Mastering the art of customer success management with LinkedIn's Erika Tabacniks

So I need to find that balance or I can't really do anything. I can't be a mom. I can't look after myself or my dogs or even my team, right? So I am to encourage a healthy work life balance and then involve setting clear expectations regarding working hours or taking personal time. Welcome back to Conversations with Vendesk, where we explore new technology and trends in customer experience. Each episode we speak with industry innovators and experts to hear their thoughts, unpack industry trends and discuss the most important ideas around CX. I'm your host, Nicole Saunders. Today's conversation is with Erica Tabaknick, manager of customer success for healthcare in North America at LinkedIn. With 20 years of work experience and customer success, sales and business development, Erica is a passionate and strategic leader who thrives on building long-term relationships with clients, peers and partners. She leads a team that helps clients achieve their talent acquisition and retention goals. Previously, Erica was head of customer success for Latin America at LinkedIn, where she set the strategic direction and operational management of a cross regional team that served diverse clients around various industries. Before joining LinkedIn, Erica worked at Thompson Reuters and Indeed.com, where she managed client service teams and let global projects that drove business transformation and organizational change. Stay tuned as Erica and I talk through the opportunities and challenges facing customer success teams today and how she's leading her team with empathy and compassion. She's got some great wisdom to share with you. But before we get to that, I'm excited to share a little bit of Zendesk News. Relate 2024 is returning with a three day in-person event taking place at Virgin Hotels in Las Vegas on April 16th through 18th. We're inviting the best brains in customer experience. That's you. To grow your skill set, network and influence at our in-person flagship conference, I hope to see you there. Secure your spot at $695, Erie Bird pricing through December 22nd. Register now at zendeskrelate.com. All right, on to my conversation, Erica to back. Well, Erica to back next, welcome to Conversations, Miss Endesk. Oh, thank you, Nicole. It's a pleasure to be here. I'm so glad to have you on today. So we just heard your bio in the introduction, but I'd love to have you tell us a little bit more about your role. What are you doing today? Today, what is your team focus on that kind? There are seven main areas that I focus on as the manager of a customer success team at LinkedIn. So area number one, customer relationship management, building and nurturing strong, long lasting relationship with our customers is at the core of our mission. So we aim to understand their unique needs, their goals, their pain points, to tailor our solutions accordingly. So this involves regular communication, check ins and active listening, something most systems forget to do. Then on boarding and training. So ensuring that our customers are, of course, on boarded onto the platform is extremely important. And this includes providing them with the resources and training they need to maximize the value they get of our services. It's such as optimizing their solutions, creating engage content and using corporate features. Then product knowledge and feedback staying up to date with the companies, every evolving features and capabilities is so so important. We serve as a bridge between our customers and our product development teams, collecting feedback and insight to helping his or her offering. So this involves continuous learning and sharing knowledge with the team. Then success planning, number four, we create tailored success plans that outline their objectives and the steps that we're going to take to achieve them. So this may involve specific APIs, potential challenges, proposals and solutions to overcome that number five. And I'm sure if you're in customer success, you do a lot of this issue and resolution. It's important to identify and address any issues or concerns that our customers may have. So we work closely with our support and technical teams to ensure resolution and minimize disruptions to our customers experience. Finally, data analysis and reporting. So we use data analytics to monitor and track the success of our customers, measuring their engagement and ROI on our platform. We often share insights and reports with them. So they understand the value that they're gaining from LinkedIn. And finally, and super important as well, cross functional collaboration. So we collaborate closely with other departments, such as sales, marketing and product development to ensure that we have a holistic approach to customer success. So this includes aligning your efforts with the overall business goal and the strategy of the company. So my data activities, they involve a blend of strategic and tactical work. I did a team of customer success managers and together we set objectives, design customer engagement strategies. We ensure that our customers receive the support and the guidance they need. Sometimes this is one and one meeting. Sometimes it's group meetings. I do a lot of coaching and mentoring to share best practices and insights. So just a few things. Yeah, your bucket understands. So what kinds of things are top of mind for you teams? I'm going to answer this question thinking about a customer success team from any specific industry. Because I think this is top of mind for all of us globally. And of course, customer retention. This is priority number one. So maintain and grow customer relationships to reduce churn and ensure value. And this is not only about retaining the existing customers that we have, but also finding opportunities for upsell, cross sell, products or services that they might need to achieve their goals. Then customer engagement. And this is important because we're focused on increasing active usage and engagement through personalized experiences, but also through AI driven recommendations. When we use AI, our customer success teams can tailor the content and feature to keep their customers engaged, driving long term satisfaction and loyalty. Something else also related to AI data driven insights. So there's data all around us, right? So Instagram, podcast, LinkedIn news TV. One of the most important skills to have is to know which data is relevant and important. And then how to use it, right? To bring value to the conversation. I could talk to you about so many things, but I was thinking, okay, what is relevant? We would they want to know what is the audience interested in learning? So leveraging AI and data to gain valuable insights and customer behavior and preferences is extremely important. So AI empowers our teams to identify those trends, predict needs and provide targeted solutions to our customers. And then we can deliver more personalized customer experience. Then proactive support. We've been talking a lot about this. How to differentiate reactive from proactive. How do you do more proactive support? And this is something that a lot of customers, success teams are focused on. And not only this, but how to use AI to identify and address potential customers, you should interactively and prevent frustrations. Those who can do it well will do it better than others. They already step ahead of the curve. And finally, this is also very important. It's not so much related to the customer, but looking internally, team development and internal mobility. Colching and developing customers, success teams to acquire nail skills, fostering a culture of learning and growth and enabling career advancement with the new organization. You talked a little bit about differentiating between reactive and proactive support and trying to really prevent frustration for customers. What are some of the strategies or tactics that you've seen that work well today? Some companies actually have different teams that will be responsible for each type of this communication. And then another strategy is to differentiate the customers into segments according to revenue or potential for growth or specific needs or industry or even location. And then according to the type of customer and the support they need, we can develop the strategy that makes sense for each one of them. And it's also important to take a look at ourselves, right? When I use something that I'm a customer, right? The gym that I go to, there are lots of studies I show once you join a gym, the 30 initial days or the three months are so, so important. If you have a good experience, we'll come back and they'll do it again. If not, then how many people here pay gym and they don't go, right? They'll use it. So that experience makes a difference in how we see the value of the services that we acquire. And sometimes the phone call is enough or sometimes I want a personal trainer, but it's important to understand what the customer needs and what value means to them. So what are the some of the techniques and tactics that your team uses to understand those customer needs? And how do today adjust when a customer is maybe getting into a roadblock or challenge that they're having? That's a great question to call. I won't share our internalist strategies, but in brief, we employ a combination of data analysis and proactive communication. So we listen to our customers, analyze their usage patterns and gather feedback so that we learn insights into their needs and challenges. We also have been engaged in with them directly through conferences or frountable or interviews. So that we provide support and guide them to solutions that they need. It's about being attentive and responsive. It's extremely important in a dynamic and ever evolving industry like LinkedIn. That makes a ton of sense. And it really connects to this idea of personalization, which, you know, we highlighted in our 2023 CX trends report as a big thing that customers are looking for. But you know, we talk a lot about how important it is. to personalize things. What are some examples or ways that you think about personalizing interactions or content? I love this topic too. Personalizing content for users. It's a critical component of enhancing their experience on their platform and their, the first strategy is an example of how we do this. One is our famous algorithm, right? So we leverage advanced recommendation algorithm that takes into account the users profile their activities or where they click, what they like, what they share, things like this, and preferences to suggest relevant content. For example, we provide a personalized job recommendation based on a user's skill and career interests. So the more you use it, the more you train the algorithm to respond to your needs. Content curation, we have a team that curates content feeds and it also done automatically, based on a user's industry connections and entries. For example, users will see updates from their network relevant articles and posts from thought leaders in their field aligned with their interests. Something else you probably have noticed email and notification if you're a LinkedIn user, you might get email notifications and an app alerts as well to inform you about relevant job opportunities, networking events or content updates. This message is our tailored to each user's interests and activities. What else? Learning and development? LinkedIn learning. I don't know if you have a user. I love it. I like to learn it. It offers personalized forms for accommodations based on your skills, your career goals, and also your learning history. So it looks at what you're doing and suggests contents and skills that are related to what your goals are. And then it suggests contents and tutorials. Personalized messaging, this is important as well. In our communication with users, we use their profiled information and interaction history to personalize the message. For example, when we congratulate users on work and accessories or suggest connections based on shared interests that they match. For those that are premium users, they have additional features. So they receive for insights, more data, often related to their job search, competition, or industry insights. And then it advertises those that use LinkedIn to market. They can target a specific audience as a core into job, title, industry, location. So that everything is personalized and it reads the right individuals. Well, it's certainly a comprehensive outline of the different ways to do it. And I think there's something that we can all learn from those strategies. So turning our attention back to some of the work of the customer success team, I know that customer health scores are a tool that success teams frequently use. Could you tell us a little bit about the way that you think about health score, how your customers are doing, and how do you ensure that those scores are telling you something meaningful and useful? I love this topic. I love this interview and I've had a customer. We were looking at the health scores of our customers and they were looking at the, we were looking to turn them at our tools and everything was green, strong user. This wasn't how LinkedIn was a different company. So internally was a healthy customer. I'm like, this is great. They use it well. Well, fast, the renewal day they actually ended up churning. And then when I call, I used to do this. I used to call every customer that churn to get more insights as well. So then I'd call them to understand what was happening. And they're like, well, it had no idea how to use the platform. So we were clicking everywhere and trying to find the information that we needed. So that was a great learning. Sometimes it's strong. The usability doesn't really mean that it's a healthy customer. So we need to understand. And then now answering your question, customer health scores, if well used, they're a valuable tool for customer success teams to assess the overall well-being of their relationships, right? And help us to identify accounts that are at risk. So when we think about the scores, we need to ensure that they provide the beautiful insights that we need to guide our actions. And here's how I would approach the concept. One, data-driven metrics and customization. So customer health scores, they shouldn't incorporate both data-driven metrics, but also subjective assessments to provide a more progressive view of the health. So this is both usage, support ticket history, for example, but also customer sentiment. I'd recommend customizing this scoring system to align with the unique needs and expectations of your customer base, right? And it's important to know that different industries and customer segments, they may require different metrics and thresholds. Then regular review, it doesn't really help much if you have a score, but you don't use it, right? So make it a habit to use it. So regular review, holistic view, they're dynamic and this scores and they change a lot. So it's important that they're updated to reflect how the customer is changing, how their behaviors are changing. So once you're created, ensure that you're seeing the visits of score to keep them relevant, right? It's important to also adopt a holistic view so that when there is a risk for churn or something is not going that well, we take a balanced approach and provide a more accurate assessment of all the well-being of the account. Then collaborative approach. This is also very important. If your system can trigger an alert every time something happens that you can say, "Oh, this is an opportunity for risk, for growth, I mean, or this is a risk." And the way that it triggers an alert for your team to take action, this is beautiful. And then ensure that we work together with sales and marketing and support to align on this strategy, right? That's a fair enough feedback and improvement. Not every customer knows how this score works. So I have a fan of telling that to the customer, they say, "Hey, we have this score and it measures this, this and back. That doesn't make sense to you. Is this what is important to you?" So take this customer feedback inside and change the system if needed. Make sure that it's aligned with what they see as something valuable to them. So when if all of these principles we can develop and maintain a customer house or that is focused on using data, sentiment, collaboration and feedback to act together. I love the anecdote that you shared there about how you had a health score that ended up, it looked like the user was really involved with using the platform, but it turned out that they were actually struggling and that was either clicking around. And I think it is so important to be aware of what your data is measuring and what it's showing. I remember one time I was looking at a website and we couldn't figure out why page views had suddenly dropped so much. And it was because we had implemented a spam filter in a community. And so it was blocking all of the spam posts. And so it looked like traffic was down when in fact what it was is that we had a more accurate reading of the legitimate users that were coming into the site. It says always important to dig in and unpack those things and understand where they're coming from. In talking about the health score you mentioned working with sales and marketing and some other teams. And earlier you also mentioned the importance of cross-functional collaboration. Tell a bit about how you go about developing those cross-functional relationships and partnerships with other team reorganization. When I joined LinkedIn, I got a lot of internal emails from people saying, "Hey, Eric, welcome to the company, welcome to our team." And what I did is actually, it's casual that I wouldn't want with everybody that invited me, welcome me into the company, into the team, as I wanted to know who they are. But they do, but their goals are what their KPIs are, how we collaborate together, what opportunities we have. Every time there's a chance to meet somebody in touch, just somebody understand what they're doing, what their goals are. I make it a priority to join my other meetings as well, understand what the team is focused on, what their objectives are, how the numbers are. So I make it a priority to join their meetings, one at once. And I also share, I share what my goal is, what my numbers look like, what I'm aiming to achieve, and ask for feedback as much as possible after a project, after I'm eating through email, through teams, and then take action and change or enhance something that can be enhanced. I think you and I think about those things in a very similar way. I'm constantly encouraging people. I tell them, you know, go look at the company directory and find someone who's role you're not familiar with and ask them if you can have a quick Zoom coffee. And I think about it a lot in terms of if you're playing a sport, for example, and you're on a team, you know the function of everybody on that team. And the only way that you can successfully make a play or get to a score is effectively leveraging all of those roles. But a big company is sometimes, you know, it's impossible to everybody if you're a company of thousands or tens of thousands. But it's still important to know the roles and capabilities as many people as you can so that you can all drive to success together. One of the things that you're never chatting about before, we jumped into recording the podcast today, um, the mental health of team. How do you think about helping you support your team when us are stressed for or supporting their mental health? I've learned a lot about this over the last almost three to four years now with the pandemic. And there are five strategies that I like to follow to support my team in managing their mental health. So one is open communication. Open communication means creating an environment where team members feel comfortable and safe, discussing their mental health challenges with no fear of judging, right? So that is what I see as open communication is that, Hey, Erica, something stuff of mine. Hey, I'm concerned about this. I'm anxious about this. Having that ability to do this with the manager is so so important. And I aim to achieve this through regular check in one and all conversations so they can share their experiences once they're concerned and also see guidance, right? So this helps them and me identify issues, but also the primary culture of empathy and support to work life balance. So I'm a single mom. I'm from Brazil. I moved from Brazil to the US to Chicago first year and a half ago. I can't be a mom. So I aim to encourage a healthy work life balance and then involve setting clear expectations regarding working hours or taking personal time. I encourage my team to take breaks. connect from work when they're actually off, right? Use their vacation days. Something I mean, I don't do a lot of I've learned. And leaders can set an example. They can set an example by following this principle themselves and showing the importance of time spent outside of work. Something important for me is also flexible work arrangements. If your company allows people to work remote or flexible hours or have different work weeks, this flexibility helps CSM's and actually everybody to better manage their professional and personal responsibilities offering access to mental health resources such as employee assistance program and counseling services is also important as they provide a confidential and supportive avenue for team members to seek help and guidance when their experience stress, workout or even other mental health challenge. I use them myself. They have a partnership with a coach therapist that I talk to weekly, recognizing and appreciating the efforts and achievements of team members is also important for their mental wellbeing, feeling valued and appreciated in the workplace, can boost morale and reduce stress. I really appreciate what you said about leading by example. It's so important that we all take care of ourselves and that we model those things for our other team members so that they know that it is okay to share or that it is okay to take a break or it is okay to say, "Hey, I'm going to be away from Slack for two hours. Pick the kids up from. " I think another way that we can really help support mental health for teams is also making sure that people are staying engaged at work and feel like they're growing in the roles and that things are interesting and challenging. What are some of the ways that you're prioritizing professional development for your team? Are there any resources you recommend for other managers that they can leverage to help support those things? Start by assessing the skills and competences of your team members. Find areas where they can improve and grow and this could be done through self-assessment tools or a peer feedback or a performance reviews. Then create a plan. So work with each team member to create a, it can be called the career development plan and the visual development plan. As long as it outlines their goals and their strategies to achieve them, it's a good plan and a timeline. So this will provide them a roadmap for growth. Then learning and training. Foster culture, this is important. We know that we're committed to learning and growing within the team. So make learning a part of the work environment. I assure that your team members have the opportunity to learn through doing and they can take on new responsibilities or a new project. They can manage high value customer account or really they cross functional initiative. Then also mentoring and coaching parity members with mentors or coaches who can provide guidance, share experiences, offer insights. I also look at the skills and then pair them according to skills and things they want to develop so that one person can help the other. So in corridor team members to collaborate with other departments such as sales, marketing, product development, they're often internal opportunities for projects that are involved all of these areas. Support those team members in joining an attending events, webinars, workshops, speaking if they want or even joining them or learning these events they provide opportunities to network to learn about the industry and gain insights. Finally, of course, feedback and performance reviews, regular feedback, performance reviews, this can help us identify areas for improvement and help develop goals. And then I think that following the strategies and using resources like LinkedIn learning or other tools can help every person understand where they are, where they want to go, and how to get there. So I'm thinking about that professional development. What are some of the key capabilities or skill sets that you think help draft success team to success? Embracing change is important and committing to ongoing learning is important. So stay agile, stay open to new ideas, the new approaches and adapt to different customer needs. Our customers are also changing right? The industry is changing the way you communicate is changing. So stay open to changes, adapt, so adaptability and learning data driven. I'm going to go back to data, leveraging data and analytics is that the core of our decision making process. So we rely on customer behavior and preferences and insights to make informed customer centric decisions. So use that data well so that you guide your strategies and align with the expectations of your customers. And then customer relationship is strong customer relationship. This is so so important. Build that. I added CSM on my team once and it's always to become invited every customer holiday party at the end of the year. And I loved it. Long lasting customer relationship is the heart of our mission. Our teams listen, they provide support, they engage, they saw problems. So last question, this is one of my favorite ones to ask everyone of our guests. Have you ever had a standout customer experience or interaction with customer service, the e-file, particularly satisfying or inspiring? It's a good question. So when I was in Chicago, I lived in a high rise and there was a dormant there like they've worked in the lobby. Oh, same. Well, Zellas even featured in the newsletter as one of the best or men in Chicago. He would have the music blasty. I think there were, I don't even know how many apartments like I'd say 500, I'd be a mix exaggerating a bit, but he knew the names of Pabbie Buddy and the kids and the dogs. And he wouldn't give treat to the dogs. He would help with groceries, he would help with deliveries, open the door, make coffee every morning, he had to cough for everybody every morning. And he's just loved doing it. And when I think about life actually or her goals, there is one concept that I love. It comes from the Japanese culture, Eki-Gai, which is a powerful framework for understanding ourselves with the world needs and we'll do well. Right? So when I think about, say, I think about this, you loved his job. Right? This is a starting point. It's recognized in the activities, the tasks. There is a work that excited, motivate you. So find that thing, find that passion. When I'm passionate about something, when I like what I'm doing, I feel more engaged, motivated and committed to myself, to my role. So he really loved doing that. Then it's what you're good at, right? You're just trying to understand what you do well. Then the purpose, try to find what society needs or what our customer needs. This is about aligning your efforts with the goals and the requirements of your customers or the side or the building where you're at. So then what you're doing is not just the work. It's so much more and it's easier to be motivated and happier in the end. And I think of it when I was thinking about this question because for me, is a tool is a real example of that. I think that that is so inspiring. Thank you so much for sharing that story. I hope that everyone can find that intersection point in their lives because it does really bring meaning to your work and helps create great experiences for other. They are, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. I really hope you join us for our final episode of the season. Be sure to tune in on December 13th when I sit down with Zendesk CEO Tom Egamire for a provocative conversation about the seismic changes in store for CX. In that episode, Egamire will share his thoughts about how AI will radically disrupt CX and how Zendesk is uniquely set up to help businesses navigate this new era of intelligent CX. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with a friend or colleague or you could write us a review on Apple Podcast. Thanks so much for listening and for being a part of our community. You can always join the conversation at zendesk.com/community or connect with other zendesk users through our user group meetups. Find one for you at usergroups.zendesk.com. Until next time, I'm Nicole Saunders for Zendesk, the intelligent heart of customer experience. Relate 2024 is returning with a three-day in-person event taking place at Virgin Hotels in Las Vegas on April 16th through 18th. That's you. Secure your spot at $695 dollars, Erzie Bird pricing through December 22nd. Register now at zendeskrelate.com.