He Managed 40,000 Customers at Freshworks With Just 30 People | The Second Year - Ep 1

He managed 40,000 Freshworks customers with a team of 30. In this episode, Karthick JL breaks down the exact system he built to find, onboard, and retain a customer cohort nobody was watching, one that turned out to be 25% of the company's revenue. Karthick spent 21 years in post sales, starting as a software engineer before moving into customer success when it barely existed as a function. He built and led the scaled customer success org at Freshworks, managing 40,000 accounts with a team of 30. He later joined [Josys] as their first international hire and improved operational productivity by 30%. He has written eight books on customer success and is working on his ninth. In this conversation, we cover: How a long tail cohort of 40,000 customers surfaced as a quarter of Freshworks revenue The email, in app, and pooled CSM system he built to fix onboarding without adding headcount The five question cancellation survey that recovered 10% of customers without offering a discount Why he never used discount offers to stop churn The most common mistake companies make when hiring their first customer success leader Where companies get AI adoption wrong in customer success What actually happens to customer success jobs as AI takes over operational work Timestamps 0:00 Introduction 1:05 Who is Karthick outside of work 2:29 Explaining customer success before it was a job title 4:55 The 40,000 Freshworks accounts nobody was watching 6:40 The insight that got management to say yes 8:07 Building a 30 person team for 40,000 accounts 10:28 The full onboarding to cancellation system, step by step 19:02 How he got a direct line to the CRO 20:05 The five question cancellation survey 22:42 How the survey recovered 10% of cancellations 25:56 Why he never used discount offers to stop churn 26:32 Joining [Josys], the 30% productivity story 29:17 The most common customer success hiring mistake 31:39 Writing eight books and starting a ninth 33:35 Where companies get AI adoption wrong 34:38 What happens to customer success jobs because of AI 41:05 Rapid fire round 43:19 Why churn is a customer success problem, not a product problem 45:51 What he believed about customers in 2013 that he no longer does 47:12 Advice for CS leaders who feel like they are underwater The Second Year is RetainSure's series on what happens after year one closes. Onboarding gets the spotlight. Renewals decide the business. Guest: Karthick JL   / karthickjl   Host: Dhiraj   / dhiraj-patel-1501   RetainSure helps SaaS teams turn customer signals into renewal and expansion action. [https://retainsure.com/?utm_source=yo...] #CustomerSuccess #SaaS #ChurnManagement