AMA: Jellyfish Senior Vice President, Customer Success, Nicole Alrubaiy on Influencing the C-Suite

Is it okay to say all of the other execs? I'm not joking when I say the Customer Success / Customer business is central to the company and needs to align with everyone. Sales - We need to tightly align on what kinds of deals we want to bring in and how we'll serve them. I need to get Sales excited about post-sale life so they can get prospects excited about it. Product - I joke with our Head of Product that we need to be besties, but we are serious about collaborating. I share trends I'm seeing ...Read More

Great question! I've fallen in this trap so I'm speaking from experience here. You need to lead the conversation here and find the right answer, and don't just take orders from the various departments on what they want CS to focus on. Being too responsive here (rather than proactive) is how we land in the camp of doing "all the things" and creating a ton of thrash on the CS team. My recommendation: Start by understanding what customers need. Talk to them-- customers of all shapes and sizes. Unde ...Read More

Ultimately, the executive team wants to know that the business is healthy and growing, and that they won't have any surprises coming at them. I see a lot of discomfort / unfamiliarity with the Customer Success teams among executives because the field is still relatively new, doesn't always have consistent definition, and is sometimes not quantifiable enough. Given that, here are a few questions that come to mind for execs when it comes to Customer Success and how your work helps to address them: ...Read More

Early in my career, I didn't. I was at a larger company with many functional and department heads. Not everyone will/should work directly with the C suite, but if the work you're doing has a high impact on the entire company, you will. My first real work with the C suite was when I was building a new Customer Success function at a mid-stage company. We had built our first churn/retention forecast and our CFO needed to understand our projections and have confidence in them before taking it to the ...Read More

You can go two ways here with respect to metrics. Use a metric they know and understand Pros: They can engage with it, they have an understanding of why it may be going up or down and a sense of how they can help influence it. Cons: It might not be the best measure of the health of the customer base or may be one of 5+ factors. Use something new that you feel better represents the business. Pros: You can have confidence (if you've done your homework) that influencing this metric will drive reten ...Read More

It's important to understand the goals of your company and your part in them. Only then can you really have a well-thought and engaging interaction with a C-level leader regarding the business. I sometimes see folks early in their career eager to share new ideas, but without the relevance to the business. We want ideas, but make sure they're tightly aligned to the goals of your organization and well-vetted. Get feedback on your idea from others and test it out in a small way if possible before g ...Read More