On this week's episode of Inside Outside Innovation, we sit down with Harini Gokul, Head of Customer Success at AWS. Harini and I talk about the importance of working backwards to define customer success. And how companies can better understand customer needs to create better products and services. Let's get started. Inside Outside Innovation is the podcast to help new innovators navigate what's next. Each week, we'll give you a front row seat into what it takes to learn, grow, and thrive in today's world of accelerating change, and uncertainty. Join us as we explore, engage, and experiment with the best and the brightest innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneering businesses. It's time to get started.Interview Transcript with Harini Gokul, Head of Customer Success at AWSBrian Ardinger: Welcome to another episode of Inside Outside Innovation. I'm your host, Brian Ardinger. And as always, we have another amazing guest. Today we have Harini Gokul. She is the Head of Customer Success at Amazon Web Services. Welcome to the show. Harini Gokul: Thank you. It is such a pleasure to be here. I've heard many episodes of your show and I'm so excited to have this conversation. Brian Ardinger: Obviously, Amazon Web Services is one of those companies that we think of when we think of innovation. I first want to just start with, what is your role at Amazon Web Services and what is the Head of Customer Success actually do? Harini Gokul: Yes, it's a great question. So, AWS is all about customer obsession. It is baked into the DNA of how we build products and go to market and take care of our customers. I lead what we call as the customer solutions function. What they industry sometimes also calls to as customer success for our next generation of customers. What that means is we want to make sure that we are investing in our highly innovative hyper-growth customers to make sure that we are supporting them in their transformation. In their digital transformation and their business transformation. At the end of the day, my job is making sure my customers can take care of their customers. Brian Ardinger: Let's dig into that a little bit. So obviously you, by working with a lot of different companies, you've seen both the good and the bad of how people focus on customers. And what are some of the insights or maybe biggest mistakes that you've seen from customers when it comes to interacting with customers.Harini Gokul: There's certainly a lot of good and a lot of opportunities for us. Our starting point is how we define value and good with the customer. Right. And the one challenge I see is we start with our definition of what good looks like. And we are nodding. We are in customer conversations and nodding sometimes. But not really actively listening or absorbing what the customer's articulating their problems. Because we so badly want our solution to fit their problem statement. So, I think the biggest hurdle is starting with what we think is good. And thinking versus truly actively listening to the customer and focusing on a customer defined value. Brian Ardinger: So, are there particular tactics that you use when you start that first conversation with a potential customer to understand their needs and then subsequently what to with that?Harini Gokul: Absolutely. So, my, my favorite, I've many tools in my toolkit, but one of my favorite tools is actually an Amazon methodology called Working Backwards. Many of our listeners, and probably you have heard about it, Brian. Working backwards as an approach of creating a press release before you build a new product or a service, or you create a new program and what that does is it starts from the customer. And it says, when we do this, this is the problem we are solving for. This is the challenge we've addressed. This is the benefit we've provided the customer. And it's an articulation of value. And what good looks like when the job is done. So, you work backwards and place the customer squarely in the c