#35 Prendre de la distance pour prendre de la hauteur... Avec Gabrièle de Lamaze, head of CS chez Plezi

Key Points

• Customer success is defined as the ability to adapt to client maturity levels and guide them to extract value from the tool, requiring a company-wide culture.
• The speaker began her CS role with no prior experience, starting by personally meeting all 20 clients to understand their needs, which helped structure a standardized onboarding process.
• Maternity leaves served as accelerators for team structuring, forcing the creation of clear processes and empowering the team to operate independently.
• A key organizational move was separating support from CSM roles, reducing mental load and allowing CSMs to focus on strategic value delivery rather than technical fixes.
• Onboarding was also separated into a dedicated role, emphasizing pedagogical skills and a defined timeline to help clients become self-sufficient.
• Returning from leave provided a fresh perspective, highlighting easy improvements that save time for everyone.

Summary

In this podcast episode, the guest, Head of Customer Success and partner at Pleysie, shares her journey from an events background into customer success, emphasizing how she structured the role from scratch. She defines customer success as the team’s capacity to adapt to each client’s maturity level, guiding them to the next stage to extract value from the tool—a philosophy that extends beyond the CS team to the entire company, including sales consulting before signing “exotic” deals.

When she joined Pleysie with no prior CS experience, she began by individually meeting all 20 clients to understand their expectations and desired outcomes. This listening phase informed her next step: standardizing the onboarding process, which she found was previously highly personalized but inconsistent. She structured a uniform onboarding approach, built a knowledge base (still called “api-académie”), and used saved replies in Intercom to save time, enabling the team to deliver value quickly.

A pivotal moment was her first maternity leave, which she describes as a powerful accelerator for team structuring. Before leaving, she ensured the team had clear objectives and processes, allowing them to operate independently. Upon return, the fresh perspective revealed easy improvements—like separating support from CSM roles—that reduced mental load and elevated the CS team’s focus from technical fixes to strategic, long-term client value. This move also valorized the support role, giving it dedicated ownership. Similarly, onboarding was split into a specialized role requiring pedagogical skills and a defined timeline to help clients become self-sufficient, closing the “cocooning” period effectively.

The guest highlights that maternity leaves forced her to step back from daily operations, accelerating organizational decisions and allowing her to focus on enabling the team rather than being stuck in execution. She encourages listeners to take a break—whether through parental leave or a month off—to gain clarity and identify improvements that save time for everyone. Overall, the episode underscores the importance of listening to clients, standardizing processes, and strategically separating roles to scale customer success while maintaining quality and team well-being.