We Are in the Business of Transformation — Akila Giridharan

So, I own an EV, you know, and today I got a an update on the software and I do have dogs and I'm very fond of dogs. I have two of my personal and I foster all the time. So, uh, one of the features I was sold on for this car was, uh, the fact that it had a dog mode and, uh, you know, it allowed you to keep the dogs in the car and lock the car, but the temperature will be regulated to so that they're comfortable. So that was the one of the features that you know I was sold on when I bought that car you know and today I I received a a notification that you know the software update one of the software updates is that the dog mode has been named uh has been renamed to pet mode so that it's inclusive of all the pets that could be there in the car or you know that we are I thought that came from a place of empathy and I was really really happy.

Most customer success teams will tell you they lead with empathy. It's in the mission statement. It's in the job description. It might even be on a poster somewhere in the office. But empathy is a value and empathy as a practice are two completely different things. And the gap between those two things, between the intention and the execution is exactly where customer relationships start to fall apart. My guest today has spent 15 years building learning ecosystems across some of the most complex environments you can imagine. From SaaS companies to global manufacturers to media conglomerates and global energy companies. And somewhere along the way, she landed on a belief that's changed how she works. She believes that empathy isn't something that you feel about your customers.

something that you build into your systems before program launches, before the training is designed, before a single piece of content gets created.

Akila Giridharan is a consultant and director of learning and development who's made a deliberate shift from internal talent development into customer education. And the reason that she made that move tells you everything you need to know about what drives her.

She didn't want to be adjacent to growth. She wanted to be responsible for the growth. And in this conversation, we talked about what she found when she left the office and actually went into the field and why that field observation and performance gap analysis actually uncovered things that were nothing like what the leadership had asked her to build for. We talked about the difference between customer education and enablement and why that matters more than most teams realize. And we discussed how she made a case for L & D in a boardroom full of people who only speak numbers. She closed with something I honestly didn't expect and it's a line that ended up being the perfect way to describe what the show is all about.

This is episode two of Scaling Trust.

I'm your host, Matt Sidwell. Let's get into it. Akila, welcome to the show.

Thanks so much for being here.

Thanks so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here.

Oh my gosh, this is really good. I I'm I'm super appreciative of you making time on a Friday afternoon to get together. I think our audience has a lot to learn uh from you today. So, I couldn't be more excited. For context, I would love for you to just share a little bit about your your background, your history. If if someone goes to your LinkedIn page, they'll see that you've had just quite a career. Uh everything from technical training to quality assurance engineering, uh being a business owner, actually responsible for P&Ls and all of that, being a consultant, working for some of the largest names in industry like Warner Brothers, energy companies like Sonnen.

um just give us the high level. Just share a little bit about your history for context and we'll get into the interview.

Sure. Um thank you so much. Um yeah, so I've been in learning and development forever. But that's great because that's where I want to be. Uh and uh and I love being here. Um having said that you know I started off like you said as a technical trainer but and moved my way up and uh went through the entire I think I've gone through the entire spectrum of the learning life cycle you know uh starting from you know down at the bottom with the you know online with the in-person facilitation and moving up the the ladder and uh getting into strategy and actually learning design and you know and uh building learning ecosystems. I yes like you rightly pointed out I have I have worked with big names I have worked with small startups I have had my own uh company too but in all this the common thread is I have loved building programs from the ground up and that's been I think I've I've finally figured out that's my specialty is actually looking at the problem and trying to build a learning solution that is very unique to the problem really uh impacting the business outcome come in that way. So I'm very happy to be here. Um the last my last position at Son and Inc. was at customer education which is again something that I really really am excited about and I feel there is a whole lot of potential for all of us to contribute.

That's perfect. That's perfect. And you know, it's not often, maybe this will become a trend as more and more folks start their businesses, but it's not often that you find someone in customer education that has worked in the thousand plus employee companies, has also been a small business owner, has also been in the engineering side of the house. I mean, that's just such a diverse skill set. And I think I don't know it I I hope that we get some of those different perspectives from you today because uh so so many of us are either consultants full-time and we're not in the engineering seat or we are um learning and development and we have a totally different strategy, totally different vocabulary language sometimes or if we're in the customer education seat. I feel like a lot of us are trying to figure out what title we're supposed to have and like what KPI we're supposed to move. So maybe we can jump into some of that today. But I guess maybe to kick it off, I'm curious with the with the the background in L & D that you have. What was the triggering event or like what was the experience that got you interested in customer education? What made you move in that direction versus staying in the leadership and talent development world that you were in?

Great question. Uh so customer education uh I think I joined uh when I joined this company I think customer education was kind of getting a little bit uh building some kind of m momentum from you know the customer success uh you know category and they like okay what else can we do and customer education was getting right there uh and into many boardroom conversations you know so I got in at a perfect time with this company to help build this function from the ground up And uh I found I'm like when I got in I was like okay um how hard it can it can it be it's it's going to be you know it's education it's learning and development which I've done for so many years but then when I got in and uh you know really really looked into it and found um you know just the the need or the requirement I felt that this was such a dynamic role with so many possibilities and so much potential and uh you know the misconception has always been okay you have an LMS um you know your learning management system and then you put some bunch of training there create a certification pathway and that's your training and you're done but I felt there was so much more above and beyond what what actually was uh being uh portrayed or being seen so um I I I was really excited by the opportunity and I felt there was this was a unique opportunity for me to give solutions that were enhance product uh adoption and uh really make a difference on the bottom line. Um, you know, I always go with the mantra that um, you know, you could have the best products in the world, the best service in the world, but what's the point if the customers don't know how to use it? Um, you know, and that's where I felt my purpose and my I I think uh my passion to develop customer education to such a point where it becomes a need of the hour to uh to to the to the success of any enterprise.

Yeah, that that's incredible. I think uh I I relate with you in that as well as far as I have a background in education but um the idea of working inside of product companies or working alongside product companies and really helping build kind of a customer centric part of the organization or at least being the voice of the customer in rooms that traditionally didn't have that voice at least initially. I think a lot of folks have have have changed since I started in 2013 and you know the the market's very different now but at that time it was kind of a unique thing but that idea around the driving customers to outcomes like helping them win that like spirit of that in customer education equipping them for success not just not just helping them when they have a problem but proactively enabling their success.

I think that is is a shared vision probably by everybody who gets a chance to be in a customer education seat or department and I think that's probably what drives us. So um that's wonderful.

When when you and I first met you mentioned um I believe it was while you were at Sonnen you actually went out into the field with some of the partners that were doing like installation for the energy company and um and it was it was pretty interesting. Hopefully I get this correct. You correct me if I'm if I'm wrong. Kick me if I'm wrong. uh you essentially got a brief for a training program and they said we need to make this and not necessarily instead of doing that but alongside doing that you actually went out into the field and said okay let me let me actually see what we need and you did a proper needs assessment kind of a performance gap analysis. What did that process teach you about corporate education like customer education at the corporate level andor um the process of designing impactful experiences versus check the box experiences?

Yeah, if you check my LinkedIn post, I'm all about uh not doing the checkbox training and my you know being um you know really mindful about performance outcomes and what we want to achieve there. with this assignment that I had at Sonnen. Uh it was yeah I this was the leadership ask you know uh we we are getting a product out right now uh let's and you need to create a certification program a certification learning pathway for the for our installers they were a B2B B2B uh company uh and our installers for our customers and uh and help them you know install uh so that they can install the products successfully at the customer sites. So okay I was like okay we have to build another training program but uh then it struck me okay let me first understand the customer let me find out exactly what you know who they are how do they learn and you know what exactly do they need right before I go ahead okay tell me the product and let's start devising the stepby-step in instructions for installation you know so that is where I found the actual inspiration for what h actually happens in the field and giving and that was the turning point in devising my strategy.

Um you know uh so yeah we can be in offices you know collaborate with the you know all our teams you know our product teams engineering teams but we are just going by one side of the story.

I wanted to get to the other side and really listen to the um needs of the learner rather than from the point of view of what the business needs. I felt there was a lot of disconnect and uh you know I was happy to do it was about I think about a month worth of uh you know field installs like pilot installations that I witnessed talking to learners observing how they actually install the products which gave me a lot of insight as to hey I need to focus more on this maybe I need a video here which would really um you know allay all their fears on uh you know whatever it is they're trying to do especially from safety purposes. So although it was an exercise that was about two to three months uh I was uh I was happy to get the leadership buy in and uh you know um get that time uh in order to actually create impactful learning and I thought the first step was to understand the needs of the learner and uh so yeah the field uh you know the the experience in the field was uh really priceless for me to build the training. I love the way you framed that where you said um you said the we're only hearing one side of the story and I think that that is something that even I forget to consider at times because we know like especially in the technology world we know we have you know a goal to meet we know we have a customer to win. We know we have clients to make happy to keep to keep our ARR going and all that stuff.

Yeah.

But you mentioned the idea of of learning everything that happens outside of that product like the day in the life of story. I almost I would bet I'm not really a betting person but I would bet that uh more often than not we as customer education or as success or even as founders and co-founders you know in in business haven't done enough work in understanding the day of the life of the customer. We just kind of say well let's give them different modalities. Let's have it live. Let's have it on demand.

Let's throw it on YouTube. Let's put it in an LMS. Let's have a tool tip.

Yeah.

Great. We got modalities, but actually spending the energy to go like what is your world like? What do you do on a Monday morning? And and like understand that level of detail. I I bet the companies that do that win a lot more.

I mean there was there was this instance actually that that really uh was uh you know kind of took our strategy in a different direction uh so to speak you know where um we have uh we have installers in Puerto Rico and um so you would say hey it's a US state but US territory no problem they would know English but then when I when I really conversed with them and it was very very um you know insightful you know I was taken a back that yes they don't know English. They're more Spanish- speaking uh population and uh they were really not engaging with my learning. It was just like uh because everything was in English, right? Uh the only thing they were engaging with were the videos which showed them what is to be done at what point of time. But again, those videos were not all, you know, like every step, right? So that really opened my eyes saying, "Hey, okay, well, if a lot of our population is going to be Spanish speaking, we definitely need some translation and some voiceovers to ensure that they understand the you know nuances of the product installation." Um, so that I've never got sitting in my office talking to products and uh you know talking to engineering because they are just talking about the product but they're not talking about the customer experience or the learner experience per se. So what did you do in that situation? Did you um did you engage like translation resources and and do a completely separate path or how did you overcome that?

Um yeah, AI to the rescue.

Yeah, of course. You know um uh AI is here. I mean it's it's it's a big topic uh nowadays and uh yeah I I had to be creative of course you know budget con constraints time constraints development because we were ready to launch uh and uh you know and I just really really felt that if this is going to be even remotely impactful it is important that it's also inclusive of the population that's going to really uh uh install our products and um so I had to be creative and of course generative AI um you know we have some amazing tools and technologies nowadays to the rescue and uh yeah and use them in order to uh get the product out in li time in Spanish with with a with a new learning pathway.

Yeah, I love it. There's there's some lessons buried in there. I think you know not only the region or the country as you mentioned but the enduser especially in an industry like where where you served uh in in in energy but I could see all all of the manufacturing industries I could see all of the logistics industries any of those that have such a diverse workforce and language and uh and skill sets and things like that and when you're dealing with such high-risisk products like I would imagine you couldn't really mess up what what the product installation that you all had otherwise it would be catastrophic all because of language and communication right you don't want that to be a barrier at all yeah that's right that's right well speaking of barriers you mentioned when we first met you mentioned um the idea around um empathy and having empathy for learners and even as you speak now I think that's that's something else that's coming through and uh I think a lot of customer success teams probably have something about empathy and like their mission statement or what their teams do or we lead with empathy or we we have the voice of the customer.

But like where do you actually see the gap between the intention of that?

Like we want to be empathetic for our customers and then the actual application of that in the business like when there's deadlines, when there's costs, when there's all those considerations like how does empathy show up in customer success? Oh, that's my favorite topic that empathy. Empathy in uh in leadership, empathy in customer success. And uh yeah, and you hit the nail on the head. I think uh everybody has empathy um as a fashionable, you know, as a phrase in a in a mission statement, but not everybody gets it right. Um you know, uh of course, I mean, uh we all know what empathy is. It is you know understanding the customers understanding where he's coming from the p pain points and uh really getting into their stepping into their shoes in order to um it could be the the the objective could be anything you know it could be selling the product or teaching the teaching how to use the product it could be anything um right um so customer success I think it's it's one of the top skills that we need to develop uh in order to really understand what the customer is going through when they're engaging with the product could be argued that oh there is no way we can quantify empathy but I think we can using so many performance metrics that we have uh and how it has played a role in uh in so many success stories you know take Microsoft for instance you know the CEO is uh so um I guess famous for being uh an empathetic leader and he has uh really um I guess that something that he's uh he's famously said is that uh you know you don't build programs saying that you have empathy after the fact, right? You need to really ensure you want to build programs, whatever the programs may be. First having the empathy and then build the programs. I think we have it the other way around and say, "Hey, we are very empathetic when you have the customer success, the support uh people, they say, "Hey, I'm very sorry. I do understand what you're going through, but I think they don't because if they did, they would not be there in the first place, you know. So that is largely misunderstood as to where empathy should come uh in the entire uh you know business workflow if you will whatever you're trying to develop or create. Um yeah does that answer your question? Yeah, it's interesting if if I could follow up on that because this is a really unique um convers this is a unique lens to view the problem set of customer retention in in your work and in your your experience. Where has that empathy come from? It feels like based on what you just said using the Microsoft as the example that you know the CEO, the founders, the the leadership has to essentially initiate that point of view, that perspective in order for the larger team to adopt it. How have you seen that play out? Do you have any examples or could you share maybe an example of of that actually in practice?

You mean of uh empathy being played out in real real life? Yeah. Yeah. Sorry that was a pretty vague question. Yeah.

Okay. Um well actually I have a funny story today morning. Uh you know and I felt there was a lot of empathy in that.

So I own an EV um you know and um today I got a an update on the software and I do have dogs and I'm very fond of dogs.

I have two of my personal and I foster all the time. So, uh, one of the features I was sold on for this car was, uh, the fact that it had a dog mode and, uh, you know, it allowed you to keep the dogs in the car and lock the car, but the temperature will be, um, you know, will be regulated to so that they're comfortable. So, that was the one of the features that, you know, I was sold on when I bought that car, you know. And today I received a a notification that you know the software update one of the software updates is that the dog mode has been named uh has been renamed to pet mode so that it's inclusive of all the pets that could be there in the car or you know that we are and I thought that came from a place of empathy and I was really really happy. I mean it may not touch the entire population. I'm like, okay, I don't know what she's talking about. I mean, it's just just the small population. But I think it's an excellent example of how they have led the business uh with empathy where they have re realized that hey you know I mean it's not like you know a cat owner is not going to use the dog mode just because it says dog mode but the fact that they have recognized that and you know they have a little you know it's it says pet mode and they have different uh avatars uh you can say it's a cat or a whatever you have in there a head maul whatever it you know, you can have an out and say, "Hey, uh, you know, uh, I'm just chilling out here and it's okay because you know, the temperature is whatever." I thought that was that was a very very nice uh, gesture and um, you know, and that, you know, something very small. It could be the smallest things, you know, and that's how they lead with empathy.

Not because uh, like a 100,000 customers told you, hey, that dog has to be renamed to pet otherwise we not buying the car. It was about them really um looking into, hey, who are our customers? Yeah, we are we don't really have dogs only as pets. We have others too. Let's change it. Uh you know, I thought that was uh something that was a perfect example of empathy.

I love that. And how how do you think, you know, it's it's easy to think like the squishy feely like empathy, interpersonal things, but you're talking about empathy in the details of interfaces, like in the small things.

How do you think that increases the trust or the perception of the brand in customer opinion?

Oh, that I I think uh you know definitely there is a huge uptick in uh in in brands that really lead with empathy. um you know this there's this example that I told you and you know even in my uh in my organization you know when I was have have been building learnings uh or learning systems I have definitely tried to see not only from our customers that is our installers who are installing the products but also from the point of view of the end customers who are using our products that is our homeowners where into whose homes these uh battery systems are going in um you know so things such as that you know there's you know there's this energy system you know in your in your garage and it's supposed to work a certain way uh but I don't know there are there are all these colors that come up all the time and I don't know what they mean well putting a small kind of a quick cheat sheet or a quick reference guide on the panel of that uh you know of that uh system gives the customer so much of information that they know okay they don't have to panic whenever that changes color and you know something's going on with that system is leading with empathy you know in my opinion because I have for I have foreseen the problems that probably a customer who doesn't have dayto-day interaction with the system needs to know that hey okay everything's all right with this there's nothing there's nothing no don't need to panic and I need to panic only when the colors change a certain way otherwise it's all okay and you know sun's got my back and those kinds of things is I think um you know are small very small things, a quick reference guide, two minutes, I mean not two minutes actually, but maybe a day or two worth worth of work. But I think that humor makes a huge difference in product adoption in customer satisfaction scores. It it it definitely percolates to all these different performance metrics that we um you know see today uh in in in the field of customer success.

That's perfect. My goodness. And what's fascinating is I'm kind of picking up on this. the audience probably is too as they hear your story is you had essentially multiple business lines within the customer education program. You created materials designed specifically for the end users who receive the the energy system in their home and you designed it for the installation partners as well. Did you view those as two like separate cataloges, two separate product lines, two separate initiatives, or how did you navigate creating, reusing, multi-purposing, re all that sort of stuff? How did you manage that? I know we didn't have that in our notes, but how did you manage that um in your role?

Again, learning the uh learning I mean really understanding the learner, right?

So, if you look at uh these two uh learning audiences, they're completely different, right? We have an installer who is very technical in nature who just needs to know where each wire needs to go. how do you need to what is the procedure for the installation and how do you get this up and running right so he's very technical whereas the other part is the homeowner who has a 100 million things they have app on their phone uh and uh I don't think uh I mean I'm a homeowner myself or anybody just a normal person I don't think we've taken a manual ever in our life right but we need something that is really really a dumbed down version of how to operate this huge machine sitting in my garage.

Right? So I had to ensure that I did not give too much of technical knowledge or technical details to the homeowner whereas I gave all a lot of technical details to the installer. So they were very different learning audiences. So when we talk about customer and that's why I stress on the point that you really need to know that customer or the or the learner the the learner per se because customer education learner same thing um for our purpose and so they were different but one thing that I um I managed um you know quite nicely was that I broke up any kind of training into smaller uh you know segments I call them bite-sized content um which was which was based on the methodology of rinse and repeat you know so you build these modules which are really really small and um snackable in nature and you stick them up stick them into whichever learning pathways you want. I mean of course some of them you have to build from the ground up but some others you can just rinse and repeat uh you know so that definitely cut down the develop development times by significantly you know and uh was uh was able to make the product launch to different learning audiences at the same time. Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing. It's, you know, it's um I find that with that kind of byite-size learning approach, I guess just in my my own personal experience, figuring out the right, it sounds overly surgical, but like figuring out the right duration or the right packaging of that exercise, like once you once you go through the exercise of doing that, the amount of time you can take to plan that up front and actually like really thoughtfully engineer that from the beginning to the end of the system, the better because I have messed it up more times than I've gotten it right where you end up with these super micro things that are like, "Okay, sweet. That's a quick fix." But then you end up with a learning experience that has a hundred steps and nobody ever wants to do that. Or you do the opposite and you have these two-hour long programs. Nobody really wants to do that either.

So, it's finding the right mix of that and then figuring out how to mix and match those things. You did something really interesting, though. If I remember correctly, you not only did you have like an academy learning management infrastructure, but you also just went straight to where the users were. You went straight to YouTube.

Yep.

Absolutely. And this kind of touches on the point where I think we've talked about this before uh about uh uh customer enablement uh and how that is um you know um how customer education is a subset of customer enablement because I think now we are in the age of where customer education has matured to um something that is more performance-based or performance outcome based rather than okay just checking the boxes and providing training um right so as part of that exercise uh you I felt that yes we have the standard you know uh you know LMS and the certification program and on the other hand thinking again empathetically about the learner about the installer on the field trying to install the system and forgot a step and you're like okay now what do I do I really don't know where to stick this wire in and it's it's a crazy situation and you know he's like okay do I go to the LMS and go and find out that exact step Well, that's going to take a really an awful lot of time and maybe there's no network and stuff stuff like that.

But everybody has phones, right?

Everybody has phones. Everybody engages with YouTube. Uh so the idea was to build a YouTube channel and have certain steps, not the entire workflow, but certain steps that I found when I went on my visits to the field that were really troublesome, you know, that were that were tough that that that uh had and uh and something that product and engineering really really wanted the installers to get it right, saying that this step is really really important.

ensure that you focus on that instead of it being uh buried inside the LMS in one of those modules. I you know I identified some of these very critical steps and ensured that I had a YouTube video for them to uh to engage with to to um you know to engage with at the you know at the field or in the field um so that you know they can be empowered to install the systems on time. You know, you just mentioned the distinction between education and enablement. Do you feel that when you took the enablement approach going straight to YouTube, did that free you in any way from from like the expectations of traditional education? Did you feel like operating under an enablement umbrella gave you more latitude to make a difference or did that change anything about your execution or anything? I don't think it changed anything about my execution and my and my title did not change but I just felt I did customer enablement more than education because I was coming at the program from the point of view of uh performance outcomes rather than checkbox knowledge retention that kind of uh um you know uh KPI. So my KPI became different and as KPI became different my approach and my strategy also trickled down to uh pervade the entire learning ecosystem not just the LMS but you know keeping it in at the point where they actually needed the information or needed the knowledge. we are in a Tik Tok you know insta res kind of a situation here or in a scenario or um you know and it's important to know uh to acknowledge that and move with the times and ensure that you know um people are not always with their laptops and their iPads you know sometimes they're just looking at stuff on their phone and if you give them that ready accessibility at whatever point wherever they want to engage with the content I think you've done your job well Yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense. I you know, especially in the we could we could almost do like a whole separate followup in the future one day around in the field versus in the office. And it feels like organizations that have, you know, I even think about like health care. It's not in the field necessarily, but it is very much an active experience where you're visiting patient after patient after patient. you don't have the kind of corporate, you know, uh, time boxing to sit down in a laptop.

You're you're walking the labor and delivery floor and you've got to go visit everybody there and it's like when are you going to have time to do that?

It's like you you have 15 minutes in between something else in your shift or if you have field technicians, you've got weather issues, you've got uh location geography, do I have cell service, you have all that those sorts of things um to combat. And so figuring out how to design, maybe it limits all the sophistication and complexity you could dream up, but it gets you to the simplest version that could be consistently delivered. Which which one?

Something that I really believe in. Keep it keep it simple and short.

I love it. I love it. Are you telling me to rock the interview, Akila? You're like, keep it simple and short. Let's go. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding.

So this I'm willing to keep it long. No problem at all because I love talking in my office.

Me too. Me too. You I guess along those lines too, you've you've talked a little bit about this. You've hinted at it, but thinking about you mentioned performance support. You've mentioned outcome focused uh learning. You mentioned empathy and product design. You've mentioned enablement. Thinking about all of those things. In my mind, all of that is how do we keep the customer longer and how do we make more money uh as a business, right? And so as you think about the shifts from an L & D from, you know, uh increasing let's just say uh skill set uh capabilities things like that from an internal lens you've shifted into customer education and enablement. Think about that from an external lens.

What does a company have to believe differently for education to become something that drives revenue?

Yeah, that's a big one. Uh I think uh and I think um you know unless we talk numbers, we don't have leadership listening to us.

Let me put it that way, right? Because what is the what is what is the business for? We are doing business, right? and we want money to grow money we want the business to do well and you know we have all these KPIs uh we need to make a billion dollars in five years or what it's all numbers right so I sincerely believe if we do not talk numbers we have lost them you know uh so it is important that we tie performance and what do we do as an L&D organization right it's important that we tie um performance metrics or data metrics to our learning solutions. Whatever program we are trying to uh put out there, you know, whatever initiative it is, put some numbers around it. Uh you know, maybe like a before and after number or um you know, some sort of a uh I mean not not just, you know, LMS, you know, okay, completion rates and stuff like that. That's all very superficial but really focus on um you know the satisfaction of the learner or customer satisfaction scores but more importantly on behavior change what they have been doing before and once they have engaged with the learning what has happened as a result of that have they changed the behavior are they doing things differently and as a result of doing things differently has their for example in uh that son's case son's Um has the has installation time reduced? You know per again performance metrics has the number of calls to support or service reduced again another performance metrics. So those kinds of things those kinds of numbers are what uh is uh very very vital. They're just they're vital for leadership to be able to acknowledge and give lead give L &D a seat at the table for us because I think learning is one thing that touches every fabric of the organization you know be it employee development or you're looking on the other side externally towards customer education. Um so with employee development yes of course we know all the all the all the statistics and the data is there you know with uh respect to you know education and you know um uh leadership development and talent development and all that but I think customer education still has some ways to go and time or customer education uh initiatives to customer success metrics I think it's is key for us to ensure that we have uh lead leadership uh kind of uh say okay we need learning and L & D at the table or customer education at the table to discuss our sales uh strategy to discuss our product strategy. Um so I think yeah interesting so you're thinking not necessarily what does the company have to believe differently about L & D for it to be a growth driver. you're thinking what does L &D have to believe differently to to basically not convince but to convey the impact they have on growth. So and and if I understood you correctly it's figuring out the language of leadership which is often dollars and cents.

Exactly. and and figuring out how do I align the initiatives that are important to me, the empathy that I want to bring to the c the customer experience, the the empathy we want to bring to the product experience.

How are we taking those things and attributing a dollar amount to it?

Whether it's in dollars, customers retained an extra contract cycle or whether that's um whether that's new customers from a new market, whatever that happens to be, more partners are able to install so we can do higher volumes, all those types of metrics. That's interesting. I really like that perspective.

Yeah, because um yeah, they're listening only when you have and and and fairly so, right? Right? I mean we can't expect them to be all superfluous and subjective about uh you know because that's what learning has been all the time. like okay we have so the only kind of metrics that we have really looked at are the completion rates uh the time to completion the modules how how how much time each learner took you know uh how how do they engage with the that is that is probably it you know although we all talk about performance metrics what are those metrics and how do we show it to LT or to the leadership to ensure that um you know hey they think or they they definitely believe or they advocate that L & D needs to be part of any strategy conversation.

Yep. Yep. I I see that. I can see that.

And I guess if you were going to build a a new team, let's say that you are either wearing your consulting hat or you you enter the next chapter and you're building a a a customer success team from scratch. We've talked about empathy, we've talked about attribution, those sorts of things.

what key skills or like what approach would you bring to that that new team like what is a customer success team of the future or maybe not that far in the future maybe next week like what is the customer success team of of today's technology companies like what's essential for those those teams see I think we are in the era of uh technology pervading all our lives like AI getting into everything uh and doing things easier for us that we never thought possible. So I think we need to look at humans, you know, we need to look at we as people and the skills that we bring to the table that AI cannot do replace for us, you know. Um so things like empathy, things like being proactive, things like um really going above and beyond um you know somebody's you know work responsibilities and ensuring that um uh you know this is I know definitely this is what the customer wants because I have talked to this person and and I've talked to these many people and I have data to prove it.

Those kinds of skills are going to be so important uh going forward for customer success team because we have the tools, we have the technologies, it's going to do everything you know data analysis, we have a tool for that. learning outcomes, learning uh you know modules uh you know your uh scorn packages. We have so many tools for that you know but recognizing when and where and how to use these tools effectively to ensure that whatever we are building is impactful and really resonates with the learner is going to be so important.

I love that. And every time you say learner, just for context to the audience, you're actually saying customer most often like in in the L & D world, we have learners.

Beyond that, we have we have business units or whatever, but often in in your context, you're you're thinking about the customer just complete customer centricity obsession about what the customer experience is like. That's great. I've defined it as learner because my customers were twronged, you know, in the in this in the my previous it was the installer or actual customer and that it was the homeowner or the end customer. So that's why I I kind of had that distinction and kind of generalized it as but yes, I meant a customer.

Oh, no. I love it. I love it. You wrote I I got notes here, but you said something that was I wanted to remember, so I wrote it down in my notes app. Um you said in customer education it's important that you understand you are actually responsible for the growth.

You're not adjacent to it. You're not supporting it but those teams are responsible for it. I align with that so well. I think like customer education wears so many hats, but we all are in the business of building trust, building brand loyalty, building community, equipping our customers to win with the product because we know that if they win with their product, they'll stay with us, they'll refer us, they'll do those things. And I was going to ask you, what does it feel like for people to own that growth? What does it or what does it ask of the people who are in customer success or who are in customer education?

What does it ask of them in this new world of customer success and enablement? Um thinking about that growth.

Yes. Uh you put it perfectly right. We have we have empathy. We have all these skills that we require of customer success uh leaders or managers or you know for the team as such. And then we have uh numbers right because uh there's no point of all this if it's not going to reflect in your numbers and the company's bottom line uh right so I think it's very important to have a fine balance of both of them uh ensure that the c the team understands um that okay yes we are here to keep our customers happy but also going above and beyond that in order to achieve a particular number right so I think it's important to have that fine balance and I think leadership or the you know the manager or whoever it is you know is the one to define that uh is to ensure that you know they build a team that has empathy that has a lot of uh you know the values that we talked about but also is has an eye out for those performance metrics uh in order to ensure and and and solid ways and strategies to bridge the two.

You understand what I'm saying? So you know if you're talking about empathy and if you're talking about what can I say customer satisfaction and uh you know seeing the data and going back and working on that data saying hey okay the customer is not happy or I I I see that the customer is always not always um you know stuck on this particular feature you know and then the customer and for the customer team to recognize that and not do anything about it. No, but going back to maybe product or engineering translating that ensuring that they unders they got that message uh and then relaying back to the customer and being that liaison between the customer and product and engineering to ensure that this is being fixed so that not we're not just talking about one customer we're talking about data right so the the data should point us in that direction so that the company's bottom line changes for the better you know so I I think it's important either the leadership is is is um strong is solid and sees it in this kind of manner for them to u be a partner in growth.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. It feels like the mix that you're saying is like yes with all of the support tools that we have and the tech we have product can continue to iterate on features, right?

But there at the end of the day people do business with people and the the opportunity not necessarily the role but the opportunity that we have is to become a human first department like a human-led department in a world where AI could so easily route to a knowledge base but there's a missed opportunity at times there's a missed opportunity at times if we don't really consider how do we interject our humanness this into the customer experience and I don't mean that you know you know you have customer service uh you know the teams I know we have AI uh taking over the chat bots and you know um you know agents and things of that nature but then looking at that that data and saying hey what's going on what what what are these scripts what are the customers interfacing what are they like and not just it becoming uh some sort of a an exercise but actually becoming a data point for you to I you know really really analyze and u do whatever you need to do in order to make the customers happy.

I love that. I love that. Oh my goodness. If uh I guess we are approaching time, I'm so appreciative again of you spending some of your Friday afternoon with me. If if you had any parting words to leave with the audience, thinking about the founders, the CS leaders, uh the teams that are thinking about retention and trust like how do we continue to win? What's one thing we could do differently to win in a world where people are building features faster than ever?

Um, what advice would you say? What's the one thing you might leave folks uh to build that competitive edge?

I think that we are not in the retention business. We are not in the renewals business. We are in the business of transformation. At least from customer education perspective, right? You're in the job of taking something to somebody from where they are and getting them to where they want to be. You know, so be it the installer, be it a customer in in terms of product adoption, what have you, right? You want them to be uh faster, smarter and more confident than they ever thought possible. So we are in the business of transformation and that's what great enablement does, right? It's not uh and that's what great education does. So I think uh creating creating programs that uh that are empathetic, that are datadriven and and essentially at the end of all of it or super how can I say um like an umbrella um you know uh uh the humanness of it uh I think is is something that is uh going to be a gamecher for organizations where they look to build you uh businesses uh that scale and um scale with trust.

Hey, did you happen to know the tagline of the show? There you go.

I saw it. I saw it. I'm like, I I have to put that in.

Oh. Oh, that was awesome. That was sweet. That's awesome. Um Oh my goodness. Akila, this has been a wonderful conversation. I I sincerely hope that as the show continues to grow, I have the opportunity to invite you back on and and you'll come join me and share the the next round of of innovation and empathy and team building and all the wonderful things that you do uh with us and with the audience. Um I've really enjoyed today. Thanks for making it happen.

Thank you so much. It was so much it it was a it was a real pleasure to be on this show and uh you know uh sharing these insights and sharing this knowledge that I have. Uh, I would always welcome the opportunity to speak with you. It's always been a pleasure talking to you.

Amazing. Awesome. Well, have a wonderful weekend. I'm sure we'll be in touch.

Thank you so much. Bike.