Recent Posts by Steve Olenski

When it comes to customer success or ANY profession in ANY industry there are 6 words, that when used together can be the difference between success and failure, literally. Before I get to MY personal 6 Most Dangerous Words Anyone Can Use, let's take a trip back in time, shall we? 1864 - Some guy named Louie tells his buddies and anyone else who will listen that he's discovered a a way of preserving food by heating it to kill off bacteria. 1880 - Tommy Edison says enough is...

There is most assuredly a reason this post includes "part 1" for there will most assuredly be more; more such posts that tie in pop culture and what customer success pros can learn from it. I say that so decisively because I am the world's self-proclaimed biggest proponent of infusing and incorporating pop culture into, well, pretty much every aspect of my life.  I've been known to ask thought leaders to assign a pop culture reference to a marketing/advertising prediction for...

“…a cumulative effect produced when one event initiates a succession of similar events.” Yes, I know we all know what the term ‘domino effect’ means. I did not mean to insult anyone’s intelligence. Just consider it a friendly reminder and leave it at that. So why do I use this particular phrase with this particular post? Well, it’s rather simple when you look at the chart below, which is an excerpt from the most recent CMO Survey, which according to its site: “collects and...

Customer Success is about getting the right information in front of customers who need it, at the right time. We believe customers benefit when the steady diet of technical guidance they receive from vendors is augmented with information that helps them think in a bigger way about challenges and opportunities in front of them. We believe our blog posts are doing just that. Here are the top 5 posts from the last quarter all ready for you to read and digest in 5 minutes! 1....

Gordon Tredgold. No that’s not a typo. It’s a gentleman I just stumbled upon while thinking of how to craft this particular piece. Gordon Tredgold is someone I had never heard of before but I can tell you this: He and I need to meet for he is a man after my own heart. First off, the following verbiage is on his site: “Gordon has a strong sense of humour, and believes that humour is a great stress reliever and that teams that laugh together work harder together.” As you can...

Ah the age old dilemma of perception vs. reality. It can manifest itself in many different ways for sure. What one person perceives to be true may in fact be anything but. There's no shortage of ways to describe the differences between these two worlds. I like this one: Perception: Psychology. A single unified awareness derived from sensory processes while a stimulus is present. Reality: The state of things as they are or appear to be, rather than as one might wish them to be. In...

This post is co-written by Peter Armaly and Steve Olenski Marketing has been around forever. The ancient Greeks practiced it as did the Ming Dynasty Chinese in the 1400s. For something that’s been around for hundreds of years, you might think it shouldn’t be such a consistent target today of business leaders who question its value. Yet that’s where we are. Does marketing deserve criticism that its tactics result in messaging that is crass, superficial, and (the worst sling of...

As you’ve probably heard by now, there was an announcement made at Oracle OpenWorld, and not just any announcement. On the contrary, this was a biggie. Dubbed “Redwood,” it is the name for Oracle’s next-generation user experience across product and marketing. It refers to a broad array of touchpoints and building blocks that will transform how the world experiences Oracle, from product to brand—including our look and feel, interaction design, UI platform, website, and customer...