In today's data-driven business landscape, understanding how to harness the power of information is crucial for driving growth and delivering outstanding customer experiences. We had the pleasure of speaking with Candace Wallace, the Chief Customer Officer at Relias, a workforce education company focused on the healthcare space. Our conversation delved into Candace's career journey, the key data Relias tracks to gain customer insights, and how they leverage that information to drive real business outcomes. Here are the highlights from our discussion:
Q: You've had an interesting career trajectory, starting out as an archaeologist before transitioning into the business world and eventually rising through the ranks at Relias. What prompted that shift and how did you navigate the transition?
Candace: When I met my now-husband, I was living in Texas working as an archaeologist while he was based in North Carolina. Archaeology work is quite specialized by region, so moving would have meant largely starting over in my career, so when I moved I decided to make a career change.
I decided to try something totally different, but I knew I needed to find meaning and purpose in my work like I had felt in archaeology. I was drawn to Relias as one of the few for-profit companies I came across that was making a real difference in healthcare. I started out in an entry-level support consultant role, but within two weeks they asked if I wanted to become a Customer Success Manager as they were just launching that function. I said yes, and that was right when the company began a period of major growth after being acquired by private equity. So it was a lot of hard work, but also some lucky timing and opportunities that arose from being part of a high-growth organization.
Q: Relias works with thousands of B2B customers and millions of end users across various products. With that level of scale, what are the key data points you track to understand the customer experience?
Candace: Data is absolutely critical for us to gain insight into our customers across millions of end users and different software systems. But I'm always wary of just looking at aggregate metrics like an overall NPS score or net retention rate. Those matter, but to actually drive change, you have to dig into the details.
My team slices data across three core dimensions for anything we analyze: customer segment, sales segmentation, and the markets or verticals we serve. We also look at product usage splits and other attributes. Having that level of granularity allows us to pinpoint very specific issues, like seeing a problem emerge for a particular customer profile using a certain product in a key market we serve.
Another important element is marrying together multiple data sources - what customers tell you about themselves, what they say in surveys, and then what they actually do in terms of product behavior and usage. Tying together those stated and revealed preferences is very illuminating.
Q: Speaking of tying data together, you mentioned looking closely at support ticket data and actually quantifying the business impact of specific customer issues. Can you share more about how you approach that?
Candace: Absolutely. Most contact centers track a "cost per ticket" metric. My team tracks our average cost per case across different support functions. We've built dashboards, shared widely across the company, that show the cost of tickets for major case categories and even drills down to sub-issues.
For example, login issues are a common pain point. We can see how much login-related tickets are costing us in a given timeframe, break that down by product, and even identify something really specific like problems with the username reset process on a certain site. We can then go to our web team and say "Hey, we spent $20K on support calls this year because of how this workflow is labeled in the UI. Can we adjust that?" Providing that direct line of sight from customer friction to the bottom line impact is so powerful for driving prioritization and change.
Q: It's interesting that you mentioned partnering with other teams there. As a leader overseeing post-sale functions like renewals, where you see the downstream impact of customer challenges, how do you collaborate cross-functionally to improve the customer experience?
Candace: I partner extremely closely with three key groups. One is our head of product and the product management organization, to ensure we're factoring those key customer insights into our roadmap and development processes. Second is our Chief Revenue Officer, because there's a natural tension between sales and post-sale teams that requires active collaboration to ensure continuity from the sales process through to customer success. And third is our marketing team, particularly product marketing, to make sure we're developing the right messaging, positioning and enablement as we launch new offerings.
I'd also call out finance as a critical partner. If you want to get things done and make a case for investment, partner with your finance and accounting teams early and often. I've procured software solely based on building out an ROI model with my finance counterparts to show "if we deploy this tool, we can drive X outcomes and results." They're the perfect partners to help you tell that story in numbers.
Conclusion
Our discussion with Candace highlighted several crucial elements for any business looking to become more data-driven in their approach to delivering customer success:
- Aggregate metrics only tell part of the story; to have real impact, you must slice data across meaningful segments and attributes to uncover actionable insights.
- Combining multiple data sources, both qualitative and quantitative, stated and observed, provides a more robust picture than any single source could paint.
- Quantifying the cost and revenue impact of specific customer experience issues is an extremely effective way to build the business case and secure resources for solving root causes.
- CX leaders must build deep cross-functional alignment, shared goals, and a commitment to data-driven decision making, particularly with their product, revenue and finance counterparts.
As Relias continues to scale its offerings and customer base, Candace's leadership in leveraging data to understand friction points, drive accountability and focus company resources on the issues that matter most to customers serves as a model for any business pursuing customer-centric growth. Her career journey also reminds us that the most valuable data isn't just the numbers, but the human insights needed to ask the right questions in the first place.
