One profession that seems to be at the forefront of the movement to CS is professional educators. And for good reason, there are lots of parallels between teaching and education and making customers successful, so much so that at times it's hard to tell them apart.

Today’s guest is Jeffrey See, Assistant Principle for the DC Everest Area school district. In this episode you’ll hear how he:

• Compares the role of educators and CSM's
• Creates strategic outcome driven action plans
• Leverages data to prioritize action and make decisions
• Uses customer discovery methods to get buy-in for project budgets
• Puts the ultimate success of students above internal measures and tactics

Enjoyed this episode? Connect with Jeffrey on LinkedIn and let him know, or subscribe for future episodes of Happy Customers.

Building repeatable paths to value that enables customers to succeed is the best way to reduce churn, increase retention and ensure ever expanding customer accounts.

Today’s guest is Samuel Hulick, creator of UserOnboard and founder of Value Paths. In this episode you’ll hear how he:

• Defines a value path
• Discovers the outcomes customers are seeking
• Thinks about the function of products and services
• Thinks about onboarding measurement and experimentation
• Encourages companies to think about products as stepping stones

Enjoyed this episode? Connect with Samuel on Twitter and let him know, or subscribe for future episodes of Happy Customers.

Should you try to automate everything and create "scalable" self-serve experiences? Or is a more human-led approach to making customers successful more effective?

Today’s guest is Con Cirillo, Head of Customer Experience at Carro. In this episode you’ll hear how he:

• Defines metrics to align the business on CX
• Ensures everyone hears the Voice of the Customer
• Strategically puts humans in the loop for high-risk actions
• Applies learnings from scale at HubSpot to startup life at Carro
• Prioritizes his time on the highest impact experience challenges

Enjoyed this episode? Connect with Con on LinkedIn and let him know, or subscribe for future episodes of Happy Customers.

Effective customer onboarding can help bridge that gap, ensure customers see value, and are set up for ongoing success.

Today’s guest is Donna Weber, author of the best selling book "Onboarding Matters". In this episode you’ll hear how she:

• Defines customer onboarding
• Uses a success plan as the basis for aligned onboarding
• Addresses onboarding misconceptions and common red flags
• Thinks about overcoming sticking points in the onboarding journey
• Recommends companies go about scaling their onboarding programs

Additional onboarding resources from Donna: 

• What is Orchestrated Onboarding and Why You Should Care
• Onboarding ≠ Implementation
• Whoever Understands The Customer Best Wins

Enjoyed this episode? Connect with Donna on LinkedIn and let her know, or subscribe for future episodes of Happy Customers.

That’s the question that so many companies are asking themselves right now because the truth is it’s really, really hard.

I've been asking CS leaders what it takes in practice to become a company that genuinely cares about making customers successful. And there’s one thread that keeps being pulled. Companies that make customers successful have a strong culture that puts them at the center of everything they do.

Today’s guest is Ellie Hutton, Director of Customer Success at Dooly. In this episode you’ll hear how she:

• Structures the CS org at Dooly
• Sets goals and metrics for customer success
• Intentionally builds a culture that earns the right to grow
• Avoids internal politics and puts the customer at the center
• Builds practices to help all Dooligans get closer to customers 

Enjoyed this episode? Connect with Ellie on LinkedIn and let her know, or subscribe for future episodes of Happy Customers.

Having a partner that is aligned around your goals and expectations of that investment can be the difference between a prosperous long-term relationship and a spiral into frustration and ultimately an expensive break-up.

Our guest today is Jerry Henry, Director Professional Services and Onboarding at Sendoso. In this episode you’ll hear how he:

• Defines 4 pillars of onboarding at Sendoso
• Empowers his team to get creative helping customers
• Reports on the business impact of onboarding performance
• Maps the journey for customers from closed won to successful
• Ensures a smooth handoff from sales to onboarding for customers

Enjoyed this episode? Connect with Jerry on LinkedIn and let him know, or subscribe for future episodes of Happy Customers.

But people don’t “scale”, so how do you ensure that your customers are still being successful even as the business explodes.

Our guest today is Dan Ennis, Scale Team Manager on the Customer Success team at Monday.com. In this episode you’ll hear how he:

• Prioritizes customer touch points
• Makes reactive customer outreach feel proactive
• Designs experiments to improve customer outcomes
• Uses data to strategically include a human in the loop
• Collaborates with other teams to map the customer journey

Enjoyed this episode? Connect with Dan on LinkedIn and let him know, or subscribe for future episodes of Happy Customers.

In today’s world of commoditized software and infinite choice, the company that becomes their customer’s trusted advisor is the company that wins.

Our guest today is Maranda Dziekonski, Chief Customer Officer at Swiftly. In this episode you’ll hear how she:

• Pitches customer success to executives
• Structures her customer success team
• Aligns the company to customer outcomes
• Builds a proactive customer success practice
• Thinks about hiring and leveraging technology to scale

Enjoyed this episode? Connect with Maranda on LinkedIn and let her know, or subscribe for future episodes of Happy Customers.

Happy Customers is about why making customers successful — and ultimately happy customers — is more important than ever before.

Over the course of this series we’re going to explore what people insides some of the world's top companies are really doing everyday to go beyond the metrics and numbers on the balance sheet, collaborate across their entire organization, and truly invest in making their customers successful.

I hope you’ll join me (Stuart Balcombe) as we uncover the universal lessons, and day-to-day practices that ultimately result in happy customers.