Explore every episode of the podcast Customer Success: Pivot Your Career

Part2 of our conversation with Elizabeth Italiano.

In the Customer Success Pivot Your Career podcast, hosts Alex White and David Lokietz discuss customer success strategies with Liz MacAulay (Elizabeth Italiano), Founder & CEO of the consulting firm, What Not To Do (WNTD) Partners.

Discussions include the impact of Gen AI, developing truly personalized customer engagements and evolving customer success into a revenue center. Elizabeth also shares her experiences and insights on go-to-market strategies, business acumen for CSMs, and the value of identifying ideal customer profiles.

In the Customer Success Pivot Your Career podcast, hosts Alex White and David Lokietz discuss customer success strategies with Liz MacAulay (Elizabeth Italiano), Founder & CEO of the consulting firm, What Not To Do (WNTD) Partners.

Discussions include the impact of Gen AI, developing truly personalized customer engagements and evolving customer success into a revenue center. Elizabeth also shares her experiences and insights on go-to-market strategies, business acumen for CSMs, and the value of identifying ideal customer profiles.

In the CS Pivot Your Career podcast, we have a conversation with Jennifer Albrecht, a Customer Success SVP and Revenue Leader for Higher Ed SaaS companies. She shares valuable insights on change resilience, highlighting the importance of embracing mistakes, maintaining transparency, and fostering a feedback-driven culture.

Key topics include expanding your "Lego set", outcomes vs outputs, account multithreading, tech consolidation opportunities, and the idea that achieving "inbox zero" doesn't achieve business outcomes.

The 'Customer Success Pivot Your Career Podcast' hosts Alex and David have a conversation with Pranav Parekh, Chief Customer Officer at Imply.

Pranav shares his philosophy on customer success, emphasizing the importance of being customer-centric, building high-performing teams, and fostering a collaborative culture. They highlight how true leadership makes others better both in the leader's presence and absence. Additionally, practical insights on driving customer success, the role of executive communication, and how to handle revenue-related tasks within customer success.

In this episode of the 'Customer Success Pivot Your Career' podcast, hosts Alex and David discuss job-search strategies with Noah Little, a Senior Enterprise Customer Success Manager at recharge & CS Coach for landing your next CS opportunity.

Noah shares insights on navigating job markets, crafting compelling resumes, and leveraging storytelling in interviews. He emphasizes the importance of documentation of achievements and seeking direct feedback for improvement. The conversation highlights the evolving landscape of customer success roles and practical tips for standing out to recruiters.

In the first episode of the Customer Success: Pivot Your Career podcast, hosts Alex White and David Lokietz have a conversation with Steve Pino, SAP National VP North America, Cloud Success Services focusing on data and analytics.

They discuss the importance of relationship building in customer success, the evolution of customer success from on-premise solutions to enterprise cloud software, and the approach to solving clients' issues through trust and periodic check-ins rather than a sales-centric perspective. Pino shares examples from his career, emphasizing the value of understanding and adapting to clients' needs, implementing a rescue renewal program for underutilized software, and strategies for becoming a trusted advisor rather than just a vendor.

The discussion also covers advice for hiring in customer success roles, focusing on teamwork, the we vs. me mentality, and the significance of building collaborative relationships within the company and with the clients to ensure mutual success.

Welcome to our new podcast! Learn more about us and our podcast in this 6 minute introduction.

AI that meets customers where they work by cleansing data, managing AI drift, ensuring governance and managing a solution that is AI model agnostic.  Leave the heavy lifting to Subatomic!

Guest Karl Simon, Co-founder and CTO of Subatomic, joins the Customer Success Pivot Your Career podcast with co-hosts Alex White and David Lokietz. Karl recounts his path from Oracle into data warehousing and analytics, through roles at companies including Gap, Saks Fifth Avenue, Genentech, and Komodo Health, and explains why Subatomic focuses on enabling AI without disrupting existing workflows.

The discussion centers on how poor, incomplete, and inconsistent data undermines AI ROI, how Subatomic uses AI to audit and unify data, and how its model-agnostic approach dynamically selects best-fit models while managing drift, cost, and governance via “Deep Lens” (introspection, audit, eval). Karl also describes “AI coworkers” that execute role-based go-to-market workflows across sales, marketing, and service

What can't a resume tell you about a candidate? Quite a lot, as it turns out.

Rebecca Novetsky, a customer success leader who builds CS functions from the ground up at early-stage startups and the creator and host of the Next Hire podcast, joins the Customer Success Pivot Your Career podcast with co-hosts Alex White and David Lokietz.

Rebecca's career has looped from product development to customer success, into product management, and back again. This mix makes her a sharper advocate for the customer and the product. She digs past surface-level feature requests to find the customer's real "why" before prioritizing a roadmap. As a first CS hire at multiple startups, she aligns stakeholders, defines what success means for each customer, and builds onboarding playbooks that keep new customers from slipping into the abyss. The results speak for themselves: adoption up 35%, onboarding time cut by two-thirds, and a product taken from pilot to paid.

Rebecca also shares how Next Hire, her short-form interview podcast, helps job seekers tell the story behind their resume, build confidence, and own their work.

Enjoy, rate our podcast and share your comments.

Guest John Huber, founder of Customer Success Architects, joins the 'Customer Success Pivot Your Career' podcast with co-hosts David Lokietz and Alex White. John shares his extensive experience in customer success, which spans over 20 years and includes roles at five different B2B SaaS companies.

The discussion covers various aspects of customer success, including Leadership on Demand services, Advisory consulting, and Specialized Coaching. John explains how he helps SaaS companies manage customer health, churn, and renewals. Additionally, he highlights the importance of cross-functional alignment and strategic customer engagement to drive retention and growth. A don’t miss episode!

• 02:16 Introducing Today's Guest: John Huber
• 04:55 Leadership on Demand
• 19:50 Challenges in Early-Stage Companies
• 26:32 Operationalizing Customer Health Data
• 30:49 Company-Wide Customer Success Mindset
• 36:58 Coaching Services and Career Development
• 41:20 Final Thoughts and Career Advice

Sri Vidya Annapragada, Head of Technical Program Management, Device Cloud at Google discusses the unique challenges in the retail industry, the importance of cross-industry learnings, and strategies for effective digital modernization. There is a diverse topics such as navigating priorities in enterprise-level customer success, and the importance of empathy and agility. Sri emphasizes the significance of connecting, communicating, and collaborating with customers, and shares anecdotes from her career across Oracle, Salesforce, Apigee, and Google.

You don’t want to miss this episode!

In this special anniversary episode of 'Customer Success: Pivot Your Career,' hosts David Lokietz and Alex White celebrate one year of podcasting.

Guest Chris Fernandes discusses how AI is revolutionizing how people work, how to get started with AI and more importantly the impacts on customer success and how it can turn your focus from reactive to proactive relationship building.

Get out of the weeds and learn about AI so you can spend more time on what matters in Customer Success!

00:00 Anniversary Edition Opening (submit your ideas)

03:30 Episode Opening

07:05 Chris Fernandes

42:35 WrapUp Discussion

James Lawson, Chief Customer Officer at Service Genie and founder of the River Consultancy Group, shares his insights on the 'Customer Success Pivot Your Career' podcast.

• CS as a competency, not a department

• Concept of peak to end

• Focus more on direction vs impacts

• Use marketing in CS, both externally and internally

• CAT model for scaling startups

The discussion explores how James’ marketing experience helps him in CS both with his customers and to internally market CS.  Discussions also include CS as a competency, not a department and focus more on direction vs impacts.  Additional topics include the evolving role of AI in customer success, the importance of personalized customer journeys, and James also introduces the innovative CAT model for scaling startups without traditional sales teams, focusing on building efficient customer account teams.

In this episode of the CS Pivot Your Career podcast, hosts Alex White and David Lokietz speak with special guest Drew Cather, General Manager at Trace3, emphasizing the significance of building long-term client relationships by acting as trusted advisors.

Drew shares insights on managing client expectations, handling project challenges, and leveraging educational initiatives like a mini-MBA to empower both clients and internal teams. The episode highlights the significance of trust, transparency, and robust communication in creating successful, enduring CS partnerships.

The Customer Success Pivot Your Career podcast’s guest, Carol Crowe, a Customer Success Executive at Google, shares her journey from technical support to CS leadership. Carol emphasizes the importance of building trusted advisor relationships both with customers and internal teams. Key topics include communication, empathy, and leveraging AI for efficiency. The discussion also highlights how to maintain and nurture these relationships, particularly in large enterprises, and offers practical advice for CS professionals.

Carly Agar is founder and CEO of Carly Agar Training, who specializes in career coaching for CS job seekers. Carly shares common pitfalls in the job search process, and the importance of refining job seeking skills. Key topics include optimizing resumes and LinkedIn profiles, using AI effectively without over-relying on it, and the value of drawing parallels from previous roles.

Actionable advice for both new and experienced CS professionals!!!

Our final episode is 2024 YEAR IN REVIEW!

If you are new to our podcast, this provides highlights from all our 2024 interviews so you can go back and listen to the episodes that resonate with you.

In the Customer Success Pivot Your Career podcast, hosts Alex White and David Lokietz provide an overview of its first-year episodes, discussing insights and key takeaways.  Guests included Steve Pino, Noah Little, Pranav Parekh, Jennifer Albrecht, Elizabeth Italiano, and John Gusiff, highlighting discussions on operationalizing customer success, relationship building, storytelling, change resilience, and business acumen. 

See you in 2025!!!

Books Referenced;

The Seven Pillars of Customer Success by Wayne McCulloch

• Pillar 1: Operationalizing Customer Success
• Pillar 2: Onboarding
• Pillar 3: Adoption
• Pillar 4: Retention 
• Pillar 5: Expansion
• Pillar 6: Advocacy
• Pillar 7: Strategic Advising

Customer Success by Nick Mehta

• Law 1: Sell to the Right Customer
• Law 2: The Natural Tendency for Customers and Vendors Is to Drift Apart
• Law 3: Customers Expect You to Make Them Wildly Successful
• Law 4: Relentlessly Monitor and Manage Customer Health.
• Law 5: You Can No Longer Build Loyalty through Personal Relationships
• Law 6: Product Is Your Only Scalable Differentiator (somewhat)
• Law 7: Obsessively Improve Time-to-Value (Briefly)
• Law #8: Deep Dive into Customer Numbers (High level)
• Law #9: Numbers Don’t Lie, Use Them to Win!
• Law #10: Everyone Needs to Be on Board!

In this episode of the CS Pivot Your Career podcast, hosts Alex White and David Lokietz speak with John Gussif, Managing Partner for Customer Centric Solutions.

John shares his journey into customer success and emphasizes the importance of a well-defined customer experience strategy. He delves into the bowtie model, which connects acquisition and expansion phases, and the importance of maintaining a robust voice of the customer program.  Other topics include the significance of understanding and measuring business values and outcomes and identifying and tracking buyer personas.  

Guest Sudi Navile, Chief Customer Officer at SID Global Solutions, joins the Customer Success Pivot Your Career podcast with co-hosts Alex White and David Lokietz.

Sudi shares lessons from a career that started in enterprise sales in India and grew through technology consulting into global customer success leadership.

The conversation digs into how AI is rewriting the playbook, bridging language and cultural gaps with international customers, democratizing access the way BASIC once did for programming, and forcing leaders to rethink value, packaging, and outcome-based pricing as token economics keep shifting.

00:00 AI in the CS Job Search

04:30 Meet Sudi: From Enterprise Sales in India to Global CS

07:30 Solving the Bigger Problem, Earning the Right to Ask "Why"

14:30 Working Across Cultures: Reading the Room Globally

17:30 AI as the Great Equalizer: Language, Literacy, and Access

34:00 Outcome-Based Pricing and the AI Token Costs

46:30 Alex & David Wrap Up

In this bonus episode of the Customer Success Pivot, David Lokietz and Alex White interview Amber Monroe, SVP of Customer Experience at Paradigm, about pivoting from hospital operations into customer success and technology in healthcare through mentors, communities, and domain focus.

Amber discusses the shift from treating all customers the same to a segmentation model, defining segment-based SLAs and aligning sales, implementation, and CS to deliver differentiated experiences. She shares lessons learned from early account transitions, including adding transition-risk scoring, and highlights customer listening tours, as well as touching on AI leadership.

Amber recommends signing up for the CS Insider Newsletter @ https://www.csinsider.co/

Enjoy!

In this episode of the Customer Success Pivot Your Career Podcast, hosts Alex White and David Lokietz welcome Layton Chaney, an 18+ year customer success veteran for a candid, unfiltered conversation about burnout, mental health, and redefining success.

Layton describes how he recently paused and labeled a personal failure, only to find relief and clarity. The discussion explores how SaaS grind culture, shaky leadership values, and weak psychological safety impact CS. Learn practical signals like the “Sunday method” to know when it’s time to reevaluate your priorities.

In this bonus episode of the Customer Success Pivot Your Career podcast, we welcome Alex Raymond, founder of Amplify and founder & former CEO of Kapta, to discuss his book, “The Growth Department”. We discuss how post-sales teams need to change the narrative from “glorified support” to a core growth engine. Alex explains why CS is often underrecognized despite being responsible for the majority of revenue, how declining sales efficiency increases the need for retention and expansion, and why net revenue retention (NRR) is a company-wide leadership metric.

Alex challenges the myth of “recurring revenue,” emphasizing “re-earning” renewals through measurable results made visible, even when outcomes are bad. He also shares the Amplify Method for expansion and portfolio thinking.

We welcome Stephen Wise, founder of Monocle—an AI-powered executive assistant built for customer success teams. Stephen explains how Monocle is designed to reduce the “invisible work” of CS through embedded, human-centered AI.

Request a product demo at https://www.snowise-monocle.com/

Hosts Alex White and David Lokietz provide an overview of each episode from 2025 and discuss what's ahead for 2026.

Guests in 2025 included; Carly Agar, Carol Crowe, Drew Cather, James Lawson, Chris Fernandes, Sri Vidya Annapragada, John Huber, Matthew Rinker and Caroline Grant.

In this episode of the CS Pivot Your Career podcast, join hosts Alex White and David Lokietz as they welcome special guest Caroline Grant, Sr. Director, Strategy at Concentrix. Caroline dives into her extensive experience with evolving customer needs in the Customer Success landscape. 

She'll share actionable strategies for navigating these shifts, offering practical advice on managing customer expectations while simultaneously crafting solutions that benefit both the client and the vendor. This discussion highlights the critical roles of communication, trust, and transparency in identifying the right offerings and successfully adapting to ensure satisfaction within Customer Success relationships.

04:37 Caroline's Journey into Customer Success

10:54 Consulting Insights and Career Advice

22:27 Challenges in Product Ownership

23:01 Mindset Shift in Digital Product Management

25:12 Adapting to Technological Changes and AI

33:26 Successful Client Engagements

36:11 Building Long-Term Client Relationships

39:34 Final Thoughts and Takeaways

Guest Matthew Rinker, Enterprise Customer Success Manager for DocuSign, joins the Customer Success Pivot Your Career podcast with co-hosts Alex White and David Lokietz. 

Matthew shares insights from his journey from consumer hardware to SaaS, highlighting the importance of consultative selling, strong customer relationships, and the evolving roles in customer success. Learn what it means to be an Enterprise CSM and the challenges encountered and how to manage these effectively.

01:47 Role of Procurement in Renewals

12:34 Account Management vs. Customer Success

18:55 The Importance of Customer Success Mindset

27:44 Customer Success Models and Strategies

38:50 Enterprise Customer Success Insights

42:52 LinkedIn Tips for Customer Success Professionals

45:31 Alex & David Wrap Up