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We are all about Content Management Platforms.
Welcome to "Beyond the CMS," the podcast where big ideas, insightful conversations, and industry-leading voices converge to redefine digital content experiences. Each episode, we sit down with influential thought leaders and innovators from the most prominent CMS platforms—including Contentful, Storyblok, Agility, Magnolia, and more—to explore emerging trends, groundbreaking technologies, and transformative strategies shaping the future of content management.
Our guests are industry experts, visionaries, and key executives who dive deep into topics such as headless architectures, personalization, AI-driven content strategies, composable solutions, and best practices for delivering seamless digital experiences at scale. Whether you're a marketer, developer, product manager, or simply passionate about digital innovation, join us as we uncover actionable insights, discuss bold ideas, and provide a unique behind-the-scenes look into the ever-evolving CMS landscape.
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(0:18) Hello and welcome folks. Thanks for making some time in your day to join us for Connect the Dots, (0:28) a web tech talk show that we created in the spirit of the car guys. I don't know if you're (0:35) familiar out there, but it's a safe space to call in, type in, ask myself and our special guests (0:44) questions about web and marketing tech.
Yes, thanks again. There's a team working behind (0:52) the scenes, Marie and Natalie, that are helping us aggregate questions and make sure that we (0:58) answer anyone who's giving us a question via the chats. We're live on LinkedIn, Facebook and (1:04) Instagram, I think.
All right. Well, super special guests today, a dear friend and technology (1:13) colleague, Matt Kane is joining us. Matt's currently at Shopify and he has had a career (1:22) in various aspects of marketing and web technology.
And let's get right to it, Matt. Thanks (1:28) for making some time in your day to hop online with us and share some of your insights. Maybe (1:33) you want to just say a few words about yourself.
Yeah, well, thanks for inviting me. I know it's (1:38) been a while coordinating, so happy to be here. Chris and I go way back.
I just have to plug that (1:44) in. My profile shot used for the promo probably dates back to when we first met. But yeah, (1:52) bonded over music and then technology and working on stuff.
Myself personally, I've been in the (1:58) tech space or digital space by default for quite some time. Just given my tenure and when I kind (2:05) of entered the scene, I've worked as entrepreneur. So I had a startup that went public actually on (2:10) two very small exchanges, way back when, for about five years, and then got into consulting (2:15) across different digital firms, into ad tech, and then Shopify, into the fraud space, and then back (2:24) to Shopify where I am now.
Traditionally, outside of being a founder, a core piece of my (2:29) career has been really embedded within customer success. So kind of working as a trusted advisor (2:36) on both sides of the business, one for our clients, and then two on the business to make (2:41) sure that we're aligned always, that we're moving forward, and that I have both sides of the (2:47) business best interests at heart. Awesome.
Awesome. I know when we were kind of briefing a little bit (2:52) and we tried to keep the show somewhat unscripted, and to anyone out there who's listening in, (2:59) really feel free to ask us anything. We'll do our best to get you some decent answers.
(3:04) But Matt, you mentioned something that stuck in my mind around this idea of (3:11) customer success for smaller size businesses, not necessarily in the enterprise space, but kind (3:18) of lifting some aspects of that enterprise playbook, and helping smaller SMEs get the (3:25) value of that kind of thinking as they implement their e-comm strategy. I don't know if you wanted (3:30) to talk a little bit about that? Sure. Yeah.
How do you unpack that? When I look at (3:37) what we built from an enterprise level through the different companies I worked at, (3:41) I realized the importance or how relevant it was for entrepreneurs or small business owners. (3:50) Oftentimes, business owners, they don't have a customer success team that they can lean into (3:55) or rely on, and they kind of have to wear that hat, right? Entrepreneurs wear many hats. SMB (4:00) owners wear many hats.
So yeah, I mean, when you look at the foundations of customer success or (4:07) the key KPIs, I mean, they really ladder up to the key KPIs of the business overall, right? Or (4:14) at least there are two very important ones when you look at the whole landscape, and that is (4:20) retention or renewal, and then expansion and upsell, right? So how do you do that? I mean, (4:26) through the sales process, you've done a good job in convincing and hopefully onboarding correctly (4:32) the client, but what happens in between there, right? So really where a CSM or MSM, (4:39) whatever acronym is used across the board. Can you describe what those mean? (4:43) Sure. Yeah.
Let me describe that. I'm stuck in a bubble right now. CSM is Customer Success (4:48) Manager.
MSM is Merchant Success Manager. You'll see MSM attached to a lot of e-com (4:54) sort of apps or platforms. So really the account manager, the strategic account manager.
(5:01) So to borrow from the book, what made me successful or when we weren't successful, (5:09) at least able to really be close to the business and understand how to fight back and win back (5:15) in instances of retention plays or if there was any tough discussions, it really boils down to (5:22) this first point around motivations, right? We're all motivated by something. To put it crudely, (5:28) it's usually fear and greed, right? And those motivations, they don't always overlap in (5:34) personal and business life. So it's great when you get to build a relationship and understand both, (5:38) but really with the decision makers or influencers and those folks you hold relationships with, (5:45) understanding their motivations, right? Also, how are we being judged, right? How are you being (5:53) judged? Like if you're not the decision maker by influencer, how are you being measured? What's (5:58) important? What sort of peace and comfort and value do we bring you now and down the road? (6:04) And are we hitting those cues? So that's kind of the core piece right there.
From there, (6:11) I like to run yearly or twice a year, a bilateral strategic alignment. And that's where we get to (6:19) unpack more of those motivations tied to business goals. Very important to keep in mind that (6:28) you're doing your client a service, you're delivering value and understanding their (6:34) holistic goals as well, not just making it about your product or platform or you.
(6:39) Because there could be ways that you could help, right? Maybe there's introductions. (6:42) Maybe a client is looking to do an IPO. You know someone in your space or someone at the company (6:48) has gone through an IPO and you can broker that connection.
I mean that supersedes your platform (6:54) or product requirements, right? So you're checking more boxes there. I'll kind of wrap off the list (6:59) here if that's okay, Chris. Yeah, absolutely.
Multithreading, right? So multithreading, (7:05) it can mean a couple things. So multithreading can mean that, you know, if you're an entrepreneur, (7:11) you're really working up the ladder or down the ladder or across the organization (7:17) to make yourself visible, but also to go through the exercise of understanding their motivations, (7:22) including them or separately kind of having that strategic alignment discussion to form a (7:28) hypothesis about the business and where you sit overall. Then multithreading in other cases where (7:33) you have an executive team sitting above you and your counterpart at the business that you're (7:43) serving also has executives working above them.
You want to be able to network those folks (7:52) as frequently with as much value as possible to get on their radar, to build a bridge at (7:59) executive level. Most of the time they're signing off even if they trust other folks (8:03) and to create this culture of co-authorship, but also cross accountability. And when I say cross (8:11) accountability, what I mean is we hoist the trophy together, but when there's a fire burning, (8:17) we all show up for the fire hoses.
And I think that's super important because you're going to (8:21) have those situations where a renewal is going to get spicy or something's going to happen, (8:27) a platform outage or your product's not going to be working the way it's supposed to work. (8:30) And you're going to want to have that visibility and those connections at the highest level (8:34) to fight the fire when it's small and really to get your leadership in the game so they have (8:42) skin in the game so they're not blindsided and they have the fullest context as possible (8:46) when approaching that. And again, on the other side, when it's time to lift the trophy to pop (8:50) bottles, it's great.
Awesome visual too. There's a lot that I can learn about this as well. We (9:02) have a small SaaS startup as well as the agency itself.
And just this idea of cross accountability (9:09) is pretty key as we get better at, I guess, helping make sure that the accounts are always (9:17) in good stead and that everyone's prepped for change management too because a lot of things (9:22) change in the organization while you're engaged with the platform or product or that kind of thing. (9:28) I was just wondering if there was, well, I know our audience is primarily CMOs and kind of (9:34) chief decision makers around technologies that they may not be that familiar with. (9:43) They're kind of maybe they're coming from a more kind of traditional or ad marketing proper (9:49) background.
They've got these decisions to make on purchasing platforms and e-commerce (9:53) kind of technology and stuff. Do you have any advice maybe that you can share with (9:59) folks that are tasked with these large decisions on platforms like Shopify, for example? (10:04) Yeah, I think multi-threading comes into play there when you have that executive bridge to (10:10) really have those conversations. But before you get there, it's going back to the fundamentals, (10:15) right? What motivations, building out the persona of that CMO or decision maker, (10:21) like what do they care about? What do they know? What don't they know? In some cases, (10:24) you're going to have to convince them.
In most cases, but the degree of convincing can vary, (10:29) right? It could take 10% of effort or convincing, it could take 80%. So in those cases, (10:37) it's building the context, knowing the motivations, knowing the goals, knowing the persona. (10:43) Oftentimes, you have to work as a partner, whether you're MSM, CSM, business owner, to really (10:49) equip and help build the storytelling narrative for that influencer who reports into the decision (10:58) maker to really empower them and get the message across.
So basically make them an advocate (11:04) and get them enabled and aligned with the message. And once you have that, it's not (11:12) always going to be a home run, but that's going to better your chances. (11:16) Interesting.
I know some of the folks that mentioned they'd be listening in, they're (11:22) obviously curious about the more product-focused aspects of e-commerce platforms, but I know this (11:29) isn't your role particularly, but what are you seeing is kind of trending or coming up in 2025 (11:37) around kind of e-commerce plays? And obviously there's a bit of AI kind of discussion in there. (11:44) Do you have any opinions on what's going on or what opportunities are maybe coming around (11:49) the corner? Yeah. I mean, post peak COVID, and I mean, when you say peak COVID, (11:55) it means a lot of things, right? It was a horrible time.
Personally, we went through a lot. (12:04) We're still kind of recovering from a business sense. I think that mirrors a lot of that, (12:09) but in different ways.
We saw technology expedite. We saw dollars become rapidly available at low (12:17) interest and times were good from a business perspective, especially for e-com. People (12:23) were willing to spend and ask less questions.
What's happened now, I'd say over the last (12:27) couple of years is that those good times have cooled off and we're hit harder times where we've (12:34) all personally or professionally have to make more value-based and value creation-based decisions. (12:41) So it's not a great place to be when you're talking about getting more for less, but a lot (12:51) of discussions are, I want to pay the same, maybe a little bit more or a little bit less, (12:58) but because we're in the landscape that we are, I want to derive maximum value. How are you going (13:03) to make me grow? I've lost market share.
My vertical has seen a downward trend. I've had (13:10) to make layoffs as a result. So how are you going to make me more efficient, more nimble without a (13:17) price tag and enable me to survive or thrive? So a lot of discussions are around that.
(13:24) Talking about AI or products in specific, it's the entrepreneur's job or the CSM's job to show (13:34) real value and numbers and potential that back that up. If you're going in in this environment (13:40) and selling stuff because it's a buzzword or it might've worked for (13:45) ex-client or ex-merchant, you're going to potentially erode your relationship that you've (13:52) built up. And the influencer or decision-maker might second guess making time for you because (13:59) you're coming off salesy or you're not coming off as genuine.
So I think it's good on our side (14:05) of the business where we've had to become laser focused in understanding business value, how to (14:09) drive that, presenting numbers and building business cases as to why this product or this (14:16) platform is the choice. Gotcha, gotcha. If you don't mind, just a few questions around just (14:25) kind of this customer success idea.
And I know some folks in our space are a bit curious around (14:34) tools and application. How do you manage customer success as you're growing a team? Do you have (14:40) any kind of favorite methodologies or tool sets or any kind of advice that might be cool in that (14:47) department? Yeah, so customer success, what can I say? A lot of investment in kind of fine-tuning (14:55) or perfecting or seeking out the next best thing. Fundamentals, and I think the best example of (15:02) fundamentals would be playbooks, right? So knowing again how to run an EBR, knowing how to (15:12) have executive conversations, having a retention and expansion playbook, right? The interesting (15:18) thing about playbooks within customer success and within tech in general is they're ever evolving.
(15:24) I think the footnote there is these are ripe for disruption and they aren't always a silver bullet, (15:32) but to have those foundations to revisit and then calibrate as needed have been the most (15:40) successful sort of plays within the customer success. If we're talking tools, it's all over (15:45) the place, right? There's very expensive tools I've seen that can do cool things or suggest that (15:51) can do cool things, and then there's people who just use spreadsheets or Google Sheets, (15:57) which are all fine. Really, it's about execution and then having those fundamentals to revisit (16:03) because there's so much noise going on that you need those fundamentals and those pillars (16:09) as kind of table stakes to go back and revisit, to ground yourself, and to remember what are the (16:16) most important KPIs that you're being measured by internally, but also how your clients are (16:21) measuring you by.
At the end of the day, those are the most important things. (16:25) Interesting. I know a part of the customer success journey is, I guess, owning the commitment (16:34) of the product to be innovative and continuously adding value to the customer, (16:41) thus their success.
I was just in an interesting talk yesterday about kind of the journey of (16:47) innovation in a product in general. I'm just wondering, what are your thoughts on when you (16:54) inevitably hit the innovation kind of dip where the product is kind of fully featured and there (17:01) just isn't anything new for a while? You've got competitors that have kind of found some silver, (17:06) shiny thing that they're introducing. Maybe it's AI or something and you're just kind of (17:11) not adopting because it doesn't make sense.
What do you do from a customer success perspective when (17:16) you're just kind of in that inevitable lag where you ramp up for the next newest thing? (17:22) Yeah. Be a dialed-in advocate and advisor to both sides of the business. That's sort of a (17:29) recurring theme throughout CS as well.
The best CS folks are just that. They're in the front line, (17:36) hearing the feedback, the frustrations or ideas from their clients or merchants, and then they're (17:42) tapped in and well-networked on their business side with the product or engineering teams to voice (17:50) the clients' concerns, ideas, and ideas around innovation. So saying like, look, there's a (17:58) potential case here.
60% of my merchants are talking about AI. We know that X competitor (18:04) is implemented AI. I think we have a budget.
There seems to be a need. Beyond building a case, (18:11) another great step there is to actually build up some advocacy and this also builds trust. (18:17) So getting those key clients on the phone or on a video call with the key product team or (18:25) engineering team or whoever is applicable to actually have a chance in a platform to voice (18:30) their concern or voice their ideas.
If they're sticky and they're advocates and fans of your (18:36) product and of your platform, that's gold. And then from there, that furthers the business case (18:42) and maybe there's some meat in the bone here. We can actually spur some innovation.
(18:47) Cool. I know a lot of our friends are in the platform space as well and this is great (18:53) information for them. I just wanted to give a shout out to the folks who are making a bit of (18:58) time in the morning to listen in, watch on all of the channels.
Thank you very much. Again, (19:05) we're at your service. Ask us anything.
We have a bit of an e-commerce customer success bias in (19:12) the conversation today, but really we want to just make this an environment to chat about web (19:18) and marketing tech in general. Matt, some of the questions that I've been asked lately is just (19:26) around AI kind of circumventing the traditional user experience of shopping with the kind of (19:34) voice activation stuff and just saying something and making a request into the robots zone and (19:42) it's just kind of producing results. And how far are we away from kind of AI transactional experiences (19:48) that just know your credit card number and your address and grab you the product you're looking (19:52) for that's the right price, fit, style, and color and it just gets dropped off creating a whole new (19:59) scene in general? Yeah, it's a good question.
Timeline. I'll say it within our time. (20:10) What it really falls down to is when you talk about these really cool innovative plays, I mean, (20:15) what's the core of those plans? It's data, right? So how good is your data? What sort of data (20:20) management do you have? How much data do you have? I think there's really great opportunities to (20:25) partner and broker data through platforms or products.
I've been at companies, including my (20:31) current company that has billions of data points, other companies as well. They don't always have (20:36) to be as big. So being able to combine that data and then build those experiences, (20:44) I see it in the near future.
I don't know what the timeline is. (20:47) Everything's exciting until it goes and then we figure out we're not as far advanced. So (20:53) I'm sure it's going to happen on the transaction side.
I think that's super interesting and up for (21:00) disruption. But alongside with that, there's a lot of compliance and old banking and financial (21:07) institution rules that will have to be altered or rewritten. So curious to see how long that (21:13) takes.
But in terms of the kind of curated, customized experiences through AI, we're seeing a (21:19) lot of that already. One example I can talk to is I was at a company called Contabox. They're (21:27) still around.
They're super amazing. Canadian based as well. And they were, with the approval (21:35) of their clients and they got all the approval, they were able to also include their tag on (21:41) customer sites, big retailers, and then be able to serve up curated experiences when you enter the (21:47) page.
But also through ads, right? If you're looking at iTech Play, the upper funnel stuff (21:52) is really great. It's warm, it's fuzzy. Then kind of like going down the funnel and combining site (22:00) data and site behavior, you're able to serve up not only these highly tailored landing pages or (22:06) experiences as you cruise these retail sites, but you're also getting ads now that are highly (22:11) focused on the stuff that you need.
So one example, one made the retailer, but they had (22:15) hundreds of thousands of SKUs. You and I would see the same ad. It wouldn't be a sexy ad.
It'd (22:21) be a rolling sort of carousel of products. But although the format looked exactly the same, (22:27) content usually was very different based on our behavior. So I think that can be replicated (22:33) through the voice activation or furthered through AI.
So that exists, but the financial stuff, (22:39) the transaction stuff, it's exciting. I just don't, I think that's a longer drag. (22:44) Right, right.
Gotcha. Something that I guess not a lot of people know (22:53) is that part of your role is to attract private equity and partner with them. I don't know how (22:59) much you want to talk about that, but I love to kind of help my friends and guests on the show (23:05) talk about what their roles are and maybe create some opportunities for you out there.
Do you want (23:11) to just maybe talk about your role and how you kind of really help out private equity firms (23:16) with partnership with Shopify? Yeah. So, I mean, that could be a whole other podcast. (23:21) We can do that.
And I am sort of constrained to what I can share. In a few words, my role now, (23:30) I sit within partnerships and we see a real need, especially built around the themes I mentioned (23:36) earlier around reducing costs or TCO in this case, and then amplifying or accelerating revenue while (23:47) getting to market fast. Shopify does that very well.
So we're working with private equity firms (23:53) who, there's no secret here, look at distressed assets with potential. They want to build them (23:59) up and eventually move them out of their portfolio or sell them. So we're looking to, (24:05) and we have been partnering with these firms to really help them with that digital transformation, (24:12) hit all those cues around TCO and conversion and revenue and innovation.
It's no secret as well, (24:18) Shopify heavily invest, reinvest their profit more than anyone else into innovation and engineering. (24:26) Cool. Yeah.
I just wanted to mention that because I don't think a lot of people know, (24:29) especially folks in the PE space, that that partnership program and services is something (24:36) that you put a lot of strategy and thought into, and it can be really helpful to lift (24:39) these kind of smaller or kind of reset companies and get them off the ground. (24:43) Yeah. It's basically, we've perfected that outside of the PE and VCC.
And now, recently we've, (24:51) over the last few years, we've recognized this is a scalable play for operators. (24:58) And maybe just thinking about the role of that kind of customer success, do you find that there's, (25:04) that the impact of customer success is great enough that it drives organizations to change (25:12) platforms? Is it that much of a value add, obviously, that you're committing that much (25:18) to it, that it substantially impacts your business? (25:23) It's a great question. And I'd say three to five years ago, organizations would say no.
(25:31) But what's happening across the board now is there is a common consensus from the executive (25:40) level that CS drives a lot. I mean, the term used within organizations is that a senior (25:47) enterprise CSM is the CEO of their book of business. And oftentimes they are trusted that (25:54) way.
So to answer your question more directly, what's happening is within the sales cycle, (26:00) let's say halfway through-ish, and this is across the board. This is not my current company or the (26:05) last company. This is happening across the board.
CS is being inserted into the conversations as (26:11) part of the pre-sale or sales motion, because people want to know what their experience will (26:17) be after they buy, who will be their trusted advisor. And merchants and clients are looking (26:24) at CSMs or customer success people that way as their trusted advisor. That has also changed over (26:29) the last five years, right? There's been a lot of innovation.
There's been good times, (26:34) there's been bad times. So who can I count on, right? It's not just answering emails and showing (26:38) up a couple of times a year to run a very run-of-the-mill business review, right? It's (26:45) more than that now. So the value of the CS person is seen, it's heard, and they are being placed (26:52) within the sales cycle more often.
Interesting. In our experience, it's been somewhat of an (27:00) afterthought, the experience I have with CS agents. I just had no idea that there was that much (27:05) thought and strategy put into it, but it makes a lot of sense.
It's similar to the, I guess, (27:12) advent of a much more strategic partner ecosystem, which is kind of CS for partners of platforms, (27:20) and the thinking behind that as well. Just a question from Natalie. She asks, (27:28) Matt, I'm a bit curious where you'd like to see customer experience go, and it comes from maybe (27:36) an angle of social impact.
It's kind of an interesting perspective on there. How are you (27:43) thinking outside of just, I guess, assuring the sale, but the commitment to good stewardship, (27:51) let's say? Yeah, there's a key component, and it's something that you have to balance (27:58) within a CS role, is empathy, right? And going back and being a broken record to the motivations, (28:04) both professionally and personally, you start to paint a broader picture of the business and (28:10) business stakeholder, but also the person, right? Keeping their best interests at heart. I mean, (28:15) when you have an internal business review with executives in CS, a good customer success person (28:22) will paint that picture of the persona, and that does include, this is a young high-riser who has (28:28) a young family.
They just had a newborn. They're also very interested in golf and tightly tied to (28:36) these social movements or a volunteer here, right? That all comes into play, and it's used well. (28:42) It's not used as an advantage, or it's not used in a way to leverage someone or manipulate (28:49) someone.
It's really to help paint that picture, and at the end of the day, it's relationship (28:54) building, right? You want to be able to have the trust, and I have another note here when I was (28:58) going through the different pillars, one that I left off, but it's building the relationship where (29:04) you can have the 6 p.m. phone calls, the phone calls while you're on a walk, the phone calls when you (29:10) are driving home or in your car. Those are metrics, or those are scenarios, (29:18) in my opinion, that shows that you're truly getting in there, or you've made it. You've (29:22) won the relationship.
You've won the trust. You're spending that sacred time after hours or during (29:28) your rituals or while you're driving to connect with that person. Interesting.
I think this will (29:35) provide a great archive of information around the whole world of customer success, especially (29:41) as it's impacted through e-commerce experiences. Time flies. We are just about out of time.
(29:54) Matt, just wanted to thank you for making time in your busy day to join.