Laurie Barlev of Barlev Success insights provide a roadmap for both seasoned professionals and newcomers in the field of customer success, shedding light on the challenges, strategies, and the future landscape of this dynamic domain. Her emphasis on understanding and valuing the customer forms the cornerstone of her approach, setting a valuable precedent for the industry's evolution.
What Advice Do You Have For Someone's First 100 Days As Head Of CS?
Laurie emphasizes the importance of understanding the company, team, stakeholders, and clients in the initial phase. Learning the technology, aligning role expectations, and identifying a feasible yet impactful problem to solve within the company are crucial aspects in the first 100 days.
What Does Your CS Strategy Focus On Currently And In The Future?
Laurie's present strategy revolves around enhancing customer retention and exploring opportunities for growth, given the market's challenging environment for acquiring new clients. She underscores the importance of understanding customer values and consistently delivering on them, fostering a platform for potential growth.
How Do You Measure Success With CS?
She highlights the significance of both business and team-oriented success metrics. While gross revenue retention is a critical business metric, early indicators such as time to value, engagement, and customer feedback serve as key measures influencing the team's success.
What Pain Points Do You Have Leading A CS Team?
Laurie addresses the challenge of customer success being often seen as a cost center despite its significant contribution to revenue. Communicating the broader responsibility of the entire company towards customer success and handling customer complaints while maintaining team morale are major challenges she faces.
How Do You Establish Partnerships And Gain Buy-In With The C-Suite?
To get the C-Suite on board, Laurie emphasizes the importance of backing requests with data and building trust through delivering on promises. She advocates for transparency with the executives, looping them in on significant customer-related issues.
Do You Have An Example Of Utilizing Customer Feedback To Improve Your Company?
Laurie provides insights into leveraging customer feedback to improve products or services. She cites an example from her experience working with meet-up organizers, where engaging with customers directly led to identifying and solving issues, thereby enhancing customer satisfaction.
What Is The Future Of CS?
She predicts a continued emphasis on customer retention and growth and foresees a growing reliance on automation to manage and engage with a larger customer base, especially in the SMB market.
About Laurie Barlev
Laurie Barlev is a distinguished Customer Success executive with a profound focus on enhancing customer experiences. Her journey into the world of customer success started through a deep-rooted passion for understanding customer needs and delivering tangible value, which eventually led her to transition from product strategy to customer success about a decade ago.
Laurie offers an opportunity to learn more about her and engage in discussions through her website, Barlev Success, and her LinkedIn profile. She's open to sharing insights and assisting those looking to enhance their customer success strategies.
About CX Chats
CX chats is an interview series with Ben Holland, where we talk to industry leaders in the field of customer experience and customer success. Each interview dives deep into the insights from each leader and highlights how they became successful, tips for aspiring CX professionals, and their thoughts on the future of CX.