Ever wondered what's in a job title? Jeff Heckler, a seasoned Customer Success guru, joins the podcast to unravel the significance of titles in the CS world and how they impact both personal and organizational dynamics. As we traverse Jeff's journey from business intelligence to leading the charge in customer engagement, you'll learn how titles such as "Head of Customer Success" can translate into real-world challenges and triumphs.
Navigating the corporate ladder isn't simply about climbing; it's about mastering the rungs you step on. This episode will illuminate the often overlooked emotional labyrinth that accompanies promotions and leadership roles. For those feeling out of step with traditional career paths, our discussion on entrepreneurial leadership may just spark the inspiration needed to carve out your own success story in the world of Customer Success.
Join us for a candid conversation that promises to leave you with a fresh perspective on your role in Customer Success and how to leverage your position for maximum impact.
Ever wondered what's in a job title? Jeff Heckler, a seasoned Customer Success guru, joins the podcast to unravel the significance of titles in the CS world and how they impact both personal and organizational dynamics. As we traverse Jeff's journey from business intelligence to leading the charge in customer engagement, you'll learn how titles such as "Head of Customer Success" can translate into real-world challenges and triumphs.
Navigating the corporate ladder isn't simply about climbing; it's about mastering the rungs you step on. This episode will illuminate the often overlooked emotional labyrinth that accompanies promotions and leadership roles. For those feeling out of step with traditional career paths, our discussion on entrepreneurial leadership may just spark the inspiration needed to carve out your own success story in the world of Customer Success.
Join us for a candid conversation that promises to leave you with a fresh perspective on your role in Customer Success and how to leverage your position for maximum impact.
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 Kristen Hayer and I'm the host of Innovations in Leadership and the founder and CEO of The Success League, and joining me today is Jeff Heckler, who is a Customer Success thought leader, and today we're going to tackle the topic of job titles, specifically the title Head of Customer Success, and this one really really chaps my hide, so I'm very excited to dig in and have this conversation with you. Jeff, welcome to the podcast.
Jeff Heckler:Thanks for having me here. Thanks for your team as well, supporting us today.
Kristen Hayer:Yeah, well, before we get started, tell us a little bit about your career path and how you ended up in CS leadership.
Jeff Heckler:Oh gosh, how much time do we have? Like everybody else accident I spent the first half of my career in business intelligence. So data science, data analytics and all that fun stuff got into CS around 2011, trying to solve a problem. We were building PS, but, as I kept telling my CEO at the time, kent except saying Kent, the closer we are to our customers, the more that we sit shoulder to shoulder with them, the better off we will be in this infancy of our company to go forward and provide feedback loops for product marketing, sales, even the board, to what we're seeing on the ground. And so why don't we eat a little bit more of margin and start to give away a little bit more PS?
Jeff Heckler:And at that time, I started coming across more and more. Customer success likes things more in the consultative world than real strict CS. And then, early 2012, had a real seminal conversation with our friend, Andrew Marks about Customer Success, and he was doing some work for a BI company that I know very well and coming from that background, we're putting our heads together and Customer Success more and more seemed like this is what we really need to be doing and going, and that's where it started. I had already been in leadership positions by that time. So as I grew up, the team grew up in the leadership as well.
Kristen Hayer:Cool, and I think that's really similar to how a lot of people sort of like ease their way, and I came in to it from the sales side of things and about the same time like 2012 was sort of, when I guess Customer Success had been around for a little while at that point, but it was pretty undefined still. In a lot of companies, I think at that point, we're kind of just using it as a way to retitle their support teams or their services team, something that sounded super friendly, so a lot has changed since then. One thing, though, that I think has been consistent and this is something that just really bugs me is this title head of customer success. Have you ever had to have that title?
Jeff Heckler:I have.
Kristen Hayer:So tell me about that. How did that come to be?
Jeff Heckler:I will, but I will put a pin in some of our conversation as we go through this. There's this new kind of let's reinvent CS and even maybe change his name and things. So I think some of the things that we were thinking about maybe 10, 12, 13 years ago coming forward now and, depending upon who you ask, because he has started in 97 or somewhere in a Sales F orce boardroom or bathroom maybe even. But anyways, that's for another time. So the very broad question of my head of CS experience it started off well and then I went through a little bit of a valley and then it ended rather well, I like to think so. Holding the title it was Global Head of Customer Success, with a team that was not so large but then grew to be about north of 55, covering the globe, seven languages, from 85,000 distinct logos to over 100,000. Interesting number in there is 100,000 logos but then about three quarters north of three quarters of millions unique users.
Jeff Heckler:That kind of changed the aspect of the game. The valley came in the form of an acquisition so going from founder, held and owned for 10 years and profitable and bootstrapped to then doing a very large, massive exit to one of the premier equity firms of the world and having to reeducate and almost build political capital all over again with every stakeholder of that org and that value creation group and that side of the list, and then coming back through and building again with the CS ops team and things like that in there as well. So I think the key things talking about how to, how to weather that is in this topic it's brought up again and again and depending upon who you talk to and who you ask and what things are important is the financials. That already had a solid relationship with the CFO who stayed on through the acquisition, and so that went very well and I had that kind of resource and the BIT behind or the business told to team and the financial team and chops behind the CFO's office to get some of the things that are something's done. So in the valley of time, I built out performance bonuses paid out quarterly for my CS ops team, which I hadn't seen done up in that point in time because I was looking for templates and ideas, and so building out performance bonuses that matched a structure for the rest of the ICs on the CS team seemed to me just to be equitable and the right thing to do.
Jeff Heckler:But then doing it and getting it paid out was something for a whole nother conversation I've had in some other podcasts, but that built out more of the political capital I mentioned and more of the conviction that who they had running CS knew what they're doing. But the interesting thing is something very simple is if you're ahead of something, whatever that is, and you look across your organization and individuals that share your profile responsibilities and see that the table have different titles, like maybe VP, then there's something a little bit of miss. Probably it is the lack of education, understanding and, in some cases, respect that C- suites and boards have around customer success and so the head of just kind of sticks and head ofs are good for when the organization is really flat, when you need to just simply identify who's who and who's running what. Titles are also very important. I think they're more important for our customers so that they know who they're speaking to and what kind of reach you might have with the title that you're holding.
Kristen Hayer:I think that's absolutely right. I think there's pros and cons and we're going to talk about those a little bit more. A bit as I was prepping for this conversation and I went and looked at LinkedIn and to see what's out there right now and how many of them are more formal titles like Director,VP, and how many of them are titles that are head of and there's still a lot of head of titles out there. What are you seeing in the space?
Jeff Heckler:Well, today, and today is the 10th of January 2024. Today I saw CloudFair. They have a Head of CS role. It is budgeted and this is all public. It's budgeted from 304 to 440 and they want someone who's come in that has held one billion in revenue. That's one place where, until you peel back and say, okay, what is the breadth of this person's responsibilities With those types of numbers?
Jeff Heckler:I would surely hope that this individual has a couple of slides every quarter to share with the board. I hope that this individual has a nice envelope to share for annual budgeting purposes. And then head of could be four guys renting a house and building a startup something I did once and I was ahead of a lot of things. It means for the company I have a lot of voice and traction, but outside of the company, given that weight, there's not much behind. So it depends what it is. But you know, it's a funny and maybe because I only am CS myopic, I don't see a lot of head of in other organizational structures for other parts of the org. I don't know what you say.
Kristen Hayer:I don't see that a lot either. I certainly don't see it in sales, which is sort of my background Right. Like in sales, you would never accept a head of title ever, because that's I mean it feels very disrespectful if you're coming from that field. We kind of started talking about this, but like everything, I think there's pros and cons to this title. So let's start with the positive. What are some of the advantages you see for this title? Head of oh gosh.
Jeff Heckler:Well, like all title titles, internally and externally shows ownership. You have lack of a better term one throat to choke or one individual's for accolades, but I really find it stretched to five other than you know. This is your head, hanshaw. This is the person the primary contact for this org. Like I don't really see too many positives, yeah.
Kristen Hayer:I have a customer right now who has a Head of title as the Head of Customer Success and I think in her case it's mostly because the organization is going through some larger organizational changes around funding and along with that they're sort of holding off on making major title shifts. So I mean, I think that might be a reason why head of sometimes gets surfaced, because it's sort of a, I want to say, like a holding pen until, you know, new leadership comes in or new investors come in. I mean, it's still not sort of a great reason, but it's a it's a reason.
Jeff Heckler:Yeah, so I don't think we're going to spend a lot of time on the positives for the individual holding it at. The segue into the next half of the conversation is what are the positives? Just overall right. And then, as you mentioned, it gives the organization the ability to be flexible in how it starts to grow. I would offer the warning that, well, there could be lack of direction, lack of understanding, lack of institutional knowledge to really understand.
Jeff Heckler:Well, this is what CS is. I even see just gosh just yesterday, an org that doesn't know how they're hiring the CS. So you have VPs of what we'd classically call other portions of a CS ownership. So let's just say it's onboarding, implementation, pro-serve inside of a customer org, and now all three of these individuals have VP but they are going to report to a VP of success. So as a customer, I would be a little bit of myth if I'm dealing with the VP of onboarding and then a VP of success and then a VP of implementation and all these VP titles under a customer org reporting to a CEO instead of a CCO. There's no CCO currently.
Jeff Heckler:It just seems to me like okay, now we're just throwing around titles. Those titles mean anything to these people get anything done. If there's crisis or something that really needs to be moved, who am I going to go to? So there's a lack of clarity and there's title inflation and something that us, as leaders, we're all dealing with is title inflation, salary inflation and now salary constriction due to the moment of macroeconomics and how somebody feels a weather vane is pointing that day. So I think that's a benefit to a head right. Then you can say well, a head of CS is someone who is. They could be a one man show, right. They're doing a potency or hanging their shingle somewhere. Or they could be this cloud flare where they have probably over a billion dollars of responsibility on recurring revenue. So it's really nebulous until, as I mentioned earlier, you start to dig behind it.
Kristen Hayer:Yeah, so let's. I mean I think you and I are both on the same page that while there might be some positives, there's a lot of negatives to this, and I hate this title with a fiery passion because I just think it shows a lack of respect for the role and I'll approach this as the woman in the room here. Women already have to fight pretty hard for titles, and to take a Head of title instead of an actual title, like a Director or a VP, is it's not a move in the right direction for most women in their career paths and I think that's true for everybody. But I'm just speaking from my own experience as somebody who's had to duke it out for titles over the years. I just I really hate it. What's your perspective on it? What are the negatives?
Jeff Heckler:Well, first I'll say this is what I liked about your candor and what you do here with Success Radio is that I can just tell you that, as a middle-aged white male in the United States of America, I held the title and we've negotiated my butt off for all the right reasons to have a path. And so, as we, you know, and I will do my best to add a little bit of yang to your yen, as we think about global head of dot dot dot and the pitfalls, it right off the bat, to somebody like you or me, I think it signals a lack of support, lack of understanding from the leadership of the C-suite and the board. But I also think there's a way forward, right. So in the position when I held it, I reported to my tenure two different VPs who both got it pretty much. Then they left and I took it took a bit of education.
Jeff Heckler:Then I was reporting the COO, which I of course loved, but it was a lot of education and then to build out a path that, okay, here's the timeline, the deliverables, the performance expectations to get to VP, and with that I was like all right, then that's great, we can knock this out, but most of the heavy lifting. Like any other promotion or change of title, the work is already done. Like one of the best things anybody ever said to me was the first VP I ever reported to a woman named Jesse Finn and she told me Jeff, you do the job before you get the job. In my early mid-20s that was very educational. I really appreciate that.
Kristen Hayer:Yeah, and I think one thing that there's a lack of understanding about a little bit for some of the newer, younger people in our field is that it isn't just a natural progression from CSM to Manager, to Director, to VP.
Kristen Hayer:It's not that smooth and those aren't you just getting increasingly good at CS, it's you getting increasingly good at levels of leadership that are very different from each other.
Kristen Hayer:This is one of the other things I dislike about Head of is that it's very vague. I think when you say director, what you know is that a director manages managers, and when you say VP, you understand that that's somebody who has a broad set of functions that are reporting to them. And when you say Head of, it could be any of those things it could be a manager, it could be a director, it could be a VP, it could be a CCO, depending on the company, depending on why you were given that title, and it's vague. And it's vague to people who are reporting to you, and it's also vague to people who are who you need to be able to influence as a leader, like your other leaders in your company, your shareholders, your investors, and so it takes away some of your power 100% and that's because of the assumptions that come from, you know, the the and, in CS, the dozens to tens, to hundreds of people that we will touch within a day, week, month and quarter.
Jeff Heckler:So the signaling is precarious, you know. I want to come back to some of the comments that you just made that I found really intriguing. There's a woman that I follow I have yet to meet in real life, Megan Bowen. She's just been promoted from CEO, the CEO of Refined Labs, and she wrote today. She said be careful of going after the promotions because they're never as good as you think they're going to feel. And I thought there's a moment of bare honesty. Who, from some of you, just been promoted? Well, yeah, because it's one of those things that was just, you know, really brilliant and also telling it true, Someone's going through multiple promotions in their career and I believe she's been on your show, you know, just fantastic insight and so just something that I found to be pretty, you know, in the moment, very touching.
Kristen Hayer:Yeah, yeah, I think I think that's she's absolutely right, that's you have to be careful. And also, I think, don't just pursue the promotion thinking that it's more money. That's another thing I see people making a lot of assumptions about. It's, yes, probably more money, but it's also a lot more and different work generally.
Jeff Heckler:And promotions aren't the national progression for every career, right.
Jeff Heckler:I've seen, especially as SaaS becomes more verticalized and more specialized, we see more TAM, more CE, semi-rolls, and I see more PS being necessary for even for product led companies, which we can have a whole show on product led one day.
Jeff Heckler:But I've seen some individuals just absolutely crush it when they've had a little bit of patience and then they start maybe a technical arm or they start a PS arm, or they become more developed and as an SME and you know the go to in their field, you know.
Jeff Heckler:There's another thing that I think is very important for individuals who are coming up in their careers to understand is, just because you make, let's say, 10, you could be managing other individuals in your department who will make 12, 14, 16, especially if you look at variable comps. So don't, you know, ever believe that just because you have a certain place in the org structure or because you're the one that goes to other people's performance reviews, that that naturally lines up to a certain compensation structure. It's about the value that you bring to your company and your customers full stop. So, and some coaches are great at coaching but will never be great on the field. You know I like sports so I can name a couple of them, but I'm not here for sports analogies. So you know it's knowing your lot in life and a little bit of humility goes a long way for yourself.
Kristen Hayer:Well and I think you know, having come up through Sales, that is really very true. When you cut over from being a salesperson to being a Manager, All of a sudden you're like whoa, everybody I'm leading is making more money than me, at least at the very beginning when you're a sales manager.
Jeff Heckler:And you're like, if I'm leading a team and everybody else is making more than I am, then I know everybody's good. Yeah, exactly Like we're all.
Kristen Hayer:Yeah, and I think that that's becoming, as as there becomes more and more variable comp and CS, it's becoming true there too, and you have to be okay with that. You also have to be okay with knowing that just because you were good at being a CSM doesn't mean you're going to be good at being a leader of CSMs. Knowing the job and being a leader are two totally different things, and so the leadership path is not for everyone. It's a job that you have to really love to be good at, and not everybody loves it, and if you don't love it, it's okay. There are other individual contributor roles for you that give you increasing amounts of money, get you further along in your career path.
Kristen Hayer:One of my friends was a. She worked for Amazon and was the person who managed their Apple customers and they competed in some ways, but in other ways they collaborate or have a customer-vendor relationship, and she was making many, many six figures doing that because as an individual contributor who had people helping her but she wasn't leading a team per se, but she made a lot of money doing that because it was a valuable role for the company as an individual contributor role, and she was at the top of her field, and so you can go far as a CSM, as an individual contributor, depending on what you want to do. I'll just say this to the audience out there don't go into leadership if you don't really want to be a leader and you're just after the money. There's other ways to get the money.
Jeff Heckler:You can say that about anything in life If your heart doesn't don't do it. Like I'm not going to drag racing, I'm not into it. I might look cool but I'm not doing it, you know. The other thing I want to say there's this third angle. Is you know, stay or go somewhere else? Or you could do the third angle, which takes a lot of guts and a lot of initiative and something like you've done with Success League. I'm going to start something else and once that gets going, I'm going to bring some people in and we're going to do this thing.
Jeff Heckler:And so I've seen individuals find out that they had a real spirited leadership vein in their own entrepreneurial way, once coming out from under a place that they learned a lot from, and I'm not going to get away from that. Like you know, I've worked for the essentials of the world too. You know it's like, but take those things and then apply them to another place where you have the ability and the autonomy and the breadth of range to really make an impact, and so it's not this one. You know I'm going to get promoted or I'm going to stay here and this is going to be my lot in life forever, you know, just like there is with the other. You know individual contributor roles where you have a lot more responsibility, as you outlined it. I've outlined with the PS and SME stuff Like there's. There are other ways.
Kristen Hayer:Yeah, absolutely. And I think you know you'll go through different phases in your life, and your career too, where you want different things. I mean, you know, I think a lot of people go into their careers being very driven and wanting, you know, upward trajectory and wanting management experience, and then later you might learn that's not what you're really about anymore and you know your perspective might change and your life might change outside of work and you might want something different. And I think it's okay to accept that.
Kristen Hayer:It's not a linear path always Mine at least, was very winding and like I probably looked I you guys can't see me, but I'm basically gesturing a graph that goes up and down in circles, and so, yeah, it's, it's definitely can be all over the place, and so and that's okay, I think you need to do what is right for you at the right point in your career path. Okay, let's drift over and give people some advice. So let's say, somebody in our audience is about to get saddled with the head of title or has the head of title and they want to negotiate into something different. How would you recommend they go about that?
Jeff Heckler:If you're coming in that new high. So this is a job that with a different org than you're currently with and looking at this and those. Well, where does that come from? Are there other heads of in the organization? What is it? Can I, why is it there? And ask the origin story behind the title, just like you were asking the origin story behind a position? Is this in that new position? Is it a backfill? How is it, you know, organic or why? Why is this coming forth?
Jeff Heckler:And then looking at the org itself and thinking you know, these are the numbers behind, like what's the portfolio size? What does that roll up to? What are the run rates of revenue? What does the profitability look like? How much ramp do I get? How much runway is there for the company itself? And getting a really big picture.
Jeff Heckler:And then looking at where places of impact, where can I really make impact change in different stages First, immediately, second, after maybe six to nine months, and then, if I'm here, a year, what am I really looking to do as goals that are going to drive me to whatever it is that I want next from this head of position?
Jeff Heckler:And really outlining that and making that intention heard, known and document and with a path, if I nail these objectives one, two and three. Our agreement here, as my leadership understands, is that we're going to have a change title, maybe a change of responsibility. Maybe I can ask for additional head growth, head count growth for other places where we weren't forecasting in the turn annual budget. So, looking at all the levers, just all you're doing is negotiating a contract, but a larger scale, right, as a CSM, all the levers that I can pull and push in order to get something done across the organization from a customer, what can I do for myself internally and how can I advocate? And then how can I document progress? You know, take things off, get a complements and achievements under my belt and then go to the next stage.
Kristen Hayer:Yeah, I think the other thing that I want to mention, just based on what you just said, is that those levers you need to treat individually.
Kristen Hayer:Sometimes people tie the title and the salary levers together and I think if you separate them, you have better negotiation power.
Kristen Hayer:And you have to kind of decide is it more about salary or is it more about the title for you? And what can happen is you can start to kind of climb that ladder by looking at those separately and you can say, okay, what matters to me most right now is the title, because down the road that will lead to a salary that's closer to where I want to be, and I think if you can separate them, that gives you more negotiation power as you're talking to the people in your organization, because they then understand that, oh, it's not just like, okay, we're going to make this person a VP and that means we're going to have to throw an extra 50K at them, and I think that they can give you the title and you'll be okay with that for a time, and that makes it easier for them to give it to you. Make it easy for them to do what you need, I think title-wise. Don't make it hard. It would be my piece of advice to add on to that.
Jeff Heckler:I think that's 100% and it's looking at what's driving the company. Where are the goals? What is my management? How do I manage my business to match with my organization of looking and it's a classic stuff how do I make things easier for those above me, how do I make things more visible and wins for my customers, and how do I take care of my team and elevate them?
Kristen Hayer:Yeah.
Jeff Heckler:The growth that you provide for your company, for yourself, comes from the others around you that you're elevating and that you're empowering and that you're motivating to change and to grow with the company. So those are other things to say. Hey, I've directed seven ICs into other roles that have greater responsibility, different titles, whatever happens to be, but it helped elevate these seven people to these roles within our organization. I'm worried for more responsibility in these ways.
Kristen Hayer:Yeah, I think that's great, you know, as you're thinking about. You know advocating for yourself, definitely talking about what matters to the boards, what matters to your leadership team, is an important approach for that. If somebody's out there listening and they're looking for their next role and I know there's a lot of people again, this is January 10th 2024, lots of people looking for jobs at the moment there's somebody considering taking a role as head of customer success. What suggestions would you have for them?
Jeff Heckler:I would say this to anybody who's got itchy feet and walked somewhere else is there's a? There's a term that I heard a long time ago, and it's better to accept a lot that you have than the lot that you don't know. You know. Well, all right, I'll just say and we can edit this out if you want but it's better to have the hell you're in than the hell you don't know about.
Kristen Hayer:Yeah, we want to edit that out.
Jeff Heckler:Anyway. So you know what you have going to. The grass is greener on the other side, or whatever other analogy you want to put on it. Beware right, beware of the unknowns. You know what you know. You know what you don't know. You don't know what you don't know.
Jeff Heckler:There's a lot of boomeranging we've seen in the space boomeranging individual that leaves the company, kind of goes back, which is great because there's a newfound love and respect between both parties. But it's also a little bit of lost time and efficiency, resources and dollars on both ends of the game as well. The things to be careful about. But then there's also analysis, paralysis. You've been out in the market and looking for so long and you just never going to find the perfect. Well, nothing's perfect. I don't do one thing perfectly in my life. So those are things to think about. And then I would go back to the things that we've outlined. Right, take a piece of paper, draw a line down the middle and we know what's positive and negative about the things you have right now. Then, on the other side of that piece of paper, why and why not, would this head of be the right choice for someone? And then even deeper, with a lot of decisions.
Jeff Heckler:I have to look at it. What's my driving force? Is this ego? Is this time? Is this money? Is this because I feel it's the right thing for me? I have younger siblings. They both have advanced degrees. I don't. Is that something that I'm going to let you get me for the rest of my life? No, but that's not where I needed to be For my profession. That's not necessary. So those are things that I think about and it comes intrinsic. What do I need to be happy? And is this title going to be? Or am I going to build contempt from day one? And it's just going to start to build and that's healthy for anybody.
Kristen Hayer:Yeah. The other thing, too, though, is just don't assume that whatever's put on the job description that you're applying to is the title. I know so many people that are chief customer officers who got the job by applying to a VP role, and people who got director titles after applying to a manager role, or you know. Like it is a point of negotiation, you can always negotiate away from head of, and sometimes they might have just put head of on the job description as a holding title, you know, and they might have a plan to title you differently later, you know, based on your experience coming in.
Jeff Heckler:The other thing that we've been talking about a couple of different places in the conversation that we've touched upon is educating those above us, like educating that the head of is a placeholder, but what we really see is this is a director role, or this is a senior manager or senior director, this is SPP or an executive vice president, like let's you know, really start to open it up, reconstruct it. If you're anything like me, I've had job wrecks where I've edited them after I've had some candidates come through, after our company has changed a bit.
Jeff Heckler:Almost every time, but after other stakeholders have also looked at them and started interviewing Jeff. I think we really want to go more this way, less this way. Hey, that's a good idea. Let's start to think about that. We have to change the con. Okay, we're going to have to go back to the finance and HR work this out. Okay, that's going to mean another six to four weeks, that's great, but at least we'll get it more right and we're doing a service to the new people we're bringing in our company, while also signaling people that are in our company so seriously and how much thought and consideration we want to put behind us.
Kristen Hayer:Yeah, yeah, I think that's great advice. Okay, we're going to off road now. So what do you see as the biggest trend in CS right now, and why?
Jeff Heckler:Oh, okay, followup. I don't see it as one singular thing, but the trend that I do see. We had COVID and that put a lot of good fire and gas and energy and inertia behind Customer Success and then we had a little bit of a low, we had a bunch of layoffs, then we came back pretty strong. Then we had the recession and I don't know if this is depending who you ask and what day it's a soft landing. No, this is going to be a prolonged global macroeconomic.
Kristen Hayer:Nobody knows.
Jeff Heckler:No one knows that we're going through. Yeah, no one knows. And yet and there are still some layoffs going on it's still very challenging. So, whether we're coming upward, continuing to stay flatter, even taking a little bit of a dip, it's very sluggish, right, the whole space is a little sluggish, and I think that I spent a lot of time in science as a kid. And there's this you need a certain amount of energy to move the needle just the little bit of a degree from a liquid to a gas, so boiling something, this amount of energy that it takes to move something just a little bit. Then we have a pendulum that's swinging in CS. So I think that, very simply, we're going into this next generation if you want to call it three dot oh or four dot oh or 19 dot oh of Customer Success, where we did all of this classic account management style hand holding, love your customer to death, trusted advisor to swinging the pendulum, to scaled digital async community platforms. And now we're coming back to okay, well, we can't automate the crap out of everything. Let's hit the pause button for a moment. Let's see what AI is going to bring into the technologies that are already there. I don't think we need to reinvent too much, but let's see how these are going to become more fortified and more efficient with some different you know, the gen AI and another tech center out there in the space.
Jeff Heckler:If you asked me this question 12 months ago, I said, well, I'm going to see. You know, see a lot of big M&A activity. I don't think that at all. Now I had a little bit.
Jeff Heckler:What I think is the best companies are never going to make it to an IPO or never going to make it to a big M&A because they're going to run out of ramp, or companies that do have cash and do see an advantage to getting more aggressive are going to gobble them up, and so I think we're going to see a lot of small M&A activity.
Jeff Heckler:I think we're going to see a little bit of wait and see what gen AI has in store, and I think we're going to have see a little bit of this pendulum coming back from scale. Then you can't scale and digital everything out of what ultimately is helping a human to succeed, and so if that's a CEO is trying to get this pet project of 18 months through, or this is an individual, that's, you know, trying to clean up their metadata for an organization. Like all the different levels, it all comes back to people, so we, thankfully, we've never lost focus of that, and so I think we're going to see just another stripped down and rebuild of okay, Customer Success is this scaled automated GenAI, supported human, first empathetic motion of our company, and this is where it lives, and by golly it's going to be a VP, not a Head of.
Kristen Hayer:Yeah, well, nice, nice segue back into our original topic there Awesome. Well, Jeff, thank you so much. I really appreciate your perspective I the perspective I think we share on the challenges of the head of title and and also just your perspectives on the field in general. You always have great things to say, so thank you for joining us on the show today.
Jeff Heckler:Well, thank you and thanks for all that you do for our CS community, individually and with Success League and Success Radio, helping out thousands of people every year, no doubt in a very personal way. So thank you.
Kristen Hayer:Thank you. So, jeff, if someone wanted to get in touch with you directly, what's the best way for them to do that?
Jeff Heckler:LinkedIn, linkedin's best. So, jeff, I believe LinkedIn.
Kristen Hayer:Great Well. I also want to thank our producer, Russell Bourne, and our audio experts at Auraform Audio. This podcast is a production of Success League Radio. To learn more about The Success League's consulting and training offerings, please visit our website, TheS uccessL eague. io, For more great Customer Success content. Follow The Success League on LinkedIn or sign up for our newsletter. You can subscribe to Success League Radio on Apple, Google, Amazon or anywhere else you get your podcasts and. Thanks for listening. Hope you'll join us next time.