Jul 30, 2019 · 28m · saastr
"7 Tips and Tricks to having happy customers at Scale" New Relic EVP, Roger Scott
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Roger Scott, Chief Customer Officer at New Relic, outlines seven foundational principles for scaling enterprise SaaS customer success by pairing empathetic, trust-based partnerships with operational telemetry, advocate cultivation, and deliberate leadership development.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. How this is scored →
Jason as informed peer 0.0 Guest teaching 0.0 Guest disagreement 0.0 Jason pushing back 0.0
speaking balance: gold is Jason, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 6:00 Challenging Fuzzy Customer Value Concepts
In a non-adversarial solo keynote, Scott makes his sharpest critique by warning against entering customer discussions with strong opinions on fuzzy concepts rather than clear value.
Hardest push from Jason ▶ 0:00 Keynote Opening Audience Check-inThere is no host pushback in this solo conference presentation; Scott briefly queries the audience before launching into his address.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 17:00 Educating on White Glove Foundations Before AutomationScott educates the audience on the risk of scaling prematurely, explaining why companies must slow down and master white glove service before attempting automation.
Jason holds their own ▶ 0:00 Host Absence in Solo AddressThe host does not speak during the presentation, resulting in no active host expertise demonstrations on record.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Jason as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Jason pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scaling from Ruby on Rails to Enterprise Dominance | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | This is a solo keynote presentation where Roger Scott outlines New Relic's growth trajectory from monitoring Ruby on Rails to becoming an enterprise instrumentation platform. There is no host involvement or adversarial friction. | |
| Photography Principles Applied to Customer Experience | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Scott presents an extended analogy comparing enterprise customer relationship management to photography concepts like subject focus and mindfulness. As a monologue, there is no host pushback or debate. | |
| Trust, Intimacy, and the SaaS Continuous Service Model | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Scott elaborates on the continuous service delivery flywheel and building trust across the software lifecycle. The presentation proceeds without external interruption or dispute. | |
| Tip 1: Strategic Hiring and Leadership Development for Scale | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Scott discusses internal leadership hiring strategy and balancing first-time managers with seasoned mentors. No host is present to question or challenge the framing. | |
| Tip 2: Co-Creating Success Plans and Slowing Down to Go Fast | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | The speaker shares best practices around co-defining success plans and citing Reid Hoffman's concept of slowing down to go fast. The monologue remains smooth and educational for the audience. | |
| Tip 3: Designing Persona-Driven Customer Journeys at Scale | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Scott explores persona-driven customer journeys and tracking granular operational KPIs over aggregated vanity metrics. The dynamic is purely a solo conference talk. | |
| Tip 5: Transforming Users into Brand Advocates and Trust Custodians | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Scott covers cultivating brand advocates who act as trust custodians and being present during critical customer moments of truth. There is no conversational opposition. | |
| Tip 7: Continual Learning Through Industry Peer Collaboration | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | The speaker concludes by encouraging peer learning and invoking the South African philosophy of Ubuntu. The session closes out without any host Q&A. |
Statements from this episode (10)
Scott: New Relic Never Had an On-Premise Solution
“We didn't ever have an on-prem solution. We didn't ever have any technology that sits on premise outside some of our collector agent technology.”
Roger Scott: New Relic exceeds $550M ARR with 50%+ Fortune 100 penetration
“We're a five hundred and fifty million dollar plus ARR company. Since, you know, over the last four years, going from 140 to five 50, we're still growing at 30 to 35%. We've re-accelerated growth. If you look today, over 50% of the Fortune 100 would now use ou…”
Scott: Scaling SaaS Requires a Service Strategy, Not Just Tech and Sales
“And I think it's critical if you're trying to scale a business to start having this service mentality mindset that it's not about the technology alone, and it's not about technology with a bunch of sales people, but it's actually what is the service delivery s…”
Scott: 50% of New Relic's 75 CS managers were promoted internally
“The 75 managers in my, people who have a management responsibility in my team today, 50% of them got their first management gig in the company.”
Scott: SaaS companies must master unscalable white-glove service before automating customer success
“Pay attention to the white glove service, which doesn't inherently scale, to then be able to at some point in time scale that whether it's through digital channels, or through automation, or growth engineering, or a combination of all those.”
New Relic affords direct CSMs for only 1,200 of 17,000 accounts
“If I think about it in our context, we've got 17,000 customers. We can probably afford to invest direct customer success management and the solution architects in about 1200 accounts.”
Scott: Customer journeys should be structured around personas, not products
“We argue that persona is the critical one, especially as we're going to be developing loads more products over time, and so we just want to focus on certain Personas and how we introduce those capabilities to them.”
Scott: Monitor granular account KPIs instead of obsessing over a single metric
“We started out this
This part of our journey, by trying to define an aggregate customer health metric, and I think we just got into analysis paralysis, and whilst I think ultimately it's useful to have a single metric, there's a whole plethora of KPIs that you…”
Scott: Executive advocates moving between companies drove massive value for New Relic
“Right up to the senior executives, and so that when a senior executive like Paul Cheeseborough, who was here at News UK, went to News Corp as a global organization, went to 21st Century Fox, which part of which was acquired by Disney, that connection has been …”
Scott: Supporting Customers During Peak Events Builds Empathy for Future Outages
“Because if you're there and you can build that trust, they'll be there for you when inevitably something goes wrong with your service. And they'll understand that you've got, they've got empathy for you because you were there for them and they will likewise be…”