John Monteith of Seismic On The 5 Ways To Create a Wow! Customer Experience

Always strive to go above and beyond expectations. — Don’t just be a robot that implements software and answers questions. Your customers pay you to be their partners — they’re coming to you because they’re trying to solve a problem. That means you need to be a creative thinker and problem solver. They’re looking to you for guidance because you know more about the deployment of your technology than they do, and they may not even know what they want to do with your product in the first place. Don’t just be a yes man — challenge what your customers think they may need to do and collaborate with them.

As part of our series about the five things a business should do to create a Wow! customer experience, I had the pleasure of interviewing John Monteith. John Monteith is the Chief of Staff and Vice President of Customer Success at Seismic, a global leader in sales enablement.

Thank you so much for joining us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

Customer experience has been a primary theme throughout my career, no matter where I find myself working. My first job was in a hospital setting, which was very patient-centric. When you’re working with patients, you have to learn empathy and bedside manner above all else, and I take these skills with me everywhere I go.

I finished grad school in 2007 and naively expected to find hundreds of thousands of dollars in offers. Instead, I found a financial crisis and a collapsed economy. This forced me into the world of early stage ventures, where I learned the experience you deliver to your customers makes all the difference when you’re trying to raise money and launch products. That’s what will allow you to sell more and establish a reputation you can build off of in the marketplace.

In 2009, I started a company with some of my colleagues from business school. We were rolling out a services offering with a team that was supposed to be focused on customer experience, but we were getting a lot of negative feedback from customers. I was very confused, thinking, “What’s going on here? Why are our customers complaining all the time when the entire team is working endlessly on their accounts?”

It turns out, we weren’t effectively communicating to our customers what we were doing. We learned if you’re not interacting with your customers on a regular basis and keeping them in the loop, it doesn’t matter if you’re doing the best job on the planet — they’re not going to know. That’s a tough hole to dig out of, but it pushed me to really focus on building a layer of customer experience in everything I do.

I started at my current company, Seismic, in 2013. We were still relatively small and had just completed a Series A round of funding. We had under $2M in ARR and a handful of customers, so our primary objective was to bring as much value to those customers as we could. My original task was to build an onboarding customer experience program so customers could see what value they would get out of our product — it was a perfect role for a customer-obsessed person like me.

Today, as VP and Chief of Staff over our Customer Success team, I get to focus on our ongoing customer retention efforts, growth, professional services and customer education. I get to stay obsessed with our customers’ experience and devote my time to providing them with the best scope of services possible.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

One of the first companies I worked with right out of school was an early stage defense contracting company. We were developing tethered aerostat systems (basically helium-filled balloons) for the Department of Defense that had to be able to lift 15 pounds and deploy in a certain amount of time. When the time came to test the balloon for our first real customer, it was an extremely windy day. The team was so anxious to get the customer’s signoff so we could get paid that we decided to fly it anyway, even though the winds were reaching 30 miles per hour.

I’m sure you can predict what happened once we launched the balloon. The tether broke loose with 15 pounds of lead weight tied to it and started flying over a metropolitan area in Kentucky! My team jumped in our pickup truck to chase it across town, praying it wouldn’t drop all that weight on someone’s head.

Thankfully, the balloon landed in some rural farmland and nobody was hurt. But we still chalked it up to a failure; we had pushed our product to its threshold, and it broke. We thought our commitment to getting the balloon in the air would make our customers happy, but we ended up making a worse impression because of our disregard for everyone’s safety.

I learned two big lessons that day. One: it’s important to try and please your customers, but not at the expense of the safety of those involved or the product itself. And two, don’t fly weighted balloons on a windy day.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

I’ve been really fortunate to have great mentors who have helped me at different stages throughout my career. Pete Solvik, one of the first investors in Seismic who got me involved with the company in the first place, has been a great coach for me throughout my Seismic journey. Pete has always helped me maintain the right perspective in a customer-facing role; he’s taught me that the demands of your customers, especially at an enterprise software company, can be pretty intense, and it’s easy to get lost in the weeds and lose sight of your broader strategy. Pete has challenged me to pull myself out of the weeds and take a step back so I can grow my team and help them focus on what is both important and urgent. Without a focus on strategic objectives, it can be challenging to grow to meet the evolving demands of customers.

The founding team at Seismic has also been a consistent source of strength for me. Doug Winter, Marc Romano, Ed Calnan, and Fred Xie have always been incredibly supportive of the work we’ve done in Customer Success, both through consistent investment into our practice and the moral support to build out our discipline.

Thank you for that. Let’s now pivot to the main focus of our interview. This might be intuitive, but I think it’s helpful to specifically articulate it. In your words, can you share a few reasons why great customer service and a great customer experience is essential for success in business?

This is one of the foundational principles of my professional life: service is a differentiator, full stop. That applies across all industries, from enterprise software to consumer products. At Seismic, when we compete in the marketplace with someone selling a similar technology to ours, our customer services have always been legs for us to stand on. Assuming the technology is equivalent and customer perception of the products is the same, the service we provide can be what nudges a customer to make the buying decision to choose us over a competitor.

If you deliver on the expectation you sold your customers in the first place, that is a lasting differentiator, and it will become a big catalyst to word-of-mouth promotion with your existing customers. Products will always come and go, but it’s the way you apply that product to your business that matters. A service professional brings together the product and the challenges faced by a business to deliver value to prospects and customers.

Furthermore, we’re in an environment right now that’s obsessed with automation and reducing human involvement in just about everything. People have been so bombarded with automated responses, whether they’re dealing with a chat bot or calling a company’s customer service line, that we’re starting to appreciate any human interaction whatsoever. Businesses that embrace human connection will stand out in the crowd. It doesn’t have to be a face-to-face conversation; chat-based support provided by an actual human being instead of an AI bot can make a world of difference and make someone want to work with your company again.

Human connection is something Seismic has always prided ourselves on. Sales enablement didn’t exist as a market when Seismic was founded. Now, it’s a $7.5B market that we’ve helped define. And enablement is a thoroughly human practice that isn’t just throwing a piece of software at a problem and hoping it fixes everything. Sales enablement is a discipline, and through our experience implementing and establishing those disciplines for our customers, we’ve helped them solve a multitude of challenges. We wouldn’t be able to do that without exceptional service.

We have all had times either in a store, or online, when we’ve had a very poor experience as a customer or user. If the importance of a good customer experience is so intuitive, and apparent, where is the disconnect? How is it that so many companies do not make this a priority?

This one is simple: service costs money. It’s an area of investment, and unless you’re really focused on driving services revenue, it’s a lot harder to correlate that investment with a quantitative return. In the Software as a Service (SaaS) space, we can look at customer retention and customer growth as measures to justify the investment, but in general, this takes a lot of money. Most businesses are just trying to run as efficiently as they can and drop as much profit to the bottom line as possible. This is great from a spreadsheet perspective, but not from the perspective of building a great and lasting company.

I’ve been on the other side of the table in the SaaS space for implementation, where we’ve transacted with a vendor bringing in their services team. At least nine out of ten times, I’ve been underwhelmed. The mindset of delivering a great customer experience has to be there. It will help you sell more software, and in the end the investment will pay off.

Do you think that more competition helps force companies to improve the customer experience they offer? Are there other external pressures that can force a company to improve the customer experience?

When you’re competing on product, service can be a lasting differentiator. Great or terrible customer service will help define your reputation in the marketplace. Competition can be a driver for better customer experience, but it can also be a distraction. If you’ve got a great product and great services and a competitor comes in with something that’s faster and easier to implement, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better. It’s always to the customer’s advantage to take the extra time to implement a piece of software or deploy a particular product — and do it the right way, with the right services team.

Can you share with us a story from your experience about a customer who was “Wowed” by the experience you provided?

SaaS is a team effort, so this is nothing I can solely take credit for. One incident that stands out happened a couple years ago, when a customer gave notice that they didn’t want to work with us anymore. I didn’t understand why they were leaving — I thought we were hitting the mark and giving them what they needed. But, at that time I wasn’t involved in the nuts and bolts of the project and felt like it was a worthwhile exercise to dig in and see what was going on.

I reached out to the project sponsor and asked him to outline what all of the company’s needs were. It turned out none of what they were trying to accomplish was rocket science — they just hadn’t really been listened to yet. I told the sponsor we wanted to keep his business, move forward and provide value, and he said: “This is exactly what I need in order to move forward.”

By reaching out to the right people and gaining a solid understanding of what they were trying to accomplish with their product, we were able to keep their business. A few months after the fact, the project sponsor reached out to me again. He told me, “That’s the greatest customer success experience I’ve ever had with a SaaS vendor. You listened and took the time to understand our business instead of just preaching what your company and platform do. You brought the right resources in to help us accomplish what we wanted.”

This is one of my favorite customer success stories to tell, because we took a negative situation with an unhappy customer, and in a matter of months we flipped the script, got them to renew, and they’re still with us and growing as a customer today.

Did that Wow! experience have any long term ripple effects? Can you share the story?

A few months after that customer renewed, their Head of Sales Operations reached out to me. She had overseen the project sponsor and let me know they were creating a customer success program at their company. She wanted OUR advice on how to build customer success for their business, because they were so impressed with our service. That, to me, was the ultimate compliment: they weren’t just interested in solving problems with our product, they wanted to translate our customer success and sales enablement discipline into their own internal practices, too.

Ok, here is the main question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things a business leader should know in order to create a Wow! Customer Experience. Please share a story or an example for each.

It’s hard to boil this down to just five, but regardless of industry, here’s how to ensure you deliver a superior customer experience:

1. First impressions are key.

You always remember the first time you meet someone, and if it goes well, it’s easy to build off of that foundation. But if it goes poorly, it’s nearly impossible to repair. Making a good first impression isn’t hard to do. Any time we have a new customer, we always start with a kickoff call. Getting in contact with them within 24 hours of contract signing and introducing yourself will let your customer know they’re being taken care of and you’re taking the time to understand their business.

2. Have respect for your customers.

They’re the lifeblood of your business, and you need to treat them as such! It blows my mind whenever someone feels inconvenienced by a customer — yes, they can be demanding, but they’re also paying you for a product and/or service. Be responsive and respectful of their time, and remember that every business has a different selling motion.

At Seismic, it’s critical for us to care about our customers enough to learn about how they do what they do. How can we implement our sales enablement discipline if we don’t understand what our customers actually sell?

A short anecdote about this: I was working with a customer in the finserv space in my early days at Seismic. During one meeting, someone joked, “We could set our watches to your start times on meetings, and we really appreciate that! You’re never late!”

Showing up on time and fully prepared are little things you can do to show respect for your customer, no matter the industry.

3. Don’t over-automate your customer interactions.

This is true especially near the beginning of your relationship. You need to build trust and rapport with your customers, and that relationship will be the foundation of everything you do going forward. Send personal emails and interact with them as a human being.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s okay to create multiple channels of communication to interact with your customers and meet them where they want to be met. Just make sure when they hit you up on one of those channels, they can talk to a real human being. If you have any sort of reputation in the marketplace, this type of extra care will carry you to the next level.

4. Pay attention to the data your customers give you.

Always strive to better understand your customers’ needs, wants, and how they operate. You can gather this information through surveys, use cases and other types of structured feedback. All this data will tell a story you can start to infer and interpret results from, and it’ll enable you to deliver better service across the board.

Doing your due diligence to understand the customers you work with and putting yourself in their shoes will allow you to come to the table with some knowledge of their business. This will help you nurture that relationship and build customer trust and loyalty.

5. Always strive to go above and beyond expectations.

Don’t just be a robot that implements software and answers questions. Your customers pay you to be their partners — they’re coming to you because they’re trying to solve a problem. That means you need to be a creative thinker and problem solver. They’re looking to you for guidance because you know more about the deployment of your technology than they do, and they may not even know what they want to do with your product in the first place. Don’t just be a yes man — challenge what your customers think they may need to do and collaborate with them.

In the end, it’s our job to come to the table with solutions and wow them with that experience. The more you can be a creative problem solver and offer them opinions and solutions, the more respect you’ll build and the greater chance you have at wowing them!

Are there a few things that can be done so that when a customer or client has a Wow! experience, they inspire others to reach out to you as well?

Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback and/or references from your customers. You won’t get it if you don’t ask! Also, if you know your customer had a great experience, don’t be shy and ask them to post a review. This will help you replicate that experience going forward and attract new prospects.

At Seismic, we have a customer advocacy program, which puts our customers into an ecosystem where they can provide value to us. Program members become our word-of-mouth evangelists, and we can show them our appreciation by sending them some swag or connecting them with our product team so they have some influence over the product pipeline. There are lots of ways to ensure a Wow! customer experience has ripple effects — all you have to do is be proactive!

My particular expertise is in retail, so I’d like to ask a question about that. Amazon is going to exert pressure on all of retail for the foreseeable future. New Direct-To-Consumer companies based in China are emerging that offer prices that are much cheaper than US and European brands. What would you advise retail companies and eCommerce companies, for them to be successful in the face of such strong competition?

It doesn’t matter if you’re in the business of B2B enterprise software or Direct-To-Consumer (D2C) products: when you’re competing on product or price, service will be your key differentiator. D2C product sales work with a limited scope of services because you’re not delivering a service on behalf of your product. But there are little things retailers can do to set themselves apart, like including a handwritten note in every product order that’s shipped explaining the story behind your business.

As the ubiquity of products becomes huge thanks to online retailers like Amazon, celebrating the individuality of your business will give you a strategic advantage. The more you can tell the story of why you’re in this business, how it came to be, why you’re passionate about the product, etc., the more likely customers will remember you and keep coming back.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) will also separate you from the rest of the herd. Take a company like Bombas, for example: for every product purchased, they donate an item of clothing to the homeless. Making your customers feel like they’re taking part in social welfare when they buy your product is a form of service, especially when you’re not providing them with a direct interaction. The more you can seek out these bespoke differentiating experiences, the more advantages you’ll see when it comes to brand sentiment and reputation in the marketplace.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

The lifetime cost for someone living with multiple sclerosis (MS) is close to $4M, but 5% of the MS population in the US is currently living on social security. There’s a huge inequity there that needs to be corrected.

I would love to kickstart a movement that helps people with chronic disabilities enter the workforce. These are folks with sky-high healthcare costs, but fewer opportunities when it comes to making a steady income because the physical and mental demands of the American workforce are simply too much to handle.

I think it’s well past time we find a way to gainfully employ and provide supplemental income to people living with disabilities. How can we introduce people into the workforce in a meaningful way so they can cover the cost of their living expenses?

My wife and I started a charity for folks dealing with lifetime chronic disabilities called Adapt. Our rehab center in San Diego offers services like physical therapy, counseling, social isolation prevention, and community building to help minimize the impact disabilities have on a person’s life. We need more programs like this on a national and global scale, because right now, our society is not doing enough to make these people feel valued and able to live up to their full potential.

How can our readers follow you on social media?

Follow me on LinkedIn!

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.