In this episode of Mastering CS Candid Leader Insights, Irina Cismas sits down with Ellen Quirke, Head of Customer Success at IRIS Audio, the AI audio company helping teams remove background noise and capture clearer conversations at scale.
Ellen shares how her years as a high-performance athlete shaped the way she leads, prioritizes, and builds systems, then breaks down what it looks like to create a CS function from zero inside a fast-moving company.
She explains how IRIS Audio serves both high-volume environments like BPOs and call centres and expands into mission-critical markets like emergency services, aviation, and defence, and why that expansion changes how CS must operate.
What You’ll Learn
- How to build a CS function when no CS team existed before
- How Ellen splits her time across enterprise onboarding, frontline support, product input, and revenue ops
- The 2 roles she prioritizes first: digital customer success and regional CSM coverage for global time zones
- Why Ellen values NRR, churn, and retention context more than standalone scores
- What new CS leaders underestimate about coaching: patience, perspective, and lifting the weakest link
- How to implement process without breaking execution: design end-to-end, roll out in chunks, test weekly
- Why CS, Sales, and Product roles blend more over time and what skills become dominant in AI-heavy orgs
- The 1 piece of advice Ellen gives her younger self: implement earlier and learn faster through failure
Key Insights & Takeaways
- Athlete discipline translates into operational clarity. Ellen runs CS like training blocks: time-boxed work, sharp prioritization, and consistent execution even when conditions change.
- Building CS from zero requires education inside the company. The first job is aligning leadership on what CS is: not “account management,” but a function that drives adoption, growth, product feedback, and retention.
- Digital success scales care across the long tail. Educational content, webinars, and structured support protect smaller accounts without turning the experience into “just a chatbot.”
- Global CS needs regional coverage. Time zones create real friction. Enterprise accounts stabilize faster when a CSM exists close to the customer’s working hours.
- Prioritization runs on 2 filters: authority and impact. Board-level deadlines outrank everything. After that, the best use of time comes from asking: “Am I the only one who can do this?”
- Metrics without context lose meaning fast. Churn, retention, and expansion only matter when paired with explanation: what changed, why it changed, and what the business does next.
- Data accuracy comes before dashboards. Ellen slows reporting until the underlying CRM data tells the true story, because incorrect reporting locks teams into wrong decisions.
Podcast transcript
Intro
Irina (0:01 – 0:23)
Welcome to Mastering CS Candid Leader Insights, the podcast where we dive into the world of customer success with industry leaders. I’m your host, Irina Cismas, and today I’m joined by Ellen Quirke, Head of Customer Success at IRIS Audio, a company that helps teams capture and analyze open conversation using AI. Ellen, I’m really happy to have you here.
Thanks for joining!
Ellen (0:23 – 0:28)
Thanks for inviting me on. I’m looking forward to the conversation. It’ll be good.
From high-performance sport to customer success
Irina (0:30 – 0:43)
Let’s start at the beginning. Before customer success and SaaS, you were a high-performance athlete. How did you get pulled into CS and what made it feel like the right place?
Ellen (0:44 – 2:16)
Yeah. All the way up until I was 22, I was a swimmer my entire life. So I was on the New Zealand National Swim Team. And I also went over to Texas A&M on scholarship.
I was on the team there as well. So it kind of had this identity as a swimmer, and I absolutely loved it. And alongside that also studied exercise science.
So did my bachelor’s in exercise science, and then my Master’s as well. And off the back of that, I was offered to do my PhD. And I was kind of in this process of getting funding for my PhD in exercise science as well.
And I kind of had this light bulb moment of, am I good at anything else? I’ve never tried anything else outside of sport. It’s always been so integral to who I am.
And as soon as that thought was in my head, I couldn’t quite shake it and was really curious as to what else in the world I would be good at and what I would enjoy. So my mom’s worked in tech her entire life. She’s a product manager.
So I was kind of already adjacent to the world. She would have loved for me to be a product manager as well. I think she thinks I’d be pretty good at it.
But I found a job listing that was the most eclectic job posting and job description I’ve ever read that said nothing about what I would do and just everything about this is who I want as a person to work for me. Applied for the job, got a phone call within 30 minutes and was offered the job the next day. And that set up five years, basically building my career and customer success with a startup in New Zealand.
Irina (2:18 – 2:44)
That’s an interesting journey. And I have to I tend to somehow agree with your mom, even though I don’t know it, being a good CS person actually makes you a very good product manager. If you ask me, it’s one of the skills that the PMs should have, talking with customer, understanding, being empathic.
So yeah, you should try it at some point.
Ellen (2:45 – 2:47)
Sure, I will.
IRIS Audio in 2026: who they serve and where CS fits
Irina (2:47 – 3:01)
But staying on the customer success part of things, for people who don’t know IRIS Audio yet, can you give us a quick snapshot? Who do you serve? And where does CS fit into the business today?
Ellen (3:01 – 4:23)
Yeah, so IRIS Audio is an AI audio company and we basically remove background noise. We’ve got software that removes background noise and amplifies and enhances the quality of the audio or the voice that comes through. I wish I could give a quick demo now.
I could turn on my washing machine and turn off the app. You’d be able to hear it spinning and I’d turn it back on and you wouldn’t be able to hear it at all. It’s quite amazing.
But we exist in a few different markets. Customer success right now sits on the CX side of the business. So we serve a lot of BPOs, call centres, that kind of industry.
Because obviously call centre floors, you’ve ever called up a call centre before and hear all the conversation happening on around the background. Yeah, and also working from home or people, you know, like being able to definitely, there was a rise via Covid, where you could hear dogs barking, you can hear whatever else and people didn’t like that.
So these are the customers we serve today. And we’re growing into the other side of the business, which I don’t currently sit on, but which is more of mission critical space. So looking at emergency services and aviation and defence, and being able to implement our software via physical form.
So on a chip, essentially into comms devices. It’s really exciting.
Building CS from scratch: roles, responsibilities, and priorities
Irina (4:24 – 4:28)
And what does your day-to-day actually look like as Head of CS now?
Ellen (4:28 – 4:34)
You’d ask any Head of CS and I’m sure all of our day-to-days would look so different.
Irina (4:35 – 4:48)
This is why I start with this, because your day is definitely different from another Head of CS. And usually, CS means different things in different organisations.
Ellen (4:48 – 5:54)
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, so I was actually brought on eight months ago, as the first person to build out CS within IRIS. So there was no CS function that existed before I was hired, which for me, was something that was really exciting, because it means that I get to kind of shape what that looks like.
So yeah, my day-to-day, I do anything from obviously taking some of our bigger clients, our enterprise clients through onboarding, starting to build out some of our digital CS functions. So whether that’s looking at filming some webinars or whatever else that is, sometimes jumping on frontline support over this Christmas break, I’m on a roster doing frontline support, sitting in on product meetings, our roadmap meetings and helping bring the customer voice into that. And then a lot of revenue ops stuff as well, frankly, at the moment, I run a lot of our CRM side of things.
So, helping build dashboards and everything else for our execs and for our boards. So yeah, no two days are the same at the moment, they’re kind of it’s what needs to be done, gets done, or it gets added to the list and hopefully gets done the next week if I run out of time.
Structuring the first CS team
Irina (5:55 – 6:18)
You mentioned before we went on record that you are starting to build the foundation of a future CS team. What do you have in mind in terms of structure? What is your ideal CS setup?
Ellen (6:19 – 8:24)
It was actually our VP of Sales, Chris, who was advocating for two years to bring in someone in CS into the business. So he was very stoked when he was given the green light to hire someone. But I think very quickly, it was kind of realized that what you said before, everyone’s got this different interpretation of what customer success is and how it exists within a business.
And then also whoever is fulfilling that function, how you see it, and how you do it differently. So I think my first kind of path within IRIS has been almost bringing people along on the journey to get them to understand the way that I see customer success and the way that I think that it can fit into the business that we have. And it’s more than just being an account manager who makes sure that people are happy and checks in with customers.
You know, it’s a lot more nuanced than that. And there’s a lot more that goes into it. And a lot more impact you can have as well. Being able to help grow accounts or identify really cool new features that you might not ever have thought of yourself.
So for me, in terms of my structure, and the way that our business runs as well, there are two really important roles that we’ve been looking for. And I think it comes into that digital CS space. So it’s being able to kind of help support our long tail, just to make sure that we’re able to give educational material and support to more customers who maybe are on a lower ARR value, and we can make sure they’re still really wrapped and feel supported and feel heard.
And not just talking to a chatbot. That’s really important to us. And then another one of those, too, is having CSMs that exist within different regions, because with time zones, we’re a global company.
It’s really difficult right now for me, managing some of these accounts with the time differences, to actually be where I need to be. So, being able to bring people in for some of our enterprise accounts in some of our different regions. And that’s kind of where I’m looking at starting.
Irina (8:26 – 8:28)
What would be your first follow-up?
Ellen (8:28 – 9:16)
Well, this is an ongoing conversation at the moment in terms of what the importance is with my executive team. And I’m still tossing up between two. I’m having conversations with different people, and lots of different people have different opinions. And I mean, any comments on this as well, people give me advice.
II think about it from a personal perspective, freeing up my time would be hiring another CSM. But the biggest impact that it can have on the business and the way we can support our customers in 2026, I think it would be someone to be able to build out the digital success side, the digital CSM and customer support kind of function a little bit more. Yeah, that’s probably the way it’ll go, I think first.
How Ellen prioritizes when everything feels urgent
Irina (9:17 – 9:32)
Because now you are the only person in CS, and I assume that you have a lot on your plate. So what do you personally focus on first when everything feels urgent?
Ellen (9:33 – 10:48)
Yeah, that’s a great question. And sometimes, it’s not always the best answer for it. I think it’s prioritizing A “who’s asking”, and then B “who impacts”. These two things go through my head.
Obviously, the who’s asking if I’m getting a request for a report that needs to be generated from an exec that has to go to the board, then it has to be done by tomorrow, then everything else kind of has to stop, and that has to be done. So that gets prioritized straight away, right? But afterwards, I think it’s more like am I the only one that’s capable of doing this, right?
Because when you’re in the success space, as you know, you are involved in support, and you are involved with the product team, and you are involved with marketing, and you are involved with sales, and you kind of become a little bit of a center point for lots of different conversations. And so I think sometimes I have to take a step back and go, am I the best person to be doing this? Or does someone else have the skill set and the ability to do this thing that can get to it a lot sooner than I can?
Because if other things come up that are urgent, I need to be able to focus my skill set and my time, my priorities there. But you don’t want to let anything go.
Athlete mindset at work: time blocks, resilience, and 1% improvements
Irina (10:51 – 11:23)
Listening to you, there’s a lot of, I would say, discipline and clarity in how you approach those moments. And that makes me think about your athlete background again. And I’m curious how much of that athlete mindset still shows up in your work?
What habits or ways of thinking from competitive sport have translated well into that customer success part?
Ellen (11:24 – 14:16)
Yeah, I mean, I’m sure it shows up every day and in ways that I don’t even, I’m not really conscious of, I’m sure, because it’s been my entire life, up until my professional life was sports and high-performance sports. I think time management, and I think sometimes it’s a bit of a cop-out answer because it’s one of those easy things to put on a resume and whatever else, but I think time management is probably one that is so ingrained in me that I would never be able to remove. Being able to prioritise things and block my time really well to make sure I can get things done that have to get done.
I would definitely say that’s up there. Discipline, I mean, you mentioned it, but yeah, being able to be disciplined and work on things. And I think, yeah, it’s being able to block out the noise.
And I think that that’s probably something that’s the most unique is, you know, it doesn’t matter what’s going on in your personal life or other things that are happening around you, the ability to kind of like narrow in and block out the noise and focus on what has to happen at work that day. And then vice versa, also being able to still stay tapped into the things that are important when you’re outside of work, because for me, my brain’s always on with work, but being able to know what to let in and what not when you are taking the break and when you are kind of trying to recharge. Yeah, being able to balance those things, I think it’s something that’s quite unique.
Yeah, and I suppose there’s one more thing, it’s like the little 1%. So this is more about being unique to customer success, and working in technology and working with people is finding the little 1% improvements or the little things that’ll make a big difference. And I think this is why I got into sport and exercise science as well, and found that really fascinating.
I ended up studying it because I wanted to know how I could be a better athlete. That was the only reason that’s what I’m going to study at university, because I was thinking, well, there are little things that I can change in my diet or little angles I can change in how I’m swimming that can make me better. And so it’s finding those little 1% changes and I think you can have conversations with customers and they might mention a little thing that they don’t even think is big, it’s just this, oh, this happens and then we experience this or whatever else.
And being able to take that little nugget and spin it up into something else, get it, whether it’s a process change, whether it’s a new feature, whatever it is, and being able to present that back to the customer that solves this little problem or this little idea that they had and being able to see the delight because they never asked for it, but you’ll recognize it as this little thing. Sometimes they don’t even know that they were the ones that sparked the idea through the conversation and it’s like, oh, well, remember we’re talking about it a few weeks ago and here it is. Yeah, I think that’s something that I credit to being an athlete as well, those little 1%.
Metrics that matter: context, accuracy, and the risk of bad data
Irina (14:16 – 14:40)
Let’s talk about how you measure success, and I know that you’ve driven retention, expansion, CSAT results across different roles. When you strip it all back, which outcomes do you care about most, and which ones tend to be overrated?
Ellen (14:42 – 16:29)
Yeah, I think this is something that’s really relevant to me at the moment because we’re trying to define which metrics we’re measuring, at what levels, and how we roll them up as we present them. For me, the biggest thing is context. A lot of the time people want a number or a single figure, and that’s important, but a number without context is useless.
If you think about churn, for example, you could have a higher churn number, but with the right context around it, it might not be as alarming as it first appears on the page. The same applies to expansion. So what we mainly focus on measuring right now is NRR.
We don’t measure NPS or CSAT at the moment, and we’re still deciding whether to introduce them or not. Right now, we’re leaning more toward anecdotal insights, while also measuring churn and NGRR. This is something I’m still actively learning and refining how to make sure we’re presenting the right information in the right way.
I don’t want to rush it, because data accuracy matters. One of the biggest things I’ve focused on since joining IRIS has been making sure the data we have is accurate and truly reflects the story. I don’t want to report on metrics when the data behind them is incorrect or missing key elements. Because of that, I’ve intentionally slowed down reporting on certain metrics until the data is solid.
So I don’t think any metric is inherently useless. Context and accuracy simply have to come alongside it.
Developing teams: what new CS leaders underestimate
Irina (16:32 – 17:07)
I want to talk about those outcomes. As you said, it’s not always about how important a specific metric is, everything depends on context. But those outcomes don’t happen in isolation. They’re driven by the people doing the work. And I know you’ve managed and coached CS teams directly. What do new CS leaders usually underestimate when it comes to supporting and developing their teams?
Ellen (17:08 – 19:04)
Yeah, so I think in the past I’ve supported and managed a few people throughout my CS career. But I think my biggest experience in helping grow and develop people and manage teams actually came from previous work. I owned a swim school for a number of years back in New Zealand and built a team of learn-to-swim instructors who had never taught swimming before.
I think I learned a lot about leadership, management, and skill development in that environment, especially because I was very skilled and experienced myself. And I think the biggest thing is taking the time and having the patience to bring people along on the journey with you, and listening to others’ perspectives, no matter how much you think you know.
Everyone comes from a different background, has heard different anecdotes and stories, and has been taught and mentored by different people. There isn’t one single right way to do something. I think it’s a combination of different ways of doing things that makes it right in context.
And once again, I know it’s a bit of a cliché, but you’re only as strong as your weakest member. So as you’re building a team, you’re only going to be as successful as the people around you. If someone isn’t on the ride, isn’t on the journey, isn’t feeling inspired, or doesn’t feel supported enough, the team can only succeed to the level that person is succeeding.
So yeah, I think it’s about taking that step back, learning together, knowing that everyone has something to learn, and building together as a team—because you can’t succeed on your own. I probably should have mentioned this earlier when we talked about my athlete background, because that’s something I definitely learned there as well: working as a team and being only as strong as your weakest member.
Structure and process: building playbooks while onboarding weekly
Irina (19:05 – 19:15)
What about structure and processes? How important are those in the life of an athlete, but also in the life of a CSM?
Ellen (19:16 – 20:54)
Yeah, well, I’m a massive process person. I love structure, I love process, and I think that’s been one of the things where, if I could segment my time better in my day, I’d spend more time building out process. Especially because, in terms of building my team next year at IRIS, I want to be able to bring people in with a structure already in place. I think that’s the best way I can support a team when I bring someone in.
I don’t want them to feel like they’re struggling to swim—pardon the pun—when there’s no structure there for them. So I’d love to spend more time building structure, but sometimes that’s just not the reality. You still have to do the day-to-day work. I’m still trying to implement, build out, and improve our sales-to-success handover process, our onboarding process, build playbooks around that, and train our sales staff as well, because they have responsibility on their side too.
At the same time, every week I’m still onboarding two to three new clients, and that can’t stop because we’re still selling. So I have to keep doing that while also trying to bring more process into place.
In terms of implementing it, my biggest approach is choosing chunks. So designing the process end to end in theory, but then picking small pieces—maybe within a week you change this part, put it into place, test it over the next week or two with new clients, and then continue introducing new chunks of process. Over time, you end up with a new end-to-end process in place, because too much change at once is difficult for people.
The future: what CS and sales leaders need to unlearn in an AI-heavy org
Irina (20:56 – 21:06)
Looking forward, what do you think sales leaders need to unlearn and what skills matter most over the next few years?
Ellen (21:07 – 22:53)
Yeah, I think when it comes to unlearning, there’s been this continual evolution within customer success. It’s an area that has grown, evolved, and changed so much, and it existed in a very different way before it was even called CS. So I think one thing to unlearn is the idea of what CS is “meant” to be.
Some people do that really well, but others, as you know, tend to hold on to the idea that success is meant to own a specific thing, sit in a specific lane, or do a specific set of tasks. I think it’s about being more open-minded to the melding between different areas within a business.
The reality is that with AI—and I know it’s a buzzword—but the reality is that it’s going to play a massive role within businesses. That means reduced headcount in certain areas, and teams not being as large as they once were. But the people who are part of those teams are going to be highly skilled and capable of working with AI.
They’re also going to need very strong soft skills, which I think will become even more important, because AI can’t replace soft skills. It can’t replace the ability to understand people and genuinely connect with them.
I also think we’ll continue to see the blending of lines between departments. That’s already happening more and more, and as headcount reduces slightly, it won’t be a case of product sitting here, sales sitting here, and CS sitting here. You’ll see roles that have crossover between these areas, with shared responsibility, acting as a conduit between teams rather than CS being the only function sitting in the middle. And yeah, I think that’s more what the future will look like.
Closing advice: failing faster and implementing earlier
Irina (22:56 – 23:12)
And to wrap things up, I want to ask you if you could go back and give your younger self one piece of advice at the start of your CS career, what would it be?
Ellen (23:14 – 24:09)
Don’t say yes as much. But then again, I don’t know if I’d be where I am today if I hadn’t, so yeah. I think it’s about being more open to learning earlier on.
I’ve always been really curious, but being able to try new things and be okay with failing is something I haven’t always done as well. I tend to plan a lot and do much more upfront before I implement. I’ve definitely gotten better at that as I’ve moved forward in my career.
So yeah, it’s about being able to try new things, take things on board, learn, but implement earlier and be okay with failure. You learn a hell of a lot more from your failures than from your successes, and sometimes that’s just as valuable—if not more so.
Irina (24:10 – 24:41)
Ellen, this was such a grounded and honest conversation. I really loved how you connected performance, resilience, and real-world execution, and showed us what CS leadership—and I’d say leadership in general—looks like when things aren’t necessarily perfect or when you don’t yet have a dedicated structure in place. Thank you so much for sharing your story and your insights.
Ellen (24:42 – 24:47)
Thank you for having me. I’ve really appreciated it as well; it’s been great.
Irina (24:48 – 24:56)
And to everyone listening, thanks for tuning in. Until next time, stay curious, keep learning, and mastering customer success.
