How to Practice Customer-Centric Leadership

Anyone who is customer facing should be building close, authentic, long lasting relationships with their customers. It pays off in more ways than you can imagine: repeat customers, references, community champions, content ideas, competitive intel and so much more. Here are 5 ways you and your team can start building those relationships: 1. Amplify a customer’s LinkedIn posts - When your customer posts something interesting, don’t just like it yourself but share the link on your internal chat and ask your team to like it as well. It’s amazing how powerful this is. It’s human nature to look at who is liking your content on any social platform and most people get a consistent number of likes. If you drive 50% more for a customer they will notice that. 2. Help find candidates for their team and jobs for them if they’re looking - In your position engaging with a specific persona all day every day you have amazing visibility and connections into relevant candidates for open jobs and companies hiring. If you let your customers know that you can be a resource for them on both sides of the table you will see how quickly you can start playing matchmaker. 3. Share best practices that have nothing to do with your company/product - Everyone is looking to improve in their job. Everyone wants to know what their peers are doing at other companies. When you hear good ideas from other customers or read about a best practice, send it to them. Just show them you’re thinking about them and are invested in them being successful. 4. Make them look good in front of their manager and/or team - It needs to be authentic and relevant but find a reason to give your customer a shoutout when you’re in a meeting with them. It doesn’t even need to be a big thing but something about how they’re the fastest to roll out your product, how their feature request ended up becoming a game changer for a bunch of customers, how they’re the most productive team you’ve seen at one particular thing. 5. Fight for a feature/bug fix/service that they’re asking for - In short, be the squeaky wheel for your customer. When they ask for something, set the expectation that it takes a while to get that thing done but then go fight for it internally. Each company has their own process for this kind of stuff but if you push in the right ways you can usually get their request prioritized. When it’s done make sure the customer knows you fought for them to get that thing done. The best thing is that these are “free”. Of course they will take time and energy but the return on this work is astronomical. I honestly didn’t appreciate the power of these relationships when I started my career but I now have close relationships with so many customers that I’ve worked with over the years. They’re a sounding board for business ideas, they’re working with companies I’m advising and we’ve become each other cheerleaders. What did I miss? What else are you doing to build relationships with your customers?

I bought and installed a huge whiteboard in my home many years ago. I regularly close my laptop and put my phone on DND, and I just draw out loud. Prior to the launch of our small business (a dementia caregiving and support organization based out of our memory care community), I had one such white boarding session about marketing [pictured below]. In red I drew the typical sales funnel for senior living. It is one I’ve known for years and always thought, “if I could do it myself, I’d do things differently.” In black I drew a contrasting visualization of a customer journey centric approach. A few of the highlights in my thinking: - Embrace digital. Instead of thinking of digital as just a means to capture the lead to get it to a live person, improve the digital experience for customers so they can spend more of their time answering their own questions and opting IN or OUT of the sales cycle. - Focus on quality over quantity. Instead of simply driving higher lead volume, do your best to clearly define your audience and curate your leads (lower them!). Instead of converting 4 out of 100 leads, convert 4 out of 25. - Recalibrate marketing spend (including time) from solely focusing on new customers to engaging 50% of the time on existing customers and better content (facilitate word of mouth). - The website shouldn’t be the company’s story. It should be the customer’s story reflected back to them. I’m proud to say that this whiteboard drawing is nearly identical to the actual marketing strategy that our company has executed. Oh and that 4 out of 25 goal, we didn’t exactly land there. We went well past it. Over the past two years we have averaged an inquiry to closing rate of around 35%. (That’s a brand new company with zero market presence prior to opening.) At best, when I was a top performing sales person in senior living, I converted about 10-15% of my total leads. Today, we spend LESS time on leads that don’t match our persona. We spend ZERO on paid referrals. We don’t have a dedicated sales position. We have virtually no discounts or incentives. What all this really means…? We are being GOOD STEWARDS of our customers’ resources. When we don’t have superfluous and leaky spending in sales and marketing efforts, more of our resources are spent toward: - staffing ratios - training and development - resident programs - food - community engagement I spent years and years trying to convince other companies to embrace a new sales and marketing approach. “Good ideas, James, but…” The morals of this story: 1️⃣ Make time to be creative!💡 2️⃣ Reverse engineer sales from the customer journey. Create marketing that’s a love letter to your customer’s story. 💜 3️⃣ Embrace the mavericks on your team or watch them become your competitors. 🔥 P.S. These are nowhere near our boldest and most moonshot ideas. We’ve got a lot more fueling us than something as brittle as ambition. We’ve got LOVE in our gas tank. 🫶

If your big bet on driving customer outcomes is “let's get everyone back in the office,” you've definitely changed the view, but are you also driving customer value? Ask yourself a really simple question: do your customers see badge swipes? Customers actually experience faster answers, cleaner handoffs, and fewer do-overs. Don't confuse a facilities policy dressed up as a strategy. Here's a quick use case I can share: A global payments team mandated three days in the office to “unlock collaboration.” Onboarding dragged on for the same amount of time, tickets bounced around like they were in a pinball machine from 1978, and escalations still spiked every Friday at 3pm EST. Nothing meaningfully changed until a small group of motivated team members mapped the work, identified duplicate approvals to be killed off, set decision SLAs that were aligned to the customer, not the company, and documented the work for others to follow going forward. Cycle time dropped because the operating model changed, but the most work happened outside of the hybrid policy and within a collaboration tool, not on a whiteboard in the office. This is what being “customer-led” is all about: It's outcomes first, then org. You measure cycle time, right-first-time, and customer effort across the journey. You publish artifacts that survive meetings. You create working agreements, decision logs, and playbooks. You train managers to coach on throughput and quality, not attendance. If presence helps these metrics, great. If not, you're only slowing yourself down. If you're in a leadership position, here's what to consider doing next: Replace your attendance target with an outcome scoreboard and review it weekly with your team. Redesign rituals. Have standups by artifact, decisions by SLA, docs by default. Run a 30-day experiment on one journey slice and fund whatever cuts time-to-value the most. And be vocal about what you're looking to do at your company, not only with your team members but also with your leaders too. Not sure how any leader is going to argue with what you're trying to achieve. #customerexperience #employeeexperience #futureofwork #leadership

CX leaders, we failed... We have to admit it: CX is still not treated as a true discipline like Marketing or Finance. Real CX practitioners design, manage, and improve the entire customer journey, every interaction, every touchpoint. But unlike marketing and finance, which have hard currencies (impressions, ROI, dollars) and decades of academic backing, CX is still seen as the “arts and crafts” corner: nice to have, a little fluffy, hard to pin down. And that’s on us. CX is not a spectator sport. If you’ve been sitting on the sidelines watching the car drive by when you should be in the car steering it, it’s time to change. Here are five things to stop doing, and what you might want to start instead. CX Stop → Start Playbook ✨ Stop Selling “Delight.” Delight sounds like sprinkles on a cupcake. Stop pitching magic moments. → Start Reducing Friction and Proving Financial Impact. Make the basics flawless and tie it to dollars. 🫶 Stop Being the Empathy Police. Execs don’t want sermons about how customers are human beings. They know. → Start Connecting Empathy to Business Outcomes. Retention, loyalty, and spend, not moral high ground. 📊 Stop Drowning in Surveys. NPS worship is a dead end. If all you bring is survey results, you’re a glorified feedback collector. → Start Using Data as a Business Case. Link metrics to churn, lifetime value, and efficiency. 🪑 Stop Acting Like Victims. “We don’t get a seat at the table” is code for “we didn’t make ourselves indispensable.” → Start Making Yourself Unignorable. Show ROI, risk, and upside until leaders can’t move without you. 🎯 Stop Overcomplicating. Fancy journey maps with rainbows and post-its mean nothing if you can’t say, “Fixing this checkout step nets us $3.2M.” → Start Simplifying to Impact. Translate fixes into fast, measurable, undeniable business gains. CX will never be taken seriously until we take it seriously. Let's stop decorating the sidelines and start steering the car. Because if we don’t prove CX is a discipline, no one else will.

🔑 The Best Customer Success Leaders Are Maniacal About Retention Too many CS leaders get distracted by shiny objects—expansion playbooks, cross-sell campaigns, new tool stacks—while quietly losing sight of the single most important growth lever: minimizing churn. Retention isn’t just a health metric. It’s the foundation of sustainable business growth. The best CS leaders cherish every customer saved as equivalent or even more to a new customer won. They build organizations where churn prevention is not a reaction—it’s a strategy. What does that look like in practice? 👉 Data obsession – leading indicators of risk (usage, sentiment, support patterns) are tracked, reviewed, and actioned daily. 👉 AI-powered insights – predictive churn modeling, natural language analysis of customer feedback, and AI-driven health scoring surface risks earlier than human eyes ever could. 👉 Root cause discipline – every churn event triggers a post-mortem, feeding process, product, and enablement improvements. 👉 Customer accountability – retention targets aren’t buried in CS dashboards. They’re board-level metrics, shared across Sales, Product, and Support. 👉 Proactive playbooks – at-risk signals trigger outreach early, with tailored interventions that feel helpful, not desperate. 👉 Executive presence – leaders personally step into high-stakes relationships, proving that retention is everyone’s job, top to bottom. The difference between average CS leadership and world-class CS leadership is simple: 📉 Average leaders see churn as inevitable. 📈 Great leaders see churn as the enemy of growth. 💡 If you want to know how customer-centric your company really is, ask yourself: Who owns retention, and how maniacal are they about it?

Most customers don’t actually know their goals. We spend so much time trying to “uncover” customer goals, but what if there’s nothing to uncover? Not because customers don’t care. Not because they’re not strategic. But because they’ve never been asked to think that way. Most customers are thinking: “𝘐 𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘵 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘷𝘦 𝘢 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘮.” Not: “𝘐 𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘦 𝘐 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘮𝘢𝘱𝘱𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘴 𝘐 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘯𝘦𝘦𝘥, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘰𝘰𝘭 𝘵𝘰 𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦.” Also, the initiative with your tool is new and something they don't do very often so they don't have same level of experience you and your company has. That’s where you come in. You’ve seen hundreds of accounts. You know what success should look like. You know the goals that actually drive results and the benchmarks that show if they’re on track. So here’s how to shift the conversation: 𝟭. 𝗖𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘇𝗲 𝗴𝗼𝗮𝗹𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗺𝗮𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿:  • Save time  • Save money  • Drive leads  • Boost productivity 𝟮. 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘀:  • Open rate  • Cost per lead  • Leads per month  • Resolution time 𝟯. 𝗔𝗱𝗱 𝗯𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝘀: Poor → Good → Best (ex: <5 Leads/mo, 6-15 Leads/mo, 16+ Leads/mo) 𝟰. 𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗴𝗼𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝘀𝗲. If they’re generating 1 lead a month, don’t aim for 25. Example: “𝘎𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘰𝘶𝘴 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘯𝘤𝘦, 𝘐 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘨𝘰𝘢𝘭 𝘣𝘦 10 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘴/𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘩 𝘣𝘺 𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘘1, 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘦 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘴𝘩𝘪𝘧𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘱𝘩𝘢𝘴𝘦 2 𝘪𝘮𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘵𝘰𝘸𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘴 20 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘴/𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘩.”) The opportunity isn’t to 𝘢𝘴𝘬 for customer goals. It’s to help them 𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘰𝘴𝘦 the right ones together and guide the path forward. Because the CSM isn’t just a partner. You’re the strategic coach they didn’t even know they needed. How do you guide goal setting with your customers? #customersuccess

I have been coaching a good amount of revenue leaders as of late. Heads of sales, vp's of sales, chief revenue officers and founders who are wearing the sales hat because they are pre-seed or seed. I ask them all this question early on in our journey together. "Can you tell me the details behind your last 5 deals closed?" They typically know the answers. But, it is all in their head or their reps head. I then ask them this question. "Does everyone in the organization know the details behind the last 5 deals closed? I'm talking, marketing / product / legal / finance / IT / HR. Everyone!” They typically say, no. People know we won deals but not the details. This is wear I push them to implement my "win story" framework as it pertains to onboarding. OMG, a sales leader working with HR & People Ops..... Yep! Step 1: Actually get to know your people team and not just when issues come up. Step 2: Walk through some recent win stories with them. Step 3: Tie ROI to why you want to have an onboarding session with everyone hired that talks about "win stories." If you need help here. Use this. "Sarah! All employees are "customer facing" these days, especially in the world of social media. It is important for them to know why we exist other than our mission, vision and values. They need to know WHY the last 400K deal signed with us, like the deep reasons. Example, ABC org partnered with us because of a succession action plan. They had a lot of processes in place and were tying performance to pathing but coaching was missing, that is where we came into play. To take that critical talent and prepare them for future V - C Suite opportunities!" Something like that. Step 4: Be organized. Have all of your "win stories" in one location so you can point new hires to a specific area to read and study. Step 5: Make the meeting very short. Typically a Q&A due to their study and then share one recent win and go into everything from deal size to lead source to revenue to mutual action plans to expansion hopes. Step 6: Be sure you work with whoever owns your slack or teams environment and loop in your rev ops person to ensure that any time a "closed won" deal happens, an update goes to each person on the team! Can have a channel just titled "win stories." Here is what will happen when you implement this, seen it time and time again! Revenue will go up. Why? Because you will have the entire team thinking about the WHY behind the organization and how you are making your customers and future customers life easier. And if you want to get real real crazy? Have every other leader in the org implement something similar about their day to day wins and actions, CTO / CMO / CHRO / CPO / and everyone else! PS-In a remote world, we have sort of lost touch with this type of stuff. We no longer hear Jamal or Ashton running down the hall talking about a deal they just closed or Sam or Larissa talking about their new feature release while talking to the SE team.

Bad customer experience (CX) is costly. But worse than the cost is the damage it can do to your business. We’ve all seen the fallout from poor customer interactions—lost sales, negative reviews, and damaged reputations. That’s why it’s crucial to prioritize and enhance CX. Here are key strategies to implement: ➡ Map the Customer Journey: Each click and interaction shapes their perception. Create detailed personas to uncover needs, behaviors, and pain points. ➡ Process Inventory: Identify inefficiencies, like delayed shipping, by mapping the customer journey and tracing issues back to their roots. ➡ Ethnographic Research: Study customers in their natural settings to gain insights data alone can't capture. Align strategies with genuine customer expectations. ➡ Cultivate a Customer-Centric Culture: Follow Tesla’s lead—ensure every employee is driven to enhance CX, fostering continuous feedback and adaptation. ➡ Leverage Data: Use a 360-degree view of each customer to predict needs, personalize interactions, and exceed expectations. Don’t cut corners when it comes to improving CX. Focus on these strategies to drive loyalty and revenue. It’s worth it.

If you don’t know your customers’ goals by the end of January, that’s a you problem. When I was a CSM, January was my golden ticket for getting aligned with my customers. Everyone’s in “fresh start” mode, and there’s no better time to talk priorities, goals, and how to crush them together. But let me ask you something: If I opened your customer notes right now, would I see documented goals for every single customer? Would I see exactly how they define value? If not, don’t panic—yet. But it’s time to step up. For those of you managing a massive book of business (aka “How am I supposed to talk to everyone?!”), here’s your cheat code. This strategy is easy, scalable, and effective: 1️⃣ Record a video (Yes, even if you hate being on camera). Grab Loom (or your phone—no fancy tools required). Wish your customers a Happy New Year and let them know you’re here to help them with their business goals in 2025. No meeting request needed (because nobody wants another meeting). Instead, end with a CTA: “Take 2 minutes to share your 2025 goals using this quick form!” 2️⃣ Create a form (keep it simple). Build a survey with dropdowns, picklists, or examples relevant to your product's value. Help your customers think, “Oh yeah, THAT’S what we need to focus on.” 3️⃣ Distribute in bulk. Send the video + form link to your key contacts. Use your CSP, CRM, or even old-school email—it doesn’t matter how you send it, just send it. 4️⃣ Track it. Follow up. Repeat. Spreadsheet? CRM? Sticky notes on your desk? Whatever works for you, track responses and follow up with the stragglers. 5️⃣ Turn insights into action. Take those submitted goals and bake them into your next call. Ask deeper questions. Validate their objectives. Show them how your product becomes their superpower. If your book is smaller: Just make goal alignment a top agenda item for your next call. No excuses. Here’s the deal: January is prime time to do this. If you don’t have your customers’ goals locked in by February, that’s a you problem. Don’t leave this opportunity on the table. Lean in. Get it done. Your customers (and your metrics) will thank you.

A reminder to all CS practitioners and leaders alike. Never set up a call to “just check in” - make sure you have a plan! Below is an actual example of guidelines I've put out for a few of my teams. Feel free to take them and make them your own. What else would you add? ________________________________ The check-in call is a good time to review the status of the partnership and mutually created goals, update any action items, discuss challenges, and adjust plans accordingly. You should also use this time to share any product updates! They will likely hear about things from a marketing drip campaign, but you are their trusted advisor, so it's great to hear them directly from you as well. A few other helpful things that can help guide content for these calls are: - Use Google Alerts and see if there's news about the customer. Bring up anything good or positive you've learned and ask probing questions about how and if this impacts their function. - Twitter and LinkedIn are also helpful for looking for updates that are interesting. - Come with a key insight that you've learned about their industry from others you are working with. Try showing them that you know their account and their market and that you are a valuable partner. - Look at usage trends. Has usage changed recently? Talk about usage trends and anything interesting you are seeing. Are there any other folks that should have access? - Try to get connected with other departments that could benefit from using this service/solution. - Bring up the past EBR goals and keep them at the center of the conversation. - Be prepared to discuss open tickets as it is likely to come up. Best Practices: - Before your call, send an agenda (at least 1 day in advance). Always be respectful of their time. Ask: - Is there anything you’d like to add to the agenda? - Is there any person who should be added to the call? - Come with some probing questions ready for problem statements or progress you’d like to assess. Always have a few and work them in naturally. When you start the call, start with some small talk, but keep things on track. - Have one slide that shows the agenda. Prioritize items by importance. - Try and stay on the agenda, but also listen for topics that may drive strategy. - Be flexible and prepare to adapt to their needs. Mind your talk-to-listen ratio. - It’s important that you lead and share, but make sure you talk less than the customers. Of course, I am not suggesting you sit in awkward silence, but make sure you are aware of how much you are speaking compared to them. Listening actively. Pay attention to what’s being said, how it’s being said, tone, body language, and any other non-verbal cues. This will help you gain a greater understanding of the overall health of the relationship. Follow through and follow up! - Always follow up with a thank you email with any information or actions clearly documented. These emails should be sent within 24 hours of the initial meeting.