Working With Product Teams to Solve Customer Pain (w/ Christine Itwaru of Vitally)

When Customer Success aligns with their Product team, it’s near-perfect harmony. The product improves, customer satisfaction is enhanced, and ultimately, revenue increases.

Christine Itwaru, Head of Product at Vitally, understands the importance of creating this seamless feedback loop with Customer Success. In this episode, Christine shares the blueprint for building strong partnerships. She teaches CS Leaders how to speak the language of Product and ask the right questions, and reveals her top 3 insights that every CS leader should know. 

About Christine:

Christine has been in product management for 13+ years, starting her career as an IC Product Manager and has held various leadership roles in product during her time in finance, fintech, and SaaS. She’s focused on not only delivering product experiences and outcomes to customers, but also strengthening product teams while doing so. Christine believes that great relationships with customers start with a frictionless product experience that helps them build trust with the company, ultimately creating a partnership vs. a transactional relationship. 

Her passion for connecting product people to their partners and customers helped guide her throughout her career, and has been foundational to her role as a pioneer in Product Operations, and a thought leader in the broader product space. Focusing on data-driven product management, she’s led and coached hundreds of teams through product-led transformation and building product strategy. 

Guest Quote:

“There's the saying, ‘Only the fool tries to please everyone.’ Product people, especially earlier in their career, want to please every customer and it ends up hurting everyone. We have to be intentional about what we're going after so that we can solve the pain for a massive amount of customers, not just one or two, but we truly do want to solve pain for everybody.”

Timestamps:

*(00:34) - Bridging Customer and Product Teams

*(03:03) - Three Insights Every CS Leader Should Know

*(06:06) - How To Build A Strong Customer Voice Program Together

*(16:44) - Navigating Challenges And Aligning On Customer Needs

*(26:09) - Quick Hits

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Links:

• Connect with Taylor Johnston on LinkedIn
• Connect with Christine Itwaru on LinkedIn
• Learn more about Vitally
• Take our season 1 survey