The memory is vivid: a dark blue piece of construction paper, a fresh unused roll of tape in a handheld dispenser. I remember looking around and seeing my classmates using crayons, markers, and massive pencils to create their parent’s newest piece of fridge decor. Scissors were used by some, glue bottles and sticks by those less trusted. Why was no one using the tape? I remember the feeling of being consumed by this question as I stared at my blank canvas, glancing at the pristine, intact roll of tape, and then back to the blue paper. I remember the uncertainty in my mind placing the first piece of tape on the construction paper—starting at the top left corner and ending at the center. The second stretch ran from the bottom left corner to the center, the third from the bottom right corner to the center, and by the time I placed the end of the fourth piece at the top right corner, I knew I was onto something.
The next five to seven minutes were filled with what my table mates must have viewed as the erroneous workings of a child gone mad, but with each strand of transparent tape I placed, the blue began to fade and was replaced with the ivory of multi-stacked strands of tape. At last, my masterpiece was complete. I did something no one had ever done. I did something no one even thought to attempt. The roll was empty, my fingers gummed in the remnants that never found paper, my mind, and curiosity—liberated and unaware that this moment would become my most early memory in life, the most notable leading indicator of how I think, analyze, process, and learn.
Welcome to Rants of a Customer Success Analyst. I’m Justin Garlock, and over the next three months, I’ll be providing you a weekly firsthand look into the mind of a Customer Success Analyst: how we should think, what we should be doing, what we should be asking, and how we should execute and deliver.
In this 13-part-topic-of-the-week series, I’ll share stories from my life—some humorous, some embarrassing—that combined with my experience working with a variety of clients, from SMB to Enterprise Fortune 500, will provide a framework for the emerging and vital role of Customer Success Analyst. You’ll be presented with real industry challenges with how Customer Success Analysts can contribute to the resolution or remediation of those problems—with a little bit of ranting of course!
No buzzwords for the sake of sounding like the cool kids.
No false claims of perfect data.
No magical tool to fix the lack of a data warehouse.
Real. Raw. Authentic. Curious.
I do not claim to be an omniscient expert in my field or have the answers to instantly increase all the three-character financial acronyms; however, I spend a lot of time observing, processing, evaluating, learning, applying, and as a result, I’ve unintentionally molded my curiosity into deliverable value being unafraid of asking the often evaded one-worded question that unsettles the norm: WHY?
So, if the above appeals to you—and you want to learn what crocheting or hand sanitizer have to do with Customer Success—you’re going to want to continue to tune in every Friday for The Reason, The Rant, and The Resolution. This is Rants of a Customer Success Analyst. Welcome.