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Fractional Leadership and the Future of Customer Success with Eleni Vorvis
47 Plays10 days ago
In this episode of Resilient Revenue, host Kacyn Goranson welcomes Eleni Vorvis, a fractional VP of Customer Success at Coachum and co-founder of the Boston Founders Forum. Eleni shares her journey into customer success, the evolving role of CS as a revenue-driving function, and how her passion for building relationships and delivering value has shaped her career. Together, they discuss the rise of fractional leadership, the challenges of owning revenue in CS, and the critical role of resilience in navigating the highs and lows of customer success.
Eleni discusses:
- The Evolution of Customer Success: From customer service roots to a strategic value-delivering function.
- Fractional Leadership in CS: How fractional leaders bring expertise to build scalable processes and teams.
- Owning Revenue in CS: The benefits, challenges, and importance of enabling CS teams to contribute to the company’s bottom line.
- Adapting to Change: The importance of managing transitions, aligning stakeholders, and defining roles clearly.
- Resilience in CS: Balancing challenging customer conversations with long-term relationship building and value creation.
Key Links:
- Guest: Eleni Vorvis: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eleni-vorvis/
- Host: Kacyn Goranson: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kacyngoranson/
This podcast is brought to you by Women in Renuve. If you’re a resilient woman in a revenue role and crave connection, join our community!
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Transcript
Introduction to Resilient Revenue
00:00:01
Speaker
Welcome to Resilient Revenue, a Women in Revenue podcast series designed to magnify the voices, victories, and valuable insights of trailblazing women in revenue-generating roles.
00:00:13
Speaker
Each episode will showcase stories of resilience, mentorship, and self-advocacy. You'll learn exactly how these remarkable women are breaking barriers, redefining success, and showing us the transformative power of unity within the tech industry.
00:00:31
Speaker
Join us as we embark on this enlightening journey toward equality and empowerment in the world of resilient revenue. Hey, y'all.
Exploring Customer Success with Eleni Vorvis
00:00:40
Speaker
I'm your host, Kacen Gorenson.
00:00:42
Speaker
And today we've got Eleni Vorvis from Coachum with us. We're really going to be digging into customer success. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited. Yeah, I am too. So I'm a marketer and I don't always dig in so closely to customer success.
00:00:57
Speaker
So I'm extremely excited about the conversation and to learn more. Yeah. So I guess starting off, would love to kind of hand the mic to you and let you introduce yourself and share a little bit more about how you got into this world.
00:01:11
Speaker
So as you mentioned, I'm currently working with an organization called Coachum. So I am the fractional vice president of customer success, and they are a coaching execution platform for frontline managers in revenue roles such as sales and customer success. So I've worked in sales and For the last 20 years and for the last year or so, I work as a fractional leader, advisor, coach to customer success teams and founders.
00:01:36
Speaker
In addition to being the co-founder of Boston Founders Forum or BFF for short. So we are a community and think tank in the Boston area that runs monthly events to connect founders with the resources that they need to be successful. So we get some pretty amazing speakers to come to our events.
00:01:52
Speaker
And we also recently launched a digital community. So that keeps me pretty busy. I can only imagine. So would love to know. Obviously, everyone in the world, it feels like, is going to some degree fractional or working with fractional employees.
Understanding Fractional Leadership in CS
00:02:08
Speaker
How would you say that's different for customer success? Ooh, that's a good question. i' not I haven't really been in the other positions for fractional leaders to say how it may be different, but I think what I am seeing as a trend overall is more this appetite for fractional leadership, particularly when it comes to helping to build and scale customer success teams and really leveraging the expertise of individuals who have been operators at a variety of startups to be able to fast track some of the work that founders
00:02:38
Speaker
End up having to figure out on their own. So there's definitely been a shift, I would say, in the last couple of years. There have been other functional areas where I think being a fractional leader was more popular, such as product marketing, for example, that's been around much longer. But recently there has been that shift, I would say, in the last couple of years. It's kind of amazing to see how many people are out there now.
00:03:00
Speaker
as consultants or as fractional leaders. And at first, when I was diving into this area, i thought, wow, there's so much competition. But then as you start to network with people, you realize there's a lot of opportunity and people tend to focus in particular areas that they are experts on when it comes to customer success, because it's such a wide umbrella, depending on how the department is structured, what the responsibilities are, et cetera. So, you know, went from thinking, oh, wow, there's a lot of people out there to These are potentially people I could collaborate with, or it's exciting to see that there is enough and of a demand for it now in the customer success space. So it's not a, oh, what is this?
00:03:36
Speaker
Why would I need a fractional leader? I think there's a lot of benefits to having somebody come in to help to set up the structure, the team processes, and then hand it off to someone to be able to run with it.
00:03:48
Speaker
No, I mean, i think that makes perfect sense. And one thing I've seen is definitely more of an emphasis on customer success, both as a function and how it relates to other teams.
Eleni Vorvis's Journey and Passion for CS
00:03:58
Speaker
So that being said, I would love to know kind of more on how you personally became so passionate about customer success.
00:04:05
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question. i think for me, it stems to the type of person that I am and like the the personality. So i enjoy building relationships with people and I like to support whether be organizations or customers or people to be successful and and to hit their goals. That's been something that I think back to even my first job was in retail and working on the Gap. And you've got your customers, you're helping people to pick out clothing that they're going to wear to make them feel good, to working at a bank, a call center, and then getting into the the startup world. So I did start off in sales. And
00:04:39
Speaker
There are elements of sales that I really loved. It's exciting to be able to to work on closing a deal or to generate leads as a as a BDR. But then I found myself wondering what happens after the deal is closed and how does that customer go along their journey to get value from your product or or service and also to get that ah ROI and which then allows them to renew and to continue the relationship. And so being curious about that and then thinking about what I wanted to do for the rest of the career, I said, let me just make this shift and see what it's all about. And so I went into partner success back in 2009, but it wasn't called that at the time. But if I look at the responsibilities that
00:05:21
Speaker
I had in that role, it was partner success. And so I started off in that and really got the opportunity to do a variety of different things that fall within the customer success umbrella and then transitioned into a official customer success manager role for partners.
00:05:37
Speaker
a software ah recognition and engagement platform. So that really was my foray into like official customer success. But I think the 2009 was absolutely partner success. And so I found that I really enjoyed the post-sales journey and partnering with different departments to help a customer to do the things that they needed to do. So I think skills like being able to translate what the customer is looking for into how we would deliver that. Collaborating with different departments. I'm definitely a team player. i never gravitated towards roles where you were just an individual working in a silo.
00:06:12
Speaker
on tasks. I always get my energy from from others. And so I think there was just things about CS that made me interested enough to go into it and keeps me excited about i think people who have high emotional intelligence, who love to communicate and work towards a common goal, make really good customer success managers and leaders.
00:06:32
Speaker
you know There's level of negotiations that we do as well. So a lot of those soft skills that I wasn't sure what I wanted to do after college. and i went to a business school where a lot of people went into finance or accounting roles. I know I didn't want to do that, but I wasn't absolutely sure about what to do.
00:06:49
Speaker
So I chose sales. And it's funny to see now, 20 years later, how there are sales concentrations, how the concept of customer success is being introduced now at the undergraduate level and being talked about in graduate level courses as well is really exciting because it was not something I knew about 20 years ago. So I think given all of those things, I feel like I've arrived in a community in a place that is super supportive too. So I love the content that's put out there by other leaders and other teams. And there's so many ways for us to to meet and get together and network that also makes me excited and proud to be part of customer success.
00:07:26
Speaker
No, thank you for sharing that. I do you think it's very interesting how you share back in college. You know, everyone focused on accounting or finance. Marketing. marketing But no one focused on customer success, which is interesting because there's so many companies out there who always say everyone works in customer success. Everyone works for the customer.
00:07:49
Speaker
And so it's ingrained in so many company
Evolution and Value Delivery in Customer Success
00:07:52
Speaker
environment and ethos. but we don't talk about it when we're learning business. so Yes, and it's it's very interesting. Or even the the role has evolved or what it was before there was customer success, there was customer service. So sometimes people confuse it with customer service or customer support or their account management exists. And that has sort of evolved. And then depending on your model of CS, there may also be account managers. And so I think there were...
00:08:21
Speaker
people were were doing it, but under a different title and with not, I think, all of the roles and responsibilities of today, but there was a starting point for it and has definitely evolved in the last, I would say, five to 10 years. And then in last couple of years, it's been a big focus on how do we shift this model to be really efficient in working with customers to really focus on delivering value. So moving away from this concept of Happy customer equals renewable customer. Happy customer equals ah opportunity to upsell them or cross sell, etc. It's now all about the value conversation and supporting.
00:08:56
Speaker
CS teams to be able to do, you know, to get rid of kind of the mundane tasks and automate through AI, et cetera, to really be focusing on having those conversations with customers that will help them get to that end goal.
00:09:07
Speaker
Otherwise, there won't be a path to renewal. And we we know that things have been tough, particularly in the SaaS space over the last couple of years. A lot of scrutiny on where dollars are being spent and what the return is.
Revenue Responsibilities for CS Teams
00:09:18
Speaker
Yeah. So speaking of where dollars are being spent or where they're coming from, and especially around revenue, would love to get your take on customer success team members being 20-year-olds.
00:09:31
Speaker
Yeah, so for me, i have my experience has been with customer success owning number. So whether it's renewal or renewal and upsell, I've seen it in various, depending on the company again and where they are, at their evolution with owning it completely to partnering with sales for specific upsells, just depending on the size of the customer, e cetera. So I'm a big fan of CS teams having revenue responsibility. I think it makes sense given it's The sales team is there to focus on new logo generation. That takes a lot of work. And so to be able to balance new logos and existing customers, that's a lot to ask of the sales team.
00:10:12
Speaker
Is there a a world in which they they do some of the upsell cross-sell? I think absolutely. So my answer isn't that CS has to completely own all of the post-sales revenue activity, but I think that they should play some sort of role and that model gets figured out between the CS and the sales leader and the founders of the company, depending on the size of the company that that you're at. So I think there's a lot of benefits to having that. And I'm definitely seeing the shift. So it's interesting to see that we've moved from a 50-50 kind of split on yes to owning revenue, no to owning revenue, to now hearing a lot in these communities and on LinkedIn, CSM saying, I'm now being asked to
00:10:51
Speaker
carry a quota or I'm now being asked to do sales and I don't want to do sales, but similar to the everybody owns the customer and everybody is doing something to help the customer be successful, whatever role you're in you're selling in some way, shape or form. You're representing a company or a brand.
00:11:09
Speaker
And so i think people just you need to flip the script to the conversation that I'm having with this customer. You don't have to be an aggressive person. salesperson to do that. You're having a ah discovery conversation to find out what's important to them. How is what you're offering them in your solution helping to move their business forward? How is it helping them in their role to, the right? So for them to be successful, to get promoted, and how does that tie to what the company is doing overall? And the individuals who have the ability to connect those dots and ask those questions are
00:11:42
Speaker
That is what you're taught in selling. And so I think we all are visualizing this like worst case scenario when you're being told we want you to do some sales activities. Everybody thinks of the worst example that they've had in an interaction with the salesperson. And so it's reminding them that not Every sales interaction is like that. And in many cases, it's not because people are adopting a philosophy in which you are having a conversation with someone. You're asking them questions. You're trying to get to what is their level of pain. And that really takes a lot of talent and art to be able to do that. So I think when you present it that way to customer success teams, they start to understand, OK, this makes sense. I'm doing some of this today.
00:12:24
Speaker
how do I then get the skills to be able to do it moving forward? And I think that's the big thing. If we're going to ask people this team to own revenue, how do we enable and educate and train them? Sales has a training budget. They get trained on a variety of sales methodologies. The same should apply to customer success so that both teams are speaking the same language and they're they're able to um leverage a framework that allows them them to do their job successfully.
00:12:49
Speaker
Not just saying, you'll figure it out. We want you to do X, Y, and Z and just setting a goal and letting them struggle through that. It's how do you create a process, a structure? How do you compensate accordingly so that people are motivated to want to do that type of work.
00:13:05
Speaker
Absolutely. It's definitely making me wonder if we're going to start to see more shifts around sales enablement teams and softwares moving to the entire revenue team.
00:13:16
Speaker
But then even is there going to be paths of promotion from sales moving into customer success in the long run? But along the same lines, I would love to know if a team wants to move into more of a quota carrier capacity for customer success, what do you think that they should think through or overall need to do?
Navigating Change Management in CS
00:13:37
Speaker
Yeah. So I think it's going to start with a conversation on how do you make that change? Because change management is going to be the biggest hurdle. And it's something that as customer success professionals, we talk a lot about that with our customers. So we need to also apply that to ourselves when looking to make changes internally. So it starts with a conversation with the stakeholders, right? Because if you're going to now be doing something that another department was responsible for, how do you map out what that shift will look like? And it starts with conversations around, okay, what exactly are we going to be responsible for and getting that alignment between the CS and sales leaders? It could even require ops being involved and, ah yeah, rev ops, because there's going to be changes to the way that things are tracked in the CRM, the way that people are paid. And so there's all these different stakeholders that need to
00:14:27
Speaker
to map out what the process will look like. how then that will be communicated to teams. So when you're taking something away from somebody in terms of responsibility, it also is a struggle for them to undo the habit or the act of being responsible for that that area of the business. So helping them understand why is now as a salesperson, here is what you're going to be focused on. Why are we making this change? How is it going to benefit the customer, the organization and the individual? And kind of thinking about it from those three vantage points.
00:14:58
Speaker
Always the what's in it for me is the thing that's going to drive an individual because at first they're going to think, well, are you taking away my ability to earn additional commission or are you allowing me to focus on net new business, getting new customers, which will and increase my earning potential? So I think you have to really map out what that change means. And then for the team that has the new responsibility, when will that happen?
00:15:23
Speaker
What will the goals be? How will I be compensated? Kind of thinking through all of the details. I'm a very ah detail oriented, hyper focused on like process and the operations because all of that matters. The last thing you want to do is just not think through all of that and the reactions that you'll have and just tell people, OK, this is changing and you make the the date effective and then people just feel like, okay, now I have all these questions swirling in my head and I need to figure it out and I'm not sure.
00:15:52
Speaker
i should raise my hand because does that mean my job is then put at risk? So I think it's just putting all of that out there and acknowledging that this will be a change and the way that The organization will work together to support the change and the training and enablement that will happen for those teams. And then how will we measure success? I don't think you can just flip the script so the script all of a sudden and say, we expect you to be hitting these numbers. You've got to start with some small wins for the teams and a path for success.
00:16:20
Speaker
you know, making that transition because it's definitely not overnight. But mapping out the the entire process, think of it as an implementation similar to what you would do with your customers and making sure that you check the boxes in all of the areas.
00:16:31
Speaker
No, I think that's perfect. And you definitely hit on something that I think a lot of companies tend to overlook. But really, they're reiterating that your job is still safe.
00:16:42
Speaker
It's just this is a transition and those pieces. And it's not putting your job at risk. It's more just giving you a different type of responsibility. So I love that you included that there.
00:16:53
Speaker
So let's pretend someone wants to go into customer success that has never gone there.
Advice for Newcomers to Customer Success
00:17:01
Speaker
What's one piece of advice that you would get to them? Yeah, that's a great question. I think do your homework. There's so much content out there nowadays, which is really exciting. So I would say customer success can vary. So thinking about where in customer success do you want to go? There's implementation.
00:17:18
Speaker
component There's a support component. There's customer success managers. So just be thirsty for the knowledge and go out there and find, i mean, there's so many communities also that you can join for customer success that are in Slack that will give you those connection points and the ability to ask questions and to network with people who have been in the job. So I think also having those relationships with people and reaching out to say, I'm thinking of transitioning into CS. My background is in X.
00:17:45
Speaker
Here is what I think I know about it. And just being able to talk to somebody about what you're looking for, I think goes a long way because that way you can decide based on the research I've done and talking to some people, is this still the right role for me? I think truly understanding what it means to be customer success, not just what you hear or sometimes, you know, in being in this in career for quite some time, have friends who don't work in SaaS or don't work in tech and they hear they a lot of the positives that, oh, you're traveling a lot to see your customers. You get to take them out for dinner or for these experiences. You run a customer conference, et cetera. And that's the glamorous aspect to the job. But there's a lot of things that we do.
00:18:25
Speaker
that are very difficult and challenging. And so I think it's just going in with your eyes and ears wide open to truly understand what it is you would be getting into. Also, i think the people in the community in CS are just so welcoming. So I would tell people not to be shy with their questions. Don't be shy with reaching out because you will overwhelmingly see that everyone is there to really want to help and share aspects of their journey that they're going through.
00:18:50
Speaker
There's also several podcasts which can tell you more about customer success. ah There's events you can attend in person. So I think immersing yourself in that community aspect will really give you a sense for this is what it feels like to be in the world of customer success. And then you can decide, you know, industry wise too, what what excites you, right? What product would be something that you could see yourself working on. And then from there, there's going to be pockets of communities that address that specific need.
00:19:19
Speaker
and Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. So last question I have for you today, would love to know what does resilience mean to
Resilience and Adaptation in Customer Roles
00:19:27
Speaker
you? and Great question. For me, resilience really comes down to the ability to adapt and overcome challenges in life. So whether it's going to be resilience on a personal level or on a business level at work, I think the constant in our lives is change and it's how you react to that change. I also like to look at there's a quote that I appreciate by David Goggins, who is a very popular motivational speaker, former Navy SEAL.
00:19:54
Speaker
who says resilience is a choice. It's choosing to rise above your circumstances, no matter how difficult and become the person you're meant to be. So I think all of us are challenged in in one way, shape, or form. Unfortunately, for some people, they've had to overcome a lot of things. And for others, life may seemingly be easy, but I think it just all depends on your reference point. And I think everyone at one point or another does go through some challenges in your life, and it's how you react to it and the ability to say, this doesn't define me as a person.
00:20:25
Speaker
If I want to set this goal and to do this thing, that it is possible. So I think that A lot of successful people in life have had to be very resilient. Things were not just handed to them on a silver platter. They had to kick and scream and claw their way up to the position that they wanted to to have or the dream to build a business or to do um x y and z And I think particularly in customer success, resilience is something that is an important trait for customer success managers because your day can just vary so much depending on what is going on with your customer base. You could have a really...
00:21:00
Speaker
successful conversation, a customer is getting an ah ah ROI and they're so thrilled and then have to leave that call to join a call with a customer who is extremely upset and you're trying to diffuse the situation and have a challenging conversation.
00:21:13
Speaker
And some days it feels like you're firefighting when you want to be more proactive. And so the ability to Say, this does not define me this bad day or this particular situation with a customer.
00:21:25
Speaker
Don't take it personally. You have the ability to think about the long-term good that you're doing and the reason why you're there in the role versus just getting caught up in the, you know, not so great interactions. I think particularly in in CS and and in sales, these revenue roles where you are trying to hit goals while also getting your work done and balancing all these other things can definitely be challenging. So i think that's where resilience really sets in.
00:21:50
Speaker
I cannot think of a better final question and answer. thank you so much for sharing that. And thank you for your time today.
Joining the Women in Revenue Community
00:21:59
Speaker
um for everyone out there listening, if you want to reach out or learn anything more from Eleni, just find her on LinkedIn. That's the best way to get a hold of her. But thank you so much for your time today. I'm really glad we were able to have this conversation. It was my pleasure.
00:22:14
Speaker
And that wraps up another episode of Resilient Revenue. These narratives are more than just personal triumphs. They embody the collective journey that we undertake as we strive for a future where every woman, no matter her career stage, location, industry, or demographic profile, has the opportunity to ex excel in her chosen field.
00:22:35
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Women in Revenue exists because we know amazing things can happen when driven, talented, bottom line oriented women are fired up and collaborating to grow their careers and organizations.
00:22:47
Speaker
We invite you to join our amazing community of 7,000 plus members. If you'd like to become a member for free, head on over to womeninrevenue.org to join today.
00:22:58
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see you next time on Resilient Revenue.