The Right Hire for Customer Success with Dan Barrett

In this curated episode of the Revenue Builders
Podcast, John McMahon and John Kaplan are joined by Dan
Barrett, Executive Vice President of Customers at MongoDB. Dan
shares his journey of evolving MongoDB’s customer success
strategy from a reactive to a proactive approach. He discusses
the importance of hiring the right profiles, implementing
disciplined processes, and understanding the nuanced root causes
of customer churn. This conversation is a must-listen for anyone
involved in customer success or looking to enhance their
customer-centric strategies.


KEY TAKEAWAYS


[00:00:36] Transition from Reactive to Proactive Customer
Success
[00:01:01] Implementing a Disciplined Process to Identify and
Address Risks
[00:02:30] Balancing Skill and Will in Hiring and Developing
Customer Success Teams
[00:04:47] Key Attributes for Successful Customer Success
Managers (CSMs)
[00:06:21] Common Pitfalls in Customer Success Leadership
[00:08:24] The Complexity of Understanding and Addressing
Customer Churn
[00:09:46] The Importance of Truly Listening to the Voice of the
Customer


HIGHLIGHT QUOTES


[00:01:54] "The earlier you engage with the customer, the better
chance you have of fixing their problems and getting them
happy."
[00:02:54] "Part of it was a skill thing, but part of it was also
a will thing. Do people actually want to be doing that kind of
job?"
[00:05:34] "The biggest strength of a great CSM is that they just
want to go above and beyond for their customers."
[00:07:31] "Customer success is not a silver bullet to a product
that doesn’t work or doesn’t have product-market fit."
[00:08:43] "Most churn situations are much more complicated and
nuanced than a single subcategory."
[00:10:33] "There is no substitute for actually talking to
customers and understanding what really went wrong."


Listen to the full episode with Dan Barrett
through this link: 
https://revenue-builders.simplecast.com/episodes/an-outcome-mentality-the-right-way-to-approach-customer-success


Check out John McMahon’s book here:
Amazon Link: https://a.co/d/1K7DDC4


Check out Force Management’s Ascender platform
here: 
https://my.ascender.co/Ascender/