Cross-Functional Collaboration & Community Building in Digital CS w/ Karessa Parish | Episode 107

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Digital CS looks like a lot of other things that might already exist that have similar projects that they might be working on.
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So even more important to have this internal roadshow and kind of figure out who's doing similar things.
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Once again, welcome back to the Digital Customer Experience podcast with me, Alex Turkovich.
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So glad you could join me here today and every week as we explore how digital CS and AI can help enhance the customer and employee experience.
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My goal is to share the insights that my guests and I have learned over the years so that you get what you need to evolve your own digital program.
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If you'd like more resources, head over to digitalcustomer success.com.
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There you'll find access to a chatbot that's trained on this content and get information about the Digital CX masterclass where I teach you how to execute and thrive in Digital CX.
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For now, let's get started.
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And welcome back to the Digital S podcast.
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It's been a bit, but I'm back with another guest episode.
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This time we have Carissa Parish joining us, who, if you've been following digital on LinkedIn at all, uh should be no stranger to you.
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Um but Carissa and I talk about a variety of digital-related things, such as uh digital versus scale, which is a topic that comes up all the time.
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Uh we talk about humor in global communications, uh, we talk about lessons from B2C in B2B, also spend some time on self-service onboarding and digital customer support.
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And we just kind of talk about a bunch of digital related things.
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So I hope you grab some great nuggets for your own program with this conversation with Caressa Parrish.
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It's funny because we are both in Austin and we're not doing this in person.
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We should meet in person sometime.
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But you know how the world works.
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Like calendars are tight, and also traveling anywhere in Austin takes like two hours.
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So, but I'm stoked to be chatting with you because I think you're doing some really cool stuff.
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And, you know, when whenever I kind of think about who I'm gonna have on the show, these days for me it's all about like people who are in the trenches doing great work and and and really digging through the problems of digital CS and fighting the good fight for getting awesome digital experiences in motion.
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And from our conversations, it seemed like you were doing exactly that.
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So I'm excited for this conversation, but first I'll you know, I'll turn it over to you.
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I'd love to get just you know, the tour of Caressa and what your like how your career has evolved into what you're doing today.
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Yeah.
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So it's actually, I think it's super interesting.
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I was a middle school teacher first and foremost.
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So as a middle school teacher, I realized I was repeating myself seven times a day to an audience that did not care what I had to say.
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Um and so I like brought digital learning into my classroom before digital learning was a thing, but now all of our kids, that's all they do.
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But then I had the opportunity to move into customer success, didn't know what that was at the time, for a product that I had championed at my middle school.
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And the same kind of challenge rose up like, oh my gosh, we're meeting with these customers and we're repeating ourselves all the time.
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And there were five of us, and no one had really done anything to scale the motion yet.
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We were all having the same meetings with customers.
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And so again, took it upon myself to start building out some digital content, learning content primarily, and just kind of fell into whatever scaled or digital CS is before it really even had a name to it, but decided like that's the part that I really, really love.
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I think you probably got into it about the same time I did when the industry was kind of wrestling with the whole thing.
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Like, is it a segment?
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Is it a strategy?
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Is it a thing?
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Like, what are we doing?
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That's cool.
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And so now, where are you now?
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Okay, so I'm at a company called Momentous Technologies.
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So we we do software for event and a venue management.
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So it's like a whole CRM project management, start to finish for um kicking off events and booking events for your venue.
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Yeah, that's cool.
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Yeah.
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Which probably means you have, you know, a lot of interesting customer data to work with, like a lot of probably a we yes.
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It and something that's like different, because I came from K-12 ed tech was that's like the audience I've worked with my whole life.
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So this is my first time working with a different audience.
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We're global, so that brings um new challenges to the table.
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The user types, like it's just a vast variety of user types and venue types as well.
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So just use cases are different.
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So there's a lot of variety, which is exciting, but it can also be a challenge.
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Yeah, because if I I think about events, and it can, I mean, there's all kinds of different events, I would imagine, and there's probably all kinds of customers using it for like edge case scenarios, too, right?
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For sure, yes.
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Yeah, that's really cool.
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I've always found that teachers make the best kind of customer success people for sure, but then also, you know, the digital customer success people, especially just because you know, there's a scrappiness involved in being a teacher, I think, because you have those limited resources and you're trying to figure out how to make something work out of nothing.
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And uh, you know, you've got all these various tools.
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And so I think I think that kind of the teacher mentality and the education mentality feeds one side of it from a content and a you know structure and a uh a learning perspective, but then you've got kind of this scrappiness of you know taping two sheets together with duct tape kind of mentality.
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For sure.
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And I think teachers too are always like looking for the next the next thing because the old thing isn't keeping our kids engaged anymore.
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So like where can I what's the new tool that's available to me that I can try and see if this is gonna keep them engaged this year compared to last year?
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Totally.
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I gotta give a shout out to my sister while we're talking about this, actually, because she's a high school language arts, she she leads the language arts department at at her school, but she's also like the resident technologist and got a master's in in education technology, and she's like running AI workshops for administration and all this kind of stuff, which is so cool, but it but that's totally reminded me of that.
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Yeah, teachers on the forefront to this stuff.
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Oh, yeah.
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And working with kids too who are growing up with it, which is crazy.
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Yeah.
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I know.
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Often, so this is totally off topic, but my last year of teaching, I taught robotics, but I say I facilitated robotics.
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Those kids definitely taught me more than I probably taught them.
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Yeah, well, that's part of teaching too, is you're learning, learning while you're teaching.
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Yeah.
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Well, that's super cool.
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I I definitely want to get into, you know, a lot of the things that you're doing because I think our listeners could, you know, benefit greatly from, you know, just hearing what kind of projects you're working on.
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I know there's a couple specifically that we talked about that would be cool to highlight, but um, you know, I I think one of the things that you and I discussed briefly was just kind of like this this digital mindset shift, if you will, or or like, you know, and it dovetails into what we were just talking about.
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Like, you know, what what does it take for maybe a digital CS practitioner or leader to kind of shift into that mindset, or what does it take an org to shift into that mindset?
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And I wanted to get kind of your take on it, and maybe just in general, your whole definition and ethos of digital CS.
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Yeah.
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I think the best definition, I don't even think I came up with it.
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Someone else came up with it, but they describe digital CS as like the connective tissue.
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So I keep going back to that.
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And when I do my little internal roadshow of what is digital customer success, um, because we also have scaled customer success in our org.
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And so many people think that that's the same thing.
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Some places it is, it is not here.
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Right.
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And so digital CS to me is like yes, we're meeting with customers one-on-one.
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And absolutely we want customers to have a person in the company that they can go to and have that personal relationship, but it is not realistic for them to um to meet with that person all the time.
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And it's also not realistic for them to only get support when they meet with that one person.
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And so to me, digital CS is like everything that happens in between those touch points with their person, if they have a person, digital CS is everything else.
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Hopefully, it's covering the 80 to 90 percent of the things that like we really don't want them to have to go to a person for these things.
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And therefore, we're going to guide them in the journey that we think creates the best customer and provide them all the information they need in the right places, all of that, without them needing that one person to help them.
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So that's that's kind of how I define it.
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I love that.
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That's super cool.
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Um, and it, you know, it's it's interesting because like you gotta figure out how to be proactive with this stuff in instances where you know a question is gonna come up or a topic's gonna come up or the the content would be especially timely, timely.
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But then on the flip side also, you know, you gotta figure out how to make that stuff reactive when a signal appears or something like that, or whatnot.
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So it's it's so it's a weird thing.
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Tell me a little bit about you you mentioned Roadshow for a second, because the thing that I've experienced, I'm sure you have too, is when you're working on these programs and building this stuff, you can't do it in a vacuum, right?
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You gotta you gotta really pull other departments, other leaders into the conversation because in essence, the entire company in one way or another is a stakeholder, right?
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So I'm curious to get your take on what you're doing there, how you're approaching those roads, what kind of conversations are you having, maybe what your operational cadence is around that stuff.
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That'd be super interesting.
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Yeah, I and I think the other important thing to that point is that digital CS looks like a lot of other things that might already exist, at least like pieces of it, like overflows into other job titles or departments that have similar projects that they might be working on.
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So, even more important to have this internal roadshow and kind of figure out who's doing similar things or where are gaps that I might fill.
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So, internal roadshow, I try to identify who are the main stakeholders that I'm probably going to be working with.
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So I have been at this company now for I think eight months.
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It still feels brand new to me, but who are the main stakeholders that I'll probably be working with?
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And I certainly want to meet with them first and foremost.
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And then also just department wide, like when are when's your next meeting for your department?
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And can I come and give like a 15 to 20 minute spiel and y'all can ask questions?
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It's really like, okay, here's my definition of digital CS.
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This is how it's different from scaled CS.
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This is how it's different from named CS.
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I mean, that's what we call it over here.
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Yeah.
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And here are the different things that I will be working on primarily and how it benefits you and how um these things are going to be helpful to you and your relationship to the customer and how you can utilize me to and the projects I'm working on to help you reach your goals.
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So those are the main things I try to focus on in these internal roadshows.
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And then also, if there's like similar projects, so this happens in product marketing a lot.
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Like, hey, you have a similar project, our metrics are probably different, but it doesn't make sense for us to have two of the same thing.
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That's confusing to the customer.
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So we got to figure out how let's work on this together and try to meet both of our goals with the same project rather than two separate projects.
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I know that as soon as we started talking about cross-functional stuff, that pretty much everybody who's listening, their mind probably immediately went to marketing and product marketing because the overlap is insane sometimes.
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And I think for a lot of organizations, that area specifically can be super contentious if approached the wrong way, just because you know, product marketing is essentially doing kind of what we do, but like with a different goal in mind, you know, with a different uh kind of different ethos and a and a and a different set of I guess outputs, if you will.
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But the the re you know, from a I love how you mentioned the customer experience element of it because from a customer's perspective, it like looks the same.
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Like Yeah, they don't know.
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So why am I hearing from Joe and why am I hearing from Sally?
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Yeah, exactly.
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So how how are you approaching that?
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And has that been a difficult thing for you, either in this role or in previous roles?
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In this role, it has not, but I think it's because I've I've learned so much in the along my other career journeys that I really wanted to make it a point to um focus on that first and foremost and not become territorial of my space versus their space.
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Also, our product marketing team is fantastic.
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Um, they're super easy to get along with.
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Um, and so that helps a lot.
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And we enjoy working together.
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I think I enjoy working with them.
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I don't know if they say the same.
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So we do we meet regularly.
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Not that we have a standing meeting, but it's like anytime I'm like, hey, I'm working on this project and I would love to bounce ideas or see if this is aligned with something that you're doing.
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So we have meetings pretty regularly to stay, stay on top of that.
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Yeah, it's so important.
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All this stuff is just communication, you know.
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We forget that sometimes.
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Like we're we we hide behind like SOPs and policies and all this kind of stuff.
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But man, just knock on the door virtually or in person if you can, and say hello.
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And like, what are you up to?
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It's amazing what you can accomplish, you know, just by communicating.
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Yeah, and I think a lot too is like it's not what I'm doing is better than the way you're doing it.
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Like I may have come across that way and previously, and I certainly don't want to come across that way at all.
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It's just we have two separate goals and they're both valid goals, but we need to find a way to work on it together so that we're just providing the best experience possible.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Otherwise, our customers are gonna start ignoring us.
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Yeah.
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So I I do want to go back and talk about how you all have structured scaled versus digital.
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And I mean, I get it.
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Like to this day, that is still a very confusing thing for a lot of people.
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And digital and scaled are used interchangeably.
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But I'm curious how you all have approached, you know, not digital versus scaled, but how you've worked how how you've approached integrating the two so they're both feeding each other.
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Yeah.
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I also work very closely with a scaled team.
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In our organization, the scaled team has a portfolio of customers.
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Now they it's a um, you know, around Robin style.
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Those customers don't know that they have a dedicated CSM, but they know that there's a team of CSMs.
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And so those CSMs do own a portfolio of accounts, whereas me on my side, on the digital CS side, we don't own any accounts.
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I'm not looking at individual account health and uh renewal stuff.
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But what we do should be supporting not only those scaled segments, but all customers across the board.
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Um, I just think that the relationship between scaled and digital is so important because scaled is relying on that digital strategy so heavy because they cannot meet with their customers as often as those named series.
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Right.
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So that's why I think scaled and digital often is interchangeable because they probably just work a lot closer together.
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We you have both in the org, but they're not the same in terms of what they do.
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Now, our scaled CS team, they do host our monthly webinar series.
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So they own that, whereas I do more of like the logistical and promotional side of it.
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But they are the content experts in terms of what is it that our customers need to hear about this month?
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We're gonna be the subject matter experts, and they want to be the face of it too, because they do want those, their customers to associate them with um customer success, whereas I'm kind of more behind the scenes there.
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Yeah, makes perfect sense.
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I um the thing that I often find myself talking with people about is that combination of customer facing and internal programs or automations or resources or tools.
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And it and it sounds like you're kind of operating in that that way too, where a fair amount of what you're building is customer facing, and whether it be you know campaigns or in-app or whatever, but then it sounds like a fair amount of it also is like internal triggering and alerting and signaling and tools and that kind of stuff, right?
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Yeah, it's a good balance of both for sure.
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What does that I mean, what is that functional?
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So let's say I'm a scaled, I'm gonna dig in here, so because I'm shameless.
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Okay.
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Let's say let's say I'm a scaled CSM or whatever.
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What what are they what are they seeing that they may or may not even know comes from your team?
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So I'll be honest here, we have not started any trigger-based accounts.
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That's kind of what we're looking at for Q2.
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We do have new like new products that are being being released as like add-ons, and they have been deemed as self-onboarding.
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Oh, cool.
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These new products are self-onboarding, they're not gonna go to professional services, and and everyone's hearing self-onboarding for the first time, and they're looking around and they're like, What is that?
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What is that?
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What are customers getting?
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Who's building this?
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Like, there is no plan whatsoever.
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Just like self-onboarding.
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Yeah.
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Well, who owns that?
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And so it came to after some time had passed, and we had heard this enough times, I'm like, okay, I need to dig in here.
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And it turned out that like the product team, like, oh yeah, well, they they click this button and then they get an email that has like a link to a document or something like that.
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I'm like, okay, I think I should own this.
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And so now the process we're going through is outlining what a standard self-onboarding campaign should include.
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What are the triggers?
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Um, and then, you know, depending on the complexity of the product and all of that, is like, okay, what should the sequence be?
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What should be included in that sequence?
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Um, so our customers probably don't know that when these start going out, these emails and the learning experiences that they'll be going through, that's my team that is building that up.
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Yeah, you you were telling me a little bit about that.
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And it sounds really cool.
00:22:04.519 --> 00:22:09.000
And I think something that, you know, there's a million ways to build this kind of stuff, you know.
00:22:09.159 --> 00:22:17.639
And and, you know, some of the most effective self-onboarding, to be honest with you, hasn't always necessarily been in app.
00:22:17.959 --> 00:22:23.159
Like I've gotten email drip campaigns from some vendors.
00:22:23.319 --> 00:22:26.759
What was one that I was talking about a lot a couple years ago?
00:22:26.919 --> 00:22:27.399
I forget.
00:22:27.559 --> 00:22:44.199
But anyway, it's like these drip campaigns that are super effective in just giving you the basics and and distilling content into like bite-sized chunks because we're all adults and we have short attention spans because we're all on TikTok and we need stuff in bite-sized chunks, right?
00:22:44.439 --> 00:22:45.000
Yeah, exactly.
00:22:45.319 --> 00:22:47.159
So I'm sure that's the world you're living in right now.
00:22:47.399 --> 00:22:57.480
Yeah, and we build our the digital CS team and my organization also is the customer education team building out the digital learning and the learning center.
00:22:57.719 --> 00:23:06.279
So we'll be able to do both and have ownership of the content and the experience.
00:23:06.679 --> 00:23:08.199
Yeah, that's really cool.
00:23:08.439 --> 00:23:09.319
That's really cool.
00:23:09.639 --> 00:23:17.959
Um and I I love one thing that you said, which is like I think you said I should probably own this.
00:23:32.599 --> 00:23:35.559
And it'll have stuff in it.
00:23:35.639 --> 00:23:37.559
And yeah, yeah, it has all the information.
00:23:38.119 --> 00:23:42.359
From our perspective, it's very clearly laid out and all that kind of stuff, right?
00:23:42.679 --> 00:23:45.559
But that doesn't it that ticks the box, sure.
00:23:45.719 --> 00:23:46.039
Yeah.
00:23:46.279 --> 00:23:52.359
But it it doesn't drive any kind of, you know, engagement or advocacy or adoption.
00:23:52.839 --> 00:23:54.039
Option or any of that.
00:23:54.359 --> 00:23:55.799
Yeah, exactly.
00:23:56.599 --> 00:23:56.919
Yeah.
00:23:57.079 --> 00:24:02.599
I I I I mean I encounter that a lot in this space specifically.
00:24:02.759 --> 00:24:09.399
And I think I think part of it too is like, you know, other orgs don't really know how to execute on something like that.
00:24:09.559 --> 00:24:17.480
So there's like a a lack of expertise necessarily in in how to build those customer-facing motions out.
00:24:18.039 --> 00:24:19.719
And so they just kind of don't do it.
00:24:20.039 --> 00:24:21.799
Yeah, that's so interesting to me.
00:24:21.879 --> 00:24:27.639
Like, I don't know, it just starts with one person who thinks like, hmm, maybe, maybe there's a better way.
00:24:27.799 --> 00:24:30.119
And uh maybe we should figure this out.
00:24:30.519 --> 00:24:33.799
Yeah, it's it's a whole different kind of customer advocacy.
00:24:34.039 --> 00:24:34.359
Yeah.
00:24:34.599 --> 00:24:42.439
It's not like really listening to the customer and taking their feedback and moving, it's like kind of shepherding the product experience a little bit.
00:24:42.839 --> 00:24:43.000
Yeah.
00:24:43.159 --> 00:24:43.959
Yeah, for sure.
00:24:44.039 --> 00:24:44.279
Yeah.
00:24:44.519 --> 00:24:49.959
Um, I know they do like betas for a lot of the products before they release.
00:24:50.119 --> 00:25:01.480
So my goal is to get set up in those co cohorts early on so that I can be listening and getting feedback to help build these campaigns.
00:25:02.119 --> 00:25:03.000
That's a good idea.
00:25:03.159 --> 00:25:03.719
Yeah.
00:25:04.039 --> 00:25:05.240
Yeah, I dig that.
00:25:05.399 --> 00:25:08.199
So your team also owns community.
00:25:09.959 --> 00:25:10.439
Advocacy.
00:25:10.839 --> 00:25:11.079
Yep.
00:25:11.240 --> 00:25:11.480
Yeah.
00:25:11.719 --> 00:25:11.959
Yeah.
00:25:12.119 --> 00:25:15.000
So again, sounds a lot like customer marketing.
00:25:15.159 --> 00:25:23.559
We actually we don't have customer marketing in our orgs, so we kind of take on, you know, a lot of what customer marketing might might have in another org.
00:25:23.719 --> 00:25:33.240
So yes, we own the community and we like partially own advocacy, that is a shared, shared ownership across everybody.
00:25:33.559 --> 00:25:43.399
But because our like advocacy program is mostly takes place in the community, it's like I own, I own that because I own the community.
00:25:43.719 --> 00:25:44.279
Yep.
00:25:44.599 --> 00:25:46.199
Yeah, that makes sense.
00:25:46.439 --> 00:25:48.039
So I guess tell me a little bit about that.
00:25:48.359 --> 00:25:50.279
Did you was that launched?
00:25:50.359 --> 00:25:52.279
Was that already a thing when you came in?
00:25:52.679 --> 00:25:55.480
It was mid mid process.
00:25:55.719 --> 00:25:56.919
Um, they were getting it set up.
00:25:57.079 --> 00:26:04.519
I knew in my interview process that that was like gonna be the number one thing um that they wanted me to do in the first few months that I was here.
00:26:04.759 --> 00:26:05.959
And so they were mid-process.
00:26:06.199 --> 00:26:08.839
They already selected their the community vendor.
00:26:09.000 --> 00:26:15.079
Um, and they had done a lot of like the foundational things in terms of like data integration and stuff like that.
00:26:15.159 --> 00:26:19.959
Um, but in terms of community strategy, um, that was a lot of mine.
00:26:20.119 --> 00:26:25.879
And then now I get to be like the moderator, facilitator.
00:26:25.959 --> 00:26:27.879
Um, hopefully it's a group effort.
00:26:28.039 --> 00:26:29.319
More and more people are getting involved.
00:26:29.399 --> 00:26:33.240
And a lot of our spaces in the community is meant to be customer led.
00:26:33.399 --> 00:26:37.079
Like that's the most valuable part for them is to be able to learn from each other.
00:26:37.240 --> 00:26:43.240
So majority of our forums, like there's several different forums in our community that people can be a part of.
00:26:43.399 --> 00:26:48.839
Um majority of them are customer-to-customer peer-to-peer forums.
00:26:48.919 --> 00:26:56.919
And we like don't do a whole lot in there except see if there's like opportunities for us to answer questions or redirect as needed.
00:26:57.240 --> 00:27:04.199
Other spaces in there are more of like a bulletin board where we want to show this webinar is coming up, or here's a new resource you might find helpful.
00:27:04.519 --> 00:27:06.519
So those are some of the other spaces.
00:27:06.839 --> 00:27:13.399
And then this community platform has like, I don't know if you're familiar with Influitive from back in the day.
00:27:13.559 --> 00:27:17.399
Um, they have like those mission type um engagements too.
00:27:17.480 --> 00:27:20.039
So we can push points out to our members.
00:27:20.119 --> 00:27:23.000
And so there's that gamification um component too.
00:27:23.079 --> 00:27:30.439
And so it's fun to kind of think about what kind of content we want to push out in the community and get them engaged through that way as well.
00:27:30.919 --> 00:27:32.279
Like badges and stuff.
00:27:32.519 --> 00:27:33.559
Yes, yes.
00:27:33.799 --> 00:27:34.679
So it is fun.
00:27:34.759 --> 00:27:36.679
The teacher and me, like I did.
00:27:36.839 --> 00:27:37.639
Oh yeah.
00:27:38.279 --> 00:27:46.039
Now, some of our customers, like they do not care about gamification at all, but they're there just for the peer-to-peer learning.
00:27:46.199 --> 00:27:49.000
Whereas some of our other customers are like, yeah, give me all the points.
00:27:49.079 --> 00:27:50.519
I want to be number one on the leaderboard.
00:27:50.679 --> 00:27:52.839
So there's something in there for everybody.
00:27:53.319 --> 00:27:55.079
Yeah, that's awesome.
00:27:55.319 --> 00:27:57.719
Um I'm trying to look up.
00:27:58.039 --> 00:28:03.319
We're gonna nerd uh we're gonna totally side channel uh side channel it.
00:28:03.399 --> 00:28:06.119
I'm gonna try to see if I can find this thing real quick.
00:28:06.359 --> 00:28:10.599
My wife and I, we got these pins off of the TikTok shop.
00:28:12.199 --> 00:28:14.759
I'm gonna show you a picture of it because it's hilarious.
00:28:15.000 --> 00:28:23.719
It's like, you know, when you get a gold star, um, you know, as a teacher, you give out gold stars or whatever.
00:28:23.879 --> 00:28:26.919
We got these pins, and this is the picture of the pin.
00:28:27.240 --> 00:28:28.359
Oh my gosh.
00:28:28.919 --> 00:28:32.359
And it says you're did it, and it's like a really haphazard star.
00:28:34.279 --> 00:28:41.159
So we got like a dozen of these things, and once in a while, if somebody does something really cool, give them a your did it pin.
00:28:41.399 --> 00:28:42.119
I love that.
00:28:42.199 --> 00:28:43.559
That's hilarious.
00:28:44.279 --> 00:28:47.079
Yeah, it's super funny, but it's that kind of thing.
00:28:47.240 --> 00:28:51.319
Like, you know, I love when you can interject like humor into these kinds of things too.
00:28:51.639 --> 00:29:00.199
That's what I'm still trying to figure out, like the customer base that we have, like how creative and how comedic can I try to be.
00:29:00.279 --> 00:29:01.079
Um, yeah.
00:29:01.399 --> 00:29:10.439
And if it will land correctly or not, especially since we have a global audience, like I don't know what you know how things are taken in other places.
00:29:10.599 --> 00:29:15.559
So I feel like I'm still testing the waters.
00:29:15.879 --> 00:29:17.240
It's it's tricky.
00:29:17.480 --> 00:29:29.159
One of my previous work experiences, we had a lot of customers in Europe, and specifically customers in Germany did not enjoy humor.
00:29:29.480 --> 00:29:30.119
Yeah.
00:29:31.079 --> 00:29:41.079
No shade to anyone who's listening in Germany, but like it's a very it's a very straightforward, and uh also I'm from Austria, full disclosure, so I speak German and it's all cool.
00:29:41.240 --> 00:29:48.519
But like, you know, it's a very straightforward form of communication where here's the facts, here's the bullets, see you later.
00:29:48.679 --> 00:29:49.000
Yeah.
00:29:49.159 --> 00:29:58.279
Where versus, you know, in North America and Canada, there's a lot of room for just being more casual and injecting humor.
00:29:58.519 --> 00:30:14.599
So what's interesting about that is is we, you know, in that in that gig, we actually started to segment our emails or our drip campaigns out by geography based on kind of formal, you know, how formal it needed to be.
00:30:14.919 --> 00:30:16.519
Yeah, I've considered that as well.
00:30:16.679 --> 00:30:19.079
We're not there yet, but yeah, I've wondered that as well.
00:30:19.319 --> 00:30:26.119
The community platform just recently got um gifies as part of like that, wasn't part of it.
00:30:26.199 --> 00:30:28.439
And so that's like my love language.
00:30:28.599 --> 00:30:32.759
And so I'm like, everything's getting a gifie, and I think I'm the only one in there.
00:30:32.839 --> 00:30:35.639
I'm like, no, no one else is excited about this.
00:30:35.959 --> 00:30:42.119
You need to find that one other person in there who's sending gifts.
00:30:42.279 --> 00:31:00.519
So you are I would imagine in your day-to-day, as you're having meetings or chatting with customer-facing folks or whatever, probably I don't know, four or five, six times a day, you're encouraging somebody to go into the community and engage and all that kind of stuff.
00:31:00.679 --> 00:31:02.519
Yeah, like, oh, have you been in the community yet?
00:31:02.759 --> 00:31:04.679
That would be a great idea for the community.
00:31:04.919 --> 00:31:05.959
Yeah, for sure.
00:31:06.439 --> 00:31:09.000
Yeah, and you're probably doing that with customers too, I'm guessing.
00:31:10.119 --> 00:31:10.679
Yeah.
00:31:10.839 --> 00:31:16.519
Um, it's it it's funny because the community is the community.
00:31:16.759 --> 00:31:39.959
I there's a really good reason why there are dedicated community managers in like large organizations and community teams, because it it takes conscious effort, constant pressure, and just that drive to on one end create the engagement and the interaction, which then creates value.
00:31:40.119 --> 00:31:48.119
But then on the other end, also to come in with massive value so that those who are going there, especially for the first time, are like, oh, this is cool.
00:31:48.199 --> 00:31:49.799
This is okay, you know?
00:31:50.039 --> 00:31:53.399
Yeah, like it's just the first challenge is just getting them in there.
00:31:53.480 --> 00:31:55.559
But yeah, that's the easy part.
00:31:55.879 --> 00:32:00.519
The hard part is getting them to come back over and over and over again.
00:32:00.919 --> 00:32:11.639
So are you seeing community as basically like where you're driving all of your customer engagements, you know, as where the webinars are, where the product updates are.
00:32:25.319 --> 00:32:28.919
Email still seems to be number one for our customers.
00:32:29.159 --> 00:32:39.480
Um and they've recently, the community platform did did recently launch like um like email notifications when new things are added.
00:32:39.559 --> 00:32:43.000
So there's still a little bit of room for improvement there.
00:32:43.159 --> 00:32:47.480
So our members will actually be notified, like, hey, come back in.
00:32:47.559 --> 00:32:52.359
There's something new for you, without me having to manually promote it all the time.
00:32:52.839 --> 00:32:53.399
Yeah.
00:32:53.719 --> 00:32:56.279
So hopefully that will continue to improve.
00:32:56.439 --> 00:32:59.399
I would love for the community to be our primary spot.
00:32:59.480 --> 00:33:01.559
And we're still like finding ways all the time.
00:33:01.719 --> 00:33:10.839
Like I just had a meeting yesterday with one of our CSMs who who owns a good handful of customers that are all from like the same like parent company.
00:33:11.000 --> 00:33:21.480
Um, and she was asking if we could open a private forum for all of those people to come together and like peer crowdsource from each other and stuff.
00:33:21.559 --> 00:33:24.279
I'm like, heck yeah, like how many more people is that in the community?
00:33:24.439 --> 00:33:25.240
Yes, please.
00:33:25.559 --> 00:33:27.000
Yeah, the answer is yes.
00:33:27.240 --> 00:33:27.559
Yeah.
00:33:30.679 --> 00:33:36.839
I was working in K-12 ed tech, and our platform was reliant on teachers.
00:33:37.000 --> 00:33:57.719
So, like the principal or the um superintendent might purchase it and and they might even use it, but if it's the teachers that really are the ones that using it is going to make or break the renewal at the end of the year, um, you know, we spend so much time and attention on training these five people one time.
00:33:57.959 --> 00:34:09.960
And then we're like, okay, principal, who has a million other things to do, go train the the rest of your staff on how to use this tool according to best practice and consistently throughout the year.
00:34:10.119 --> 00:34:11.960
So, like, we cannot rely on that.
00:34:12.199 --> 00:34:15.880
We have to rely on other measures and who's going to do that.
00:34:16.039 --> 00:34:18.920
Um, it has to be built into the process.
00:34:19.240 --> 00:34:19.639
It does.
00:34:19.800 --> 00:34:33.320
And and I mean, how many times have you gone to an onboarding and the decision maker, person who signed the contract, team who made the decision to purchase is nowhere to be found, right?
00:34:33.719 --> 00:34:41.800
So it's like that hearts and minds rapport building all over again in the post-sale.
00:34:42.039 --> 00:34:50.440
And it's interesting because there are, you know, there are some companies who do really cool, like inexpensive stuff when it comes to that.
00:34:50.599 --> 00:35:03.079
Like I'm I'm thinking teachers, you know, like I mean, it wouldn't cost a whole lot of money to like send a teacher a mug once they finished your course.
00:35:04.519 --> 00:35:06.599
Or once they do XYZ.
00:35:06.679 --> 00:35:16.679
You know, like it does it doesn't cost that much money to like do little those little acts of kindness, I think, are huge and like perfect for digital.
00:35:16.920 --> 00:35:17.240
Yeah.
00:35:17.719 --> 00:35:18.679
Come in and do stuff.
00:35:18.920 --> 00:35:19.719
Yeah, exactly.
00:35:19.880 --> 00:35:22.840
The threshold's pretty low, like the benchmark's pretty low.
00:35:22.920 --> 00:35:24.440
Anything is better than nothing.
00:35:24.760 --> 00:35:25.400
You totally.
00:35:25.559 --> 00:35:26.280
Yeah, exactly.
00:35:26.440 --> 00:35:33.639
So as we kind of close out, um, I always like to like to ask folks what they're paying attention to in terms of content, like what's in your content diet?
00:35:33.719 --> 00:35:34.440
What are you reading?
00:35:34.519 --> 00:35:36.119
What are you listening to?
00:35:37.400 --> 00:35:43.320
I used to be on LinkedIn all the time, and I would learn from a lot of folks on LinkedIn.
00:35:44.039 --> 00:35:49.480
I have since stepped away from LinkedIn as being as active there and finding some more balance in my life.
00:35:49.559 --> 00:35:58.119
But we do still have a meeting with some of my former colleagues that we've all moved on to to other gigs now, but we're all still in the similar space.
00:35:58.360 --> 00:36:05.079
So we do come back together um weekly or monthly to share what we're working on, new things that we've seen.
00:36:05.159 --> 00:36:12.119
So that's where I find the most value is just hearing hearing from people I know, what other things that they're doing, what has worked and what hasn't worked.
00:36:12.199 --> 00:36:15.639
So that's what's in terms of digital CS and the work.
00:36:15.719 --> 00:36:17.480
That's that's the content.
00:36:17.880 --> 00:36:26.279
I mean, you can't argue with in-person stuff and staying connected to colleagues and you know, sharing best practices and stuff.
00:36:26.440 --> 00:36:28.119
So yeah, for sure.
00:36:28.679 --> 00:36:29.880
Well, this has been super cool.
00:36:29.960 --> 00:36:32.199
Um, where can people find you and engage with you?
00:36:32.279 --> 00:36:35.639
I mean, LinkedIn is a black hole sometimes for a lot of stuff.
00:36:35.960 --> 00:36:39.639
Yeah, even though I'm not on LinkedIn so much anymore.
00:36:39.799 --> 00:36:41.319
I do still have a profile there.
00:36:41.400 --> 00:36:45.880
I do still check it occasionally, so you can certainly still reach out to me on LinkedIn.
00:36:46.039 --> 00:36:48.199
I am, I will see it.
00:36:48.360 --> 00:36:49.639
I will connect with you.
00:36:49.799 --> 00:36:54.119
Um, and then we from there can connect again offline off of LinkedIn if needed.
00:36:54.199 --> 00:36:56.519
So yeah, happy to connect with anyone.
00:36:56.839 --> 00:36:57.799
That's awesome.
00:36:58.039 --> 00:37:01.239
Well, um, thanks for spending this time with me.
00:37:01.480 --> 00:37:04.839
It was cool to hear about the stuff that you're building.
00:37:05.079 --> 00:37:13.480
Um, and it's always fun to hear from folks who are kind of in the throes of building and where you are and what you know what you're doing.
00:37:13.559 --> 00:37:17.079
So that was really fun, and I appreciate you taking the time out of your Friday.
00:37:17.400 --> 00:37:18.920
Yeah, thank you so much.
00:37:19.079 --> 00:37:19.880
Thanks for asking me.
00:37:20.360 --> 00:37:23.559
Thank you for joining me for this episode of the Digital CX Podcast.
00:37:23.639 --> 00:37:28.279
If you like what we're doing, consider leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice.
00:37:28.360 --> 00:37:29.079
It really helps.
00:37:29.239 --> 00:37:41.880
Don't forget, digitalcustomer success.com is where you can find extra resources, a chat bot trained on this show's content, and the Digital CX masterclass that helps you master digital and AI in CX.
00:37:42.119 --> 00:37:43.319
My name is Alex Turkovich.
00:37:43.480 --> 00:37:46.519
Thanks again for joining, and I will see you next time.