In Partnership With
Hey {{first_name | CS Pro}},
Picture walking into your next renewal with a number instead of a gut feeling.
Not a green health score, not a champion who likes you, but a result your customer's CFO has already signed off on.
That's what Tiina Kanninen, SVP of Global Customer Success at RELEX Solutions, has built with something her team calls verified outcomes.
And what I loved about this convo is that her customers aren't software people, they're the planners and buyers keeping your local supermarket shelves stocked. This week on the podcast, she broke down exactly how it works, and how AI turned days of work into hours.
But first, today’s sponsor
↓
Plus, why only 17% of CS teams track expansion after onboarding
Most teams track time-to-value, completion and health scores during onboarding. Very few track what it makes possible afterward. Our survey of 699 CS professionals shows where measurement stops, and why that makes the business case for onboarding harder to build.
Inside the report, you’ll learn:
The metrics most teams track, and the revenue signals most teams miss
How to test whether on-time onboarding leads to more renewals and expansion
How to set a 90-day churn baseline you can measure improvement against
What a verified outcome actually is
RELEX has always measured value, things like forecast accuracy, inventory levels and spoilage.
But Tiina said looking good on a dashboard isn't enough. The real question is:
"Are they actually moving the needle?"
A verified outcome takes those KPIs, puts a money value on them, and then the customer's stakeholders sign off on it. It's not RELEX saying they delivered value… it's the customer agreeing.
It starts way before go live, by capturing why the customer bought and what was in the business case. That becomes the baseline during implementation.
After 6 to 12 months of use, they compare a before and after period, clean out other factors that could have moved the numbers, and land it on a 1 page summary in the customer's own language. They do 1 per customer, per year, and it's now required for every new implementation.
And if the result isn't good? That gives the CSM a reason to work out with the customer how to get back on track.
If your CSMs are still claiming value instead of proving it, this is exactly what my Value and ROI workshop covers… customer goals, success plans and an ROI story built on your real accounts. Book a call here and let's chat.
One number, 3 very different audiences
A planner, a manager and a CFO can all be in the same value conversation, caring about completely different things.
Planners care about ease of use. Can they get their work done faster, with less manual work, and still feel in control?
Managers care about business metrics like forecast accuracy, inventory and availability.
The CFO cares about money. Lower inventory frees up working capital, and better availability turns into more sales.
The verified outcome is aimed at the senior stakeholders and the C suite. User experience still gets tracked through NPS and CSAT.
If you're only ever talking to your champion, nobody is translating that value for the person who signs off the budget. If that sounds like your accounts, let's chat about a stakeholder mapping and multithreading workshop for your team.
How AI turned days into hours
Pulling data, cleaning it and calculating it all in spreadsheets used to eat days of a CSM's week.
So Tiina's CS ops team built what they call the value analyst, an AI agent built with Claude. It walks the CSM step by step through fetching, cleaning and polishing the data, and it removes around 75% of the workload. As Tiina put it:
"The work that took days and now it can be done in hours."
That means they can now do it for the whole book of business, not just 1 or 2 accounts.
My favourite story from the episode? Tiina asked a CSM on one of her exec sponsor accounts to build a verified outcome for a strategic business review, using the value analyst. The customer's stakeholders were happy with the results.
Soon after, that customer acquired another business in different countries and wanted to expand. They used the verified outcome as the benchmark for what the new part of the business could achieve, and the expansion business case was turned around in 1.5 days.
And the customer was using the term verified outcome themselves. That's when you know it's landed.
It's also why Tiina says renewal shouldn't be an event. Her team starts these conversations 12 to 18 months out.
Weekly challenge: the verified outcome test
In the episode I asked CS leaders an honest question. How many of your CSMs could put a real number on the value they've delivered today… one their customer could take to their own CFO?
This week, pick 1 strategic account and answer these 4 questions without asking anyone:
Why did this customer buy, and what was in the original business case?
Which 1 or 2 KPIs did you baseline at the start?
What's changed since, and what is it worth in money?
How would you explain that result to the end user, their manager and their CFO?
You can't prove value against a goal nobody wrote down.
That's it for this week! Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or YouTube. And if you want your team building verified outcomes on real accounts, book a call to design a team workshop.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s newsletter.
If you have any questions or suggestions, please feel free to contact us.
Cheers to your CS success,
Anika
