In this episode of Mastering CS: Candid Leader Insights, Irina Cismas speaks with Katrin Loodus, Customer Success Manager at RangeForce, a cybersecurity training platform for hands-on, scenario-based learning.
After more than a decade with the company, Katrin has worked across content, support, product-adjacent roles, and Customer Success, giving her a unique perspective on customers, product development, and organizational growth. She shares how deep product knowledge helps her serve customers more effectively, how cybersecurity readiness is measured beyond course completion, and how AI is helping her deliver more value while reducing manual work.
Katrin also reflects on a personal social engineering incident that shaped her view of cybersecurity, the lessons she carried over from teaching and systems analysis, and the human skills that will remain essential in Customer Success as AI continues to evolve.
What You’ll Learn
- How working across multiple roles created a stronger Customer Success foundation
- The advantages of deep product and organizational knowledge
- How cybersecurity readiness is measured beyond training completion
- What a real-world social engineering attempt taught Katrin about security
- Practical ways AI helps automate and improve Customer Success work
- How to communicate customer needs more effectively to product teams
- The skills that will remain valuable as AI transforms Customer Success
- Why curiosity and continuous learning matter more than ever
Key Insights & Takeaways
Deep product knowledge accelerates customer outcomes. Understanding the product, teams, and internal processes helps Katrin respond faster and connect customers with the right resources.
Success isn’t measured by course completion alone. Real-world simulation exercises provide a more accurate view of cybersecurity readiness than training consumption metrics.
Cybersecurity remains a human challenge. Technical defenses matter, but people continue to be one of the most vulnerable parts of any security strategy.
AI creates leverage when paired with expertise. The biggest value comes from combining AI with human judgment, context, and customer understanding.
Strong Customer Success starts with asking better questions. Katrin credits her background in teaching and systems analysis for helping her uncover the real needs behind customer requests.
Curiosity remains a competitive advantage. As technology automates more routine work, creativity, learning, and human connection become increasingly valuable.
Podcast transcript
Intro
Irina (0:04 – 0:38)
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 Katrin Loodus, Customer Success Manager at Cyberbit, a cybersecurity training platform for hands-on scenario-based learning. Katrin, I’m really happy to have you here.
Thanks for joining. Thank you for having me. More than happy to be here.
You’ve been at Range Force, now Cyberbit, for over 10 years.
Katrin (0:38 – 0:39)
Yes, that is true.
Irina (0:40 – 0:55)
Moving through content, support, and now into a full CSM role. Help me understand where you are today. What does your role actually look like?
And how’s life after the acquisition?
Katrin (0:56 – 2:31)
Yeah, of course. I’ve been with the organization for over 10 years.
I was actually the fifth employee, so I’ve been there since the very beginning. It has been an interesting journey to see the organization grow from its early days to being acquired by Cyberbit.
In a way, my life hasn’t changed too much after the acquisition because I’m still doing the same job and working in the same environment. But there are definitely organizational, branding, and resource-related changes that have made things more abundant than before.
Although I’ve worked in different teams throughout the organization, I’m now primarily focused on the Customer Success side. On a day-to-day basis, I talk with customers, have regular check-in calls with them, and generate QBR reports.
Since we were quite a small organization, we all took on additional responsibilities. Because of my technical background, I also helped with the support queue. I have experience with provisioning and licensing as well, so I can cover procurement-related topics when needed.
I would say my work is still very diverse, but my main focus is building relationships with customers, helping them understand our product, and supporting them in achieving their organizational goals through the readiness program we offer.
Those are the main things I focus on today.
Managing customer relationships after the Cyberbit acquisition
Irina (2:32 – 2:52)
So you for sure have a lot of things that you are covering. I want to know, in this setup, what keeps you the busiest? Where do your main focus and energy go into, I don’t know, one normal working hour?
Katrin (2:53 – 3:39)
That is a very good question. I would say my primary focus today is to handle one very large account. That is my main priority.
In the pool of the different accounts that I have, and just helping them onboard the users on the platform, and supporting them in their kind of processes that they have to. And of course, in addition, focusing on all of my other customers as well, and just making them introduced to the new branding, and all the cyber features and functionalities that are now coming to the platform. So just helping users to get accustomed to the new platform, to the new branding, and the new process that we have on the organization.
But I would just say that basically I’m the main contact for my customers, and that is my primary focus as well. Just covering different topics while doing that.
The advantages of deep product and organizational knowledge
Irina (3:40 – 4:00)
Most CSLs come in from the outside. You’ve lived inside a company for a decade. I’m curious, what does knowing the product that deeply change about how you work with your customers?
What’s your advantage? You need to have an advantage.
Katrin (4:01 – 5:16)
Yeah, I do think I have an advantage. I’ve grown within the organization, moving from different roles into Customer Success.
I think the main advantage is that I have a full understanding of the product. I know the people across different teams, I understand their primary responsibilities, and that gives me a very good overview of how everything works.
Whenever a customer has a problem, question, or issue, I usually know who to turn to. I can get responses quickly, which allows me to respond to customers faster so they can make time-critical decisions with the information they need.
In larger organizations, there can be situations where customers wait a week or two for an answer. Of course, it depends on the organization, but having that internal knowledge helps speed things up.
Since I also have a technical background and have worked in different parts of the organization, I can often map out an issue while the customer is describing it. I can already think, “Okay, I know how this works. This is probably going to happen within this timeframe. This is probably not going to happen until next quarter.”
That gives me more context and helps me understand what the right answer is for the customer, so I can better support them in achieving their goals.
I think that definitely helps me a lot.
Measuring success in cybersecurity training programs
Irina (5:17 – 5:29)
How do you measure whether a customer is genuinely succeeding, when success means their people are better prepared for something you hope never happens?
Katrin (5:30 – 7:26)
Oh, that is a very clever question. Our product has evolved around this challenge because we offer blue team defense training. Often, people assume success means completing a large number of modules and using that number as proof of progress. But over time, we’ve realized that completing modules alone is not a true indicator of success.
Instead, we measure performance through a product feature called Live Fire Exercises. These are real-life-based scenarios where users enter a virtual environment and, within a four-hour period, are presented with live attacks that reflect threats they may face in their organization or everyday work.
They are under time pressure to defend against and mitigate those attacks. From what I’ve heard from customers, this provides a much better understanding of how people actually behave when they are under attack, especially since these situations may never occur in their real organization.
The platform measures technical skills, but it also provides an opportunity to evaluate soft skills. In cybersecurity, success isn’t only about technical expertise. You also need communication, leadership, and decision-making skills to perform effectively under pressure.
Having that combination, along with the reports generated after the exercise, gives organizations a much clearer picture of their readiness. They may believe they would perform well against a specific threat, but once they have actually been tested, they can identify where the gaps are.
Sometimes those gaps are related to leadership or initiative. Sometimes they are communication issues. Other times, they are technical weaknesses.
I think that gives organizations a much more accurate measurement of success than simply tracking completed modules. These exercises reflect how people perform in realistic scenarios, which makes them a much stronger indicator of actual readiness.
A personal social engineering incident that changed everything
Irina (7:27 – 8:03)
Speaking of that, I know that at some point you experienced a personal social engineering incident, and you mentioned it in your LinkedIn profile. That experience made cybersecurity very real for you.
I’m curious, and I think our audience will be as well: what happened?
And how do you leverage that story in your day-to-day CS work? Do you leverage it at all?
Has that experience helped you in any way when it comes to the Customer Success work that you do?
Katrin (8:03 – 8:05)
I can’t disclose too many details.
Irina (8:06 – 8:11)
Yeah, of course. Tell us only what are the things that you can share publicly.
Katrin (8:12 – 9:52)
Yeah, no worries. It happened around 15 years ago, and I’ve been in the IT field for quite some time now.
It was a situation where I became the target of a social engineering attack, and at first, I wasn’t aware of it at all. Everything seemed normal on paper, but something about the conversation felt off. I’m not even sure what the correct word for it is, but an alarm bell went off in my head.
Since I was in a position with access to very sensitive data, I was perhaps more skeptical than most people would have been, and that ended up saving me.
At the last minute, I thought, “This sounds really strange. I need to double-check it.” Thank God I did, because if I had clicked that specific link, there was a real risk that someone could have gained access to my organization and sensitive data.
It was a very close call. After that experience, I was shocked, and it definitely sparked my interest in cybersecurity and social engineering.
To answer the second part of your question, I do use that experience in my everyday work with customers. With the rise of AI, especially now that we have deepfakes and voice replication, artificial content is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from reality.
I think this topic is more relevant than ever for customers. It helps highlight that cybersecurity isn’t only about technical protections. There’s also a very important human and social element.
People are often the weakest link in the cybersecurity chain. Sharing that experience helps raise awareness and makes the conversation more relatable for customers.
So yes, I can definitely use it in my everyday work.
Using AI to improve Customer Success workflows
Irina (9:53 – 10:32)
You brought AI up, and I want to ask you how you leverage it. What are the use cases where you’re using it in your day-to-day CS operations?
I know you mentioned wanting to use it for repetitive tasks. Your goal is to free up time and spend it where you’re needed most, rather than on manual work.
Now I’m curious, how does that actually apply in real life?
Katrin (10:33 – 13:24)
Yes, AI is definitely a very popular topic these days. In my everyday work, I can share an example from a recent situation.
I was putting together a QBR report. Our platform provided some of the data, and I had additional resources that provided more data. When I presented that information to the customer, they said it was useful, but they were still missing the exact insights they needed.
Without AI, I would have had to analyze all the data manually, use spreadsheets and Excel formulas, and figure out how to present it in a way that would help the customer.
Instead, I took the raw data, put it into an AI tool, and said, “I have this data, I have this requirement, can you analyze it and produce the version the customer is asking for?” And it did.
I shared it with the customer, and they were extremely happy with the result. It took me about an hour to put everything together, and it delivered much more value to the customer. If I had done the same analysis manually, it could easily have taken a week or even two.
So the amount of time saved was significant.
Another example is customer feedback. During customer calls, we gather feedback about the platform and discuss features they would like to have. I often understand exactly what they are describing, but when I need to communicate that to the engineering or product team, there can still be gaps.
We are a multicultural organization, and English is not my first language, so sometimes communication can become less precise than I would like.
Recently, we participated in an AI workshop where we were introduced to tools that can generate prototypes very easily. You can provide a prompt, upload an image of the platform, and tell it things like, “Please add a button here,” or “Please add this functionality to this page.”
From that, I can create a visual representation of what the customer is asking for and show it directly to the product team.
There’s a saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, and I think that applies here. It removes a lot of confusion and reduces communication gaps.
That’s another way AI helps me save time. And all the time I save can then be invested in customer strategy, customer relationships, and helping customers achieve their goals.
Those are two practical examples from my day-to-day work.
Lessons from teaching, systems analysis, and lifelong learning
Irina (13:25 – 14:48)
Those are great examples.
I want to ask you about your background because I know it’s quite diverse. There’s the NGO work, and I know you were also a teacher in a previous chapter of your life.
How have those experiences shaped who you are today? More specifically, do they make you a better CSM?
And in this era of AI, where the CS role is evolving, what are the skills that will remain essential regardless of how technology changes? What does it take to be a good CSM, or even a great CSM?
I know that’s a lot of questions in one, but essentially I’m asking two things: What from your past experiences helped you become the professional you are today? And what skills do you believe will remain important, no matter how AI and technology evolve?
Katrin (14:48 – 17:36)
That is a very good question. I love that question.
My background has a lot of different roles, even within the organization. I think having this variety is something that I’ve really enjoyed throughout my career. And I would definitely take some wisdom from all of the roles that I’ve been in.
From the lecturer and systems analyst roles, I would take the ability to understand what lies underneath the requests that my customers might have.
I’m going to connect that to the AI part as well. Some people say AI gives results that are not usable or too simple. Others say, “Oh my God, it’s the best tool ever.” For me, it depends on how you use it.
One important part of that is how you write your prompts. The question already determines the answer you’re going to receive.
I think my background as a systems analyst, where you always need to think outside the box and understand customers with very limited information, has given me the creativity to think, “Okay, my customer is expressing this, but what do they actually mean?”
Having that open mind and creativity helps a lot.
And from the lecturer role, what I gained from the academic world was structure. It may seem conflicting. How can you be open-minded and at the same time have structure?
But I think when you combine those two strengths, you get something really valuable. Using structure to guide your creative ideas, even when writing AI prompts, can give you many interesting and innovative approaches that you might not have discovered otherwise, simply because you didn’t know how to ask the right questions.
So when you ask what my recommendation would be moving forward, and how to have that awesome CSM experience, I think people should never stop learning. You need to stay curious about life and about the role you’re in.
AI is a powerful tool, but it will not replace human creativity, inspiration, and curiosity.
As long as people are interested in working with other people, there will always be more to learn. You can never know too much about a person. It’s endless.
So having creativity and the willingness to learn will be a huge advantage moving forward as technology automates more of the mundane tasks.
I think those are the things I gained from my previous roles that I can apply today, and they will continue to help me in the future as well.
Irina (17:37 – 18:09)
Katrin, this was a genuinely different conversation. And I loved how your path into CS came from so many directions and somehow each one left something behind that you are still using in your day-to-day current role. Thanks so much for joining me.
Thank you so much for having me. And to everyone listening, thanks for tuning in. Until next time, stay curious, keep learning and mastering customer success.
Thank you. Bye.
