March 29, 2024 - Week in Review

Heather Wendt · March 29

March 29, 2024

These past couple of weeks have been full of conversations. Meeting new GGR members or LinkedIn connections, internal calls, customer calls. And while it impacts my calendar, I absolutely love them! The chance to learn more about the people in my GGR and LinkedIn community, hearing their wins and struggles while having a chance to collaborate is such an energy boost!

In my recent customer (Higher Logic Vanilaa) interactions, I am reminded about WHY we have these particular calls - to listen and understand their needs and then work to help them use our product to solve them. I follow @Bob London because this is his passion area. When those who are customer facing (especially those in CS) understand that these conversations are done well when they aren't focused on you but are focused on how you can help them, it changes the game.

I am ending this week feeling revitalized and eager to start working on some exciting ideas for GGR! I hope you are feeling empowered in your space, too…

🗨️ GGR CS Leadership Office Hours

The GGR Leadership Office Hours are a great way to connect with your peers through conversations about leading CS topics.

Wondering if it is worth it? Here is some feedback from our latest event:

These present a unique opportunity to bounce ideas off other professionals. The format is great, just enough of a start to get us in the right mindset, time for collaboration and close with key takeaways. Thank you for hosting these, I look forward to more!

Our 2024 schedule is now available here, and our next meetup is Thursday, April 4 and will led by Nisha Baxi from Gong.

Be sure to register!

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Office Hours Hosting Spots Available

Have a topic you would like to bring to your peers for discussion and collaboration? Our Leadership Office Hours are a great way to start the conversation, and the good news is, you are spending just a few minutes introducing it to kick off the conversation. Sound interesting? Take a moment to share your interest here.

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Live in the Bay Area? Get registered and join us!

✨ GGR Live is kicking off 2024 in San Francisco! We have a terrific panel that is going to come to talk about how CS Leaders can continue to strengthen their value to the organization in a variety of ways.

April 24 at Par3 in San Mateo is going to be a time of networking and collaborating! We hope to see you there!

**Not in the Bay Area? Let us know where you would like to see a GGR Live event this year!

Register for the April event

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💥 Higher Logic Super Forum 2024

Higher Logic's 14th annual Super Forum returns April 10-12, 2024 to National Harbor (near Washington DC), with two full days of sessions to help you discover the SPARK that connects the dots between community and your customers.

This event is not limited to Higher Logic customers, and will have sessions focused on using community to support 1:many programs, build brand advocates, and drive engagement, all through the power of reaching your customers with the information they need when they need it.

Learn more and register!

Best Practices (Conversations)

Check out some of the great conversations happening on GGR. Click the title to see the full conversation and share your insights!

NEW SERIES!

Self-Service vs Personalized Support

@Julie Fox brings a highly relevant question to the GGR audience this week. How do you maintain a balance between empowering customers to find solutions independently and providing the personalized support of a CSM? Do you have ideas about how you use these two programs in a way that supports both the customer and your team without minimizing the value of 1:1 touchpoints.

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What surveys or assessments are you using for your Customer Success team (CSMs)?

@Successful_lion brings some great questions to GGR about the best ways to evaluate the value customers receive from their CSM. They thoughtfully brought a number of areas that they would like to assess, and are asking for feedback and input such as:

Touchpoints
Individual vs Account
Survey Type
CSM Bonus tied to Survey

How are you measuring the value of your teams?

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Digital CS: What is your ratio of employee:customers? What do you have in place to support this?

@AnthonyEm @Justin Voellmann posted a great question about how to help teams embrace processes that allow better insight into churn risk that includes the ability to quickly see progress on plan implementation. How are your teams addressing this common issue?

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Org chart for 100 employees

@klewis is looking for some insights into organizational structure as a company grows, specifically the CS reporting chain. Have some thoughts or opinions? Bonus points if you can share an example!

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2nd Quarter Introductions

Our new quarter Introduce Yourself Thread has started! GGR has grown dramatically just in the 2 years I have been here (we have added 5,200 new members in that time!) and it can be difficult to know who else is in the community.

If you haven't taken time yet to hop on and share a bit about who you are (regardless of how long you have been here), click the link and learn about your peers and share a bit about yourself!

Content

📃Blog Post

Why Customer Success Should Stop Treating MAU as the Key Renewal Metric in B2B SaaS

Debra Wilson from BrainStorm shared some thoughts on why relying on a single metric such as MAU is not going to give you the information you need to understand your customer health. Walking through 5 areas that give a more clear picture of health, Debra shares some suggested metrics for each to help you grow your aresenal. You wouldn't have a lot of faith in a doctor who soley monitors temperature as the key indicator of health, and CSMs are no different.

What are some additional metrics you include in your customer health monitoring?

Read more here

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Customer Success Compensation Models

@Jeffrey Kushmerek shared a content piece that brings the value! There has been conversations both within GGR and outside in LinkedIn, etc. surrounding incentive-based models. This document helps you determine whether this is something that is relevant based on your teams' maturity and walks you through building a program that works.

Check it out here!

Community

Have a GGR story?

Has the GGR community inspired, helped, or impacted you? We would love to hear how! Share your story here.

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Now Launched! CS Leaders Group

Are you a CS Leader who has been missing the ability to connect directly with other leaders? GGR hears you and wants to help. In this new group, members are vetted before being allowed to join, ensuring that you 1) know that you are talking directly to peers, and 2) have conversations that are not part of the entire GGR membership (your conversations are private!)

If this is something that you would benefit from, take a moment to fill out a quick form so we can review your request and get you in this private area within GGR! Access the form here.