Finding a new CSP is always a challenge. It’s not just a matter of looking at a list and picking one at random. It involves a lot of internal dialog and consideration. This process is different for every company. 

We had a chance to sit down with Chaz Logue, Manager of Revenue Operations at Alyce, and speak to him about his experience in selecting and getting started with Catalyst, and what their process was for making a final decision. Let’s dive into the conversation...

‍Let’s start at the beginning. Can you tell us a little about yourself and what you do at Alyce? ‍

Sure! Im Chaz Logue, and currently a member of the Revenue Operations team at Alyce. I currently support both our Sales and Customer Success teams with everything from systems management and process design to measuring and planning.  In my #5to9, I enjoy planning my next theme park visit, gaming with my buddies, and being a Dog and Cat Dad.

For those unfamiliar, Alyce is a B2B smart gifting platform where we help our customers acquire and grow revenue by enriching their customer experience, while promoting revenue stickiness. 

‍What were the top problems you were looking to solve that led you to invest in Catalyst as your CSP? ‍

When I joined Alyce a little over two years ago, I came on as a CSM and CS Ops hybrid. I inherited a recently-purchased CS platform and a small number of accounts. We only had a handful of CSMs in a very generalized capacity at the time, handling everything from onboarding to support cases. 

Our team matured at a brisk pace, but Covid accelerated our need to scale and adapt how we served customers. In response to Covid, our market validity leapt across the “chasm,” and along with it came an abrupt shift in our competitive landscape. This emphasized the need to invest in driving successful customer outcomes. Over the course of 2020, we worked to transition our CSMs from being swiss army knives to being more proactive strategic customer partners. We spun up both a Support and Solutions team, and more recently introduced a dedicated onboarding function. Given the growing complexity of our org, we knew we needed to invest in:

• Improving the efficiency and capacity of our CS org, not just adding headcount.
• Ensuring our tech stack’s capability could deliver quick-wins and support our longer term vision.
• Raising visibility into the adoption and effectiveness of our processes and plays, to support future process iteration and learning.
• Level up transparency into CS efforts and its impact to the broader org

Given those challenges, how did you decide on Catalyst being the right fit for Alyce?

We actually tried two CSPs in the two years before signing Catalyst. It’s fascinating to observe the different approaches and thought leadership. We had win’s and challenges with both and given our experience thus far,  we had a good sense of what our key pillars for decision making needed to be.

Allow ourselves breathing room to examine the market.

• Understand the competitive landscape, and identify companies that not only aligned with our functional needs but also our roadmap, values, and culture. We weren’t just looking for a tool, but a growth partner.
• Afford the time to simmer on the value a CSP or feature set will provide over time, once initial novelty has worn off and your “quick win” is secured.

Include our CSMs as stakeholders in the process. 

• That meant including them in demos, post-briefs, and final decision-making. We wanted to ensure our CSMs were invested, while also supplying a gut check for decision makers from those closest to our customers. Adoption of process and tools is a two-way street. If your CSMs aren't invested or bought-in, it's going to create barriers and sap energy and resources.

Compare platforms on a feature and cost basis, along with its ability to deliver against our  short and long-term objectives.

• Instead of diving head-first into demos, we made sure to scope and align on quick-wins and longer term future states. We also browsed software review sites like G2 Crowd and TrustRadius to help narrow down the playing field. 
• We reviewed and refined our scope, while also tapping our network around the amazing CS and Operations communities. We then synthesized our thoughts into a CS platform evaluation document that became an asset, not just for our competitive analysis, but also our business case for executives.

Once our internal team reached our final decision, it was full steam ahead! We’ve had a phenomenal experience at every stage of our journey with Catalyst, not just during onboarding. We felt like we had a real extended team -- one that was ready to jump in and provide guidance and perspective as we systematically configured and tested initial workflows and integrations.

Upon first login, we found Catalyst surprisingly easy to configure and very intuitive. So much so that our CS Leadership team elected to proactively build within Catalyst. It’s provided an amazing level of agility to the team as we look to continuously iterate and learn.  Given we had product data visibility via our BI tool, we also elected to not focus on plugging in product data in our initial launch, saving that for a future enhancement and helping to drive smart automation decisions down the road. Also, the Salesforce integration was shockingly easy compared to what I’ve experienced in the past across SaaS solutions, not just CSPs. I had slotted an entire afternoon assuming I would need it for the setup. But we had data flowing within 20 minutes. The object creation, initial field mapping, and record pulling... I was blown away. 

For our “version 1” launch we focused on:

• Actionable Homepages for reps and managers around our CSMs’ book of business 
• Intuitive, focused, and easy to digest Account Layouts
• Salesforce integration, with Field and Object Mapping 
• Supporting workflows, leveraging Note Templates to guide process and tracking.
• Build structure and metrics into our Onboarding Lifecycle
• Perform user acceptance testing, and adoption monitoring

Now that you’re 90 days out of implementation, what have been the biggest wins for your team?

Here are some of the biggest wins we experienced:‍

1. Significantly decreasing our customer’s Time to Live and Time to Value  in conjunction with our absolute rock star of CS Julie Hayes, who has been able to leverage Catalyst to quickly build and support a lean, but highly efficient onboarding motion. 
2. Increased our CSM/Sales Rep knowledge transfer capability through shared processes and integrations.
3. Fresh visibility into process adoption, how CSM’s engage with customers, and our customer’s health.

Awesome! Thanks so much for sharing your story!‍

Thank you for giving me the platform to share it! If anyone reading wants to chat on our experience or approach, or nerd out on Customer Success and Operations, or just unwind and play some games, feel free contact me on LinkedIn. 

Go Team Catalyst!