APAC Director, Customer Success at GitLab
About You
I am a Kiwi based in Sydney, Australia.
I have been in technology for 30 years. I have always worked for US software companies, both enterprises in the form of Oracle, IBM, VMware, and now GitLab and startups such as Tealium and Marketo.
I think of my career as a portfolio rather than a path.
There has been my time in tech but it’s complemented by 8 years simultaneously in governance roles as a non-executive director and my time in elite sport with the old endurance adventure along the way.
The lessons learned on the side of a mountain or at the board table complement and strengthen my contribution to tech.
Technology has always fascinated me as to the benefits it can provide businesses in innovation and efficiency. That’s what drew me in and holds me in a tech career.
Key Achievements
Taking Tealium from 4 employees in APJ with no customers to 70 employees and 50 customers in 5 years with a product that did not even have a category when we started.
I have represented NZ 6 times in triathlons and cycled over the highest rideable pass, Thorong La in the Himalayas.
Currently, I am cycling Sri Lanka from tip to tip.
Driving Customer Success
The strategy I always return to is customer connection.
No matter what problem you are trying to solve within your business you should never lose sight of your customer.
Ensuring there is an ongoing dialogue at multiple levels of the business especially with a set of key stakeholders will prevent the business from straying too far from customer need.
Ensure you hear early about issues with the relationship and often the customers are the best sources for product development direction.
This dialogue has to be give/get in nature; there is plenty for the vendor in that kind of conversation but what is in it for the customer?
Also, this is a process that the executive needs to be deeply invested in, to ensure the conversation occurs at all levels of the customer.
What’s Your Take On AI and Customer Success?
Embrace it and educate yourself on how you can use it just as you would any other tool such as search or analytics.
What Generative AI (Gen AI) can deliver will quickly become table stakes for everyone, the quicker you learn how to value add to that the better.
Learn how to use it to speed the generation of foundational content and then you add your unique insight to this.
Customer Success struggles with scale and Gen AI has the potential to help accelerate some of the more repetitive mundane tasks such as basic success plans.
On those micro-credentials I mentioned earlier, make one prompt engineering, another understanding of what Gen AI is good at and what it should not be used for, and finally use Gen AI for Creative Ideation.
In terms of how you make your career resilient to the impact of AI, cultivate your uniquely human skills.
Of the three pillars of CS I mentioned earlier that is Mindset, the leading edge of technical/industry/category.
And for your CS skills, it’s relationship building, commercial conversations, and so on.
Building a Customer-Centric Culture
Customer Success at VMware has a paid and vendor-invested offering.
When I joined the business the team already had a remarkably strong customer-centric culture due in part to the amount of time they spent with their customers as the paid offer enabled more time to be spent and for this to be onsite.
Maintaining customer centricity and uniformity given the size of the customer was more of the focus.
As they say, what gets measured gets done so having a uniform metric for customer sentiment, initially NPS and later perspective score, helped detect where there may be an issue with centricity.
It comes down to caring and delivering to the customer outcomes.
So it starts at the beginning of the relationship with understanding what those are and maintaining mutual alignment with those via success plans throughout the relationship.
Ensuring these are shared as customer-centricity must be company-wide.
Here’s what we covered in the 2nd part of our interview:
Team Empowerment
Discover how trust and empowerment are the keys to success in leading diverse teams across 16 countries.
Cross-Functional Collaboration
Learn practical tips for effective collaboration by focusing on "What's In It For Me" and building strong customer relationships.
Proactive Customer Engagement
Explore strategies like customer gatherings, benchmarking, and proactive risk reviews to ensure lasting customer success.
Leveraging Technology
Find out how to navigate challenges with customer success tools, productivity tools, and collaborative alignment using OKRs.
Measuring and Iterating - Key Metrics
Simplify success metrics to align with business objectives and proactively manage customer risk.
Continuous Improvement
Dive into building a learning environment for continuous improvement, where diverse views are welcomed.
Advice for Leaders
Gain insights on leading from your current role, building a career portfolio, and valuable advice for personal and professional development.
In The News
Understand the impact of recent layoffs in the Customer Success community and the importance of refining metrics and considering paid offers.
What's Next
Get a glimpse into what the future holds for Catherine in 2024 and her exciting exploration of new opportunities.
Her Hobbies and Recommendations
Explore Catherine’s amazing hobbies, involvement with a non-profit, and recommendations for influential people to follow and podcasts to listen to.
Upgrade now and access my full interview with Catherine and other top CS leaders.
Level up your skills with practical knowledge every week, not just in theory!
