Here are the nominees
for Most Creative CS leaders of 2023

Get a bird’s eye view at their creative success plays of the year

Bogdan Zhyguliovtsev

Bogdan Zhyguliovtsev

CSM Team Lead at AppsFlyer

Creative play of the year →

The growing customer-base at AppsFlyer called for the implementation of a smart and personalized 1 to many approach. Bogdan, who leads customer success for the CIS region led the implementation of the different 1-to-many methods that were available such as content creation, webinars, customer hubs and email automation to ensure customers of all sizes are engaged throughout their lifecycle, with a special focus on the customer onboarding program.

Read more...
Bogdan Zhyguliovtsev

Bogdan Zhyguliovtsev

CSM Team Lead at AppsFlyer

Creative play of the year →

Making 1-to-many a winning strategy that enabled a high percentage of clients/customers

The growing customer-base at AppsFlyer called for the implementation of a smart and personalized 1 to many approach. Bogdan, who leads customer success for the CIS region led the implementation of the different 1-to-many methods that were available such as content creation, webinars, customer hubs and email automation to ensure customers of all sizes are engaged throughout their lifecycle, with a special focus on the customer onboarding program.

Brady James

Brady James

VP of Customer Success at GoCanvas

Creative play of the year →

It was clear to the team at GoCanves that increasing its headcount alone would not lead to a meaningful improvement in their longtail customer experience. Using the existing CS tech stack, Brady built a journey that represented how the customer wanted to interact with the product, giving them support when they needed it, and giving them space when they were self-serving. If a customer was struggling and needed a human touch, they had a scalable way to support 4k+ clients with only a small team of 4. With 90% of the journey automated and the establishment of conditional plays tied to defined "moments of truth", their clients became dramatically more successful.

Read more...
Brady James

Brady James

VP of Customer Success at GoCanvas

Creative play of the year →

leveraging their tech stack to build a robust scalable customer engagement model for their low-ARR, but largest cohort of clients.

It was clear to the team at GoCanves that increasing its headcount alone would not lead to a meaningful improvement in their longtail customer experience. Using the existing CS tech stack, Brady built a journey that represented how the customer wanted to interact with the product, giving them support when they needed it, and giving them space when they were self-serving. If a customer was struggling and needed a human touch, they had a scalable way to support 4k+ clients with only a small team of 4. With 90% of the journey automated and the establishment of conditional plays tied to defined "moments of truth", their clients became dramatically more successful.

Angie DeLaRosa

Angie DeLaRosa

Associate director of CS Operations at NAVEX

Creative play of the year →

With over 13,000 customers and multiple products, NAVEX seeks to collect desired customer outcomes and success plans at scale across all customer success segments. Angie spearheaded a project to create a product maturity model that can be used as a customer-facing self-assessment survey. The focus of the survey is to standardize the capture of outcomes and allow customers to self-identify areas of success and opportunities with NAVEX products. While this is a new process, early indicators are that customers will engage with this model, facilitating the ability to drive customer adoption, engagement, and maturity, giving the customer success team greater visibility into customer-desired outcomes.

Read more...
Angie DeLaRosa

Angie DeLaRosa

Associate director of CS Operations at NAVEX

Creative play of the year →

Creating a self-evaluation survey to allow customers to identify their own areas for success and growth opportunities.

With over 13,000 customers and multiple products, NAVEX seeks to collect desired customer outcomes and success plans at scale across all customer success segments. Angie spearheaded a project to create a product maturity model that can be used as a customer-facing self-assessment survey. The focus of the survey is to standardize the capture of outcomes and allow customers to self-identify areas of success and opportunities with NAVEX products. While this is a new process, early indicators are that customers will engage with this model, facilitating the ability to drive customer adoption, engagement, and maturity, giving the customer success team greater visibility into customer-desired outcomes.

Brittany Casey

Brittany Casey

Senior Customer Success Manager and Mentor at DocuSign

Creative play of the year →

Brittany takes a unique approach to nurturing customer relationships. By making new contacts & sharing internal success, she’s able to expand her footprint within her customer's organization. Brittany leverages LinkedIn Sales Navigator to connect with potential businesses. Once she’s made contacts in new business units, she invites them to hear the success story of her current customers. Whether it’s in the form of a one-on-one solution day or a larger peer group meeting setting, the goal is for her customer to communicate the value they have seen and the problems they have solved with her solution. She encourages other CSMs to leverage their networks and to never underestimate the power of community and its ability to grow within a business.

Read more...
Brittany Casey

Brittany Casey

Senior Customer Success Manager and Mentor at DocuSign

Creative play of the year →

Nurturing customer relationships by creating pivotal value conversations

Brittany takes a unique approach to nurturing customer relationships. By making new contacts & sharing internal success, she’s able to expand her footprint within her customer's organization. Brittany leverages LinkedIn Sales Navigator to connect with potential businesses. Once she’s made contacts in new business units, she invites them to hear the success story of her current customers. Whether it’s in the form of a one-on-one solution day or a larger peer group meeting setting, the goal is for her customer to communicate the value they have seen and the problems they have solved with her solution. She encourages other CSMs to leverage their networks and to never underestimate the power of community and its ability to grow within a business.

Kristin-Leigh Brezinski

Kristin-Leigh Brezinski

Director of scaling CS practices at AppsFlyer

Creative play of the year →

Each CSM at AppsFlyer manages customers in different verticals and ARR levels. KL founded the Scale+ CS team, for mid-market customers. Before KL's scaling strategy, customers usually spent over 90 days onboarding and required support from both a CSM and Solutions Architect.. KL's use of EverAfter along with Zendesk and Zoom webinar softwares reduced onboarding time while increasing time-to-value and removed the dependency on Solutions Architects for customers in this segment. As a result of her one-to-many approach and use of technology, her team now has a lower churn rate than enterprise accounts. Not only that, she also was able to reduce CS headcount requirements.

Read more...
Kristin-Leigh Brezinski

Kristin-Leigh Brezinski

Director of scaling CS practices at AppsFlyer

Creative play of the year →

Setting up a scale team to facilitate growth in mid-market customers

Each CSM at AppsFlyer manages customers in different verticals and ARR levels. KL founded the Scale+ CS team, for mid-market customers. Before KL's scaling strategy, customers usually spent over 90 days onboarding and required support from both a CSM and Solutions Architect.. KL's use of EverAfter along with Zendesk and Zoom webinar softwares reduced onboarding time while increasing time-to-value and removed the dependency on Solutions Architects for customers in this segment. As a result of her one-to-many approach and use of technology, her team now has a lower churn rate than enterprise accounts. Not only that, she also was able to reduce CS headcount requirements.

Robert Vogel

Robert Vogel

Director of strategic accounts at K4Connect

Creative play of the year →

Historically, enterprise software onboarding in the senior living space was heavy - usually taking multiple months of emails, meetings, emails about meetings, and meetings about emails. By implementing EverAfter, K4Connect gave clients a 24/7 "Digital CSM" to highlight their journey with key actions and program milestones. After using EverAfter to roll out "Mission Control", K4Connect’s industry-leading client portal, the team was able to reduce their onboarding time by 50% while sending a fraction of the emails. By powering everything with their CRM, they gave clients a seamless, secure SSO login experience so everyone could easily be on the same page - literally.

Read more...
Robert Vogel

Robert Vogel

Director of strategic accounts at K4Connect

Creative play of the year →

Developing an industry-leading onboarding experience powered by existing tools and databases

Historically, enterprise software onboarding in the senior living space was heavy - usually taking multiple months of emails, meetings, emails about meetings, and meetings about emails. By implementing EverAfter, K4Connect gave clients a 24/7 "Digital CSM" to highlight their journey with key actions and program milestones. After using EverAfter to roll out "Mission Control", K4Connect’s industry-leading client portal, the team was able to reduce their onboarding time by 50% while sending a fraction of the emails. By powering everything with their CRM, they gave clients a seamless, secure SSO login experience so everyone could easily be on the same page - literally.

Stijn Smet

Stijn Smet

Lead Customer Success Manager at UseWhale

Creative play of the year →

For some customers that didn't opt in for Success Services at UseWhale, there wasn't really a plan of attack to make them successful and guard the retention rate. It became clear to Stijn that the onboarding process was too simplistic and needed to be structured properly. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Stijn designed a conversational style, human-centered onboarding journey with videos and GIFs (including every gif of the Real Housewives) focused on increasing retention and satisfaction. During the DIY onboarding process, customer education is provided through GIFs, personal videos, and other materials. This way, retention is increased & onboarding at your own pace never was so much fun.

Read more...
Stijn Smet

Stijn Smet

Lead Customer Success Manager at UseWhale

Creative play of the year →

Launching a new customer onboarding plan: a DIY 8-week-long onboarding journey.

For some customers that didn't opt in for Success Services at UseWhale, there wasn't really a plan of attack to make them successful and guard the retention rate. It became clear to Stijn that the onboarding process was too simplistic and needed to be structured properly. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Stijn designed a conversational style, human-centered onboarding journey with videos and GIFs (including every gif of the Real Housewives) focused on increasing retention and satisfaction. During the DIY onboarding process, customer education is provided through GIFs, personal videos, and other materials. This way, retention is increased & onboarding at your own pace never was so much fun.

Mohammed Alqaq

Mohammed Alqaq

Customer Success Manager at Crucial Solutions & Services

Creative play of the year →

Seeing that the Customer Success eco-system isn't mature enough in the middle east, Mohammed took it upon himself to grow the local community through advanced knowledge. This past year, Mohammed has worked with CS Leaders from around the world to translate their posts, blogs, and articles into Arabic to increase local interest. Also, he started a series of written interviews with CS experts to help local companies learn from global experts. This is certainly just the beginning and his plan for 2023 includes new channels and lots of activities.

Read more...
Mohammed Alqaq

Mohammed Alqaq

Customer Success Manager at Crucial Solutions & Services

Creative play of the year →

Developing the Middle East Customer Success community through content creation

Seeing that the Customer Success eco-system isn't mature enough in the middle east, Mohammed took it upon himself to grow the local community through advanced knowledge. This past year, Mohammed has worked with CS Leaders from around the world to translate their posts, blogs, and articles into Arabic to increase local interest. Also, he started a series of written interviews with CS experts to help local companies learn from global experts. This is certainly just the beginning and his plan for 2023 includes new channels and lots of activities.

Luke Ferrel

Luke Ferrel

Sr Director of Customer Success at Outreach

Creative play of the year →

Outreach realized their approach to longtail customers wasn't well structured, resulting in low retention rates for that segment. By working closely with his customer success team, Luke created a CS scale function that's proactive rather than ad-hoc, incorporating purely digital engagements. As time went on, the team got more innovative and started using data-driven cohorts. They tested leading indicators to determine which led to churn in accounts and then used outreach.io to "prospect" these accounts. By doing so, they were able to create personalized content based on customer characteristics at a minimal cost and with minimal effort from the CSMs. Consequently, the longtail of Customer Success renewal rate increased from 69% to 77%.

Read more...
Luke Ferrel

Luke Ferrel

Sr Director of Customer Success at Outreach

Creative play of the year →

Creating a data-driven personalized and scalable longtail engagement model.

Outreach realized their approach to longtail customers wasn't well structured, resulting in low retention rates for that segment. By working closely with his customer success team, Luke created a CS scale function that's proactive rather than ad-hoc, incorporating purely digital engagements. As time went on, the team got more innovative and started using data-driven cohorts. They tested leading indicators to determine which led to churn in accounts and then used outreach.io to "prospect" these accounts. By doing so, they were able to create personalized content based on customer characteristics at a minimal cost and with minimal effort from the CSMs. Consequently, the longtail of Customer Success renewal rate increased from 69% to 77%.

Raman Bindra

Raman Bindra

Head Customer Success at Haptik

Creative play of the year →

A new team was formed at Haptik to cater to a specific set of customers with a lot of new team members brought on board. The major problem was the lack of sync, unfamiliarity, and lack of collaboration among many teams. Raman realized that the team members didn't know one another on a personal level and decided to bring them together by asking personal questions. As he reviewed the answers, he realized which teams have what motivations. Which team is more aggressive, which team is more responsive, and what does each team need? Based on their process suggestions and motivation, he created playbooks. As soon as the team was aligned, customer retention rates went up.

Read more...
Raman Bindra

Raman Bindra

Head Customer Success at Haptik

Creative play of the year →

Creating a true sense of community within a newly acquired company that experienced dramatic changes internally.

A new team was formed at Haptik to cater to a specific set of customers with a lot of new team members brought on board. The major problem was the lack of sync, unfamiliarity, and lack of collaboration among many teams. Raman realized that the team members didn't know one another on a personal level and decided to bring them together by asking personal questions. As he reviewed the answers, he realized which teams have what motivations. Which team is more aggressive, which team is more responsive, and what does each team need? Based on their process suggestions and motivation, he created playbooks. As soon as the team was aligned, customer retention rates went up.

Daphne Lopes

Daphne Lopes

Head of Customer Success at HubSpot

Creative play of the year →

Customer success managers are responsible for nurturing customers and expanding their accounts. How does a customer who is "ready to grow" look like? Is it possible to identify these growth opportunities and use technology to nurture customers? Daphne took on the challenge of generating a programmatic upgrade play to identify the right customers with growth potential at the right time. A key component of her play was the use of data about product usage, adoption, industry, and customer profiles. As a result of her efforts, the team has seen an increase of $400K in MRR.

Read more...
Daphne Lopes

Daphne Lopes

Head of Customer Success at HubSpot

Creative play of the year →

Building a programmatic upgrade rate play that uses product data to identify customers with growth potential.

Customer success managers are responsible for nurturing customers and expanding their accounts. How does a customer who is "ready to grow" look like? Is it possible to identify these growth opportunities and use technology to nurture customers? Daphne took on the challenge of generating a programmatic upgrade play to identify the right customers with growth potential at the right time. A key component of her play was the use of data about product usage, adoption, industry, and customer profiles. As a result of her efforts, the team has seen an increase of $400K in MRR.

Michael Porcelain

Michael Porcelain

Customer Success Manager at PayEm

Creative play of the year →

Michael is always looking for creative ways to make processes more efficient, use data to the team's advantage, and create customer advocacy programs. His efforts have improved visibility into what's happening across the CS organization, improved customer engagement, and transformed the way PayEm's success team uses data.

Read more...
Michael Porcelain

Michael Porcelain

Customer Success Manager at PayEm

Creative play of the year →

Always on the lookout for creative ways to improve internal processes

Michael is always looking for creative ways to make processes more efficient, use data to the team's advantage, and create customer advocacy programs. His efforts have improved visibility into what's happening across the CS organization, improved customer engagement, and transformed the way PayEm's success team uses data.

Ziv Peled

Ziv Peled

CCO at AppsFlyer

Creative play of the year →

AppsFlyer's customer success team uses a variety of customer success tools. Although we used many different tools this year, we realized that combining these tools together was key to getting the results we desired, especially around reporting and customer journeys. Ziv collaborated closely with the customer success operations team to ensure that SalesForce, Looker, and EverAfter are used as effectively as possible. This resulted in increased alignment internally and externally as well as more activities and documentation in SalesForce.

Read more...
Ziv Peled

Ziv Peled

CCO at AppsFlyer

Creative play of the year →

Creating a winning customer journey infrastructure and reporting using the right CS tech stack.

AppsFlyer's customer success team uses a variety of customer success tools. Although we used many different tools this year, we realized that combining these tools together was key to getting the results we desired, especially around reporting and customer journeys. Ziv collaborated closely with the customer success operations team to ensure that SalesForce, Looker, and EverAfter are used as effectively as possible. This resulted in increased alignment internally and externally as well as more activities and documentation in SalesForce.

Minh Le

Minh Le

Head of Customer Onboarding at Base Enterprise

Creative play of the year →

As the business grew, Base Enterprise needed a way to differentiate between onboarding for SMEs and enterprises. Minh was asked to redesign the onboarding process and seized the opportunity. There were 5 pillars to his unique program: Clear definition of the objectives, onboarding task list, detailed materials, success factors, and SLAs. As a result of her efforts, all CSM resources are categorized into different segments in one place and accessible from everywhere. Additionally, CSMs are more proactive than ever before because they know what is the next step and if there are any obstacles they must warn their clients or avoid.

Read more...
Minh Le

Minh Le

Head of Customer Onboarding at Base Enterprise

Creative play of the year →

Reshaping the customer onboarding program to differentiate between different customer tiers and scale CSMs capacity and engagement

As the business grew, Base Enterprise needed a way to differentiate between onboarding for SMEs and enterprises. Minh was asked to redesign the onboarding process and seized the opportunity. There were 5 pillars to his unique program: Clear definition of the objectives, onboarding task list, detailed materials, success factors, and SLAs. As a result of her efforts, all CSM resources are categorized into different segments in one place and accessible from everywhere. Additionally, CSMs are more proactive than ever before because they know what is the next step and if there are any obstacles they must warn their clients or avoid.

Yair Bortinger

Yair Bortinger

Head of Customer Success Operations at ControlUp

Creative play of the year →

While operating with a small team of three CS professionals, Yair needed to find a good way to engage and drive value to more than 1000 customers. By combining two technologies, the team was able to create a fully customized, clear and specific customer experience: Cast.app, which proactively explains WHY a specific CTA should be taken, and a direct link to the EverAfter Customer Hub, which explains HOW to take that specific CTA. With a focus on creating a tech-touch onboarding experience, the team was able to create a faster, more effective onboarding experience with a minimum of human interaction as well as achieve higher onboarding success rates with shorter time to value.

Read more...
Yair Bortinger

Yair Bortinger

Head of Customer Success Operations at ControlUp

Creative play of the year →

Implementing two technologies that made the customer experience personalized and complete

While operating with a small team of three CS professionals, Yair needed to find a good way to engage and drive value to more than 1000 customers. By combining two technologies, the team was able to create a fully customized, clear and specific customer experience: Cast.app, which proactively explains WHY a specific CTA should be taken, and a direct link to the EverAfter Customer Hub, which explains HOW to take that specific CTA. With a focus on creating a tech-touch onboarding experience, the team was able to create a faster, more effective onboarding experience with a minimum of human interaction as well as achieve higher onboarding success rates with shorter time to value.

Subha Shrinivasan

Subha Shrinivasan

VP of Customer Success at Rakuten Symphony

Creative play of the year →

As the VP of Customer Success at Rakuten, Subha was faced with the challenge to utilize one CS team that would handle end-to-end responsibility for delivery, CS, retention, and expansions within a complex ecosystem of chip, silicon, radio, hardware, and software. Subha created a customer success function from the ground up, building a pool of SMEs, who presented a unified pre-sales and post-sales function, multiple CSMs for each account, a global delivery function serving to other business units and a central delivery model. This model has helped in increasing the subscriber base, revenue, and customer satisfaction for the company.

Read more...
Subha Shrinivasan

Subha Shrinivasan

VP of Customer Success at Rakuten Symphony

Creative play of the year →

Introducing a framework for subscription led business championed by a single customer success team.

As the VP of Customer Success at Rakuten, Subha was faced with the challenge to utilize one CS team that would handle end-to-end responsibility for delivery, CS, retention, and expansions within a complex ecosystem of chip, silicon, radio, hardware, and software. Subha created a customer success function from the ground up, building a pool of SMEs, who presented a unified pre-sales and post-sales function, multiple CSMs for each account, a global delivery function serving to other business units and a central delivery model. This model has helped in increasing the subscriber base, revenue, and customer satisfaction for the company.

Anika Zubair

Anika Zubair

Vice President of Customer Success at Karbon

Creative play of the year →

Karbon's EBRs have always been crucial as there was a direct correlation between customer engagement and product stickiness. Although customers appreciate EBRs, it can be difficult for them (especially executive sponsors) to attend. Anika and her team developed content to engage customers who don't have EBRs in several ways: Videos less than 90 seconds, emails with 2 sentences and a report on the most important metrics, and auto-generated usage reports. Following the launch of the new process, the team began to see meaningful engagement with executive sponsors who were given the right information at the right time. Additionally, they observed a 33% increase in executives joining future calls after receiving short form video content and reports.

Read more...
Anika Zubair

Anika Zubair

Vice President of Customer Success at Karbon

Creative play of the year →

⭐️ Creating personalized yet automated bite-sized content to engage with executive sponsors who can’t attend EBRs

Karbon's EBRs have always been crucial as there was a direct correlation between customer engagement and product stickiness. Although customers appreciate EBRs, it can be difficult for them (especially executive sponsors) to attend. Anika and her team developed content to engage customers who don't have EBRs in several ways: Videos less than 90 seconds, emails with 2 sentences and a report on the most important metrics, and auto-generated usage reports. Following the launch of the new process, the team began to see meaningful engagement with executive sponsors who were given the right information at the right time. Additionally, they observed a 33% increase in executives joining future calls after receiving short form video content and reports.

Seth Dovev

Seth Dovev

Senior Director of Customer Success at Chili Piper

Creative play of the year →

It became apparent to Chili Piper's success team that they weren't measuring the direct impact CSMs had on expansion revenue. Seth worked closely with the team to roll out a Customer Success Qualified Opportunities (CSQO’s) program to track and measure expansion efforts that came specifically from CSMs. As part of the process, after a CSM qualified an upsell or cross-sell opportunity, they could instantly book a meeting between that customer and their dedicated Account Manager. They knew CSMs contributed to expansion, but now they could track it with an automated workflow. By incentivizing CSMs to source growth ops as part of this program, the team saw a 26X ROI increase.

Read more...
Seth Dovev

Seth Dovev

Senior Director of Customer Success at Chili Piper

Creative play of the year →

Establishing the Customer Success Qualified Opportunities (CSQO) program to track and measure CSM-led expansion efforts

It became apparent to Chili Piper's success team that they weren't measuring the direct impact CSMs had on expansion revenue. Seth worked closely with the team to roll out a Customer Success Qualified Opportunities (CSQO’s) program to track and measure expansion efforts that came specifically from CSMs. As part of the process, after a CSM qualified an upsell or cross-sell opportunity, they could instantly book a meeting between that customer and their dedicated Account Manager. They knew CSMs contributed to expansion, but now they could track it with an automated workflow. By incentivizing CSMs to source growth ops as part of this program, the team saw a 26X ROI increase.

Delia Visan

Delia Visan

Head of customer success at Bright Spaces

Creative play of the year →

Delia aimed to improve communication between the sales and CS teams at Oracle, particularly in regards to the handoff process which was a challenging one from a CS Department’s role misconception perspective. In order to solve the problem creatively, she had to address the elephant in the room with empathy, compassion, and understanding, and explain to them why their fears are understandable. The previous handoff process was replaced with a 1:1 call with each Sales Rep to discuss how their collaboration would work when they introduced her to customers. The best practice was shared with her team, leading to smoother interactions between members of the two departments.

Read more...
Delia Visan

Delia Visan

Head of customer success at Bright Spaces

Creative play of the year →

Bridging the gap between sales and CS and making the handoff experience one to remember

Delia aimed to improve communication between the sales and CS teams at Oracle, particularly in regards to the handoff process which was a challenging one from a CS Department’s role misconception perspective. In order to solve the problem creatively, she had to address the elephant in the room with empathy, compassion, and understanding, and explain to them why their fears are understandable. The previous handoff process was replaced with a 1:1 call with each Sales Rep to discuss how their collaboration would work when they introduced her to customers. The best practice was shared with her team, leading to smoother interactions between members of the two departments.

Boaz Maor

Boaz Maor

Chief Customer Officer at Talech

Creative play of the year →

Many customer success executives are faced with the challenge of deciding whether to let their customer success team manage renewals and upsells. Boaz developed a comprehensive framework to help customers succeed through the strategic question: Who should own renewals and upsells? Customer success or sales? With the framework, political factors were removed and executives could justify their recommendations logically. Thousands of customer success professionals viewed and downloaded this framework. After the framework was publicly shared, the popular question is no longer a topic of discussion in top CS social groups.

Read more...
Boaz Maor

Boaz Maor

Chief Customer Officer at Talech

Creative play of the year →

Developing a comprehensive framework to help CS leaders determine which team should own renewals and upsells.

Many customer success executives are faced with the challenge of deciding whether to let their customer success team manage renewals and upsells. Boaz developed a comprehensive framework to help customers succeed through the strategic question: Who should own renewals and upsells? Customer success or sales? With the framework, political factors were removed and executives could justify their recommendations logically. Thousands of customer success professionals viewed and downloaded this framework. After the framework was publicly shared, the popular question is no longer a topic of discussion in top CS social groups.

Dan Ennis

Dan Ennis

Scale Team Manager at Monday.com

Creative play of the year →

The customer success team at Monday.com was looking for a way to better report on ARR that was at-risk and measure risk beyond just the renewal, while identifying the best contacts to reach out to using data. Dan worked with his team to create a three-fold solution that allowed them to tackle these challenges. Thanks to the process executed, CS teams improved the accuracy of revenue forecasting by having a much more proactive role in risk identification and mitigation, thus reducing the ARR that churned over time. In addition, CSMs were able to receive credit for mitigated risks and further show the business impact of the Customer Success organization.

Read more...
Dan Ennis

Dan Ennis

Scale Team Manager at Monday.com

Creative play of the year →

A creative approach to report on at-risk ARR that combines Risk Mitigation, Champion Identification, and smart scaling.

The customer success team at Monday.com was looking for a way to better report on ARR that was at-risk and measure risk beyond just the renewal, while identifying the best contacts to reach out to using data. Dan worked with his team to create a three-fold solution that allowed them to tackle these challenges. Thanks to the process executed, CS teams improved the accuracy of revenue forecasting by having a much more proactive role in risk identification and mitigation, thus reducing the ARR that churned over time. In addition, CSMs were able to receive credit for mitigated risks and further show the business impact of the Customer Success organization.

Irina Smirnova

Irina Smirnova

Customer Success Manager at AppsFlyer

Creative play of the year →

Irina began implementing one-to-many solutions early in the year, even before a structured plan was put in place. The first person on the team to implement EverAfter was Irina, who recognized the need for an effective way to engage customers in a personalized manner. Through her efforts, customer engagement improved, more touchpoints were added, and customers can now communicate with the CS team and learn about the product from a single source.

Read more...
Irina Smirnova

Irina Smirnova

Customer Success Manager at AppsFlyer

Creative play of the year →

First to implement smart one-to-many solutions for the low-touch customer base on the CS team at AppsFlyer.

Irina began implementing one-to-many solutions early in the year, even before a structured plan was put in place. The first person on the team to implement EverAfter was Irina, who recognized the need for an effective way to engage customers in a personalized manner. Through her efforts, customer engagement improved, more touchpoints were added, and customers can now communicate with the CS team and learn about the product from a single source.

Stuart Balcombe

Stuart Balcombe

Product Marketer at Arrows

Creative play of the year →

During this past year, Stuart has been sharing his famous "Steal this workflow" content which allows CS professionals to learn about smart success plays and automations he has built using Hubspot. Steal this workflow posts include diagrams and detailed processes on how to use Hubspot as a CS tool. Stuart is recording videos and often explaining how to deliver a connected customer experience, how to improve customer onboarding and how to make the most of your time. These posts were able to attract lots of traction and are continuously empowering CSMs to improve the way they manage their operations . People who use Hubspot can implement his workflows and optimize their results with detailed plays and action items.

Read more...
Stuart Balcombe

Stuart Balcombe

Product Marketer at Arrows

Creative play of the year →

Introducing "steal this workflow" - a series of social posts on HubSpot automation best practices for the CS community.

During this past year, Stuart has been sharing his famous "Steal this workflow" content which allows CS professionals to learn about smart success plays and automations he has built using Hubspot. Steal this workflow posts include diagrams and detailed processes on how to use Hubspot as a CS tool. Stuart is recording videos and often explaining how to deliver a connected customer experience, how to improve customer onboarding and how to make the most of your time. These posts were able to attract lots of traction and are continuously empowering CSMs to improve the way they manage their operations . People who use Hubspot can implement his workflows and optimize their results with detailed plays and action items.

Marie Lunney

Marie Lunney

Director of Digital Customer Success at Chili Piper

Creative play of the year →

The success team at Chili Piper needed to figure out how to give their SMB customers the same quality of service that was given to their Mid-Market and Enterprise customers — without taxing expensive resources. Marie worked closely with the team to utilize a combination of tech and data including Chili Piper to trigger risk and assign a pooled CS resource to take action. Thanks to the new program, the team is proactively reactivating $594,000+ ARR and this number is continuing to grow.

Read more...
Marie Lunney

Marie Lunney

Director of Digital Customer Success at Chili Piper

Creative play of the year →

Utilizing tech and data to build a unique program that triggers an action when SMB accounts are at risk.

The success team at Chili Piper needed to figure out how to give their SMB customers the same quality of service that was given to their Mid-Market and Enterprise customers — without taxing expensive resources. Marie worked closely with the team to utilize a combination of tech and data including Chili Piper to trigger risk and assign a pooled CS resource to take action. Thanks to the new program, the team is proactively reactivating $594,000+ ARR and this number is continuing to grow.

Einav Rothschild

Einav Rothschild

Director of Customer Success and Solution Architects, EMEA & LATAM at AppsFlyer

Creative play of the year →

Einav leads one of the customer success teams at AppsFlyer's HQ in Israel. Due to the diverse nature of the Israeli team, as well as the work across many different regions, it can often be challenging to work collaboratively. Einav strives to bring teams together and create a sense of togetherness. With the realization that more tech knowledge can help the team thrive, she started a collaborative modesty across the team that had a significant impact on the team's satisfaction and success. Amongst her efforts was the enforcement of solution architects and other stakeholders to help with different integrations and more complex implementations.

Read more...
Einav Rothschild

Einav Rothschild

Director of Customer Success and Solution Architects, EMEA & LATAM at AppsFlyer

Creative play of the year →

Increasing overall team unity and success by increasing access to tech knowledge.

Einav leads one of the customer success teams at AppsFlyer's HQ in Israel. Due to the diverse nature of the Israeli team, as well as the work across many different regions, it can often be challenging to work collaboratively. Einav strives to bring teams together and create a sense of togetherness. With the realization that more tech knowledge can help the team thrive, she started a collaborative modesty across the team that had a significant impact on the team's satisfaction and success. Amongst her efforts was the enforcement of solution architects and other stakeholders to help with different integrations and more complex implementations.

Hannah Gordon

Hannah Gordon

Product Operations Manager at Livly

Creative play of the year →

As the Product Operations Manager working directly with the CS team, being a creative leader is a key function of Hannah’s role at Livly. While Livly's onboarding program was achieving its onboarding goals, the Livly team realized they needed to speed up time-to-value to increase overall customer satisfaction and buy-in. Hannah overhauled the onboarding process with the help of the amazing Livly CS team. Her program upgrade included the introduction of EverAfter as a customer-facing solution so clients could see where they stand at any point of onboarding and access all necessary documents. Additionally, she helped improve the onboarding process by utilizing data more creatively.

Read more...
Hannah Gordon

Hannah Gordon

Product Operations Manager at Livly

Creative play of the year →

Uplifting the customer onboarding program through technology, content creation and data utilization.

As the Product Operations Manager working directly with the CS team, being a creative leader is a key function of Hannah’s role at Livly. While Livly's onboarding program was achieving its onboarding goals, the Livly team realized they needed to speed up time-to-value to increase overall customer satisfaction and buy-in. Hannah overhauled the onboarding process with the help of the amazing Livly CS team. Her program upgrade included the introduction of EverAfter as a customer-facing solution so clients could see where they stand at any point of onboarding and access all necessary documents. Additionally, she helped improve the onboarding process by utilizing data more creatively.

Jyo Shukla

Jyo Shukla

Advisory Board member at CosTheta

Creative play of the year →

As a startup with limited resources and a growing customer base, the team at CosTheta was struggling to give their customers a proper post-sale journey for onboarding and adoption, which led to increased churn and missed expansion opportunities. Jyo worked closely with customers and the internal team to develop a more efficient CS strategy that allowed the team to showcase value to customers at scale, and has offered us a way to delight our customers more efficiently. This in turn, has helped the internal team become more focused and has also allowed to plan in advance the customer journey for a product they haven't launched yet.

Read more...
Jyo Shukla

Jyo Shukla

Advisory Board member at CosTheta

Creative play of the year →

Building a plan to digitize and scale customer success at a growing startup with limited resources

As a startup with limited resources and a growing customer base, the team at CosTheta was struggling to give their customers a proper post-sale journey for onboarding and adoption, which led to increased churn and missed expansion opportunities. Jyo worked closely with customers and the internal team to develop a more efficient CS strategy that allowed the team to showcase value to customers at scale, and has offered us a way to delight our customers more efficiently. This in turn, has helped the internal team become more focused and has also allowed to plan in advance the customer journey for a product they haven't launched yet.

Kristi Faltorusso

Kristi Faltorusso

CCO at ClientSuccess

Creative play of the year →

The ClientSuccess team has historically offered a one-size-fits-most engagement and onboarding model. Kristi designed a Success Probability Score that analyzed customers based on a specific and unique 11 point criteria scale that would allow to better understand where they were starting to have the greatest impact on their success. Thanks to the tool, The team was now able to set proper expectations with customers and ensure their needs were met. The team has immediately seen an improved experience for customers and employees, higher success rates, stronger adoption, and increased engagement over time.

Read more...
Kristi Faltorusso

Kristi Faltorusso

CCO at ClientSuccess

Creative play of the year →

Developed a Success Probability Score to ensure each customer can get the best experience according to their needs.

The ClientSuccess team has historically offered a one-size-fits-most engagement and onboarding model. Kristi designed a Success Probability Score that analyzed customers based on a specific and unique 11 point criteria scale that would allow to better understand where they were starting to have the greatest impact on their success. Thanks to the tool, The team was now able to set proper expectations with customers and ensure their needs were met. The team has immediately seen an improved experience for customers and employees, higher success rates, stronger adoption, and increased engagement over time.

Priya Ganoo

Priya Ganoo

Customer Success Manager at Timely (the only CSM on Timely's UK team)

Creative play of the year →

After their customers were onboarded, Timely Software had a hard time keeping them engaged. As her customers are creative and visually oriented, Priya, the only CSM on her team, was looking for a visual way to engage with them, which led to her setting up a customer-centric Instagram account. Priya uses the account to participate in the big life moments of her clients on Instagram. She then sends gifts and voice messages for life's big milestones, like anniversaries, new apartments, and new babies. As a result, Priya was able to increase Timely Software's engagement rate, feature adoption rate, and genuine customer feedback, which ultimately heated QBR's target for two consecutive quarters.

Read more...
Priya Ganoo

Priya Ganoo

Customer Success Manager at Timely (the only CSM on Timely's UK team)

Creative play of the year →

Engage customers on a personal level by setting up a customer-centric Instagram account.

After their customers were onboarded, Timely Software had a hard time keeping them engaged. As her customers are creative and visually oriented, Priya, the only CSM on her team, was looking for a visual way to engage with them, which led to her setting up a customer-centric Instagram account. Priya uses the account to participate in the big life moments of her clients on Instagram. She then sends gifts and voice messages for life's big milestones, like anniversaries, new apartments, and new babies. As a result, Priya was able to increase Timely Software's engagement rate, feature adoption rate, and genuine customer feedback, which ultimately heated QBR's target for two consecutive quarters.

Gil Gorni

Gil Gorni

Customer Success Team Lead at IRONSCALES

Creative play of the year →

Gil took on the challenge of changing the team's mindset about QBRs. Rather than showcasing what the product team delivered, the team focused on asking the right questions, exploring and revealing customers' pain points, and setting up measurable goals. Upselling opportunities Additional customer adoption opportunities were revealed, resulting in a drastic increase in the company's NRR customer's realizing more value. The CS team was also able to identify customer pain points more in advance and address their pain points on time, resulting in more satisfied customers that renewed and expanded the engagement. Further, as customers begin to realize the value of the QBRs, more decision-makers join the sessions, resulting in new partnerships.

Read more...
Gil Gorni

Gil Gorni

Customer Success Team Lead at IRONSCALES

Creative play of the year →

A mindset shift on QBRs, why to do them and how to make the most of them

Gil took on the challenge of changing the team's mindset about QBRs. Rather than showcasing what the product team delivered, the team focused on asking the right questions, exploring and revealing customers' pain points, and setting up measurable goals. Upselling opportunities Additional customer adoption opportunities were revealed, resulting in a drastic increase in the company's NRR customer's realizing more value. The CS team was also able to identify customer pain points more in advance and address their pain points on time, resulting in more satisfied customers that renewed and expanded the engagement. Further, as customers begin to realize the value of the QBRs, more decision-makers join the sessions, resulting in new partnerships.

Danielle Zimmerman

Danielle Zimmerman

VP of Customer Success at Wistia

Creative play of the year →

Danielle was seeking a mechanism that would ensure her team will be focused on the right target customers, understanding their true needs and challenges from a deep perspective. In order to build this process, there were many moving parts and new practices that had to be established. To name a few: She implemented a regular cadence of cross-functional "Voice of the Customer" insight meetings to highlight key themes from Sales, Success, Support and Marketing. She also was focused on creating alignment between customer-facing "Product Experts" and their Product Teams. She utilized tools like Gong to share customer calls and specific snippets with Product, as well as had CS make warm introductions to Product for customer interviews. As a result of her efforts, customer satisfaction and product adoption increased.

Read more...
Danielle Zimmerman

Danielle Zimmerman

VP of Customer Success at Wistia

Creative play of the year →

Establishing a customer-centric company culture with a customer feedback process and cross-team insights loop.

Danielle was seeking a mechanism that would ensure her team will be focused on the right target customers, understanding their true needs and challenges from a deep perspective. In order to build this process, there were many moving parts and new practices that had to be established. To name a few: She implemented a regular cadence of cross-functional "Voice of the Customer" insight meetings to highlight key themes from Sales, Success, Support and Marketing. She also was focused on creating alignment between customer-facing "Product Experts" and their Product Teams. She utilized tools like Gong to share customer calls and specific snippets with Product, as well as had CS make warm introductions to Product for customer interviews. As a result of her efforts, customer satisfaction and product adoption increased.

Tripti Dubey

Tripti Dubey

Director of Customer Success at Joveo

Creative play of the year →

The team at Joveo was having a problem with measuring the customer feedback consistently. Tripti worked closely with the team on the process of customer feedback by creating the customer happiness score process which now allows the company to not only collect the feedback but is also the top KPI for all customer-facing teams and contributes to customer retention. Thanks to these efforts the customer happiness increased from a score of 5 to 8+ across 90% of accounts. As a result of the customer feedback, the product team took immediate action, which helped increase customer satisfaction.

Read more...
Tripti Dubey

Tripti Dubey

Director of Customer Success at Joveo

Creative play of the year →

Introduced the customer happiness score to help with measuring customer feedback accurately

The team at Joveo was having a problem with measuring the customer feedback consistently. Tripti worked closely with the team on the process of customer feedback by creating the customer happiness score process which now allows the company to not only collect the feedback but is also the top KPI for all customer-facing teams and contributes to customer retention. Thanks to these efforts the customer happiness increased from a score of 5 to 8+ across 90% of accounts. As a result of the customer feedback, the product team took immediate action, which helped increase customer satisfaction.

Mercer Smith

Mercer Smith

VP, CX Insights and Community at Partnerhero

Creative play of the year →

Mercer noticed that CS/CX leaders were operating in silos. Her goal was to build initiatives that would better connect leaders and unlock their wisdom. This year, she organized multiple community events and practices (such as the CX Innovators Fund) to elevate customer success professionals. The result was a high level of engagement and successful connections between CS professionals and potential employers.

Read more...
Mercer Smith

Mercer Smith

VP, CX Insights and Community at Partnerhero

Creative play of the year →

Establishing the CX Innovators Fund as well as additional community events and practices to unlock CS wisdom industry-wide.

Mercer noticed that CS/CX leaders were operating in silos. Her goal was to build initiatives that would better connect leaders and unlock their wisdom. This year, she organized multiple community events and practices (such as the CX Innovators Fund) to elevate customer success professionals. The result was a high level of engagement and successful connections between CS professionals and potential employers.

Guy Rahamim

Guy Rahamim

Customer Success Manager at LinearB

Creative play of the year →

The LinearB team was pursuing new ways to demonstrate the real ROI for customers. Guy collaborated with the engineering and product teams to use their own technology stack to tie product adoption and ROI together. Thanks to the successful collaboration with R&D and the product, the team was able to show customers their true ROI during quarterly business review sessions. This effort led to a 10% increase in retention rates.

Read more...
Guy Rahamim

Guy Rahamim

Customer Success Manager at LinearB

Creative play of the year →

Leveraging technology to demonstrate deep ROI to customers through cross-team collaboration

The LinearB team was pursuing new ways to demonstrate the real ROI for customers. Guy collaborated with the engineering and product teams to use their own technology stack to tie product adoption and ROI together. Thanks to the successful collaboration with R&D and the product, the team was able to show customers their true ROI during quarterly business review sessions. This effort led to a 10% increase in retention rates.

Dana Alvarenga

Dana Alvarenga

VP of customer success at SlapFive

Creative play of the year →

The SlapFive team had customers using various modules of their solution at different stages, and few were using all of them. Dana realized she needed to help customers to explore additional potential use cases that could solve more of their challenges. Together with her team, she developed a peer-to-peer customer program called BackStage Pass with a SlapFive RockStar. Through this program, one customer allows their peers to peek behind the curtain and see how they are implementing a specific use case. This is an educational and enabling process for someone who knows what they are going through. In this two-way exchange of value model, everyone wins.

Read more...
Dana Alvarenga

Dana Alvarenga

VP of customer success at SlapFive

Creative play of the year →

Creating a peer-to-peer engagement program that facilitates the exchange of value and results in customer expansions across new use-cases.

The SlapFive team had customers using various modules of their solution at different stages, and few were using all of them. Dana realized she needed to help customers to explore additional potential use cases that could solve more of their challenges. Together with her team, she developed a peer-to-peer customer program called BackStage Pass with a SlapFive RockStar. Through this program, one customer allows their peers to peek behind the curtain and see how they are implementing a specific use case. This is an educational and enabling process for someone who knows what they are going through. In this two-way exchange of value model, everyone wins.

Kristin Haluch

Kristin Haluch

Head of Customer Success & Operations at Bold

Creative play of the year →

The CS team at Bold was working out of 5 different systems to manage customer interactions, which led to inefficiencies and challenges for scaling.Through Kristin's leadership, a CRM and Marketing Platform was implemented that connected directly through APIs to the product data and customer service tech stack to manage customer interactions and report on employee performance. As a result of her efforts, the team was able to handle 5x the subscriber volume without having to increase team size. Furthermore, their product team can now tie customer service and marketing interactions directly to product metrics, leading to increased engagement with the product.

Read more...
Kristin Haluch

Kristin Haluch

Head of Customer Success & Operations at Bold

Creative play of the year →

Constructing a smarter system to manage all customer interactions to unlock more personalized engagement with customers

The CS team at Bold was working out of 5 different systems to manage customer interactions, which led to inefficiencies and challenges for scaling.Through Kristin's leadership, a CRM and Marketing Platform was implemented that connected directly through APIs to the product data and customer service tech stack to manage customer interactions and report on employee performance. As a result of her efforts, the team was able to handle 5x the subscriber volume without having to increase team size. Furthermore, their product team can now tie customer service and marketing interactions directly to product metrics, leading to increased engagement with the product.

Chad Horenfeldt

Chad Horenfeldt

Customer Success & Customer Experience Leader at Meta

Creative play of the year →

Kustomer's team (by Meta) wanted to shift from a product-centric mindset to a customer-centric mindset, focusing on the customer's needs and wants and how they can help scale them. In collaboration with his team, Chad implemented two types of meetings: Business Outcome Reviews and Health Checks. Business Outcome Reviews focused on understanding the businesses of their customers. The Health Checks enabled them to understand the client's processes and how they related to their product. Client relationships were strengthened through both engagements, which resulted in higher retention rates.

Read more...
Chad Horenfeldt

Chad Horenfeldt

Customer Success & Customer Experience Leader at Meta

Creative play of the year →

Adopting a customer-centric mindset that led to a 100% increase in retention rates.

Kustomer's team (by Meta) wanted to shift from a product-centric mindset to a customer-centric mindset, focusing on the customer's needs and wants and how they can help scale them. In collaboration with his team, Chad implemented two types of meetings: Business Outcome Reviews and Health Checks. Business Outcome Reviews focused on understanding the businesses of their customers. The Health Checks enabled them to understand the client's processes and how they related to their product. Client relationships were strengthened through both engagements, which resulted in higher retention rates.

Hannah Dean

Hannah Dean

Customer Success Manager at Livestorm

Creative play of the year →

Livestorm's Customer Success team was focusing on decreasing churn risk with customer engagement and increased product adoption. Hannah developed a strategic framework based on enhanced engagement content and resources inside the product that increased adoption and decreased churn significantly within global Enterprise portfolios. The new framework used documents, automated message templates, and dedicated resources to get in touch with previously unresponsive (service tier) clients. As a result of the automated content framework, client engagement went up and churn went down.

Read more...
Hannah Dean

Hannah Dean

Customer Success Manager at Livestorm

Creative play of the year →

Creating a standardized content engine to drive enterprise customer engagement and reduce churn

Livestorm's Customer Success team was focusing on decreasing churn risk with customer engagement and increased product adoption. Hannah developed a strategic framework based on enhanced engagement content and resources inside the product that increased adoption and decreased churn significantly within global Enterprise portfolios. The new framework used documents, automated message templates, and dedicated resources to get in touch with previously unresponsive (service tier) clients. As a result of the automated content framework, client engagement went up and churn went down.