On this month’s episode of The Customer Success Channel Podcast, brought to you by Planhat, I chatted with
Vijay Mehrotra, Professor of Business Analytics and Information Systems at the University of San Francisco about what tomorrow’s CS leaders are being taught at the university.
Since 1992, Vijay has been active in the world of analytics, technology, management, and innovation. Prior to becoming a professor, he spent more than a decade working full-time in Silicon Valley as an analytics consultant, entrepreneur, and executive. Since 2010, his column “Analyze This!” has been published in every edition of Analytics magazine. In addition to his teaching and research, he regularly advises and invests in early-stage technology start-ups and consults with companies large and small on their use of data and models.
Today, Vijay serves as a professor of Business Analytics at the University of San Francisco, where he has recently developed an innovative module for his MBA students that is focused on Customer Success Management (the first such academic program in the world).
It all started five years ago. Vijay was a part of redesigning their MBA program and was working on a new “career accelerator”. Essentially, he was thinking about doing something with Data Analytics – but when talking to former students he learned that many of them worked in CS.
In our discussion Vihay helps answer some of the tricky questions when it comes to getting a degree in customer success:
- Give us a rundown of what is taught about Customer Success at university.
- Do you think education has caught up with the technology era? I never studied customer success but I am a CS leader, do you think education will be able to educate future generations on customer success?
- CS operations have been one of the hottest jobs this year, how is taking your course leading to people working in CS operations?
Some key takeaways from this discussion:
- The role of education has fundamentally shifted as a consequence of the web, the search engine, and the smartphone
- As a professor in the 21st century, I’m a CSM. My new students coming in are my new logos, and their career launches are outcomes that drive retention for new enrollments
- The career accelerator course is divided into three parts. Starting with Customer Success Management, the students learn about the economics of SaaS businesses and the identification of the impact of renewals and growth on the success or failure of those businesses. Then they examine the customer journey by getting tasked with a specific customer and asked to build a success plan. Finally, they finish up the course with a case study where churn levels are above 30% and come back with distinct recommendations on how it can be improved.
Make sure you listen to the full episode and let me know your thoughts in the comments!