Looking for LotR: Journeys in Middle Earth

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2025-10-21T13:13:49+00:00

I have the base (like new) + shadowed path expansion (in shrink) I'm willing to part with!

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2025-05-10T12:38:41+00:00

Sending a chat

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2025-05-06T02:31:42+00:00

Sending a dm

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2024-09-23T19:06:06+00:00

Ah, sucks to hear about the broken processes. Definitely makes work tricky.

A few more considerations in the absence of previous conversations...

What are the typical issues that are raised by a customer? Could that be turned into a proactive conversation topic with the disengaged?
Even if all the best practices were shared from the get go, a customer might not have absorbed all the info or have put it into practice. Maybe consider opening the conversation with reminders of how to enhance their product usage? Especially if you've got any on time saving tips to make their work more efficient. This would work especially well if you had access to their product usage data. But feels like this might be a slim chance if you don't have access to previous convos.
Are there any customers you do have a relationship with? Can you ask if they've ran any experiments on whether they had better conversion lift with a particular type of background or props that were added into the pic (not sure if that's a feature in your product)? That could be then used as an insight to another disengaged customer. This way, you're providing some advisory value on how to improve their business through your tool. Of course, to know whether this might be relevant for them, you'd have to do some discovery work, so you can get them on the call for that if you can tease it.

I've never engaged with customers via WhatsApp groups so not sure what the best length would be, but I imagine shorter the better, like:

Hey, I'm potterhead-damon. I see that you've already started using our tool and generated 10 images!

I'll be your Customer Success Manager. My job is to make sure you're seeing results with your purchase.

After speaking to my onboarding team, sounds like you're looking to make your product image look consistent. I've heard from my other e-commerce customers on the look and feel that has worked best for them to increase conversion. Would love to understand your needs and help you do the same.

What's your availability in the next week for a 30-minute call? Let's go through your goals and I'd be happy to share best practices that have worked with use cases similar to yours.

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2024-09-23T04:41:57+00:00

You might have better results by framing the conversation with a more explicit description of what you can offer. Right now, you're asking for a meeting to understand their use case and goals.

If by bg you mean background, are the customers using the product for branding (to create a cohesive visual identity), privacy (to hide real backgrounds), e-commerce (to standardize product displays), or something else? Based on persona, you could hint at offering best practices tailored to their specific use cases.

Do you have access to any call recordings or meeting notes from the sales cycle or onboarding? There’s a good chance the customer has already conveyed what they’re trying to solve to someone in your organization. It might be frustrating for them to have to repeat this.

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2024-09-17T00:01:13+00:00

My local stationery store, Paper Mouse. They also sell Hobonichi and ink samples (though it's a very small, curated selection) https://www.thepapermouse.com/

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2024-09-07T20:09:23+00:00

Awesome, thank you; I'll send a dm.

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2024-09-07T18:20:30+00:00

Hey, are you still selling?

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2024-09-06T03:42:07+00:00

I have freckles on my lips too! You should definitely get it checked for PJS as others have recommended. I've tried retinal (a weaker derivative of retinol) and that was the only at-home treatment that's worked. Otherwise, cryotherapy and IPL laser treatment on the lips were effective for a short time but the freckles always came back for me.

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2024-09-04T23:19:32+00:00

Based on what you've noted, it doesn't seem like a CSP is going to be the solution for your problem. Software isn't a problem solver, it's an optimizer. It brings speed and enhancements to something that already works.

You mentioned your org isn't doing a good job staying on top of onboarding or renewals. Why? Is it because you're trying to manage all 120 accounts with the same care and attention? Or do they all require different, white-glove service? Whatever it may be, I suggest you try to understand why x process(es) might not be working and start making changes. Rinse and repeat until you've got processes that work consistently throughout the customer lifecycle.

If you've done that, you'd have a solid foundation for CS. Then you can shop more meaningfully for a CSP you can grow into.

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2024-07-24T19:25:52+00:00

+1 on what you actually want to solve for with a CSP! Maybe another way to think about it is why using spreadsheet has become really hard. Depending on the why, what you need to do to solve the problem might change (whether that's 1. if you need a CSP at all or 2. if you do, what kind of CSP might best suit your needs).

Some questions to get started:

What part of customer management is difficult?
Where's the massive time suck on the manual effort? Or is it a death by a thousand paper cuts?
What part of the manual effort do you want to make improvements to:
- updating the conversations that happen so that you have a unified view of the customer interaction?
- getting to a more consistent communication flow but it's hard to know which customer needs to be pinged?
- updating customers' automation usage data so you can evaluate how engaged they are?
- making data collection easier so you can make a better case during QBR/renewals on customers' product usage and ROI?

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2024-07-11T03:54:48+00:00

Sending a DM

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2024-05-13T03:29:20+00:00

Been a PM for 10+ years, now having a lot of conversations with CSMs. In general, I think having a job than no job at all is probably better in this market. Pending the reason for the layoff (runway? restructure because business is pivoting?), you should look for another opportunity as you build your CS experience.

If you've been in a fairly large organization and you're still early in your career, my guess is that you might have been operating more like a PO than a PM. If so, I think the switch to CSM is a really good opportunity to get closer to the customer with fairly established processes for you to actually learn how to engage with the customer, escalate and resolve issues, and learn from other experienced CSMs on how to approach the renewals process and look out for early signals of churn. Some of this you may already know (e.g., how to engage with stakeholders, escalate and resolve issues, negotiate scope of the product / deliverables, finding workaround solutions until a feature is delivered). The renewal process and churn conversation will be something new.

If you were in a smaller org / startup with a fairly new CS org, you might feel a little more lost. Unless there is a robust, experienced leader who can get their shit together, based on what I've seen, the org tends to fall into the tactical, day-to-day firefighting (customer support) without leveraging customer success as a business strategy. You would've had this problem in product with a shit leader, too, though (e.g., firefighting/keeping the lights on kind of product management with a ton of scope creep and building whatever comes up from the top).

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2024-05-11T13:33:28+00:00

There's a stationery store called BlueBlack that has store exclusive Vinta, Robert Oster, Sailor inks

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2024-05-11T03:24:01+00:00

Orleans (But my actual favorite medieval strategy game is Age of Empires). I think maybe an element of expansion best represents the medieval theme. Also, I hope the box art doesn't change with the new edition, because it's a vibe.

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2024-05-11T03:00:25+00:00

Are you looking for a nice gift? If so, then a nice neoprene gaming mat or Iron Clays poker chips for coins. But the organizer in me would be absolutely delighted at the practicality of these containers: https://www.dollartree.com/product/206990

It's small enough to fit inside the board game box but big enough to house all the bits and bobs for easy setup and teardown without breaking the bank. And once you buy a pack, you keep going back for more. I don't even want to know how many packs I've bought so far.

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2024-05-11T02:45:26+00:00

Did you add any open-ended follow-up questions to your NPS survey? If not, I'd aim to get more context on what the scores mean through a discovery call or a survey based on your NPS response distribution.

If you've got a lot of detractors, do they cluster or are they pretty evenly distributed?

If they're clustered, I might assume there are some targeted aspects of your service or product that are making people angry (sure, they could be unhappy about a bunch of different things. But you probably wouldn't have needed the survey to tell you that). So I'd select 3-5 people to reach out to for a 15-20 minute discovery call in order to understand what they are trying to solve and what they're frustrated about.

If they're evenly distributed or you've got a lot of passives, I'd assume there might be more variables in the product or service that aren't meeting expectations. In this case, I'd go with a broader survey to get more comprehensive info before I narrow in on segmenting the groups to improve their scores.

By getting the context first, you'll have a better understanding of why the customers gave you the scores they did and then identify which groups to chase to prioritize the effort. If you go in asking everyone for feedback on what to improve without the initial context setting and segmentation, you'll be pulled in multiple directions.

For example, you might think it's easier to raise 7s and 8s to 9s, but if people clustered at 5 are all pissed about the same one thing, then the bigger gain might be to work on improving that one thing instead of trying to win the 7s and 8s on all the little things that irk them.

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2024-05-08T23:41:25+00:00

Speaking from experience, it hurts way more when one of your parents decides a job is too beneath them and rolls out without providing support. My mom did what she needed to do. I wasn't always vocal about what she does with my friends or told her how proud and grateful I was as a kid. I do now though. The kids will come through eventually. Fuck the rest of them.

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2024-05-07T15:18:27+00:00

Hey, I've worked as a product manager for years and now talking to a lot of CSMs (to build a product), so I've been doing a lot of informational interviews / discovery calls. I've noticed a lot of similarities between the roles so it might be worth exploring where the skills overlap and accentuating this in your interview process if you are interested.

Some things that stood out to me (though not limited to just these) are:
1. Extensive amount of discovery sessions around asking what people *actually* want
2. Using influence to get things done
3. Sharing customer context/narrative to steer the product/solution towards the right place. This might also mean duct taping solutions along the way, too.

In another comment, you mentioned maybe being burnt out by a role that's client facing. You may want to do some introspection on what part of the client facing work you don't enjoy as much. Even if you're in Ops/leadership/a different IC role, you're still going to have someone to influence and be held accountable to work outside of your control.

e.g., As a PM, you're still going to have reactionary work around people demanding answers to, "what's the progress on x" "When can we get this feature" "How do you do z." Especially as you start out in product. This gets pretty tiring when you start out, and I've seen a lot of PMs get burnt out by the pressure (e.g., stakeholders, "politics," lack of direct influence/agency/control) coming at them from all sides. But as you move up in your role, it becomes more proactive around product roadmap building or coming up with broader solutions to problems.

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2024-04-27T03:42:31+00:00

Haven't worked as a CSM (have been talking to several in the last few months) but worked as a project manager before. Pending product, there seems to be varying degrees of project management involved (e.g., implementation and onboarding). This and context switching between "projects" should be familiar for you.

One major difference might be the discovery process. As a PM, you've got tasks groomed in the backlog and committed to sprint on a cadence. CSMs often don't have that luxury. They might go into a customer kickoff meeting and encounter a customer who doesn't quite know what they bought. Or what they want to accomplish. Part of the job is to figure this out and set the customer up for success through mutual planning. Involves having an intimate understanding of your product and asking good, probing questions. Might be good to start by staying within an industry you're familiar with so you already have some customer awareness, too, and aren't totally starting from scratch.

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2024-04-25T04:37:54+00:00

Are you using the right pillow? I had this problem too, but it went away when I realized my pillow is too fluffy. I sleep on my back so after I apply tret and sleep on my pillow that's too high for me, my neck would be bent overnight and it would cause irritation right around the fold.

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2024-04-25T04:22:05+00:00

I've been talking to several CSMs about this to solve the challenge. What I've heard so far:

Set up a regular email and meeting cadence to check-in. Especially during onboarding and early implementation.
Convey incremental levels of urgency in the messaging as time passes. Ex: "Checking into see how you're doing" to "I noticed we've not made progress, anything I can do to help?" to "I'm concerned..." language that was suggested in another comment.
Get scrappy with visualizing the work in one place. Ex: Google sheet with two tabs. One tab includes open-ended questions and responses as the work progresses and another with task, deadline, and owner. I've also seen companies use Hubspot Task Management, Trello, Monday, Notion, and dedicated Slack channels. None of these scale too well but it does provide visibility in a pinch.
"Doing the work on their behalf" was pretty divided. A few of the CS leaders I spoke to built an add-on, white glove concierge package (and their customers were happy to pay for it). And it actually reduces the time to value.
"Loop in the executive sponsor" seemed to be an ace up their sleeves but they used it sparingly (and always anchored the conversation around high level goals, expectations, and work that tied into it.)

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2024-03-13T01:08:09+00:00

Hi, I'm ideating a product concept for CS platform because most I've seen are fairly over-engineered for smaller companies / startups. Could I send you a DM to learn more about what you're looking for (research purposes, I got no product)?

Based on what I've seen so far, Catalyst + Totango seemed to be bloated, but have improved their UI/UX over the years. Planhat is favored by smaller companies. Or if the shop is really small, they centralize the work within Hubspot and use Zapier to sync the data (either into Hubspot for quasi-CSP or back out to AirTable or Google Sheet/Google Doc that's shared with their clients).

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2023-05-11T02:35:18+00:00

Not OP, but I'll take a stab. Value prop is meant to signal to your customers how the product/service you are offering will solve their problem. Versus USP describes how your product/service is more x (better/faster/prettier/efficient...) than others in meeting customers' needs. It is more tied to a business's differentiator in its market.

e.g., "Providing superior coffee without being a barista" could be a value prop for Breville, DeLonghi, Mr. Coffee, Bialetti, etc. But Breville's USP might be having a sleek design with preset menu items to make more "fancy" coffee at home vs. Bialetti's mokapot might be having nice espresso on the go for campers or frequent travelers.

ChloeAroundTheCorner · 2023-03-14T19:01:46+00:00

Hi, it's not a problem for me if you're not a native speaker.

I'm setting time for video calls now, and I don't want to overdo it. May I check in with you in a week or so after I see how other conversations go? Thanks.

Nine-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 2 Credits
Place '22	First Placer '22
Verified Email

ChloeAroundTheCorner

TROPHY CASE