In this episode of CS No BS, Brent Cogswell, Head of Customer Success at Schneider Electric, discusses the difference between customer success and customer support, and shares how to harness data for a more proactive approach to avoid problems and enhance outcomes. Brent also highlights the benefits of “failing fast” and making the most of it.
This episode of CS No BS features an interview with Brent Cogswell, Head of Customer Success at Schneider Electric. Schneider Electric's purpose is to empower all to make the most of energy and resources, bridging progress and sustainability for all. Brent has 27 years of progressive advancement through Schneider Electric, beginning his development through a sales focus. He has held significant leadership positions in regional support, direct accounts, global processes, and the Customer Care Center.
In this episode, Brent talks about the difference between customer success and customer support and shares how to harness data for a more proactive approach to avoid problems and enhance outcomes. Brent also discusses the benefits of “failing fast” and making the most of it.
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“Customer success is focused on recurring revenue, and it's the life cycle management of the recurring revenue with a very large focus on the customer's desired outcomes. It's very customer oriented on its desired outcomes. Whereas customer care is a reaction. It's when the customer calls or chats or emails us, it's not us proactively going to them. So it's reactive. It's more about solving problems after they happened. Whereas on the flip side with customer success, it's being proactive and using data to avoid problems.” - Brent Cogswell
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*(02:22) - Brent discusses his role at Schneider Electric
*(12:21) - Brent explains the difference between Customer Success and Customer Support
*(18:07- From spreadsheets to Totango
*(21:52) - Keys to success
*(31:56) - It’s a journey, not an event
*(38:38) - The biggest BS in CS
*(43:52) - Brent’s advice
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Connect with Jamie on LinkedIn
Connect with Brent on LinkedIn
Brent: [00:00:00] Highlights would be, customer success is focused on, you know, recurring revenue and it's the life cycle, you know, life cycle management of the recurring revenue with a very large focus on the customer's desired outcomes, right? It's very customer oriented on their desired outcomes. Whereas customer care is reaction calls or chats or emails us.
It's not us proactively going to them. So it's a reactive. It's more about solving problems after they happened. Whereas on the flip side with customer success, it's being proactive using data to avoid problems, right?
Narrator: Hello and welcome to CS No BS, your practical playbook for delivering net revenue retention, the holy grail of customer growth.
Hosted by Jamie Bertasi, COO and President of Totango. Today's episode features an interview with Brent Cogswell, Head of [00:01:00] Customer Success at Schneider Electric. Schneider Electric's purpose is to empower all, to make the most of our e nergy and resources bridging progress and sustainability.
Using metrics and data to drive continuous improvement, Brent's leadership has lifted both customer and employee satisfaction to all time highs. In this episode, Brent breaks down the difference between customer success and customer support and shares how to harness data for a proactive approach to CS. But before we get into it, here's a brief word from our sponsor.
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Learn more at Totango.com. And now please enjoy this interview with Brent Cogswell, head of customer success at Schneider electric.
Jaime: Brent, so great to have you. So fun to talk to you. Let's start by having you just tell us a little bit more about your scope of responsibilities at Schneider
Brent: electric. Yeah.
Sure. So at Schneider electric, as I mentioned, I'm the head of customer success. So, so what does that mean for, for Schneider electric? So we are an industrial company. That's sold products for many, many years and, and, and some services, but has started to sell more and more services and, uh, software wrapped around those services to enable them to be digital.
And so we have a need. Build a customer success process for our recurring services, which is a, a very growing segment of our portfolio. Yeah, of course. Yeah. Yeah. So my role started about two years ago to, to build out this customer success practice and to, uh, and I [00:03:00] can talk a little bit more in a moment about that, but just to frame it up and my scope is.
Directly responsible for our digital services and then acting as the consultant, if you will, in the company to, to be the leader in the, uh, the, the person helping frame up what customer success looks like for all, all, uh, recurring
Jaime: services. So just as like maybe just a bit more background for Schneider itself, can you tell people a little bit more about what does Schneider.
Brent: Yeah, sure. So Schneider electric is, uh, an energy management and an automation company that helps, uh, their customers be more efficient and, you know, able to, to use energy the, the, the most efficiently way they can and sustainable, uh, we as a company, believe that energy. Is a basic human right that, that all humans should have access to.
And we enable our customers to keep life is on without, with, with the access to energy for everyone everywhere. And at all times, Yeah, that's
Jaime: so great. [00:04:00] Right? This is not my typical conversation with people when ask 'em about what their company does. Doesn't typically they don't typically say, well, we're here to deliver energy to the world.
I mean, it's amazing the
Brent: scope. Well, one of the things that's really cool that, that I like, and that I is very attractive with the company is that we're very, um, green focused, right? It's not only our corporate colors, but it's also. Our view is that electricity is one of the, the most efficient vectors to helping decarbonize the world.
And so we're really proud about being a, a big player in that, that, uh, that space and helping solve this, this, or balancing this equation that, you know, the, the population is, is more than doubling in the next several years. And the energy demand is growing. And so we're here to help balance that
Jaime: equation and customer success of course is
Brent: key.
Oh, absolutely. So, you know, in part of that and we'll get into it is that these software enabled services, what we call digital services, enable our customers to see how. [00:05:00] The equipment that we sell is performing and that information and that telemetry allows them to not only monitor it themselves, but with the services, we can monitor it for them.
And that's really the space of that. We call digital services, you know, we call it the ecostructure advisor. And so ecostructure is this mm-hmm marketing name that we gave to, you know, to these product. And it is, you know, built with three state or three levels of this ecostructure stack. So the first layer is products, which are all the products that we've traditionally made, like circuit breakers, UPSs, switch gear, et cetera.
And over the years we've been making that equipment, uh, O T connectable or adding sensors. So we can get telemetry off of that hardware layer. And in the middle layer is what we call edge layer, which is enabling our customers to, you know, on-prem. See and monitor and understand all that's going on with their, uh, infrastructure.
And then the third layer is apps and [00:06:00] analytics, which is bringing that information into the cloud, which enables our customers to maybe use an app to see that on their phone. And, uh, more importantly us in terms of services that we can sell to them, to give them monitoring services for all of their equipment and providing predictive analytics and recommendations on how they can improve their equipment, et.
Jaime: Yeah. And so I guess the other question is really, maybe just give a sense for how big the company is, how many customers you guys have, cuz I know your scope is enormous,
Brent: is huge. Yeah. So the company is, uh, is a large multinational company. Uh, revenues are over 30 billion Euro. We operate in more in 150 countries.
We have over 150,000 employees, hundreds of thousands of customers. The customers for these digital offers is lower. I mean, our vision is that all of our customers have an enabled, a digitally enabled service, but that's the segment that is, uh, growing the fastest within our company. [00:07:00] And, and, and one of the reasons I moved from my previous role, I know we'll talk about that in a minute, uh, to leading customer success is this is the exciting new growth area within our company.
And my track record over the years has always been the guy who builds out new teams, transforms, uh, elements of the company, et cetera. So I've taken those, uh, experiences from previous roles into this current role to help lead this charge. And. First explain to people what customer success is and frame up, uh, a playbook that we have to, to, uh, to, you know, define the building blocks within the company and then roll it out country by country to, to start getting traction.
Yeah,
Jaime: that's totally awesome. So you've been there, you know, about 30 years or something, you know, you've had this extensive career at Schneider and of course you, as you've just told us. The mover and the shaker who really brings the new stuff in and so forth. It must have been difficult though, to give us a little bit more of a flavor of your journey at the company.
Brent: Well, absolutely. So. [00:08:00] You know, the company, uh, Schneider is comprised of many acquisitions over the years. And my story at Schneider for, for someone who's been there, like I have is no different. So I came into Schneider electric through an acquisition. I started with a company named American power conversion, right outta college, on the classic engineer and, and, and went, got my MBA later on.
And I went right into. Like a technical sales, uh, career path that then ended up being more of the manager of support and services and inside sales, you know, various teams over the years. And then when, uh, when we were acquired by Schneider electric, at that time, I was the director of what we call customer care, customer care.
We have the abbreviation of CCC here at Schneider. And then right after we got acquired, you know, I started looking at this larger, you know, company that we're now a part of and one of the initiatives was one Schneider electric. And so we wanted to blend together [00:09:00] multiple teams that did the same function.
So I took on the role of leading the customer care organization for all of north America, which is us Canada, Mexico for Schneider, for all of Schneider portfolio. So it was great opportunity to blend. Teams that had grown up in silos, in different companies and bringing together the processes, the people and the technology to make that happen.
That really was, uh, a launchpad for me to end up where I am today, because that was, I've always been in customer. Uh, You know, facing teams and that was really support services. You know, if you, if you think it back then we got involved with TSIA, the benchmark, how we're doing. And it really got me, uh, focused on building out our digital experience.
And so in that role, it was, it was customer care and tech support, but. The biggest challenges we had is we had so many assisted support calls and emails coming in that we needed to find ways to solve our customers' problems, you know, or [00:10:00] enable them to solve it themselves. Right. So we really had a lot of focus on building out our self-help tools and our, um, You know, uh, you know, online, you know, communities.
So customers could post a question and other customers would answer it for them, et cetera. And then also, if, if we couldn't solve it online, then I, I opened up teams in India and Philippines to leverage low cost locations to, you know, for high volume, you know, low. Complexity type activities and send it over to, uh, to those locations.
So I was in that role about five, six years, and then, uh, wanted to move into a, a role that that was the growth area, which was about digital services. This is about four years ago. I moved into a. Transformation role for digital services. And I wanted to go into a global role. You know, I'd had some global experience because of the India and the Philippines experience, but not, you know, from a perimeter point of view and, uh, moved into the role for transforming digital services.
And at the time really. [00:11:00] This is where we got into that third layer of the ecostructure advisor of the apps and analytics. And we started talking about what are all the teams and, and operating model to support these advisors and what teams do we need to do that. And I was using my background from running tech support to help set that up and help communicate them.
And then, so that was within about a couple years during all this time. I was part of Ts I a and I was plugged into the, the, you know, the, the industry to start learning about customer success. And I like many people at Schneider electric. When I first heard of customer success, it seemed like a new buzz word for being customer focused.
Right. Cause I I've, I grown up in customer care and customer satisfaction and, and then I quickly learned that, you know, it was very different than what we were doing with, with support services and, and very reactive because,
Jaime: and I really wanna ask you about. I really do, because the thing, the thing about this that I was gonna, you know, mention here is I see a lot of people who I talk [00:12:00] to who think customer success and customer support are kind of the same thing.
Or they'll say they'll take their customer support organization or customer care organization, and they'll rebrand it customer success. And they'll say, oh yeah, we have customer success. Or we have a VP of customer success, et cetera. Um, What's the difference, you know what what's you've done both. So what is the difference?
Yeah.
Brent: Well, great question. Great question. Yeah, because we did that when I was just leaving the customer care team and I was on this transformation. There was an effort to let's just call customer care and customer success. It's all kind of the same thing. And, and so we, we, we built out in our playbook, a side by side explaining the difference.
And so just some of the highlights would be, you know, customer success. is focused on, you know, recurring revenue and it's the life cycle, uh, you know, you know, life cycle management of the recurring revenue with a very large focus on the customer's desired outcomes, [00:13:00] right? It's very customer oriented on their desired outcomes.
Whereas customer care is, is reaction, right? It's you know, the customer calls or chats or emails us, it's not us proactively going to them. So it's a reactive, it's more. Solving problems after they happened. Whereas on the flip side with customer success, it's being proactive, using data to avoid problems.
Jaime: So it's moving from kind of this reactive mode to being proactively oriented around delivering the customer's outcomes. A lot of times people will use the term adoption driving adoption, you know, here at Totango we talk about this as, as it pertains to driving adoption of success blocks, which we see consider to be like kind of those core success workflows, but the, you know, like a modular component of the success workflow.
But, uh, I do see people getting super confused about this term adoption because. In the instance that we're talking about with Schneider, right. Um, in some ways, adoption, [00:14:00] isn't really the exact correct word for what you're trying to do. It's really about delivering the customer outcome. Interesting. Okay.
So let's switch gears a little bit. Let's talk about the nitty gritty of customer success. Now that we've kind of set the stage for the, where you came from, you know, you worked for this big, huge successful, you know, multinational corporation that's been around for a long time, wants to really improve people's.
And even this company is adopting customer success and transforming to really see customer success as a key component of, of what they, of what they do to deliver for customers. So as head of customer success at Schneider, what would you say is the biggest challenge that you and your team face?
Brent: So the biggest challenge that I face is, is data is getting data and, and, and again, because we're a large company.
Luckily, we have Salesforce, which is one system for at least our pre-sales and opportunities, but when it comes to contracts and where, when we actually sell something to somebody. The [00:15:00] way we're structured is it's very, uh, uh, you know, geographic. So we have each country has a country president all the resources that support that geography report up into that, that geography.
So they have their own P and L. So unlike a typical SaaS company that might have a global team that supports all their global customers. And when they sell, they have one system and one subscription system, so they can easily run those reports. So the biggest challenge that I've had is. Getting my arms around all the data globally for each of our offers, because the different offers that we have.
Sure. They're all called ecostructure, but that was just a marketing label that all of the lines of businesses put on their product behind the scenes. You look under the covers and it's completely different. Platforms built on different systems. And so, and, and each of them have their own list of customers spelled differently, even if it's the same customer.
So the challenge we've had is imagine there's these silos of all these different. [00:16:00] Databases, and we need to get our arms around understanding who's connected. And then also are they getting what they paid for? So the challenge is data, cuz data in my mind drives the practice. The next level it was, we needed some kind of a tool or some system to bring that data together.
And I know this is a plug, but yes, we use Totango to, to do that. And uh, when I first started in my role. Because again, since Schneider's such a big company, we had been selling or parts of our company have been selling software for years. So first thing I did was I built what's called it. We call a network of excellence.
So I brought together it's up to about 30 people. We meet every month and it's basically a. A network of people that we bring together to, to analyze, you know, and, and share prac practices within our company, and also bring other people in to share practices to our company. This is the thing, uh, I think you spoke at it, uh, a year ago.
Yes. We've had Salesforce. Yes.
Jaime: I was delighted to have the
Brent: opportunity. Yeah. We've had Salesforce, we've had a bunch, a bunch of other companies, [00:17:00] TSIA, et cetera, come share. And this is really. First we learn. And then we, we use this as I'm I'm training and kind of educating all the exacts in all the leaders within my company.
And, um, and went back several years ago. What we found is one of our divisions, our secure power software team. Who's been selling software has a mature model of, of, of software as a service and software OnPrem had, had brought in Totango several years prior to solve their problem of, of, you know, to manage this, this life cycle, uh, of customer success.
So it was great that we, we had a nugget of, you know, bright light within our company to that that was leading the. So we quickly jumped on their coattails and leveraged Totango as you know, to bring in these other digital offers that were often these silos. So previously. Believe it or not, when I would go to a country and we'd talk about how you growing your digital services, they would all have a spreadsheet.
Their spreadsheet would show their list [00:18:00] of their book of customers from the different platforms.
Jaime: I know it's mind boggling the spreadsheets
Brent: that you, it sounds like you're aware that. So we had literally, we had spreadsheets, so I, I know it's, it's much more than this, but our. You know, ambition with, Totango was to get rid of the spreadsheets, right?
Yes. Bring in the data. And, uh, and we were able to, you know, feed that data in and we, we refresh it daily now. And so it's a lot, lot better to have a single pane of glass for our customers to be able to see all, uh, that's going on in their perimeter. Mm-hmm , I mean, our, their I'm not only our customers, but our CSMs rather within these geographies.
So if I'm in Thailand, I can now go into Totango and I can see all of my digital customers in one. That was definitely a key element for us to, to enable our CSMs in the countries that we're, you know, that we're rolling CSMs out to have a single tool that allows them to get visibility and not only visibility, but data that refreshes real time directly from the digital [00:19:00] platforms.
And then, um, we're in our, you know, we're continuously evolving in terms of the health scores, but defining health scores that. Trigger based on different events and, and the analogy I use. I don't know if you've heard you referred this way is I refer to Totango as it's like the dashboard of your automobile, right?
So there's certain lights that come on or indicators. So when, when, when our CSMs are looking at Totango, it, it brings to their attention. Something that they may need to dig into. And take action on, and then that's how we use it. And we're, we're trying to bring in more indicators and more light, so we can, you know, light up the Christmas tree if you will, of, of different indicators, but that's the evolution and you know, we're gonna get there over time, but that's, that's the direction we've been going.
Yeah.
Jaime: And then I think the natural next step seems like it would be building in some, maybe some automation based on an indicator, right. Triggering this kind of thing to try and give people back time in the day. Cause the, I guess the consistent thing I hear from really [00:20:00] everyone I talk to is every single employee is being asked to do more with less these days.
Right? No one has enough resource because of the world we live in, you know, just the increasing number of customers expectations and yet less resource.
Brent: Absolutely. So we do as, as you know, we use a lot of the campaign function and, and many of those are triggered by, you know, first we have the, the customer journey, but different events can occur.
So an example of one is, you know, the way our, our connected devices send their information back to us is something called a gateway. So if that gateway goes offline, then we have a workflow that kicks in that immediately. Sends information, you know, through a campaign to the customer, with a pre, you know, defined email that has information about, you know, like self-help documents for them to figure out how to solve and, you know, correct the issue on their side.
And then we, we have a timer and if it. If it's not resolved in a day, then it, then it goes to the CSM who may, you know, engage or, you know, [00:21:00] confirm in other ways, you know, how they can get them connected. And then again, if it escalates, you know, another seven days, then we, it goes to another group of people to make sure that we can get that connection back.
Jaime: Yeah. So I guess this is an example of what we were talking about before, which is like the proactivity versus waiting for that customer to be dissatisfied at kind of coming to you with the problem. Absolutely.
Brent: Correct. Yeah. It's sensing, it's seeing something. Now that, and then we can take, you know, immediate action.
We, we, we first try to empower the customer through like a tech touch approach to, Hey, heads up. This is going on. This is how you can solve it. And then we want to, you know, offer some assistance, you know, at, at the appropriate time, depending on the level of customer.
Jaime: What do you think have been the keys to your success with, you know, whether that's you as the leader of customer success at Schneider, very impressive position and job, or just, you know, trying to make forward progress every single
Brent: day to be successful.
In my role, what it first had to do is, is build a clear charter of what we're trying to do and. . [00:22:00] Um, and, and again, with my experience of, of bringing, you know, driving transformations and bringing teams together, it started with building that network of excellence. So you, you, you, you really have your, your network of specialists within the company.
And also the network of people like T S I a and others external that can bring in the, you know, the credibility, if you will, from outside of company. So the first thing I had to do was. Define our charter and, uh, and define, you know, a, a clear vision or description of what the role is. And as I mentioned, build that side by side slide of how is it different from customer support?
How is it different than inside sales? And then I went on a road show. I, I, I, I went and met the different leaders around the company, and this was no different than my previous role. You know, when I, when I was. You know, uh, bringing together all the support organizations, they didn't just say, uh, Hey, you know, all these teams now report to you, Brent, it was go down to Mexico and convince the country president that they should give you all their teams.
Right. [00:23:00] So you go down there and have to. Explain the synergy and how it's all gonna work. And this was really no different. It was going and, and working with the different countries. So my role is as, as a global process owner. So the way we're structured is again, the, the CSMs report into the country. So I.
We, we didn't boil the ocean. We started with the, the, the top five to seven countries that represented the largest, you know, um, you know, share of our digital services in myself, as well as first, some of the other functions like digital sales and, and marketing and, and, and, and we had several different work streams.
So I led the one for customer success and it was going to them with a compelling story of. And explanation of what customer success is. And we've been very successful so much so that we now have people coming outta the woodwork, like wanting CSMs for, we want it for digital grid. And some of these other digital offers that haven't been in our, you know, initial perimeter, which is great.
Plus the [00:24:00] view that it's not only for digital offers, we want all recurring services, you know, even for the traditional services for installed based services, where we roll a truck to the due preventative maintenance, we ultimately is now within our vision that we want, uh, customer success or CSMs in all the countries for all recurring contracts, which is the way it should be.
But we're leading with digital. We're leading with digital because we have the telemetry and the. Information to add the most value throughout the life cycle.
Jaime: Right? So if I clarify what you're saying is that for your recurring revenue contracts at Schneider's, some are digital and some are not, that is correct.
And so you started with the CS practice on the digital, and now the others are all coming to saying, Hey, can we get some CS help or CS workloads going on? Some of these other things too? That is
Brent: correct. So that, so the end, so today it's mainly focused on digital. but in the future, if you, and even if we, you know, platformed our accounts into the triangle of, you know, high touch, medium [00:25:00] touch and tech touch.
Yeah. Most of our high touch is, you know, strategically is, is, are the digital customers, right? So they mostly are up there, but apple, I was on a call with, you know, with apple, you know, our support, you know, CSM for, for apple. And yeah, we want to now expand it from just the digital CSM. To all recurring contracts and that that's a whole other scope, but we've gotta bake that in because from a customer's point of view, they want one CSM customer success manager.
If they don't wanna talk to, oh, it's this offer, I'm gonna talk to this CSM, it's that offer. I need to talk to this different, you know, other person. So we, we see that and know that we're not there yet, but that's, that's the vision of where we want to.
Jaime: Right. And I think that this is very true for a large corporation who has, you know, many, many, uh, products and, uh, BU selling to the same customer that they, they often, uh, run into this issue where the customers really just wants to have, you know, kind of a unified customer experience, as opposed to this [00:26:00] joint disjointed experience that they're having.
Because, you know, BU number. One has chosen to do it one way, BU number two, or product number two has chosen to another way. And then the customer is, you know, not really sure, you know, kind of how to move forward with things. Yeah. Interesting. So what about mistakes? I'm sure this has not been super, super simple and, uh, you know, uh, without its moments of frustration and so forth.
So what mistakes did you make along the way here? What have you learned? What advice might you have. I've
Brent: made lots of mistakes. And in, in one, one mantra we have here at Schneider is fail fast. So if, if you're gonna fail, which you likely will in many aspects, you do it quickly, identify it fast and, and turn it around.
So, so one of the areas that I would say was a mistake of mine is not ramping up like a CSM operations team or in, in resources to support me getting this
Jaime: data. Yeah. So otherwise known as customer success, operations, for those who are yes. Less familiar. Yep. Go ahead. Right. Mm-hmm.
Brent: Those first sense operations is, is [00:27:00] still critical for me.
Right. I need to, you know, I'm doubling the size of our team and we need more people because like I said, data drives the practice and if I don't have the data, I don't, I don't have the prac, you know, I don't have, I don't have, you know, the fuel for, for the tool to light up and share with us all the insights and data that it needs.
Yeah. So I would say that's probably the, the biggest one is, is that the other thing would be. Bite it off in small pieces, right? Because we we're such a large company. We have so many different focuses, just keeping it, uh, keeping a narrow focus of certain offers that we're rolling into, uh, , you know, we brought in, you know, several offers already and we have one going on now, you know, it's a balance between throw it in quick just to kind of check the box, but then.
It's kind of jumbled into Totango like we need to then clean up exactly. Which are the key, what's the key info and which data do we need and we already have our team focused on next offer. So, so we've gotta do a little bit better job. I think, [00:28:00] of, of, of fully defining exactly what we want and, and cleaning it up versus just kind of, you know, do it quick.
Right? So.
Jaime: Yeah, totally. And so grant, can you say a little bit more when you, what you mean when you say offer? So we brought an offer in, and we're gonna bring another offer in what do you mean by offer?
Brent: Uh, so in, in Totango, you know, we would bring in it as a different product customer. So it might be the same customer.
Like I used the apple earlier. Mm-hmm so we, we have different, um, solutions that we sell. So just the name one, we have ecostructure, you know, asset advisor for electrical distribu. That that's what we call an offer. And, and, and if it is sold into apple, they would be, uh, an apple. You. Customer, uh, but the pro the, the, the customer type would be product and, and the product name would be EAA, you know, secure power.
Right. And then, uh, we have one for electrical distribution and, and each of those offers, it may even sound the same. Like I mentioned, our marketing team did a [00:29:00] great job with ecostructure, but the reality is each of those offers are. Digital solution. So it's, it's basically, uh, an advisor for your electrical infrastructure.
The other one is an advisor for your UPS's and your data center stuff. Right? So that's why I'm calling 'em offers. And the data comes from a completely different system. Right? Cause each of them were built in different parts of the company. Right. And the, the systems don't talk to each. And
Jaime: how hard has it been to get the data?
And once you identified the data, was it like a Hercule task to bring, you know, do big integration projects to bring this stuff in? Did you, you know, what did you need to make that happen?
Brent: It it, uh, uh, so getting it into Totango is easy. It's getting it out of the source system and organizing it. And what I mean by organizing it, what, the biggest point that I would say about organizing is that we first brought them in, in their own little box.
[00:30:00] And then, uh, and that, that's how the system was. When I started two years ago, it was already brought in. We brought in one other just to get it done. This is kind of back to my mistake. We brought it in just to get it done quick, but we didn't, we didn't rationalize whether the customers were the same or not.
Now that we're getting into, uh, you know, more and more offers that are from other databases, we are doing a much better job of rationalizing the customer base. Against what we have in Salesforce, because Salesforce is our system of record of what we have for our customer. So we've created fields in Totango that give us the Salesforce account ID.
And if we don't have that, we're gonna manually update that. And then that's the ID that we use to join at the customer level. So they may have one customer, one site. I wanna see if there's three products sold at that one site. I wanna see them nested in Totango under one site.
Jaime: Yeah. So there's ways for you to bring this all in and have it kind of make sense to the [00:31:00] team.
And as you build out the workflows in, you know, really the, uh, onboarding program or the, you know, risk programs or the health scores or all these other things that you guys are doing, um, in a way that makes, that makes sense, and you can kind of keep track of it. I think that the CS operations thing, even for us here at Totango is the same.
We have two resources that we have dedicated to CS ops and they spend all their time really working with the team to build the campaigns and to build the success blocks and to make sure the team has everything that they need and to be, you know, productive up and running in that kind of proactivity.
Is, you know, happening really, as we've kind of built out the customer journey and we continue to refine and kind of iterate against it. So maybe speak to that a little bit more, you know, how hard is it for you to change things? Do you find that you're still kind of in the early stages, are you continually, you know, optimizing or, you know, what's the what's going on?
Brent: So the answer is we, I, I, I always refer [00:32:00] to it. It's, it's a journey, not an event. So we are constantly. Changing and adopting things. We are, I love the, uh, the aspect of Totango being composable because we have different maturity levels within our own company. So as I mentioned for product a, we might have a different customer journey because of the, the maturity and the amount of.
Digital tech touch campaigns, et cetera, as you know, for our, our secure power software teams and their associated offers that are different than some of these other digital offers. It may be less tech touch because it's much more about, um, the predictive report and making sure our CSMs engage on a monthly or quarterly basis, depending on the frequency of, you know, what we put in their success plan to make sure that we deliver all aspects.
So the customer sees value, right? So, so the. The outcome's slightly different by each of these offers. So we're, we're leveraging that [00:33:00] flexibility of configuring and composing and, and Totango to help us do that. And no, we're not done. It's, it's a, it's a ever evolving, uh, journey that, like I said, because of, um, limited CS, you know, ops people, I'd like to step it up.
And every time I look at it, I'm like, oh, we gotta continue to improve this. Or, you know, uh, you know, make the system a little bit. Yeah.
Jaime: So what do you think, like what's your dream state? What would be amazing in your mind if you were able to achieve it?
Brent: So my dream state is that that, that we have one system that we can drive all customer success for Schneider electric off that out of.
So that means not only are digital offers that have these various sources where the data's coming in, but it includes. Our standard field service, recurring contracts that all that data right now is in Salesforce. So there's been some internal discussions about, well, why don't we just use Salesforce for managing those types of contracts?
But the answer is [00:34:00] the real answer is that we need one system for all. Customer success. And the vision also is that all contracts have some element of digital. Like we want to overlay this digital component because that's really, you know, the value creation center and the money maker. If you wanna say it, uh, where we add the most, you know, impact for our customers to gain visibility and go from.
Recurring contract where we're just guessing that something's wrong. So we have to go and do scheduled maintenance. Why don't we have a digital service where we can use that data and see real time how the health of all your assets are and use that data to predict when you need service, instead of just go out four times a year, because we're guessing that you need support.
How about. Cut that in half sell you a digital service and then use more of the telemetry and information that we're getting to go out as needed and improve the
Jaime: service and improve the [00:35:00] service for the customers. Right. Because who doesn't want that? No one wants people, you know, visiting on site and all that, that they don't really have to have.
They don't wanna deal with that either. So it's oh, exactly way better from a customer point of view.
Brent: Well, it'd be like with your furnace, right? You, you buy a contract and they show up once a year, just. It's once a year, if somehow there was a service that said, Hey, if we monitored your, the health of your furnace for you, for whatever your program, and then we're only gonna show up, you know, right before something breaks.
Jaime: Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. That's awesome. You know, and so do you feel like there's a shared vision in the company to make that happen? Or do you feel like you still have work to do culturally to bring people along.
Brent: Well, the, uh, I, I believe I have, I mean, there's been recent discussions on this that I've shared with you.
And so I believe that we are now getting the, uh, the buy-in internal to the company, you know, our, our it group and our, our Schneider digital, there were some concerns about the ability for Totango to, to connect and, and, and, and consume information outta Salesforce. That's been put [00:36:00] to bed. We've gotten two thumbs up in terms of that, that capability.
So that is not an issue. And. Because we're really coming out of this. First few a year and a half was to use this Totango setup that was already in our company. Let's pilot it by bringing in some other offers. And now we're at this phase that's internally being called scale up, you know, are we ready to scale up with Totango or should we look somewhere else?
And the, and the answer, you know, I've got the preliminary answer already is that it's, it's a green light let's scale up with Totango versus. You know, start over. And, and a lot of that has to do with the, the ability and the capabilities that we've seen in Totango and the fact that, you know, the ease of integration of all the data sources that we already have.
Yeah. Cause Salesforce is only one of many places that we get information to drive our customer success practice. Yeah. Nonetheless, but, but not the only place. Yeah.
Jaime: And many of our large customers in particular, when they bring all the data in Totango, it's the first time they've [00:37:00] actually had all this data in the same.
So they've never actually had this view of their customer that they for the first time have, and then they can now start to build out those, those success blocks against that. And so that's, I think, uh, really kind of, um, an exciting time for people. People usually get pretty jazzed up about that when they start to see that for the first time
Brent: and when I've show, you know, shown people.
Uh, and again, when I go. Different, you know, we now have expanded from those first seven to eight customer, you know, countries to now we're up to 20 different countries. It's very easy when I show people cuz cuz we have global CU you know, every, if they have a digital customer, I can show them already into Totango where it is and they're blown away with oh great.
It's all in one place. I can see what's going on. I can see how many alarms they got, you know, whether the Gateway's online, et cetera. So the visibility is, is key. And so, and, and we have additional offers that are in the pipeline that already have. You know, the message has been heard loud and clear that we need customer success to help, you know, ensure [00:38:00] that that our recurring services are delivered and we show the value and we, you know, ultimately it's, it's net, you know, RR, right?
So we wanna, you know, not only retain those, those customers, but during our life cycle, focus on the expansion and, and, you know, growth within that account to be able to grow our, our, you know, recurring.
Jaime: Yeah, totally great. Okay. So we're going to switch gears for a second. I'm gonna ask you about some totally other stuff.
Okay. So no, no problem. Let me ask one more CS question before we move on. What do you think is the biggest BS in CS? What's the thing that, that you think like, oh, come on. This is ridiculous.
Brent: Uh, you know, I, I, you know, I guess I'd go back to people's lack of understanding. Customer success is again, there's there's people still in our company.
You know, that would probably initially when I explain it to 'em they get it, but it's this whole difference between customer care and, and, and customer success. And, and I come with a unique background because I was [00:39:00] that guy I, I built and ran most of those teams. Right. And, and, and everyone in the global team knows us, you know, knows me personally about that.
So, so from a credibility point of view, it, it was very easy. Help explain that one, one thing I didn't bring up, which I think is critical and, and maybe this is true with other companies is. In our job codes, like when you're hiring somebody, we have this, you know, internal book of job codes that, you know, it's kind of predefined.
One of the things I did in my first year in, in the job is I helped define job codes specific to customer success because the CSMs that were, that were already called CSMs, they were using like tech support, job codes or inside sales job codes. There was no. Home for them. Like there were orphans when it came to our HR systems right.
Of what job codes, because the job code comes attached to its competencies, which were dialed into those other functions. Right. So we gotta dial those into what we want for [00:40:00] customer success. Yep. And then we also built a training curriculum that's associated to, you know, building upon all those competencies.
And so that's something that we, we built out. So when we go to a country and talk. Here's what you need. And then we also show them here's who you need. And oh, by the way, it's all set up in the HR systems. You know, everyone's gonna know what you're talking about when you're trying to hire this person and oh, by the way, when you hire them, you know, here's, you gotta enroll them in this training program that we put together and, and they can get started.
Jaime: How long is the training program? It sounds
Brent: great. Well, it took us a while to put it together and it's not perfect, but it's, mm-hmm, , it's a six month program where. You know, we have four parts. The first one is more skills based, based on the skills and the, the people skills, the account management skills, like the different types of things that we believe are important for, for our CSMs.
And then the second module, which is also mandatory is, is a summary of all the different ecostructure digital offers that we have, because we want them to be [00:41:00] aware of everything. Even if they've maybe grown up in one part of the company and only know about one offer, we want them to be aware of all of our.
Jaime: Absolutely. Yeah. Great. Okay. So what's something you've read, watched or listened to recently that you can't
Brent: let go. I always like looking at, you know, YouTube videos and one of the things I was looking at recently that, that, that blew me away is, you know, I'm always checking up on, uh, on, on SpaceX and you know, what they have going on with, uh, with Starship and how it compares to the SLS.
You know, why I can't let that go. Is. I'm really happy that they got involved in that industry because you see the efficiencies that they've been able to accomplish with what Starship can do or, or is supposed to be able to do. Right. And, and, and they've proven it with the Falcon and these other rockets compared to what NASA has traditionally done.
Right. So think of the millions of dollars that like, we just shoot these things up and they fall in the. right. And that's what they're planning on doing with this, you know, you know, space launch system, right. So we're gonna, it's like 22 [00:42:00] billion. I was reading this saying, you know, they're gonna shoot it up and yay.
It got in the orbit and it just like crashes , you know? Oh my God. So, uh, it just makes me think that, uh, someone Elon, you know, went into an industry that was that he disrupted and drove. Complete like efficiency and, and, and, and, and just change, which reinvigorated like this, the, you know, like my kids and others are excited about space again, when I was a little kid, I remember where I psyched about space and it kind of like dwindled out and fizzled.
And he's kind of brought that back for everybody, which I think is cool.
Jaime: So, if you weren't working at your current company or in CS at Schneider or CS, what would you be doing? Would you be in space?
Brent: no, I wouldn't be in space. I would be on my boat. So, uh, I live in Rhode Island and, uh, you know, we have, uh, Sea race, ITAM bridge, you know, which is basically it's our condo on the water.
So we love spending time there. Mm-hmm and one of the, I love those Seara. [00:43:00] Yes. Yeah. So you're familiar with that. So we, um, mm-hmm and we just got back from, uh, out in Martha's vineyard and, and one of the things that, that one of our friends are doing with, which is on my, my, uh, you know, my list is the do what's called the great loop.
So it, it basically is going up the Hudson river through the Erie canal, through the great lakes down through Chicago and the Mississippi, et C. All the way around Florida. And, and that's what a lot of our friends, or, you know, one couple that has already started it that we'd like to do someday. Right.
That's something that, that would cool. Wow. Yeah.
Jaime: That'd be fun hopefully in the summer. So you're not freezing.
Brent: Absolutely. I think if you're gonna do the great lakes, it has to be, there's only like two months. Yes.
Jaime: No ice. Yes. Yes. Yes. All right. Okay. Last question. What advice would you give someone starting out in your role today?
And I bet you do knowing you, I'm sure you meet with people who are just joining the company and give them advice. So what advice do you have for the newbies?
Brent: Well, uh, the newbies I would say is, you know, especially for customer success is, is get plugged into the industry and get plugged in with a [00:44:00] network of people within our own company that, that have been there and done that.
This is an exciting place to be, you know, the new members of my team. I congratulate 'em for joining, you know, the best team within our company. Right. I, I truly believe that I'm not just trying to give a sales pitch, is that I wanna be. In the part of our company, when our CEO gets up on the stage and talks about the future of our own company, it's about services enabled with digital because that's the element that's growing twice faster than the rest of the company.
So I'd rather be the tip of the arrow and be the team that's enabling that fast growth of all of our recurring services. And, and I welcome people that, that, that are joining me in my, in my role, in my functions here in Schneider and, and excited to be part of this. Awesome.
Jaime: All right, friend. Thanks so much.
Totally appreciate it. All
Brent: right. Cool. All right. Thank you. That's it for this week's episode of CS. No vs. With your host, Jamie Berta. If you enjoy today's episode, please leave a rating or review and tell a [00:45:00] friend. This podcast was created by the team at Totango design and run best in class customer journey.
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