Latest / Unstuck Pod / Customer Success Has Superpowers (Shareth Ben and Jamie Schneiderman)
Transcript
- Jamie Schneiderman: Hi everyone and welcome to the Unstuck Pod. excited today to have Sharth Ben here with us. I'm gonna pass it over to him and let him share a little bit more about his background, his journey to get here, and what here is and what he's doing right now. So Sharth, welcome. SHareth: Yeah. First up, Jamie, thank you for having me on the podcast. Yeah, hello everybody. My name is Shareth Ben and currently I'm the chief customer officer at a company called Abdiga. We provide GRC automation services for mid-market companies. I've been doing cybersecurity for the last twenty years, always been customer facing, and most of my experience comes from the convergence of you know, scaling startups in customer success in cybersecurity. And so when you put all these three things together, what I do is I turn customer success into a revenue and a retention engine. and what that really means is putting together the infrastructure, which is the people, process, the technology, the tooling. In order to build a system that can scale as a company goes through the various stages of hypergrowth. How about that? Jamie Schneiderman: That's pretty good. that was good. so so so let me ask a question. So how does it differ? So so I want to know, so you so you've been working in these in these spaces, and let's say so two things that stand out to me more than anything SHareth: Yeah. Jamie Schneiderman: else. Customer success. So the world of customer success has changed, right? Like a fair bit over the last little while. for Because of technology, because of just expectations, SHareth: That's right. Jamie Schneiderman: right? But all and at the same time, so is cybersecurity. Cybersecurity, SHareth: Yeah. Jamie Schneiderman: massive change. So help me understand where those two come together, the complexity of trying to manage around an area that is in constant change, right? Like constant change, especially like I think on the cybersecurity side, but I I think both. SHareth: Yeah, it's a good question, Jamie. you're right about that. I think cybersecurity has been evolving and with AI it's evolving even much faster. the last time I checked there are over eight thousand vendors. I'm sure that count is going up pretty significantly. And and so yeah, that's definitely at a growing at a rapid pace. the market's growing, the problems are compounding, the needs are still there. However, the buyers can be a bit confused with where to go make the next best investment. I would say customer success has evolved quite a bit in the last ten years and it's one or two clicks away from cyber in terms of the pace in which it's unraveling. that's because if you think about the number of SaaS companies that have come into existence, once they let's say cross the a million mark and recording revenue, they need a an established a foundational customer success unit that can basically help not only retain customers but also shape the product roadmap and also have them expand. So when you kind of take those factors in, which is SAS B2B SaaS companies scaling up and the need for getting more organized and having more structure, there's a there's an absolute need for a team and tools to basically come together to put that, you know, the scalable process in place. Jamie Schneiderman: So go on. Sorry, go on. Go on. I don't want to be hurt. SHareth: Yeah, no, I would say, you know, I spend a lot of time the convergence of cyber and customer success. And I feel like, you know, cybersecurity is complex. It's high stakes environment. There are a lot of competition out there. You really have to kind of know how to, you know, integrate with the various ecosystem. I think customer success in is is also a flavor of that because in customer success tooling you have to integrate with the CRMs, you have to integrate with product analytic tools. And so on. So the integration piece is definitely there, but not at the order of magnitude that cybersecurity tools do so. Jamie Schneiderman: So so couple things. So I I wanna tackle both because I really want to you're talking okay, so so customer success, like I think about cybersecurity and what it means and and sort of the where it sits on the digital frontier, right? Like it's it's really it's really on the front end because it's changing so rapidly. It's so important and yet It's you know, it's under constant attack, no pun intended. Like it really it really is, obviously. How do you train a customer success team and and equip them when that's what they're like with what they're dealing with is changing on a really on a SHareth: Yeah. Jamie Schneiderman: daily basis? SHareth: Excellent, excellent question. So it's hard to find a CSM who can do all of the above, which is the relationship, you know, keeping in touch with the technical you know, changes that are evolving, you know, as well as having a commercial mindset. Because end of the day, you know, you want them to not just help deploy. and use the product but also expand, it's very hard. You don't find too many CSMs and in in my experience I've had a handful of them and I and I hold on to them in the best way possible. but you know I would say it it comes from a place of the of mindset and attitude which is if they're curious And if they are passionate about like delivering outcomes for the customers, and some of them are, right? Because they get energized when they get somebody on the other side, the customer, promoted or give or deliver results. And that fuels them to do better, which means they're going to go to any extent, you know, in an autonomous way to learn and keep pace with the changes. And in today's environment, I think that is absolutely essential. Because AI is unraveling at a rapid pace. Cybersecurity challenges are also unraveling. And customer success, like you pointed out, has also been changing, you know, quite a bit. We're moving away from a a seat-based model to a consumption model because customers are like no longer interested in just buying a software, they are interested in getting the outcome for the reason they buy the software. So there's a lot of demand on the customer success teams to deliver. and so if you see these all these changes kind of Coming together, one has to be very open to learning new things and evolving and adapting. Adapting. I think that's the right word. Jamie Schneiderman: Yeah. Okay. So and speaking of adapting, so you mentioned AI. Everyone loves to talk about it. there are immense benefits, drawbacks. There's been a t endless, countless discussions about what it is today and what it'll be in the future. I want to talk about it in the context of the two most fa of the two places that you actually operate, right? Which are customer success, which You know, clearly there are AI agents, there are you know, there are many times I've spoken to AI. you don't always know up front anymore. so I'm curious about one let's start here. Where where does AI play in first on the customer success side? How how do how do you think about it? How do you work it into what you do? SHareth: Yeah, I'm sure you're very familiar with the productivity gains that customer success has been, you know, utilizing or obtaining as a result of using AI, simple things like note taking, follow ups, email composition. I think we're definitely past those stages. I think now the CSMs that who are, you know, are really pushing the envelope, I know are building their own skills and taking matters in their own hands. So instead of waiting for a support team to fix or debug an issue. Or instead of waiting for the product team to pro come up with a particular feature, they're using cloud and using cloud skills to come up with solutions in the field. And that way they can get to the outcomes faster. They can they can get to the get through the problems, you know, faster in their own way. as opposed to waiting for those teams. So I think that I see is an essential. It's going to become more and more essential as the CSMs or customer success evolves is to do more field engineering work, given that the the customers that they're serving are also can be complex. And that's where the concept of like forward deployment engineers also comes in, because you want to be able to Embed yourself into the customer environment, into their workflows. And so that way you can deliver the outcomes in a much faster manner. Jamie Schneiderman: So, okay, so I got it. And I and I think that for a lot of folks, the idea of using AI and customer success is is less daunting. And you've like you've highlighted, there's a lot of areas where it's helped, and I think it will continue to help. Let's talk about it on the other side, right? Which is on the cybersecurity side. So there are cyber security solutions that are obviously AI oriented. I'm actually curious about the flip side, which is what happens when things go wrong and it's AI and it's driving cybersecurity. And I'm and I want to know what that looks like for you because the pace of change has to be massive there. And also how do you handle that? And like what does that look like? SHareth: Yeah. Well I'm I'm still learning in this process, but I can tell you upon speaking with several dozen CISOs and practitioners, it it comes down to having AI governance, which is having the guardrails to make sure that that things are enforced not just in the policy level but also at runtime. When I say runtime specifically talking about what data AI agents can access, what permissions they have, what extent they can go, you know, having visibility into that, having a human in the loop control that, having those those brakes, you know, since you're driving so fast is very essential. And I see the smart CISOs, that's what they're doing, is is they're very good at communicating to their board as well as their peers on why they need to make the necessary investments in certain areas because that's what's gonna give them the risk mitigation comfort. I mean you can never be hundred percent sure, but it's definitely doing the basics to to get to a good place and keeping that involved. Jamie Schneiderman: Yeah, I know and and and I appreciate I I I'm curious, like, 'cause you talk about governance, right? And govern look, a governance is always good if it's built in naturally. There's always this sort of conflict, natural kind of push and pull that happens between speed and governance and structure and kind of say you you know, you say CISO and I think CISO on one end and I think you know hyper growth start up on the other and you know, like how do those two work together? SHareth: I think it's a bit of a myth, Jamie, and and we to break that that myth. It doesn't have to be that way, right? Jamie Schneiderman: Okay. SHareth: you know, there's a slang saying that, you know, you need to slow down to speed up. I'm sure it's a bit of a cliche saying now, but I think it's very applicable to to AI. I've talked to practitioners in very large enterprises and they said when they initially introduced AI, people were not very happy because it was too constrained. This happens to be a regulated environment. But once they put a working, cross-functional working group, and the working group basically untangled some of these hindrances and they're kind of smoothen things out, they they listened to the business, at the same time put the necessary guardrails. then people were much happier. And as a matter of fact, that has actually accelerated the change of of adoption in AI. So, you know, I think we need to move away from the fact that, hey, you know, security is easier to slow down the business. It doesn't have to be that way. I mean, if you have the right cross-functional collaboration with the various functional leaders, you can actually, you know, put the right guardrails in place that can actually speed up. or accelerate the rate of change. So I've seen companies do that. and I think it's totally possible. It just requires a good interlock between, you know, the responsible parties in the company. Jamie Schneiderman: Okay. No, no. And that's good. And that's fair. that's a fair I I love you sort of saying I don't think that's actually the case, and I I think that's a misnomer, and that's not true. And I I I that's fair. so let me let me ask you. So in the context, you you've been doing what you've been doing for a while, you you have this really interesting set of experiences, like you said, around be especially in between the the customer success and cybersecurity. If you look back over the last few years and things that you've done, are there things you wish you'd done differently that would have been that would have moved faster, would have been done better? Like I'm just curious, like what what are the what are the big aha's that are transforming the way you maybe do what you're doing going forward and making SHareth: Yeah. Jamie Schneiderman: you smarter faster? SHareth: I've got no regrets, Jamie. yeah. Jamie Schneiderman: wow. You're perfect. SHareth: Well take that with a grain of salt. obviously things Jamie Schneiderman: I know. I mean SHareth: we can do better, no doubt about that. see in the end of the day, it's all about the product. Okay. Customer success is there to help, you know, make sure that we deliver the last the mile when it comes to making Jamie Schneiderman: Mm-hmm. SHareth: sure customers are receiving the value. So it is about the product. And a lot of times Product teams are constrained because they're getting pulled in so many different directions. you know, one chasing the market versus satisfying existing customers. So for me, I think just having a better presence in the seat of the table to influence the product roadmap and outcomes is something I'm striving to do better and better every every company I go to. I have had some good success. Someone also had some not such good success. But I've learned from those failures. And and I strive to do that part the best way possible because if you can if you can do a good job there, I feel like most of the challenges the companies face, both internally as well as externally, can be can be solved or at least can be improved. but when when product influence or when the product roadmap is is less influenced by existing customer needs, then that has a compounding effect on how it can affect customer SAT and overall in eventually affect the retention numbers as well as the growth numbers. Jamie Schneiderman: Of course. No, no, of course. and I think all that makes sense. What do you think? what do you think? you know, I thought it was earlier you you mentioned the idea of your CSMs like digging into Claude and and coming up with you know, SHareth: Skills. Jamie Schneiderman: like solutions, right? So the so the idea of solutions for in field, when when you know k can't change product all the time, can't go back and do this all the time, but what could we do? I thought that was fascinating and and kind of like a a very sort of empowering way of doing I always always heard about the idea of how do you empower CSMs more. and it feels like Claude can allow that. Well as you look forward, as you kind of see what the next twelve, twenty-four, thirty-six months of on on the customer success side and some of the technological capabilities and where it's going. Where where do you where do you think it's going? Where do you think customer success can what do you think it can do? Where do you think it can go? SHareth: Yeah, excellent, excellent question. I would say like several years ago or before the use of AI, like we were if you had a very complex product, which means there was a high dependency on support and R and D, you had a lot of CSMs twiddling their thumb or just carrying water kinda helpless and you would have you know, I'm sure there are enough examples out there. But I think that can be completely changed with with the access to AI. You don't have to be waiting in line. You don't have to be this person just carrying water. you can take matter in your own hands and you can you have the necessary tools to solve for it. Maybe not a hundred percent, but you know, at least eighty percent. Get them closer to the solutions and be an ally to the product team. I think that's where I see this going. I see some level of horizontal compression that is happening between CS and RD. When I say RD, you know, just just just product engineering, as well as to some extent, you know, support. because for example, CSMs can obtain limited access to how the code functions and so they can actually debug the a problem, you know, themselves and suggest you know, solutions to to the R and D organization. So there's a lot of time that gets wasted in level one, level two, and or needed, which is not really, you know, filled by the existing support team. So now CSMs can take that, you know, take that role and then basically advance the solution to the desired outcome, which wasn't possible before. Jamie Schneiderman: That's amazing. Like when you say that to me, that's incredible because I think about it was always easy to see where there were problems, all right, or it's obvious when there were when a problem shows up, it's a lot harder to say, what should we do about this, or have you looked at this, or maybe can you look at that, right? So that you sh like you said, compress the time and and effort there. Okay. if you're going to give advice to others who are Earlier in their career, either either they're thinking about going into on the CSM side, like the customer success side, or they or leadership. What given everything that's going on and and your past experience looking at this, what would you what would you suggest to folks? SHareth: Yeah, I see an opportunity for CSMs to excel in their roles when they become domain experts. So pick a particular domain, which is the which is the domain in which your customer is operating and go as deep as possible in the domain, understand the business of the customers so then when you understand their business you can speak their language then the remaining stuff which is the AI tooling and stuff which can be learned much faster on the fly, you can when you start to mesh those two things together, I think you have some superpowers. And you can really delight, you know, customers the way in which it wasn't really possible or wasn't was kind of rare in the past. Jamie Schneiderman: I love the that way of thinking. right? The Go deep, learn it, and then like you said, have superpowers. That's a that's a awesome line, and an awesome way to think about it. How can so I'm sure there's lots of folks who listen who are following this who are like, I I wanna chat with him. How how do they find you? SHareth: Yeah, they can find me on LinkedIn easily. I think that's the best way to to get in touch. but yeah, I'm happy to provide you with my email and you can attach it to the call notes. we can go multiple ways. Jamie Schneiderman: Yeah. Yeah, no, no. And we and we put we'll put links in the description and there'll be lots of other interesting or any other ways that we can, you know, sort of connect you. That would be that would be helpful. I think that would be great. So anything else you wanna add? Anything else that you've you you wanna share? SHareth: Well, I feel like that that's a really good question. there's there's a lot going on today and I feel like it's important as much as to to dive in is to also dive out and and catch some breath and get in nature and get some inspiration. 'Cause e every week is changing. Yeah. Jamie Schneiderman: Touch grass. Right, touch grass. I no, that's a sorry, that's that's a really great a really great perspective and it's the counter perspective that a lot of folks probably don't have. So does that mean you get a chance to do that? Do you actually force yourself to do that while you're a like SHareth: Absolutely. Yeah. I've always lived in a place where there's nature or water around so I can, you know, if I need to step away and take a break even during the middle of the day, I do that. that is definitely a big necessity for me. So yeah, I I try to do that and I try to encourage other people to do the same thing. I think it's super essential to have as much fun, as much your, you know, you're giving into, you know, whatever mission you're on. Jamie Schneiderman: Amazing. I love it. Listen, thank you so much for your time. This is great. really appreciate it. Really great insights. and some things that like I haven't heard before that I really appreciate. so thank you and thank you to everybody who's watching and listening. and until next time, thanks. SHareth: Thanks, Jamie.