How a Customer Success org of 240 strong delivers an impactful and consistent experience for their customers

Ziv Peled

|

Chief Customer Officer

of

AppsFlyer
EP
168
Ziv Peled
Ziv Peled

Episode Summary

Today on the show we have Ziv Peled, Chief Customer Officer of AppsFlyer.

In this episode, Ziv shared his experience trying to gain balance between in-office and remote work post-covid for his team and the functions of their Customer Success Operations team that makes it all happen that supports over 240 CS team members across the world.

We then discussed the sophisticated custom data and analytics setup AppsFlyer have between Salesforce and Looker for the Customer Success team and we finished off by discussing the learnings from aligning Customer Success compensation with engagement metrics.

Mentioned Resources

Highlights

Time

Balancing Hybrid and Remote work at Scale 00:00:00
The functions of the Customer Success Ops team that supports a CS team of over 240 team members 00:00:00
The sophisticated custom data and analytics setup AppsFlyer have between Salesforce and Looker 00:00:00
Learnings from aligning CS compensation with engagement metrics 00:00:00

Transcription

[00:01:31] Andrew Michael: hey Ziv welcome to the show. 

[00:01:32] Ziv Peled: Thank you for having. 

[00:01:35] Andrew Michael: It's great to have you for the listeners. Ziv is a friend of the show who previously joined us on episode 50 and 100 and is with us today to share the progression and transformation that AppsFlyer has gone through over the last year.

He is the chief customer officer at AppsFlyer the global leader in mobile attribution and marketing. And this has been an epic slide for over eight years now and started out as a senior customer success manager and has grown up the ranks to now leading the entire [00:02:00] customer team. And this time has experienced some explosive growth.

And since last speaking, fly's actually seen some explosive growth in employees from. 1002, 1,500 and 315. Those coming from the client services team of which 240 on the customer success team. So if you're interested in hearing about what it means to really scale this customer success team, uh, at this scale and size, like this is going to be one of those episodes to listen into.

So my first question for you is a very generic and general one, but what's news of what's been going on over the last. 

[00:02:31] Ziv Peled: Uh, so many things. Um, I think, you know, we are still coping with the new normal, you know, the new normal is new versions every few months. Uh, and, uh, I think the latest new normal is, is for us.

It's how to get back to the office and what is the right number of days for a CSM, eh, and how should we structure the sitting in the office? And, you know, [00:03:00] we have different offices have different offices in different countries work or different, eh, um, but it's also, you know, I'll, I'll, uh, to work on a daily basis.

I, we are, uh, we are going to be. Efficient and effective. And, and, and in that, and we can speak about it later in details. It's I think it's the evolution of the playbook, the evolution of the processes, or I like to summarize that with the title of methodology. So under methodology, I put the goals, I put, uh, the processes and I put tools.

Uh, I think that, uh, and, and, and, and if you look at the last few years and we spoke about it also in the previous episodes, and it, again, continues to evolve, it's how we develop it. Eh, some of our more playbooks and processes that are very detailed, some are. They tell them we let the [00:04:00] CSMs or the regions or the S or the busy units decide, uh, how it's going to look like in that region.

Eh, and I think that this is definitely part of the success because, you know, as I see the journey in the last eight and a half weeks, Um, the CSM, uh, work is become, um, very complex, super hard to do. They're the ones, the CSMs that are getting it and getting to that level, they are becoming a, nothing, nothing less than a super, super.

[00:04:37] Andrew Michael: Yeah. Okay. So a lot of change then I like the fact that you said it like the new norm. Uh, it feels like we're almost in like the verge of a completely new norm as well. Again, so it feels like things are going to be changing quite rapidly over the next few months as well. But. Talking a little bit about the first thing you mentioned people coming back to the office now finding like a good balance between that and what's [00:05:00] right for CSMs.

Uh, just give us a quick overview, like AppsFlyer are, you're a, like a hybrid model or you're like generally a full office, um, mode. Like what is the plan there now? Post COVID. 

[00:05:11] Ziv Peled: Yeah. So for us balance is the, it's the name of, uh, of getting back to the office? It's I bred, uh, we're looking, uh, first of all, it's a training for the new normal, uh, and a big part of it, uh, of, of balances.

Uh, we want to, for, for people to have the freedom, to decide what they want to do and say, uh, different between some departments in some regions. But overall, we are looking for two days in the office, three days a week. And big part of that training is out to be efficient in the two days. And in the three days, what should I do when I'm in the office?

Um, the two days are for more team meetings, one-on-ones socializing. Eh, and the three days [00:06:00] are more of how you optimize the things that you can do it own much better than office. Um, and for CSMs, by the way, specifically, I say that two days for me, it's the maximum, because in the end it doesn't matter how big the office with.

We will never have enough, uh, meeting rooms and areas for the CSMs to do customer calls. So for me, you know, we felt tickets, so not on a weekly basis, but on a, on a, maybe two weeks basis. I want to see them one. Two days in the office in one week, one day in the office. Cause I think that in the end, the more, the majority of the work of the CSM is engaging with the customer.

And as I told you before, even, uh, CSMs, um, you know, even before COVID long, long before COVID we were zoom customers. And a lot of, most of our interaction with customers or over. Yeah, maybe it will [00:07:00] keep, it will 

[00:07:02] Andrew Michael: say that. Yeah. Uh, so, um, you basically then just going through different departments and trying to understand, okay, what is the level of interaction we need with a team where there's face-to-face meetings and you get that social aspect and what is really like, if you want to call them maybe focused time and customer success angle, it's really about, uh, they're on calls with customers.

So it's more convenience, better to be in an environment that they control. Uh, or if it's other work, you're just looking in tech and saying, okay, what is that level of interaction needed? A nice. You have quite a few different offices there now around obviously I think a large part of the org is based out of Israel, but, uh, I think last time we spoke as well.

You mentioned you had offices in parts of south America and in other 

[00:07:43] Ziv Peled: regions. So we have over 20 offices, we just opened, eh, Indonesia and France. Eh, in Dubai. Um, it's um, I don't remember the exact number. It said either 22 or 23 offices. Uh, we [00:08:00] have, uh, the, some of the bigger ones, you know, San Francisco, London.

Israel, Bangkok and China, uh, from, by the way we speak COVID wise. So China office that was open for a long time when we had the third wave, China office is now fully closed entire countries in lockdown. Eh, very hard. Uh, in order to go to the office, you need to get tested at home and they ask the government to go to the office.

Um, I think th this is also part of the new normal of the majority of the offices are open. People are even traveling and then, but you have some offices that are not in Narcos. These people interact with each other in order to continue working together towards. The company goals. I think that's, that's also part of the new norm.

I remember when India and Brazil was closed and everyone were open now most [00:09:00] open China is closed. I think the, the, uh, this, uh, eh, we learn how to work remotely again differently. Yeah. And, and, you know, if you take one, eh, another situation, uh, which, you know, I don't know if you remember, but, uh, I spoke about that.

I believe we reacted very fast to COVID. So we closed the office in two weeks and then we decided to do many different measurement measures. Eh, like changing the budget from a food steeper in the office to their own. Eh, we, we care about employees a lot and we invested heavily in that. And now with what happens in the Ukrainian, eh, the war in the Ukraine, we did, uh, as much as we, we could very, very fast.

We have both people in Moscow and in Kiev. And we, we of course treated both [00:10:00] sides because people in Moscow are also in some kind of, uh, not, not the optimal situation. Most of them actually went out of Russia and we accommodate that. And because of also the business. Eh, shifted a bit. Then we shifted the, also some of the people.

So people that went out of Ukraine and, uh, could well could go to Germany or, or. We shifted them to a different region, eh, to support them as, as much as possible. Other people still work on the, eh, eh, the, uh, region, eh, and we of course support them in combination. 

[00:10:47] Andrew Michael: So, I mean, it sounds to me as obviously, like you must have a pretty sizable ops team as well, to be able to manage all of these different locations.

Um, how much of that is managed by like the general ops team versus I [00:11:00] can ops function within customer success or plan services. Do you have a specific ops function, uh, to manage these processes and make sure that essentially your customer success team is working effectively across the regions and the market shop?

[00:11:13] Ziv Peled: Yeah, it's a big part of customer success and customer support success at AppsFlyer is due to our CS ops, eh, with dedicated CS ops, which I invested heavily in, eh, I just presented last week to the board. And when I presented my poodle. The first slide in the police is CS ops, eh, established, eh, four and a half years ago.

If I would, if I was able to, I would go back in a, it would establish that in 2015 and not in 2018, eh, and today that ops team alone is 18 people. [00:12:00] So just think about like, budgetwise, it's almost $2 million before tools to invest in a team. But in the end, as I said poorly, it is eh, extreme, poorly in everything that we, we are doing.

Uh, and by the way, my, my leader for four and a half years that built this organization from scratch, he's now moving there to work under the COO to be. The next level of the biz ops of the company after the success of building CS ops and, um, hiring a replacement. Nice. 

[00:12:39] Andrew Michael: What is that term? You said poorly?

Cause I think that's the first time. 

[00:12:43] Ziv Peled: Yeah.

[00:12:46] Andrew Michael: First time I'm hearing it. That's 

[00:12:48] Ziv Peled: okay. So I it's it's it's, it's funny that we don't have, eh, the ability to share visually or in another Divinci inverted the poorly. So when you want to. 

[00:12:59] Andrew Michael: [00:13:00] Okay. Yeah. The police system. Yeah. Okay. So I thought it was something, a specific KPI that I was missing and I was like, we get so many different, 

[00:13:08] Ziv Peled: nothing.

It's just like if you visit our office in Israel, eh, just in our porch next to the CEO office, we have three police and you can actually see that when you have the three police on the third one, you can lift 100 kilos with one. 

[00:13:25] Andrew Michael: Oh, yeah, well, uh, that's pretty cool to have at the office. So this is sort of, uh, apps, flyers, internal comms, and how you show the different level levers that you're pulling, uh, to drive growth or, yeah.

And, 

[00:13:37] Ziv Peled: and, and if you think about it commercially, or if you think about it, like in a PNL. You know, investing one daughter in CS ops, you want to see how much of outcome it provides. It can be in revenue. It can be in, um, Eh, savings could mean different things can be in efficiency in time. [00:14:00] 

[00:14:00] Andrew Michael: Cool. I want to dive into that a little bit more, but the other thing as well is interesting.

So your CS ops team then is almost 10% of your total CSMs team. If you're 240 and you have 18, um, 

[00:14:11] Ziv Peled: my rule is 5% to 7%. 

[00:14:15] Andrew Michael: What is the functions then of the team? So what are they really like trying to, uh, what is their main goals and purpose? 

[00:14:24] Ziv Peled: So it's divided to three parts. So we have one part is enablement and tools, and they also work with our L and D team, the internal learning and development team to make sure we continuously develop the training for customer success and customer support, eh, both onboarding and ongoing for the.

Uh, which we have lots of training all the time, uh, as we release new products, new processes. Uh, so we, we want to keep, uh, our [00:15:00] employees trained, uh, Enablement also in tools. Uh, there, they are looking all the time at the different tools that we need. Eh, we are, uh, in the last one, one and a half years where integrating, for example, if thereafter as a customer portal within our product, uh, it's uh, It's a very complex process of on one side, we need to integrate it with our, uh, a engineering on one side, but another side we need to, to define it and then to test it and then to, to start with, eh, eh, evolve it per region or sub-region et cetera.

So it's a very tough product, but, uh, that's that's one, one example, the enablement team. Eh, building some of the processes, not, not, not all the process, but some of the processes are managed this process, this the enablement team, we have an analytics team that [00:16:00] starts from, so you have a few analysts, some are in Israel, in the main office.

Some are. In the regions, supporting the regions. There are the analyst, the main analyst of the region, and they work, uh, with the VP or the directors directly and then serve them. Eh, I always like to describe it as the analysts, they can do ad hoc analysis. And then most of these other candidates later on developed to be a dashboard, it can be a doc or a specific dashboard for.

It can be, but usually these dashboards, R B R D are developing to become a generic global ones either for my level or the meet, meet the leadership level or individual contributors. Uh, if you look at our main Looker page, Uh, the main board for customer success. For [00:17:00] example, you'll see that they have around, uh, 18 main dashboards.

The one main one is the good morning dashboard. Uh, it's actually tapped, eh, probably like 10 dashboards in a, in a tub view that in the end, uh, show the CSM everything that they need a team leader by the way is a good morning dashboard for the team. Cm the customer engagement manager for the long tail has a good morning dashboard for the CGM.

And now we are building my team builds the good morning dashboard for the product. 

[00:17:36] Andrew Michael: Okay, well, uh, so this ops team, then it's got quite a few different functions and you can really see 

[00:17:43] Ziv Peled: and does a third function. I think that the not forget the first function very, very important. There are pretty much the customer success ops product manager.

They, they define. And push with our [00:18:00] eh, engineering team on the BI side, um, processes mainly around Salesforce, not only, but the majority of these processes are, uh, our products in Salesforce. And then they push these processes to the entire team and they also, uh, push it to a continuous all the time to, to make sure that these processes.

[00:18:26] Andrew Michael: Yeah. Okay. Uh, because yeah, it definitely sounds like you can see the amount of work that must be going into this ops team as well. Then I think just even you mentioned the learning and development, and I can understand like a company, like AppsFlyer where the rate of change and the number of features being released and the training that needs to be on, not only to news new CSMs philosopher to existing.

Just that alone feels like a lot of work, uh, for a little team to get going and to be able to make sure everyone's on the same page. Cause I think there's obviously challenges there and there's even greater challenge, like thinking about the different [00:19:00] environments that you work within the markets, the countries now between remote and so forth.

Um, It sounds like you've got a pretty robust analytics stack as well for our customer success team. Um, and just to recap what you mentioned as well, like that was all specifically focused for customer success metrics. Yeah. Um, and you have the analysts in different regions and then, uh, in some of the big offices, uh, for the specific teams as well, 

[00:19:30] Ziv Peled: Cool.

I think, you know, to add to that, I think that too, for the success, for this platform in the end, I think we've built a product it's built mainly on Salesforce and Looker. Um, so because I was VP product, uh, 2018 until 2020. And I hired also big data analysts to work with the product side. And that year was also the first year we started using [00:20:00] Looker.

After we built the infrastructure of Luker in Appstar, then that team also built a lot of value, uh, on the. Measurement. So now when CS ops are working and building dashboards, if you think about the data points that they have. So if everything that is commercial, everything, finance, all this, all the invoices, everything they have, and anything else is available lives in Salesforce, they have all the usage.

Analytics that's comes from the product. We call it the product analytics and they, on top of that, they've all the engagement, analytics, emails, meetings. And specifically on that, we enrich that data even with more manual data, that would be. We, we push our CSMs to, eh, even detailed even more. When I have a meeting with an important customer, I can say a few.

I can write a few [00:21:00] words later on in Salesforce can do that in troops. I can do that in, in different, uh, tools, but in the end I enriched the data in sales. And it can be a regular meeting, can be an EBR and there, by the way, in that same process, you get, you'll get the message after the meeting in troops, in slack, and it gives you also the opportunity to start a relation.

Which is an object in Salesforce or to open a red flag, which is an object in Salesforce or a CSQ request, customer success qualified lead that later on in terms of opportunity, which is in Salesforce and. Uh, actually trying to say, or is that what we actually developed here in the last two and a half years?

Is that a lot of the things that in some other organization lives in either the brain of the CSM or in a spreadsheet or an email or whatever. [00:22:00] We standardize it to be a custom object in Salesforce. And then when a CSM is getting promoted, moving or, or leaving the company, uh, the end over between CSMs become, become, become much, much, much simpler.

Is most of the data that I need to know lives in Salesforce even think about. I'm a CSM of the top customer and I developed eight relationships, even 60 days after the CSM left, uh, the relationships, these eight relationships. And now I need to establish. I have an a in that same object, I have the previous relationship.

The past relationships is a comparison that I know that these are the eight people that I need to develop the relationship with. I'm not, eh, I'm not looking at the contact object. That is 180 people that are. Yeah. 

[00:22:56] Andrew Michael: So just to understand as well, like I think a lot of companies today would [00:23:00] typically use a customer success specific tool like Gainsight or one of those from my understanding, what you're saying as well is that you've really leveraged Looker and Salesforce to be lucky Gainsight.

So essentially having everything within, uh, Salesforce and then building in custom objects to make sure if they're new fields that aren't available. 

[00:23:21] Ziv Peled: Correct. I think, I think that the most important thing here is that when you, you are getting to be a complex organization, a hyper growth, you grow very fast.

I think that. And maybe ear, I can say the failure of this customer success platform is, is that they are trying to build something to generic that will work for everyone. And I think that in, in, in that, even if you, you know, you have a JavaScript that tries to bring the product analytics and you have, it's, it's really, really hard to bring even one that the set of the.

Eh, generically and, you know, the, the Mixpanels that [00:24:00] try to do that side, like, I don't think that one company can be the best mixed panel on one side and the best, eh, engagement analytics on another side and the best commercial analytics on any, on another side. And here actually the success was to build it proprietor to our needs.

And I think that, you know, I wouldn't, eh, suggest it to every company, but I think that after you see the first hyper growth, eh, You you're definitely, it's a must to start thinking. Yeah. Think, think to think about, and then for sure you need two, three analysts and start your CS ops team. But I think that, you know, when you see that, uh, this autistic continuous, you, you need to build some kind of that platform in the end.

You know, like this is what we've built around CS, but as 600 people. Eh, plus minus on the business side, it works with Looker. No, uh, I built, [00:25:00] eh, one of the businesses that I've built last year was the, the account cockpit. It's a dashboard, no tubs, just one dashboard that shows you everything that we know about the.

Everything. Eh, you can see there, the things that they use, that they pigs, that you don't use, the better features that they are. They're using trials, uh, the opportunities, uh, for the entire life, the CSMs that managed this customer for the last seven years, even the cloud compute costs, uh, we see there and in India, this is the number one.

Eh, dashboard at these currently used by the sales people. I built it for myself for some kind of another process. And now every sales person before a quote found, uh, that this dashboard, uh, they just need to spend three minutes before a call, uh, on that this one, they know everything. 

[00:25:57] Andrew Michael: Yeah. [00:26:00] Does look or have any specific integration more with Salesforce since the post acquisition?

Like, does it embed itself better within Salesforce or is it just two separate systems that ex you know, you're either accessing Looker for the data side or then, uh, Salesforce more for like the individual user side, because it sounds like you've got it. 

[00:26:19] Ziv Peled: Yeah.

[00:26:23] Andrew Michael: okay. 

[00:26:24] Ziv Peled: Um, and, and the answer is no and no, and no Looker. It does not integrate well with Salesforce. Tableau doesn't integrate well with Salesforce. Salesforce bought slack a year and something ago, maybe two years ago. Now they bought. You enrich the integration between slack and Salesforce, which are both their companies, their, their tools.

[00:26:50] Andrew Michael: Yeah. All right. Uh, cause I, I think definitely I think from your side, uh, I see the huge value in having a powerful setup and Looker, and I agree as well, like [00:27:00] tools like Mixpanel or these individual tools, they only. Use for so far. And then eventually you're going to have questions come up that people can't answer with the standardized reports, the heaven.

And like you say, you can't have a best in class, all around for the different functions that some of these tools tries to serve. Uh, but yeah, I also do agree with you that it's probably not for every company and it depends on the stage and where you want to spend your time. Cause I could imagine this being quite a costly initiative to set up it almost becomes its product on its own, uh, living and breathing and needs to be obtained and maintained and things like.

[00:27:32] Ziv Peled: Yeah, I'll give you another great example of, you know, when these data points marry. And then if you think about like, uh, you won't find any tool that does that. So, you know, we are building relationships and then we mapped those relationships, one to one human to human in Salesforce, custom object, but then we wanted to, eh, in the product in Looker, we wanted to also provide the CSM the ability to find the relationship.

Potentially [00:28:00] relationships, they did. They didn't established yet. So what we, we, we showed them there. We look at three main data points. We look at the decision factor. How important that person will be in a, in a future decision, in an opportunity. And we look at previous opportunities, previous feature non-premium opportunities, and if they are the account owner, and the second at the point we are looking at is the usage.

And they're not only that we are looking at that and give them a percentage from zero to 100, we look at. What features they're using and also in the absolute amounts of times that they're using it in 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. So to know if that's like a very, a highly, uh, user, highly effective user. And then the last point we look at the engagements and there we look at the very interesting points, number of emails, number of tickets that this user of.

And [00:29:00] the last C-SAT. If the answer to seaside C-SAT NPS, we want to see there's just a 10 person. It also, eh, pushes the weight there from the zero to 100%. And in the end you get the calculated, weighted usage, engagement, and decision the factor. And then you see as a CSM, you see that, oh, you have potential now to build a relationship with these top 40 contacts and you get the higher ones.

Uh, in the top. And the only thing that you need to do is click and open up. And I think, you know, if you think about like in, against side to tango Mixpanel, I don't think there's a platform that I think there's a few platforms maybe developing that today. Yeah. 

[00:29:45] Andrew Michael: I'd say in Mixpanel's defense, they've come a long, long way.

Like I first used mixed panel maybe like eight years ago today I'm using it for my company. And I think they're getting closer, like more and more of those things that you mentioned and creating formulas and being able to bring in data points from [00:30:00] multiple different sources. Uh, they always see do it, but it's definitely never going to be as robust as something like Looker or Tableau.

Being able to bring everything into a single data warehouse or data lake and. 

[00:30:10] Ziv Peled: I think, you know, I'll say or something that I think is it's the gap in the industry. And I said, I said that too many startups, but in the end, I think with the amount of data, even, I'm not even saying AI even rule-based, uh, would work here, you know, with all the data that we have.

Eh, a very simple solution could tell a CSM that has 20 customers and 100 context, significant context. As I, as I like to call it, significant relationships could easily say to that CSM, which of the contacts in is he or she needs to contact tomorrow morning? It, what exactly. On what Shannon and probably with what [00:31:00] data point or around what data points.

So I know this customer is using my data Looker and I just added a new feature, non, non premium feature, eh, in investment, on data Looker. So, and, and, and the system knows that I usually interact with that person on the over slack and that the optimal hour for me to say, He's 9:17 AM. So, you know, I don't even want it to be automated, but the draft, the 95% should be ready.

And then I should have a draft for nine 17, and I just need to maybe customize it with something personal and click away the, you know, then maybe that was my goal in the first place that, you know, in the end there's Dunbar number and the amount of relationships as we can. Uh, cope with, and then with such a tool, we can debate our capacity.

A CSM can manage a lot more or a lot more contacts, [00:32:00] be more personal. They will want to use that relationship. And in the end, uh, and I showed that, uh, in Q4. And since then I showed that, uh, as, as, as the CSM established more significant relationships across the account, we see higher. Yeah, 

[00:32:21] Andrew Michael: absolutely. And also you see a lot less churn.

I think this is something we've talked about probably together on the show, but also lots is it's a, if the number of like relationships chevrons and the counts, if you're at one, it's a huge, huge turn risk because when that champion leaves, so that relationship does like, um, you need somebody internally fighting 

[00:32:39] Ziv Peled: for it.

I found them, I found that the sweet spot for an enterprise account in our industry, you need seven religions. Yeah, the, the sweet spot for NRR in an enterprise account, seven significant relationships that, you know, 

[00:32:54] Andrew Michael: nice. You mentioned a couple of things then as well around engagements. And I wanted to follow up from our [00:33:00] last discussion because previously we spoke a little bit about compensation.

If I remember correctly or, and, uh, engagement metrics, being a part of that, like real focus on trying to. Give guidance and where the CSM should focus their time with it with customers. Uh, have you evolved that system since we last discussed? Like maybe you can just give us a refresher on, uh, how it works and how the team is compensated.

[00:33:25] Ziv Peled: Yeah. So, um, we still have, again the same structure for compensation. Um, again, you know, I, I always, uh, you know, fight, fight with myself about it. Eh, You know, if you should tie it to a specific metric or not. I, I think th th th the worst thing about the compensation, um, you know, is a bonus that you pay quarterly on specific activities is that you do.

A [00:34:00] huge increase on those activities, but, uh, it comes, uh, um, on the cost of other things. So again, we, we have, uh, variables for all our CSMs. Um, we evaluated, uh, on a yearly basis and we don't tie it to a very specific thing maybe, maybe next year. Um, but when we build OTRs for it, for the. I, um, on a high level, from the vision perspective, I look at three main things, uh, are according to this priority, I invest in first of all, in people's success, internally the employees and that their development and their self-reflection and what they want to do next and how they reach their.

And secondary is the customer success. And this is just to say our mission statement. Uh [00:35:00] it's uh, to understand our customers achieve their desired outcomes while building long-term relationships and in the year. The last goal. Last objective is company success is our company success. And if we invest in our employees and then we help our customers achieve their desired outcomes, we will achieve that.

Eh, Indian, you know, revenue goals, whether it's, uh, uh, I think, you know, if, if next year we will turn. Uh, these goals, these variables to the net revenue retention or the mechanical revenue. I don't believe that it really change a lot, you know, in the end, you know, maybe it will be two or three main things that the variable will drive, but I, my job will stay the same.

I will still need to drive CSMs to do [00:36:00] 15 to 20 things. And if we, we, if we want to be able to do these activities, we will never be successful. What I see very, very clearly today on the short term is that you need to understand what the customer wants to achieve. You need to build those relationships.

You need to end the onboarding. Then you need to finalize the onboarding has to be successful, fireworks everything. Then you need to go to the QPRs. Now, if you have the business desired outcomes, Well articulated, then your QBR, just your QBR tasks just became super easy. Yeah. You know exactly what to speak about and you can be very, very direct with your customer and say, oh, we achieved that.

We didn't achieve that. This is on me. This is on you. Uh, now everyone knows what we want to do. And I think that when a CSM does all that, then the customer. Is taking [00:37:00] them to the next level and then speak, oh, you know what? These are my KPIs for the year. Let's work together. Let's see how, uh, how you help me achieve these KPIs.

Then you achieved your KPIs. We are, we, we built, eh, amazing trust. We are now much closer. Maybe, maybe next time the, the, this customer or this specific person will tell you. My next challenges. Oh, challenges. If I get thinking about your company, think about, uh, any company. If I get the customer and enterprise customer, a big account to now tell me their challenges, I'm bringing the product team, and maybe I have an opportunity here to build the next feature.

Then I can monetize it here and then, oh, the Senate press customer. Now it can take you to 500 customers. This is a happy face on the inner child. This is our B2B service companies. [00:38:00] Over time, eh, and, and, you know, to close your, the relationship circle is that we still work with marketeers. They still change jobs every two years.

If we provide them great products, great service, and we build that long-term relationship, they will be our customers. 

[00:38:21] Andrew Michael: Yeah, absolutely. You mentioned as well that, um, engagements previously in the episode was like your game. What I really liked about the previous episode was typically like maybe customer success teams will say our goal is to, uh, increase NRR or to decrease.

Or whatever it is, but they don't really tell you much. Well, they don't tell you what to do or how to do it. And what I remembered was last time we discussed, you had specific metrics that you had worked with analysts to understand, okay, what are the key KPIs users need to take? What are the actions? Um, and that's where you like the CSMs, their goal was to try and increase those key actions within the product.

But it also sounds like now that you're [00:39:00] saying is. Those connections maybe did increase, but maybe not always for the right reasons. Is that something that you came into, uh, with the system? Because I think it's pretty normal as well. I think as well, there's always a level of gaming the system when, uh, things come in to play, especially with competition.

Was that something you saw and, uh, what was like the worker. Yeah. 

[00:39:20] Ziv Peled: So, uh, I think very, very little, um, but you know, I think what's in the end, uh, this, uh, end to end system that we've developed. And again, the methodology all over it is that we're able, and by the way, also our size, our capacity, we are able to now.

Push QPRs and in a month or two to see the effect of QPRs now, I think, um, and, and I presented this also to the board last week. You know, if I look at my customer journey and then I know the strategic points that we must do, and this, all the things that I already said, [00:40:00] the onboarding, building relationships, the business desired outcomes.

The QBR. And I didn't say before, but now that we have a renewal forecast and then we have a renewal committee, um, all these things are, you know, in addition to those, we have the, maybe I'll say that the feature areas, and then you have, you've divided to non premium and premium. So. We're still driving. And we see a lot of, uh, effect from, from driving.

These non-premium features that drives mostly stickiness, by the way, you can tie directly to JIRA. Eh, and we work together, uh, with marketing and eh, very, very closely with product to analyze and decide which features to, to drive and on the artists. This year I can. My goal not [00:41:00] unachievable goal is to drive 100% of the CSQ Wells for existing customers.

So to drive all the upsells, to touch all the apps, 100% of the cases probably we'll get to 70, 75 when I'm getting to 75%. If we'll get 80, it will be amazing. Eh, we have a huge number for ups of this year. Eh, and, and, and I think in, in the end, you know, eh, any, any growth manager, our existing, eh, customers, their salespeople that works with the CSM is a better shot to win.

We know the customer best. We know you want on the call. You don't want the call. We know that the probability for any customer to buy something. And, and I, and I think in the end, this is, this is the driver of what this company can be in the next two, three, even five [00:42:00] years, because in the end, B2B, SAS is all about it.

Doesn't matter what you do to. It's about what are the, what, what is your future product and oh, how many contracts have you established? And then maybe the metric or the object that most companies doesn't see and doesn't doesn't map and measure the relationships. If you know that, uh, we, we, we, in the last year, year and a half, we met.

In enterprise alone, over 5,000 relationships. Those are the top marketing people you want to work with. Those are the top people that you want to understand their opinions. What, what improves their day to day? What doesn't, what makes their difference? What doesn't, what will be six or maybe even seven figures, ARR for them.

Eh two-by. And, and, and, and, and that's the story of, of B2B [00:43:00] SAS? Yeah. Th the, the new business is huge. It's super important from marketing to close, eh, but after you do that, Then you start some companies look at that as a retention effort. I look at that as an opportunity effort, the opportunity in deputy I'm I'm I'm, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm focused noncommercial leader.

I look at that opportunity is that how much value we can provide to these customers, to these individuals and. Am I able to build a relationship with them or not, by the way, a relationship is bullying. It's either they, the other person on the other side wants to develop a relationship with me or not, you know, customers from maybe from the past or even in your existing company.

There's people that doesn't want to engage with you. And even those [00:44:00] people, when you turn them, when you understand that. The value they are looking for and you turn them, they become your biggest advocates because our people are not a less than advocate than others. They just, you just need to find the value that they are looking for.

[00:44:19] Andrew Michael: Absolutely. Was there ever, this is a, been an education again, and a very enlightening, it's good to see sort of, um, how things keep progressing year over year. There's any final thoughts? Cause we've run up on time. Now. Any final thoughts you want to leave the listeners with? Like anything they should be aware of from your side or any message you want to share with them?

[00:44:39] Ziv Peled: Yeah, I dunno. I think the most important thing is to focus on being positive. It doesn't matter what happens, you know, last lots of things happened in the last three years. Always think positive. You know, what you imagined is what lit later on our pens. Eh, and, um, [00:45:00] you know, my, my, my biggest advice is to always do and, and, and, and focus your efforts on the things that are in your control.

I think that it sounds common sense. But, uh, I don't know anyone that listens to this episode to think, think about the things that you've done in the last week, two weeks. Think about if you focus on the, on the things that are was in your York. 

[00:45:24] Andrew Michael: Yeah, this is something I truly believe in a lot, is that so many times that people worry about so many things outside of the control.

We really like, if you focus on the things that are within your control, you gain control in that manner. But if you like just sort of setting it, all the things that you kind of influence over and you let those things worry you and get you upset or thing. It's like if this second thing they say one of the songs it's as effective as trying to solve an algebraic equation by doing by.

Like, you're not going to learn anything or do anything by it. So, uh, I love that message. Definitely focus on what you can control. [00:46:00] Uh, Ziv has been a pleasure. Thanks so much for joining, and I wish you best of luck now going into this next chapter next year. And hopefully like we hear from you in the next year of, uh, bigger and better.

Uh AppsFlyer. 

[00:46:12] Ziv Peled: Thank you so much. 

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Ziv Peled
Ziv Peled
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The show

My name is Andrew Michael and I started CHURN.FM, as I was tired of hearing stories about some magical silver bullet that solved churn for company X.

In this podcast, you will hear from founders and subscription economy pros working in product, marketing, customer success, support, and operations roles across different stages of company growth, who are taking a systematic approach to increase retention and engagement within their organizations.

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