RevRev Ep. 5 – Michelle Curless

This week on Revenue Revolutionaries, Michelle Curlees, CCO at Cheetah Digital, joined me to talk about how she thinks about the ‘art and science’ of customer management, the power of a ‘red-bow’ customer experience, and the keys to building strong customer relationships in order to achieve retention and growth goals.

Episode Key Takeaways

1. Customer management is a combination of art and science – Michelle shares how she thinks about customer management as a combination of art and science. Science is required to run the operations of a business really well while ‘art’ is necessary to determine the best way to achieve the operational goals. Leaders must find a balance between the two in order to create meaningful relationships with customers. 

2. Leaders must review customer experience improvement opportunities by using both ‘outside-in’ and ‘inside-out’ strategies – In order to move the proverbial customer experience needle, it’s imperative that leaders take both an ‘outside-in’ and ‘inside-out’ approach to customer experience work. It is crucial that organizations understand the customer experience through the customer’s perspective while also driving change internally by being aware of an organization’s own capabilities and limitations.

3. Simplicity can be the key to success – Michelle explains how organizations often over-engineer processes and experiences for customers. Sometimes it’s necessary to simplify in order to produce the best results for a customer.

4. Customers want a ‘red-bow’ experience – Michelle details how her work experiences across various industries and categories have been a catalyst for learning. Getting experience in various industries can widen your perspective and make you a stronger customer leader. She cites a ‘red-bow’ experience example in the B2C space and shares how it has inspired how she thinks about crafting B2B customer experiences.

5. Define and design around what customers want, need, and value in order to protect and grow revenue – Creating customer trust through transparency and honest conversations are key to leading customers. Michelle shares how she thinks about developing customer relationships to create a path for achieving retention and growth goals.

6. Employee experience and customer experience are directly connected– Michelle has oversight of HR in her CCO at Cheetah Digital. This unique dynamic has given her a front-row seat to better understanding the relationship between the Cheetah Digital employee and customer experiences. This organizational structure has provided a venue for aligning all employees better in delivering customer value.

Check out additional episodes of Revenue Revolutionaries here.