Customer Success Team Profile: GoCanvas

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Web: https://gocanvas.com/            Industry: Mobile Software            

This month’s team feature profiles GoCanvas, a mobile platform that makes it simple for any business to automate their work.

We met with Brady James, CS Department Manager and Zoe Stewart, Customer Success Operations Manager, to get the scoop on this high performing CS team. Read on to meet the GoCanvas CS team and learn how they leverage ChurnZero.

Q: Tell us about GoCanvas and your CS team 

A:  The GoCanvas platform grants anyone - regardless of familiarity with technology & software – the ability to create mobile forms (aka “apps”) that solve business problems relating to, or resulting from, data collection. The Customer Success team is 12 strong - 8 CSMs, a team lead, a CS Operations Manager, and our Department Manager. We align our CSMs based on revenue bands (mid-market & enterprise).

Our self-serve market is supported by a customer engagement specialist, who owns & optimizes aspects of our digital-touch strategy. Dedicated management of our clients is shared between Customer Success and a team of Account Managers & Account Specialists focusing on expansion potential. The post-sale side of GoCanvas is completed with Technical Support and Professional Services teams.

Q: What is the primary focus of the Customer Success team at your company?

A: Zoe Stewart: While technically aligned to drive onboarding and product adoption, being a member of our Customer Success team is much more. Supporting a diverse range of industries and use cases, it is natural to provide solutions to problems as they arise - but that is providing support, not success. Being a GoCanvas Customer Success Manager is a commitment to understanding the “why” of each client. From “Mom-and-Pop” shops to enterprise organizations, effective workflow management and data organization requires constant iteration. By focusing on our client’s “why”, we’re able to support scalable solutions and deliver meaningful outcomes.

Q: How do you encourage customer centricity across your entire organization?

A: Zoe Stewart: Our customers are the charter for everything we do, and we’ve enforced that as a key pillar of our culture. Whether you are an IC, Team Lead, or member of our C-Suite the expectation is that all decisions are made in consideration of our clients and our people. That said, we’ve had to work incredibly hard to earn Customer Success a seat at the table. By continuing to prove out the value of a well-organized customer success team, we are able to keep customers as our “north star” for all decisions.

Q: What types of hires have you found most beneficial? Have you noticed any positive correlations with past roles, industries, or backgrounds?

A: Brady James: The CS organization at GoCanvas has seen exponential growth over the last year. We have team members with backgrounds in sales development, account management, customer service and some where this is their first job out of college. This diversity in backgrounds has benefited the team with fresh ideas, varying skill sets and career development aspirations within and outside of the team. There is no “perfect background” for a successful CS professional, just a need to be passionate about customers, and a desire to help them find the most value with the product at hand.

Q: What moment(s) makes you most proud of your team?

A: Brady James: As the leader of this amazing team, it’s hard to choose just a few moments to be proud of. I would say firstly, what makes me proud is each individual member of my team, whether they are a CSM, an Ops Manager, or a Team Lead, is always looking for ways to better their customer’s experience with GoCanvas. Hearing them proudly describe a problem they solved, or finally getting a customer on a phone call after chasing them for weeks, fills me with pride knowing they’re doing it for all the right reasons. I’m also incredibly proud of this team’s ability to lean into change. Throughout the last year, we have rolled out several new processes, including a complete overhaul of our customer onboarding, and this team leaned in, accepted the change, and got to work with thoughtful and insightful feedback to continue to tweak to better serve their clients. I’ve seen such growth in this team in a short amount of time, and they should all be proud of the impact they’ve made on the organization.

Q: In what ways has ChurnZero empowered your team to do their job?

A: Zoe Stewart: ChurnZero has been a catalyst of maturity for our entire organization. The biggest factor in our growth has been ChurnScores. Prior to focusing on ChurnZero efforts in 2020, each team at GoCanvas used different criteria to define, measure & analyze customer health. Having the ChurnZero team (shoutout to Naomi Aiken & all of ChurnZero support) and platform in our corner, we were able to aggregate and analyze cohorts of clients and unify our company. Defining client health is not black and white - it’s a prediction of whether or not your client is receiving value. Shifting that mindset would not have been possible without ChurnZero.

Q: Was there an “aha moment” when you saw how impactful ChurnZero could be?

A: Zoe Stewart: My “aha moment” was when I began to learn about Journeys and how many ChurnZero clients use them to structure onboarding experiences. The way ChurnZero Journeys are structured (milestones consisting of internal tasks and client achievements) completely changed how we support new clients. The nature of our platform is totally customizable, and as a result, we were often overcomplicating training and oversimplifying adoption. By looking at the journey as a set of steps both clients and CSMs need to complete for mutual success, we were able to become much more thoughtful and consistent at the most crucial time for our clients.

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Would your team like to be profiled in our next CS Team Feature? Email aweihmann@churnzero to learn more.