With Scott Salkin, senior vice president and general manager of Gainsight's Customer Success Platform

In today’s economy, companies are getting scrappy. They’re searching for new ways to do more with less, optimizing their software and leaning into technological advancements for support.

But prioritizing efficiency and productivity shouldn’t come at the expense of your customers. And, as Scott Salkin explains, it doesn’t have to. Companies like Gainsight are developing new and innovative strategies to leverage their tech stack and better serve their customers. It’s about finding the right tools to invest in and exploring how these investments will ultimately serve you and your customers better.

And with the advent of AI and other game-changing technologies, companies shouldn’t forgo the opportunity to experiment with and implement new ideas and assess their effect on customer success.

Still, sometimes organizations overcomplicate the most impactful strategies to foster long-term customer satisfaction and engagement. As Scott puts it, if companies want to reach higher levels of customer success, they need to explore how to connect with their biggest advocates and greatest champions.

And from there? Where will companies find the perfect balance between high-touch human interactions and the digital world? Only time will tell.

Jen and Scott chat:

• Exploring new strategies to serve customers holistically (4:27)
• Maintaining connections with your biggest advocates and champions (10:35)
• Leveraging software to better understand your business and your customers (18:22)
• Finding the balance between high-touch customer success and digitally led customer engagement (19:50)
• Looking ahead: investing in the right tools to drive customer success (29:09)

Resources:

• HubSpot Attribution Reporting Readiness Assessment
• Sales and Marketing Bootcamp for SaaS Marketers
• The Tech Marketer’s Guide to Achieving Inbound Success
• SaaS Marketing Strategies: Getting Quick Wins and Building for Long-Term Victory

With Jake Randall, Chief Operating Officer at Common Room

As COO of an early-stage company, Jake Randall understands the importance of building community and solving complex problems with listening and empathy.

In fact, that’s exactly how Common Room came about. Common Room is an intelligent, community-led platform that helps businesses deepen their relationships, build better products, and drive impact for their customers.

As Jake points out, companies often try to solve their most complex problems in silos. By pausing to listen to internal teammates and external customers, you become better equipped to overcome your community’s greatest challenges, wherever that community resides. And when you leverage platforms like Common Room, you can gather impactful, qualitative data about the problems people are solving and the strategies they’re using to solve them.

As Jake puts it, “Customer empathy is our No. 1 value. Everyone has a community; [they’re] just not always listening.” Find the people who are talking about the problem you’re trying to solve. Then, find a better way of solving it.

Empathy and awareness extend beyond an organization’s thought leaders and industry experts. Customers want to feel listened to, too. Focus on customers’ greatest needs and their biggest challenges, Jake says. Then, scale that approach as you begin to tackle today’s biggest economic and industry-related challenges.

What’s next? Speaking like a true innovator and problem solver, Jake says, “Remain agile.” Don’t make the mistake of trying to solve the same problem with the same solution over and over again. If it’s not working, find a new way. Test, pivot, execute. The rest will fall into place.

Jake and Jen talk about:

• Building community to nurture authentic connections (3:12)
• How collective problem-solving breeds collaboration (8:19)
• “Everyone has a community; you’re just not listening” (14:32)
• How to mitigate risk and prepare for shifts in your industry (25:32)
• What? So what? Now what? Leading with authenticity and building trust with your team (29:09)

With Lindsay Tjepkema, CEO and co-founder at Casted

On this episode of the Intelligent Inbound Podcast, Jen sits down with Lindsay Tjepkema, CEO and co-founder of Casted, to explore why she started the company and what other organizations can learn about building audience engagement through creative storytelling.

As Lindsay explains, Casted is a software platform made specifically for B2B marketers who want to both maximize and measure the impact of audio and video content. Although it hasn’t always been easy to convince people to invest in the marketing power of podcasting, the team at Casted has found education to be the key to success.

Literally and figuratively, it’s about keeping the conversation going, so both your target audience and key investors can join you on the journey toward your marketing goals. Whether they’re focused on podcasting or another kind of content creation, Lindsay describes how marketers all too often become consumed by the idea of building new content each time for every campaign.

Instead, she encourages marketers and organizations alike to focus on “shopping [their] closets first”—that is, repurposing and repackaging existing content before reinventing it completely. Ultimately, whatever marketing approach you and your team pursue, as Lindsay goes on to say, you have to find a way to humanize the message, the medium, and the methodology to make the biggest impact.

Jen and Lindsay discuss:

• Meet Casted (2:04)
• Measuring engagement in the podcasting space (6:54)
• Making listener data actionable (8:37)
• Keeping conversations going as you scale (15:10)
• Shopping your closet: upcycling your content (20:00)
• The power of demand generation and content marketing (30:27)
• Humanizing your marketing approach (31:47)

Resources:

• Inbound Marketing Quick Wins for Lead Generation
• The Only Inbound Marketing Guide You’ll Ever Need
• HubSpot Implementation Checklist