Ready to revolutionize your customer success strategies? Join me, Kristen Hayer, founder and CEO of The Success League, as we decode how to achieve this by harnessing the power of Total Search. Buckle up for an engaging discussion with Prasanna Dhungel, co-founder and managing partner of GrowByData. We’re breaking down how marketing tools like Total Search can drive efficiencies in customer success programs. Together, we'll navigate through the importance of understanding what your customers are searching for on Google, and how these insights can help you stay ahead of market trends and threats.
We'll also share some insights on how to use Google as a resource to understand platform evolution, and assess your brand's online presence. Get ready to explore the need for customer success leaders to be proactive and adaptable in the fast-paced digital world.
Listen in as we analyze the changing landscape of customer success and the day-to-day tasks of being a frontline employee. Don't forget to subscribe for more insights into the world of customer success!
Ready to revolutionize your customer success strategies? Join me, Kristen Hayer, founder and CEO of The Success League, as we decode how to achieve this by harnessing the power of Total Search. Buckle up for an engaging discussion with Prasanna Dhungel, co-founder and managing partner of GrowByData. We’re breaking down how marketing tools like Total Search can drive efficiencies in customer success programs. Together, we'll navigate through the importance of understanding what your customers are searching for on Google, and how these insights can help you stay ahead of market trends and threats.
We'll also share some insights on how to use Google as a resource to understand platform evolution, and assess your brand's online presence. Get ready to explore the need for customer success leaders to be proactive and adaptable in the fast-paced digital world.
Listen in as we analyze the changing landscape of customer success and the day-to-day tasks of being a frontline employee. Don't forget to subscribe for more insights into the world of customer success!
Welcome to Innovations in Leadership, a Success League radio production. This is a podcast focused on customer success and the leaders who are designing and implementing best practices in our field. This podcast is brought to you by the Success League, a consulting and training firm focused on developing customer success programs that drive revenue. My name is Kristin Haier and I'm the host of Innovations in Leadership and the founder and CEO of the Success League, and today I'm joined by Prasanna Dhungel, who is the co-founder and managing partner of Grow by Data, and we're going to be talking about how some of the tools that are available to marketers can help customer success teams drive efficiencies across their programs. So, Prasanna, thank you so much for joining me today.
Prasanna Dhungel:Thank you so much, Kristen, for inviting, and I look forward to the conversation.
Kristen Hayer:Me too, so I know you've had an interesting path into your current role. Could you share a little bit about your career, so I am an engineer trained person.
Prasanna Dhungel:Then, when to business school, you know I was exposed to marketing and client success and that discipline and then I was noticing a lot of issues with data in the early part of the 2010 decade Started Grow by Data in 2014. It's been almost 10 years and we've been helping retailers and, over time, a lot of verticals outside of retail with providing insights, marketing intelligence, and what we've done is, you know, we started in e-commerce retail small to mid-sized businesses but, by listening to customers and really trying to be close to them, really have offered insights to marketing leaders across verticals so that they can really stay on top. What we like to say is we like to help leaders regain, defend and grow their brand at these times of big change. It's been an evolution by listening to customers and really trying to delight them.
Kristen Hayer:Yeah, I think that's such an interesting way to kind of ground your career, because I think you know, while you have a lot of work that you've done in the marketing space, I think that translates really well over into customer success as well, and that's really what we're going to be talking about today is like how can we use these tools that you've developed and things that you've thought about in the realm of marketing in customer success as well? I love what you're doing. It's great. We're going to talk about something called Total Search today, and I know our audience is primarily made up of CS leaders and professionals who might not know about that, so can you explain what that is?
Prasanna Dhungel:Sure. So the concept of Total Search means looking at, search or Google search more so you know, to really understand what customers or potential customers are searching for, what's presented to them, who is in the ecosystem, you know, what products are being exposed to shoppers, slash clients, and how do you manage around that. That's a loaded question, but still I'm trying to unpack this. So what this means is you know if you are a B2B vendor, you know then you might be getting a lot of clients from Google as a channel, as source, as a channel right. You might be getting leads. You know prospects might be finding about you.
Prasanna Dhungel:What Total Search really means is helping you understand what shoppers or buyers are seeing on the Google page, what it means. What are the tech sets, paid ads that are visible, who is visible, what are the other components that are, for free, available on the page? How does all of that together? When you, as a buyer or a client, you're searching for something, then you're exposed to many different things on the Google page. Total search really allows you to understand what is being visible to a buyer or to a customer, so that you are on top. Why is this important is because Google is, in fact, the landing point for many individuals. We all do Google search. Having a good impression when someone searches for whatever year she is trying to search, is critical. That's the brand message, that's the brand strategy. Total Search really helps you understand what is visible by different geography, by different category, and have a proactive strategy. That's what Total Search really is about.
Kristen Hayer:I really like what you have to say about Total Search. I know that, as people are listening to this, they're probably thinking about it in terms of yeah, that would be really helpful for companies that are in the consumer space, but how do we think about it from a B2B standpoint? The thing that I always think about is that B2B is becoming daily more like a B2C environment, because the customers and the buyers are all expecting that same experience that they're getting when they're going to Amazon or they're going to anywhere else and they're searching on Google. We all have to be able to respond to customers and the buyer. A buyer is a buyer, they're a buyer of their own stuff and they're a buyer of business software. One of the biggest ways that Total Search could help customer success programs from my perspective is to provide that view into a competitive landscape. Can you tell me why you see that as important and the kinds of information that it can provide to a customer success team?
Prasanna Dhungel:Sure. So we work with B2B players and what the B2B lines are really finding and the value goes to marketing, sales, clients of success product and the whole gamut. And the value that they're getting is here like, say, I'll just make it up your Oracle right and then its users, its prospects, across different persona, are doing a search that could be going to Oracle. So that's like the challenge that you need to be on top on the marketing and sales side. But for client success, imagine you're doing a renewal right, you're doing a big renewal and if you do not understand what competition is doing, you could be caught off guard.
Prasanna Dhungel:So it might really be that while you were complacent, competitors were really visible in front of your prospects and they were educating your clients, they were understanding consumer trends, they were sensitive to privacy and regulations that have appeared and they really crafted their messaging and their product to align with some of the emerging trends and threats.
Prasanna Dhungel:And so if you do not understand that, what could happen is come renewal, your clients might stop considering you to be a premium player. They might begin to negotiate with you on pricing because you're you could be perceived as everyone else. The other problem could really be they may have already begun testing. You know a competitor product and when you come to renewal, they're asking you like five questions about features and functions and support and pricing, and you do not know, and the worst thing that could happen is the big customer leaves. And so that's why I think it's critical you know that client success leaders really use insights derived from source to keep up all self-competition and then be more proactive than be reactive, and that's in fact how very proactive clients in the B2C space use insights from source.
Kristen Hayer:Yeah, I agree with you, and I think we have a tendency in our field internally, as CS leaders and CS practitioners, it's really easy to get focused on okay, what are the gaps in your own software? What are the problems with your own pricing structure? What are, you know, your customers complaining about to you? But it is critical to understand what's happening in the market and where are your competitors. And just as an example of that, the last company I worked for before I started this company, one of our competitors was really hitting us hard in two geographies across the US and outside of those two geographies. We really didn't have to worry about them and by knowing that, we actually were able to build that as a risk factor into our health score so that we could say, okay, we know, if there's a customer in New York or their customer in San Francisco, we're at a much higher risk of turning them to a competitor than if they're in these other two spaces. And so I think there's so much importance in understanding your competitive space because that can help you make better decisions as a leader and as a CSM. And you know certainly. I think what you brought up about, like how are the competitors pricing things. That's really incredibly valuable information and sometimes it's hard to get, but if there's a way that you can find that through Total Search, I think that's fantastic.
Prasanna Dhungel:Yeah, and there's one example which may be very relevant in the B2B space, right? So about 15, 20 years ago we were used to like bulk pricing. You know you buy enterprise license, you host it in your own premises or your data center. We've evolved to a SaaS model in which we're paying every month.
Prasanna Dhungel:I was recently reading about how many buyers you know are fatigued with this subscription model. I mean, there's a big brand that we were talking to and they have bought 10 subscription licenses for doing similar things and they hired a consultant to go in and then look at the 10 and only sell like the few that were really relevant. And that's one trend that's happening. The other trend that I was recently reading was how some companies are going back to like fixed pricing. You know you buy, you have a license and you don't need to pay subscription. So if you're like staying on this right, how do you understand this trend? And then, how about you know if you're biggest competitor or an emerging competitor? It could be a big market firm that's really going strong to your point goes in on a new geography and attacks you or comes up with a totally new pricing model that perhaps you know. Cfos are now beginning to come around to, given the state of the economy. So I mean, I think all of these things you get from the total source picture.
Kristen Hayer:Yeah, I think that's so great. Another thing, as you and I were kind of prepping for this conversation, was that you know, I think Total Search can help you better understand your best customers and your high potential customers. Can you talk about that a little bit?
Prasanna Dhungel:Sure, you might be prospecting into a certain category. Let's say you're trying to prospect into the HR space. What Total Search allows you to do is you can see they might have recently raised capital or they may just be a mid-market form that's really doing really well, appearing very strong. You might not have heard of them. You can begin to see. So visibility we call share of voice, which is by understanding what are the players that are really rising in terms of visibility in search, you get a sense as to these guys could really be strong. They are aligned with the market, they are proactive and if I go and sell to them A, they might be willing to buy from me and B, they might be a very strong customer midterm because they have a much stronger fundamentals.
Prasanna Dhungel:You're able to even do qualify your prospects and categories better. That's one value of search. The second part is Total Search helps your clients, because if your clients are not really portraying the perspective or the persona that buyers and the executive buyers or CFOs or your target buyers are expecting, then it could have a bad impact from a brand perspective. You might be doing the best customer service, but if there's a lot of bad sentiment online, then that could ultimately do bad to them and cause charm or what have you. I think it's these aspects that you get. I'm curious you guys, you work with clients and are those some of the types of questions you're also getting? Which is using market signals to be on top of threats that customers have or detect new ways of detecting prospects?
Kristen Hayer:I think some of the best customer success leaders are doing that and are really befriending and leveraging the information that their marketing teams have and utilizing that. From my perspective, unfortunately, most customer success teams and this is why I love that we're having this conversation really neglect the competitive landscape and forget that that is a huge part of what can make or break a renewal. They're very focused on internally not losing that customer, but customers can be lost for so many reasons outside of your product. Often it is that. That's what I'm seeing is there's a real neglect of understanding the competitive space. I wanted to ask you.
Kristen Hayer:I know that marketers use the information to understand and grow their brand. How do you think having a really strong brand has an impact on customer success and how does that branding play into the efforts of the sales team and the success team?
Prasanna Dhungel:Absolutely. We look at two types of traffic your brand and non-brand. Non-brand means you're trying to buy HR software, or the brand is you're buying workday software. If you look at it from this brand and non-brand lens, clients that have really strong brand in the market have this aura. When I say this, when I say strong brand, I mean those that have a strong digital brand, and that means they are visible when shoppers are searching different questions. They are very helpful across the marketing funnel. They are providing the best service.
Prasanna Dhungel:One aspect that's really important it's off in B2B is bars and resellers. Even they are providing the right experience, the right service and so on. So when you package all of these things together, I found that companies that have their processes set up in this really are able to reduce their cost of customer acquisition. That's one just because they just have that brand aura and customers are attracted to customers. The other part is even from a client retention standpoint. I think the good ones have these processes that are propagated throughout the organization. So the client success teams are doing a great job. The product is amazing, the product feedback is great. So all of these things together have helped with better retention. The ones with strong branding, were able to really tap into what customers current and future customers are asking are able to upsell. So I think it's all of these aspects that I've seen customers who use these insights too well.
Kristen Hayer:So, Prasanna, one of the things I wanted to ask you is this seems like a newer area, and I know Google is constantly changing things, and I guess what advice would you give to CS leaders who are trying to think about how they can leverage this total search concept inside of their organization?
Prasanna Dhungel:I would say Total Search is a new concept, and the reason is Google. The platform is changing a lot, and so what I've also realized is given the platforms are really changing at the moment whether it be like Google changing, bing is changing I believe that it's important for customer success leaders, who are really at the front lines, to really be on top of these, at least be aware of these platform changes and understand how that's impacting their brand perspective, as well as how competitors the existing competitors, are emerging competitors are tapping onto it. So I don't think it's really like a set and forget, which is the classic days of you you're so old and you come back, think about all of these things, come renewal. I don't think that works. I think you just have to be on top and really be experimenting and really encouraging your organization to be using these newer techniques. Given we're a lot of change, that's a key message I do want to offer.
Kristen Hayer:So if someone from the audience wanted to learn more about Total Search, what resources would you really recommend for them?
Prasanna Dhungel:I would recommend they look at Google not as like shopping for sale, but in terms of how that platform is changing, because if you kind of look at Google over weeks or months, not just like one of searches, it is really changing a lot. Think about questions your clients are asking and then you should do the search yourself on Google and really see who shows up, whether you show up or not, and how you show up, because that's the end client. So that's one thing I would recommend. The other is there's just a lot of articles and talks about topics like this.
Prasanna Dhungel:This podcast is an attempt to speak about this latest in Google and how customer success leaders should be on top, how they should really break silos in the organization. You have signals in the organization in other departments. I think it's listening to podcasts like this. The other is, I'd even say, experiment a bit. It's always good to have a little bit of budget, that you have to experiment on these new techniques, because we are going through a time of change and I've known that clients that are experimenting and using this are really winning. I like to say they're regaining lost territory, they're defending their turf and being crying. So I do think you need to have a lot of these things in place.
Kristen Hayer:Yeah, I agree, I love your advice on that. Okay, last question, and this is sort of the one that we ask everybody who comes on the podcast, because it's interesting to hear everybody's responses but what do you see as the biggest trend in customer success right now, and why?
Prasanna Dhungel:Sure. So there's a few what I think the traditional walls within the organizations are breaking because you have signals external signals and client signals that live in customer success, product support, sales marketing, resellers and so on. So I think bringing intelligence that lives in these silos and really turbo charging client success is what I think is a key trend that is happening and really leading organizations. The second is, I think it's using the product thinking in customer success. So where I'm going with this is you understand questions that your clients are asking. Some of it may be repetitive, so how do you use that to improve the product and let the customer self-help himself or herself? How do you really utilize your client's success team to work on higher value items which require client dialogue, which require thinking deeper?
Prasanna Dhungel:I think that's the other one which is in you could get so caught up in the day to day that you don't have the time to really be thoughtful and really be proactive. I think that's the second one. Then the third is that GenAI and some of these newer tools allow client success to be done in a new way. So where I'm going with that is perhaps we like to chat, we might just be busy and we are so loaded that GenAI and these tools might allow clients to self-answer certain questions and we come to you for deeper, more complex questions. I think that's the other trend that I think will be happening. So I think these three.
Kristen Hayer:I love that and I love your very first one.
Kristen Hayer:I want to go back to that because I think that that's such an interesting concept that I've been thinking about myself a lot lately.
Kristen Hayer:I think customers are starting to demand a different way of engaging with companies and we're still stuck in our there's a product team, an engineering team, a marketing team, a sales team, a success team.
Kristen Hayer:I think those walls are going to have to come down, because customers aren't wanting to engage in that very traditional software way anymore. They want to engage like they've been engaging with consumer companies. Those companies have had to break down all those silos too, and so I think we're at a real turning point, probably in the next 10 years in B2B, where we really have to think about what are the roles, and those roles may cross over several different of the traditional departments. Like you may have a person who shepherds a customer from the very beginning all the way through aspects of customer success, and that may be a role that is called something completely different than what we have today, and not sales and not customer success and not marketing. And I think we have to be a little more creative as organizations as we think about how are we truly serving our clients, and so I really appreciate you bringing that up.
Prasanna Dhungel:That's brilliant. With many working from home. Imagine you have to buy something at Amazon. So when I go to Amazon, I'm trying to buy shoes. I buy shoes and it comes to my doorstep. Imagine that same person. Now you're working with a B2B player and you have to go to client success. You have to wait, and then the client success person doesn't know about something that was committed to marketing in any case days. Do you see the friction? We sit in the same chair with Amazon. You have one click you don't like something in return and Amazon figures it out, whereas with B2B, you are dealing with walls and department, and so I think we get frustrated. That's like B2C buyers or B2B buyers and you don't think as such. I think you're going to lose. That really is what's happening.
Kristen Hayer:I agree because I will say, as the owner of a small business, I'm the same person. I buy groceries for my family from Amazon and also I buy software for my business and I am doing that exact same buying process and the process itself is so radically different and it shouldn't be, it doesn't need to be. I have already done my homework before I go buy anything from my business. I don't need a big sales pitch. I might have some questions I need answers to, just like I might have questions for any consumer thing I buy, but I only want that when I want it. So I think there's this thing that we're all kind of missing right now in B2B, where we're not willing to move away from the classic marketing, sales, cs, support structure of how we engage with customers, because it's so baked in. But we have to. We have to move away from that.
Prasanna Dhungel:Yeah, absolutely. We don't care about those walls, right? We expect the same delightful service. B2b players that provide delightful services are the ones that are winning and will win. I think those that don't are going to lose because we, as consumers, are used to that. We don't have the patience. I think that's the future that we need to evolve to.
Kristen Hayer:Well, high five, virtual high five. Prasanna, I so appreciate you taking the time today to share about how things are shifting in the marketing landscape and how that impacts customer success teams. If someone wanted to connect with you directly, what's the best way for them to reach out?
Prasanna Dhungel:I am available at GrowByDatacom. That's our website. You can contact me at info at GrowByData. com or you can find me on Twitter @pd277. I'm also on LinkedIn, but I'm happy to be of help. This is a topic that I'm passionate about. I'm customer obsessed, I like to say, and all of these are very interesting things we are doing on a day-to-day basis. So I'm happy to be of help.
Kristen Hayer:Well, Prasanna. Thank you so much again, and I also want to thank our producer, Russell Bourne, and our audio experts at RFM Audio. This podcast is a production of Success League Radio. To learn more about the Success Leagues Consulting and Training offerings, please visit our website, thesuccessleague. io, and for more great customer success content, follow the Success League on LinkedIn or at TSL Customers on Twitter. You can subscribe to Success League Radio on Apple, google, amazon or anywhere else you get your podcasts. Thanks so much for listening and we hope you'll join us next time.