GTM 123: Customer Experience Fuels Business Growth, Build a Customer-First Culture with Kim Peretti

The GTM Podcast

Kim Peretti is an experienced Customer Success executive with over 25 years in the technology industry. Her most recent role was as Chief Customer Officer at Klaviyo, where she transformed the customer success organization during the company’s hypergrowth, and played a key role in preparing the company for its IPO. Prior to Klaviyo she was the Group Vice President of Customer Success at DocuSign, where she built and lead successful strategies that delivered key customer outcomes and results. Kim's extensive background also includes leadership positions in Customer Success at renowned technology companies such as Adobe, Qlik, and Symantec. Her career reflects a strong commitment to driving customer impact and achieving business results.
Discussed in this Episode:

• The importance of building a customer-first culture from day one
• Strategies for aligning sales, marketing, and customer success teams
• The role of data in understanding and driving customer health
• How to implement an effective voice of the customer program
• The misconception that customer success managers alone can solve churn
• The impact of shared compensation goals on cross-functional collaboration

Highlights:
(1:56) Kim's journey through top tech companies and the power of networking.
(5:39) The importance of customer experience from the first marketing touch.
(8:38) Shifting focus from new logos to customer retention and expansion.
(15:10) Implementing shared compensation goals across teams.
(20:37) Building a voice of the customer program.
(35:17) The role of partnerships in customer success.
(40:37) Using data to understand what makes customers healthy.
(45:58) One thing revenue leaders believe to be true that Kim thinks is bull$***.
(47:58) One thing that is working for Kim in go-to-market right now.
Guest Speaker Links (Kim Peretti):
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kim-peretti-2b719730/
Host Speaker Links (Scott Barker):
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ssbarker/
Newsletter: www.gtmnow.com/tag/newsletter/
Product Recommendation: Apollo
"The revenue tech stack is messy right now.

If you are one of those leaders, I would recommend that you take a look at Apollo. Maybe you think you know Apollo, maybe you’ve taken a look at them in the past but I’ve looked under the hood recently and if your goal is to reduce and simplify your tech stack AND have best in breed data layered in with AI - they would be at the top of my list. There’s a reason Rippling and Stripe switched over.

We worked with their team to create an interactive demo page. You can check it out at: https://www.apollo.io/gtm

Almost all I hear these days is “we need to figure out how to best leverage AI in our sales process” and “how can we consolidate/simplify our tech stack.” With Apollo I believe you can accomplish both." - Scott Barker

The GTM Podcast
The GTM Podcast is a weekly podcast hosted by Scott Barker, GTMfund Partner, featuring interviews with the top 1% GTM executives, VCs, and founders. Conversations reveal the unshared details behind how they have grown companies, and the go-to-market strategies responsible for shaping that growth.
Visit gtmnow.com for more episodes and other interesting content.