Kim Peretti, a seasoned Customer Success executive with over 25 years in tech, shares her insights on building a customer-first culture. She emphasizes the importance of aligning sales, marketing, and customer success teams to foster business growth. Kim discusses the role of data in understanding customer health and encourages companies to shift focus from acquiring new customers to retaining existing ones. She also highlights the value of shared compensation goals in enhancing collaboration and dispels the myth that customer churn is solely the responsibility of customer success managers.
56:43
forum Ask episode
web_stories AI Snips
view_agenda Chapters
auto_awesome Transcript
info_circle Episode notes
question_answer ANECDOTE
Network Fueled Her Career Moves
Kim built her network early at PeopleSoft which became the launchpad for her career across top tech firms.
Those relationships repeatedly led to opportunities at Symantec, Adobe, DocuSign, and Klaviyo.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Operationalize Voice Of Customer
Build a dedicated voice-of-customer function and adopt a platform to consistently capture feedback across channels.
Prioritize and surface themes to product, sales, and exec teams to drive roadmap and operational change.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Communicate Early And Often
Overcommunicate proactively with customers about issues, timelines, and mitigations instead of leaving them to discover problems.
Provide transparent expectations even when you cannot immediately fix something.
Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode
Kim Peretti is an experienced Customer Success executive with over 25 years in the technology industry. Her most recent role was as Chief Customer Officer at Klaviyo, where she transformed the customer success organization during the company’s hypergrowth, and played a key role in preparing the company for its IPO. Prior to Klaviyo she was the Group Vice President of Customer Success at DocuSign, where she built and lead successful strategies that delivered key customer outcomes and results. Kim's extensive background also includes leadership positions in Customer Success at renowned technology companies such as Adobe, Qlik, and Symantec. Her career reflects a strong commitment to driving customer impact and achieving business results.
Discussed in this Episode:
The importance of building a customer-first culture from day one
Strategies for aligning sales, marketing, and customer success teams
The role of data in understanding and driving customer health
How to implement an effective voice of the customer program
The misconception that customer success managers alone can solve churn
The impact of shared compensation goals on cross-functional collaboration
Highlights: (1:56) Kim's journey through top tech companies and the power of networking. (5:39) The importance of customer experience from the first marketing touch. (8:38) Shifting focus from new logos to customer retention and expansion. (15:10) Implementing shared compensation goals across teams. (20:37) Building a voice of the customer program. (35:17) The role of partnerships in customer success. (40:37) Using data to understand what makes customers healthy. (45:58) One thing revenue leaders believe to be true that Kim thinks is bull$***. (47:58) One thing that is working for Kim in go-to-market right now.
Product Recommendation: Apollo "The revenue tech stack is messy right now.
If you are one of those leaders, I would recommend that you take a look at Apollo. Maybe you think you know Apollo, maybe you’ve taken a look at them in the past but I’ve looked under the hood recently and if your goal is to reduce and simplify your tech stack AND have best in breed data layered in with AI - they would be at the top of my list. There’s a reason Rippling and Stripe switched over.
We worked with their team to create an interactive demo page. You can check it out at: https://www.apollo.io/gtm
Almost all I hear these days is “we need to figure out how to best leverage AI in our sales process” and “how can we consolidate/simplify our tech stack.” With Apollo I believe you can accomplish both." - Scott Barker
The GTMnow Podcast The GTMnow Podcast is a weekly podcast featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.
Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.
The GTMnow Podcast