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The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström®: Expert Mode Marketing Technology, AI, & CX
#626: Building customer success instead of vendor lock-in with Toya Del Valle, Cornerstone
00:31:54
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- [00:00]
Greg Kilstrom
Your brand may be staying on top of current trends, but are you agile enough to stay relevant, resilient and successful as customers, competition and the world continues to change at a breakneck pace? I'm thrilled to share the newly revised version of my first book, the Agile Brand. I'm calling it the Agile Brand Revisited. It's been updated to reflect our continually changing world and it provides seven principles that form the backbone of an agile brand, offering detailed insights and actionable steps for incorporating them into your business strategy.
- [00:31]
Toya Del Valle
This is the book that started it.
- [00:33]
Greg Kilstrom
All and I'm excited to share it with you. It's now available in print and digital formats and available everywhere. Learn more by going to the Agile Brand guide website at www.agilebrandguide.com.
- [00:46]
Toya Del Valle
The Agile Brand.
- [00:55]
Greg Kilstrom
Welcome to season seven of the Agile Brand where we discuss the trend, trends and topics marketing leaders need to know. Stay curious, stay agile and join the top enterprise brands and Martech platforms as we explore marketing technology, AI, E commerce, and whatever's next for the Omnichannel customer experience. Together we'll discover what it takes to create an agile brand built for today and tomorrow and built for customers, employees and continued business growth. I'm your host Greg Kilstrom, advising Fortune 1000 brands on martech, AI and marketing operations. The Agile Brand Podcast is brought to you by Tech Systems, an industry leader in full stack technology services, talent services and real world application. For more information, go to teksystems.com to make sure you always get the latest episodes, please hit subscribe on the app you listen to podcasts on and leave us a rating so others can find us as well. Now onto the show.
- [01:52]
Toya Del Valle
Is your business building true customer loyalty or is it just locking customers into a system they can't escape? Today we're joined by Toya Del Valle, Chief Customer Officer at Cornerstone, a workforce agility company that supports over 7,000 customers, including global leaders like Samsung and UPS. With a unique journey from HR Director to CCO, Toya brings a deep understanding of what HR leaders and organizations need to succeed. She's here to share insights on leveraging AI for customer success, building meaningful relationships between CFOs and customer leaders, and and creating loyalty in an increasingly SaaS driven world. Welcome to the show, Toya.
- [02:31]
Great. Thank you for having me. I'm really happy to be here.
- [02:34]
Yeah, I'm really, I'm excited to talk through this. A lot of, lot of good stuff to talk through here today. Before we dive in, why don't we start with you telling us a little more about Your background and your role at Cornerstone.
- [02:48]
Sure, absolutely. So I have been at CornerStone, I'm approaching 11 years with the organization and what a privilege it's been to be with the journey of Cornerstone to where we were then to where we are in 2025. So it's just pretty amazing for that. Within Cornerstone, as you mentioned in the intro, start us as a Director of customer success through a series of what I call yes answers and discovery and solving problems and opportunities for the business. Have moved into the CCO role two years ago. And within that role, I lead our customer success teams globally, our customer support team, professional services, our Cornerstone University, and then also a team that works through customer strategy and customer insights. So it's been quite a privilege to lead this team from different parts of the world and as the world keeps changing in different aspects within different geos and really different business models as well. Before coming to CornerStone, I spent 15 years in the airline transportation business, which I'll say certainly prepared me for this role. So in different, I'll say pinnacles and some challenging components from being in the airline space with 9, 11, also being with the airline and a different airline at the time when the US Airways airplane landed in the Hudson, to the joys of new ways of consumer buying. So it's been quite a journey that's really led me to here and pretty pumped about what today is and then what the future holds.
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Yeah, yeah, I love it. Well, you are definitely the person to talk with about this, this topic here. So we're going to, we're going to touch on, on a few things here, but I want to start with talking about AI. And you know, certainly we talk a lot about that on this show from a number of different angles. But I wanted to talk about finding return on investment in customer success using artificial intelligence. And you've said that AI is key to driving customer success. How can organizations leverage AI to deliver better outcomes for their customers?
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Yeah. Thank you. This is where I mentioned a moment ago what today and what the future holds and the excitement that I have from it. So from an AI perspective and customer success, it could be one of those things that people view or engage in and have some concern and trepidation about. And for me and my team, an overall cornerstone, it's about the thoughtful use of AI and saying yes to it in a thoughtful manner. So some ways that we've been using it is really is from a predictability from a customer perspective. So based on the number of customers that we, that we're privileged to have at Cornerstone and the different segments of customers that we have, we really want to know from a predictability standpoint as much as we can, is that what are they focused on? How are they utilizing the platforms that Cornerstone has to the benefit and to the value of the customers? So what we've been doing is taking a lot of data that we have with our customers, aggregating that and using it in a predictive manner so that we can further pinpoint how we should be addressing our customers. And so it's been a pretty thoughtful approach in how we've done that. But what it's been able to do is direct our work. Where I'll say that AI is in the middle. We don't start with it, we don't end with it, but we certainly use it as a directional and a scaling force so that we can ensure that the work that we're doing is targeted to the different customer segments that we have.
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Yeah, yeah. And I know you touched on this a little bit, but, you know, are there areas where you're seeing AI being specifically, you know, a game changer, you know, a net multiplier, you know, something. Something where it's really making a specific impact?
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Yeah, the game changer. I'll say the biggest game changer in customer success right now, and I'll say in customer support right now is time and efficiency. So it's allowing us to like I'll give an example where in our customer support team, how we're using AI is that we have our customers and say they have a concern and they've created a case immediately as that customer logs that matter into us. We know who they are, we know what their issue is. We can immediately route them to the most efficient place for them to get their question or their answer resolved, sometimes without them even talking or engaging with an agent. So when folks call or reach into support, they want. First of all, anytime you're coming, calling to any kind of support line, you have an issue and you generally don't want to be there. And so with that is that we're like, hey, we got you. We know who you are already. We know the platform that you have, we know the solution, and we can pinpoint where that issue is. Even take in some of the things that we know that's coming and some future releases as well, and getting directly to that customer, solving, resolving fast. Also in the customer success or the CSM team as well, is that we'll talk. I know more about the SaaS business, but folks are looking for a solution and they want to ensure that they have value aligned to what they purchase. So because we're way more predictive, we know more about our customers, we know where they're going and what they're needing, we're able to really quickly match our solution to their outcome and again, get there faster, get there successfully, ultimately meeting the needs of their organization.
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Yeah. And so now let's talk a little bit about. There's a lot of focus on AI and a lot of amazing things, as you just mentioned. There's also in some cases, I'm certainly one of those people that doesn't like to sit on a customer service line and wait for a human to pick up. But there are needs in some cases, and sometimes there's a lot of benefit to having a human connection as well. So how do you look at balancing some of the amazing efficiencies and other things that AI is able to do with this need for human connection and the value of human connection?
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Yeah, we'll never lose that. And I think that's where sometimes people get a bit concerned about AI. Is it going to take over the humans? In my view, it's never going to take over the need for humans. What it's going to do and has done is removing some things that can be automated, that can be sped up, that don't need the human and uses the human in a more elevated manner. So I'll use one customer example that we've had, where we've had a customer has a lot of, I'll say, organizations that they work with within their own ecosystem. And so they have a lot of different inputs of use cases, data usage, ensuring that we're getting to value to the overall need of that business. But then they, this company has, like I say, many different organizations underneath them. So what we've been able to do is to at the top of that organization say, hey, let's talk about what your 2024 goals and targets are and what you need from every organization to ensure that they're driving the success of what you need. So very cleanly and very quickly, we have been able to aggregate all that data from their different business units and some external business units that they've used. We've pulled that together to determine did we meet the requirements of your business with the solution that we have. And not only did we meet it, I'll call it tactically, did we then further go in and solve your business problem? And so that's where some financial services institutions that we've really gone through and said, wow, you have all these branches and all these different organizations are each of them individually meeting your business objectives. Pull that data together, bring it to the top, assess where it's working, where it's not working, working with that organization to celebrate the successes, find areas of remediation, but ultimately get to why they purchased the solution to benefit their business and in most cases, their bottom and top line.
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Yeah, yeah. Because I mean, at the end of the day it's, you know, as much as I like playing with fancy toys and the latest and greatest, and I'm sure most of us do, it's about solving real problems. It's about treating our customers well and creating value for customers. I love that, I love that example and that way of framing things.
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Sure.
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Another thing that as we're, you know, just starting 2025 here, there's certainly a lot of focus being put on costs, budgets for the year, all of those kinds of things. And that inevitably brings in the cfo. And so another thing I wanted to talk with you about was just the relationship and the partnership between the CFO and the Chief Customer officer. How do you think through those, how can chief Customer Officers serve as strategic advisors to CFOs? As we're, you know, probably most companies are probably through some of their planning, but as we're kind of, as we're starting off the year and working through it.
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Yeah. So while I have strong relationships with each member of our executive leadership team, I will say my CFO and I, Dave, are pretty tight and pretty tight in the sense that we must be to not only deliver what we must deliver for our customers at Cornerstone, but also to deliver for Cornerstone as a business. And so Dave and I have done a lot of work with our teams and our other leaders to determine what do we expect from a return for our business. So that we are saying, hey, what's our renewability with our customers? Where are there opportunities for expansion? We have a new Galaxy platform that has many different opportunities for our customers to grow with us. That includes AI, that includes our skills framework as well. So when we are predicting our own success as an organization, we are saying, hey, if customer behavior looks like this and customer expectation looks like this, and we are working on their adoption of our systems, the usage of them, the growth opportunities that they have for them, what does that look like for the bottom line of Cornerstone? And so that's where we spend quite a bit of time in connecting the dots between the customer success team, the sales team, prod, engineering, marketing, all the way up to ensure that Cornerstone is Continuing to thrive so that we can continue to benefit our customers. So it's a pretty tight relationship where I spend a great part of my time working through what our numbers look like from a Cornerstone perspective, in addition to our customers, so that our customers succeed. But also Cornerstone continues to succeed and thrive so we can continue to offer new innovation to our customers as well.
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Yeah. And along those lines, for those listening that want to build that kind of partnership, what data or insights do you recommend that customer success leaders bring to the table to, you know, it sounds like there's ongoing conversations and collaboration is key, not only with the cfo, but with others in the C suite and elsewhere. But do you have any recommendations on data or insights specifically that a CCO can bring to the table to demonstrate their impact to the bottom line?
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Yeah, absolutely. So close partnership that I have with my team and the CFO's team. But what we're looking at quite a bit is NRR and then into grr. So from a statistics and numbers standpoint, we are looking at something we do continuously is looking at our retention rate, our renewability from a numbers perspective. So we'll say, you know, coming into 2025, what is our ATR or available to renew within a dollars perspective and then what is that opportunity, not only to renew those dollars as we drive success and value to our customers, but what's our expansion opportunity as well, which is where we get into nrr. So on a weekly basis, my team and Dave's team, along with other members of different teams within Cornerstone, we are looking at, hey, what are the customers that are available to renew in this period and are they successful with our products and our solutions so that there are potential upsells and exposure expansion, not for the sake of expansion in itself, but for the sake of driving value to those organizations and then that expansion and growing the business for Cornerstone. So constantly looking at who are our customers that are renewing, what are our expansion opportunities for customers that are renewing or not quantitatively. And then we're looking at our data from a health score perspective. If I'm saying, hey, Dave, here are all of our customers that are renewing an X period and then here's the quantitative health, because we measured that via health score. Then from a predictability perspective, we believe in history, we believe that X number of customers will renew with us. And then we also believe that X number of customers will continue to expand with us. So that's where that NR comes in. And then of course, working with our total ecosystem, the more customers that we have, that are renewable, are renewing with us, that have, that are advocates for us. So we quantify that as well. That helps us also understand our total growth from a GRR perspective also.
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And so, you know, in addition to the opportunity, with a new year starting, you know, getting off the ground, there's also plenty of uncertainty. And you know, this has been a theme for several years now, of course, but economic uncertainty, good or bad or unknown, is certainly in the mix. How do you recommend that CFOs and CCOs work together to prioritize investments in customer success? Because, you know, as we all know, there are certain things that, you know, when times are, when times are tough or potentially tough, people, you know, within an org will take a sharper look at very specific areas of the business. How do you, how do you work as a partner with the CFO to prioritize the customer success components?
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Yes, and you know, look, we do that within Cornerstone. We know that our customers do it. It's just, as you mentioned, a way of working that happens every period. I say in the good and bad years, they're always going to be looking for, you know, are we using our money in the best way that we should. And so in this role, and especially now of, to your point of, I'll call it tightening the belts a little bit, the, the number one thing that my team and the other leaders at Cornerstone focus on is value and value because when the, when the, the belt tightens or when that scrutiny comes in, there will be a tightening. But what we want to ensure is that Cornerstone is providing so much value to, to organizations that they are compromising or taking that cut someplace else because we have provided a solution that works and is very necessary to their business. And so that's why I think, I probably say it a lot of times, but really, really will continue to click on value because that's where it's at. We had examples where, when I think about during the heart of the pandemic and when a lot of organizations moved to remot work, well, Cornerstone was continued to be there and we allowed organizations to continue to thrive, whether they were on site or they were working remotely, we were valuable to their organization. When I look at some of the things during the pandemic, I'd say some of the drugs that were created and ensuring that we have heavy compliance in those areas. Cornerstone was able to solve, verify and ensure compliance with all the very, very necessary governing bodies to ensure safety. And so, and then as we move into, you know, the future and self directed Work and understanding what skills are necessary. Kind of going back into that AI component is that we have to determine what skills are necessary for the future. What does that look like? How do I career path through that? Those are things that we've also been able to double click and then anchor on and ensuring that there is a future ahead and we can help organizations go there so they know what to do again, predictability within their business. So when I, you know, kind of answering the question in summary about how about these investments and when it gets tight, it will never not exist without ensuring that we have some type of value component which then gets in the, into that predictability and we're creating solutions and services and offerings and support that really are necessary for companies to thrive.
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Yeah, yeah. So the last topic I want to talk about is, you know, customer loyalty is certainly something I think on every brand's minds and certainly there's lots of different ways to approach it. I think perhaps the inverse of customer loyalty is vendor lock in. Right. So it's, you know, customer loyalty, we want to be here, vendor lock in. We kind of have to be here at least for some period of time. Right. So in the SaaS world, you know, how, how can an organization ensure that they're, they're doing the right thing, you know, they're, they're building genuine loyalty rather than just kind of keeping people or companies there as long as they can.
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Yeah. And the vendor lock in is temporary, it's not lasting. I know it exists in some spaces in some organizations, but it's never lasting. So we can never align to vendor lock in because there's always a way and there's always a new company and there's always continued innovation that will move us out of that vendor lock in. But when we talk about that loyalty component, it, that's bit where the people come in again as well. Because we are ensuring the success of these organizations and not just of these organizations, of these individuals who are making pretty strategic and forward bets into the future for their organization. And so part of the loyalty that we have done is that we've recognized that Cornerstone has a very, very solid solution. But we also know that there is an ecosystem of solutions as well, ensuring that we know how to lock in, integrate well, lock in, but we know how to integrate with other customers within the HR ecosystem that we understand like the true cycles of how organizations are working and how are we connecting with them to make sure that what they're really trying to get accomplished is trying to get accomplished. But I'll Say not more so on the human perspective, the individuals that we're working with to ensure that they're achieving their success because their success is ultimately tied to the business. And really that's how you get loyalty. You get loyalty when things are really going kind of crummy and you're coming in and you're solving and you're engaging. You're getting loyalty when you're understanding that we have at Cornerstone a platform that is open and that's available, that can work with organizations wherever they are on the journey. And then ensuring that our entire journey that we have of user experience is that we're easy to work with, we're responsive, we keep changing and updating with you within our releases and the different acquisitions and different things that we're building in. To me, that's how you get loyalty and that's what sticks more so than a vendor lock in, which is absolutely temporary.
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Yeah, yeah. So looking through the new year and beyond, what do you see as the most important trends that are shaping customer success?
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Yeah, the most important trends are ensuring you'll never get away from customer success. Truly, not just as a title, but as an active. I have a saying that some people think is interesting where I say our goal is not to make our customers happy. So I'll say this is the number one trend. We are not focused on making our customers happy. What we are focused on is truly making our customers successful. And what that means is that we are solving problems for them, especially as a SaaS solution. We're ensuring that our roadmap is aligned and working with them. And it's that if we have a path to get to the outcome, sometimes we make customers sit happy, but it's not going to help them down the road. But generally, I'll say generally most of our successful customers are happy, but our first line is not in happiness because also kind of to that lock in happiness sometimes is very, very short term success is not. And so with that, so that is a trend is focus on success, not happiness, which is sometimes short term wins. The other thing of some trends is always being data focused. So we have to ensure that we are going back and we're understanding how are we scoring with our customers? Are we actually hitting those value metrics? What is our health score predictability with those customers? Are we sticky with them because we've added value? Are we not sticky with them? So a data forward customer success organization must be there. In addition to that, as I mentioned earlier, is a thoughtful use of AI in the middle because that's also, you know, a bit to the squeeze that we talked about earlier. Look, we are also focused from a cornerstone perspective to ensure that we're guiding this business properly. So I am going to use AI for scaling and our in the middle to ensure that we're driving the success of our customers, but also I'm not also driving significant costs to our business.
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Yeah, yeah, I love that. Well, Toya, thanks so much for for your insights today. One last question I'd like to ask everybody here. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
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Hmm. That is. That's a interesting question, which I'll say it's a lot of engagements and talking and sharing with a lot of different people. What I know is that I know a lot about the space. I've been in the space for a while, but I also know I don't know everything and I know there's a future here. So it's about having a lot of different conversations, listening and learning, sharing ideas. That has been the path to. You hear a nugget, you pick up on it, but then you just say, okay, I know this component, this person knows that component. How do I take it from there and elevate or build more with other folks in our team? So it is staying agile to me is staying open, staying aware and being engaged with many other people, leaders and the newness in the world. Because that's how I know we're going to continue to thrive and change. And that's how I'll continue to stay agile.
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Wonderful. Love it. Well again I'd like to thank Toya Del Valle, Chief Customer Officer at Cornerstone, for joining the show. You can learn more about Toya and Cornerstone by following the links in the show Notes.
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Greg Kilstrom
Thanks again for listening to the Agile Brand brought to you by Tech Systems. If you enjoyed the show, please take a minute to subscribe and leave us a rating so that others can find the show as well. You can access more episodes of the show@theagilebrand.com that's the theagile brand.com and contact me if you're interested in consulting or advisory services or are looking for a speaker for your next event. Go to www.gregkilstrom.com that's G R E G K I H L S t r o m.com the Agile brand is produced by Missing Link, a Latina owned, strategy driven, creatively fueled production company co op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. Until next time, stay curious and stay agile.
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Toya Del Valle
The agile brand.