Mastering CS: Candid Leader Insights

Hosted by Custify | Customer Success

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Oct 2026

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About the show

Welcome to Mastering CS – Candid Leader Insights, where I, Irina Cismas, Head of Marketing at Custify, take you on a journey into the depths of Customer Success. Each episode, I sit down with some of the most influential minds in the CS world, from seasoned managers and renowned influencers to dynamic team leaders, to uncover the challenges and opportunities that shape our profession. Our conversations are rich with insights, drawing on personal experiences and innovative ideas to offer practical solutions. Join me as we make every interaction count in the dynamic world of Customer Success!

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October 29, 2026Episode 9918 min

Ep 99 | José Miguel Longo

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with José Miguel Longo , Enterprise Customer Success Manager at Gravyty, a platform that helps universities and nonprofits stay close to their alumni and donors. José spent more than 16 years in higher education before moving into SaaS. He explains why trust and transparency are the foundation of every partnership, why the customer journey starts with sales, and how detailed handoffs between sales, implementation, and CS set the stage for a strong kickoff. What You’ll Learn: ☑️ Why trust, transparency, and owning mistakes build stronger partnerships ☑️ Why the customer journey starts with sales, before onboarding begins ☑️ How to structure handoffs between sales, implementation , and CS ☑️ The questions to ask at kickoff to uncover goals for the first 90 to 120 days ☑️ How to use deeper discovery when customers can’t articulate their goals ---- With Custify, you can: ☑️ automate daily tasks through Playbooks ☑️ build individual customer #HealthScores ☑️ create customer segments ☑️ improve your customer communication strategy ☑️ streamline your onboarding process ☑️ track customers’ journeys every step of the way ☑️ get a 360 view of their progress Want to do great things with your customer success initiative? Keep in touch with us below: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Custify Website ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Contact Us ⁠

October 27, 2026Episode 9816 min

Ep 98 | Melanie Faye

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Melanie Faye , Senior Customer Success Manager at Vidyard, a video platform for sales and marketing teams. Melanie explains how she segments her book of 140 inherited accounts into high-touch and low-touch, how she delivers value through nudges and tips instead of monthly calls, and why she does her homework before discovery so customers never have to repeat themselves. She also shares how setting expectations on both sides drives adoption, the curiosity-first approach behind three straight quarters of 100% renewals and six-figure expansion, and the Claude workflows she uses for email follow-ups, daily call prep, and customer benchmarking. What You’ll Learn: ☑️ How to segment a large book of business into high-touch and low-touch ☑️ How to deliver value without relying on monthly check-in calls ☑️ How to prepare for discovery calls on inherited accounts so customers don’t have to repeat themselves ☑️ What goal-based onboarding looks like at Vidyard ---- With Custify, you can: ☑️ automate daily tasks through Playbooks ☑️ build individual customer #HealthScores ☑️ create customer segments ☑️ improve your customer communication strategy ☑️ streamline your onboarding process ☑️ track customers’ journeys every step of the way ☑️ get a 360 view of their progress Want to do great things with your customer success initiative? Keep in touch with us below: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Custify Website ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Contact Us ⁠

October 22, 2026Episode 9720 min

Ep 97 | Justin Camarata

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Justin Camarata , Principal Customer Success Manager at Invoca, a platform that helps revenue teams learn from their customer calls. Justin shares how he researches a customer’s business priorities before the relationship starts, why trust is built by showing up often and in person, and how he drives adoption with 30-, 60-, and 90-day milestones. He also explains how to prove ROI in executive business reviews without pitching a roadmap, the AI workflows he uses for data analysis, deck creation, and weekly engagement summaries, and the running advice that shapes how he starts every account: your first mile should be your slowest. What You’ll Learn: ☑️ How to keep dozens of enterprise stakeholders aligned on why they bought your product ☑️ How to research a customer’s business priorities using earnings reports and public materials ☑️ Why trust and in-person relationships are the foundation of enterprise CS ☑️ How to drive adoption with 30-, 60-, and 90-day milestones ☑️ How to prove ROI in executive business reviews without pitching a roadmap ☑️ Practical AI use cases for data analysis, deck creation, and weekly engagement summaries ---- With Custify, you can: ☑️ automate daily tasks through Playbooks ☑️ build individual customer #HealthScores ☑️ create customer segments ☑️ improve your customer communication strategy ☑️ streamline your onboarding process ☑️ track customers’ journeys every step of the way ☑️ get a 360 view of their progress Want to do great things with your customer success initiative? Keep in touch with us below: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Custify Website ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Contact Us ⁠

October 20, 2026Episode 9617 min

Ep 96 | Cassandra Dehlot

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Cassandra Dehlot , Enterprise Customer Success Manager at Orca Security, an agentless cloud security platform. Cassandra walks through the AI workflows she built on top of her CS platform and CRM to draft meeting follow-ups, update success plans every Friday, prioritize risks, and analyze support tickets for hidden risk and expansion signals. She also shares how she structures her day around priorities instead of urgency, why EMEA teams should close Q4 by the first week of December, how milestone-based onboarding and success planning drive adoption, and what she learned building the first CS playbook for the French market at Procore. What You’ll Learn: ☑️ How an enterprise CSM structures the day to avoid getting lost in false urgency ☑️ What good onboarding looks like when milestones are set at the four-, six-, and eight-week marks ☑️ Why success planning is the key to adoption and easier renewals ☑️ Practical AI automations for follow-up emails, success plan updates, and support ticket analysis ☑️ How to build a CS playbook for a new market by adapting what already works ☑️ Why champions and early executive alignment matter in every industry ---- With Custify, you can: ☑️ automate daily tasks through Playbooks ☑️ build individual customer #HealthScores ☑️ create customer segments ☑️ improve your customer communication strategy ☑️ streamline your onboarding process ☑️ track customers’ journeys every step of the way ☑️ get a 360 view of their progress Want to do great things with your customer success initiative? Keep in touch with us below: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Custify Website ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Contact Us ⁠

October 12, 2026Episode 9517 min

Ep 95 | Christina Cato

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Christina Cato , Customer Success Director at Kontakt.io, a real-time location platform for hospitals. Christina has spent her entire career in healthcare, first as a hospital analyst and quality program manager on the customer side, and now as the person responsible for ensuring large health systems get measurable value from their technology investments. She shares what adoption really means when your end users are clinical staff, how to build a business case in front of a CFO, and why data alone never tells the full story without the conversation behind it. What You’ll Learn: ☑️ What Kontakt.io does and what the CS Director role looks like across large health system accounts ☑️ Why adoption in healthcare means more than logging in and what it actually takes to get there ☑️ How Christina builds buy-in from both C-suite leaders and frontline clinical staff ☑️ What makes a compelling business case in front of a CFO in a tight budget environment ☑️ What the CS tool stack looks like at Kontakt.io and how Salesforce and Gong do the heavy lifting ---- With Custify, you can: ☑️ automate daily tasks through Playbooks ☑️ build individual customer #HealthScores ☑️ create customer segments ☑️ improve your customer communication strategy ☑️ streamline your onboarding process ☑️ track customers’ journeys every step of the way ☑️ get a 360 view of their progress Want to do great things with your customer success initiative? Keep in touch with us below: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Custify Website ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Contact Us ⁠

October 12, 2026Episode 9419 min

Ep 94 | Kristin Maguire Clark

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Kristin Maguire , Senior Customer Success Manager at RocketLane, a platform for running customer onboarding and implementation projects. Kristin spent most of her career on the implementation and onboarding side before moving into a strategic CSM role. She shares why AI needs to be tied to outcomes rather than treated as an auxiliary feature, how she uses RocketLane's MCP connection with Claude in her day-to-day work, and why personal rapport with a customer never guarantees a renewal. What You’ll Learn: ☑️ What RocketLane does and what the Senior CSM role looks like post-onboarding ☑️ Why AI as an add-on is the wrong mental model and what the right one looks like ☑️ How Kristin handles the build versus buy conversation at renewal ☑️ How RocketLane’s MCP connection with Claude changes how she manages workflows and learns the product ☑️ What AI signals she uses to catch churn risk and upsell opportunities she might otherwise miss ---- With Custify, you can: ☑️ automate daily tasks through Playbooks ☑️ build individual customer #HealthScores ☑️ create customer segments ☑️ improve your customer communication strategy ☑️ streamline your onboarding process ☑️ track customers’ journeys every step of the way ☑️ get a 360 view of their progress Want to do great things with your customer success initiative? Keep in touch with us below: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Custify Website ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Contact Us ⁠

October 1, 2026Episode 9316 min

Ep 93 | Andrey Tirel

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Andrey Tirel , Senior Customer Success Manager at Jellyfish, a platform that helps engineering leaders see how their teams spend their time. Andrey has been in Customer Success for 10 years and has seen the function from every angle: early-stage startups, acquisitions, Snowflake before most people had heard of it, and VMware. He shares what CS looks like when your customers are CTOs and VPs of Engineering, how to handle the build versus buy objection, what adoption actually looks like beyond login data, and why relationships are still the one thing AI will never replace in customer success. What You’ll Learn: ☑️ What Jellyfish does and what the Senior CSM role looks like across a book of 20 to 30 enterprise accounts ☑️ How Andrey handles the build versus buy objection with engineering teams ☑️ What good onboarding looks like at Jellyfish and how it has evolved over time ☑️ How Jellyfish measures adoption beyond logins and what broad versus narrow usage signals mean ---- With Custify, you can: ☑️ automate daily tasks through Playbooks ☑️ build individual customer #HealthScores ☑️ create customer segments ☑️ improve your customer communication strategy ☑️ streamline your onboarding process ☑️ track customers’ journeys every step of the way ☑️ get a 360 view of their progress Want to do great things with your customer success initiative? Keep in touch with us below: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Custify Website ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Contact Us ⁠

September 29, 2026Episode 9214 min

Ep 92 | Frances Dupree

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Frances Dupree , Principal Customer Success Manager at Agiloft, a contract management platform for legal teams. Frances spent years inside legal operations before moving to the vendor side, and that experience of being the customer gives her a perspective that shapes everything about how she shows up for her accounts. She shares what it was like to be on the receiving end of both great and poor CS, what good onboarding looks like when you manage 30 customers across multiple industries, and why overcommunicating is the one habit she has carried from every role she has held. What You’ll Learn: ☑️ What Agiloft does and what the Principal CSM role looks like across multiple industries ☑️ What Frances learned from being the customer that she now brings to every account ☑️ What made one CSM exceptional and what she would change about the assignment process ☑️ What good onboarding looks like and how the handoff from implementation to CS actually works ☑️ What gets hesitant users from resistance to adoption once the software is live ---- With Custify, you can: ☑️ automate daily tasks through Playbooks ☑️ build individual customer #HealthScores ☑️ create customer segments ☑️ improve your customer communication strategy ☑️ streamline your onboarding process ☑️ track customers’ journeys every step of the way ☑️ get a 360 view of their progress Want to do great things with your customer success initiative? Keep in touch with us below: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Custify Website ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Contact Us ⁠

September 24, 2026Episode 9118 min

Ep 91 | Eric Mistry

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Eric Mistry , Automation Strategist and AI and Automation Transformation Lead at Zapier, the automation platform that connects apps and workflows. Eric's role sits at the intersection of customer success and automation strategy. He shares what the Automation Strategist title actually means, what he automated first and why it changed how he shows up for customers, how Zapier's MCP integration and Claude Code have become his personal cheat code, and why empathy is the most important skill he has ever developed. What You’ll Learn: ☑️ What the Automation Strategist title means and how it differs from a traditional CSM role ☑️ Why Eric is his own first customer and how internal builds become customer-facing workflows ☑️ What the first things he automated were and what the results actually looked like ☑️ How he thinks about the mindset shift required to move people from zero to one with AI ☑️ What infrastructure you actually need to run a scalable automation stack ---- With Custify, you can: ☑️ automate daily tasks through Playbooks ☑️ build individual customer #HealthScores ☑️ create customer segments ☑️ improve your customer communication strategy ☑️ streamline your onboarding process ☑️ track customers’ journeys every step of the way ☑️ get a 360 view of their progress Want to do great things with your customer success initiative? Keep in touch with us below: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Custify Website ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Contact Us ⁠

September 22, 2026Episode 9024 min

Ep 90 | Rachel Weller

In this episode of the podcast, Irina Cismas , Head of Marketing at Custify, sits down with Rachel Weller , Head of Customer Success for the Americas at Canary Technologies, a guest management platform for hotels. Rachel shares what it looks like to build a CS team from scratch in a new region, why doing messy, unscalable things first is one of the most important habits in CS, and how she thinks about the balance between technology and headcount when scaling. What You’ll Learn: ☑️ What Canary Technologies does and what the Head of CS role looks like day to day ☑️ Why building a CS team from scratch should start with the market, not the org chart ☑️ What messy, unscalable things you can’t skip when building from zero ☑️ How Rachel thinks about defining and co-creating value with clients ☑️ How she approaches scaling across people, process, and product, and what signals tell her when to use technology versus hire ---- With Custify, you can: ☑️ automate daily tasks through Playbooks ☑️ build individual customer #HealthScores ☑️ create customer segments ☑️ improve your customer communication strategy ☑️ streamline your onboarding process ☑️ track customers’ journeys every step of the way ☑️ get a 360 view of their progress Want to do great things with your customer success initiative? Keep in touch with us below: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Custify Website ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Contact Us ⁠