In this segment of the interview, the speakers discuss a vivid example of "customer magic" manifested through an external endorsement. A newly onboarded company's CEO posted a heartfelt LinkedIn tribute praising Notion's product and the deep, company‑wide adoption they experienced. The speakers highlight how such unsolicited public validation serves as powerful proof of successful engagement, even without direct interaction from the Notion team. They also note how Customer Success Managers (CSMs) capture these moments in internal "brag" documents for performance reviews, turning external praise into lasting internal capital.
Chapters
And I think externally when you see magic happening, I had a very great example. I don't see Monica anymore here, but about a month ago we had like a magic experience from an external perspective where a customer of Notion that was recently onboarded to using the product wall-to-wall at their company, the CEO of the company went on LinkedIn and just posted, this has nothing to do with Notion. I just want to share how amazing this journey has been to get on this product. And the adoption at the company has been so amazing to see and wall to wall, and people are so highly engaged. And that will probably be a memory that never leaves me that like externally we made magic happen because there was no conversation that happened with us at all. Someone, a CEO, took the time to write that up and to recognize the company and the team. So that to me is magic from an external perspective.
I mean, there's no validation like customer validation when it comes to these things. And definitely that, that little screenshot from LinkedIn goes into that CSM's brag document for a review season, right? Like, it's like, definitely remember this, Erica, for like 20 years. That's right.
If I was a CSM, I'd use that.
That definitely shows up every time you have an interview question around those things. But There's lots of elements, right? You talked about the clarity of roles, accountability for the team, the joint recognition that the team show up together. I think a little bit of this is also about the mutual respect of everyone kind of like knowing that you trust each other in the game. You know, one analogy I use, like, we don't always talk about customer obsession. Like, that's a big part of every organization that is really focused on delivering value. But sometimes customer obsession can turn creepy is how I think about it, right? Imagine your entire revenue organization, you're always in everything in front of the customer at the same time. It's like one of them and four of you in every meeting. That is kind of creepy, right? Like that is the wrong side of obsession on the customer side. So having those lines set up where you know what you're all doing, and then you have a common language by which you talk about different stages of the customer lifecycle. There's no sales framework that's like pre and post-sale. If you decide qualification is med pick, Everyone speaks the language of metric, whatever you pick, it's common. And then the thing that I've always loved is this idea of like leadership interchangeability. Sort of like, can you walk in the shoes of your revenue peers, right? So as a CS leader, can you actually drive a sales forecast call? If you're a sales leader, can you run a risk review meeting as well as your peers? If you do, that sends an incredible signal for magic happening within the organization itself. So those are some of the things that I look at.
