values. Candy, we're thrilled to have you here today. Can you tell us a little more about yourself?
Katie Smith:Sure. Thank you so much. I'm really excited to chat with you today. So I'm a fractional chief marketing officer, so that means that I help companies, um, create strategic planning from their, for their marketing from the top down. I love to come in help companies who, you know, they've got their business ops figured out, they're ready to scale and they really need some help. Just getting, figuring out what their marketing program should be. So I love being with them every step of the way and building that out.
Kevin Metzger:So let's go ahead and jump right in. What's your number one tip for ensuring customers stay engaged throughout their entire lifecycle, especially in the fast changing markets?
Katie Smith:So my number one tip is that you build into your marketing practices, ways that you can check in with your audience all of the time. So you always have a finger on the pulse of how they're feeling, what they need, and you can keep up with the changes as their, as their needs change, as the market changes. Um, if you always have these. Ways of listening. So that could be, um, in, you know, some of your, your sales processes, you just have one or two questions thrown in there. You have a few questions during the onboarding process, and then when you're doing your regular check-ins. You just have a few of those marketing type situational questions thrown in that you're always collecting that data and then you're always analyzing it so you can see any changes happening real time, and then you can make the adjustments before any of your competitors are even thinking about it.
Kevin Metzger:So what's an example of those types of questions or the kinds of follow up that you wanna kind of be asking throughout the process, the lifecycle?
Katie Smith:Sure. So, uh, I think when you're doing onboarding, you really wanna know, you know, what are you hoping for or what does this mean to you? Um, so those are questions that are, you know, forward thinking, how is this going to change your program? And then you also wanna. To get the questions of, you know, what made you decide to choose us, uh, what are you most excited about with our program? And then if you're doing your, your regular, um, check-ins with your customer, your customer success team, just have little questions thrown in about, you know, um, what are you looking? You know, so it's forward thinking questions. So, you know, what do you have planning for your next quarter? What are you working on? What, how do you, how are you hoping to integrate this into the next, you know, iteration of your, of your project prog or your project schedule? And then kind of looking back like what's been the most meaningful or, um, especially those first check-ins, you could, you can ask things like what is, uh, what has changed? What has this changed the most for you? That was unexpected. So you're always kind of mining for little bits of information, and if you just do it kind of suddenly subtly, um, you're not, you don't, I'll have to send out a big long questionnaire all the time. You can. Um, but there's other things. This is just an easier way for you, for your team and for your customers to have a little bit of that two-way connection and just kind of keeping your finger on the pulse of. Of what is really going on with your customer's environments, especially when things are changing so fast like they are right now.
Kevin Metzger:Yeah. Yeah. And it makes a lot of sense too. I mean, I mean it's, it's the strategic questioning of whether or not you are accomplishing the goals that you set with the customer during the sales process, really. Um, yeah. And you know, if you are, which is. You know, any good customer success program and, and it makes sense that that information needs to get back to the marketing team as well, because it's not just the sales, it's not just the ongoing operations. It's not just the resell, but it's the, Hey, how, how do we use this information, I guess really to help with the funnel and break dry traffic into the channel as well. Correct. Very good. Great. Well, fantastic. Katie, thank you for kicking off with a powerful tip on continuous customer engagement, and we'll see you on Wednesday for our one big question about how customer success and marketing teams can work together to drive long-term value.
Katie Smith:Oh, yeah. I'm really excited.
Kevin Metzger:I think we kind of just touched on it briefly, and I'm excited to dive in. So make sure to subscribe, uh, so you don't miss the Wednesday episode or any of our episodes. Like, listen, comment, we look forward to it. And until then, keep on playing.
