The Jasons take on...

In this episode of Jason's Take On podcast, hosts Jason Whitehead and Jason Noble explore the evolving concept of customer centricity in 2025. We discuss how advancing technologies, shifting customer expectations, and economic pressures are reshaping business strategies. The conversation highlights the importance of delivering value at all stages of the customer journey and moving beyond lip service to practical actions.

In this episode, Jason Noble and Jason Whitehead discuss the often overlooked topic of managing customer exits in SaaS businesses. They delve into the significance of handling departures effectively and its impact on company reputation and future engagements. The podcast highlights how companies can develop structured approaches to customer exits, ensuring positive experiences and learning opportunities for all parties involved. With emphasis on long-term growth and customer retention, we provide insights into creating win-win scenarios for businesses and departing customers.

Join hosts Jason Noble and Jason Whitehead as they discuss the evolving landscape of customer success with industry leader Jay Nathan. This episode explores whether customer success is an outdated term and how businesses can adapt to changing market dynamics. With insights into AI's role and strategic alignment, listeners gain a comprehensive view of the future challenges and opportunities in customer success. Jay Nathan shares his expertise in B2B SaaS and offers ideas on how companies can remain profitable through customer-centered strategies.   About Jay Nathan: I’m an entrepreneur and tech executive passionate about growing businesses, building high-performing teams, and delivering value for customers. Over the past 20+ years I’ve built and led post-sales customer success, professional services, support, and account management teams across a range of companies—from bootstrapped startups to publicly traded enterprises, $1M to $600M in ARR. My expertise lies in driving customer retention, expansion, and channel-led growth. I publish a weekly newsletter for customer success and sales execs at https://www.chiefcustomerofficer.io/

Welcome back to another episode of The Jasons Take On, where we explore key topics shaping the world of Customer Success, growth, and leadership. Today, we’re tackling an incredibly timely topic: How coaching helps build resilience in the workplace. In today’s fast-paced, ever-evolving environment, resilience is a crucial factor in both personal and professional success. Whether you’re navigating customer churn, market volatility, or internal challenges, having the resilience to adapt and overcome is key. We’re thrilled to be joined today by Summie Yeung, a coach who specializes in helping multicultural professionals align their career paths with their identities, without feeling like outsiders or cultural clichés. Before becoming a coach, Summie had an impressive career in tech consulting and advisory services. She held high-end roles as a business analyst and product manager, and she was on my team at Creator, where she consistently demonstrated her knack for leadership and problem-solving. Now, through her 1:1 and group coaching programs, she’s empowering clients to embrace their unique backgrounds while excelling in their professional lives. You can learn more about her work at summieyeung.com.

 In this episode of The Jasons Take On, we are exploring a transformative concept that’s reshaping how companies drive sustainable growth: "Customer Led Growth." This approach emphasizes putting the customer at the heart of your growth strategy, focusing on maximizing customer lifetime value and turning satisfied customers into your most powerful advocates. Joining us today is a true pioneer in the Customer Success space, Edward Chiu, the co-CEO of Totango + Catalyst. Edward's journey in Customer Success began with building the customer success organization from scratch at DigitalOcean. He later co-founded Catalyst, where he spearheaded the creation of the customer growth platform category. Now, as the co-CEO of Totango + Catalyst, Edward is at the forefront of helping businesses protect and grow revenue by ensuring that customers experience recurring value throughout their entire post-sale lifecycle. We’re thrilled to have him on the show to share his insights on Customer Led Growth.

Join this episode of The Jasons Take On.. where we are joined by Casey Trujillo and Todd Kirk, co-hosts of the "SaaS Therapy" podcast. In this episode, we talk about building commercially confident teams. SaaS Therapy Podcast Check out the SaaS Therapy Podacast Here: https://www.brainstorminc.com/saastherapy About Our Guests: Casey Trujillo: Casey applies over 20 years of technology experience to help organizations and individual users change the way they work with technology. In his work with the Fortune 100, Casey is consistently on the road delivering workshops each year to help executive teams see that technology can help speed up their biggest initiatives. As a change management practitioner, Casey brings a unique approach to solve a problem hitting every organization: the cost of unused software.  When he has down time you can see him trying to achieve his goal to dunk a basketball, run a 5-minute mile and prove to his sons that his glory days are ahead of him and not behind him! Todd Kirk: Todd has over a decade of experience supporting enterprise customers in adopting new technologies. He started as a project manager, coordinating professional services. Later, he became an advisor and coach training senior leaders in large corporations. Todd’s team developed the first scaled technology adoption solution of its kind. His expertise includes Content Strategy, Customer Onboarding, Product Management, Video Production, Webinars, Live In-Person Training, and Strategic Partnerships. Todd, originally from Southeast Texas, now lives in Pleasant Grove, UT, where he continues to explore insights into organizational software success and failure. 

In this insightful episode, co-hosts Jason Noble and Jason Whitehead are joined by customer success veteran Dan Gianfreda to delve into the transformation from reactive to proactive customer success. Dan shares his wealth of experience working across sales, marketing, customer success, and operations to set better customer expectations, gain commitment to success, and build strong relationships with customer executives. Discover the critical importance of involving not just the software executive sponsor but also getting the CFO and CEO on board to see the value in the software investment. This approach is key to securing continued funding for renewals and expansions. Tune in for actionable strategies and expert advice to elevate your customer success game. ABOUT DAN GIANFREDA: Dan Gianfreda is the Chief Revenue Officer for DeepStream Technologies, a scale-up e-sourcing solution provider. With 11 years of experience in B2B SaaS, predominantly in procurement tech, Dan has held several key roles including Sales and Marketing Director, Senior Director of Customer Success, and Chief Customer Officer. He also owns a SaaS consultancy, Batteries Included, focused on customer success optimization and go-to-market strategies. Dan is dedicated to aligning sales, marketing, and operations to create a seamless customer journey and drive significant business outcomes. His passion for building lasting relationships with customer executives ensures organizations see the full value of their software investments. Contact Dan at: http://www.batteriesincluded.biz

In this episode of The Jasons Take On... we are joined by Dave Jackson, where Dave shares his thoughts and insights into the challenges with customer success today and some of the changes that need to happen and why. This is a really exciting episode discussing some of the big issues in the industry today. ABOUT DAVE JACKSON Dave Jackson is the CEO and founder of TheCustomer.Co helping companies improve their financial performance through customer focus. He was the founder and CEO of Clicktools before that. Dave’s an accomplished author and his book “Customer Led Growth” is all about helping CEOs and leaders build successful B2B SaaS companies. David is a recognised expert in customer focused organisations and was named as a Global Top 25 Customer Success Influencer in 2020. David works with B2B SaaS CEOs, executive teams and investors to deliver profitable growth through customer focus. CONNECT WITH DAVE LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidjacksonuk The Customer.Co: https://thecustomer.co FREE EBOOK ON PRODUCT-LED CUSTOMER SUCCESS Download Dave's insightful ebook on Product-Led Customer Success: https://thecustomer.co/2018/07/17/product-led-cs-ebook/

In this episode of The Jasons Take On... we are joined by Vicky Kennedy, where Vicky talks to us about the future of customer education and her own journey into creating her company Echtus, a startup on a mission to revolutionize the way companies use education to achieve meaningful business results and disrupt the tradition legacy customer education space. And some of the challenges with customer education today and it’s evolution over the last 20 years. ABOUT VICKY KENNEDY Vicky Kennedy joined NYC’s tech industry in 2012, pivoting from a ten-year career in higher education. She soon found her way into Meta, where she merged her love of education with the fierceness and agility of tech, followed by Amazon, where she led the strategy and execution of the first global advertiser certification. She recently founded Echtus, a startup on a mission to revolutionize the way companies use education to achieve meaningful business results.  CONNECT WITH VICKY LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vickykennedy/ Echtus: https://www.echtus.com

In this episode of The Jasons Take On... we are joined by Jennifer Chiange. She shares her experience and insights into how product development teams and customer success can better align. ABOUT JENNIFER CHIANG Jennifer Chiang is the Author of the Amazon Bestseller, The Startup's Guide to Customer Success and Product Manager at Seso. Previously, she has founded and led customer success teams at multiple startups. She is a leader who is passionate about helping companies - particularly startups - unlock the true potential of customer success through analytics, empowerment, and a truly customer-centric mindset. During her free time, she enjoys exploring the great outdoors, solving sudoku puzzles, and trying to develop a green thumb. CONTACT JENNIFER  https://www.guidetocustomersuccess.com/  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-chiang

Today we are joined by our guest Rohan Tailor and discussing the customer success talent market today. We cover what's happening in the industry, what's happening with roles, new positions. ABOUT ROHAN TAILOR Rohan's principal consultant to ABR talent where he focused on on customer success, sales, and marketing roles. CONTACT ROHAN LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rohan-tailor/ Work: http://www.abrtalent.co.uk

In this episode of The Jasons Take On... weexcited to welcome back the one and only Alex Farmer. In this episode, we talk all about customer success excellence. ABOUT ALEX FARMER Alex is a Customer Success executive with experience building post-sale teams to reduce churn and increase growth at high-growth B2B SaaS scale-ups. He’s the Founder and CEO of Customer Success Excellence – the world’s first awards event dedicated to the Customer Success profession, with the first event planned in London later this year. CONTACT ALEX: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderfarmer/ Customer success excellence: https://www.customersuccessexcellence.com/

Join us when we speak with Jay Nathan. Jay’s the CCO for Higher Logic and one of the co-founders of Gain Grow Retain. In this episode, Jay is going to talk to us his recent blog post and newsletter on long term value and growth. About Jay Nathan  Jay is a world renowned CS leader and has worked in exec roles across pretty much all the post sales customer facing parts of the business and has built up a methodology and approach for building, leading, and scaling SaaS companies serving a wide range of end-markets and customer sizes. He founded Customer Imperative, a company focused on helping B2B SaaS retain customers, grow revenue and scale customer success which he sold to Higher Logic and then in 2020 co-founded Gain Grow Retain, a community for customer success leaders. CONNECT WITH THE JASONS Jason Noble on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonnoble1/ Jason Whitehead on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonwhitehead/ ADDITIONAL RESOURCES Follow "The Jasons Take On..." company page on LinkedInFollow "The Jasons Take On..." on TwitterRead Jason Noble's BlogRead Jason Whitehead's Blog (on Success Chain) Visit our webpage at https://thejasonstakeon.com/ to learn more about The Jasons Take On... and to contact us. SPONSORED BY SUCCESS CHAIN! The Jasons Take On... is Sponsored by Success Chain! Success Chain provides the tools, services, and support you need to build your change management, user adoption, and customer success capacity. You achieve greater results faster, more effectively, and cheaper than you can working on your own. Learn more at: https://www.successchain.net

Many CS organizations need to move from delivering high-touch services to every customer, to a more scalable approach. Developing a high-impact customer education program that enables customers to achieve success on their own is one approach for reducing the need for high-touch CS. In this episode, we sit down with Vanessa Neurohr, Vice President of Customer Success at MuckRack to learn how she has transformed and scaled her CS team by building out their customer education program. About Vanessa Neurohr Vanessa Neurohr is the Vice President of Customer Success at Muck Rack, the software platform that enables thousands of organizations including Google, Golin and Duolingo to find the right journalists to pitch, report on media coverage and prove the value of their work. In this role she works to change the way professionals approach public relations and encourages better relationships with the media through a unique mix of technology and partnership. Vanessa partners with brands and agencies to ensure they are working smarter to surpass goals, reinvigorate strategies and streamline workflows. Vanessa joined Muck Rack as a Customer Success Strategist in 2016. Prior to this, she worked in customer experience at Capital One and digital marketing at TITLE Boxing Club. Vanessa is a frequent speaker on customer success and has given presentations at the Digital Customer Experience Strategies Summit, Summit on Customer Engagement, the Customer Contact East Event, ISG’s Customer and User Experience Summit, Digital Summit Series and Customer Success Summit Canada. She is also the co-founder of ThriveNetwork in New York City, which is a community of over 500 members in the customer success space. CONNECT WITH THE JASONS Jason Noble on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonnoble1/ Jason Whitehead on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonwhitehead/ ADDITIONAL RESOURCES Follow "The Jasons Take On..." company page on LinkedInFollow "The Jasons Take On..." on TwitterRead Jason Noble's BlogRead Jason Whitehead's Blog (on Success Chain) Visit our webpage at https://thejasonstakeon.com/ to learn more about The Jasons Take On... and to contact us. SPONSORED BY SUCCESS CHAIN! The Jasons Take On... is Sponsored by Success Chain! Success Chain provides the tools, services, and support you need to build your change management, user adoption, and customer success capacity. You achieve greater results faster, more effectively, and cheaper than you can working on your own. Learn more at: https://www.successchain.net

Join us when we speak with Pat Phelan. Pat is the Chief Customer Office for GoCardLess, where he's responsible for building and scaling a best in class customer success organisation with leadership of Customer Onboarding, Support, Experience, CS management and Account Management disciplines globally. In this episode, Pat is going to talk to us about his journey to becoming a Chief Customer Officer. About Pat Phelan Pat is a seasoned CCO in the fintech space and has held a multitude of leadership roles in different GTM and commercial functions with some very fast-growing tech companies. Pat was the CCO at Brandwatch before GoCardless where in addition to the usual CS functions he also led a global account management team. CONNECT WITH THE JASONS Jason Noble on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonnoble1/ Jason Whitehead on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonwhitehead/ ADDITIONAL RESOURCES Follow "The Jasons Take On..." company page on LinkedInFollow "The Jasons Take On..." on TwitterRead Jason Noble's BlogRead Jason Whitehead's Blog (on Success Chain) Visit our webpage at https://thejasonstakeon.com/ to learn more about The Jasons Take On... and to contact us. SPONSORED BY SUCCESS CHAIN! The Jasons Take On... is Sponsored by Success Chain! Success Chain provides the tools, services, and support you need to build your change management, user adoption, and customer success capacity. You achieve greater results faster, more effectively, and cheaper than you can working on your own. Learn more at: https://www.successchain.net

Join us when we speak with Jay Nathan. Jay’s the CCO for Higher Logic and one of the co-founders of Gain Grow Retain. In this episode, Jay is going to talk to us about strategic behaviour and how it relates to customer success. About Jay Nathan: Jay is a world renowned CS leader and has worked in exec roles across pretty much all the post sales customer facing parts of the business and has built up a methodology and approach for building, leading, and scaling SaaS companies serving a wide range of end-markets and customer sizes. He founded Customer Imperative, a company focused on helping B2B SaaS retain customers, grow revenue and scale customer success which he sold to HigherLogic and then in 2020 co-founded Gain Grow Retain, a community for customer success leaders. CONNECT WITH THE JASONS Jason Noble on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonnoble1/ Jason Whitehead on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonwhitehead/ ADDITIONAL RESOURCES Follow "The Jasons Take On..." company page on LinkedInFollow "The Jasons Take On..." on TwitterRead Jason Noble's BlogRead Jason Whitehead's Blog (on Success Chain) Visit our webpage at https://thejasonstakeon.com/ to learn more about The Jasons Take On... and to contact us. SPONSORED BY SUCCESS CHAIN! The Jasons Take On... is Sponsored by Success Chain! Success Chain provides the tools, services, and support you need to build your change management, user adoption, and customer success capacity. You achieve greater results faster, more effectively, and cheaper than you can working on your own. Learn more at: https://www.successchain.net

Join us when we speak with Maranda Dziekonski. Maranda is the SVP of Customer Success at HourWork. She is seasoned customer success executive and leader and with extensive experience building and scaling teams in early and mid-stage startups and has been part of 3 companies who have all seen successful exits. In this episode, Maranda is going to talk to us about the future of the customer success manager role. ABOUT Maranda Maranda Dziekonski was until very recently the Chief Customer Officer at Swiftly. For those that don’t know Swiftly is helping us make our cities more efficient, and helping to improve service reliability, passenger information, and operational efficiency. But she joined the team at HourWork as their new SVP of Customer Success. Maranda is a vey well respected and well known leader in the customer success space and has extensive experience building and scaling teams in early and mid-stage startups and has been part of 3 companies who have all seen successful exits. CONNECT WITH THE JASONS Jason Noble on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonnoble1/ Jason Whitehead on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonwhitehead/ ADDITIONAL RESOURCES Follow "The Jasons Take On..." company page on LinkedInFollow "The Jasons Take On..." on TwitterRead Jason Noble's BlogRead Jason Whitehead's Blog (on Success Chain) Visit our webpage at https://thejasonstakeon.com/ to learn more about The Jasons Take On... and to contact us. SPONSORED BY SUCCESS CHAIN! The Jasons Take On... is Sponsored by Success Chain! Success Chain provides the tools, services, and support you need to build your change management, user adoption, and customer success capacity. You achieve greater results faster, more effectively, and cheaper than you can working on your own. Learn more at: https://www.successchain.net

Join us when we speak with Ryan Johansen. Ryan is customer success leader based in Boston who has been an IC, Manager and Director of CS. In this episode, Ryan is going to talk to us about mental health as it relates to CSM's and their workloads. ABOUT RYAN JOHANSEN As a first time manager at a startup, Ryan ended up in a hospital because of a mental breakdown caused by workplace stress. After going to a dark place with mental health, he discovered putting your mental health first can actually have major career benefits.  Driven by a desire to help people avoid what happened to him, he started doing presentations on managing stress as a csm. This quickly took off and he has helped thousands of individuals at dozens of companies. He provides live training programs on how to manage stress, improve productivity, and change work for the better. CONNECT WITH THE JASONS Jason Noble on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonnoble1/ Jason Whitehead on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonwhitehead/ ADDITIONAL RESOURCES Follow "The Jasons Take On..." company page on LinkedInFollow "The Jasons Take On..." on TwitterRead Jason Noble's BlogRead Jason Whitehead's Blog (on Success Chain) Visit our webpage at https://thejasonstakeon.com/ to learn more about The Jasons Take On... and to contact us. SPONSORED BY SUCCESS CHAIN! The Jasons Take On... is Sponsored by Success Chain! Success Chain provides the tools, services, and support you need to build your change management, user adoption, and customer success capacity. You achieve greater results faster, more effectively, and cheaper than you can working on your own. Learn more at: https://www.successchain.net

Join us when we speak with Jamie Bertasi. Jamie is the President and COO of Totango. Previously she was also the company's Chief Customer Officer. In this episode, Jamie is going to share her predictions for Customer Success in 2023! ABOUT JAMIE BERTASI She is responsible for the go-to-market, onboarding and customer success teams at Totango. A proven and trusted leader, Jamie has a demonstrated track record for building high-value experiences for customers and partners, delivering strong business results and building teams with a positive culture. Jamie is a recognized expert in go-to-market and customer success strategies. Before joining Totango, Jamie was the COO of HomeSuite and previously led TellMe to a successful acquisition by Microsoft." CONTACT JAMIE BERTASI https://www.totango.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/saas-executive/ CONNECT WITH THE JASONS Jason Noble on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonnoble1/ Jason Whitehead on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonwhitehead/   ADDITIONAL RESOURCES Follow "The Jasons Take On..." company page on LinkedInFollow "The Jasons Take On..." on TwitterRead Jason Noble's BlogRead Jason Whitehead's Blog (on Success Chain) Visit our webpage at https://thejasonstakeon.com/ to learn more about The Jasons Take On... and to contact us.   SPONSORED BY SUCCESS CHAIN! The Jasons Take On... is Sponsored by Success Chain! Success Chain provides the tools, services, and support you need to build your change management, user adoption, and customer success capacity. You achieve greater results faster, more effectively, and cheaper than you can working on your own. Learn more at: https://www.successchain.net

Join us when we speak with Deborah Andrews. Deborah (aka "Debs") currently works across all post-sales functions at Unit4, alongside leading the Customer Success Operations and Digital teams. In this episode, Debs is going to talk about the world of customer success operations and why it's critical to businesses today. ABOUT DEBORAH ANDREWS Having a varied background in IT, Support, Operations and Customer Success Management for companies such as Sage, Gainsight and Salesforce, she actively collaborates to drive the awareness and implementation of customer centric initiatives that are intentionally designed to drive a seamless, leading-edge and sustainable customer experience. Success for All is her favorite mantra. CONTACT DEBORAH ANDREWS https://www.unit4.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/debscloud/ CONNECT WITH THE JASONS Jason Noble on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonnoble1/ Jason Whitehead on LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonwhitehead/   ADDITIONAL RESOURCES Follow "The Jasons Take On..." company page on LinkedInFollow "The Jasons Take On..." on TwitterRead Jason Noble's BlogRead Jason Whitehead's Blog (on Success Chain) Visit our webpage at https://thejasonstakeon.com/ to learn more about The Jasons Take On... and to contact us.   SPONSORED BY SUCCESS CHAIN! The Jasons Take On... is Sponsored by Success Chain! Success Chain provides the tools, services, and support you need to build your change management, user adoption, and customer success capacity. You achieve greater results faster, more effectively, and cheaper than you can working on your own. Learn more at: https://www.successchain.net