#39: How Customer Success Can Be Your Company’s Secret Weapon with Don Aquilano and Haresh Gangwani

Following last month’s announcement that Powderkeg has officially become a product company, my team and I have been doing some intensive planning on how to build a world-class customer experience (CX). With this in mind, I sought out Haresh Gangwani of Bolstra and Don Aquilano of Allos Ventures for this episode to get the perspective and advice of two experts in the SaaS Customer Success space. Gangwani and Aquilano have a combined 30 years of customer success experience, Gangwani as a business operator and Aquilano as an advisor and investor. Gangwani previously served in various VP roles at the enterprise software company Aprimo, where he developed such a passion for helping customers get value out of a product that he later launched his own customer success SaaS startup, Bolstra. Meanwhile, Aquilano invested in and sat on the boards of both Aprimo and Bolstra, which helped him form a close working relationship with Gangwani and taught him the incredible value of customer success from a financial and advisory perspective. Our guests provided some truly invaluable insights on why and how to make outstanding customer success practices a secret weapon for your SaaS business. I know I’ll be heeding their advice as we create our new customer experience strategy for Powderkeg. Enjoy the show, and please leave us a comment below to let us know if you liked the episode! You can also reach out to Gangwani and Aquilano on LinkedIn (links below) to thank them for sharing some of their wisdom on the podcast. In this episode with Don Aquilano and Haresh Gangwani, you’ll learn: -- How Gangwani conceived of Bolstra’s customer success platform -- What a true mentor/mentee relationship looks like, and why you need one -- The big difference between customer success and customer support -- Bolstra’s process for driving customer success with their SaaS product -- Why charging for customer success actually makes economic sense -- Why you need to commit to customer success early in the life of your business --- This episode of Powderkeg is brought to you by DeveloperTown. If you’re a business leader trying to turn a great idea into a product with traction, this is for you. DeveloperTown works with clients ranging from entrepreneurs to Fortune 100 companies who want to build and launch an app or digital product. They’re able to take the process they use with early stage companies to help big companies move like a startup. So if you have an idea for a web or mobile app, or need help identifying the great ideas within your company, go to developertown.com/powderkeg. If you like this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes. You can also follow us on Soundcloud or Stitcher. We have an incredible lineup of interviews we’ll be releasing every Tuesday here on the Powderkeg Podcast.