We are back with Mastering CS, Candid Leader Insights podcast, where Irina Cismas, Head of Marketing at Custify, sat down with Alexandre Kinapenne, the Head of Customer Success at Nodalview.
In this episode, Alexandre talks about his amazing insights into his journey in CS, the challenges he overcame, and the strategies he implemented.
What You’ll Learn:
- How to have a growth mindset
- How to structure the CS customer success team
- What are the right skills for CS
- The importance of the right tool stack for CS
- How to overcome customer challenges
Key insights and takeaways for CSMs based on the interview:
Importance of Proactivity and Creativity in CS: In a small CS team, it’s crucial to balance reactive support with proactive customer engagement. By leveraging automations, self-service resources, and strategic experimentation, teams can deliver value without the need for large-scale hiring.
Focus on Data and Automation: A robust CS strategy relies heavily on data. Utilizing tools like Amplitude, Intercom, and Zapier, along with a strong data pipeline, allows for seamless automation and ensures that customer health, usage, and engagement are constantly monitored and optimized.
Growth Mindset and Leadership: A core belief in continuous improvement is vital. As one mentor emphasized, “The best leaders are the ones who want to be better leaders.” This growth mindset applies not only to leadership but to the entire CS approach, encouraging experimentation, iteration, and ongoing learning.
Customer-Centric Approach: A key challenge for CS leaders is getting buy-in from senior management and embedding customer-centric thinking across the company. It’s essential to focus on delivering value for customers, as this ultimately drives company growth. Proving the value of small initiatives through data-backed results can help secure more resources and support.
Tailoring Tech Stack to Needs: Instead of investing in expensive CS platforms, Alexandre has successfully built a customized tech stack using tools like Intercom, HubSpot, and Zapier. This approach maximizes efficiency and allows for flexibility in handling customer interactions, automations, and data flow.
Podcast transcript
Irina 00:02
Welcome to Mastering CS – Candid Leader Insights, the podcast where we deep dive into the world of customer success with industry leaders. I’m your host, Irina Cismas, and today’s guest is Alexandre Kinapenne, Head of Customer Success at Nodalview. Alex, welcome and thanks for joining us today!
Alexandre 00:19
Thanks, Irina! It’s a great pleasure to be on the stage, and I’m really glad that you’re inviting people from different countries and backgrounds as well.
I come from Belgium, which is a pretty small country, and I’m super happy to not only represent myself today but also to represent the whole CS scene in Belgium, especially in the US and all over the world.
It’s a real pleasure to be here today with you.
Starting out in CS
Irina 00:45
Let’s find your story.
A lot of CSMs I’ve talked to have transitioned into the role of CSM from different roles, whether it was user experience, support, or product. But in your case, I think you found your thing, and it was always customer success from the very beginning, with a bit of an exception, if I recall correctly—you had a sales role.
I’m curious what drew you to this path and what kept you here. How come it was only CS?
Alexandre 01:24
Well, first of all, I think it’s pretty funny that you mentioned it that way because it’s actually true. Most of the people I’m interacting with in the CS ecosystem come from very different backgrounds, whether it’s psychology, sales, or something else entirely.
I took a different path, actually, looking back on my own career experience. I was drawn into the CS ecosystem a bit by chance. When I was younger, I didn’t have a degree. I didn’t pursue a big academic career—it was more about opportunities that led me into the CS world.
I worked a bit in sales in the past, and when I had to move to Paris with my girlfriend, I needed to find a job. I was open to everything: discovering new things, asking questions, meeting new people. While reflecting on my next move, I stumbled upon the customer success ecosystem by chance, just by reading a job offer. One job offer led to another, and I applied, eventually getting the job.
It was a tech company selling CRM software for enterprise accounts, and I had the opportunity to learn on the job. I picked up the ropes of being a CSM, fine-tuning my customer relationship skills, all while leveraging my sales background, which helped me at the time.
The great thing is that a few years ago in France, the CS environment wasn’t as developed or as fast-paced as in the US, where the topic had been established for decades. In Paris, it was fairly new, so people had little to no idea what they were doing. They were experimenting with a lot of things, and that’s what I really liked about my work in CS—it allowed for experimentation. Experimenting with tools, processes, frameworks, and also with customers. That’s what I love about CS, and it’s what keeps motivating me.
Irina 03:58
I want to ask you, because you mentioned that in France, it’s a fairly new thing, or at least it used to be. Wasn’t it harder to actually sell it internally, to craft a role, or to explain what you were actually doing?
The reason I’m asking is that, whenever the CS role is new, people usually consider it as just another form of support—only with a fancier name. It’s harder in the beginning because you have the challenge of teaching and educating. Did you feel the same in your case?
Alexandre 03:58
When I was in that company, I was pretty lucky because I think they understood the real value of CS. From the start, they offered CS as a billable service, which is rare and something you usually only see in bigger enterprise companies. Even today, many companies are afraid to take that step.
They knew from the beginning that as soon as you put a price tag on something, it has value, but you also expect a return on that investment. I think that’s where the company was smart, because it not only incentivized the customer to take on a CSM but also motivated us to provide as much value as possible since they were paying for it.
It wasn’t like buying software and then having a CSM on the side trying to get your attention. It was the opposite—we had to justify the investment, which changed the rules of the game a bit. I think that’s where I learned to truly own the CSM position and become a trusted advisor for the customer.
Irina 06:09
I know that it was one of your very first jobs in CS, and it has been a while since then. But do you recall what actually helped you succeed in that role?
How did you approach it? What was important for you as a first-time CSM?
Alexandre 06:31
I think the first thing was really the tech. It’s something I really like. I enjoy having a problem in front of me—buttons, issues—and I love pushing things, trying to understand how they work and how they interact with each other. I like to see it as a puzzle sometimes.
I also enjoy explaining puzzles. Having to explain a complex tool in a simple way actually helps create a narrative around the product and builds the relationship with the client because you’re the one guiding them through the whole process. Once you earn that trust from the client, it opens the door to every kind of conversation you can have with them.
For me, what it taught me was the importance of being curious about the product. That curiosity can be shared with the customer you’re managing. When you teach someone something, it creates a relationship that helps you be more productive, provide value, and so on.
A typical day as a Head of CS
Irina 07:56
Let’s go back to the present and talk about what a typical day looks like for you as the Head of CS at Nodalview.
Tell me more about your current role.
Alexandre 08:06
Well, maybe let’s first talk about Nodalview and who we are. We are a sales and marketing platform aimed at real estate agents, a proptech company. We support our customers at every step of selling a property. Our core business at Nodalview is the creation of visuals. We sell software that helps optimize the quality of pictures using AI, machine learning, and similar technologies.
We also help them sell the property by providing tools to share links, generate leads, and gain as much visibility as possible so they can sell the property quickly. In the real estate market today, efficiency is key, but visibility is just as important. We help them achieve that visibility so they can sell the properties they manage.
As for my role, I oversee two teams: the support team and the customer success team. Although their goals—helping the customer and providing value—are similar, the teams operate very differently. I made the shift from a reactive to a proactive approach, something many CS leaders aim to do. I was lucky to experiment and drive that change in mentality within the team.
My job is to ensure both teams have the right knowledge, tools, and everything else they need to be successful. I also focus on motivating them because the CS ecosystem tends to have high turnover. I want to instill motivation in my team so they can thrive and grow as individuals. This makes up about 50% of my job.
The other half is ensuring that Nodalview is making the right decisions, strategies, and objectives to support our customers’ growth. This involves influencing product decisions and pushing for projects that the company should tackle. So it’s a mix of both strategic and day-to-day work, where I’m there to support my team and help them grow.
Overcoming customer challenges
Irina 11:05
Let’s talk more about your customers, and then we’ll switch to your team. You mentioned that you oversee both support and CS-related operations.
First, regarding customer challenges—what are those challenges, and how do you overcome them in your role in CS? How do you help real estate agents sell their properties?
Alexandre 11:05
So basically, the challenge is pretty straightforward. As a real estate agent or agency director, your goal is to sell the property, right? You only get the commission when the property is sold, and all the work you’ve done beforehand is kind of useless unless the property is sold. So, they have to justify all the investment, effort, and time they’ve put into meeting potential buyers and finding sellers because the whole business revolves around connecting a seller and a buyer. If there’s a match, they get the commission. That’s really the job.
But it comes with its own set of challenges. On one hand, they need visibility for the property to stand out, but they also need a lot of support to ensure that every interaction with buyers and sellers is top-notch to optimize their chances of selling a property.
Speaking of challenges, I don’t know if it’s the same in the US, but currently in Europe, we are facing quite a housing crisis. Interest rates are extremely high, especially compared to the end of COVID when they were very low. The market had a lot of cash and transactions, but now the economic situation is pretty bad. Agents are really fighting for their commission because there are fewer transactions, less money, less budget, and less time to invest in solutions like ours. And if it’s not working for them, the agency could close. So, it’s more about survival than just a “nice-to-have” tool.
Today, they are trying to save as much money as they can to survive as a business and keep paying their employees. It’s a really tough market we’re navigating, and it’s extremely challenging not only for them but also for us. We have to support them in this difficult market, and it’s our responsibility to double down on the efforts we provide. We need to ensure they receive not just 100% value, but 200%, even if it’s outside our usual scope. We have to be industry leaders, experts, and educators, helping them grow as professionals so they can come out of this crisis better than before.
We have a lot of education and thought leadership to offer across the market, which is a challenge because we’re a relatively small company, even though we have many customers, mostly in Europe. We have to carry that message, which isn’t an easy one: telling your customers that what they’re doing may not be enough, and if they don’t do more, they won’t survive. But we are here to help them.
Managing Support and Customer Success teams
Irina 15:25
Let’s talk about your team. You mentioned that you oversee both support and CS at the same time, and while they share the same objective, how do you manage to separate them?
First of all, how did you end up with this formula, and how do you manage to separate the proactivity from the reactivity? Both of them work towards a common goal, but I think their KPIs are extremely different. So tell me more about your team setup.
Alexandre 16:09
Before talking about the setup, one important thing to know about Nodalview is that today, we manage almost 5,000 customers across more than 30 different countries, and we are only eight people in the CS department. So, we have to be creative. We need to be resourceful with languages, investment, and in deciding whether to put a human behind every interaction. Sometimes, we can provide value without a human being directly involved.
The whole puzzle was really about this: we have customers with questions, issues, and the need for day-to-day support. If the app isn’t working, no matter how proactive you are, they won’t be able to take pictures, and that’s a huge issue for them. So, the first principle was that we needed to be reactive and respond whenever they had issues. But, we couldn’t afford to hire 5, 10, or 20 reps to support them.
We had to balance being reactive with being proactive. Proactivity is more about self-service resources, communication at scale before the question arises, and providing the right training, tools, and knowledge so customers don’t have to ask us. Naturally, we arrived at a point where we needed to provide on both sides: reactive support for customers who inevitably fall through the cracks and need help, and proactive efforts to create value before they ask us questions.
It’s a bit of a dance between the two teams. Support handles things that go wrong on the proactive side, and as a tech company, we sometimes deal with bugs and other issues. Life wouldn’t be fun without those challenges, right?
That’s how I started creating these two teams with clear ownership. Of course, they have different objectives and KPIs, but we are all working toward improving the customer experience in the end, which is what ties us together in the department.
KPIs of support and CS
Irina 19:01
Speaking about KPIs- what KPIs does the CS team have, and which are the KPIs of support and how do you keep track of them?
Alexandre 19:01
I’ll start by talking about the support team because it’s more straightforward. It’s all centered around CSAT, response time, and making sure the answers provided are correct, fast, and efficient—while also fun and engaging. We really want our support to represent our tone of voice and who we are as individuals. So, for support, it’s all about speed and efficiency.
On the CSM side, it’s more focused on customer engagement. We don’t call it NPS internally, but we do track something similar, as well as usage. We monitor the usage of all the features we sell and aim to improve adoption of each feature—Feature A, Feature B, Feature C. Ultimately, we’re tracking the financial results our efforts generate, but we also track the number of opportunities the team creates for the sales team.
So, it’s quite different. Support is more about reaction, speed, and efficiency, while the CSM side focuses on usage, customer feeling, perception, and ultimately, revenue.
The right skills for CS
Irina 20:25
What are the you mentioned about the team structure? Now, I want to ask you about the skills. What do you think are the must-have skills for a customer success manager?
Alexandre 20:40
I think that’s an excellent question. What makes CS so rich is that a lot of skills can be transferred from various backgrounds. That’s also what makes it work, because we have customers who are extremely different from one another. We shouldn’t limit success in CS to a specific set of skills—many can be transferable.
If I had to pick three key skills, the first one would be being a team player. Why? Because CSMs are at the center of a choreography. You need to interact with many people, both internally and externally—with the champion of the company you’re managing, your colleagues, the product team, engineering, and even the CFO sometimes. So, you need to be a team player and enjoy that context. You need to be outgoing and willing to step out of your comfort zone to find answers to your customer’s problems.
Second, I’d say assertiveness is extremely important. You need to make sure you can communicate effectively. Communication is crucial in CS, not just with your portfolio, but also internally, to ensure your voice is heard and you can influence decisions when necessary.
If I had to pick a third one, for me personally, it would be having a growth mindset. This is especially important in CS because it’s an ecosystem that evolves constantly. Every month or year, we have new ways of working, new tools to explore, and now AI is around the corner. Having a growth mindset helps you embrace all these changes and implement new ideas in your day-to-day work. I think it’s essential for success in CS, at least in my opinion.
Having a growth mindset
Irina 23:09
And how would you, how would you test this growth mindset? How, how would you make sure that the person you want to bring into your team has this growth mindset?
Alexandre 23:21
For me, it’s a question of who you are as an individual, and I think you can easily see that when you talk to people. There’s something extremely important: your internal drive and your passion. I believe that by talking to someone about their passion, you can identify whether they want to grow and be better at something—whatever that may be. It could be fishing or anything else, but having that passion and the desire to be a better version of yourself is, in essence, a growth mindset.
By having conversations about what people genuinely like to do, you get a sense of who they are. Work, in the end, is a way to earn a salary, but it’s your passion that defines who you are as a person.
The challenges of a Head of CS
Irina 24:14
You make it sound so simple, but I do think that in your role, you also experience challenges. Let’s talk about those—the challenges you’re currently dealing with as Head of CS. What’s the most difficult part of your role?
Alexandre 24:45
I see two big challenges that I’m currently facing. The first one is the economic situation our customers are going through, which not only impacts them but also affects us. We’re still a company, not a nonprofit, so we have to grow. We need to convince our customers to stay longer and sometimes pay a little more, even though we know they’re struggling. We have to justify every euro they spend on our solution, maybe twice as much as we did before.
That’s the first challenge—justifying the investment by providing value and offering the best software we can. We also need to go the extra mile. Even though we have a small team, that shouldn’t stop us from providing extra value in every interaction, whether it’s over the phone, in a meeting, or during training. When the customer thinks, “Wow, I can’t believe they showed me that tip or helped me in that way,” that’s what makes the difference. If our customers aren’t successful, they’ll churn, and ultimately, that affects me. I’m really trying to instill a growth mindset, not just in my team but also in the customers we manage.
The external challenge is one thing, but internally, I think it’s similar to what every CS leader experiences. We need buy-in from almost every team, even though we might be only 1/5 of the company. We’re the ones with something to say about the product, the sales process, and even how money is spent. The biggest challenge, which is something all CS leaders face, is embedding customer-centricity in every decision made by the company.
It’s easy for teams to focus on their own results—sales wants to bring in new customers, finance wants to save money, marketing wants to generate leads—but it shouldn’t be just about meeting individual objectives. It should also be about the growth of the company, which comes from successful, satisfied customers. If you can’t create value for them, even if you have the best inflow of new customers, they won’t stay, and the company won’t survive.
Proving the value of CS internally
Irina 28:01
Regarding this, what’s your approach to getting senior management on board with your goals? Most of the CSMs I talk to mention this as one of their biggest challenges—getting leadership buy-in and ensuring they understand the value CS provides and how it supports company growth.
What’s it like in your case? How do you approach it?
Alexandre 28:39
I think I was pretty lucky at Nodalview because I didn’t have to fight to be heard. I had my own ideas and a plan, and I think the planning part is extremely important, especially when you’re talking to senior management or the board. You need to focus on solutions rather than just problems.
That’s something I see a lot when I talk to other CS leaders—they tend to highlight problems without providing enough solutions. The way I flipped things around was by saying, “Okay, we have this problem, but here’s the solution I’m recommending.” As a CS leader, you need to be creative because you want to unlock specific budgets to try things like X, Y, or Z. They may not approve a new position because it’s complicated to justify the return on investment, for example.
My biggest advice to CS leaders struggling to get buy-in, budget, or visibility is to start small. Iterate with as few resources as possible. If you can prove that with just 5% of what you need, you’ve already managed to create X, Y, or Z results, then it’s much easier to extrapolate and say, “Look, if you give me more, this is what I’ll bring to the company.”
It’s always about solution-focused thinking rather than saying, “I need 10,000 euros to buy new software because I’m sure it will help with retention and expansion.” I’d actually approach it the other way—play around with the tech you already have. We’re lucky to have many solutions, sometimes cheap ones or no-code options that you can build yourself. Try it out, and if it works, it will be much easier to get buy-in from your management team.
Having the right tech stack for customer success
Irina 31:08
Speaking about technology, you mentioned that you have only eight people under CS and Support, so you need to make smart decisions. You have to think, “Should I hire, or is this something I can optimize or automate?”
What is your current CS tech stack? What do you use to ensure efficiency and save time for your CS team?
Alexandre 31:29
If I gave you the blueprint of the tools we’re using, I think you’d be pretty scared. But to summarize, it’s a combination of different tools that I’ll explain a bit later, orchestrated in a way that everything flows seamlessly. Information moves from one solution to another, stopping at different points before an action is finally taken. So, it’s really about creating a lot of different automations to ensure information flows from one place to another.
I believe data is a key topic in CS. I’m extremely lucky to have a data department within my company that’s willing to provide me with as much data as I need. The data is built in a way that allows us to access almost anything we want—it’s just a matter of asking for it. That’s already a huge win because once you have access to the data, you can create automations and streamline processes.
I also deliberately chose not to invest in a CS platform. The reason is that, today, we don’t have the resources to orchestrate and build one, and I think CS platforms are often used as a replacement for a lack of data or technical knowledge. Instead, we use other tools. One I highly recommend is Intercom, which allows you to do a lot of powerful things—whether it’s product tours, sending surveys, or automating tasks and communications through in-app messages, emails, and more.
We also use webinars, Zapier (which is the centerpiece of all our CS operations), and HubSpot for our CRM. So, it’s really a collection of all these tools working together.
Irina 33:58
And when it comes to product, when it comes to product tracking data, how do you? What do you use?
Alexandre 34:02
We use Amplitude, which gathers event analytics that are then sent to our data warehouse. From there, our data department works some magic, allowing us to have a kind of health score without needing to buy a specific software for it. We’ve essentially created our own health score based on what we’ve determined and investigated as the leading causes of churn, for example.
Irina 34:32
And how do you store all those health scores? How do you get alerted when something goes up or down?
Alexandre 34:38
That’s a good question. We’ve created some alerts based on specific data that fluctuates. For example, usage is an easy one—if a customer doesn’t log in for X days or weeks, it triggers an alert. If someone is using more than expected, it also triggers an alert. Everything comes into Slack or HubSpot, depending on the action that needs to be taken.
It’s pretty simple: it works like a round-robin system, where the CSMs take the task and complete it. For example, if it’s an inactive customer, we call them. If a customer is having an issue that we’ve identified, we reach out. All of these events trigger some internal messages, and the responsible person takes over the task.
It’s low-tech, but it’s working extremely well. It’s pretty solid, and we’ve managed to make it work for 10,000 users and 5,000 customers. So far, it’s been running smoothly.
Irina 36:20
And for all the automations, I assume you use a combination of HubSpot and Intercom to build them across different tools. How did you manage to build the proper playbooks? You had the systems, but you needed to develop the overall strategy and approach. I’m curious—what did you need in order to build all the automations and flows? How did you end up with what you have today?
Alexandre 36:53
When I joined Nodalview, there wasn’t much in place, so it was pretty easy to start. I had to first do what I mentioned earlier—iterate, try small tests with a limited batch of customers, and see if they reacted the way we wanted. If it worked, we’d extend it a bit more, maybe change the frequency, adjust the timing, or completely change the messaging. We’d do some A/B testing to figure out what worked best and what didn’t. If it wasn’t working, we’d kill it early. If it was kind of working, we’d investigate further to see if investing more time and resources could have a bigger impact.
All of these processes, along with our playbooks and frameworks, are linked to how we work internally. I also want to encourage everyone on the team to experiment with these processes and come up with new ideas. The knowledge isn’t just with me—it’s within the team. Sometimes they’ll suggest changes, and I’ll say, “Okay, great. How would you do it?” They come up with solutions, and if they don’t have one, I help them. Then we start small, and I assist them with the technical aspects to see if it works or not.
If it works, we keep iterating until we’re satisfied with the results and consider the project validated and launched. We still monitor it to make sure the results hold, but then we move on to invest time in a different process. By iterating piece by piece, we’ve built this whole system of working together.
Irina 39:05
Alex, before we wrap up, I’d love to know—who has been the most influential mentor in your career, and what’s the best piece of advice they gave you that still resonates with you today?
Alexandre 39:18
That’s a good question. When I arrived at Nodalview, they decided to invest in a coach—more of a leadership coach rather than a CS-specific coach. I met a great mentor, who also became a friend later on, named Stijn. He’s the former Chief Customer Officer of one of the biggest SaaS companies in Belgium, Showpad, and he has a huge background in psychology. He was the one who instilled in me the growth mindset, as well as mental models and internal frameworks that I still keep in my back pocket.
Every time I face a situation, I think, “Oh, I have that framework I can leverage” or “I have that mental model I can use.” It’s hard to summarize all of this learning into one sentence, but I remember something he told me, which I now share with my team: “The best leaders out there are the ones who want to be better leaders.”
That really resonated with me because it applies to everything. If you want to be the best husband, you have to do everything you can to become the best husband. If you want to be the best friend, you have to work toward being a better friend until you reach that goal. It’s about wanting to be better at whatever role you’re striving for.
Irina 41:11
Thank you so much, Alex, for sharing your insights with us today! A big thank you to everyone who listened to this episode. Until next time, stay safe and keep mastering customer success!
