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Hi ​there]​,

 

So, my last newsletter was the first week of November. Did I miss anything?

 

Before the tech layoff wave, before SVB, before my first time getting Covid (then my rebound on Christmas Eve), before ChatGPT, ya know, happened… It feels like a lifetime ago that predictability was something we could claim to have. Do you feel that you’ve gotten your prediction skills back? Or maybe you’ve just pieced back together your sense that they ever existed? I mean, who can say what CS will look like in a year?

 

Sorry, I didn't mean to send you into a nihilistic tailspin. On the contrary, you have trained for unpredictability. Do you remember that feeling from March & April 2020 of, "What on earth happens next?" In your day-to-day life, in the four walls of your home, the only possible answer was, "What's immediately in front of you." (Or, in the style of a Jeopardy answer: "What is Tiger King.") So, you know how to pick your way forward, one breadcrumb at a time, if you realize that that's what's called for.

 

In CS Ops right now, we need to be in breadcrumb mode. Thanks to those layoffs and SVB and all the rest, all of a sudden, CS Ops is a customer-facing role. CCOs and CFOs have set their sights on Digital CS as the Important New Thing to build. All the tools in that toolkit are either owned by CS Ops, or CS Ops mediates where they slot into the customer lifecycle:

  • Automated emails & reports
  • In-app engagements
  • Pooled CS (reactive or proactive)
  • Community
  • Small-group events
  • Large-group presentations
  • Product documentation
  • Customer education
  • Customer portal / hub
  • Listening posts for customers' needs (surveys, product usage)
  • Data to send communications (names, roles & personas, emails, unsubscribes, outreach throttling)
  • Data to score organizations and individuals on the spectrum from 'at risk' to 'advocate'

 

The problem is that this list is WILDLY OVERWHELMING. And Crawl-Walk-Run sounds like a lovely methodology, but it doesn't actually tell you what method is right for your organization.

 

I'm here to tell you that nothing can tell you what is right for your current customers. Other company's experiences could be a misfit for your customers, for your team. Certainly learn about others' experiences, but you can't expect that the few Digital CS motions that you try will have a specific impact. There's unpredictability. The maximum confidence you can have is, "This next step seems promising."

 

To build a confident sense of "If we do X, we can expect Y," you need to build real-world experience. That's your most important job when doing something for the first time, not cranking out impact. (The impacts will come, but they aren't perched at the forest's edge.)

 

We've been taught that 'professionalism' means gruelingly executing, with gravity and temperance, towards a predictable result. Wheee. I believe a different kind of professionalism is called for when you aren't hoeing a 1660s Massachusetts pea farm. No, you're creating a brand new way of engaging with customers. How can you create a space for Digital CS where you bring a professionalism that feels less like bricklaying and more like cracking open a box of LEGO?

 

I'm not just waving a wand over your mindset. Presto change-o! Rather, I'm asking you, what does it actually look like to construct the space where that flavor of professionalism is possible? If I could spend an hour either feeling a bit more clear about results to expect, or increasing my risk tolerance to try something more inventive and sooner, I'd choose the latter. Here are my suggestions for 'breadcrumb mode':

  • Low stakes. Build small. Launch to a pilot group. Run some role-plays. Whatever it takes so that you aren't betting your whole budget on one idea.
  • Imitate but adapt. Learn about what has worked for others. Lean towards things that have been successful. Know, though, that you'll need to make them your own. You can never expect that a copy-paste execution will have copy-paste results. (Your results could even be better, or lead to a different next step.)
  • Diversity of efforts. You'll learn more from trying three very different things than three similar ones. After finding what works, you can shift back to less diversity and more focus.
  • Diverge then select. The whole point of doing something new is inventiveness. Why are you rushing the invention step? One way to measure creativity is by how many ideas you wrote down and then left on the table. What ratio of 'keepers' to discards would you aim for? 1:1? 1:2? 1:20? Spend time generating a brain-bending, unruly profusion of reasonably interesting ideas. Then pick the most promising by grading them on estimated impact and expected feasibility.
  • Let the business carry the weight of the gamble that it took on you. Your company knows that it took a bet when it chose you for this initiative. Let them make that bet; let them carry all the trust and fear and hope that they played their best hand. You can trust that you're pretty great, so that means your job is to be the person who they bet on. What does it look like when you're the one doing this work? I can tell you that Gainsight put me in my role and they're getting a distinctly me-flavored result. Believe in your own flavor of inventiveness. It's the thing that your business is betting on you to have, right now, for Digital CS.
  • Show how little you know. If your boss put you in charge of something you've never done before, that no one has done before at your company, then you need budget & time to learn-by-doing. Be transparent about the time and latitude that you need to deliver some wacky results. There's a reason that trainee haircuts are free at my barbershop. There's also a reason that only some of the barbers are trainees. And there's a reason that they have the trainees doing real-world haircuts.
  • What's success? If you're in charge of something ever-evolving, so no one can ever learn how to do it perfectly, what kind of professional is best suited to that type of role? How do they approach their projects? What do they expect of themselves? What do their bosses hope they're doing? Society hasn't trained us in the type of professionalism that's called for. You get to make it up.
  • Learn explicitly. When you're learning-by-doing, especially as a team, it makes a huge difference to air out what you've each learned. I reliably get wonderful and unexpected insights from this Retro format:
    1. The Observable Facts: What did we achieve? What did we not achieve yet?
    2. Reflections: How do we feel about our progress? (This question is actively uncomfortable to ask a group, but don't skip it! Feelings are the language our minds use to compare our expectations and aspirations to reality. Also, they influence our actions.)
    3. Interpretation: What does all of this mean? What have we learned?
    4. Decisions: What does all of that tell us that we should do next?

I wish you luck!

 

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Seth Wylie | Director of Community

He/Him/His | Based in Boston, MA

Gainsight Certified Administrator

 

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