>> Hey, welcome back everybody.
Jeff Frick here with theCUBE.
We're at PagerDuty Summit in Downtown San Francisco.
Actually, out on the wharf.
It's called Pier 27, never been here before.
Pretty cool venue between Pier 39 and the Bay Bridge.
We're excited to have a very seasoned
Silicon Valley veteran, Nick Mehta.
He's the CEO of Gainsight, but look at his LinkedIn profile.
He's been on startups, he's been at venture capital
companies and now we hear you might may be growing
a little unicorn thingy out of your head
after that last round. (Nick laughs)
>> I don't know about unicorn-- >> Nick, great to see you.
>> But a gray hair, for sure.
Seasoned, I think just means gray hair, so.
>> Absolutely.
>> That's growing in my head for sure.
>> For people who aren't familiar with Gainsight,
give them the basic overview.
>> Sure, Jeff.
At Gainsight, we really believe that
almost every business model is shifting to ones
where customers have more power.
Therefore, you can't afford to just sell a customer
and move on, and for a long time,
businesses, the vendors had all the power.
You sell a software product or hardware, you sell a device,
and once the customer has it,
it's up to them whether they get value.
Gainsight, we're trying to help enable a shift
to this concept we call customer success,
where companies have to own whether or not
their customers are getting value,
whether they're getting the outcomes they want,
whether they're using the stuff they buy,
and we build a software product, a SAS application,
that helps companies make sure everyone in your company
is orienting your customers towards getting more value,
and in the process, get them to stay with you longer,
spend more money with you,
and become bigger fans of your company.
>> Right, I imagine a lot of people
might confuse it with CRN.
>> Right. >> Customer relation management
and there's a big 60 storey building going up.
>> I've seen the building, and we love those guys.
Think of us as an adjacent product to what you might do
with a Salesforce automation product like salesforce.com.
We actually integrate very tightly with Salesforce,
as an example, they're an investor in Gainsight.
As you're managing sales with your Salesforce,
you're managing your support team,
you're managing other systems.
How do you manage your customers
and make sure they're getting value,
make sure they're going to stay with you and grow over time?
That's what Gainsight does.
>> It's really interesting, 'cause people have been
talking about the 360 degree view of the customer forever,
but that's the challenge you guys went directly after
with your application. >> Yeah, it's funny.
That's right.
I think, for a long time, people were trying to solve
360 view of the customer, but what they were really solving
was 360 view of the deal, 'cause it was all about the sale,
and the sale is important, it's still very important, right?
It was about marketing leads and who I'm selling to
and who has power and those are all really important things
but now if you think about a world where the customer
has power, you've got to look at 360 view of the customer.
Are they getting the outcomes they're looking for?
Are they adopting and using what they bought?
Are they having a good experience?
It's a totally different pivot on the world.
It's about the customer, not the deal.
>> It's interesting too to parallel that
with just SAS and Cloud,
because when you have a SAS relationship with a client
and an ongoing subscription revenue model,
you have to keep delivering value, you have to make sure
they're going to pay you next month
and the month after and the month after.
It's not just a sell it and walk away.
>> That's exactly right, Jeff.
As you know, first of all, it's way cheaper to keep and grow
an existing customer than to go get a new one,
and because of that, the SAS business model
depends on actual high retention rates.
People talk about gross retention rate, basically,
"Are you keeping the customers you've got?"
And then also your net retention rate,
are they spending more money with you over time?
And the most successful SAS companies,
the highest valued ones, are keeping their customers
and getting them to spend more money,
so that's one of the most important value drivers in SAS.
>> I'm curious, when you guys deploy into a new company,
a new customer, what are some of the early a-has
that you just see over and over and over again
that they just miss before they had this view?
>> Totally, so number one is almost every company
feels today like they're reactive.
They find out about things but very late.
A customer leaving them, somebody unhappy,
a missed sales opportunity, so number one is just
getting your organization to be more proactive.
Number two, how do you get everyone in the company
aligned around the customer?
You might have somebody that cares about that one customer,
but that customer is talking to support,
they're working with your services team,
they're going through training.
How do you get everyone aligned around the customer
and really have a good view across your whole organization
so they're all marching for that?
Number three, the third a-ha, is how do you scale that?
You might have 100 customers, you might have 1,000,
you might have a million.
How do you scale the right approach with the right customer,
whether it's a human outreach
or whether it's a fully digital experience,
which we can do both, of course.
>> What about, there's customers that are in your sales book
as a company, but then there's individuals, right,
that you're interacting with. >> That's right.
>> And in a big company to (mumbling) a relationship,
it's not just two companies.
It's thousands, or hundreds of thousands of people
that are interacting at a bunch of different levels.
>> I'm so glad you said that.
>> How do you integrate that in?
>> Yeah, totally, it's funny,
because if you have a big customer
and somebody says, "Is your big customer happy or not?"
There's no one answer to that question.
There might be one part that loves you,
another part that doesn't like you,
one part that's rolling out,
one part that's using some new stuff,
one part that's not using anything,
and so you have to be able to break up that company
in a lot of little pieces, we call those relationships,
and then measure each of those differently
and be able to drive each of those forward.
So, you're totally right.
It's not about one company, it's about a lot
of little customers within that big customer.
>> Right, now you bought into Cloud early in.
I think you were actually at a VC firm looking at Cloud
and obviously you're at Gainsight and SAS Application.
As you look forward, you just got off a panel, what's next?
Where do you see the next big evolution or revolution,
if you will, in the way IT services
and software are delivered?
>> Totally, I think the biggest thing that's happening
right now is that Cloud is just a delivery vehicle,
I think everyone knows that.
SAS is kind of table stakes.
Mainstream companies are saying,
how do I reinvent my core business by shifting
to these business models that are digitally enabled?
People call that digital transformation.
That's what this panel we just did was all about.
That's happening not just in Silicon Valley,
that's happening in manufacturers and retailers
and financial services companies.
When they do that, they're rethinking everything
about what they do, how they manage product development,
how they actually sell, and also the customer experience,
which is where we come in.
We think the biggest thing is kind of obvious,
it's digital transformation.
Underneath that, you can leverage all kinds
of new technologies whether it's artificial intelligence,
machine learning, bots.
But the transformation of mainstream businesses
is happening at a rapid speed right now.
>> I want to get one last point before we let you go,
the impact of social,
direct social back to these big companies.
My favorite one is Comcast Cares.
Every time my internet goes down, I jump on and I tweet--
>> Nick: Oh my God.
>> Give my internet back!
>> I feel for those Comcast Cares social people.
They deal with a lot of mean words.
>> No, this is not Xfinity Cares, this is Comcast Cares.
But it's a really interesting paradox for companies,
because people can reach out directly
in kind of a semi public forum,
which it wasn't, you know, just calling the 1800 number.
How are they integrating that into
this customer relationship management?
>> Oh my God, we talk about the fact that
customers have more power and they have bigger voices.
One customer has a much bigger voice than they ever did,
and so you have this amazing opportunity to either
create a great advocate who could bring you new customers
and new sales, or create all these detractors.
I think that that public voicing of customer experience
has made CEOs much more aware of why it matters.
Before, a customer has a bad experience,
they type up a letter and mail it to some office
that nobody ever reads, and now, this CEO is seeing
on her or his Facebook or Twitter feed or LinkedIn
the customer upset, and I think that's making them much
more aware of customer experience being really important.
>> Right, right, and are you seeing,
it's interesting to me, there's some senior executives,
Michael Dell, Beth Comstock, just picked two out of the hat,
that are super active on social--
>> Nick: Oh my gosh, yeah.
>> Directly engaging with their community.
There's other big companies, which I won't name,
where people don't even have a LinkedIn account--
>> That's right. >> Much less a Twitter account.
Is there a direct correlation that you're seeing between
embracing a direct engagement with your community versus,
"Eh, I don't want to say anything bad,"
which I think, it's either or the other.
>> Yeah, I empathize with the fear,
because I think people worry about saying something bad,
so I get it.
I think it's definitely misguided and kind of backwards.
You can't stick your head in the sand anymore.
Take somebody like Marc Benioff, who's so great at this,
and he's on Twitter, he's advocating for causes.
He's taking, maybe, controversial stands in some cases,
but he's putting himself out there
and he cares about his customers.
Same thing with Michael Dell, same thing with Beth Comstock.
There's so many great CEOs out there, so honestly,
at this point, if you're not out there,
you look like you have something to hide, right?
(laughter) Which is not good.
>> Which is not good.
Alright, Nick, thanks for taking--
>> Thanks so much, Jeff.
>> A few minutes, and congratulations.
I saw you were a Top 50 SAS CEO of 2017,
and continued success at Gainsight.
>> I don't know how I made that list, but I felt honored,
so thank you so much.
>> Absolutely. >> I really appreciate it.
>> We'll see you next time.
He's Nick Mehta, I'm Jeff Frick.
You're watching theCUBE from PagerDuty Summit 2017.
Thanks for watching.