Customer Success Podcasts
If you’re like me, then you can’t help but sing into a hairbrush when you listen to music. However, when I’m in public, I spare everyone the free concert and opt for a podcast instead.
Podcasts are a great way to keep informed and learn on the go – and I’m not the only one who thinks so. About 73 million adults in the US have listened to a podcast in the last month. That’s around a quarter of the population!
And they aren’t half-assing it either. The average listener gets through 7 podcasts a week, and the numbers have been growing year-on-year.
With the rise of storytelling as the new marketing, companies are rolling out their very own podcasts to inform, educate, and connect with their customers. It’s another exciting example of community building we see happening in the most customer-centric of companies.
You know what else is growing?
Customer Success of course!
With two fine graphs like that, it was inevitable podcasts would begin covering topics at the heart of Customer Success (CS). And they have! Longstanding Customer Experience (CX) podcasts are interviewing CS professionals while Customer Success software companies and consultants are producing their own series. All are setting out to illustrate the value Customer Success provides.
We’ve compiled a list of our favorite Customer Success related podcasts to help CSMs through their commutes, coffee-breaks, and workouts. As a bonus, we’ve also tacked on a list of one-off episodes we found hiding in podcast series that don’t usually deal with Customer Success.
So put down the hairbrush, shut down Spotify and enjoy these podcasts. Listed in no particular order.
Jump to…
Forrester’s CX Cast
Run by Forrester.com, this series is hosted by Customer Experience analysts Sam Stern and Jennifer Wise. With a new release each week and over 100 episodes in their back catalog, you’ll have plenty of CX goodness to pump through your earbuds. Most episodes are easily digestible at 10 to 20 minutes long.
Our Pick: How To Build A Customer Health Assessment [iTunes, Podomatic]
Listen if you are developing a health scoring system for your customers but don’t know where begin.
Host Sam Stern chats with his colleague TJ Keitt about the benefits of measuring B2B relationship health and describes how to get started building a minimum viable health score for your customers.
Also, check out:
- Overcoming Challenges To Successfully Map B2B Customer Journeys [iTunes, Podomatic]
- Customer Success Management Is The Key To Outstanding B2B Customer Experiences [iTunes, Podomatic]
SuccesslyLive
Co-Founder of Successly and host of SuccesslyLive, Adam O’Donnell has built up an impressive set of Customer Success interviews with big companies and familiar names in the space. After 200+ interviews, he’s even guest featured in a ServiceRocket podcast discussing his findings on the state of Customer Success.
Protip: There are over 50 of Adam’s interviews available as podcasts but for the full library, check out the SuccesslyLive YouTube channel.
Our Pick: Interview with Boaz Maor, Customer Success Executive & Advisor [iTunes, SoundCloud]
Listen if you want to take your customer health score to the next level.
Customer Success Executive and Advisor, Boaz Maor discusses the maturity of Customer Success as a function and how CS is evolving to predict churn. He reveals what he feels is missing from most predictive models out there – the outward-looking measure of customer maturity.
Also, check out:
- “Happiness Doesn’t Pay,” CEO of Client Velocity Greg Daines [iTunes, SoundCloud]
- Interview with Todd Eby, Co-Founder & CEO, SuccessHacker [iTunes, SoundCloud]
Churn It Up
Churn It Up is another podcast series that picks the brains of Customer Success professionals. Who better to ask for insights (besides your customers of course!) than real-life CSMs? This series comes courtesy of Receptive and is presented by their Director of Customer Success Aly Mahan. We love their tagline: All CS, no BS!
Our Pick: Customer Training Best Practices & Quick Wins with Linda Schwaber-Cohen, Skilljar [iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher]
Listen if you want to create or improve your customer training program to drive Customer Success.
Get expert guidance from Teacher-turned-Tech-Trainer Linda Schwaber-Cohen. As Training Manager at Skilljar (a Learning Management Platform), Linda lays out first steps to building out customer training – establishing what you need to teach and how. From there, listeners are schooled on how training can impact Customer Success.
Also, check out:
- How To Set Up Customer Health Scores from Scratch with Rachel Jennings, Assignar [iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher]
- From Founding CSM to One of Many with Srajan Bhagat at Sauce Labs [iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher]
Outside In with Charles Trevail
Hosted by the CEO of C Space, Charles Trevail, this series is all about customer-centricity. Through his interviews, Charles sets out to discover what being customer-centric means to businesses and how others can accomplish it. This podcast has a storytelling slant we love, and there are plenty of great guests sharing their stories.
Our Pick: JetBlue: Inspiring Humanity in Travel [iTunes, SoundCloud]
Listen if you want to hear how an airline builds customer loyalty through customer-focused innovation.
Some JetBlue Advocates on Twitter
JetBlue’s mission is “to bring humanity back to air travel”, but is it working? Well, of the 4 million Voice of the Customer (VOC) survey results they get each year, 1 in 3 mentions the crew members by name. In this podcast, Jamie Perry (Vice President of Marketing at JetBlue) gives a behind-the-curtain look at the customer-centric decisions made by the airline.
Also, check out:
- Metro Bank CEO: Creating Fans, Killing Stupid Rules [iTunes, SoundCloud]
- Lego & Gatorade: Innovation as “Dating” Your Customers, Not Fighting Competitors [iTunes, SoundCloud]
Strengths In Action: Customer Success | SaaS | Career
Created by Nils Vinje of Glide Consulting, Strengths In Action is like your favorite TV show that ended too soon. Nils has created a 7 episode series packed full of engaging and insightful chats with Customer Success team leads and consultants. He hasn’t made an episode since 2016, but don’t let that put you off – there are plenty of food-for-thought moments in his series. We wonder if we can get a petition going for a season 2.
Our Pick: Interview with Greg Tate from Optimizely [iTunes, Stitcher]
Listen if you’re considering a career change from Sales to Customer Success.
Greg Tate, VP of Customer Success at Optimizely, waxes lyrical about his move from graduate Sales Engineer to Sales-Rep at Salesforce.com before discovering Customer Success. He talks about what drew him into CS and how his employment background has served him well in leading a 60-strong Customer Success team.
Also, check out:
- Interview with Bill Lapcevic, Customer Success Maven [iTunes, Stitcher]
- Interview with Catherine Blackmore from Oracle Marketing Cloud [iTunes, Stitcher]
The Chief Customer Officer Human Duct Tape Show
Host Jeanne Bliss has an impressive resume. She’s led Customer Experience initiatives at five major US corporations – Microsoft, Allstate, Coldwell Banker, Mazda, and Lands’ End. Now a CX consultant, author, and keynote speaker, Jeanne makes time to bring us a new podcast episode each week. There are plenty of interviews with C-Level CX executives and 100+ episodes to choose from.
Our Pick: Getting Your Board to Embrace Customer Experience, With Maury Kask [iTunes, Stitcher]
Listen if you are struggling to get buy-in from management on your Customer Success efforts.
Jeanne conducts an in-depth interview with her guest Maury Kask, who as she points out, has a very long job title: Senior Vice President of Consumer Operations and Chief Customer Experience Officer (CXO) at Westminster Savings Credit Union. Maury believes that an essential part of getting buy-in for customer-focused change lies in collaborative implementation. He lays out the strategy that worked for him, including his “7 work streams”.
Also, check out:
- First 90 Days of a Chief Customer Success Officer, with Duygu Cibik [iTunes, Stitcher]
- Leading Customer Success in a B2B Business, With Jose Vergara [iTunes, Stitcher]
Inside Intercom
Run by the team at Intercom (obviously), this podcast is a celebration of the people who are designing, building, and sharing the software products of today. Interviewees are always excited to discuss hot topics and share insights with listeners. We regularly come away with some tidbit from these conversations.
Our Pick: Intercom on Customer Engagement [iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher]
Listen if you are building out your customer messaging strategy for engagement and retention.
Officially this is a set of 8 podcasts combining to form a how-to guide to ensuring your customers engage with your product. The team from Intercom walk you through developing a messaging strategy for your customers, starting with targeting. They explain what customer segments are and why you would want to use them to engage with customers. Crucially, however, they elaborate to include the “how” with real-world example segments and the purpose of having each one. From there, Intercom digs into the nitty-gritty of crafting targeted messages and triggering them at the right moment.
Also, check out:
- Monal Chokshi, Head of UX Research at Lyft [iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher]
- From Conversion to Retention: Industry Experts on Improving Your Onboarding [Intercom, iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher]
SaaStr Podcast
Harry Stebbings hosts this podcast series for SaaStr which covers topics of interest to SaaS startups. Harry’s enthusiasm for Customer Success is evident to listeners, with conversations regularly touching on the subject. There are plenty of CS-focused episodes to be found once you dig into their 170+ strong collection.
Our Pick: John Gleeson, VP Customer Success @ Affinio Discusses The Optimal Relationship Between Customer Success and Sales [Libsyn]
Listen if you are concentrating on improving the hand-off process between Sales and Customer Success.
John Gleeson, VP Customer Success at Affinio tells Harry about the separation of Sales and Customer Success at Affinio and their reason for not allowing CS to own revenue.
Also, check out:
- Dan Burkhart, Founder & CEO @ Recurly Shares How to Build & Scale A Customer Success Team [iTunes, Libsyn, SoundCloud]
- Jon Herstein, SVP Customer Success @ Box Discusses Building & Scaling Box’s Customer Success Team [Libsyn]
Voxpro Studios
Brought to you by CX Outsourcer Voxpro and hosted by their Content Editor Patrick Haughey, this podcast series has a laid-back vibe that’s perfect for your Friday commute. Patrick is super passionate about Customer Experience and eager to sit down with the CX folks who are doing it best – Spotify, Airbnb, and GoFundMe, to name just a few.
Our Pick: How I raised Net Promoter Score from 8 to 68 – Alan McNab, MD EMEA of Velocidi [iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher]
Listen if you’ve been tasked with rebuilding trust with your company or improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Patrick met with Alan McNab, Managing Director of EMEA at Velocidi, to discuss the importance of trust in business relationships. Alan reveals his love of philosophy and his discovery of the four different measures of trust – presence, expertise, experience, and sincerity.
Also, check out:
- Asana – Brian Boroff, Head of Customer Success, Services, and User Operations [iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher]
- HubSpot – Amanda Whyte, Senior Manager of Agency Partner and Customer Success [iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher]
Helping Sells Radio
Brought to you by ServiceRocket, Helping Sells Radio is a podcast aimed at helping you attract the right customers and make them successful with your product. Hosted by Bill Cushard and Sarah E. Brown, their tagline is “Selling Doesn’t Help, Helping Sells.”
Our Pick: Samuel Hulick On Secrets To Successful User Onboarding [iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher]
Listen if you are concentrating on improving the onboarding experience your users have with your product.
Samuel Hulick has seen it all – from hasty welcome tours to tooltips pointing out features rather than guiding users to the product value. In this interview, Samuel shines a light on the often-neglected area of user onboarding and touches on the more general topic of customer education.
Protip: If you haven’t heard of Samuel’s onboarding teardowns, we highly recommend you check them out.
Also, check out:
- Nichole Elizabeth Demeré Says PMs and CSMs Must Align On Customer Journeys [iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher]
- Protip: Nichole has been promoting Customer Success for a number of years and regularly touches on CS topics over on her blog.
- Ken Hirsohn On Why Customer Training Must Be Fully Integrated With Customer Experience [iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher]
The Customer Success Podcast by Gainsight
This podcast series is in its second year and is hosted by Chief Customer Officer at Gainsight Allison Pickens. Expect plenty of expert insights from Allison and interviews with thought-leaders in the space.
Our Pick: How to Create Advocates Through Personal Delight with Chris O’Neill (CEO, Evernote) [iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher]
Listen if you are interested in building a customer advocacy program.
With 220 million registered users, Evernote’s growth in the past decade is impressive and largely due to word-of-mouth referrals. Their CEO Chris O’Neill chats about the competitive advantage you gain when you pay attention to what the customer is saying about your product. Chris explains the formal advocacy program they have at Evernote and the benefits it brings.
Also, check out:
- How to Find a Job in Customer Success with Emilia D’Anzica [iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher]
- Protip: Emilia was voted one of the “2018 Top 25 Customer Success Influencers” by Mindtouch. The list is a great place to find new CS folks to follow.
- Why Transparency is a Customer Success Imperative with Simon Tucker [iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher]
This is CX
Next up is a podcast hosted by two Customer Experience professionals at West Monroe Partners – Mike Manfredo and Paul Hagen. They have a wealth of CX experience between them and have thankfully decided to bestow their knowledge on us, bit-by-bit, in half-hour segments. Their goal with this podcast is to “share personal experiences and best practices, in [their] hope to make the world a little more customer-centric”.
Our Pick: Understanding Your Customers Using Data [iTunes, This is CX]
Listen if you want glean insights and develop personas from your customer data.
In this episode, Mike and Paul are joined by Jamie Fishman, an Advanced Analytics Consultant at West Monroe Partners. Jamie looks at the different questions companies may have that can potentially be answered by segmenting their customer base. Jamie also highlights challenges such as missing data and what to do to get a workable dataset.
Also, check out:
- A Discussion on B2B Customer Experience [iTunes, This is CX]
- An Introduction to Voice of the Customer [iTunes, This is CX]
CXYZ
TaskUs’s Co-founders, Bryce Maddock and Jaspar Weir host this excellent Customer Experience podcast series. They interview industry leaders who have tales to tell of successes and failures with their CX strategies. Bryce and Jaspar release a new episode every other Tuesday.
Our Pick: Personas and Metrics — Understanding Your Customer with Karen Tang of Prezi [iTunes, Stitcher, TaskUs]
Listen if you are interested in developing and validating customer personas to better understand your customers.
VP Customer Success & Support Karen Tang describes the approach her team took when developing customer personas at presentation software company Prezi. Karen gives examples of customer personas they use and highlights the importance of establishing the success metrics and customer journey for each persona.
Also, check out:
- Understanding and Meeting the Needs of Your Customers with Kirsty Traill (VP Customer, Hootsuite) [iTunes, Stitcher]
- How to Build a Team and Create a Culture with Alan Chambless (VP Customer Success, Weebly) [iTunes, Stitcher, TaskUs]
Customer Success Conversations
Hosted by the founder of CustomerSuccessManager.com, Adam Joseph, this series features interviews with leaders in the Customer Success industry. In Adam’s own words: “I wanted to create these podcasts so that I could invite a whole range of people that work in Customer Success every day so that we could swap some stories and some tips about some of the challenges that we’ve faced and most importantly what we’ve learned as a result.”
Our Pick: Interview with Matt Myszkowski, Head of Customer Success at Rant & Rave [iTunes, SoundCloud]
Listen if you are hiring for your Customer Success team.
For this the first episode in the series, Adam chats with former work colleagues (and fellow Liverpool fan) Matt Myszkowski. Matt discusses what he looks for when hiring a CSM and how he measures the success of his Customer Success team.
Protip: Follow Matt on Twitter – CustomerSuccessMatt (@MattMyszkowski). You won’t regret it.
Also, check out:
- Interview with Emilie Dubau, Manager of Customer Success at Sana Commerce [iTunes, SoundCloud]
- Alan Armstrong, Founder and CEO at Eigenworks [iTunes, SoundCloud]
Strikedeck Radio
As the name suggests, this series is brought to you by the CS platform Strikedeck. Your host is Kristen Hayer, the Founder & CEO of The Success League.
Protip: If you haven’t come across Kristen or TSL yet, we highly recommend you check out The Success League blog. Now back to the podcasts!
Our Pick: Interview with Tom Lipscomb, VP of Customer Success at Datanyze [iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher]
Listen if you are searching for the best Customer Success metrics to track.
Veteran CS leader Tom Lipscomb joins Kristin to discuss “Leading indicators of Key Customer Success Metrics”. Tom discusses the importance of establishing some form of correlation between your leading indicators of success and desired goals or behaviors. He stresses the importance of proving these correlations with data and recognizing the ever-changing nature of SaaS goals.
Also, check out:
- Interview with Maheen Memon, Director of CS at Nulogy [iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher]
- Interview with Loni Spratt Brown, Head of CS at Entelo [iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher]
MyCustomer
Next on our list is the MyCustomer podcast which is brought to you by MyCustomer.com, an online community of customer-focused professionals. Your host this time is MyCustomer.com Editor Chris Ward. This podcast series had just four episodes at the time of writing, and release dates are sporadic, but fingers crossed they’ll make more.
Our Pick: Why Your Customer Surveys Suck [MyCustomer, SoundCloud]
Listen if you want to survey your customers and don’t want to, well, suck at it.
Chris collects opinions on customer survey dos-and-don’ts from three experts in the field. This episode highlights the complexities of conducting actionable surveys at scale and common survey pitfalls like asking for information you should already know.
Also, check out:
- Why It’s Time You Understood Your Customers’ Emotions [MyCustomer, SoundCloud]
- How to Deliver Proactive Customer Service [MyCustomer, SoundCloud]
The SaaS Revolution Show
The SaaS Revolution Show is brought to you by SaaStock, the SaaS conference from Dublin, Ireland. Host Alex Theuma (Founder and CEO of SaaStock) brings you insights from the SaaS leaders in Europe and around the World. Alex and the SaaStock team just celebrated their 100th episode with a special roundup edition showcasing all the best bits so far. Congrats guys!
Protip: In addition to their podcast series, the team at SaaStock also share invaluable Customer Success talks from their conferences over on their YouTube channel.
Our Pick: Building a Customer-Driven Startup, with David Cancel, CEO of Drift [iTunes, Overcast, Stitcher]
Listen if you want to foster a company culture conducive to Customer Success.
David Cancel of Drift has some advice for entrepreneurs – keep customer outcomes at the core of your business or risk being disrupted by a customer-focused competitor. He chats with Alex about the benefits of a customer-driven company culture and shares his tips for making internal changes towards customer obsession.
Also, check out:
- How to Maintain Customer Relationships as a Company Scales [iTunes, Overcast, Stitcher]
- Why Product User Engagement Is the Most Important Metric for a Saas Company [iTunes, Overcast, Stitcher]
Bowery Capital Startup Sales Podcast
Ignore the “Sales” part of the title for a second and bear with me. This series is brought to you by early-stage venture capital firm Bowery Capital. I’ve included this in our Customer Success podcast list as the Bowery Capital team regularly hit on CS-related topics, and there is valuable strategic advice to be found here.
Our Pick: Client Journey Mapping with Nicolle Paradise (ADP) [Bowery Capital, iTunes]
Listen if you are kicking off the process of customer journey mapping.
If there are any Customer Success households out there, Nicolle Paradise is surely a household name. She’s Senior Director of Client Experience at ADP and a regular keynote speaker on all things CS. In this podcast, Nicolle shares practical advice for creating a customer journey map, right down to who should and should not be in the room at the time.
Also, check out:
- How to Build a Customer-Focused Content Strategy with Georgiana Laudi (Unbounce) [Bowery Capital, iTunes]
- Protip: Georgiana runs Forget the Funnel with Claire Suellentrop. If you are tackling customer journey mapping, don’t miss their excellent workshop with Amy Ellis of FullStory.
- Cohort Analysis for Customer Success with Allison Metcalfe (LiveRamp) [Bowery Capital, iTunes]
The Customer Success Channel hosted by Planhat
Here’s another podcast from a Customer Success software builder, this time it’s the Swedish company Planhat. Hosted by their Marketing Manager Megan Lozicki, this series is all about educating listeners on the best Customer Success practices and strategies through conversations with CS trailblazers.
Our Pick: David Apple, VP of Customer Success @ Typeform [iTunes, SoundCloud]
Listen if you are building out your Customer Success team or scaling an existing one.
Megan interviews David Apple, discussing his role leading the Customer Success initiative at Typeform. David explains the problem of churn in the survey software industry and tells how they began to move from a reactive customer support model. David also shares his CSM onboarding tips and the mistakes made when scaling the team.
Also, check out:
- Yves Doucet, CEO of Dovico, on Creating a Culture of Customer Success [iTunes, SoundCloud]
- How Sales & Customer Success Can Overlap [iTunes, SoundCloud]
Bonus Customer Success Podcast Episodes
Photo by Delaney Dawson on Unsplash
Still with us? There are so many great business podcasts which primarily focus on growth, marketing, sales, or design, but do occasionally hit on some Customer Success pearls of wisdom. Here are some of those episodes:
- Actionable Marketing Podcast
- How To Develop Editorial Values That Improve Customer Success With Gregory Ciotti From Help Scout [CoSchedule, iTunes]
- B2B Nation
- Insightly: Predictive Analytics and Initiating Customer Interaction [iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher]
- Being Boss
- Building a Customer-Focused Business with Brooke Castillo [iTunes, SoundCloud]
- ChartMogul‘s SaaS Open Mic
- Improving Customer Feedback in SaaS with Canny [iTunes, Simplecast]
- Thinking beyond UX with David Okuniev, Founder of Typeform [iTunes, SoundCloud]
- CX Pilots
- What’s Wrong With Customer Surveys? [SoundCloud]
- Flip My Funnel
- Ground Up
- VP of Customer Success Julie Hogan / Drift’s Approach for Getting Closest to the Customer [iTunes, SoundCloud]
- OV | BUILD
- Proposify
- How Demos, Onboarding, and Microcopy Lead to Long-term Customer Success [iTunes, SoundCloud]
- Quotable Sales Podcast by Salesforce
- Building Customer Success into Your Sales DNA, with Tiffani Bova [iTunes, SoundCloud]
- Rework By Basecamp
- How to Say You’re Sorry [iTunes, RadioPublic]
- Rocketship.fm
- Sales Hacker Podcast
- How to 10x Your Business with Customer Success [iTunes, Sales Hacker]
- Startups For The Rest Of Us
- The ActiveCampaign Podcast
- Creating the Complete Customer Journey with John Morrison [ActiveCampaign, iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher]
- The Content Love Podcast
- A Crash Course in Building an Insanely Engaged Community With Lucia Fontaina-Powell [iTunes, Marijana Kay]
- The Empowered Marketer
- Customer Retention is Everything in Ecommerce | Dominic Coryell of Glambot [iTunes, SoundCloud]
- The Growth Show by HubSpot
- Behind the Scenes With Zappos: How to Build a Lovable Company Culture [iTunes, SoundCloud]
- The Humans Strike Back by Hotjar
- The SaaS Business Podcast
- How to Earn Your Customer’s Attention with Tom Schwab [iTunes, SaaS Business Podcast, Stitcher]
- The Support Ops Hangout
- UI Breakfast Podcast
- SaaS Email Onboarding with Val Geisler [iTunes, Stitcher, UI Breakfast]
- Protip: Head over to Val’s blog and check out her email onboarding teardowns. You won’t be disappointed!
- SaaS Email Onboarding with Val Geisler [iTunes, Stitcher, UI Breakfast]
- Unemployable with Brian Clark
- Why Customer Complaints are a Valuable Business Asset [iTunes, Unemployable]
- UX and Growth Podcast by Austin Knight
- Re-Engaging & Retaining Users [Austin Knight, iTunes]
