Stephanie Berner is a Customer Success Executive at LinkedIn. Since 2018, Stephanie has spearheaded all post-sales functions at LinkedIn Sales Solutions through its period of rapid growth. With a background in building and scaling customer success teams at Box, Medallia, and Opower, Stephanie has extensive experience in delivering exceptional customer experiences across various company stages.

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In this episode, we discuss:

• Common customer success mistakes


• Creating a world-class customer success org


• Tactics for hiring exceptional talent


• How to structure compensation packages


• Where customer success fits into the wider org


• Key early-stage customer success metrics and rituals


• Successful strategies from Box, Medallia, and LinkedIn

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Referenced:

• Aaron Levie: https://www.linkedin.com/in/boxaaron/
  


• Box: https://www.box.com/
  


• David Love: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-s-love/
  


• Gainsight: https://www.gainsight.com/
  


• Jon Herstein: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonherstein/
  


• Jonathan Lister: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathanlister/
  


• Ken Fine: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kmfine/
  


• Medallia: https://www.medallia.com/
  


• Nick Mehta: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickmehta/
  


• Opower: https://www.oracle.com/utilities/opower-energy-efficiency/
  

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Where to find Stephanie Berner:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanieberner/
  

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Where to find Brett Berson:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/
  


• Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/brettberson
  

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Where to find First Round Capital:

• Website: https://firstround.com/
  


• First Round Review: https://review.firstround.com/
  


• Twitter: https://twitter.com/firstround
  


• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@FirstRoundCapital
  


• This podcast on all platforms: https://review.firstround.com/podcast
  

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Timestamps:

(00:00 ) Introduction

(02:21 ) Formalizing customer success at a startup

(05:01 ) Hiring ICs before CSMs

(06:22 ) Tactics for hiring standout talent

(11:39 ) 3 questions to ask candidates

(15:38 ) Fail-case patterns among customer success hires

(17:49 ) Considering candidates with non-traditional backgrounds

(21:21 ) Indexing toward a bias for action

(24:17 ) What v1 of customer success looks like

(26:03 ) Key early-stage customer success metrics

(28:21 ) Whether customer success or sales should own renewals

(30:40 ) Where customer success fits into the org

(32:14 ) Why customer success doesn’t report to an executive

(33:48 ) Distinguishing a product problem from a customer success one

(35:18 ) Simple way to deal with customer churn

(39:21 ) Tactics to get customers to give honest feedback

(40:58 ) What happens when customer success and product teams collaborate

(44:14 ) Rituals for zero-to-one customer success

(48:23 ) How to structure an early customer success team

(52:01 ) Structuring compensation packages

(54:35 ) Aligning customer success with the business model

(60:14 ) The role of customer success in B2B software

(62:17 ) Common customer success mistakes

(67:44 ) People who had an outsized impact on Stephanie