Ruth Wisniewski on Coaching with Clarity: What Customer Success Really Needs to Scale

Overview:

Kerry Guard sits down with Ruth Wisniewski, Senior Director of Customer Success at Vehlo, to explore how CS teams can scale without losing the human connection. Ruth shares how she rebuilt her org through systems, coaching, and cross-functional clarity—redefining success beyond just retention and NPS. From managing major change to turning support from defense into offense, this episode is packed with real-world insights for leaders growing customer-centric teams in fast-moving environments.

Transcript:

Ruth Wisniewski 0:00

So I think a lot of people end up in customer success because it feels good. It feels good to help someone accomplish their goals. It feels good to know that you were a little piece of that accomplishment, right, that you taught them a skill, or taught them how to lay out a strategy, and in the end, they were able to hit that milestone and be successful. So that's one way I think of beyond retaining my customers, just the day-to-day gratification of being there for them, and having a true partnership. Being a trusted, trusted advisor is probably an overused term in my industry, but really having their trust and knowing that when I give them advice, it is with their best interests at heart and based on everything I've learned that I've seen the best practices that I see work and bringing that to them so that they too can use them, that's huge for me.

Kerry Guard 1:18

Hello and welcome back to the show. We are officially, officially Back on T-R-A-C-K. The new messaging and branding have launched. I've been seeding it for a while and avoiding trying to say our previous name while we got her new messaging up and up and running. But we are up and running. We are officially Back on T-R-A-C-K. Why Back on T-R-A-C-K? Because we are here to help founders get their marketing up and running in a way that doesn't burn their runway and their sanity. So we are going to help them actually lean into a growth marketing strategy and bring on some experts, like we have today, to get that done for them. So yes, we are. We are officially, officially Back on T-R-A-C-K. Welcome to the show. I am joined by Ruth Wisniewski, Senior Director of Customer Success at the Vehlo SaaS platform, transferring how automotive businesses run. Ruth's career has been all about transformation, taking Customer Success teams from reactive support models to proactive growth engines. She's led through change of every stage, from enterprise SaaS at BrightEdge to scaling operations at a private equity-backed tech company. We'll talk about what it really takes to build a high-performing CS organization, how to align teams across functions, and why clarity and empathy go hand in hand. Ruth, welcome to the show.

Ruth Wisniewski 2:46

Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here and excited for your new branding. I love it. Back on T-R-A-C-K. Just makes so much sense.

Kerry Guard 2:55

Yeah, you know, I love tea time. I think I mentioned this in my post, I had, like, sort of an identity crisis of not wanting to give that up, because I felt like we built a little following. We had a little bit of, you know, people knew the brand a little bit, but it had nothing to do with anything other than the fact that I moved to England five years ago. So I really needed to bring it back to the center and to support the MKG brand as well. So yeah, glad you like it, because I think it, I think it makes a lot of sense as well. And I'm a very logical person, and this is jiving for me. So great to hear that it's working for you too. Absolutely, before we get started into the heart of our conversation, we're going to do a quick warm-up, a little customer reality check. Okay, the premise is you're going to, I'm going to, quick-fire responses, where you will share your gut reaction to the real world. CS, scenario. Oh, man, okay, ready? All right, yeah, you open a renewal report and see churn creeping up. What's your move?

Ruth Wisniewski 4:06

Analyze the data deeper underneath it. Why is it creeping up? Look at my exit interviews.

Kerry Guard 4:15

I like that customers say we're not seeing value. What's your go-to question?

Ruth Wisniewski 4:23

What was the reason for buying the software? Let's anchor on the goals that they had when they purchased it.

Kerry Guard 4:31

One metric disappears from your dashboard. What can you still use to tell the story?

Ruth Wisniewski 4:37

Every other metric? Oh, you should never be. You should never be focused on just one metric. I think you should be looking at adoptions across the page. They could be logging in but not using five core features of your software. They could be not logging in, and maybe there are some automated email reports going. Coming up that they keep a pulse on. So, yeah, you got to understand how your software works and what they use, every feature functionality, what are the benefits to them?

Kerry Guard 5:12

Multiple metrics, yes, your CEO says we need to do more with less. What's your next step?

Ruth Wisniewski 5:20

Nowadays, I'm looking at automation and AI a lot. I think we do do a lot with a lean and mean team here at Vehlo. But I mean, with the advances in technology and Customer Success software that's evolving on a monthly basis, you should certainly be exploring that at all times.

Kerry Guard 5:45

Yes, you should. It's a slippery slope, because, oh, we're gonna get into it. We're not gonna get into it right now. I could, there, not gonna go there. That was awesome. Those are my quick five wonderful responses. Way to get into the pocket. Yes, all right, let's get into the let's get into the heart of the conversation around customer success and your expertise. What first drew you to customer success as a career path, especially coming from a marketing background?

Ruth Wisniewski 6:16

There are just so many transferable skills, right? When you're a customer success manager, you need to understand the customer, right? And in marketing, the same thing, you are always trying to tap into your target audience. Yes, and it's the same thing in software, I guess, for me, why I pivoted not so much. It wasn't so much intentional at first, actually, but I love it, and I'm glad I landed here. I came from an advertising agency, and they lost a large customer, and there was some downsizing, and I had multiple offers, and it was like two different agencies I could go to, or a software company that focused on marketing automation software, and I decided, let's try something slightly different, with a lot of transferable skills. And that's how I ended up here. And I have never been happier.

Kerry Guard 7:11

You've been there a while, too.

Ruth Wisniewski 7:14

Yeah, I've been at Vehlo going on four years now, so before that, it was in software. I was at a company called BrightEdge, and that's the marketing automation software. Vehlo is vehicle, and it's Vehlo is a playoff a vehicle. We're in the auto industry. We have aftermarket solutions, we have credit card processing solutions and financing solutions, and then we have dealership solutions. And my area of focus is all of aftermarket.

Kerry Guard 7:42

Nice, nice, totally different market, though, Bright Edge and Vehlo are totally two different things, but I people are people, right? People are people Yes.

Ruth Wisniewski 7:57

And business owners are business owners, right? So it all comes down to understanding what are their goals. So when you're e-commerce, for instance, you're looking to increase the number of people that find your website and make purchases, increase the number or the purchase size, so your cart size, right? It's very similar at Vehlo with my aftermarket audience. You know, what are they trying to do? They're trying to increase their exposure to new customers. They're trying to retain their customers they have. They're trying to improve their bottom line through increasing their average repair order. So it's just very similar to me. It's just a different logo and slightly and a very different industry, but so many similarities.

Kerry Guard 8:43

So many similarities. What was the biggest mindset shift when moving from being an individual contributor to a team leader?

Ruth Wisniewski 8:52

Oh, wow, yeah, when you're an individual contributor and you're a high performer,you get things done, you're work, you're used to working with a lot of autonomy, and you just own it, and there are no excuses. You set your really high standards for yourself, and then you get direct reports. And now it's now you have to take a lot of feelings, personalities, and skill sets into consideration. So I think it was learning how to leverage people's strengths, helping them to build up where they might be weaker, you know, areas of opportunity for them, holding them to high expectations, but not unrealistic, and never to my own expectations. Like, let's see what's what's doable, what's reasonable. You need to have a work-life balance, and teaching them how to set their own guidelines for themselves, right? Like, yep. When is it end of the day? End of Day? Do you give certain customers your cell phone number or not teach them what an emergency is, which or what's something that can wait till tomorrow? It's a two-way relationship, right? They don't want to be. I don't want to use the word abuse, but that's the word that comes to mind, abused, and you don't want to be abused. So healthy boundaries, healthy boundaries.

Kerry Guard 10:28

Maybe you should teach me some of those, because everything's an emergency, everything, no, I'm just kidding.

Ruth Wisniewski 10:35

everything, right? So how do you prioritize?

Kerry Guard 10:38

Exactly, exactly? Yeah, the list is long, and you just got to get it in order, and then just work through it and get to it. When you get to it, just how the cookie crumbles. I love all the sayings. Avila, you're you've helped transition CS from reactive. Look at that. You've helped transition CS from reactive to proactive. What did that shift require from both process and people?

Ruth Wisniewski 11:08

Oh, wow. Can I give a little history that led to, yeah, okay, definitely. Let me take you a little bit through my journey. When I came to Vehlo, the general his he was a general, his he was a general manager at a time. Kevin, my boss, he is now VP of Operations, was amazing. I had done a little bit of a listening tour with all the products, and everybody was telling me, either a they thought I wasn't needed. This role wasn't needed because people wanted software that was like their phone; it just worked. You don't want your cell phone carrier to call you. You don't want AT&T or Apple calling you. You just want your product to work and to work intuitively. So there was that mentality. The other mentality was they thought I was going to bring about a service that was duplicative of support. Right when someone needed us, we would be here and we would give them, maybe white glove service. So it really started with some education and proof of concepts to show people that there is a lot of value in being proactive. So I did a listening tour. I went to Kevin, and I said, " I need to know what your vision is for the org for customer success. Here is what I'm hearing. And he laughed at me, and he was like, I brought you on to develop the vision. He's like, You, this is your job. So for the very first time in my career, I developed a vision statement. I had a presentation on what my vision was, and I really taught the whole organization what we were going to do before we did it, and I got their buy in that it wasn't about just getting the product to function as it could, but if we wanted to protect our business from the competitors that were nipping at our heels, that you need both an offense and a defense, right? And I see customer success as being the offense, and support being the defense. So in order to move down the field, you need an offensive team, same thing. So teaching them that our clients actually have goals beyond just having this software work and teaching them something that they already knew, but it wasn't top of mind for them, and it's like what we were talking about just a few minutes ago. Business owners want to increase the number of customers coming into their shops. They want to increase the amount of business each of those do, and they want those customers to keep coming back. So if we could help them move those levers by using the right features and functionalities in our software, we protected ourselves from our competition. So anyway, vision statement and then proof of the proof of concept was I literally started with two, two folks that were more support than success, and taught them the motions and the playbooks that I had been using in my career. And we got ahead of things, and we developed a customer advisory board, and we had playbooks, and then we purchased Customer Success software that showed us the health of our customers so that we could manage by exception, instead of calling every single customer, we were doing it based on the what the data told us. And now we're a I think there's 43 people in the Customer Success org. And you know, about less than four years ago, it was the three of us, me and two direct reports.

Kerry Guard 15:09

I love, I love how much planning went into it. It wasn't just like you showed up because you talked to, you know, when you're an individual contributor and you are just used to getting shit done right? You don't always sit through it. Case in point, I did this last year, earlier this year. I was like, I just need to launch this website. And I just got heads down, and I just did it. And then I, like, told people it happened, versus, like, probably should have made started a lot sooner, and, like, made a plan for it. And so I love that, like you did your listening tour, created a vision, and then, like, brought people long into it before you just went off and started doing customer success, like things. I think so so often we get ahead of our skis by not doing the thinking work. The thinking ready, work, right? The T and the R, you need to put the plan together, think through it, and then you need to build the pieces to get ready before you actually do the activation. Right?

Ruth Wisniewski 16:13

If you don't do that upfront planning, then you're doing a lot of work after, when you could have you're doing it in the process, right when you're building the plane, while you're flying it, the plane could crash, yep, where your passengers will fall out, you know? Whereas, if you do it up front, and you've got a nice stable, well-thought-out plan, the execution is smooth, smooth, like butter, which I think is a lot of what you're trying to do,

Kerry Guard 16:40

Absolutely, absolutely. How do you find success? Quote, unquote, in customer success beyond just retention.

Ruth Wisniewski 16:49

Oh, yeah, absolutely. So. I think a lot of people end up in customer success because it feels good. It feels good to help someone accomplish their goals. It feels good to know that you were a little piece of that accomplishment, right, that you taught them a skill, or taught them how to lay out a strategy, and in the end, they were able to hit that milestone and be successful. So that's one way I think of beyond retaining my customers, just the day to day gratification of being there for them and having a true partnership. Being a trusted, trusted advisor is probably an overused term in my industry, but really having their trust and knowing that when I give them advice, it is with their best interests at heart, and based on everything I've learned that I've seen the best practices that I see work, and bringing that to them so that they too can use them, that's huge for me. And then, and then, if all that goes right, right, you're in your you've got this relationship, you've brought these best practices, the customer is retained and happy, and they're achieving what they need to achieve. Then the expansion happens. And sometimes that's a dirty word, and customer success as well. To me, it's just a natural progression of the relationship that when they're happy with one service, that they increase their services. And it's not a hard close; it's not putting a square peg in a round hole. It is literally just the natural growth of that relationship. So those are the different ways that I see the success in customer success.

Kerry Guard 18:47

I love the good feels. I had a client call me a few weeks ago. I he just hired me to only do, he was very clear. He's like, I just need a website. I was like, okay, Dave, just a website. No problem. But he called me, and he was like, Can I run something by you? And I was like, Absolutely. He sent me over a presentation, and was like, can you just take a look at this for me, I really appreciate your feedback. Absolutely. Like, okay, we're building some trust here. Things are happening like you care about what I think, you know, yeah, that goes that gratification goes such a long way. Of course, I'm not going to charge him for it. I'm focused on the website, but he's trusting me to do this thing for him. I'm going to take the time to do that, right? So, ah, I totally agree. The good the good vibes, need, the good

Ruth Wisniewski 19:33

vibes, good vibes, yeah, and it comes back to you, right? Like it doesn't matter that all he asked for was a website, maybe it's two years from now, he's going to remember, and when he has an opportunity to work with you, he's going to want to, because you've developed a relationship and you provided value, and it wasn't all about the money.

Kerry Guard 19:54

Absolutely, yeah, I'm all about paying it forward, for sure. What's one process improved? You're most proud of implementing, and why?

Ruth Wisniewski 20:06

I actually just recently posted this. So maybe this, maybe this is just top of mind for me. It was a little bit of a learning, and you would think it would be something that I realized earlier on in my career, but it's something that I call hyper care, and I got that term from project management and change management. So Chrissy Beakler is our senior vice president of change management here at Vilo. So our strategy is, not only do we grow our current software, but we have mergers and acquisitions, so as we acquire things that involves some transformation, and so one of the things that she has implemented in her team for project management is this hyper care period. So, depending on the size of the project, the complexity of the project, there's a certain time period that after it launches, her team stays very close to all the stakeholders. And I was like, a little light bulb went off. And I was like, we need to be hyper-fixated post-go-live for our software launches. We had just our normal cadence of reviewing data, and I was like, no, there is this critical time period that if adoption doesn't happen, you lose everything you learned. So for me, it was taking a learning from another function and applying it to customer success. So now you know, the first 10 business days of a post go live, and in our industry, some people work Saturdays. Some people have a four-day work week. It changes those first 10 business days. Every day, we are looking at their adoption. Every day we are checking in. You've been through the implementation period, you did the training, and you successfully showed us. Now we need to see it go live in our business. So some people would back in the day, they would go on site, and they would do the training, and they would be there for the opening day. And there was still the concept. But it's more than just the first day. There is a critical time period of staying very close to a customer to make sure that it's as smooth as it can be.

Kerry Guard 22:24

I love that. I Yeah. I mean, anytime there's a new product launch, right? Your cheese gets moved. Yeah, my husband, I joke, Who Moved My Cheese. So I love that. You want to make sure that your customer has having a good experience with because I imagine that's a big turn moment if it doesn't go well.

Ruth Wisniewski 22:46

So absolutely, and we were looking at the numbers, and when we looked at it like, for instance, week over week, when you have a, let's say, you have 300 customers to a single CSM, you can't expect them to log into their analytics and look at 300 customers daily. So we use a lot of like the this segment of our customers, for instance, that recently gone live. We look at daily and this segment of our customers, we manage by exception, like they've they've gone above a certain line or below a certain line, and it's a bit it's been a game changer.

Kerry Guard 23:21

300 customers. That's no joke. How many, how many customers per team member do you try and like stick to?

Ruth Wisniewski 23:31

We segment them. So, for instance, we have what we call our enterprise customers, their MSOs, with, you know, a certain number of locations, and those, it's a very small number to a CSM, and then we have different packages with different service levels. So 300 was just a number, but you can, I mean, there is what we call high volume, low touch okay, in our industry, so you can there's some where it would be 300 to one, and that's a lot of automation, a lot of AI, and it has to be like A very simple application, sure.

Kerry Guard 24:20

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. I just love how you're talking about how it does feel very white glove, whether it is or not, doesn't matter. Just to wait. The way you talk about the how Customer Success should show up feels very personal. So, figuring out how to scale that has to be difficult, and making sure you have the right balance of people to clients, and then using to your point AI and automation to keep it where you can focus on the client and not the minutia. Well, this kind of leads into that. How do you keep your team connected to customer outcomes when scaling rapidly?

Ruth Wisniewski 24:58

Yeah. A really good question. So we do a lot of training, just like we train our customers in our software. We train our customer success managers in all the tools that they have in their toolbox. We set them up for success so that they can log into a simple dashboard and see all their metrics up front, and we teach them the segments and the personas and what each of those segments and personas need from us. And we segment our customers, but we also segment our CSMs so that they don't have a lot of competing priorities. I don't know if that answers your question, but we're continuing to evolve down that path, segmenting customers, matching them up with the segmented CSM who's able to align to those needs and the software, the tools, and the training to get them there. Donda Daniels is our, I think she's the director of learning and management here at V Low. She's leveraged a product called High Spot, and we she's an expert in adult learning and how to make things resonate and stick. And so we've we've tapped into her to set up our own customer success, our employees, internal customers, onboarding, and we leverage some of her insights into customer success as well. So nice.

Kerry Guard 26:36

I love learning. I'm an adult. I like learning. Learning is fun.

Ruth Wisniewski 26:41

Let me expand on that too. So the team, this is just a management one-on-one thing. We have a team meeting once a week, and we have a learning there's learning in it, there are best practices and sharing, there's soundboarding and strategy in that. Once a week learnings, or once a week team meetings, and then they all have on ones with their direct managers. So, and that is, you know, we have a phrase here. It's check up from the neck up. So it's a personal tap, make sure everything's good. You know, workload is good. Personal life isn't imposing or restricting what you knew in your work. And then there is that those items that you don't feel comfortable bringing up in the team meetings, or you just need additional soundboarding for.

Kerry Guard 27:39

So, yeah, check up for the neck up. I am totally stealing that because, you know, I love a good saying. Many CS teams struggle to align with product. How do you bridge that gap?

Ruth Wisniewski 27:54

Yeah, it's a partnership. So here at VLA, I've been really fortunate that my product team is very partnerly. I meet once a week with our SVP, Christian Nimsky of product, and we talk through the challenges that the team is feeding up to us. We also have a tool that we use. It's canny.io, it's a way for us, it's almost like a voting mechanism for feature requests and product requests. I think I mentioned the customer advisory boards that we have. So we have influencers in each of the products, like customers that are well networked amongst each other. They're usually big advocates. We, the customer advisory boards, are a way that we are able to give the product team visibility into customer concerns, how the industry is evolving, so that we can meet that with our development. That's worked a lot. There are times, though, that, you know, a single customer feels very strongly that they need something that is not on a product roadmap, and that can be a negotiation. If it's a large customer that's, you know, in the enterprise segment, that's something that we need to evaluate. You know, maybe it wasn't on the roadmap, but it needs to be. And conversely, maybe it's not on the roadmap and it shouldn't be, so that those are deeper conversations. And then I've taught the customer success teams themselves that sometimes a customer thinks they need a button right on a screen to get something done, when in reality, there's probably a way to do it in the software. It was the software is designed, and it's been used by 1000s of customers. We have more than 10,000 customers now, just an aftermarke,t and if they're able to use it and run their businesses on it, you know, potentially that one button isn't needed on that one screen. So we talk about get to the root of what they're trying to do. And there's probably a way to do it so that too, negotiating with customers, so we're a little bit in the middle between the two, and act as a conduit, but also as a filter.

Kerry Guard 30:27

Yeah, no, that's so smart. It sounds like you specifically are the like the physical bridge. And then you've done a good job working with your team to make sure that they figure out what what to bubble up, and what to not.

Ruth Wisniewski 30:44

Um, I would say I am one of the conduits between the teams. I would also say, like, our product team is really good about sharing the roadmap and the why behind some of the things. Like, you don't want to build a staircase and build the fourth step before you build first, second, and third. And actually, this relates to us about doing the work on the front end, like they know they have to build a strong foundation to build a house that's going to weather, you know. Well, so same thing we teach our CSMs, that talk track as well. Like, there is a reason for the sequencing that we are doing, and we give our customers multiple outlets for providing feedback and getting feedback.

Kerry Guard 31:34

I love that the why is so important. So I love that your product team shares the why that's and then, for your team, also to be asking why and what the root issue i,s like, it's just so important in communication. So I love that that's just like naturally happening across your teams. That's awesome. That brings me to the perfect question, then: how do you balance empathy with accountability when coaching your team?

Ruth Wisniewski 31:58

When we came up with the title for this, I knew that we would get to that question. So empathy and accountability. I actually think accountability is a form of empathy. So if you share what the goals are, if you say this is your key performance indicators, these are the objectives that you are trying to meet. And this is the timeline, and here are the tools. That is a form of empathy. It's setting expectations, and we do that a lot on customer success. We do it for ourselves, we do it for our teammates, we do it for our direct reports, and we do it for our customers, and our customers should do it for us, right? This is just good relationships. So I think setting expectations is a form of empathy, and then to balance it a little bit further, is communication. So I mentioned those weekly one-on-ones, when, situationally, we're not going to meet expectations that were set. It shouldn't be at the you know, final hour. The communication should be happening along the way so nobody is surprised, and we can triage, mitigate, and reduce failed expectations. Right? Sometimes you pivot and you change the goals. Sometimes you pivot and reduce workload. Sometimes you pivot and provide more tools or more resourcing. So the failure happens, and when people don't meet expectations, it's when they don't communicate, and that's coaching that happens on a weekly basis on my team.

Kerry Guard 33:43

Yes, yes, oh my gosh, you've built it in like every step of the way. I have to say, it feels so counterintuitive to put clear expectations in place and to hold people accountable. It feels like I don't know what it is about our society that it doesn't feel right or good, but when you start doing it, you're right. It is totally empathetic and the right thing to be doing, because when people know and have clear boundaries of what they should and shouldn't be doing, it actually makes their job so much easier and takes so much guessing out of it that they're so much more productive and so much happier in their jobs. We have these things called role matrices, where they know not only the role that they need to play today, but how to get to the next role, and what those roles and responsibilities look like, so they can always be playing up and looking to that next place of where they want to go. And it's all outlined, right? And it felt so weird to do, I was like, we're writing this down. Is this even what we should be doing? And. It's like yes, because now people know, and they don't have to guess or wonder when they're going to get promoted. When they hit all these check boxes, that is our moment for promotion. And there it is, right there. So yeah, I think that piece of actually being clear is kind creates a whole world of empathy. Have you seen, I mean, from the companies you've been at, have you always experienced this level of accountability and empathy, or is this sort of new to how you specifically wanted to build this team?

Ruth Wisniewski 35:34

I think that I saw a lot of pieces parts throughout my career. I'll just confess to our audience, I was a little bit of a job jumper early in my career, and I got exposure, or what would some people would call a job jumper, some people might just say I was ambitious or easily bored. I had jobs every two years, for a while, and I took a lot of that learning. I also speaking of learning. I am a voracious reader. I'm a speed reader, and I'm very interested in human psychology, so I took a lot of that to build the team. But I also got to give a lot of credit to Vilo, the senior leadership at V Low. When you look at our C suite and you look at our VP is like incredible leaders, and they have put in place a lot of structure that I was able to build on for my particular team. Incredible leadership here. I thought, I don't get to say this often, but I like I have so much respect, and sometimes I'm in awe at how strategic they are and smart and still incredibly empathetic.

Kerry Guard 36:59

So good. You've mentioned clarity through communication as a leadership principle. What does that look like in action?

Ruth Wisniewski 37:04

So everybody learns differently, everybody communicates differently. So I think it's using more multiple channels and making those channel channels predictable, right? So I have my weekly team meetings. I have my one one-on-ones, my management team does the same. They have weekly team meetings. They have one one-on-ones as an organization, the senior leadership, we have a town hall every quarter, and we have monthly syncs by product, so that predictability and the schedule, and the using multiple team meeting formats is another is one way. But it's not just about meetings and different cadences and frequencies and understanding who presents at what, it's also there's verbal communication and there's written communication and sources of truth. So for us, our SharePoint site and high spot, which is the garage, which Donda I brought up that education system, SharePoint and the garage are our sources of truth, our channels, everything that goes into Slack, because a lot of people are focused on that in instant communication, that is another form of communication, and then email, so anything that goes into a meeting is recorded, which is posted in Slack, which is sent in email, right? And there's just this consistency that helps bring clarity.

Kerry Guard 38:40

So yeah, I love that we have a similar process where every channel has a communication role, every tool has a communication role and responsibility, right? So internally, we don't send anything through email, because that's for the clients, we only want to make sure that we're getting information from clients through email, so that we're not clogging up the inbox, and then internal communication is happening instantly through we use Zoom chat, although there are talks of moving back. Anyway, I'm not gonna get my teens' hopes up. There's a so Zoom chat is where we do our instant communication. And then Asana is our product management tool, which is where everything happens in relation to a specific task. And so if it doesn't need to be immediately addressed, to comment in the task and get things resolved asynchronously there. And then, obviously, we have meetings to discuss bigger strategic thinking and planning that way. So I totally agree that in order to have clarity and communication, you first need to understand where you're communicating and how you're supposed to communicate, and then be able to make sure that it's consistent across all of it. So yeah, I mean, we're just a small little 12-person come. Company, so I can't imagine all the tools that you have to communicate across on your end. And you mentioned that you were just listing off the meetings alone. And I was like, Oh my gosh, you do get work done, right? Or are you just in meetings all day?

Ruth Wisniewski 40:16

I definitely have my share meetings, and I definitely got to get the work done too. So it's a balance.

Kerry Guard 40:25

How do you maybe you have a template or something, just, you know,a quick tip for folks here who have that dreaded this could have been an email when you're in that many meetings. I'm imagining the way that your company works, given how efficient they are, every meeting matters. So is there? What do you how do you make sure that the meetings are productive and efficient? Oh my gosh,

Ruth Wisniewski 40:55

I definitely leverage on my team and throughout that every meeting has an agenda, and every meeting has a recap, and action items have to have a signed person and a due date. So I can't say that. I can't say that everything is perfect. It definitely not, isn't. But like, we actually brought in a project management team. We have the transformational team, but we liked, for me and my team, what I hold us to is every meeting has an agenda that is sent beforehand, and there is always a recap with assigned action items, and that if someone tries to bring something up that isn't relevant to the meeting. It's noted, and it's tabled, and if it needs its own meeting, it is. If it's something that can be addressed without a meeting, it is. But we like to stay on topic.

Kerry Guard 41:54

We call pineapple if we tangent, and we're not supposed to, somebody calls pineapple, and that means that conversations got to happen another time. So great. Love it. I love it. How do you adapt engagement models for enterprise versus high-volume clients? We talked a little bit about this earlier.

Ruth Wisniewski 42:18

Yeah, yeah. So we do segment our customers and we look at it for us, the complexity of a customer is usually tied to the number of physical locations that they have, because we're a business management system with some peripheral, complementary software as well. So we looked, we looked at our customers, and we before we segmented them, we actually analyzed how much time we were spending on each of these, and that was really helpful to how we segmented. So we did do an enterprise model, and then we have a lower-touch touch higher-volume model, and that's where we're at right now. We may segment it even further, and then by product usage. So there's, I think Vehlo is up to, like, 17 products now, and within aftermarket, there's nine. So yeah, segmenting by product usage and number of rooftops complex relates to the complexity of the customer and what they're trying to achieve. So they'll have a an enterprise customer, for instance, might have 150 locations. They'll probably be using one of our enterprise shop management systems, which is a robust system, you know, comparable, if you're thinking about it, the complexity of like a sales force. So, yeah, and then they'll also have these complementary products that are integrated with it. So they might have a high-end digital vehicle inspection tool. They might have our marketing services, which is auto shop solutions. And they might have our credit card processing 360 payments. And so with all those integrations, you need some you need a smaller book of business so that you can play the quarterback on the team, collect the feedback from all the teams, and put together a cohesive plan for that customer.

Kerry Guard 44:13

That makes sense. So segmentation is really key then, to make sure that you have the certain amount of people per those clients. In terms of you mentioned AI earlier, what role does technology like automation or AI play in the CS strategy today?

Ruth Wisniewski 44:31

Oh, yeah, absolutely. So I'm so excited about how Customer Success software has evolved and continues to evolve, and the rate at which it evolves. So our customer success software we use, turn zero, and there are so many tools there. So it's taking all the data inputs from our product itself and the usage and the features that we're tracking in it, and pulls it into turn zero. And it's taking our sales for. Data, and it's seeing the interactions that the sales team for those complementary products. What actions they taking? They're taking the CSM meetings. They're taking the Zoom. Zoom actually integrates into it, and it'll actually pull it'll create a summary for us. So before we have a meeting with an enterprise customer, for instance, they can generate their summary, and it's going to show them all those important things and highlight the things that they should maybe be worried about, maybe get ahead of, or the wins to highlight for this particular customer. So that's one way we're using AI. We also use it in our own knowledge base. So if you're looking to search for something, instead of having to, you know, figure out what the keyword is, you can put in the question. It's going to give you the answer. It's going to show you those actual pages that it pulled those answers from, similar to, like when you go on Google and do an AI chat, and it's got the resources. Click link to it. What else do we use? We use Fathom so when we do, we when we when we do a meeting with a customer, we ask them if it's okay to record it using Fathom notes. And my enterprise team has the unfree version. I'm forgetting which which one we have, but it pulls in like it has the different models. You can do the chronological notes, you can do the project management notes. We typically use the project management notes, so it automatically pulls out those action items for us and that gets put into turn zero, so that we never, I shouldn't say never, so it's less likely that we'll miss an action item.

Kerry Guard 46:46

Fathom is the best. If you don't have Fathom, it's free. Go grab it. It takes the best notes. Last question for you, Ruth, I could, it's so great to reconnect with you. I could talk to you all day. I mean, I didn't realize, yeah, I don't think I realized how in-depth and big customer success is. So it's so nice to really get a deep dive into this. What's a common misconception executives have about customer success?

Ruth Wisniewski 47:16

that it's support, that it's easy? Yeah, I think when I came back, unless you, unless you've worked with a really good customer success team, Customer Success is not that old of a profession. I mean, we've used the term forever, but customer success as it, as it exists today in software, isn't that old. So if you didn't work with a software company and a team that was really good, that was proactive and took the time to educate you on what they were doing and why it was important, you may have, you know, not understood it and thought of it as being just a reactive motion and confused it with support. And it doesn't help that customer success and customer support are often referred to as CS. So another reason why they might get them mixed up in their head is the acronym or initialism is CS, and they're two sides of the same team, right?

Kerry Guard 48:21

right, right, but they're two different things. And I love how you talked about earlier, how one is proactive versus the other being reactive. Just give us a little glimpse in terms of the customer you. We've talked a lot. We talked sort of talked around it, but in terms of what customer success shows up and does, like just give usa quick definition.

Ruth Wisniewski 48:44

Absolutely, so for me, when I boil it down, it's understanding what the customer is trying to achieve. So customer success first and foremost, understanding the goals of the customer and then helping them achieve it by leveraging the software so support reactive, get you up and running in the moment you hit a bug, you hit a snag, you need help with XYZ, their speed to response, get you up and running successfully. More long-term planning. We have regular cadences. We're looking at your goals. We're helping you project manage, we're training, we're sharing best practices. So for me, it's all. It always boils down to what are the goals that they're trying to achieve, and how do we get them there? Versus support? Let's get them up and running. Got to keep it running. Both are so important.

Kerry Guard 49:42

They are two totally different things, though, Ruth, we are at a time, and I want to be thoughtful, because you have given me more than enough, and we're gonna have clips for days. It's gonna be amazing. I can't wait to re-share these to close out, though, I have to know, because it's just that. Time of year. What's currently bringing you joy outside of customer success and work?

Ruth Wisniewski 50:08

Oh my gosh. So my dad is 80 years old, and he fell and broke his hip three weeks ago, and on Sunday, I got to pick him up from rehab and bring him home, and I get to spend my days with him. And just knowing that, you know, the modern miracle of, you know healthcare today, he has a new hip, and he's able to walk around the house, and like, to me, that is so joyful.

Kerry Guard 50:42

Yeah, gonna get back on your feet, Dad. Ah, I love that. I love that. And yay that you get to spend time with him too.

Ruth Wisniewski 50:50

Oh. And one more thing gives me joy. Can I just? I'm gonna bring him on screen.

Kerry Guard 50:54

Yeah. Do we have a furry friend?

Ruth Wisniewski 51:00

Yes, this is my new rescue cat. He's like, not happy. He's like, Don't pick me up. He actually he's a snuggle bunny, but he does not like you to pick him up. He wants to come to you.

Kerry Guard 51:10

Oh, yes, I have one of those. He's around here somewhere.

Ruth Wisniewski 51:14

So this is cheddar ruffles.

Kerry Guard 51:18

Oh my gosh, he's so cute. How old?

Ruth Wisniewski 51:21

Two years old, and he's a grouchy man. He's our first boy pet. We had two cats and a dog, and he's by far the friendliest.

Kerry Guard 51:34

He's so cute. Oh, furry friends, we are here for it. We are here for amazing Ruth. Where can people find you?

Ruth Wisniewski 51:43

Oh, absolutely. If you go to LinkedIn, I'm on LinkedIn, and it's Ruth with nasky, w, i, s, n, i, e, w, s, k, i, nice, long Polish name, or you just look for Ruth at Vehlo. I'm definitely, I'd probably come up. I'm the only Ruth there. So amazing, and please send me connections. I love expanding my network.

Kerry Guard 52:05

So do it? Go connect with Ruth. Say hi. Go learn more about customer success and why we need it, and why founders should start there. So good, Ruth. I'm so grateful. Thank you so much. If you liked this episode, please like, subscribe, and share if you enjoyed it, you can be sure to check out these other Back on T-R-A-C-K episodes with Jonathan Tasman. We're building brand operating systems that scale. Desiree Goldie, how to build predictable hiring engines and high-performing teams. And Valerie Zargarpur, launching bold ideas and leading with transparency. And don't forget to subscribe so you will never miss a story about leaders who are transforming how we work. Thank you all so much. Thank you again. Ruth, so good to see you.

Ruth Wisniewski 52:49

Thank you, Kerry. Have a great rest of your day. I loved being on the show. I can't wait to watch the other podcast, yay.

Kerry Guard 52:56

Loved having you.