71 - How to Prepare for C-Suite Conversations - Laura Kightlinger

Women in Customer Success Podcast

In this episode, I’m talking to Laura Kightlinger, a VP of International Customer Success at Seismic. She leads the team responsible for partnering with customers across Europe and Asia to ensure their long-term value realisation on the platform. Prior to Seismic, Laura built the Customer Success team at Qubit from inception to 15 team members globally and supported significant growth at DocuSign and Google. She also shares her passion for Customer Success with others in the industry as a coach at Sales Impact Academy and Scalewise.
Fun facts about Laura:

• lived and worked in a number of places across America and Europe
• Her dream location is in Southern Europe, near the seaside
• At the age of 16, she couldn't imagine her current career in tech, but definitely the aspect of problem-solving and her love of change!

Career Journey:
After studying accounting and finance, Laura started her career as a financial analyst role. She ended up working at Google and realised that sitting behind spreadsheets wasn’t for her! She liked the entrepreneurial culture and the chance to grow something. After completing her MBA, she moved to London to work at Qubit, as a professional services consultant and eventually grew a global team in customer success. From here, Laura went on to join Seismic as a Customer Success Leader and has built teams in Europe and the APAC regions.
Current Role:
Laura always wanted to move abroad. She loves being in different places and learning about new traditions, foods and cultures, and having to learn to work with people that think differently and communicate differently. For Laura, living abroad was a really positive and enriching challenge, that helped her in building relationships and gaining local knowledge of how each market works to best support her clients.
Laura's Customer Success Approach:
With her background, Laura is able to bring credibility to her conversations with C-suite leaders from a finance and operations aspect. Customer Success is a huge part of revenue generation for businesses and Laura bridges that gap between overall business metrics and their own impact on the business. Laura notes the importance of not just focusing on the numbers but looking into where teams can focus on adoption and value.
The aim is to try to show a data-driven picture to her leaders about what it is they do and how that ultimately contributes to the overall kind of financial and business goals that they have. Laura talks about

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About Women in Customer Success Podcast:

Women in Customer Success Podcast is the first women-only podcast for Customer Success professionals, where remarkable ladies of Customer Success connect, inspire and champion each other.

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Host Marija Skobe-Pilley

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