Robert Statsky

So how do you build a CS team with negative infrastructure? What is negative infrastructure?

Simply put: How do you go from -10 to 0? That allows you to have at least a basic starting point on how to build out your Customer Success Organization.

I know this all sounds dramatic but I want to discuss what it is like to build out a CS function not only from scratch, but also working to undo negative behaviors that are not only hurting you and your customer outcomes, while also preventing any forward progress.

First you need to determine what forward progress is and ensure that leadership is aligned with your intentions and what you plan to do. A 30/60/90 should solve this and you should act as a playbook and motion for when you join an organization.

I’m not a huge fan of 30/60/90s because at this point, how could you expect to see any differentiated thought in these exercises? How many times can someone say, let me learn about the team, built rapport, learn the product, understand the data, meet the important customers etc.

To me that seems quite boring and overdone, and anyone can get that from AI at this point.

I think a better way to understand what a person can do is to give them 3 unique scenarios you have in your business right now and ask them how they would solve those, how long it would take, and what they would need to do it. That to me is more interesting. I’d also ask them to do that on the spot, and see if they can think on their feet so they’re not taking 10 days to find a suitable answer.

But once you decide what is progress, you need to make changes, and make them fast. Speed is everything.

1. Get your data right, or at least as accurate as possible.
2. Understand how many customers you have
   1. What they are paying
   2. What products they’re using
   3. When they are renewing
   4. Who is delinquent on payment
3. Enable your systems but do not overcomplicate
   1. Pick one system, train the team on it and then get everyone on it (think, Salesforce, Hubspot, CS Software tool).
   2. Your tech stack is important but it should not be overcomplicated.

This should be the operating rhythm for at least 30-60 days. You can argue you want to move faster but in my experience, most orgs cannot move that fast. There will always be bottlenecks from people, process, departments. You need to give yourself and the team time to breathe and adapt to any changes, but you have to have an open mind, start working through the change, measure the results and adapt quickly.

I have another article about how you can use ChatGPT as a business strategist with a detailed prompt for solving this problem. You can see that here.