Detailed Notes
In this episode of Building Better Developers with AI, Rob Broadhead and Michael Meloche explore what it really means to deliver customer success—not just customer support. Whether you’re a solo founder, SaaS developer, or part of a tech team, you’ll learn:
✅ How to move from reactive support to proactive success ✅ Lean tools and tactics for value-driven development ✅ Real-world stories of saving time, money, and frustration ✅ Why customer success isn’t just for big companies ✅ How to track outcomes that actually matter
🎯 Episode Challenge: Revisit a recent feature or fix and ask—did it make the customer more successful or just patch the problem?
📌 Learn more at: https://develpreneur.com/building-customer-success-not-just-support/ 🎧 Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform 📺 Full archive on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@develpreneur 💬 Leave your thoughts in the comments!
#CustomerSuccess #SoftwareDevelopment #LeanStartups #DeveloperPodcast #TechLeadership
00:00 – Intro and Pre-show Banter 04:26 – Episode Setup: AI-Powered Topic Generation 10:33 – What is Customer Success vs. Support? 13:50 – Why Customer Success Drives Business Growth 18:00 – Real-World Example: Weekend Maintenance vs. Upgrade 21:00 – Budget Challenges and ROI Thinking 25:00 – Tools and Tech that Improve Success 28:30 – Onboarding, Feedback, and Documentation 31:00 – Using the Right Tools Without Overspending 34:00 – Final Thoughts and Call for Feedback
Transcript Text
to the cloud. Where is my I have got to like I got to figure out where my video organization where the alignment is. I want to do it like this. Uh, let's see. I'm going to go like this. Okay, enough bandandying about. So, we're going to talk about customer success, delivering value on a budget. And let's see. So, let's tell it. This I think is going to be a little different because I think I burned through. I'm on a different uh I usually am on like the the 40 I think it's a 40 mini. This time I'm going to be on just a straight 40 cuz I used up my 40 mini usage for today going in circle circles with chat GPT for a little bit before I had to like straighten it out and say no this way. So let's see uh provide some suggested topics and content for the name. See you guys are getting like bonus material right here. I'm going to give you like the full little thing. So, uh content for the building veteran developers aka developneur podcast. Um with this title, you're typing that. Um would you be interested in having Kevin on for an interview? >> Marketing Kevin? >> Yeah. >> Yeah, that wouldn't be bad. >> Okay. I talked to him briefly about that today since he just got done doing a podcast series. >> Yeah, I've got uh there's a couple people I'm sort of lined up. There's part of me that wants to go back into like a an interview format for a while. Uh it's just getting people to actually like pull the trigger and say, "Okay, let's schedule one and do it." And then it was such a it was really a pain sometimes to do it because I had to like you had to work with a lot of different time zones. Well, I did because I was talking to people in Europe. I was talking to people out in California. I was talking to people all over the place. So, it was um that did impact the, you know, the time zones and some of the times available calls. So, sometimes I had a call at like it was fun. Sometimes it'd be 6:00 a.m. my time and sometimes it'd be 6 a.m. their time, but you know, vice versa. So, like one of us is just waking up and the other one is, you know, at the end of their day or something like that. Um, so those are always fun. Let's look real quick. It says, "Yeah, so it's not getting all super nice and friendly." It did give me seven big things, including the last one being key takeaways. Uh, okay. So, let's go ahead and uh gosh, I got to think of good thing, bad thing. Good thing, bad thing, good thing, bad thing. Talked about my kids car, I think. Oh, but we haven't talked about the tolling. So, hey, I got something I can talk about there that is actually again, I guess, a good and a bad. Uh, so, oh, I got to start this. Let's get my camera set. Let me get my zoom in the right place. This is why I didn't start drinking too much before the episode start. >> Don't get too dark. The light went out in the room I'm in. So, >> yeah. I try that quick. I'm g see if I can get a light on to get a little more I don't think it's going to do much. And I don't want to I sort of throw the Let me see. Let me throw some shades. Problem with shades is that when you do it sometimes you get like funky sun goes into weird places and suddenly you get light changes and all that. I guess at some point I should like get back to having like a nice little like lighted studio and all that good stuff. Um, except for I got rid of all that crap so I could be minimalist. And so there's that. >> All right. How's this? Uh, can you hear the fan? >> Not at all. >> Okay, perfect. I moved out. >> Can you hear the fan? >> Well, I hear it outside of the >> Oh, okay. You can't hear my fan? >> No. >> Okay. Excellente. Mu excellente espanol. Let's count dress uno. Hola and welcome back to building better developers the developer podcast. We are back with another episode in our season where we are with AI. We're taking couple seasons back taking the topics and literally just running those topics through again the titles through AI see what it gives us and uh see what we can learn from you know what AI does and things like that. There are uh definitely some things that we've come across that are some uh I guess traits of AI. Uh it's interesting that the you know what we're giving it what we're asking for is not actually specifics. So that's where you get pretty safe. You know AI can give you recommendations and stuff all day long and whether it's right or wrong it's just it's recommendations and different from like code or things like that. But I digress. Let me go ahead and introduce myself. My name is Rob Broadhead. I am one of the founders of developer also the founder of RV consulting where we help you work with technology whether you're a little company or a big company whatever it is we are here to help you use technology better through simplification integration automation innovation we sit down with you we walk through what your business is we help you just by talking to us a lot of times have that conversation about what your business is what your goals are and then we sit down and create a techn technology roadmap and we can either help you execute on it or not. And the thing that we bring to the tables has got all this experience, all these different lines of business. So, we're going to help you think outside of the box as well as help you see the box full of goodies that is technology. Uh, yes, it's goodies. It's not a junk drawer. It's not technology sprawl. Or maybe it is depending on where you're at. Good thing and bad thing. So, this is again like I'm I'm I've had a rough like it's July, end of July right now and it has been a rough July. My latest good thing, bad thing that I will throw out there is that I talked a little bit about my son had had a car accident. We had a lot of issues. We've been traveling a lot. We're back. They ended up tolling his car, which is pretty much a bad thing because he didn't have a car. And so that meant we have to go buy a car and fairly quickly because the rental that he has runs out in a, you know, small number of days. And so, and he doesn't have a ton of money. Basically, what we've got is not a lot of money from insurance. And so, we're using that as the starting point to go buy another car, which means a used car. And in this case, at least, you know, probably 10, 15 years old. Finding a car that age that still works is in itself a little bit fun. We went on a lot I will give you a quick digression. We went on a car lot where they had a bunch of these things and one almost every car that we trusted the engine light came on immediately and two every one of them had listed asis no returns and because of the way it was set up you could not take it for a drive outside of the lot. So you can't take it on the open road. I was like no that hard no. We were not going to sit there and not actually even test drive a car and that already has lights blinking all over that says don't buy me a and buy that car. That was a bad thing. The good thing was we found a car that was used. It was actually a little bit been a guy that loves to just rebuild cars. Built one. It was a the same model like two years older than my son's car, but actually literally in better shape. It was a better car. So, as far as we can tell, knocking on wood or something, you know, some reasonable faximile of wood right now, we were able to get his car replaced with a little bit better car with almost exactly the amount of money that we got from insurance out of the whole thing. So, it was like big win there. Another big win is we are back for another episode and I get to toss this over to Michael so he can introduce himself. >> Hey everyone, my name is Michael Malage. I'm one of the co-founders of developer building better developers. I'm also the owner of Envision QA where we help startups and growing companies build better software faster with fewer problems. Our services cover software development, quality assurance, test automation, and release support. Similar to what Rob does with assessments, we go into businesses and help you really figure out what it is that you need for software. You know, companies come to us when they want to avoid delays, reduce bugs, and launch with confidence. Whether you're building your first MVP or scaling a live product, we make sure the software is reliable, efficient, and ready to grow. You can learn more at envision QA.com. Good thing, bad thing. So, similar situation. Uh I would say about three or four weeks ago, my wife was mowing and all of a sudden a belt broke and the mower is dead. We had to tow it down and send it to the shop. They said 3 to four days. It's been about four weeks. Our grass is so high that we can't even find our two smallest dogs. They go out to pee, they go pee on the sidewalk because they don't want to walk into the jungle that it is our yard. Good thing is we did get the mower back. We got that back uh Monday or Tuesday. But the problem is we're also in the middle of a heat wave. So my wife gets some more back. It's like, "Great. I'm going to go mow." 3 hours in, maybe a third of the yard is done, and it is so hot. She's like, "Nope, I'm done." Uh, so similar situation, but at least we got a mower and the dogs can now get out to the yard. So, lots of good things there. That is so I was just talking to somebody yesterday that he is uh he works at HVAC systems. He's got a guy that it's very hot right now. He's got a guy that lost his HVAC. They've got to go, it's under warranty. They've got to ship the parts. Um, supposed to be seven to 10 days. I think he said it's now like day 28 and this guy is living in a house that's like 95 degrees inside. It's just like it's miserable and it's just parts are still a pain in the butt. What's not a pain in the butt is our topic. So, we're going to go ahead and dive right in because we have already like gone all over the place. So, this episode uh what we did is we're going back to a prior episode that was called customer success delivering value on a budget. And so, this is one that I threw out there and we're going to dive right in. It was uh I've got a slightly different uh engine than I used last time around and it gave me slightly different. It did not give me the uh you know, that's an awesome topic. It just like goes right into it. Here's some suggested topics and content ideas. Uh bonus if you want to go back and check us out on the YouTube channel if you're not right now then you can hear what we actually typed in and see you know how that goes. Uh what's interesting is I bet if you type it you will get something different because AI is like that. Uh so episode focus how developers product teams and technical founders can build and maintain customer success programs that truly add value even with limited time money and people. So here's the suggested structure and segments. Introduction why customer success matters for developers. We should know that like gosh we I don't know if we've talked about this one but we should all agree that. So the bullet points define customer success versus customer support. Importance in SAS software as a structure as a service gosh startups consulting and indie product projects. How early stage teams can't afford to ignore customer outcomes. and they got quote, "Even if you're bootstrapping or solo building, customer success is not optional. It's how you grow sustainably." This God, this it is frustrating because this is business 101. And there are a lot of developers that I don't think understand this. Um, I think there's a lot I've actually run into customers and entrepreneurs that don't understand this that at some point you have to actually have a customer that will sign a check or hand over cash or send you Bitcoin or something so that you can generate revenue. Businesses consume money. That means businesses have to find money so they have something to eat or else they die a horrible starvation death. Now I can see as a developer that there is that and I'm going to talk about the I'm going to focus on the one that's uh divine customer success versus customer support. Um customer success is we're building something to make our customer better. Now we talk all the time about um about the why about what is the problem we're solving? But this gets into a little bit of like why are we solving that problem? Because if we're just solving it to just solve the problem, that doesn't help them. That's not going to move the ball forward and help them generate money. And otherwise, the goal is that whatever we're solving, it is helping it. And it doesn't mean it directly impacts their revenue or adds to the revenue, but it could be things like it reduces time to produce a product, to provide a service, to get the back office stuff done. Uh what we do at RB Consulting is that kind of stuff where we say we want to take these things off of your plate that is the working in your business so you can work on your business. Those kinds of things are software that and problems and work that you're doing as a developer that is actually helping your customer with you know to be more successful. Customer support is really they're coming to you they're saying hey I've got a problem I need you to fix it and let's move forward. And usually the fix it is a band-aid. It is something along the lines of they're really struggling through things. And every so often they're going to come to you and say, "Hey, I can't solve this problem. Can you solve it?" "Sure, I solve this problem." They go back to doing what they're doing. Eventually they're going to come back and they're going to have to deal with you. Ideally, what you want to do is not get into customer support. Yes, there there's going to be support on the products you create, but if your model is customer support, then basically you are a cost center. If you are not finding ways to reduce the time, the money and the effort involved in solving their problems and getting their their job done, basically getting their company to work, then you are actually a cost and not uh essentially we'll call it an investment. That's where you want to be. If you come in as a developer, if you come in as a consultant, if you come in as a software product, and people look at it as, yes, I'm going to spend, you know, X dollars, I'm going to spend $100, but this is going to help me generate $1,000. Then the math becomes really easy. It becomes how fast can I get that software. That is important. And it's it's whether you are uh independent, whether you are doing a side hustle, whether you work for a big organization, cuz I guarantee you, as much as everybody will, you know, throw shade at Microsoft, if people didn't find value in their products, they would not exist. There is no such thing as a company that can exist with developers just going, I'm do all kinds of random stuff and think that that's going to be, you know, last for very long. Either you're going to get fired or your company's going to tank. And there is a long history of companies that have done that where they've been along the lines of we're going to do what we want to do. Screw the customer. They'll come and they'll figure it out and they'll eventually come and give us money. And you know what? They almost never show up to give you money. If they do, give me a call because we would love to be a part of that, whatever that happens to be. Thoughts on this? Oh, >> there's a lot to unpack with that. So customer success versus support typically. >> You're muted. >> There we go. Can you hear me now? >> We're going to edit that. Yes, I can. We're gonna edit that. >> Uh so you you basically provide a lot of information. So there's a big impact there. But let's go with customer service uh you know with support. Let's start with support. So, typically with support, you you want to help someone. Someone's coming to you with the problem, you want to help them. You want to solve the problem for them. The trick there is be careful not to just fall into band-aid fixes for the customer. Yes, get them, you know, if they're down, get them back up, but help them find a way to get stable quickly. the faster they can get stable or you can show them hey here is what you need to do to fix this problem long term and then show them the cost benefit of that like hey to fix this right now well here let me give you a real world example of this I had a customer for a decade for the first four years I went into this uh customer's office every weekend and it took me literally a full weekend to update three computers in their office doing system updates, uh, software updates, cleaning up the machines, antivirus, all that. 5 years in, they finally replace their computers. So, we went from 3 days to literally 4 hours. The time it cost for me to spend three days there was the equivalent of buying a computer. So after three quarters of doing this, they could have replaced all three computers and gone to a 4hour window which is was essentially like 116th of the time it took to do the maintenance. And this is just general maintenance that you need to do for the machines anyway. So it's like changing the oil in your car. It's something that you have to do, but it's something that shouldn't be that painful and that costly. So when you are helping your customer support supporting them and if they come to you with a problem, this is where you want to look at customer success. How can you make them be successful on a budget? How can you save them money and still solve their problem and still make money yourself? You know, you have to make money. You are a business, but you want to provide value like we talked about, you know, that why. What is that why? So when you're working with the customer, you know why customer success matters? Because if you keep them in business and you keep them happy, they're going to keep coming back to you for help, for support. Now, in an ideal world, hopefully you can solve their problem indefinitely and they won't need to call you again. But, you know, like a car, things do break with computers. That is a that actually is a good uh lead into the next uh point. So, I'm just going to dive into it from there. So, the next one is the budget challenge. Common myths. Customer success is for big companies. Hidden costs of ignoring customer success. Churn, bad reviews, high support loads. Framing customer success as an ROI multiplier, not an expense. And now this is really what this goes to what Michael just provided as an example is particularly when we get into and this I guess feels a little self- serving but when we get into things like simplification automation uh and even integration there's those thing and even innovation the things that we're looking at the the tasks that we're doing the values that we're bringing in the value we're bringing in is that we're taking something that takes time takes money costs resources in some way form or fashion and reducing at and it sometimes is very very direct like what you know what Michael said it's like you can say it takes 10 hours to do this thing at you know a dollar an hour so it takes 10 bucks but you can go buy this product for five bucks and then go get it done and now you don't have to maybe it only takes an hour so now it's six you know you you have an investment but now you're cutting that down every time those kinds of things are going to come back to now it's it is more of a that's more of a hard physical product. It's not necessarily customer success. But this is what we need to be looking for is the success is not that they bought our product. The success is not that they are using our product. Success is not that they love our product. Customer success is that they use our product honestly whether they like it or not and it is helping their business that it is reducing the resources required to get things done or it is allowing them to get to a new uh area expansion that they weren't able to otherwise. That is why the easy ones everybody owns. I'll give you a good example. email. If you build like email is so much faster than getting on a phone. It's so much easier than you know jumping in a plane and going to talk to somebody. Similar to that is what we're on right now is Zoom and video conferencing because now you don't have to go all these. You don't have to spend time on the road and all that other stuff. So, it makes sense, especially if you're like, even if you're across town from your team, it probably makes sense to invest in Zoom and not use the free version so you get cut off after 40 minutes. Use some of those since you can do it. You can record it. You can actually have a lot of value come out of those meetings and you can even people that can't make it, they can even see the meeting. Those kinds of things are investments, but the the payback is, you know, maybe it's not a hard payback. It's not something you can say, okay, I just, you know, generated $1,000 more. But sometimes you can. Customer success is about that. As Michael said, we are also a business. So, we have to generate revenue. We have to be successful. But I guarantee you, if your customers are successful, you will be successful. If your customer, you're making money on what you do, then it is an easy math for them to go use you more often. Thoughts on this one? So I have another kind of hidden cost but I'm going to start with a different one here. So this one is you know budget challenges with your customer. One of the biggest things as software developers we like to solve problems. We like to build code we like to automate. Like Rob says we want to simplify. We want to automate. If you are building an application and you or a customer has an application and it comes to you and it takes them four clicks to do something that should be done in one click, get rid of those three clicks and make it a single click right there. You probably have saved them about 15 minutes a week just from all the clicking to get to the page loads that they need to get to to do their work. Look for things to simplify their tasks. Uh especially if you are building software. Now, I'm going to flip back over to the hidden cost real quick is from a business perspective. I've done a couple different startups over the years, and one of the biggest things that I am very cheap about is my website cost, hosting costs. And every Black Friday, I will go sign up every year for a new deal with a new vendor, HostGator, Blue Host, whoever. And I will get the cheapest one possible that meets my minimal needs. And I move all my websites over once a year. And I will pay the very minimal cost. AWS, I do come for you once in a while if I have a new email address because you get the free year tier. But if you can eliminate hundreds of dollars and keep your backend and your servers running for the equivalent of about 50 bucks a year, that's a huge cost savings. So look at things that the customer needs and your business needs and revisit them at least once a quarter or at least semianually to make sure that you're not overpaying for keeping your business. >> I agree. I think though there is a uh it's a guy years ago that said, you know, people would um leap over a dollar to gather a dime. And I think that's what sometimes happened is that we get into and we have to have that mentality of like sometimes you do need to, you know, you need to buy something a little bit. You have to you're going to get what you pay for. A good example I'm going to use and this is you people can hate on me or whatever. I used to buy Windows laptops. I would get Dell, Gateway, Toshiba. They were all so they were all varying levels of good. The best ones lasted me 18 months, maybe two years before they were pretty much, you know, not very useful. They were slow, they were ponderous, they were a pain in the butt to deal with. And so I would go and this is even after I would wipe the whole machine and rebuild it and still not terribly fast. So, you know, they were they were cheap, 15, you know, at that time I guess 1,500, two grand a pop, something like that. So, I'm spending that roughly every other year. Flash forward and I said I went I went into the Mac world. I took a bite out of the Apple. Apples were going to cost me double basically across the board. I'm typically spending three to four grand for an Apple machine whether it's a laptop or if I do an iMac or something because I get now granted I do get high-end but I was getting high-end Windows too. Not maybe the top but I was getting pretty high-end machines. Apples last me typically five to six years. So, if I spend $4,000 every 6 years versus, let's say, $1,500 every 2 years, then I'm still $4,500 with Windows machines, not including all of the costs of like having to reinstall this, all the software, get everything configured again, move everything over. There is a lot that goes there. Now, I don't want to get this too much into budgety, so I do want to jump into the last question or the last point real quick. Lean tactics for customer success. Some powerful budget friendly strategies. These are some of the things that I think we need to be thinking about and talking to customers on all the time. And I'm not I haven't even looked at them yet, but I'm going to assume that that's where this is going to go. Automated onboarding, videos, walkthroughs, inapp tips, measure what matters, NPS, churn, feature usage, support logs. Create feedback loops, Slack groups, surveys, founder calls. Build a help hub, facts, FAQs, uh, searchable docs, GitHub discussions, email is gold. They heard my email thing. Trigger-based life cycle emails, Mail Coach, Postmark, etc., which I'd include like Mailchimp, uh, Mail Gun, all those kinds of things that are like, if you don't know what a drip campaign is for email, then go like look that up because if you're in a business, it is very useful to have those kinds of things. particularly how a lot of these tools will allow you to do it. Uh they can be very very uh impactful and they don't necessarily I mean they're going to people know that it's essentially sort of a form email of some extent but you can put enough stuff there that it makes it a valuable um a form of form email that goes back to automated onboarding. Like if if it takes your customers weeks to get started with the product then there is a problem. then you need to find ways to speed that up. Now maybe you have a very complicated product. But if your product isn't like learn how to code in Python or Java Java or something like that or you know learn how to be a financial whiz, it should not take them that long to use the product. If it does, then you probably have a mismatch. And the best way to do that is things like like videos. Like I said, they're so easy to do. We've got those. You can go out to developer.com and see tons and tons of videos that are basically walkthrough to get you started on X, whatever X is. We're not magicians. I mean, maybe we are, but no, we're not. You can do that as well. And you don't have to, obviously, you don't have to look good. You don't have to have like incredibly awesome, you know, professional lighting and all that kind of stuff. And honestly, there are people out there that will do this u, you know, they'll do the video editing, the audio editing, all that kind of stuff. Don't go to AI. it's going to screw stuff up. But there are people that do that at a and it's not too expensive. It's definitely something that's a good investment because now you don't have to put your people through all this stuff. You can just sit somebody down in front of your computer. They can read, you know, they can watch the video and you're off and running. I will I'll throw in feedback. The easiest way for your customers to get back to you is the one that you need to use. And it depends on where they're at. They may be, you know, young and they're on phones. So maybe it's going to be like a DM through whatever an app you know it could be through Instagram or Facebook or X or whatever it is or it could be email. If it's phone fine it's phone but then like you know make that as automated as you can get an IVR and things like that. Find ways to make it easy to get feedback from your customers and then act on it. When you give feedback, put it in your put it in the hopper, put it in the backlog and make sure that they feel heard and that they actually see that their suggestions and even their complaints made a difference. Thoughts on that one? >> So, I'm going to go a slightly different. So, we didn't you talked about quite a few good things. Uh, one warning I'll throw out is uh be careful the tools you use. uh don't spend a little time researching the tools before you go buy them because once you pick a tool, chances are you're going to spend the time learning that tool and to switch tools, you're going to have a cost in relearning that, retraining your employees. But things like uh you know, Jira, Confluence, wikis are a great tool to keep your documents in a place where people can keep them up to date. Now, if you're software developers, look at readmemes, keep things closer to the code because chances are the wikis will get stale on you fairly quickly. But from a business perspective, having those portals where people can go for, you know, HR material, how to to trainings and things like that, get that in a central place and make sure everyone knows where it is. It's easy to access and hopefully as you have questions you're updating the site with those qu the Q&A that your employees have or your customers have because if you don't you're going to rehash this again and again and again. Use the tools, keep track of the communications that are going on, and post what is useful. Um, and make sure that you give people an answer to a common. Frequently asked questions are probably the number one best tool for use, not with just business, but on the internet. Uh, the other thing you mentioned too was like email and Slack. Again, here, pick a communication channel that your team is comfortable with. spend a little time with each, but don't spend a lot because once you spend too much time, you're kind of set in your ways or you've already invested too much time in the tool. Uh, and it's going to be hard to pivot. Uh, so if you're a Microsoft team, it's probably better to stick with Teams or with Microsoft products. If you're not Microsoft, look at some other tools like Slack, um, you know, Trello, some other tools that are out there. So, kind of stick to your wheelhouse. Don't go too far outside of that. Um, and you'll probably find a tool that fits for you and is very useful and will help streamline your business. >> We'll follow that up by saying occasionally go outside of your wheelhouse and just see what's out there because sometimes you're going to find something that is better. That's actually like Michael said, he goes through and he tries to do Black Friday deals every year and change stuff around. So that means he's now bounced around on a lot of different providers of that sort and it allows you to test them out. It allows you to see what's out there every year. you know, especially I mean honestly probably every six months you can see big changes in a lot of the products are out there. Definitely every year actually most likely every year but I would say definitely every other year. Uh especially that's when you consider like big things like CRM and things like that. Not if you're ERP you're you're screwed basically you're stuck with your ERP that's just too long a cycle usually. But um you know smaller apps even including counting stuff things like that there are ways to transition and I'd say every you know probably every 2 to 3 years depending on how big your company is um you should be looking at stuff to see if maybe I should like take a do a big platform change. We actually recently have done this. We've stuck on the same product for almost all of the 25 years that RB Consulting has been around. About a year ago, we actually not even a year ago now, about six months ago, we tried to do a change and we're still deciding whether we really like it or not because we got really used to what we were using before, but we decided, hey, let's try something new and see how that goes for us. I recommend that every so often you do the same. You don't have to bite the bullet. You don't have to burn the the lifeboats, as it were, but see what else is out there and see if maybe you should adjust where your wheelhouse is. >> Now, in this situation, you guys are our customers. And so we are very very attuned to customer success. We want you to be successful. And you may tell from the title that we're building better developers. So if you are a developer or an entrepreneur and you're getting better at developing whether it's writing code, creating software, creating products, building your business, because we have that developer thing is the entrepreneur side and the developer side. We want you getting better. Our goal is to provide you that and that means we would love your feedback including emailing us at [email protected]. You can also check us out on the developer.com site. You can leave us feedback there. Wherever you listen to podcast, leave us a review. We would love to hear it, good or bad. Uh out on YouTube, leave us whatever you want to hear. You know, whatever you want to give us out there. We want to know the good, the bad, recommendations, and we love to hear stories. Uh, as we talked about in the the pre-show here in the green room before we jumped in, we'll call it. Um, we're also interested in uh doing some interviews and things like that. There's a lot of people that we've got sort of out there that we would like to, you know, sort of on our our list. Feel free to contact us if you would like to be on that list. If you'd like to be somebody that we can talk to at some point, do an interview. If you want to see how it goes, it'll be a little different than last time, but you can go look back, I don't know, four or five seasons ago now where we had like 87 episodes, I think, of interviews. so you can get a good idea for some of the people we've talked to. Uh, not to mention those are some incredible episodes. We talked to some really good people throughout that. So, highly recommend that. More importantly, I recommend that you wrap this up. Actually, I'm going to wrap this up. That you get out there, you have yourself a great day, a great week, and we will talk to you next time. Bonus material because I'm getting all tripped up on my words there. Uh, oh, actually, shoot. This is this one. I'm I get to do the words. >> Okay. So, uh developer tools for C customer service on a budget. My AirPods are like screwing around on me a little bit here. Okay. So, use tools like Laravel Nova or Filament to build admin UIs for tracking customer service data. Simple dashboards with metrics per client or user. Chat box like Tidio or open source options. Add intercom like features with open source tools like chat woot. Use Laravel Horizon, Telescope, or Sentry to fix user pain before it hits support. Uh, five, team collaboration. Everyone owns customer service. Devs aren't just coders. They affect onboarding, UX, and performance. Create a culture of cross functional feedback, support, uh, support, dev, sales. Lightweight ways to surface user pain, Slack alerts, trouble cards, etc. If your error logs could talk, they'd tell you where what's hurting success the most. Is the quote. Case studies and stories. is a solo dev who cut churn by 50% by improving onboarding. A small sass that added tool tips and saw fewer support tickets. How measuring one metric time to first value changed the product roadmap. And then consider inviting some people. There's some final takeaways. Final takeaways. You don't need a big budget. You need intention. Customer success is a product, not a department. Start small, iterate, and tie efforts to clear outcomes, retention, advocacy, fewer tickets. Lots of stuff there. Is there one that you want to jump on for a quick like here's our bonus? >> Well, I was just going to throw out one more example um real world example. Uh a company you and I both worked at years ago uh had these billing centers where they had like 22 people in the billing center and how they would go through the process of taking the order is they had these binders and every person in the billing center touched the binder. So it would come in, the first person would take the invoice, put it in the binder, pass off the next person, would collect the information, pass it off to the next person. That costs the company lots of overhead for every employee. You have not just employee salaries, you have uh cost of the location that you're at because you have to have a lot of office space for that many people. You know, there's a lot of hidden costs there. All we did was we basically walked through the processes of that binder and created an application to simulate that and we went from like six billing centers of 22 people to I think three to six people running the entire billing of the company. So there could very be some very simple ways to look at what you have within your business or your customer's business. Look at what can be automated or streamlined and put that into an application. Put that into a dashboard. See if you can put something quick together that basically solves their very painful daily task. And I can see your customer being extremely happy. >> Um I didn't even follow that one up. We did challenges because I was just talking to somebody about this the other day. We did challenges uh a season or two ago, a couple seasons back and one of the things that we had as a challenge on one of our episodes was we talked about automation and about like every week just pick something spend 15 minutes on something you know look around at what do you do a lot and find a way to do an automation. I think you can do the same thing with your customers is take a look at where where are the interactions, where are the complaints, maybe look at the log files, what are the errors or warnings that are popping up on a regular basis and address those. Find a way to do so. It may be that it's going to take a bigger, you know, it's not something you can solve in a couple of minutes, but it may be something that you can start in a couple minutes where you say, "Okay, we're going to have a user story that we're going to address this or an epic that we're going to address this or something along those lines." Because I think too often we get into customer success issues and we are too much one way or the other. It's either too much. We're just talking to one customer and we're just solving their problem and getting them happy and then we rinse and repeat with the next one or we're doing something and we're really not helping the one customer because we're trying to do this general solution to impact everybody and it takes forever to get to the general solution. I think that there is probably some middle ground that we can find in most cases. I think that will help you sort of bootstrap it. So, you're going to keep your customers happy, but you're also going to be reducing those costs and the the investment into keeping them happy and looking towards their success as you move forward. We haven't done near enough of that. That's why I still ask for emails every single episode as it's like, hey, shoot me an ep email [email protected]. You've heard it often enough. So, you know what the bonus is? I'm not going to say anymore about that. Send them all. Send them all. We are going to wrap this one up. We're not done. We have got plenty of episodes left. AI is, you know, it is inexhaustible. It's going to give us some more ideas and we'll come next back next time and discuss those. So until then, go out there, have yourself a good one. We'll talk to you next time.
Transcript Segments
to the cloud. Where is my I have got to
like I got to figure out where my
video organization where the alignment
is. I want to do it like this. Uh, let's
see. I'm going to go like this. Okay,
enough bandandying about. So, we're
going to talk about customer success,
delivering value on a budget.
And let's see. So, let's tell it. This I
think is going to be a little different
because I think I burned through. I'm on
a different uh I usually am on like the
the 40 I think it's a 40 mini. This time
I'm going to be on just a straight 40
cuz I used up my 40 mini usage for today
going in circle circles with chat GPT
for a little bit before I had to like
straighten it out and say no this way.
So let's see uh provide
some
suggested topics and content for the
name. See you guys are getting like
bonus material right here. I'm going to
give you like the full little thing. So,
uh content for the building veteran
developers
aka developneur podcast.
Um
with this title,
you're typing that. Um would you be
interested in having Kevin on for an
interview?
>> Marketing Kevin?
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, that wouldn't be bad.
>> Okay. I talked to him briefly about that
today since he just got done doing a
podcast series.
>> Yeah, I've got uh there's a couple
people
I'm sort of lined up. There's part of me
that wants to go back into like a an
interview format for a while. Uh it's
just getting people to actually like
pull the trigger and say, "Okay, let's
schedule one and do it." And then it was
such a it was really a pain sometimes to
do it because I had to like you had to
work with a lot of different time zones.
Well, I did because I was talking to
people in Europe. I was talking to
people out in California. I was talking
to people all over the place. So, it was
um
that did impact the, you know, the time
zones and some of the times available
calls. So, sometimes I had a call at
like it was fun. Sometimes it'd be 6:00
a.m. my time and sometimes it'd be 6
a.m. their time, but you know, vice
versa. So, like one of us is just waking
up and the other one is, you know, at
the end of their day or something like
that. Um, so those are always fun. Let's
look real quick. It says,
"Yeah, so it's not getting all super
nice and friendly." It did give me seven
big things, including the last one being
key takeaways.
Uh,
okay. So, let's go ahead and uh gosh, I
got to think of good thing, bad thing.
Good thing, bad thing, good thing, bad
thing. Talked about my kids car, I
think. Oh, but we haven't talked about
the tolling. So, hey, I got something I
can talk about there that is actually
again, I guess, a good and a bad. Uh,
so, oh, I got to start this. Let's get
my camera set. Let me get my zoom in the
right place.
This is why I didn't start drinking too
much before the episode start.
>> Don't get too dark. The light went out
in the room I'm in. So,
>> yeah. I try that quick. I'm g see if I
can get a light on to get a little more
I don't think it's going to do much. And
I don't want to I sort of
throw the Let me see. Let me throw some
shades. Problem with shades is that when
you do it sometimes you get like funky
sun goes into weird places and suddenly
you get light changes and all that. I
guess at some point I should like get
back to having like a nice little like
lighted studio and all that good stuff.
Um, except for I got rid of all that
crap so I could be minimalist. And so
there's that.
>> All right. How's this? Uh, can you hear
the fan?
>> Not at all.
>> Okay, perfect. I moved out.
>> Can you hear the fan?
>> Well, I hear it outside of the
>> Oh, okay. You can't hear my fan?
>> No.
>> Okay. Excellente. Mu excellente espanol.
Let's count dress
uno.
Hola and welcome back to building better
developers the developer podcast. We are
back with another episode in our season
where we are with AI. We're taking
couple seasons back taking the topics
and literally just running those topics
through again the titles through AI see
what it gives us and uh see what we can
learn from you know what AI does and
things like that. There are uh
definitely some things that we've come
across that are some uh I guess traits
of AI. Uh it's interesting that the you
know what we're giving it what we're
asking for is not actually
specifics. So that's where you get
pretty safe. You know AI can give you
recommendations and stuff all day long
and whether it's right or wrong it's
just it's recommendations and different
from like code or things like that. But
I digress. Let me go ahead and introduce
myself. My name is Rob Broadhead. I am
one of the founders of developer also
the founder of RV consulting where we
help you work with technology whether
you're a little company or a big company
whatever it is we are here to help you
use technology better through
simplification integration automation
innovation we sit down with you we walk
through what your business is we help
you just by talking to us a lot of times
have that conversation about what your
business is what your goals are and then
we sit down and create a techn
technology roadmap and we can either
help you execute on it or not. And the
thing that we bring to the tables has
got all this experience, all these
different lines of business. So, we're
going to help you think outside of the
box as well as help you see the box full
of goodies that is technology. Uh, yes,
it's goodies. It's not a junk drawer.
It's not technology sprawl. Or maybe it
is depending on where you're at. Good
thing and bad thing.
So, this is again like I'm I'm I've had
a rough like it's July, end of July
right now and it has been a rough July.
My latest good thing, bad thing that I
will throw out there is that I talked a
little bit about my son had had a car
accident. We had a lot of issues. We've
been traveling a lot. We're back. They
ended up tolling his car, which is
pretty much a bad thing because he
didn't have a car. And so that meant we
have to go buy a car and fairly quickly
because the rental that he has runs out
in a, you know, small number of days.
And so, and he doesn't have a ton of
money. Basically, what we've got is not
a lot of money from insurance. And so,
we're using that as the starting point
to go buy another car, which means a
used car. And in this case, at least,
you know, probably 10, 15 years old.
Finding a car that age that still works
is in itself a little bit fun. We went
on a lot I will give you a quick
digression. We went on a car lot where
they had a bunch of these things and one
almost every car that we trusted the
engine light came on immediately and two
every one of them had listed asis no
returns and because of the way it was
set up you could not take it for a drive
outside of the lot. So you can't take it
on the open road. I was like no that
hard no. We were not going to sit there
and not actually even test drive a car
and that already has lights blinking all
over that says don't buy me a and buy
that car. That was a bad thing. The good
thing was we found a car that was used.
It was actually a little bit been a guy
that loves to just rebuild cars. Built
one. It was a the same model like two
years older than my son's car, but
actually literally in better shape. It
was a better car. So, as far as we can
tell, knocking on wood or something, you
know, some reasonable faximile of wood
right now, we were able to get his car
replaced with a little bit better car
with almost exactly the amount of money
that we got from insurance out of the
whole thing. So, it was like big win
there. Another big win is we are back
for another episode and I get to toss
this over to Michael so he can introduce
himself.
>> Hey everyone, my name is Michael Malage.
I'm one of the co-founders of developer
building better developers. I'm also the
owner of Envision QA where we help
startups and growing companies build
better software faster with fewer
problems. Our services cover software
development, quality assurance, test
automation, and release support. Similar
to what Rob does with assessments, we go
into businesses and help you really
figure out what it is that you need for
software. You know, companies come to us
when they want to avoid delays, reduce
bugs, and launch with confidence.
Whether you're building your first MVP
or scaling a live product, we make sure
the software is reliable, efficient, and
ready to grow. You can learn more at
envision QA.com.
Good thing, bad thing. So, similar
situation. Uh I would say about three or
four weeks ago, my wife was mowing and
all of a sudden a belt broke and the
mower is dead. We had to tow it down and
send it to the shop.
They said 3 to four days.
It's been about four weeks. Our grass is
so high that we can't even find our two
smallest dogs. They go out to pee, they
go pee on the sidewalk because they
don't want to walk into the jungle that
it is our yard. Good thing is we did get
the mower back. We got that back uh
Monday or Tuesday. But the problem is
we're also in the middle of a heat wave.
So my wife gets some more back. It's
like, "Great. I'm going to go mow." 3
hours in, maybe a third of the yard is
done, and it is so hot. She's like,
"Nope, I'm done." Uh, so
similar situation, but at least we got a
mower and the dogs can now get out to
the yard. So, lots of good things there.
That is so I was just talking to
somebody yesterday that he is uh he
works at HVAC systems. He's got a guy
that it's very hot right now. He's got a
guy that lost his HVAC. They've got to
go, it's under warranty. They've got to
ship the parts. Um, supposed to be seven
to 10 days. I think he said it's now
like day 28 and this guy is living in a
house that's like 95 degrees inside.
It's just like it's miserable and it's
just parts are still a pain in the butt.
What's not a pain in the butt is our
topic. So, we're going to go ahead and
dive right in because we have already
like gone all over the place. So, this
episode uh what we did is we're going
back to a prior episode that was called
customer success delivering value on a
budget. And so, this is one that I threw
out there and we're going to dive right
in. It was uh I've got a slightly
different uh engine than I used last
time around and it gave me slightly
different. It did not give me the uh you
know, that's an awesome topic. It just
like goes right into it. Here's some
suggested topics and content ideas. Uh
bonus if you want to go back and check
us out on the YouTube channel if you're
not right now then you can hear what we
actually typed in and see you know how
that goes. Uh what's interesting is I
bet if you type it you will get
something different because AI is like
that. Uh so episode focus how developers
product teams and technical founders can
build and maintain customer success
programs that truly add value even with
limited time money and people. So here's
the suggested structure and segments.
Introduction why customer success
matters for developers.
We should know that like gosh we I don't
know if we've talked about this one but
we should all agree that. So the bullet
points define customer success versus
customer support. Importance in SAS
software as a structure as a service
gosh startups consulting and indie
product projects. How early stage teams
can't afford to ignore customer
outcomes. and they got quote, "Even if
you're bootstrapping or solo building,
customer success is not optional. It's
how you grow sustainably."
This
God, this it is frustrating because this
is business 101. And there are a lot of
developers that I don't think understand
this. Um, I think there's a lot I've
actually run into customers and
entrepreneurs that don't understand this
that at some point you have to actually
have a customer that will sign a check
or hand over cash or send you Bitcoin or
something so that you can generate
revenue. Businesses consume money. That
means businesses have to find money so
they have something to eat or else they
die a horrible starvation death. Now
I can see as a developer that there is
that and I'm going to talk about the I'm
going to focus on the one that's uh
divine customer success versus customer
support. Um
customer success is we're building
something to make our customer better.
Now we talk all the time about um about
the why about what is the problem we're
solving? But this gets into a little bit
of like why are we solving that problem?
Because if we're just solving it to just
solve the problem, that doesn't help
them. That's not going to move the ball
forward and help them generate money.
And otherwise, the goal is that whatever
we're solving, it is helping it. And it
doesn't mean it directly impacts their
revenue or adds to the revenue, but it
could be things like it reduces time to
produce a product, to provide a service,
to get the back office stuff done. Uh
what we do at RB Consulting is that kind
of stuff where we say we want to take
these things off of your plate that is
the working in your business so you can
work on your business. Those kinds of
things are software that and problems
and work that you're doing as a
developer that is actually helping your
customer with you know to be more
successful. Customer support is really
they're coming to you they're saying hey
I've got a problem I need you to fix it
and let's move forward. And usually the
fix it is a band-aid. It is something
along the lines of they're really
struggling through things. And every so
often they're going to come to you and
say, "Hey, I can't solve this problem.
Can you solve it?" "Sure, I solve this
problem." They go back to doing what
they're doing. Eventually they're going
to come back and they're going to have
to deal with you. Ideally,
what you want to do is not get into
customer support. Yes, there there's
going to be support on the products you
create, but if your model is customer
support, then basically you are a cost
center. If you are not finding ways to
reduce the time, the money and the
effort involved in solving their
problems and getting their their job
done, basically getting their company to
work, then you are actually a cost and
not uh essentially we'll call it an
investment.
That's where you want to be. If you come
in as a developer, if you come in as a
consultant, if you come in as a software
product, and people look at it as, yes,
I'm going to spend, you know, X dollars,
I'm going to spend $100, but this is
going to help me generate $1,000. Then
the math becomes really easy. It becomes
how fast can I get that software. That
is important. And it's it's whether you
are uh independent, whether you are
doing a side hustle, whether you work
for a big organization, cuz I guarantee
you, as much as everybody will, you
know, throw shade at Microsoft, if
people didn't find value in their
products, they would not exist. There is
no such thing as a company that can
exist with developers just going, I'm do
all kinds of random stuff and think that
that's going to be, you know, last for
very long. Either you're going to get
fired or your company's going to tank.
And there is a long history of companies
that have done that where they've been
along the lines of we're going to do
what we want to do. Screw the customer.
They'll come and they'll figure it out
and they'll eventually come and give us
money. And you know what? They almost
never show up to give you money. If they
do, give me a call because we would love
to be a part of that, whatever that
happens to be. Thoughts on this?
Oh,
>> there's a lot to unpack with that. So
customer success versus support
typically.
>> You're muted.
>> There we go. Can you hear me now?
>> We're going to edit that. Yes, I can.
We're gonna edit that.
>> Uh so you you basically provide a lot of
information. So there's a big impact
there. But let's go with customer
service uh you know with support. Let's
start with support. So, typically with
support, you you want to help someone.
Someone's coming to you with the
problem, you want to help them. You want
to solve the problem for them. The trick
there is be careful not to just fall
into band-aid fixes for the customer.
Yes, get them, you know, if they're
down, get them back up, but help them
find a way to get stable quickly. the
faster they can get stable or you can
show them hey here is what you need to
do to fix this problem long term and
then show them the cost benefit of that
like hey to fix this right now well here
let me give you a real world example of
this I had a customer for a decade for
the first four years I went into this uh
customer's office every weekend and it
took me literally a full weekend to
update three computers in their office
doing system updates, uh, software
updates,
cleaning up the machines, antivirus, all
that. 5 years in, they finally replace
their computers. So, we went from 3 days
to literally 4 hours. The time it cost
for me to spend three days there was the
equivalent of buying a computer.
So after three quarters of doing this,
they could have replaced all three
computers and gone to a 4hour window
which is was essentially like 116th of
the time it took to do the maintenance.
And this is just general maintenance
that you need to do for the machines
anyway. So it's like changing the oil in
your car. It's something that you have
to do, but it's something that shouldn't
be that painful and that costly. So when
you are helping your customer support
supporting them and if they come to you
with a problem, this is where you want
to look at customer success. How can you
make them be successful on a budget? How
can you save them money and still solve
their problem and still make money
yourself? You know, you have to make
money. You are a business, but you want
to provide value like we talked about,
you know, that why. What is that why? So
when you're working with the customer,
you know why customer success matters?
Because if you keep them in business and
you keep them happy, they're going to
keep coming back to you for help, for
support. Now, in an ideal world,
hopefully you can solve their problem
indefinitely and they won't need to call
you again. But, you know, like a car,
things do break with computers.
That is a that actually is a good uh
lead into the next uh point. So, I'm
just going to dive into it from there.
So, the next one is the budget
challenge. Common myths. Customer
success is for big companies. Hidden
costs of ignoring customer success.
Churn, bad reviews, high support loads.
Framing customer success as an ROI
multiplier, not an expense. And now this
is really what this goes to what Michael
just provided as an example is
particularly when we get into and this I
guess feels a little self- serving but
when we get into things like
simplification automation uh and even
integration there's those thing and even
innovation the things that we're looking
at the the tasks that we're doing the
values that we're bringing in the value
we're bringing in is that we're taking
something that takes time takes money
costs resources in some way form or
fashion and reducing at and it sometimes
is very very direct like what you know
what Michael said it's like you can say
it takes 10 hours to do this thing at
you know a dollar an hour so it takes 10
bucks but you can go buy this product
for five bucks and then go get it done
and now you don't have to maybe it only
takes an hour so now it's six you know
you you have an investment but now
you're cutting that down every time
those kinds of things
are going to come back to now it's it is
more of a that's more of a hard physical
product. It's not necessarily customer
success. But this is what we need to be
looking for is the success is not that
they bought our product. The success is
not that they are using our product.
Success is not that they love our
product. Customer success is that they
use our product honestly whether they
like it or not and it is helping their
business that it is reducing the
resources required to get things done or
it is allowing them to get to a new uh
area expansion that they weren't able to
otherwise. That is why the easy ones
everybody owns. I'll give you a good
example. email. If you build like email
is so much faster than getting on a
phone. It's so much easier than you know
jumping in a plane and going to talk to
somebody. Similar to that is what we're
on right now is Zoom and video
conferencing because now you don't have
to go all these. You don't have to spend
time on the road and all that other
stuff. So, it makes sense, especially if
you're like, even if you're across town
from your team, it probably makes sense
to invest in Zoom and not use the free
version so you get cut off after 40
minutes. Use some of those since you can
do it. You can record it. You can
actually have a lot of value come out of
those meetings and you can even people
that can't make it, they can even see
the meeting. Those kinds of things are
investments, but the the payback is, you
know, maybe it's not a hard payback.
It's not something you can say, okay, I
just, you know, generated $1,000 more.
But sometimes you can. Customer success
is about that. As Michael said, we are
also a business. So, we have to generate
revenue. We have to be successful. But I
guarantee you, if your customers are
successful, you will be successful. If
your customer, you're making money on
what you do, then it is an easy math for
them to go use you more often. Thoughts
on this one?
So I have another kind of hidden cost
but I'm going to start with a different
one here. So this one is you know budget
challenges with your customer. One of
the biggest things as software
developers we like to solve problems. We
like to build code we like to automate.
Like Rob says we want to simplify. We
want to automate. If you are building an
application and you or a customer has an
application and it comes to you and it
takes them four clicks to do something
that should be done in one click, get
rid of those three clicks and make it a
single click right there. You probably
have saved them about 15 minutes a week
just from all the clicking to get to the
page loads that they need to get to to
do their work. Look for things to
simplify their tasks. Uh especially if
you are building software. Now, I'm
going to flip back over to the hidden
cost real quick is from a business
perspective.
I've done a couple different startups
over the years, and one of the biggest
things that I am very cheap about is my
website cost, hosting costs. And every
Black Friday, I will go sign up every
year for a new deal with a new vendor,
HostGator, Blue Host, whoever. And I
will get the cheapest one possible that
meets my minimal needs. And I move all
my websites over once a year. And I will
pay the very minimal cost. AWS, I do
come for you once in a while if I have a
new email address because you get the
free year tier. But if you can eliminate
hundreds of dollars and keep your
backend and your servers running for the
equivalent of about 50 bucks a year,
that's a huge cost savings. So look at
things that the customer needs and your
business needs and revisit them at least
once a quarter or at least semianually
to make sure that you're not overpaying
for keeping your business.
>> I agree. I think though there is a uh
it's a guy years ago that said, you
know, people would um leap over a dollar
to gather a dime. And I think that's
what sometimes happened is that we get
into and we have to have that mentality
of like sometimes you do need to, you
know, you need to buy something a little
bit. You have to you're going to get
what you pay for. A good example I'm
going to use and this is you people can
hate on me or whatever. I used to buy
Windows laptops. I would get Dell,
Gateway, Toshiba. They were all so they
were all varying levels of good. The
best ones lasted me 18 months, maybe two
years before they were pretty much, you
know, not very useful. They were slow,
they were ponderous, they were a pain in
the butt to deal with. And so I would go
and this is even after I would wipe the
whole machine and rebuild it and still
not terribly fast. So, you know, they
were they were cheap, 15, you know, at
that time I guess 1,500, two grand a
pop, something like that. So, I'm
spending that roughly every other year.
Flash forward and I said I went I went
into the Mac world. I took a bite out of
the Apple. Apples were going to cost me
double basically across the board. I'm
typically spending three to four grand
for an Apple machine whether it's a
laptop or if I do an iMac or something
because I get now granted I do get
high-end but I was getting high-end
Windows too. Not maybe the top but I was
getting pretty high-end machines. Apples
last me typically five to six years. So,
if I spend $4,000 every 6 years versus,
let's say, $1,500
every 2 years, then I'm still $4,500
with Windows machines, not including all
of the costs of like having to reinstall
this, all the software, get everything
configured again, move everything over.
There is a lot that goes there. Now, I
don't want to get this too much into
budgety, so I do want to jump into the
last question or the last point real
quick. Lean tactics for customer
success. Some powerful budget friendly
strategies. These are some of the things
that I think we need to be thinking
about and talking to customers on all
the time. And I'm not I haven't even
looked at them yet, but I'm going to
assume that that's where this is going
to go. Automated onboarding, videos,
walkthroughs, inapp tips, measure what
matters, NPS, churn, feature usage,
support logs. Create feedback loops,
Slack groups, surveys, founder calls.
Build a help hub, facts, FAQs, uh,
searchable docs, GitHub discussions,
email is gold. They heard my email
thing. Trigger-based life cycle emails,
Mail Coach, Postmark, etc., which I'd
include like Mailchimp, uh, Mail Gun,
all those kinds of things that are like,
if you don't know what a drip campaign
is for email, then go like look that up
because if you're in a business, it is
very useful to have those kinds of
things. particularly
how a lot of these tools will allow you
to do it. Uh they can be very very uh
impactful and they don't necessarily I
mean they're going to people know that
it's essentially sort of a form email of
some extent but you can put enough stuff
there that it makes it a valuable um a
form of form email that goes back to
automated onboarding. Like if if it
takes your customers weeks to get
started with the product then there is a
problem. then you need to find ways to
speed that up. Now maybe you have a very
complicated product. But if your product
isn't like learn how to code in Python
or Java Java or something like that or
you know learn how to be a financial
whiz,
it should not take them that long to use
the product. If it does, then you
probably have a mismatch. And the best
way to do that is things like like
videos. Like I said, they're so easy to
do. We've got those. You can go out to
developer.com and see tons and tons of
videos that are basically walkthrough to
get you started on X, whatever X is.
We're not magicians. I mean, maybe we
are, but no, we're not. You can do that
as well. And you don't have to,
obviously, you don't have to look good.
You don't have to have like incredibly
awesome, you know, professional lighting
and all that kind of stuff. And
honestly, there are people out there
that will do this u, you know, they'll
do the video editing, the audio editing,
all that kind of stuff. Don't go to AI.
it's going to screw stuff up. But there
are people that do that at a and it's
not too expensive. It's definitely
something that's a good investment
because now you don't have to put your
people through all this stuff. You can
just sit somebody down in front of your
computer. They can read, you know, they
can watch the video and you're off and
running.
I will I'll throw in feedback.
The easiest way for your customers to
get back to you is the one that you need
to use. And it depends on where they're
at. They may be, you know, young and
they're on phones. So maybe it's going
to be like a DM through whatever an app
you know it could be through Instagram
or Facebook or X or whatever it is or it
could be email. If it's phone fine it's
phone but then like you know make that
as automated as you can get an IVR and
things like that. Find ways to make it
easy to get feedback from your customers
and then act on it. When you give
feedback, put it in your put it in the
hopper, put it in the backlog and make
sure that they feel heard and that they
actually see that their suggestions and
even their complaints made a difference.
Thoughts on that one?
>> So, I'm going to go a slightly
different. So, we didn't you talked
about quite a few good things. Uh, one
warning I'll throw out is uh be careful
the tools you use. uh don't spend a
little time researching the tools before
you go buy them because once you pick a
tool, chances are you're going to spend
the time learning that tool and to
switch tools, you're going to have a
cost in relearning that, retraining your
employees. But things like uh you know,
Jira, Confluence, wikis are a great tool
to keep your documents in a place where
people can keep them up to date. Now, if
you're software developers, look at
readmemes, keep things closer to the
code because chances are the wikis will
get stale on you fairly quickly. But
from a business perspective, having
those portals where people can go for,
you know, HR material, how to to
trainings and things like that, get that
in a central place and make sure
everyone knows where it is. It's easy to
access and hopefully as you have
questions you're updating the site with
those qu the Q&A that your employees
have or your customers have because if
you don't you're going to rehash this
again and again and again. Use the
tools, keep track of the communications
that are going on, and post what is
useful. Um, and make sure that you give
people an answer to a common. Frequently
asked questions are probably the number
one best tool for use, not with just
business, but on the internet. Uh, the
other thing you mentioned too was like
email and Slack. Again, here, pick a
communication channel that your team is
comfortable with. spend a little time
with each, but don't spend a lot because
once you spend too much time, you're
kind of set in your ways or you've
already invested too much time in the
tool. Uh, and it's going to be hard to
pivot. Uh, so if you're a Microsoft
team, it's probably better to stick with
Teams or with Microsoft products. If
you're not Microsoft, look at some other
tools like Slack, um, you know, Trello,
some other tools that are out there. So,
kind of stick to your wheelhouse. Don't
go too far outside of that. Um, and
you'll probably find a tool that fits
for you and is very useful and will help
streamline your business.
>> We'll follow that up by saying
occasionally go outside of your
wheelhouse and just see what's out there
because sometimes you're going to find
something that is better. That's
actually like Michael said, he goes
through and he tries to do Black Friday
deals every year and change stuff
around. So that means he's now bounced
around on a lot of different providers
of that sort and it allows you to test
them out. It allows you to see what's
out there every year. you know,
especially I mean honestly probably
every six months you can see big changes
in a lot of the products are out there.
Definitely every year actually most
likely every year but I would say
definitely every other year. Uh
especially that's when you consider like
big things like CRM and things like
that. Not if you're ERP you're you're
screwed basically you're stuck with your
ERP that's just too long a cycle
usually. But um you know smaller apps
even including counting stuff things
like that there are ways to transition
and I'd say every you know probably
every 2 to 3 years depending on how big
your company is um you should be looking
at stuff to see if maybe I should like
take a do a big platform change. We
actually recently have done this. We've
stuck on the same product for almost all
of the 25 years that RB Consulting has
been around. About a year ago, we
actually not even a year ago now, about
six months ago, we tried to do a change
and we're still deciding whether we
really like it or not because we got
really used to what we were using
before, but we decided, hey, let's try
something new and see how that goes for
us. I recommend that every so often you
do the same. You don't have to bite the
bullet. You don't have to burn the the
lifeboats, as it were, but see what else
is out there and see if maybe you should
adjust where your wheelhouse is.
>> Now,
in this situation, you guys are our
customers. And so we are very very
attuned to customer success. We want you
to be successful. And you may tell from
the title that we're building better
developers. So if you are a developer or
an entrepreneur and you're getting
better at developing whether it's
writing code, creating software,
creating products, building your
business, because we have that developer
thing is the entrepreneur side and the
developer side. We want you getting
better. Our goal is to provide you that
and that means we would love your
feedback including emailing us at
You can also check us out on the
developer.com site. You can leave us
feedback there. Wherever you listen to
podcast, leave us a review. We would
love to hear it, good or bad. Uh out on
YouTube, leave us whatever you want to
hear. You know, whatever you want to
give us out there. We want to know the
good, the bad, recommendations, and we
love to hear stories. Uh, as we talked
about in the the pre-show here in the
green room before we jumped in, we'll
call it. Um, we're also interested in uh
doing some interviews and things like
that. There's a lot of people that we've
got sort of out there that we would like
to, you know, sort of on our our list.
Feel free to contact us if you would
like to be on that list. If you'd like
to be somebody that we can talk to at
some point, do an interview. If you want
to see how it goes, it'll be a little
different than last time, but you can go
look back, I don't know, four or five
seasons ago now where we had like 87
episodes, I think, of interviews. so you
can get a good idea for some of the
people we've talked to. Uh, not to
mention those are some incredible
episodes. We talked to some really good
people throughout that. So, highly
recommend that. More importantly, I
recommend that you wrap this up.
Actually, I'm going to wrap this up.
That you get out there, you have
yourself a great day, a great week, and
we will talk to you next time.
Bonus material because I'm getting all
tripped up on my words there. Uh, oh,
actually, shoot. This is this one. I'm I
get to do the words.
>> Okay. So, uh developer tools for C
customer service on a budget. My AirPods
are like screwing around on me a little
bit here. Okay. So, use tools like
Laravel Nova or Filament to build admin
UIs for tracking customer service data.
Simple dashboards with metrics per
client or user. Chat box like Tidio or
open source options.
Add intercom like features with open
source tools like chat woot. Use Laravel
Horizon, Telescope, or Sentry to fix
user pain before it hits support. Uh,
five, team collaboration. Everyone owns
customer service. Devs aren't just
coders. They affect onboarding, UX, and
performance. Create a culture of cross
functional feedback, support, uh,
support, dev, sales. Lightweight ways to
surface user pain, Slack alerts, trouble
cards, etc. If your error logs could
talk, they'd tell you where what's
hurting success the most. Is the quote.
Case studies and stories. is a solo dev
who cut churn by 50% by improving
onboarding. A small sass that added tool
tips and saw fewer support tickets. How
measuring one metric time to first value
changed the product roadmap. And then
consider inviting some people. There's
some final takeaways. Final takeaways.
You don't need a big budget. You need
intention. Customer success is a
product, not a department. Start small,
iterate, and tie efforts to clear
outcomes, retention, advocacy, fewer
tickets. Lots of stuff there. Is there
one that you want to jump on for a quick
like here's our bonus?
>> Well, I was just going to throw out one
more example um real world example. Uh a
company you and I both worked at years
ago uh had these billing centers where
they had like 22 people in the billing
center and how they would go through the
process of taking the order is they had
these binders and every person in the
billing center touched the binder. So it
would come in, the first person would
take the invoice, put it in the binder,
pass off the next person, would collect
the information, pass it off to the next
person.
That costs the company lots of overhead
for every employee. You have not just
employee salaries, you have uh cost of
the location that you're at because you
have to have a lot of office space for
that many people. You know, there's a
lot of hidden costs there.
All we did was we basically walked
through the processes of that binder and
created an application to simulate that
and we went from like six billing
centers of 22 people to I think three to
six people running the entire billing of
the company. So there could very be some
very simple ways to look at what you
have within your business or your
customer's business. Look at what can be
automated or streamlined and put that
into an application. Put that into a
dashboard. See if you can put something
quick together that basically solves
their very painful daily task. And I can
see your customer being extremely happy.
>> Um I didn't even follow that one up. We
did challenges because I was just
talking to somebody about this the other
day. We did challenges uh a season or
two ago, a couple seasons back and one
of the things that we had as a challenge
on one of our episodes was we talked
about automation and about like every
week just pick something spend 15
minutes on something you know look
around at what do you do a lot and find
a way to do an automation. I think you
can do the same thing with your
customers is take a look at where where
are the interactions, where are the
complaints, maybe look at the log files,
what are the errors or warnings that are
popping up on a regular basis and
address those. Find a way to do so. It
may be that it's going to take a bigger,
you know, it's not something you can
solve in a couple of minutes, but it may
be something that you can start in a
couple minutes where you say, "Okay,
we're going to have a user story that
we're going to address this or an epic
that we're going to address this or
something along those lines." Because I
think too often we get into customer
success issues and we are too much one
way or the other. It's either too much.
We're just talking to one customer and
we're just solving their problem and
getting them happy and then we rinse and
repeat with the next one or we're doing
something and we're really not helping
the one customer because we're trying to
do this general solution to impact
everybody and it takes forever to get to
the general solution. I think that there
is probably some middle ground that we
can find in most cases. I think that
will help you sort of bootstrap it. So,
you're going to keep your customers
happy, but you're also going to be
reducing those costs and the the
investment into keeping them happy and
looking towards their success as you
move forward. We haven't done near
enough of that. That's why I still ask
for emails every single episode as it's
like, hey, shoot me an ep email
You've heard it often enough. So, you
know what the bonus is? I'm not going to
say anymore about that. Send them all.
Send them all. We are going to wrap this
one up. We're not done. We have got
plenty of episodes left. AI is, you
know, it is inexhaustible. It's going to
give us some more ideas and we'll come
next back next time and discuss those.
So until then, go out there, have
yourself a good one. We'll talk to you
next time.