CS EXECUTIVE CYCLE

Guy Galan, the Chief Customer Success Officer at Obrela, has spent his career shaping exceptional customer experiences in the cybersecurity landscape. Based in Tel Aviv, Guy brings a wealth of expertise to his role, blending technical understanding with a customer-centric mindset developed over two decades in post-sales roles, including technical consultancy, support, and account management. His diverse journey underscores a deep understanding of customer needs and how to meet them effectively. What Advice Do You Have For Someone's First 100 Days As Head Of CS? When stepping into a leadership role in Customer Success, Guy advises focusing on three critical areas: understanding the product, identifying the ideal customer profile, and analyzing the customer journey. Leaders must ask questions internally and externally, mapping out the onboarding process and the expected outcomes for customers. Engaging with customers early, armed with a solid knowledge foundation, helps align expectations and priorities for long-term success. What Does Your CS Strategy Focus On Currently And In The Future? At Obrela, Guy’s strategy involves simplifying the onboarding process and bridging customer knowledge gaps. Recognizing that traditional usage-based metrics often fall short in cybersecurity, his team emphasizes demonstrating clear value through innovative engagement and consistent communication. Looking ahead, Guy sees the need for deeper automation and leveraging data-driven insights to deliver value. His team experiments with AI to analyze historical data, offering proactive recommendations and fostering a leadership role in the customer’s cybersecurity ecosystem. How Do You Measure Success With CS? Success, according to Guy, hinges on tailored metrics for each customer segment. For onboarding, his team defines specific milestones and durations based on customer complexity. They complement these metrics with customer satisfaction surveys and structured feedback mechanisms like QBRs and service reviews. By maintaining a close feedback loop, they ensure alignment with customer expectations and continuously refine their approach. What Pain Points Do You Have Leading A CS Team? Guy acknowledges the unique challenges of the cybersecurity sector, where customer engagement often transcends platform usage. A key focus is determining health scores accurately reflecting customer engagement and satisfaction. Metrics like response times to incidents and proactive customer inquiries help gauge the quality of interactions and overall customer health. Additionally, his team prioritizes using internal data to identify opportunities for innovation and new service offerings. How Do You Establish Partnerships And Gain Buy-In With The C-Suite? Effective CS leadership requires trust and alignment with organizational goals. Guy emphasizes collaboration across departments, making customer satisfaction a shared responsibility. He champions understanding the objectives of C-suite colleagues and aligning CS initiatives with their priorities. By positioning CS as a partner in achieving broader business goals, Guy fosters a culture of mutual support and collective success. Do You Have An Example Of Utilizing Customer Feedback To Improve Your Company? For Guy, customer feedback is a gold mine of actionable insights. His team leverages feedback from onboarding surveys and annual satisfaction surveys to identify areas for improvement. This input is carefully analyzed, with ownership assigned to relevant departments, ensuring customer insights translate into meaningful action plans. What Is The Future Of CS? The CS profession is at a crossroads, with organizations scrutinizing its value in a SaaS-driven world. Guy envisions a future where CS drives measurable revenue impact and operational efficiency. He advocates equipping CS teams to identify and qualify revenue opportunities while maintaining strong collaboration with sales teams. Simultaneously, he sees AI as a tool to streamline operations, freeing CS professionals to focus on strategic customer engagement. About Guy Galon Outside of work, Guy is a passionate writer and athlete. He has authored two books—a science fiction novel and a contemporary novel—marking milestones in his journey. As an avid athlete, daily training fuels his energy and focus. For those interested in following Guy’s career, he is active on LinkedIn and shares resources on his website, The CS Cycle. His platform offers playbooks, articles, and tips for the CS community, making his insights accessible to professionals seeking guidance in their journeys. Read the entire article here: https://www.satrixsolutions.com/blog/tips-for-saas-customer-experience

The CSM role has evolved over the years, and it’s time to adopt a stronger commercial mindset. CMSs have remarkable assets at their disposal – they are experienced professionals capable of building relationships and acting as trusted advisors. Now, the question is how to leverage these and become a significant revenue enabler. Join me for the hands-on session to understand the shift in mindset and hear about a simple framework to manage CS opportunities. We will learn how to identify, size, and qualify opportunities based on knowledge of the customer's needs and the product/solution deployed. The masterclass drive awareness among CSMs to make a positive impact on revenue leveraging practical steps of effective opportunity management.

Customer experience should be a company mindset and not solely owned by the Customer Success teams. Moreover, it relies on well-established interfaces between customer success, sales, and product, influencing the customer experience, renewal, and growth decisions. You will hear exclusive insights into team collaboration and learn how to leverage the relationship with your colleagues from sales and product. The panel experts are at the forefront of the field and will share success stories and the lessons they learned along the way. You will leave the session equipped with practical ideas for significantly impacting your customer journey by joining forces with Sales and Product.

It can be a great feeling when you have a team of CSM professionals that love what they do and are good at their job. However, even if your team members are excelling in their current positions, it is important to have a plan in place that will allow them to nurture their careers and work towards specific goals. As a Customer Success leader, it’s your responsibility to have a professional development plan in place to help them get there. In this CS Leadership Roundtable, host Andrew Marks and three Customer Success professionals--Amy Wheldon, Daniel Ennis, and Guy Galon--discuss building professional development plans for CS teams. During the live event, the panelists discussed: * What a professional development plan includes * The benefits of a professional development plan * The first steps toward building a professional development plan for your team members * How you go about assessing a team member’s skills and competencies * How you build a learning and development strategy * What types of opportunities to offer your team members By the end of the learning session, you’ll have lots of good advice and tips on building professional development plans for your team. --------------------- Get more Customer Success resources: Check out the calendar of FREE live learning events: https://successcoaching.co/customer-success-events Enroll in an instructor-led Customer Success training program: https://successcoaching.co/training-calendar/ Start an on-demand training program for individuals https://successcoaching.co/solo-customer-success-training or teams: https://successcoaching.co/team-customer-success-training Read educational articles on our blog: https://successcoaching.co/customer-success-blog Follow SuccessCOACHING on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/successhacker/ --------------------- About Us: SuccessCOACHING is reinventing the Customer Success training experience for CS Leaders, Customer Success Managers, and aspiring CSMs. Learn more about how SuccessCOACHING can help you or your Customer Success team at successcoaching.co. #CustomerSuccess #CareerDevelopment #CustomerSuccessTraining

In today's customer-centric business environment, the quality of customer experience (CX) is a crucial determinant of a company's success. As Customer Success leaders, understanding and enhancing this experience is paramount to ensuring customer satisfaction and loyalty, key drivers of sustained business growth. In this CS Leadership Roundtable, host Andrew Marks and Customer Success professionals Bertil Weil, Guy Galon, and JoJo Kalita discuss how to curate an outstanding customer experience. During the live event, the panelists discussed: * The key components of an exceptional customer experience in today's market * How CS leaders can effectively measure and analyze customer satisfaction and loyalty * Examples of successful strategies that can be implemented to improve customer experience * The role that technology plays in enhancing the customer experience and how to leverage it * How CS teams can personalize customer interactions to increase satisfaction and loyalty * Common challenges in improving customer experience and how can they be overcome By the end of the learning session, you’ll have learned a lot about how to enhance the customer experience. --------------------- Get more Customer Success resources: Check out the calendar of FREE live learning events: https://successcoaching.co/customer-success-events Enroll in an instructor-led Customer Success training program: https://successcoaching.co/training-calendar/ Start an on-demand training program for individuals https://successcoaching.co/solo-customer-success-training or teams: https://successcoaching.co/team-customer-success-training Read educational articles on our blog: https://successcoaching.co/customer-success-blog Follow SuccessCOACHING on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/successhacker/ --------------------- About Us: SuccessCOACHING is reinventing the Customer Success training experience for CS Leaders, Customer Success Managers, and aspiring CSMs. Learn more about how SuccessCOACHING can help you or your Customer Success team at successcoaching.co. #CustomerSuccess #CareerDevelopment #CustomerSuccessTraining

#customersuccess #csmpractice #commercialmindset #revenuegeneration #maturitymodel Transitioning from firefighting to a commercial mindset can be daunting for new companies. It's crucial to focus on generating revenue while overcoming the challenges of this transition period. In an engaging video interview, we explore the CS Commercial Maturity Framework, a roadmap for evolving customer success practices. The interview covers stages like support, onboarding, adoption, renewals, and revenue generation. Practical insights and strategies, including key performance indicators, are shared to align progress with organizational goals. Learn how to embrace a commercial mindset in customer success and escape firefighting mode! 👍 Like, share, and subscribe for expert insights! 👉🏻 Whenever you’re ready...If you're an 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘥 𝘦𝘹𝘦𝘤𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘊𝘚𝘔 𝘱𝘳𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦, there are three powerful ways I can help you fast-track success while avoiding common pitfalls: 1️⃣ 𝙎𝙩𝙚𝙖𝙡 𝙈𝙮 𝘾𝙪𝙨𝙩𝙤𝙢𝙚𝙧 𝙎𝙪𝙘𝙘𝙚𝙨𝙨 𝙆𝙋𝙄 𝘾𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙩𝙨𝙝𝙚𝙚𝙩 Tracking the right KPIs is the key to driving your CSM team to higher performance. Get my Customer Success KPI Cheatsheet and learn how to focus on the metrics that actually move the needle—so you can scale smarter and accelerate revenue growth. Click here to download the workbook: 🔗 https://unlock.thecustomermethod.com/downloadcskpicheatsheet 2️⃣ 𝙅𝙤𝙞𝙣 11,000+ 𝘽2𝘽 𝙀𝙭𝙚𝙘𝙪𝙩𝙞𝙫𝙚𝙨 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙇𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙚𝙧𝙨 Every week, I share strategic insights and practical tools to help you hit your quarterly goals faster while scaling your CS operations efficiently. Don’t navigate this alone - tap into a thriving community of leaders who are optimizing their CS strategies and driving serious impact. Click here to join: 🔗 https://unlock.thecustomermethod.com/newsletter 3️⃣ 𝘽𝙪𝙞𝙡𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙤𝙧 𝙇𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙖 𝘾𝙎𝙈 𝙏𝙚𝙖𝙢 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙁𝙞𝙧𝙨𝙩 𝙏𝙞𝙢𝙚? Building and running a customer success practice for the first time doesn’t have to feel like an uphill battle. With the right frameworks, you can achieve results faster than you think. I help experienced executives confidently build a proactive, high-performing CS team—without the guesswork and costly missteps of figuring it out alone. Click here to learn more: 🔗 https://unlock.thecustomermethod.com/customersuccessf199bd ABOUT OUR GUEST Guy Galon is a multidisciplined Customer Success executive with 20 years of measurable international experience successfully managing Customers throughout their software onboarding, implementation, and support life cycle. He developed a unique framework for grooming CS talent, that he utilize in mentoring dozens of professionals, helping them to improve their performance and contribution to their organizations. 🔗 You may connect with Guy via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/guy-galon-b1a80/ ABOUT OUR HOST Irit Eizips is the Chief Customer Officer & CEO of CSM Practice. Irit is, a renowned expert in customer retention and upsell strategies. Irit has consistently been recognized as a Top Customer Success Strategist and Influencer since 2013 and was named one of the Top 100 Global Inspirational Leaders and Top 25 Customer Success Influencers in early 2021. Follow Irit on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eizips/ ◾️◽️◾️◽️◾️◽️◾️◽️◾️◽️◾️◽️◾️◽️◾️◽️◾️◽️◾️◽️◾️◽️◾️◽️◾️◽️◾️◽️◾️ Additional Resources 🎥 Video: Customer MATURITY MODEL for Customer Success https://youtu.be/fGByLhOvXeo 🎥 Video: Maximizing Growth Potential with CSAT Framework https://youtu.be/Kb0FRB-Ubv0 🎥 Video: Top CUSTOMER SUCCESS KPIs for Managing CSM Teams https://youtu.be/zGQVtV3bTyY 📑 Blog: Designing a Profitable Customer Success Framework https://www.csmpractice.com/customer-success-framework/ 📑 Blog: Expansion Selling: A Proactive Data-Driven Strategy Framework https://www.csmpractice.com/expansion-selling-a-proactive-data-driven-strategy-framework/ 00:00 Intro 01:07 Mature CS 03:05 Maturity framework 05:21 Support phase 06:53 Support to Onboarding 08:52 CSM interactions 09:55 Commercial mindset 13:58 Transition time 18:35 Revenue generator 22:48 Scalability approach 24:40 Recommendations

Sales and customer success should be joined at the hip. Unfortunately for some teams, that's not the reality. Too often, customer success teams are left picking up the pieces when sales over promises to close the deal. Or customer success withholds feedback or expertise that could be valuable to sales as they work with prospects. Watch as we discuss how sales and customer success can work together to lower churn. You'll learn how to: - Ensure sales sets expectations with customers that success and your product can deliver today - Align on the information that should be gathered by sales and how they'll hand it off to customer success - Create a feedback loop between customer success and sales to improve outreach and close more customers that will be successful with your product And more!