As social creatures, we humans care what others think and are influenced by the number of likes, hearts, and retweets on social media posts. The downside? An attraction to popular beliefs—whether they’re true or false—can speed up the spread of conspiracy theories, suggests new UC Berkeley research.

Popular Beliefs Seem True

<ul><li>An extensive study shows that people are more likely to adopt pseudoscientific and misinformed beliefs when they believe them to be more popular.</li><li>These results have important implications for how highlighting social information with ‘likes’ is more likely to spread fake news.</li><li>Study participants were more likely to agree or disagree with a statement after seeing evidence that the belief was more popular than they had expected it to be. </li><li>Some who were on the fence about a controversial issue changed their minds based solely on the number of endorsements the statement received.</li></ul>

How Fake News Spreads

Fake news tends to travel, by some estimates, six times faster than fact-based news on Twitter and other social media platforms.That’s because the algorithms social media platforms use to promote whatever is most engaging or attention-grabbing are often at odds with what is actually true in the world, especially if one is prone to burrow into echo chambers where everyone agrees with you.

Fake News Has Greater Travel Speed

The responsibility to curb the spread of misinformation falls mostly on social media platforms. One remedy would be to remove social engagement metrics such as likes, hearts, and retweets from posts that have been identified as misleading.On an individual level, diversifying the media diet can help. Doing that will give a more representative sense of what kinds of beliefs are out there and get users more attuned to motivations, nefarious or otherwise, behind the information that’s being shared.

How To Curb The Spread Of Fake News

A new study finds that we are easily persuaded by popular beliefs, even if they’re wrong.

Understand yourself and those around you.

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Psychology

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Society, Arts & Culture

How Our Brains Help Misinformation Go Viral

A few years before the world’s most preeminent scientists met, a relatively unknown physicist called <a href="https://www.inverse.com/science/inverse-daily-031622">Albert Einstein</a> came up with a radical theory: General relativity. The theory goes that gravity isn’t just a force attracting two objects, but one that warps time. It could be proven, Einstein posed, by measuring the position of the stars surrounding the Sun both before and after a total solar eclipse. Even the slightest shift in the stars’ position would mean that light travelling near massive bodies, such as stars, bends as a result of gravity.

The First Theory From Einstein

In 1919, when Albert Einstein came up with a radical theory called General relativity, its fame catapulted the little known physicist into the public spotlight and helped make him into what he is today: America’s most celebrated scientist.His name became synonymous with science. If you ask kids to show you what a scientist looks like, the first thing they’ll draw is wild white hair.

The Most Famous Scientist

Einstein's theory of relativity gained instant fame when it was announced in the 1920s.Einstein rose to his rapid and sustained fame on the coattails of his theory, as it was so novel, so profound, and went so viral. It shifted our view of the cosmos from a fixed entity to a time-twisting mind-bending universe.Many new physics theories today bask in the same fame. LIGO's detection of gravitational waves in 2016 led to more coverage of the theory.

Einstein's Rise to Fame

Before Einstein, most coverage of science and technology in the mainstream press was limited to the inventions of figures like Michael Faraday, Nikola Tesla, and Thomas Edison, and, starting in the early 20th century, Nobel Prize recipients. Einstein’s fame has led to more coverage in general of theoretical physics, albeit with a slant toward fields such as particle physics and cosmology.

Moving Beyond Tesla

As the world became curious about who was behind the novel time-bending theory, they did not get what they expected. Einstein was quiet, gentle, and charmingly awkward: He never wore socks, he made jokes and <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/285389?read-now=1&seq=15#metadata_info_tab_contents">gave quotable quotes</a>. He was not dull, unapproachable, or stolid.It was the ideal combination of eccentric discovery paired with an eccentric human behind it.

The World Begins To Know Einstein

As the theory of general relativity has aged like a fine wine, so has Einstein’s celebrity — despite his later attempts to find theories of the universe that never bore the same fruit.Einstein spent years after proving general relativity seeking a unified field theory — a way to chart all forces into one theoretical equation — a concept that many other prominent physicists at the time criticized as lacking in evidence and less worthy of science’s time.Yet his persistent attempts to come up with this unified field theory received continued attention from the news media at the time regardless.

The Unified Field Theory

Einstein became the world's most iconic scientist seemingly overnight. Here’s how the physicist rose to fame and what it tells us about how science unfolds in the public eye.

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History

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Motivation & Inspiration

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Science & Nature

107 years ago, Albert Einstein created new physics — and a new cult of celebrity

By having your CSMs perform double duty the same what your support agents do, these would be the repercussions:<ul><li>It becomes impossible for your CSMs to provide reasonable response times to your customer’s critical issues. They have calls, they are traveling, they are preparing for meetings and they are responding to customers. </li><li>It prevents CSMs from being proactive as they are kept busy solving issues.</li><li>Even if the CSM tries to be proactive by providing strategic advice, the customer’s view of the CSM is diminished if it’s the same person that is addressing their support tickets.</li></ul>

“Customer Success Managers are not Support”

Having a Support Specialist is tenacious and a no-brainer move. Their impact on the team affects two metrics positively: first response time and customer satisfaction. They handled issues quickly with the highest quality and empathy. The customer came first and they set the tone for the entire Customer Success department.

Invest in Support, Improve Customer Experience

This isn’t fake news. These are real customers and actual quotes we received from the follow up survey we send to people when our Support team closes out tickets. It wasn’t that long ago when I…

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Marketing & Sales

Repeat After Me: “Customer Success Managers are not Support” | by Chad Horenfeldt | Medium

<ul><li>Why is this important? What will it achieve?</li><li>What data is needed to make this reality and how will you access that data?</li><li>Does this process currently exist? What do you need to do to make this successful?</li></ul>Before you build out some additional infrastructure to support a new data point or a new process, you can determine if that use case is really applicable.Use cases help limit those destructive hazards from derailing your Customer Success software implementations.

DETECT AND ADDRESS LANDMINES AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE

Many software evaluations focus on features such as health scores, reporting and alerting, without doing enough due diligence. A use case simply outlines how a user uses a system to accomplish a particular goal.The trick is how you write them and how you incorporate them into your decision-making process. Trying to frame your needs into use cases will force you to think through scenarios fully, and test the requests that the CS team may be asking for.

APPLYING USE CASE AS A DECIDING FACTOR

Spreadsheets can help you determine if a vendor has the basic capabilities you need based on your stated objectives. It's important to start writing down every use case you can think of and not just those that are applicable to your current situation.When purchasing CS software, you will need to make tradeoffs as there are features that may not be included by certain vendors based on your budget or product package. Creating this type of spreadsheet allows you to determine which uses cases are the most important as well as be very transparent as to the effort that will be required.

PUTTING USE CASES INTO ACTION

How do you match your Customer Success requirements with a CS software vendors’ true capabilities? How do you avoid the potential landmines of selecting the wrong software?

The #1 Tip for Selecting the Right Customer Success Software

A mission statement is a clear and straightforward statement that everyone in the company understands about what your team does. It answers the question "what do we do?" and it can also help you make decisions about people, processes, and interactions.

Mission Statement

<ul><li>Bluecore: “To have our customers shout about us from the rooftops due to the value that we are providing and the amazing customer experience”. We needed to create more specialization in our CS team to improve the overall customer experience."</li><li>At Updater: "To have “no moves left behind”. This was focused on the moving industry. It ensured that we provided the best experience for the consumer, for our real estate clients, and for the business. We hired and structured our team accordingly."</li></ul>

Examples of Mission Statements

Do Customer Success teams really need a mission? Your company also has a mission statement (or they should). Isn’t that enough? It’s also fairly obvious what a Customer Success team needs to do. You…

Does your Customer Success Team understand its WHAT?

To effectively improve retention, companies need to have a defined process in place to manage renewals. Your team will be more efficient in their day-to-day and ensure that nothing slips through the cracks when renewal time comes along. Additionally, it will also allow them to deliver a more consistent and positive customer experience for your customers.

Retaining customers: The purpose behind the process 

The first step of establishing a renewal process is defining the leading indicators of risk within your customer base. They could include:<ul><li>Change of an executive sponsor</li><li>The number of support tickets opened</li><li>A drop in usage of your product or key features</li><li>Negative survey responses or low NPS/CSAT</li><li>Missed onboarding, adoption, or lifecycle milestones</li><li>Lack of perceived value by your customer. </li><li>Lack of visibility or missing indicators that can escalate the possible churn of a customer.</li></ul>

Determine what at-risk means and how to monitor for it 

You need to define a standardized plan of action or a playbook that enables your team to mitigate risks before a renewal cycle. Playbooks help your team be more proactive in managing renewals and provide step-by-step guidance on the actions your team should take to close the renewal.Playbooks for at-risk and healthy customers help your team build consistency into their workflows, collaborate more effectively with other teams working on the renewal, and ensure that no missed critical steps during the process.

Drive the right actions to close every renewal

The key to driving a lasting and meaningful impact on customer retention metrics is scaling your processes properly. For most companies, this is where CS technology can have the most significant impact. Automated workflows can help your team work more efficiently and engage your customer base throughout the entire customer lifecycle.

Power improved retention at scale 

Discover easy to implement strategies to reduce your churn rate

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Startups

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Business

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Product & Design

Ultimate Guide to Reducing Churn

Discover the world of business and economics.

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Economics

3 Steps to Creating a Renewal Process and Retention in Your Customer Base | Customer Success and Product Experience Software | Gainsight

There is a serious wealth of career search tools out there today. I started with a wide search on many platforms before narrowing in on the ones where I was getting the most traction. I made great contacts and had productive conversations using AngelList, LinkedIn, Vettery, and The Muse.Most people end up landing their next role through their peers and friends. Be sure to tap your network and begin spreading the word about what you are searching for

The World At Your Fingertips

As a success professional you’ve worked hard to hone your people, organization, and communication skills. Don’t forget to highlight and prove those skills while interacting with recruiters and interviewers. Be professionally persistent with your communication; don’t neglect opportunities by not keeping track of the communications

Showcase Your Skills

Do your due diligence when preparing for companies that interest you. You should be able to comfortably discuss things like company size, funding, and general team structure. Don’t forget that this is not only a test of your skills and experience, but also your opportunity to determine if you want to be on their team. Ideally, you should have a list of critical questions you’re asking each company so that you can compare the organizations you’re interested in, apples-to-apples.

Do Your Homework

Are you ready for a change? You love customer success and your role, but it’s time to move on to the next chapter in your career. A job search is work in and of itself! Having just gone through the…

Searching for Success: Job Hunting Part 1

The most successful CRM experiences are Custom-Built to cater to the company and its unique style and needs. How can you build and maintain a system that keeps everyone on the same page, while quickly bringing new teammates up to speed. How can you groom your CRM to highlight and showcase the most important and relevant information, while ensuring that a new team member can step in and easily start supporting a new customer.

CRM Best Practices for Maximum Customer Success

Many users expect their CRM to contain everything from a to Z and be perfect from day one. But if your CRM is more established and you need to Declutter, removing Duplicates can cut out a significant number of leads, people, or companies. If your CRM is more established and you need to Declutter, you might find that removing Duplicates can cut out a significant number of leads, people, or companies. In copper,

1. Keep your CRM data clean and clutter-free

Many teams fail to realize that improper or insufficient training can counteract those capabilities. Copper has a Self-Paced Onboarding program for Admins, an Onboarding training Video, and a series of Onboarding and training Webinars. If you’re just starting out, group Onboarding sessions can be a great way to foster collaboration and ensure that everyone is on the same page.

2. Invest in user onboarding

In Copper, you can filter based on: <ul><li>Leads </li><li>People </li><li>Opportunities </li><li>Companies </li><li>Projects </li><li>Tasks </li></ul>

3. Create filters to facilitate daily workflows

Making the system familiar and easy to use will instill some sense of ownership and drive interest across the board. If some of your team members are particularly adept at using Gmail, see if your Crm allows you to Embed some of its features in the Email App. Copper, for example, offers a chrome extension for Gmail and Inbox that provides you with the ability to share a single set of contacts. With just a few clicks,

4. Make the system easy to use

While you can build several types of automation triggers, I recommend you to create and use the following as a jumping off point: <ul><li>If a contact is inactive for more than seven days, create a task for the responsible user to follow up. </li><li>Send new customers a welcome message when their deal moves to the “closing stage,” and notify the relevant success manager internally. </li><li>If a customer has been active for two years, create a task to send them a loyalty appreciation present. </li></ul>

5. Automate as many tasks as possible

Configure your Crm to quickly present the information to your sales team. Many Crms are capable of automating the data entry function by pulling in business descriptions from the web. In copper, you can create automated actions to assign tasks to record owners once the leads have been created. Use automation to enhance the efficiency of your Workflows and free up your team from wasting valuable hours.

Create filters to facilitate daily workflows

Be a minimalist. Many users expect their CRM to contain everything from A to Z and be perfect from day one. But I recommend starting with a “less is more” mentality.&nbsp;Make maintenance ongoing. As your teams, clients, and data mature, you’ll need to revisit your processes and look for opportunities to optimize and automate.&nbsp;Remove duplicates. If your CRM is more established and you need to declutter, you might find that removing duplicates can cut out a significant number of leads, people, or companies.

Clean Up CRM Clutter

As a customer success professional, it’s important to remember that your CRM can only be as good as the information you put in it. Bad data in, bad data out, right? The quality of your data is a huge…

My most impactful account plans have greater context from our sales team on what was important to the client at the time of purchase and what their long terms goals were. More importantly, they also include relationship details regarding the stakeholders and their purchasing team.This intel empowers you as a relationship manager from day one to have full context into their lifecycle with your product and allows you to drive the strategic relationship forward.

The Best Account Plans Start in Sales

There are a number of ways you can kick off the account plan process in sales. In my current role, we pull certain fields from a won opportunity in the CRM into an object both in the CRM and into our account plan document in a collaborative sheet. With a minor investment in development and CRM magic, you can be pulling the key data points important to your account plan automatically.

The Account Plan Process

Here are some ideas on what to start collecting in the sales process.<ul><li>Client industry</li><li>The previous solution your product is now replacing</li><li>Summary of the client’s business model</li><li>Top challenges the need to solve for now</li><li>Long term goals</li><li>Summary of their current tech stack or tools</li><li>Planned growth or opportunities for cross/up-selling</li><li>Special contract terms or agreements out of the ordinary</li><li>Immediate action items</li></ul>

What To Collect In Sales

While the success team may own the retention and expansion goals, every department participates in customer success. Building an open and communicative relationship between success and sales ensures that the client wins every time but also your customer-facing teams.

Customer Success and Partnership is a team sport

It’s me again! Here to be your customer success conscience, reminding you how and why growth plans are a powerful and necessary tool of the trade. So far, you know the 5 elements that outline a…

Across the SaaS industry the debate about success teams owning revenue metrics, whether recurring or expansion, is a hot one. You’ll find strong opinions all over the map. Some are from the school of thought that “trusted advisors” from a success team cannot truly be trustworthy if they are responsible for a sales goal. Others say that success team members know exactly what their client’s needs are, and therefore can sell to them most successfully.&nbsp;It is important to acknowledge that all members of a company have some selling to do as a representative of the brand.

Everyone Is A Salesperson

Of course we all hope for relationships that are thriving and renewals that are automatic, but unfortunately, this is not always the case. When approaching a renewal, always provide as much time as possible; busy business contacts do not love a surprise. 2–3 months prior to renewal, schedule a call with all key stakeholders. When requesting and scheduling this call be sure to provide an overview of renewal logistics, sharing important dates and tasks

Renewals

There are a number of ways to approach selling new products or functionality to a current customer. Hopefully, with assistance of a product marketing team, your customers are frequently updated on new offerings via email. If so, this can be a natural conversation starter for you and your team. If not, you should establish a regular cadence of contact with your clients to cover product and service updates. Tracking calls with each client to your roadmap will help you be sure you have discussed every new offering as it is made available.

Expansions

Regardless of the metrics your success department owns, everyone in a start-up is an important extension of the brand. Awareness of the competitive landscape and your product will empower every member of your success team to sell in a professional, comfortable way.

Driven For Success

Across the SaaS industry the debate about success teams owning revenue metrics, whether recurring or expansion, is a hot one. You’ll find strong opinions all over the map. Some are from the school of…

How Our Brains Help Misinformation Go Viral

107 years ago, Albert Einstein created new physics — and a new cult of celebrity

Repeat After Me: “Customer Success Managers are not Support” | by Chad Horenfeldt | Medium

The #1 Tip for Selecting the Right Customer Success Software

Does your Customer Success Team understand its WHAT?

Melissa Martinez