210. Owning Retention & Standardizing CS Across 17 Acquisitions ft. Rebecca Nerad (Advantive)

33 min. [Un]Churned Staircase AI

Advantive's VP of CS on post-merger integration, owning GRR across four lines of business, and the objection-handling agent she built herself.

Show Notes

Rebecca Nerad, VP of Customer Success at Advantive, owns retention across four lines of business built from 17 acquisitions in four years. She joins Josh to break down what post-merger integration looks like from the post-sales seat:sitting in on diligence before deals close, inheriting handshake contracts nobody documented, and owning the renewal number for customers she’s only just met. Plus the objection-handling agent she built on months of renewal desk recordings, and her candid take on why she still can’t measure what it’s worth.

What You’ll Learn

– How to structure a CS org that spans across multiple lines of business
– How to not lose customer knowledge from acquired companies
– Hiring & coaching for empathy
– The internal objection-handling agent built from renewal negotiation history
– Why time to response may be the retention metric AI actually moves
– The customization trap AI reintroduces

 

Timestamps

0:00 – Preview & Intro
0:58 – Meet Rebecca Nerad (VP of CS, Advantive)
1:22 – 17 acquisitions in four years
3:52 – Playbook for post-merger customer success
5:12 – Handshake deals and undocumented contracts
6:51 – What acquired companies do better
7:46 – Running CS post-sales motion
11:15 – Staffing CSMs by industry, not product
13:41 – Hiring for curiosity and EQ
14:28 – How you actually coach empathy
17:48 – Taking an agentic AI course as a VP
18:55 – Building an objection-handling agent
22:05 – The AI measurement problem
24:00 – Time to response as the real lever
25:32 – At-risk tickets, save plays, and QBRs
28:24 – Grading the long-tail segment
29:19 – AI adoption as the CS opportunity
30:23 – The dashboard-at-scale trap

Featuring

Josh Schachter, a smiling man with a beard, wearing glasses, a dark blazer, and a white shirt, poses against a plain white background.
Josh Schachter, Host
SVP, Strategy & Market Development @ Gainsight
Smiling woman with wavy, shoulder-length blonde hair wearing a taupe top, pictured against a plain white background—her confident demeanor perfectly embodies the spirit of customer success.
Rebecca Nerad, Guest
VP OF CS @ Advantive

Transcript

Rebecca Nerad:
We’ve acquired 17 companies in the manufacturing and distribution software space, best of breed, and pulled them together, um, to become this larger organization where we can better serve our customers.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Over, over what time period have you rolled up 17?

Rebecca Nerad:
Over the past 4 years, and I’ve been here for over 2.

Yes.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
How does it work? How does it work? You got 17 product lines, 17, not even, not only product lines, I mean, 17 businesses. That’s right. And I, I, I’m, I’m Starting to see you as a center of excellence for the company. How do these CS post-sales motions run each respectively? And then how do you put them all together in a cohesive way? You’re listening to Unchurned, brought to you by the Gainsight Podcast Network. Subscribe to our Substack at unchurned.gainsight.com, where we go deep on every episode, like how one post-sales team at Cloudbeds built over 150 AI agents. That story and more at unchurned.gainsight.com. Hello everybody, and welcome to this episode of Unchurned. I’m your host, Josh Schachter, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Go-to-Market Development at Gainsight.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
And I am thrilled to be here today with Rebecca Neerad. Rebecca is the Vice President of Customer Success at Advantiv. They are the leader in mission-critical manufacturing and distribution software. Rebecca, welcome so much to the program.

Rebecca Nerad:
Great to be here, Josh.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Okay. Tell us about Advantive, then we’re going to break down the org, break down post-sales, and get into all the things.

Rebecca Nerad:
Josh, I’ve been in customer success for over 2 decades, and all of that has been in the supply chain and operations software space. My path, the focus of my past 10 years has been in M&A, and Advantive has a real focus there. We’ve acquired 17 companies, in the manufacturing and distribution software space, best of breed, and pulled them together to become this larger organization where we can better serve our customers.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Over what time period have you rolled up 17?

Rebecca Nerad:
Over the past 4 years, and I’ve been here for over 2.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Nice.

Rebecca Nerad:
Yes.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Okay, so that’s a little over 4 acquisitions, mergers, post-merger integration work per year.

Rebecca Nerad:
Yes, when Advantiv started, we pulled together 6 companies, and after that time acquired— usually it would be one at a time, but as you said, multiples every year in varying sizes and varying customer sets as well. There’s some of our larger solutions and lines of business such as packaging where we have major customers, and the ARR threshold is very different for those in long-tail small distributors, for example. that we also make sure to serve.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
So, are you just in a perpetual cycle of post-merger integration work?

Rebecca Nerad:
We always need to serve. We always have new customers to serve. So, yes, it’s rolling out—

Josh Schachter [Host]:
I like that answer. That’s a very diplomatic way of putting it.

Rebecca Nerad:
No, it’s true though. We are making sure to take care of our existing customers and offer newer things to them, while at the same time welcoming those new customers Our most recent acquisition was a company called Insequence. Just today, they had their first customer advisory board meeting. And so, some of those meetings are welcoming and introducing who is Advantiv, right? Who is this company who just acquired them? What we will offer, including AI. And, you know, it’s an entirely new team for some of them, obviously some of the same players, but, you know, new processes and new value will come. And so, yes, that’s part of our ongoing conversations with customers.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
So, you’re like the leading expert in post-sales PMI work is what I’m realizing, right? This wasn’t in the prep call, Rebecca. So, what’s— do you have a playbook for this sort of thing?

Rebecca Nerad:
Certainly, there are similar motions, and we do have a playbook as far as steps that we make sure to take care of as we engage with customers. And yes, this has been my focus when I was the VP of Customer Success at E2Open. Over 4 years, we went through 16 acquisitions during the time that I was there as well. So, it is something that I care a lot about and has been one of my focus areas. One of the reasons I love acquisitions, because specifically as relates to customer success, is because we’re buying these smaller companies who oftentimes one person wears so many hats and takes care of the customer in different ways, and they may not have a traditional customer success motion. So, I’m both bringing the process and operational efficiency and outreach that comes with customer success, but also what’s the right fit and the right homes for the different individuals who we’re welcoming into our company. Sometimes that’s customer success within my team, and sometimes it’s within another team in the organization that’s a better fit for those people.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
But do you ever come in before the deal has closed as part of diligence?

Rebecca Nerad:
Yes.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah, you do.

Rebecca Nerad:
Yes. As part of the leadership team, that’s, um, part of my responsibility.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
What’s the craziest thing you’ve uncovered? It’s like the biggest shit show you’ve uncovered in an acquire, a company that you were going to acquire or that you did acquire. You don’t have to name names. I just want to know stories.

Rebecca Nerad:
Um, I think—

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Like they were using like, like Excel spreadsheet, like was their only tool for the entire organization.

Rebecca Nerad:
That’s not uncommon to find a bunch of old Excel spreadsheets. I think for me, because renewals are often part of my responsibility at customer success, in customer success, and they are here at Advantiv. Sometimes it’s the more that we learn about some of the old contracts, right? And the way that things were written or maybe not documented very well over the decades that some of these older software companies have been in place. There are lots of times where there are handshakes and family friends that did business together. And so that’s one of the challenges when I think about acquiring and and make sure to transfer how we can appropriately care for these customers when sometimes things aren’t documented very clearly. That’s one of the things that can be interesting when there’s just not as much available. Um, and obviously we’re relying on a lot of the knowledge in people’s heads.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah. Oh, I’m sure. Yeah. I mean, when the deal desk hands you a photocopy of a napkin with a, you know, with a, with a statement of work on it, I suppose that, that becomes problematic downstream.

Rebecca Nerad:
And it can be tough when a customer’s asking for something that we no longer have a reason to be able to support in that way when it hadn’t been more clearly documented. And so, part of our responsibility, right, is repapering onto our paper and aligning on if there are any new expectations.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Have you ever taken in processes, playbooks, programs from incoming customer success teams as best practice to strengthen the core of what you do on a centralized basis?

Rebecca Nerad:
Less in customer success and more in smaller areas within the organization. Let’s say there’s a particular support triage process that has worked really well at that company. One of the things that we do, of course, is keep the business running as usual when we acquire them and understand how they operate. And in some cases, we’ll take one of those and then apply it. You know, if you have one company who does really well about You know, 24/7 support in that particular process. I know that’s support, not success, but those are some of those we have adopted and been able to extend across the broader organization. It’s less common for some of these smaller companies to have a true customer success function when, when they’re acquired by a company larger like mine.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah. So, you’re always the expert. Okay.

Rebecca Nerad:
You said that, not me.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
I said that. Yeah, I said that. You didn’t say that. You didn’t say that. Um, so, so how does it work? How does it work? You got 17 product lines, 17, not even, not only product lines, I mean, 17 businesses.

Rebecca Nerad:
That’s right.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
And I, I, I’m, I’m starting to see you as a, a center of excellence for the company. How do these CS post-sales motions run each respectively? And then how do you put them all together in a cohesive way?

Rebecca Nerad:
It was important for us to structure according to lines of business. When Advantiv got to be a certain size. And the advantage there is each LOB has a general manager, and under their purview is sales, support, professional services, because as I mentioned, the ways to serve some of these customers is very different. And that’s how we’re aligned. We have 4 LOBs here. Yet at the same time, I own the entire renewal CS function. And so I partner with those GMs, on how to serve them that way, the way they sell or market or, um, cover certain responsibilities for the customers is similar.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
But do you own the numbers? Do you own the, do you own the GRR return numbers?

Rebecca Nerad:
Yes, I own the overall retention as well as the, all the ARR renewal rates, retention uplift.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah, I guess that’s what you were saying, but, but not just the process, you actually own the numbers as well.

Rebecca Nerad:
Yes.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
That’s gotta be really challenging. I mean, you’ve just brought in a business that you may not know anything or very little about, and they have a different way of doing things, or they don’t do things, and all of a sudden they have a different GM who has their own method and methodology, method and methodology, whatever. They do things their own way. And, uh, and then you have to own the numbers. Tell me more about that.

Rebecca Nerad:
Well, first I would say, when we acquire a company, it falls into one of our existing lines of business. So, yes, there are leaders from that company who we’re bringing into the correct line of business, but there’s a general manager who already oversees that and knows Advantiv’s structure and our metrics.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Okay.

Rebecca Nerad:
So, we’re pulling that new company into the structure of one of the lines of business, right? If we just acquired a company, for example, in the manufacturing space, so that’s now under the purview of the manufacturing general manager. So, as far as who owns it, that aligns. What we’re learning about is what’s different or nuanced about this particular company that we acquired. And a lot of that, as you said, is part of the due diligence before we close the business. It’s also just reaching out and trying to understand the customers, the patterns. And the example I keep using, the company we recently acquired, I have a senior CSM who’s part of my team who she’s been with this company 15 years. She knows the customers really well. So, part of what we’ve been working with her on over the past couple months is just understanding more clearly what drives those customers, what outcomes they intended when they purchased the software, all of those.

Rebecca Nerad:
And then our understanding of risk and retention comes along with our customer understanding.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah. Do the CSMs and team go from the one product to then supporting all the products within that line of business?

Rebecca Nerad:
Focused purely by line of business, yes, but across products within the LOB. Yeah. So, my team is structured by line of business, quality or manufacturing or packaging.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
So, we’re talking 3 to 6 products per line of business, maybe something like that?

Rebecca Nerad:
Yes.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Talk to me a little bit about that, ’cause that feel— I, I know, I mean, Gainsight has a similar setup. I know it can be a challenge to keep everybody educated, especially when you have such a, a fast deal velocity as you guys do.

Rebecca Nerad:
Yeah.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Um, yeah.

Rebecca Nerad:
We’ve been fortunate to have some strong enablement, um, at Advantiv that really focuses on both the skills side of developing customer success as well as the product side, it is important that we’re focused by line of business because there are too many products for the CSMs to really be able to advise on the solutions and the outcomes across very different products.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Right.

Rebecca Nerad:
And fortunately, there’s enough overlap once they start to know the industry. that it’s important that they be able to differentiate between them too, because customers may ask us similar questions, right? If you have a customer who’s, you know, who has one of our, you know, ProPlanner manufacturing solutions, they may also be interested in Pinpoint. And so that CSM should be able to talk about those within that particular product family. And so, yeah, that’s part of the training we provide. And the other part is, I would say half my team came from the legacy organizations. So, they come from one of these companies who we’ve acquired. When Advantiv started, there were 4 people who came in from the original 6 companies. They were designated as CSMs, and they are still part of my team.

Rebecca Nerad:
So, if I think about the people who know the industry, like Rusty knows the automotive industry, He’s, and he’s now leading the manufacturing team for customer success. And so, it’s been an evolution of taking these people who do have the industry knowledge and then training others who are newer and who don’t come from the industry.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Along those lines, you mentioned the skills that you develop in addition to the knowledge enablement. What are some of the skills that you are actively developing in your team?

Rebecca Nerad:
In particular, right now, we’re training on AI skills and comfort with AI tools. That’s true across Advantive, not just in customer success. When I’m hiring, I am looking for curiosity and for EQ. We certainly do training on how to outreach and engage and be a better listener with customers, but that’s also something that Despite the fact that I coach empathy, I also need to hire for it because there’s only so far you can go if somebody doesn’t inherently have some of those skills.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
What do you mean you coach empathy? Tell me more about that.

Rebecca Nerad:
How to listen for what the customer isn’t saying, but you may be seeing in other ways, ways to ask—

Josh Schachter [Host]:
But what do you mean you coach it? How do you coach it? Sure.

Rebecca Nerad:
To work directly with CSMs one-on-one or in a broader environment on how they can better focus on what the customer needs and is asking for, how to be a better listener, how to communicate better, how to put yourself in the customer’s shoes.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah.

Rebecca Nerad:
And so, for me, some of it’s just challenging the so what, right? Making sure that we are thinking of things through the customer’s metrics, right? Moving the customer’s number, not just our number, like retention. It’s teaching about personas. When you think about who is the person who’s calling, who’s complaining about something that’s not working in the way that they would expect, what’s the impact on them?

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah.

Rebecca Nerad:
And what’s their experience? So, that it’s tough in CS or in support or in these roles where you think of your queue or you have your renewal number or whatever that looks like to think about what the customer’s actually experiencing. And so, that’s part of what I take the time to do. Else, they’re just going through a list of tasks.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
How do you do that? I guess what stood out to me, what intrigued me is you saying that you, Vice President of CS across all these product lines, I forget how big your team is, but through a substantial-sized team, that you actively coach them in empathy. That stood out to me as unique.

Rebecca Nerad:
To me, it’s any opportunity I get. We’ve had, for example, when we have an onsite with the CSM team, for example, when we have sales kickoffs, Often the CSMs come. We also have a day that’s just for CS. There’s some of that that we’re doing actually in advance, preparing as far as presentation and listening skills, and then some that we do in person. But to me, it’s also every day, anytime I have the opportunity on how to— let’s say there’s an email that came in and it really didn’t seem to clue in when the customer was expressing frustration. how we can coach better there. We’re using an AI tool right now that not only records the customer’s conversations, but it gauges sentiment. And I think even that is helping the CSMs think about, wait, if they were expressing frustration in this way, does that mean I should change the way that our health score is? How might I respond differently? How should I act differently? So there’s—

Josh Schachter [Host]:
What’s the tool?

Rebecca Nerad:
Airspeed. It used to be known as— it used to be—

Josh Schachter [Host]:
I want to give love to the startups. Yeah. As a former founder of a note-taker application, AI note-taker, I want to make sure to spread the love there.

Rebecca Nerad:
Yes, it used to be called Glyphiq and it’s Airspeed. It’s great for both the individual CSMs to be able to give— it gives specific feedback on the conversations. It gives feedback to their managers. To me as a leader, I get a weekly report of trends and it will call out specific things from customer meetings. that I’m also able to look at trends across a particular product set or a theme. So it’s, it’s very helpful to us.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Now you’ve been building, tell me a little bit about that journey of you learning and tinkering with AI yourself. Sure.

Rebecca Nerad:
I, I’m so fortunate that Advantiv really is AI forward. It was over a year ago. In fact, it was in Q2, our calendar year, when the entire leadership team, we said, what AI task are you going to take on, every individual in Q3? So, we would each decide what that was. And I didn’t know as— it’s amazing how fast we’ve learned about AI. And at the time, I decided to take a class outside of Advantive. We have some AI 101 that we’re teaching everybody and some support from various teams, but I went ahead and took a course on Agentic AI. So, that I had the opportunity to really step through and make myself learn it instead of just, oftentimes I’m using prompts or agents that other people have created here. And so, it was a nice exercise for me to go through the steps and the rigor of a course.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
What are you using the most that you’ve built?

Rebecca Nerad:
That I’ve built myself as opposed to others? We have an objection handling agent that I think is useful for my team. I’ve given some training on objection handling and negotiations that we documented, but what the agent does is leverage not just that training, but I put in a year and a half of our renewal desk recordings. And so, what it’s able to do is say, when a customer has asked for something in the past, this is the guidance that the CFO, CRO, and VP of CS have given in this type of example. We still don’t use it for approvals, but it guides the CSM when they’re saying, how might I respond to this customer? What kind of proposal may I want to come back with? It sets it all up and says, here’s what’s been done in the past. Here’s the way you may frame it in a customer email. And here’s the reason it makes sense and what you may want to use for your internal justification. So, that objection handling agent has been good for the team.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
That’s great. And it’s pulling in all the information from your Salesforce history, is that right?

Rebecca Nerad:
It’s a combination of, yeah, it’s not all the Salesforce history, but some, but specifically focusing around our renewal desk, those conversations were exported to be able to be to be used on the specific rules around, right? We have guardrails that the CSMs or their managers are able to approve. And if it goes beyond that is when it goes to our renewal desk. And it’s those conversations outside the normal rule set, and then the output and the guidance that were part of all of those.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
That’s great. What’s the channel for this objection handling agent? Is this a—

Rebecca Nerad:
It’s ChatGPT. We have corporate Across the entire company.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Um, so they put in whatever they, they, they give ChatGPT the, the, the input, the context of the emails or whatever it is, or maybe it’s connected.

Rebecca Nerad:
Yes.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
And then it spits out information.

Rebecca Nerad:
And because it’s within our network, we’re able to send actual documents, right? What’s the difference in the SLA that the customer’s requesting versus what was in their older agreement? That type of, um, information.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Have you taught the agent new things? Have you been Reinforced learning, teaching, giving feedback to the agent?

Rebecca Nerad:
I, yes, before we released it, actually, I have one, one of my managers and I both spent time correcting and adjusting the type of feedback to give. Since, since we trained it initially, I have gone back and given it more when we updated the guardrails, right? There were some rule sets that changed per product, or, hey, this was a framework that we built around a particular downsell. Like, we sent that. Um, but as far, I haven’t gone back actually, when you think about how it’s making our decision, I’m like, great, good idea. I haven’t done that yet.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah. I mean, that was my next question is, do you, do you understand the value that it’s delivered? Any, any metrics or measurements behind that yet? Or is it still early?

Rebecca Nerad:
I think often, and that’s one of the challenges we have around AI when we talk about the value, right? We know that it’s time saved. We know that, you know, time drafting an email may be saved, or in this case, it takes the CSM farther. to how have we done this before and how might you frame this than it has before, but I don’t capture.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Well, they’re using it for all of their deals?

Rebecca Nerad:
No, only when something breaks a guardrail or needs negotiation.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
But everybody has access to it?

Rebecca Nerad:
Yes. The typical motion doesn’t go through it.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
All right. I’m problem solving out loud here live and you haven’t asked for my help, but I’m just wondering if you can create some kind of cohort You know, of, of Group A versus Group B that has access to it or that doesn’t, or certain deals that, that, that used it versus didn’t and what the, the long-term impact has been on, on GRR and NRR and those sorts of metrics?

Rebecca Nerad:
I would say it’s a good, it’s a good question. I think I would be speculating on how I, it has influenced retention because of its ability to strengthen the CSM’s discussion with the customer, right? The points that they’re able to raise. But I don’t have data around that. It also does save the time that I used to spend with, you know, with some of the managers, the managers with their people, as far as coaching them on what felt like common themes. So, those are now available that they’re able to access through the agent instead of having an ad hoc meeting, for example, about that particular customer.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah. And by the way, you’re in very good company of knowing that it’s been very valuable, but not yet having a quantitative measure on it. Um, but we’re all going to get there together, I think, as an industry.

Rebecca Nerad:
I think to me, when I think about time saved, what I don’t have a measurement for, Josh, but what I’m trying to piece together when I think about retention and next steps and how we can better leverage AI, to me, it’s the idea of time to response, right? The fact that we can act on potential churn risk sooner because we are, if the better we’re able to capture some of those signals, then we’re able to reach out more proactively to the customer before it comes to churn. So that’s, I can see that happening, but I’m not measuring it.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah, that’s a good point. I mean, you know, we have Atlas, which is our autonomous agent for renewals that we, uh, it’s a newer product within Gainsight. One of the early kind of leading metrics that we’ve observed is an uptick in on-time renewals, making sure that we get to the customer earlier, that we get that renewal earlier, that it doesn’t lag. There’s a lot of value in that. And so that’s something that you might not think of as like a first-order highest important metric, but it’s one that I think is definitely substantial, and we definitely started seeing results with ARR.

Rebecca Nerad:
When I started here, that metric needed help, and that was one of the things that we looked to improve by some of the boring standard renewal processes that are important, though, when you look at, you know, ARR that’s in backlog and cash collection and all of those things, which is—

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah, it matters. Yeah, it does. It matters. Tell me, let’s go back to bringing together all these lines of business and the products within them into one cohesive strategy. It’s no different, I suppose, than a CCO at a large company that has different product lines that they’re all overseeing, even though yours may come inorganically through the acquisitions. But tell me a little bit about how you do that, how you think about creating as much uniformity as possible across your larger Advantiv org.

Rebecca Nerad:
To me, there are themes that are true across companies, across software, right? When you think about cancellation or at-risk or downsell motions, and when you think about engagement and onboarding. And so, what we developed was a pretty standard at-risk process to be able to handle that. So, It’s intentionally simple in being able to log an at-risk ticket. This is where a human is actually saying, hey, I heard a customer say this, right? They’re frustrated with support, or I know that there’s— so, someone within the organization, not necessarily customer success, is logging that at-risk ticket. And we need to make that process really simple, but also have the data be useful enough that Across the lines of business, we can identify trends. So, it has some of the product specifics, but it also has some of the reason codes behind it so that we’re able to send it to the right teams to action, but also then therefore, you know, look for some of the trends later. We also then developed save plays, and again, they apply across all of the lines of business. I think where we’ve had more differences are around engagement.

Rebecca Nerad:
When we think about some of the larger tier customers and we have quarterly business reviews, yes, we still do find value in QBRs. I know that’s hotly debated in customer success, but as far as making sure you’re engaging with your top customers and listening to them, if you don’t want to call it a QBR, that’s different from some of the long tail where—

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah.

Rebecca Nerad:
Some of the companies that we’ve acquired have had very different ways of engaging with those customers. And that’s what’s hard when you bring them into a larger model. So, to be able to have one of a, more of a one-to-many outreach for those customers, as opposed to a QBR, what does that look like? What does engagement and outreach look like for a CSM? How do we partner with product marketing? There are some of those motions that have been, it’s less about it being one LOB versus the other and more about how do we segment to be able to serve those customers appropriately.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
So that’s your scaled success. That’s your longer tail, your smaller customer base. Give yourself a grade in that segment of your business. How do you feel about that segment?

Rebecca Nerad:
Um, there’s still work to be done. I think we have a very strong marketing leader who’s done a great job of general outreach. to our customer base and guiding the product teams. It’s more that next level of, for specific customers tiered to their products and what’s meaningful to them, that, right, how they drive additional value, that’s been tougher.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah. What are your thoughts? What would you like to be doing X number of months from now? How else would you like to be approaching it?

Rebecca Nerad:
Well, to me, the real pivot for Advantiv is we really are leaning into AI when it comes to our products. And so, we have customers who are signing up for our platform and signing up for the value. So, when I see what’s the biggest opportunity for customer success, it’s to engage with customers to actually ensure that adoption, because that’s where they’re going to see additional value faster than they have in some of the products in the way that we’ve traditionally developed them. That’s the exciting stuff. It’s also important that we get it right when you think about the scary things that come with AI as well. And we’re putting a lot into that. So, to me, that’s the way that’s CSMs are going to be able to engage better with our customers is showcasing some of that additional value that customers haven’t seen. And it’s sometimes it’s really simple.

Rebecca Nerad:
I mean, it’s the idea of, hey, I wish I could see, you know, bill of materials in this way, right? That it once would have been a whole product enhancement to be able to, to make that change. And now AI is, you know, helping pull data from their software system, right? But pull it together and give it to the customer in the way that they want to see. I think the challenge there is those of us in CS who are so excited about AI, it’s so tempting to build a dashboard for every customer. And one of my colleagues who’s a director in CS at another company, it’s so cool how she’s engaging with customers. Oh, what do you want to see? I’ll pull the information from our software. I’ll show it to you in a customized dashboard. And customers are so excited. But how do we do that at scale, right? So, it’s looping back those ideas that a CSM is developing and working on with a customer, but getting that back into the product loop, to me, was just something that we have to be really mindful about.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Right.

Rebecca Nerad:
Else, we’re going to end up in the place where software was when I got into the industry 25 years ago with all the customizations that we aren’t able to maintain too, right? So, I think that’s one of the challenges. When we think about leveraging AI, is how do we continue to roll that out across our extended customer base?

Josh Schachter [Host]:
I really love this conversation. I think you, you, we, we, we touched on so many topics. I feel like I peppered you with so many questions, to be honest with you, but you, you, you really, you gave a lot of value in your responses to each one. You’ve got a broad purview over there at Adventive. Sounds like your team is doing phenomenal work. Can’t wait to hear about the next acquisition and the one after that and the one after that. And that’ll only be in the month of September, I’m sure. Uh, there’s always one on the horizon.

Josh Schachter [Host]:
Yeah, always one on the horizon. Always some more due diligence to do. Um, just make sure you’re getting like that, that private equity bill rate for your due diligence. You know, that’s my only hot tip there. Um, but, uh, no, this was great. Thank you so much for the conversation. Uh, Rebecca Neerad, Vice President of Customer Success at Advantiv. Thank you for being on the program.

Rebecca Nerad:
Great to talk with you, Josh.


[Un]Churned is the no. 1 podcast for customer retention. Hosted by Josh Schachter, each episode dives into post-sales strategy and how to lead in the agentic era.

Up next in this series