The Customer Success Pro Podcast
This is The Customer Success Pro Podcast, hosted by Anika Zubair. Customer Success is not a destination, but a a journey. Join me on this crazy CS journey as I chat to leaders, strategists and experts in customer success about their experiences and definitions of customer success and share with your their best practices on how to build and scale world class CS organization. Each interview will unlock tips, tricks and best practices to help scale your customer success career and company. I will dive into important and relevant topics to help spread knowledge about customer success in order to help companies put the customer at the center of their business. Because at the end of the day when customer are successful, so is the company.
Learn more at: thecustomersuccesspro.com
The Customer Success Pro Podcast
Why Your Marketing Team is the Key to CS Revenue Growth with Ashna Patel
In this episode, Anika Zubair discusses the vital collaboration between customer success and marketing with guest Ashna Patel. They explore how aligning these two functions can drive growth, retention, and upsells. Ashna shares her journey from customer success to marketing, emphasizing the importance of messaging and cross-functional teamwork in enhancing the customer experience. The conversation highlights the need for customer success professionals to leverage marketing resources and insights to better serve their customers and achieve organizational goals. In this conversation, the speakers discuss the critical alignment between marketing and customer success teams, emphasizing the importance of collaboration to enhance customer retention and product adoption. They explore how effective messaging and nurturing relationships can drive growth, and the role of AI in shaping the future of customer success. The discussion highlights practical strategies for cross-functional collaboration and the need for open communication to ensure that both teams work towards common goals.
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Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
02:52 Ashna Patel's Transition from Customer Success to Marketing
06:06 Understanding the Bow Tie Model in Customer Journey
09:10 The Role of Marketing in Customer Success
11:53 The Importance of Messaging in Customer Engagement
15:02 Aligning Marketing and Customer Success Teams
17:54 Leveraging Marketing for Customer Retention and Growth
20:54 Building Cross-Functional Relationships for Success
32:39 Team Alignment for Customer Success
35:05 Marketing's Role in Customer Retention
39:55 Nurturing Customer Relationships
42:04 Effective Messaging Strategies
48:15 Cross-Functional Collaboration for Success
55:30 Conclusion and Key Takeaways
Connect with Anika:
Website: thecustomersuccesspro.com
Coaching with Anika: CSM RevUP Academy
Connect with Ashna Patel:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashnapatel92/
Ashna Patel is a former award-winning Customer Success leader turned Marketer, bringing over a decade of experience in customer engagement, retention, and growth. After years of driving customer success strategies, she transitioned into marketing to bridge the gap between pre- and post-sales, leveraging her deep understanding of customer needs to fuel demand generation and customer marketing. Apart from this, Ashna is also passionate about helping professionals build personalized systems to prevent burnout, enhance productivity, and achieve sustainable success (personally and professionally).
Podcast Editor: https://podcastmagician.com/
Speaker 2 (00:00.344)
This month's episode is brought to you by our sponsor, CSM RevUp Academy. CSM RevUp Academy is my complete step-by-step coaching program designed to help customer success pros become confident revenue generating experts. Inside the program, you'll learn how to align CS strategies with business goals, identify upsells and expansion opportunities, and drive long-term value for both your customers and your company.
If you're listening to this podcast and thinking, I want to apply these strategies in my own role, then this is your next step. But heads up, doors only open a few times a year and we're opening them for just one more time in 2025. So if you're ready to stop overthinking your revenue goals and start hitting them with clarity and confidence, make sure you're on the VIP wait list. Head over to thecustomersuccesspro.com
or check the show notes to save your spot. Hello, everyone. I'm your host, Anika Zuber, and welcome to the Customer Success Pro Podcast, your go-to space for real talk, expert advice, and actual insights in the world of customer success. I'm a CS executive leader, award-winning strategist, CS coach, and customer success fanatic. I help CSMs and CS leaders build the skills and the confidence
to become revenue driving pros and scale world-class CS teams. So whether you're brand new to CS or a seasoned leader, this podcast is here to support your growth. Because customer success isn't a destination, it's a journey. And I'm here to be your guide and navigate every step of your journey. So join me every Wednesday where you'll get fresh CS tips, tricks, and strategies you can actually use.
Some weeks I'll share my own insights and best practices from working in CS over the last 13 years. And once a month, I'll bring on expert guests to dive into the most relevant and pressing topics in customer success today. So if you're ready to level up, hit subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you tune in. And let's make your CS journey a little bit easier together.
Speaker 2 (02:25.816)
Welcome back. Today we are diving into a topic that doesn't get talked about enough. And that's how customer success and marketing can work together to drive real growth, especially when it comes to upsells, retention, and long-term customer expansion. And I couldn't think of a better guest to break this down than Ashna Patel. Ashna is a former award-winning customer success leader turned marketeer.
And with over a decade of experience in customer engagement, retention and growth, and after years of driving post-sales strategies, she's decided to make a bold move and move into marketing. And now she's on a mission to bridge the gap between CS and marketing by bringing the customer voice into every stage of the buyer journey. Beyond her day-to-day work, Ashna also is incredibly passionate about helping professionals create
personalized systems to avoid burnout, boost productivity, and build sustainable careers. So if you've ever wondered what role marketing should play in customer upsells or how CS and marketing can stop working in silos, this episode is packed with insights and you don't want to miss it. So let's get into it. Welcome Ashna to the podcast. This has been such a long time coming and I know we've talked about
having this podcast for some time. So I am so, so very excited and honored to have you as my next guest. But before we get into today's topic, can you please tell my listeners a little bit more about yourself, your background and how you transitioned from customer success into marketing and kind of what made that that career show?
Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me here. Like you said, it's been a long time coming and I'm super excited to be here. But, well, you kind of said my name already, but this is, my name is Dasha Napatel and I am currently in marketing, but I've spent almost a decade in the customer facing roles, including, you know, majority of them being in customer success. So a little bit about me, like I said, spent about decade in that account management, sales, customer success, support sort of a role.
Speaker 1 (04:40.654)
Um, and then I came to a point where I think one to many kind of a conversation really, um, sparked interest to me. It's like, you know, there has to be a better way of messaging this particular message to, many individuals or many, you know, people out there. And I think that kind of led me into a little bit looking into customer marketing. Um, and, and I think that kind of led me to look into marketing a little bit too. So it's, it's kind of like.
It kind of worked out in a way that there was a, you know, opportunity opened up at my organization and kind of jumped into that role, which is definitely a different direction than what I did for so long. But the whole approach was that I'd be able to take my customer success, customer experience background, and, you know, have that little bit of a different, you know, touch to the marketing side of things. Now, as I got into marketing, there was a whole lot of things that I got to learn.
And it's definitely not just email management, I can tell you that. But, you know, I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about that, but it's, you know, what really helped is to just bring in that customer success and, you know, keeping the customer at the center of things, kind of an insight into the marketing role where I feel like I was very well aware of the right side of the bow tie of the journey. But, you know, as I jumped in the marketing and, you know, I got to learn a little bit about the left side of the bow tie.
which a lot of us don't realize, but it's part of the whole journey. So I kind of had to stop there, but I think that's been kind of a change for me. And it's been incredible just learning a whole lot of new sets of skills about marketing and how customer success knowledge fits into marketing. then eventually, my now, it's like how marketing knowledge fits into customer success and overall customers' overall experience.
I love that. Thanks for that intro. I also love that you mentioned the bow tie, which for anyone listening that hasn't heard of this, it's winning by design. It's the left side of the funnel, which is the acquisition, the sales, the marketing side that everyone kind of knows about. And then there's the right side of the bow tie, which is, you know, onboarding, adoption, expansion, all of that. And together, I think marketing helps all parts of that bow tie, which I think you just alluded to, and I totally agree.
Speaker 2 (07:05.442)
But I also think that CSMs are little marketeers. As we're going to talk through this topic, but how we message in our emails, the positioning of our product to our customers, those are all marketing skills. And I love that you just said you took CS lens and put it on marketing, but now you're also taking that marketing lens and putting it back on CS, which
There's just so much Ashna we're going to talk about. But before we get into that, I'd love to know a little bit more about your company, your team, like what is your CS team doing? What is your marketing team doing right now? Tell me a little bit more, because I think you've been at that business for a number of years right now.
Yes, I've been with my company. So the name of the company is Ascent Cloud, and we are a performance management platform solutions. We've got a couple of different products off of Salesforce App Exchange. So we work in the Salesforce ecosystem, but then we also have our own third product, and then we're just expanding into those different horizons. the focus is sales performance management. So we work with, it's not just specific industry, work with varieties of industries, but it's
you know, sales leaders and, and executives and, know, enablement team, operations and those kinds of people, the personas that we kind of work with. And our sales team, I'm sorry, our CS team, I've been into, I joined this company 2007, I would say. then, and yeah, it's been a long time and sorry, 2007, my bad, 2017. Wow. Ages. No, but I was in school in 2007. What am I talking about?
my god, I thought you made up this complete break.
Speaker 1 (08:41.933)
Um, yeah, 2017, I joined this company in 2017 and been in customer success, I think a little after that, I was in a sales for a little bit, but I've been in customer success a little after that until now moved into marketing. And there was, you know, there's a lots of things that we in customer success have done and tried and whatnot. And I think our team currently is doing amazing work in the customer success areas. They are just, you know, supporting the, the.
in.
Speaker 1 (09:10.99)
throughout the journey, customer journey, would say, from onboarding to support and after that. And then from a marketing standpoint, which is where I am, our marketing team handles a lot of like the whole marketing, the left side of the bow tie, kind like the pre-sale side of the marketing, but also we're jumping now jumping into a lot of the customer marketing side of things too, and then the park marketing side of things alongside of the way. you know, we're...
Small organization, we've got a good amount of people in our teams, but we're just trying to work through a lot of these different initiatives that basically how can we function well together cross-functionally, also take advantage of these cross-functional knowledge that we have and trying to gain, as a marketer, how do we generate more demands and more leads and flow towards that?
That's kind of where we are as a team, but we're part of our team because we've seen lots of different seasons in this organization and it's been great. So I think it's just so wonderful to see how we're always trying to work closer and closer together as different teams.
Yeah, I love that. I also love that you mentioned how marketing is looking after so many different parts because I think a lot of people see marketing as lead gen, which in the traditional sense, that's growth marketing or whatever you want to call it at your company. But it is, you are trying to generate brand awareness, lead awareness to really convert those leads into customers. But there's so much more marketing out there that I think smaller nimble teams don't even think about.
They all just see it as lead gen, but even at bigger companies, there's so much other marketing. There is product marketing, like you mentioned, there is customer marketing, but there is also lead gen marketing within customer or existing customers rather than just new customers. And I think that's really important to call out because as a CSM, you can't do it alone. there are, just like you give product feedback on how to better develop
Speaker 2 (11:27.214)
the roadmap based on what customers are asking for. You need to give your marketeers information as well, like whether it's a case study, which is the natural way that we start thinking in customer success. We're like, oh, I have a really successful customer. Let me get a case study put together. But there's also lead gen that happens because of a case study. And I think that that is what we're going to get into and talk more in detail about.
It's just so amazing to see how you've really taken this lens of like the full customer life cycle and how marketing can fit into it. And you made this bold move, Ashna. I really love it. I think that a lot of people make a move into leadership or maybe into sales or like something more of a customer success role, let's say. But you went right into marketing and that's a huge career deviation, but different direction. And like what
shift.
Speaker 2 (12:22.574)
I guess what's next for you? Why marketing? What's kind of your career dream or ambition at this point?
thing is, as I look actually back from the whole career journey that I've had, and I'll tell you this, I have experience in manufacturing, I have experience in retail and hospitality before coming into tech and all sorts of things that I've done. even within tech now getting into some of these, I've done sales and customer success, customer support, leadership, I've managed a couple of teams, not just one, but the two teams at a time.
I've gotten a variety of experience that I think this, you know, getting this marketing experience, especially now that it's like, I'm looking at it from a pre-sell marketing, but also like, kind of like jumping into the post-sell marketing, the customer marketing side of things, product marketing side of things. Which again, we're, we're, I'm still learning and then I'm still new to this and it's, there's a lot to it. I honestly don't know what's, you know, next, in terms of that. I think it's more of like, I'm ready to explore where this kind of takes me, but.
I do see myself as become like, as become as sort of a go GTM, you know, sort of a professional because I've, I've acquired different types of knowledge in the different areas. so it's, that's kind of where I see it's, it's a, not just a one direction. It's, more like I'm, I'm touching on this different, you know, different skill sets that I'm getting from these different roles. that it's, it's exciting, honestly, I need it. I'll be honest.
I wanted a change. I wanted to learn something new. I wanted to be challenged and that's exactly what I'm doing right now. And it's been just wonderful. I've got a great leader. I've got a great team and you know, just a company that supports and there's always something new that I'm, feel like I'm working on and learning. And that's kind of also what I wanted. And I, and this is also something I feel like I want to tell the speakers that it's not always about what's next. It's also.
Speaker 1 (14:22.99)
do I say this? was like, always, I used to say, it's like, we always think that can I do this or can I not do this? And it's, it's, and I always say, like, ask a different question. Should I be doing this right now? And I think that's the kind of a thing that I feel like I followed is that what I needed in my life at that time is kind of, this is the path I'm on and I wanted a different channel challenge. And honestly, I'm, lucky that I took the, took the risk because I'm, I've learned so much.
in just about a one year that I've been in this role. And then I think there's so much more to learn too, which can eventually help in whatever direction that I just had to go tomorrow. So I'll just kind of say that.
I love that. was such a great answer, Ashna, but also just such a great way for people to really tune in that career trajectory and career growth isn't linear or step by step. And you want it to have a different impact. And you definitely are having that level of impact by the sounds of it. But I think what's really cool is you're getting to do the whole GTM side of things. Because in customer success and what you've told me of your roles prior, like you've
done the support, you've done upsells, you've done renewals. That's all a commercial part of customer success. But then you also did onboarding and like product adoption and product feedback, which is more like, you know, the full customer life cycle. But now you get to do marketing as well. And I think there's, I do feel like there is a space in tech, whether it's five, 10, I don't know when it's going to be. Don't, don't hold me to this timeline, but I do think there's a space in tech that is about bringing
the go-to market teams together, meaning sales, marketing, and CS. I'm loving that for you. I'm really, I'm excited to see where your career goes and excited that, you you've been able to have such an impact in a year's time and really made this leap of faith. And I think marketing affects customer growth and revenue growth way more than we, we give it credit, if I'm honest. And you're now probably learning that firsthand. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:24.48)
Yeah, because I think it's also kind of, I know you and I kind of talked about this before, but it's also this whole notion of marketing is only done by the marketing team. I think that was the first, I think the biggest lesson that I've had when I joined the team is like, no, all of us in this organization is responsible for marketing. Now I know that there's certain aspects of marketing that is done by the marketing team. And I know being in customer success, we've always used to be like,
A customer's success is dependent on how everybody plays their role within an organization. So it's it's kind of the center of the things. And when I joined the marketing team and as I got to learn, you know, things about it, I think that was the first lesson that I felt like I learned is that, well, it also goes for marketing. It probably goes for finance. It probably goes for product, but everybody's in kind of in the center of things. you know, all of us, sales, product, know, CS.
finance, all of us need to play a role in order for marketing team or marketing to succeed because we are, whether you're sitting in the finance team or in the customer success team or in the product team, with every transaction that you're doing with the customer internally, externally, in a way you're marketing about your company and your product and the services that you provide and all of that. So it's like,
And I think the biggest thing about marketing is the messaging. And so the more that you learn about different.
Yes. I love that you say that. It's something that I think CS professionals need help with if I'm honest. Exactly. How many times are your emails going unopened? How many times are your calls being unanswered? It's because the level of messaging that you're sending to your customers is probably not as influential as you need it to be. And like, I love that you said messaging. Sorry, continue. No,
Speaker 1 (18:15.254)
No, no, no, I think you nailed it. It's because that's what it is. It's the storytelling aspect of it, messaging aspect of it, the brand voice and being it kind of in concise one voice, whether it's coming from different parts of the organization. Now in a larger organization, that could be a marketing, product marketing, customer marketing, just the marketing. And then you have, know, solution engineers and the sales and whatever. Like there's probably tons of different.
people giving out this message externally to this prospects and customer. So it's like, if there is no alignment, and this is where I think the marketing team comes in, it's like marketing can help you bring that alignment in the messaging that you're providing, which is why, you you as an individual, whether you sit in customer success, whatever, you need to fully understand how the whole customer journey works. And I think this is where we often talk about customer journey doesn't start when
the prospect becomes a customer, it starts when they knock your door, when they're just like in that lead stage. And I think that's, that's where, know, so the marketing kind of is throughout the, throughout the journey and it's not just a certain part of it. And I think it's, it's really amazing that the amount of stuff that I've learned, especially around messaging and it's like, and I feel like I felt that so many times, like if I had this type of knowledge when I was a customer success, you know, manager,
or in customer success, I could have done certain things differently. And it's just the learning of the importance of that having that one voice and one message. And I think another thing, which I feel like I will go into it, but it's like, how can we leverage what's going on in the marketing cycle, like marketing, call it a calendar, or like what they're doing, whatever, and then...
come together as an organization to kind of support those messaging because that's, amplifies the message that we're trying to put out there to our customers and prospects.
Speaker 2 (20:17.846)
Yeah, it sounds like your biggest lesson in this transition was realizing how much messaging affects the whole customer journey, which we'll get into. But like how has learning that messaging is so important really shaped how you work now? Because you just said that if I knew this earlier in customer success, it would change how I work. But if for some people who are listening, they don't even realize how much marketing and messaging especially impacts
customer revenue growth. So if you had all your insights that you do now when you're working in customer success, how would that have shaped the way you work?
I mean, the biggest thing I feel like is I feel like if I knew the importance of it and I guess the knowledge, the little bit of extra knowledge that I had today, I definitely would have worked a little bit closer with our marketing team. That's to start with, I think. Now, as a customer success person, I know I work closely with the product team. I know I work closely with work with even the sales team, team. Exactly.
it's had I known a lot of these things that I would have worked closely with the marketing team for a perspective of, oh, we're having this event. If this is the set of customers that are going to this event or whatever that may be, how can I as a customer success manager take advantage of this? Whatever parts of the life cycle that I'm working on with that customer and what sort of messaging can help out.
within that cycle. So I think it's just like understanding that there is this customer's ongoing journey and then marketing is doing their tidbits to work through the parts of it. And then just learning and just like knowing this is where those parts are happening and how can we work together. I feel like a little bit more better. think that's probably would have been something that I feel like I would have done.
Speaker 1 (22:17.954)
differently. It's just like, yeah, exactly. Working closely with marketing team. And I think it's not just about also, hey, I have this great customer use case and they're doing great and they're being successful. We could do a case study on it, but it's like, how can I actually make it help them make it happen? Because at the end of the day, then that's the story that we're telling. That's the story that our prospect will be, you know, reading. Then that can turn into a what they call like the
an ally.
Speaker 1 (22:47.758)
I mean, Legion and, you know, the CSQL, whatever that may be, there was different parts of it. So I feel like I'm kind of, you know, running around here a little bit, but I think these are small little things that I feel like we could, I could have done, you know, differently, which I feel like we still did great. And I still did great in my customer success years, but I just know that the impact would have been even more, you know, if I had, worked even closely with the marketing team in a lot of those initiatives and the journey.
Yeah, you mentioned that marketing is often overlooked as that ally that's necessary in customer success. You just mentioned, you naturally work with sales or product or even the engineering team before you come to marketing. And it's so true, we tend to come to marketing when it's only a case study, which granted, very important, but it's not the only moment in the customer journey that makes sense for marketing and CS to work together.
Now that you've transitioned and you are in marketing, can you maybe share a little bit more about where marketing is so critical in the customer journey? Like if I'm a CS professional listening today, when should you be reaching out to the marketing team and what point of the journey to really build in that ally in the marketing team?
Yeah, I mean, it's, it could be different for different organization. could be different, different, different, different size of organizations and you know, how you're focusing and the type of teams that you have and whatnot. But I think some of the things that I feel like I've learned is as soon as they become a customer, it's like the onboarding part of it. Marketing can definitely help out with this. Some of those communication that needs to, needs to happen. And this could be something that you work closely with marketing. Doesn't have to be something that goes for marketing, but it's something that you kind of ally.
you know, aligned with marketing team to make sure like the voice and the message that your new customers are getting as you start to onboard them, as you start to support them and provide enablement services and whatnot. and then other throughout the journey, I think the other adoption resources and things like that, and you know, particular type of messaging. I mean, these are the things like, okay, you as a customer success manager could
Speaker 1 (25:02.83)
one of the things that you're probably looking at is the adoption and the use of statistics in your customer success, know, journey of your customers that you have. And so the question that you should be asking to yourself, it's like, how can I provide this information to my other teams, including marketing? And then how can we, you know, work together to better communicate so that these kind of, you know, the trends that we're seeing
do not continue to happen or that we continue to see those, some of those positive trends that you're seeing. So I think it's, I'm giving a little bit of a vague, like a high level answer here, but it's, really, can be any in the, in the, any parts of the journey, as soon as, you know, the onboarding happens, even post-renewal that can be a different types of communication. mean, a lot of the things that now, you know, people do some of the other things, which also we're also diving into, it's creating a customer newsletter.
New York's provide product updates and company updates and what's happening and things like this. these are some of the things or user conferences or webinars and events that can be, you know, can be done throughout the customer journey. Now, marketing is definitely doing a lot of these events and webinars for pre-sale, like the demand generations and the leads that we need to bring into the organization, but also
these things are also happening for customers or these things can happen for customers. If you see something or some of those, you know, trends as a customer service manager or as a team of CS, these are the things that you can communicate with the marketing team. These are the things that you can work with your marketing team to, make sure, Hey, what if we do this webinar series? And this is the, the, you know, the result of that. These are the people that we can target and help target. So that's
Marketing will give you insights of how beneficial this can be, type of messaging that we can provide. You as a customer success manager can bring in your customer success knowledge to be like, how can we put customer at the middle of it? What sort of value we can provide into this and who should we be able to contact? And then how can we support you to bring in more of these information and customers and things?
Speaker 1 (27:17.144)
to these different events and webinars and other things that are happening. So there is a lot that I feel like can happen, but it really starts with, I think, know, CS to understand what marketing does and marketing to understand what CS does. And if there's no across alignment and, you know, cross functional alignment, and if they don't understand each other's KPIs and, and, know, goals and metrics, then that becomes, I think that's, that's the first point that it becomes harder.
to even think about any of this because you don't understand what matters to the other team. Because if you don't understand them, then it's kind hard to figure out what you can do to support one of
Yeah, great. I think you've laid out a beautiful way that marketing supports customer success beyond lead gen. Because again, I know I sound like a broken record, but most people just think of marketing as lead generating. But you just mentioned your customer newsletter, which is awesome. It sounds like you have great traction. It sounds like the marketing team is working on that messaging that we said earlier. But I hope if you're a CS Pro listening to this podcast,
that you realize that you don't have to do it all. I think the one thing that CS people have done and have done to their detriment is thinking that you've got to do it all. Meaning I have to do the product updates to my customer. I have to send them an email of all the new things on the roadmap and all this stuff. But no, like that is something your marketing team should be doing. Cause like you said, you have the skills and the knowledge of how to provide the correct messaging around that.
thing customer success needs to do is take that information that you've made into this beautiful newsletter and translate it to value to their customer. Yes, there's a list of these beautiful features and things on the roadmap that's in this newsletter that's positioned correctly for the customer to understand, which is exactly what your marketing team is doing. now it's the CSM's job to take it that step further. And I think that's exactly how marketing and CS can better align is like
Speaker 2 (29:25.24)
Your marketing person is your ally in step one in getting that messaging, that information out to the customer. And your job is to take it to that next further step, which is providing the value based on the messaging that the marketing team has provided, which I love that you guys are doing a customer newsletter. I think it's so important to focus on your existing customer's marketing. think so many companies. Yeah, yeah.
think it, and again, like we're just starting out with some of those things and it can evolve to many different things, but I think that's what it is. It's like, one, I think you can also work with marketing, two, try out a lot of these things and it can, some of this can work, some of this won't work, some of this you have to pivot and change and whatnot. I think something you mentioned, which is so important and I could like, that's where we struggle as different teams a lot is that
they've, they've sent this email communication out or they've sent this out and that's it. But it's like, that's the, that's the, think that's the, it's like, no, they have just, it's like, they have given you this information or to your, to your customers. Now it's your job, like you said, to kind of take it step further so that it can turn into, you know, which is why I feel like, and this could just be me, but I feel like this, having this, individual teams goals and KPIs are good.
But I think as an organization, there has to be some KPIs where an organization can kind of really just outline, well, marketing will need to play this, CS will need to play this, product will need to play this for them to get this X result. And I think if you can have the, again, this just kind of came to my mind, but I feel like that's when teams can really understand. It's like me just getting my, you know,
my tidbits or just providing some updates and whatever that may be is not going to cut it. It's like, it's, there's much more beyond to that. Our marketing team is sending out this great feature updates to our customers. Now, how can I take it step further? Am I, when I get on a call with the same customer next time, am I mentioning about that? I, am I even aware of the fact that, you know, a week before this kind of communication went out to our customers? Should I bring that up to the conversation? Can I take it a step further?
Speaker 1 (31:45.446)
What are the customer's thoughts about this? And I think this is just, okay, at the smaller level, if you're meeting your customers on a monthly or on regular basis, you can have these type of communication. But I think this starts with how aware are you of the customer marketing calendar or the marketing calendar or marketing things. And then also how much are you making your other counterpart teams?
And I'm not just saying marketing, but marketing product and sales and other teams, making them aware of what's happening in your life cycle where they can come and fit in. I think that's where that cross-functional team alignment and communication is so critical. Otherwise it's everybody's going to do their part and everybody's going to be like, well, I did my job, but it's not that it's like, well, yeah, you did your job, but you now you think about like.
Are we doing our job as a team?
company as a team. Exactly. I would say that it's so important to remember that. I personally always ask my marketing leader what's going out, what's being sent to my customer, what's in our CRM, what type of message are we sending, when's the newsletter, what's in that newsletter. But I think another thing that I've done in my career and you just highlighted as well is really asking for clarity from your marketing teams. I have worked with a brilliant product marketer
And her job was to make sure that any new product release was correctly marketed, both to new prospects, but existing as well. Cause we wanted, we wanted customers and prospects to use that new feature. And it was her job to make sure that new feature was highlighted correctly. what I love that she did, and Ari, if you're listening, shout out, but what Ari did is she took the time to explain it to the CS team and to really, to really be an ally.
Speaker 2 (33:40.686)
as a marketer to the CSM team. And the main reason she did this as her KPIs was product adoption and usage of that product. She wants to see as many new prospects and existing customers use that feature and functionality. Guess what? That's a similar KPI to a CSM. Like product adoption is something that multiple teams have similar KPIs, whether you're a product manager, a marketeer, or a customer success manager. And like you said, you need to have
that level of alignment and understanding across multiple teams to make sure that, listen, we're serving the customer and this is how we're all serving the customer together. So I love that you call that out because it's not just a, I've done my job and then this is the end of my job and then someone else picks it up. No, it's all of us coming together to make sure we're serving our customers, which I love that you've called out. Hey, just jumping in with a quick.
break, if you're loving the revenue strategies that we're talking about in this episode and want to actually apply them in your day to day work, I've got something for you. It's my totally free guide called Unlock Revenue in a Quarterly Business Review. It's going to be your go-to resource to stop firefighting and get hours back in your day and finally focus on what matters most, customer outcomes.
Inside my guide, you'll learn how to prioritize your time, prep smarter, and run executive or quarterly business reviews that actually drive revenue. These are real life tips and tactics that you can start to use immediately. And like I said, it's completely free. So go ahead and check out the link in my show notes to grab your free copy or go to thecustomersuccesspro.com
forward slash resources. Just check on us and now back to our show. You also called out how marketing is not just the top of the funnel and coming back to winning by design bow tie, you mentioned it's not just the left side, but it's also the right side. Can you maybe expand on how marketing affects the right side of the bow tie or basically the expansion side of the bow tie out customer success?
Speaker 1 (35:35.938)
The show.
Speaker 2 (36:02.882)
teens can leverage marketing for, yeah, upsells, renewals, cross-sells, that sort of thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, a hundred percent. again, like this is also something we're me as being new in marketing, just like, you know, putting my feet into this sort of a water site. It only kind of say based on some of the experience and things that we are working on. I think it's, it's some of those things that I kind of mentioned already. It's just, you need to just understand, you know, the journey that it's like the full journey. And I think.
something else that I feel like you should also keep in mind, which I know you would talk about this before, but I think that every prospect can be a customer and every customer is a prospect at the end of the day. that, that journey. Yeah. So it's like, if you kind of keep that in mind, so it's like, well, just because they renewed, it doesn't end there where renewal can turn into an upsell tomorrow. Renewal can turn into, you know, a cross sell or, or whatever that may be, or maybe you, you know,
Cut line.
Speaker 1 (37:06.142)
they've signed a three or four or five year contract with you. Like it's still is kind of a, yeah, they're existing customer, but eventually that cycle is going to end or come to an end and you were going to have to sort of, you know, prospect them or pitch them and, know, make them continue to make them a customer. it's, then it's like, the question is like, how can you work with your marketing team? or how can you work?
on your own, but also leverage marketing teams and things that are happening with the marketing team. And a lot of the things is like, you know, product usage and adoption based communication that you could be doing. So if you're really taking a look at your usage and adoption, can you work with your marketing team to be like, here's a different type of messaging, messaging that we can send out, or can you help us with this messaging? It could still be customer success team doing it. I'm not saying it needs to happen by the marketing team. It depends on the
the organization that you're in, but you can work with your marketing team and some of these different surveys that you sent out, some of these communication that goes out. There could be a different types of series of webinars that you're doing. Hey, this product, this amazing new feature is coming out. There's a potential of these existing customers that we have that could be a good, but this could be a good like prospects of this. Can we do a webinar series on this? Can you help us with this? And again,
You can work with the product team. You can work with your, you know, enablement team to kind of put this together, but then marketing can come in and be like, here's how you should present the messaging. Here's how the brand should come out. And here's how the messaging or the, you know, kind of like the email communication before and after could kind of go in to kind of keep them in a funnel. So there was a lot that I feel like, I really think that as a customer success team, you should just do a, a, know, maybe like a, one hour lunch and learn, tell us about marketing.
in general, like, you know, go to your teams and just like, tell, like, learn from them. How do they do things? Like, what are the different nitty gritty things that they're doing to make some of these things happen? Like marketing organizes events. Like there was a whole thing about event marketing and whatnot. There was so much that goes into it to make the event happen and, you know, send the communication before and after.
Speaker 1 (39:27.34)
And this could be done for your user. Like there could be a user conference, like something that we're tapping into right now is we're doing a user conference for, you know, customer specifically. And it's like, these are different things that you can, you know, one can suggest, work with your teams or work with the marketing team and other teams to kind of see like, how can we continue to expand in our customer base? And you don't have to just worry about expansion or renewal.
You also have to worry about how can I continue to retain this customer and then continue to nurture them. And I think that nurture piece can really what marketing can really help you with. I feel like it's like that nurturing aspect. Yeah.
I love it. You've just, honestly, that one line where you're like, every customer is a prospect. just, it's just resonating so much with me right now. And also what you just said is that you've got to nurture. Everything you do in customer success is nurturing. And I know that's like marketing 101, by the way. And again, not a marketeer here, but I think I've had enough conversations, but you have to nurture.
your customers in every aspect, every customer life cycle, whether it's onboarding, whether it's adoption, by the way, adoption is nurturing. You are nurturing your customer to use more and more of your product. But everything you're just saying is just clicking so much for me. And I think that we underutilize marketing tactics that work on the left side of the bow tie. And we don't necessarily apply it to the right side of the bow tie because we think that,
What we're doing for prospects doesn't apply to customers, but like you just said, every customer, when a renewal happens, it's almost like the full life cycle starts all over again and you have to nurture again. And you have to really work with your customer with whether it's messaging, whether it's delivering value, which by the way, delivering value is all around your messaging and your ability to influence a customer. So all of this ties back into
Speaker 2 (41:33.614)
the tactics that marketing uses every single day. I've just had a light bulb moment. So thank you for sharing that. But I wanted to really quickly ask more about messaging, because we talked about it at the very top of the conversation. But I do think messaging is underutilized. And I think that a lot of listeners can probably take a lot away from marketing when it comes to messaging. And I know, like you said, it's been about a year that you're in this role. But looking back, what has been kind of like
a marketing tactic that you've used to really help CSMs with their messaging to really drive growth with existing customers? Is there a tactic or maybe some sort of playbook you've built or something you've done?
Yeah, honestly, like we're still, again, like I said, it's like we're still in the kind of the new phases of, you know, beginning phases of a lot of these things that we're working. But I think we're working closely with our customer success team now than, you know, we ever did before. And I think we're trying to align some of those things. But I think what I can say is, and then what we're tapping into, it's just that, like that.
Open communication that we have when we do send out certain types of messaging to it, like if we're doing a customer communication email campaign, or if we're organizing something, that open communication between the, one of the things that I love to do, even though I have so many years of experience in customer success, I still like to shoulders of my...
customer success team members be like, hey, this is something that we're thinking of doing or we're creating for this type of, you know, campaigns or this type of things that we're doing. And this is not just me, my counterparts in marketing too. It's like, we like to reach out to those team members and be like, tell us, like fill in the gaps for us a little bit. Like help us understand like how, if you were a customer and I think because you were a customer success manager, like how would you receive, like how would you like to receive this information? What would really trigger?
Speaker 1 (43:37.164)
Like what would make you fill out the form or what would make you want to go on the website and read more about this and things like that. So I think that's, we're tapping shoulders of a product team and we're a sales team or our customer success team. And we're trying to get that information from a marketing standpoint. And I think so when I say talk about messaging, that just helps me redefine and redesign the type of messaging that I want to put out to the customer because
When it comes to messaging, and I think especially from someone that came from customer success, customer experience background, the value, like what value I can provide from this messaging, it becomes critical at the center of things. And it's just not just, I need to remind you about all this 50,000 product features and functionalities that we have. No, this is the pain point. You are the persona that I'm targeting. Here are the type of message that I want to deliver. My question is,
what is going to make you want to look at this? What is going to make you want to read this? And so then the messaging that I generate is based on that. And I think that has been really helpful is just to kind of think about bringing that sort of a customer insight to the table. And then now using the marketing knowledge that I have a little bit, which again, it's like to kind of like, you know, come back to the whole messaging and to answer your question. think it's really important.
that if CS and marketing team can just sit down and just have those open conversation, it's like, this is what we've seen working versus this is the type of messaging that I feel like we are doing and let's have a brainstorming session that could really benefit as an organization because marketing knows what they're doing. Customer success also knows how to make their customers successful.
But when you come together, you can just amplify and just kind of, you know, take this redundant work out of the way and you can just try to be like, okay, great, this is working. Now, how can we amplify this to the larger, you know, quantity of customers and prospects out there? So I think that's the general gist of it is just like, you know, try asking some of these questions, but it really starts with.
Speaker 1 (45:54.944)
I've gotten this understanding after I joined our marketing team and learned how they do marketing in an organization and kind of bring in the customer success knowledge. And I think there is so much value if you just sit down with your marketing team or other team that you want to collaborate with and just learn about, okay, how do you do things and what are the ways that we can kind of work together around this?
Yeah, I love that. I love that. And I think coming back to the messaging piece, one thing that I work with CSMs and coach them on is that you want to make sure you're speaking your customer's language and how important it is to speak in the language that they understand and the product in the way that they understand it as well. And a lot of that comes from marketing and messaging, like you just said. And sometimes it's so much easier to just ask my marketing counterpart, like, hey,
this new feature came out, what's the messaging or what are we saying about this? And then just listening to your marketing manager, product manager, customer marketing, whatever their title is, just listening to them say those words is exactly the messaging that your customer is expecting to hear. So again, coming back to the, don't have to do it all by ourselves, like don't reinvent the wheel. Marketing is literally already giving you word for word.
of what you should be saying to your customer. And I say this all the time with a lot of people I work with. I'm like, what is your website say? Like, what does, if you go to your company's website, what does it say? Because that's probably the problem your customers are looking to solve. And that messaging is what your marketing team works on day in and day out. You should probably work with them on, well, if it's totally wrong or not being heard by the customer, let them know feedback is important, but probably
That's one of the reasons why your customer signed up for your product or service. And marketing had a lot to do with that because they worked on the messaging on your website and you should probably use the same words. if anyone takes anything from this episode, like use the same words marketing is using because they have done endless amounts of research into the exact words that customers and prospects want to hear. So I would say, yeah, sitting down with your marketing team and really understanding.
Speaker 2 (48:15.126)
what each other are doing and how you can work together is a huge bridge that needs to happen. And you make it sound really easy, Ashna. And I'm going to say that at some organizations it is and maybe some others aren't, and I know you have a unique spin because you've been on both sides of the Fed. But for anyone listening that maybe has a little bit of hesitation of sitting down with their marketing team or anyone that's like, I don't really even know what to say.
to my marketing to get them to sit down and work collaboratively. What would you say is your biggest tip to those types of people or organizations?
mean, really it starts with what's the center of discussion and that to a customer success manager, it's your customers. So the conversation really starts with here's we're working on X, Y, and Z to make our customers successful. And we want to know, and we want to work with you to kind of make sure like we're aligned on the type of voice and the brand and the messaging that we're putting out there to our customers. Or how can we do this, you know, different types of things that you're.
you're putting together, how can we leverage some of these things? And I think that's where the conversation really starts is to, you know, and there's, know, a lot of other things like we've, like, I'll tell you this, we have created like internal resources for marketing to other team members that they can use, which is marketing focused resources. You know, our marketing calendar is public in terms of, know, internally public for people to kind of see.
When we're sending communication out, who are we sending this communication out to when we're doing this many events and whatnot. So it's like, figure out like, where are these different types of information that you can have access to? Which again, you don't need to master how marketing, you know, do their things. They're, they're good at doing what they're doing. You, what you need to just know is to kind of just, you know, where are these kind of different things happening? And then how can you.
Speaker 1 (50:16.75)
you know, align with those things. mean, another thing is like, if you have access to, this is an example, if you have access to your marketing teams, you know, marketing calendar or event calendar or whatever, you could be like, Hey, I know that we're doing a user or customer event in, you know, in June or whatever of this year. And this is where it's happening. I've got this type of like, I'm working on some sort of a cadence of messaging that I want to send out to our customers, or I want to, you know, maybe
have these different communication. creating some sort of a cheat sheet. I don't know, thinking out loud here, but there is different things and you can start the conversation with that. It's like, how can, you know, any, any, any kind of a, an ideas or advice that you can provide or what's going to be the target of this? What is type of communication are we doing after the event? then you are aware of the things in the flow that's happening. And then you as a CS person can kind of then come in and be like, okay, now I can.
If they're going to be sending out just like two or three emails afterwards, I can pick up from after that. you know, we can, as a team can work. mean, again, there's a lot of automation and things that happen. You can work with your rev ops team. can work with, I mean, there's so much more that you could do is be like, okay, just this customer assigned up for this event and they're going to this event. They're going to get this communication afterwards. And then so three months after I want to put them into kind of like create a task on my list that I want to reach out to them.
That's where you kind of, you know, took advantage of the, work with the marketing team and kind of took advantage of the whole cycle and be like, okay, now I'm going to follow up. so it's like, you've talked about a lot of these things.
You have a joint KPI there. And I think what you said earlier about making sure KPI's are understood. Like maybe the KPI is getting for the marketing team an X number of customers to that event in June. And then your job as a CSM is like, hey, marketing team, I want to work with you and bring, you know, my top 10 customers to the event. How are we going to get the messaging aligned across each other?
Speaker 2 (52:15.916)
I think the one thing I can say is if you are looking to work cross-functionally with your teams and what Ashna was just saying is like really find out what matters to them and then apply what you do daily to how it's gonna help them succeed. Because as humans, like we're selfish beings naturally and so we care about ourselves and what we're doing day in and day out in our own KPIs. But if you wanna start working with other teams, I think the best way is like you said, look at the marketing calendar.
or look at upcoming events or whatever your marketing team is working on and then figure out how your day to day fits in with that and then give a suggestion or an idea for a webinar, an idea for an event and tell them that, listen, this is gonna help you hit your KPIs. Can we work together on this? Because it's gonna help me get better customers. Yeah, I know.
And I think it's not just like, another thing is like, it's not just giving an idea. It's like, it's also like, how can we make it happen together? Which is kind of like what you mentioned too. It's like, you know, it's yeah, we have this great idea of this webinar, so use that we can do and that's it. And that's, that's all I'm going to give you. Like that's all the information that I'm going to provide you. That doesn't make it happen. You have to be like, okay, all right, let's, let's work together. What's gonna, you know, what are we going to need to make it happen? Who are the, you know, the target audience is going to be for this.
How are we gonna reach out to them? Like if marketing handles the messaging, what sort of communication will we be doing? Work together, you you can work together on some of those things to make it happen because it's understand each other's part, but also kind of like help each other out into playing those parts. And I think that's where things happen. And I feel like that's where a lot of the times that there are so many great ideas and so many like organizations, but they don't.
tend to like, can't execute them well because they're just ideas and like, we lack the support that we need from different cross-functional teams to make it happen. And it's not, there's no pink finger pointing at anyone. It's just like, is that, know, part of your, like part of your role, part of your, you know, things that you should be doing kind of. So it's like really understanding that this is going to help overall KPIs, your KPIs, my KPIs.
Speaker 1 (54:32.744)
you know, and we're going to be able to retain our customers better or even, you know, get more prospects and leads and whatever that may be, which matters to both customer success and marketing. So if we can work together to make it happen, like that and it's, and there's, there's, there's endless, you know, ideas around what you can do. It's just like, okay, start small, pick one and kind of work towards it, pivot, and see what works and see what doesn't kind of.
Yeah, exactly. Give it a try. Give it a go. Like nothing hurts. Like you have to try things out. think marketing is basically A B testing or trial and error every single day. but like you just said, you have to looking ahead, like marketing, working with customer success is a very strong future. And also I think that you have to come with not just the idea, which there are tons of ideas out there, like you said, but what's the plan? Like if you have this great idea for a customer event,
what type of customers are you going to bring or where is it going to be? How are you logistic? Like just, just get the ball rolling. Ultimately, the sounds of it. Just don't just give the idea and say, it's marketing jobs now. Because at the end of the day, we are here all to serve our customers and marketing plays a role and CS plays a role, but we all play a role as a company to make customers successful. listen, Ashna, we could keep going on this for
ever and ever and ever, but I wanna wrap this up and move into our quick fire questions where I challenge each single one of my guests to try to answer these four questions in a sentence or less. Are you ready? Okay, my first question is if you could predict the future, what do you think customer success will focus on next year?
Yes, let's do it.
Speaker 1 (56:18.252)
wow. Yeah, a sentence already. I feel like with the increase of AI and automation and all of those, feel like there's just gonna be continuous evolvement of that and like how can we continue to leverage those information and kind of work towards our goals. I think that's probably what I foresee from a customer success standpoint. Customers are continuing to be at the center of
attention and center of everything. And that's definitely not one line, but still, that's what I'm kind of saying. It's like, it's gonna continue to evolve in the direction that it's already going, and this has been going in the past couple of years. But it's gonna give us a lot more insights into, I think it's just coming closer together as different teams and working together. And that's kind of what I see in the future.
I agree. think AI is going to be everyone's copilot. That's what I treat it at. It's not just there. It is a marketing copilot, a CSM copilot, everything copilot. So I love that you said that. Amazing. Next question is, which app or software do you use every day or every week? It can be on your phone or your laptop. It doesn't have to be CS related. So what's something you use every day?
I mean, honestly, like, cause I'm working all the time and Slack is probably what I use the most. And, but what I love about it, I do get excited when Slack sends some feature updates and whatnot, because there is always something to do. They do have a great walkthrough and I get so excited, like a little, little, you know, but that's, that's probably Slack. mean, there's so many other ones. I feel like I think it's coming on top of my mind, but it's like my,
Great water.
Speaker 1 (58:07.968)
Zach is probably, the other one is my calendar. I live in my calendar, which again, it's like in your browser, like in my phone, I have an app, but it's like, if it's not on my calendar, it's not happening kind of a thing. And a little personal touch, I'll also say it's like, I have gotten to the habit of sending even my husband calendar invites for certain things, just so that it's like, hey, it's happening.
I've got a great family calendar as well because everyone needs to know what's happening because if it's not in my calendar, it's not happening. Next question is, if you could change one thing about customer success, what would it be?
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1 (58:47.752)
I don't know. I feel like it's probably not the answer you expected, but I don't think, but I think based on the conversation that we've had and then how I've, you know, learned a lot about different, you know, different functions and different departments and things like that, different teams and now being in marketing, what I can, what I would like to change or maybe evolve in customer success, it's just their involvement into, you know,
other cross-functional teams and departments and working with them closely and closer together. And I feel like some organization probably does this greater than others, but I think it's, it's almost, it almost needs to be part of their KPIs and journeys to, be, you know, closely working together, with others. So I, I don't know that's the kind of answer you were looking for, but I think that's because other than that, nothing really comes to my mind of, you know, changing in customer success. It's just.
they'd be evolving how customer success functions and then bringing them closer together to go to market side of things.
mean, it's your interpretation of the question, so sounds good. Last question, who should be my next podcast guest? I think you can do this in a sentence.
yes, I can. who can I tell you? Erica, I think, I don't know, for some reason comes to my mind. Erica. Erica, you don't know. Yeah, she is amazing. I think that's the person that I feel like probably a lot of people that are probably on top of my mind, you probably already have had them.
Speaker 2 (01:00:12.95)
podcast. She was amazing.
Speaker 2 (01:00:23.446)
All good. Erica's amazing. She's been on the podcast. She's done a topic on how to step up to be a strategic customer success manager. She's amazing. She is an amazing CSM. Thank you so much, Ashna, for sharing all your tips, tricks, insights on how you've transitioned from customer success into marketing and how you currently work with marketing and CS in your role right now. I've loved it. I've had so many light bulb moments. I'm sure everyone listening has had...
tons to take away, but if they do have any follow-up questions or they want to get in touch or want to continue the conversation, what's the best way to get in touch with you?
LinkedIn is probably the best. know, reach out to me on LinkedIn, DM me and send me a request. I'm always pretty open about those and I love networking and whatnot. So we could grab a, you know, do a virtual coffee and, and chit chat away.
Amazing. Well, thank you so much, Ashton. Make sure to link your LinkedIn down below for my listeners and the show notes. Thank you. Thank you, Ben. I really appreciated your time.
Thank you so much, thank you for having me, Rolly.
Speaker 2 (01:01:27.672)
Thanks for tuning in to the Customer Success Pro Podcast. I hope you picked up something valuable to take back to your team. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world to me if you took just 10 seconds to leave a review on Apple or Spotify. It helps more CS pros like yourself discover the show. And creating new episodes takes a lot of work, so leaving a nice review keeps me motivated to keep creating. And don't forget to hit subscribe on Apple, Spotify,
YouTube or wherever you listen to podcast episodes. I drop a new episode every Wednesday packed with practical tips. And if you've got a topic you'd love for me to cover or want to be a guest on my show, send me a message. All the details are in the show notes. I'd love to hear from you. And hey, if this episode helped you share it with a fellow CSM or CS leader. Remember sharing is caring. Cheers to your CS journey and I'll catch you next week for our next episode.
