Taylor: [00:00:00] Welcome to Success/ful, where we break down the essential elements of leading Customer Success strategies. This podcast is all about uncovering blind spots, pushing beyond typical best practices and tackling those out of bounds topics for CS leaders that are key to our success. I'm your host, Taylor Johnston, VP of Customer Success at Vitally. I love connecting with listeners, so find me on LinkedIn and say hello. And we'd also love for you to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. Today we're talking to Cynthia Taylor, Senior Vice President of Customer Success, Support Experience and People Science Teams at Culture Amp. She tells us why it's crucial to adopt an ‘always be branding’ mindset and how to create consistency of communication across teams.

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Welcome, Cynthia. First, tell us about Culture Amp and your role there. 

Cynthia: Oh my gosh, thank you so much, Taylor. Thank you for having me and for the invite from the Vitally team. So thrilled to be here. So where to start? First thing up is Culture Amp. Culture Amp connects and organizes employee and business data to deliver unique insights that drive higher organizational performance. And so like, what does that mean? You know, we're all here mostly in like the tech and SaaS space. And so this is all via our SaaS platform and it includes engagement, performance, develop, people analytics, and many other features. But we wrap all of that in a robust service model, scaling from SMB customers to large enterprise.

Cynthia: And then we offer Customer Success, Support, and People Science [00:02:00] teams to our customers, which is where I come in. I am, uh, the lucky leader of the Customer Success, support, experience, and people science teams here at Culture Amp. As SVP, I look after 205 souls globally in our Melbourne, San Francisco, and New York offices. Some folks like the numbers more than the, the words. And so if you want some perspective on that. Culture Amp has nearly 7, 000 customers. We are in nine, 193 countries, 1 billion data points within our SaaS platform based on customers interaction with us, that's 13 million engagement surveys that have been completed, a million performance cycles that have been launched. And we have 3,000 benchmarks across our platform.

Taylor: No small amount of work and delivery there. So thank you so much for your time. And, you know, it's, it's so great to see across different Customer Success organizations, separate roles, and everyone's sort of specializing in different ways. Can you tell us about the People Science team and how that fits into the experience?

Cynthia: [00:03:00] Yeah, um, you could think about People Science as, well, two aspects. One, People Science is like the foundation of the platform at Culture Amp. And so it's embedded in our product and it is embedded in our service delivery models. We also, for our enterprise customers, have customer facing People Science folks who are the folks who are on my team.

Who are working one to one with customers. They have a book of business that they are working with a group of customers to ensure that they get the most out of the platform with the insights and then the actions that they take with our data. And so the easiest way to think about that really is what professional services often looks like at other SaaS.

Taylor: Amazing. Well, a perfect place for us to dive in today because you yourself, of course, work at Culture Amp, but you are a cultural leader. And so I've heard you, you know, talk about the importance of internal branding as a part of how you, you operate. And I think this is a hugely underrated skill for many of us Customer Success [00:04:00] leaders. I've even heard you have a saying, always be branding. What does that mean to you as a leader? 

Cynthia: So what always be branding to me really is. encapsulates the perspective from Customer Success. We were just talking about how busy we all are and the cognitive load that we're carrying all the time. And branding is really a shortcut to help people get to focus faster, get to impact faster. And get to clarity on what it is that you need to be doing. An area of branding can be about your strategy. Like what was your strategy in 2021 versus 2024? Well, you know, my team could tell you in 2023, the strategy was Deb and we named her Deb and it was around deliver, execute, and build. And so that was something that we would talk about our friend, Deb. We would bring Deb back into a conversation. And so we knew that that was what the focus was. I also talk about time at Culture Ramp is like BC was before Cynthia, right? Or before [00:05:00] COVID. And so there's these shortcuts that help both bring, I think, a sense of play to our work, but also get really clear on what we're talking about and help you remember it in the vast noise of information that we have coming to us at any one time.

Taylor: Yeah, absolutely. And, and within that, you know, you've got the branding side of it. And then I've also heard you talk about rituals as, as a part of this skill as well. What are some examples of rituals that you've built that you've found to be most successful?

Cynthia: Yeah, there's a couple of different rituals and, and we could have a whole conversation around how do you build your operating revenue operations model. And, and how do you build that then into rituals for your business as well? Easy ones are all hands, right? I think we just had our all hands yesterday. I think it was the 40th all hands I've held within, within our team. And having that consistent and inclusive communication is a touch point is super key. Doing breakout groups in the beginning of the meetings, cause the team is global, right? Having that chance to meet in those groups is, has been really important. We also do things like the churn, churn [00:06:00] watch list meeting on a regular basis. So every two weeks we're having that conversation. And then that has really evolved into the churn watch list now being an area of brainstorming.

So we have our Customer Success and our account management and our people science teams all joining this call of customers that we are. Concerned about risk in some way, and now using this space as a brainstorming session to be specific at the logo level of what needs to be true in order for them to be retained and to get value out of the Coltrient platform. And then to use that opportunity of each one of our strengths and our particular roles, and also the learnings we have from across our business and across our books of examples that have worked with other customers. And then because it's a group call, you also have others who are listening in, who may have a different customer to talk about, but are learning or gleaning something, um, in the way that we're problem solving or in the solution we come up with that they can apply.

And so that ritual of having that turn watch list has really become a place from, uh, [00:07:00] triaging in the most like urgent sense into solutioning and like the most playful sense. And that has been, um, a great evolution of a ritual that we established, but also in. The fun and play that it can bring.

Taylor: Love that, using those spaces and those moments to turn from what can feel like a very lonely sport at times in the account management, Customer Success world into a safe space to be able to brainstorm and get ahead.

Cynthia: Yeah, I often talk about Customer Success Managers are really like three year olds in parallel play. Like everyone has their own blocks and they're playing on their own. There isn't a lot of collaboration with other CSMs, that loneliness you were talking about. But where the collaboration comes in is those cross functional partnerships with your professional services team, our people science team in this case, or our account management. And that's where really the collaborative work comes in. And how do you build something together? 

Taylor: So the consistency side of this, I know you mentioned your 40th all hands. What do you do in the all hands [00:08:00] that, that makes those so great? And how do you keep that consistency up? 

Cynthia: At first, the way consistency happened is I drove them. I put together the all hands for, I think, the first two years in order to ensure that it had the right It had the right, uh, building blocks that, that all of that work together. And so that it had one steward to really get legs culturally. We also have regular segments in there. So I have like a section that is CT's corner. My work nickname is CT. Every all hands has a CT's corner where I'm talking about the high level strategy pieces. And then we also have a metrics area and that's really evolved over time to ensure that we go from not just reporting the news, but actually providing insights and predictability about what's going to happen in the quarter.

And then that has now evolved. So for the second two years of having just, you know, your basic like rota of different teams stepping in and giving their own flavor into. The, um, all hands. So we had our East [00:09:00] Coast support team actually led the, the all hands yesterday and brought in their own sense of joys. And then using that thematically then to drive the rest of the all hands so that they each have a unique flavor and everyone knows what they're going to get. When they get there, they know they're going to have a breakout session. They know they're going to have a breakout session for collaboration.

Cynthia: They're going to have a Cheese Corner for strategy. They're going to know where the business stands. And then the rest of the agenda is really shaped around the person who's hosting, the team that's hosting, and also what's relevant in the business. Consistency does not have to equal boring. That is what I know. Absolutely not. Just as I was having a conversation with someone that professional does not have to mean formal. Like, so, so those two things are really important. It's really important to think about, right? Consistency can mean fun, professional can also mean informal, and what those things can bring together can be a really high caliber, engaging experience for teams.

Taylor: So you've mentioned that at your level, especially, and managing a highly global [00:10:00] team, that a significant portion of your time is spent building bridges across departments. Can you share an example of a time when you saw an opportunity for a closer partnership with another team internally?

Cynthia: A perfect example for anyone in Customer Success is with the product team and how you really build a strong relationship with that group. When I first came into Culture Amp, the relationship was not particularly strong between customer and product. Not that it was bad. It just wasn't, it just didn't have a lot of. Quality interactions and real partnership as, as its theme. And so we had the opportunity with a new VP of product coming in to really reestablish that relationship.

And so I kind of took that moment and grabbed my partner in crime. The VP in account management and then grabbed the new VP of product and kind of like arm and arm was like, all right, we, you know, we are going to make a difference and we are going to do it together. And I branded us the three [00:11:00] amigos and I was like, the three amigos are unified. We have the same viewpoint of our priorities. We have the same energy around the problems to solve. We have the same excitement about the opportunities ahead of us. And then using that three amigos concept, whenever I would talk in large groups or even with customers. And then I had those moments where you get that third party feedback that it's working in ways that someone doesn't always know they're giving you feedback.

But I was in London after having met with a larger customer, um, and was able to talk about the progress we had made in. The product realm and the CSM actually said to me, like on the street in our little debrief while we were waiting for the Uber, he was like, you know, Cynthia, like the three amigos are working. Like I can feel the difference. Like you can see the progress. And for him to like feedback to me, like I, the, the three amigos is working. Like it meant both the branding had stuck. He knew how to talk about us. And then that the idea of like our partnership together was actually having real progress that was [00:12:00] tangible for customers and the team was like, All right, like we're, we're going somewhere.

Taylor: That's awesome. That's awesome. And one of the rituals that I've heard you talk about that goes alongside of that partnership together is the fishbowl ritual. Yeah. Talk to us about that.

Cynthia: Yeah. So a fishbowl, if you've been to a Culture Amp, um, customer event, please come. We have great customer events, great community events. One of the rituals that we've done in that, uh, And the last event is something called a fishbowl. It involves the entire group, but you have a small group of people who need to have a conversation, make a decision, or share information. And it's very important that you have those key constituents in a conversation together. And then you have the larger fishbowl of everyone else who's in the room and is learning. is witnessing and maybe contributing, maybe they come in and have the conversation into, into the smaller, the smaller group, the folks that the actual fish in the bowl. And so we did that at one of our VP assemblies twice a year, all the VPs globally get together to set strategy and measure our progress.

And so we [00:13:00] had done that around the product and customer focus, and we'd had a fishbowl about it. And this was around the same time as the three amigos. So we'd had three amigos established. Then we did this fishbowl and then suddenly like everybody wanted to be an amigo, suddenly like we needed to grow the group. And so then I realized the importance of branding is to not limit you yourself to a number, because then we needed to like make the group a little bigger, to be more inclusive of a couple of folks in engineering, some folks in customer marketing, as an example, product marketing. And so we went from the three amigos to the fishbowl so that we had a little larger group of cross functional customer and product VPs.

And then took that into a weekly meeting that we have every Wednesday afternoon, around 4. 30, again, time zones, trying to get a North American APAC coverage. And so that we have that ritual then on a weekly basis to spend time on what's happening on the product side, what's coming up, what are opportunities and challenges and the same on the customer side. So we did everything yesterday in the meeting to planning when one of the [00:14:00] VPs will be across. For a meeting with a customer in the fall to ideating around what is the next way to go to market with a particular feature and how that might look. And so, yeah, it can be a really varied, but very rich conversation.

Taylor: Awesome. And as a part of this and building that teamwork across the departments, I've heard you talk about, you know, just consistency of message. back out to the organization. So making sure we're all telling the same story. Why is that so important as you move out of these rituals, as you leave that room where you're all together and now trying to get the message out, why is consistency there so important?

Cynthia: Yeah, again, I think it comes to the cognitive load that folks are carrying and that you are not sure, particularly in our virtual worlds, what rooms everybody is in and which conversations are happening where. Consistency of communication. It really needs to be that omnipresent view of like surround sound of like what's happening in Slack, what's happening in [00:15:00] smaller team meetings, one to ones, what's happening at the company level, and by having a strong viewpoint from a communication standpoint to ensure that everyone understands the scope, scale, and impact for them. And this is still like a huge work in progress for me. So I, by no means have this nailed as I'm thinking about feedback I had from my all hands yesterday, but there can even be things around like the, a transformation project that we're in the midst of, of ensuring that we have like a logo, which is like, sounds so silly, right?

But like having a logo. And we took the transformation project just from a singular team to a multi team. And so by signaling to the, to the business, like this is no longer a transformation just for the Customer Success team, but for actually for so many areas in our post sales organization and having a logo that can, you know, Encapsulate that change and give people an identification. So as they're scrolling through [00:16:00] Slack, they understand that this message is related to the transformation. They see it in a presentation. They know it came from kind of like our office around transformation, and they can speak to it with other teams, knowing that we've had the same conversation about it. So that can really help pull that consistency across projects so that we all are using the same language. We all have the same energy around and we all understand the outcomes and the opportunities we're trying to solve.

Taylor: Wow. So for those large scale transformation projects, you talked about the logo. I also heard you at the beginning talk about naming your strategies. How do you align with other leaders on what the logo should be? Oh my gosh. How do you do these?

Cynthia: Yeah, that part is the fun part of still being a scale up is like, you just do it. You find someone who can like craft, you know, craft it together. We have a particularly talented woman in our revenue acceleration team. Another whole conversation we could talk about who is great at design. We talked about yesterday in a meeting of like, if you could have one talent that you [00:17:00] didn't have to go to school. to become an expert at, what would it be? Mine would be, I would choose to, to be an expert in design because I do think the visual is so important in our busy worlds. So yeah, there is still plenty of opportunity at Culture Amp to just own, own a decision. One of our values is trust others to own decisions. And so if it is within your realm and within your scope, you just Make it happen.

Taylor: Amazing. Can you give us a couple examples, one or two examples of big transformative projects that you've, you've been a part of and how the idea of the logo or the naming helped move it forward?

Cynthia: Yeah, I'll share one that comes to mind as you talk about that. And it was actually my colleague, Nick Matthews, in our EMEA region, we'd opened an office in Berlin, which was a really important moment in the growth of Culture Amp and our commitment to the EMEA region. And with that, we were super focused with boots on the ground to make an impact both in Berlin and then like in the German market. As we went [00:18:00] into year two of being in market, it became apparent that our identity was becoming very focused on like the UK market and then Berlin as an example. And so the strategy that the team rallied around in that year was bigger than Berlin. And so it was really around what is. The opportunity of the non UK market for Culture Amp.

How do we think about that, um, for all of our customers who are not in the UK? And that it is, uh, it is bigger than Berlin, right? We're not just trying to, to solve this market. We're trying to solve the larger non UK market. And by having that, that tagline bigger than Berlin, everyone was crystal clear on what their job was. If you came in and you were in the Berlin office, that you should be spending time, not just on your local market, but outside of that. You felt great about the progress you made because you know you're making it big, but you want to be bigger elsewhere. And so I think that is a perfect example of the [00:19:00] evolution of what is the right message for your team now? That wasn't a year one message. It was a year two message to help drive the growth that we needed for the business and having the right tagline or branding that helped that clarity. And really get everyone to rally behind it.

Taylor: That's awesome. And you've, you know, I think you've got a special skill here that so many of us as Customer Success leaders are thinking about. How do I better amplify the work that the customer teams are doing? You know, it's a day in, day out, tough role. We're trying to improve how we, you know, make sure there's recognition and just understanding across the business. How do you Do that effectively.

Cynthia: Yeah, there are small things and silly things and bigger things. So one of the things that was an aha moment for me, we are a Slack centric organization. We have actually had new hires start and think that their email was broken because no email was coming in. Like everything is communicated in Slack. As a leader, you know, I'm passing my eye over [00:20:00] thousands of Slack messages. It's on a regular basis. And at some point I realized like, Oh, of course you want to like amplify that, right? You want to emoji it and do something like that. The team knows that you see their work, that you see them either in a public channel celebrating it or in a private channel trying to solve a problem that the team knows that you're there for them.

I realized that if you just like thumbs up it, you're like just another shade of like a thumbs up and they're like 93 people who've already like thumbs up it. And so I started just always using the green heart. And so like if I saw something, I would green heart it. And if I was looking at it, I would just green heart it anyways, because my eyes are already there. So, right. So I would just green heart it. Things. And then one day I was on a call, I was in like one of the churn watch lists with our APAC team and the leader of the APAC AM team was like, CT, you are everywhere. He's like, I see that green heart on so many slacks. And every time I see the green heart, I know it's you.

I had never told him that I was the green heart. I [00:21:00] didn't like there was no announcement that I am the green heart. I just started doing it and that consistency then showed up. And so I also had the same story out of the Berlin office where they were like, we wait for that green heart to see like how fast you get to things. Sometimes I may have a slack problem. And so now with my team, actually, I encourage every one of my leaders to have their own emoji. So Wes and Amiya is the boxing glove and Becca is the. little dancing dog and Brit is the dancing dinosaur and Ashley's the flouncing fox. Like I, I can see, like I say their name and I see their emoji now and it sounds so silly, but I can glance at a Slack and I know if my team's been there. I know if they've seen it. I know how many people have seen it. I know where they're at and what channels they're paying attention to and where to tell them to dial up, dial down. It really has become a shortcut. and improved our visibility across the organization so that the team knows that we've got them and that we're in the right places at the right times.

Taylor: You saying, like you said, feel small, but huge. To not only help [00:22:00] you digest a mountain of information that you are getting all the time, but also support your leaders and where they are. So I think that is a great takeaway for everyone listening. Something small you can do today to make yourself more present. Pick your emoji. Let me know what you pick. Yeah. Amazing. All right. Well, thank you so much for these insights, Cynthia. They've been, they've been incredible. We're going to jump to some quick hits before we let you go. So if you're ready to rock and roll, I'll go ahead and dive in. What's one habit or routine that you follow that's had a positive impact on your life? 

Cynthia: I meet every new hire on our team. That's incredible. What do you do in that time? So we now do it in group sessions and we do intros and they ask questions of me. I just had one this morning and I had two people from support, one person from people science, one coach, one person from the UK, like, you know, it's just like a smattering. And so it's [00:23:00] just like a question and answer, but just a really informal piece. But it's like highly important to me that even with the size of the organization that I have, that I can glance over. A list of names or see a org chart or whatever. And like that I have a real sense of the person and their impact, what's important to them. And I hope that comes through in my leadership style. But yeah, it's super important. And I think it creates the early culture that we need as a team.

Taylor: Awesome. If you could go back in time when you were just starting in Customer Success and give yourself a piece of advice, what would it be?

Cynthia: So my career started much before Customer Success even existed. So it feels like Customer Success has been like a third of my career, not all of it, which is just a unique perspective that maybe not, not all of us have. The The opportunity for feedback both ways with customers, I think, is one of the early pieces of advice in that we are often asking for feedback from customers, what can you do better, NPS, CSAT, like what those things look like, but also the [00:24:00] opportunity of demonstrating to customers where they could be better against their peers, against their peers, their own goals, like having that conversation and getting to that conversation faster, I think is really where you develop the deep partnership and the opportunity to grow customers beyond their own expectations.

Taylor: If you had a crystal ball for customer behavior, what is the first thing you'd want to know? How do they make decisions? That would be a very good one. And last but not least, what makes you feel successful?

Cynthia: I feel successful when I see my, our customers. Amplifying their experience with Culture Amp and the impact of the Customer Success and people science and support teams, uh, and the success they've had. So I was at, we were doing a leadership development program this week here in San Francisco at one of the women who was attending. The leadership workshop is that we're staying in a hotel, a [00:25:00] woman who works at the hotel, they ended up in a conversation, that woman happens to lead, this is just all happen chance, happens to lead the people in HR team at the hotel.

She talked about how Amazing our support team is and how it is like the best chat and the best support that she's ever had in any product anywhere. And that was just like an elevator conversation. And so you see small moments like that. I see it on LinkedIn, I see it come through case studies. I see it through proactive emails that customers send and either the The person themselves or to their boss to amplify them. Like those are the moments where, you know, the value has been so high for each, for them to mutually take out the time to point out the, the impact is just fantastic. And I feel lucky to work for a company that has those, can make that kind of impact with a customer that, They take the time out to do it.

Taylor: All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Cynthia. We really appreciate the insight that you've brought. [00:26:00] Awesome. Thank you.

Big thanks to Cynthia for sharing her insights with us today. And a special thanks to all of you who tuned in. If you enjoyed this episode and found value in our conversation, don't forget to spread the word to your Customer Success friends. Before you go, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Find me on LinkedIn at taylorjohnston or linkedin.com/tljohnston. Leave us a rating and review on your favorite podcast platform and check us out on YouTube. Your feedback means the world to us. Before we let you go, I want to remind you about our season one survey. The link is in the show notes and it should only take a couple of minutes. Click the link in the show notes to get started. We can't wait to hear from you. See you next time.

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