Post-sales teams need to study biology
We're hardwired to act one way, even if we say something different
“Everything reverse engineers to biology.”
Scott Galloway said this recently on the Diary of a CEO podcast. He and the host were talking about how AI has not taken over everything as predicted.
Why hasn’t AI taken over? Galloway thinks the answer is biology.
I agree. We want to connect with one another. That desire to connect also confuses us and often makes us look in the wrong direction for signals that affect our business.
Humans want humans (sometimes)
When I hear “humans want to deal with humans” or “people just want to talk to other people” I kind of translate that to “relationships matter the most.”
That’s how we’re taught to build customer-centric companies. Focus on building better, stronger relationships with fellow humans.
But biology is messier than that. It’s more than how we relate to others. We can say lots of nice things, but it’s what we do that’s more telling than what we say.
“Actions speak louder than words” is true.
So why do we spend so much time listening, reading, analyzing all the things we say to one another and how we say it? Shouldn’t we watch more closely what everyone does?
We want to feel like we’re connecting with and speaking with a human. But sometimes, as someone whose job it is to re-sell a recurring revenue product, we may be better off watching how customers behave than giving every call transcript to ChatGPT.
Not enough ethnography
Ethnography is observing what people do in context. The in-real-life version is like sitting in a restaurant, listening to people order milkshakes.
The digital version can be watching someone over the shoulder as they use your product. Or maybe you’re using heatmap tools like Hotjar, or product analytics like Posthog, or screenshares over Zoom, etc.
Ethnography gains real weight when you combine what you see with what people are thinking. If you can find someone to use your product and think out loud honestly, you’re in customer research nirvana.
Right now, that kind of ethnography doesn’t scale well:
You can recruit some customers to observe and listen to, but it won’t be many.
You can get lots of feedback, but without real usage behaviors attached you’re operating on trust.
You can watch lots of session recordings, but without the thought process narration you’re not sure why anything is happening.
Most teams default to feedback in the form of support tickets, reviews, and call recordings because “relationships matter most” and we like to believe what people say to us.
If we look at what really indicates happiness and attachment, a real relationship, words matter but actions matter more. More teams need more ethnography.
Paying lip service to behavior
I’ve been looking at a lot of Customer Success Manager (CSM) job openings lately. There are NRR targets. GRR targets. Lists of tools like a CRM, outreach, scheduling, and BI dashboards.
Many of the listings also mention “monitoring usage,” but there’s never a tool or ‘how’ listed.
CSMs are given an NRR target of 110%+ and told to use the “human to human” tools.
By not listing any analytics tools in these job descriptions, companies are setting a trap for new CSMs.
Optimizing for what you can see
What happens when you ask someone to monitor usage without giving them a way to see it?
They optimize for what they can see and measure. Touchpoints, meetings, NPS, sentiment analysis, gut feel, and even “osmosis.”
It’s relationship theater. It’s not laziness. The data either isn’t shared, or it’s buried in some dashboard that’s hard to decipher.
That’s how CSMs become relationship managers instead of revenue managers. They have easier access to what customers say than what they do.
Ethnography by way of analytics
Real customer-centricity isn’t just about listening to people. It’s about understanding how customers really behave and use a product.
That’s the real biology Galloway was pointing at, even if he didn’t call it that way. We need to understand how people feel (based on what they tell us), but we also need to understand how they behave.
To do that you can use tools like Hotjar and Posthog and Full Story (and Accoil, ahem). If you sell B2C, watch individuals. If you sell B2B, watch individuals and accounts.
Start with the usage patterns. Then enrich those patterns with what customers say, customer segments and industries.
When you start by observing behavior, you have a real sense of where customers get value before they tell you what they feel good about. If the two don’t align, default to what they’re doing over what they’re saying.
The challenge
“Monitor usage” shows up in a lot of CSM job descriptions, but leadership doesn’t resource it. They wrote it down. They know it matters. Given the conversations we have with post-sales teams, they often aren’t building the path to actually do it.
If you believe usage drives retention, resource it. Give your CS team event-level visibility, link it to segment and industry and tier, and let them see. You’ll learn one of two things. Either you were right, and you’ll unlock something real. Or you were wrong, and you can stop writing it in job descriptions. Both outcomes beat the current state.
Galloway said everything reverse engineers to biology. Humans want humans. But humans also do things. If you’re not watching what they do, you’re not actually paying attention and you’re missing lots of opportunities to grow your business.
To monitoring usage,
Peter
PS: This whole thing sounds a bit like I’m accusing you or someone else of doing things wrong. I think we’re all like water: we find the path of least resistance and follow it. If that’s defaulting to call recordings and sentiment reviews, that’s not wrong but it is missing an important half of the picture.