In this episode of Mastering CS: Candid Leader Insights, Irina Cismas sits down with Anastasia Veriga, Chief Customer Officer at Videowise, a video commerce platform for e-commerce brands. Anastasia has been in customer success for close to a decade, starting as a call center agent and climbing through CSM, Head of CS, and now CCO, all within a compressed timeline that included a promotion to her current role less than a month before this conversation.
She shares what the jump from individual contributor to CS leader actually feels like, how she spent her first month as CCO fixing bottlenecks and optimizing onboarding flows, what KPIs she watches to know the team is performing, how she uses Claude to build churn analysis dashboards and scan customer Slack channels, and why curiosity has been the one habit that has carried her through every role.
What You’ll Learn
- What Videowise does and what the CCO role actually looks like day to day
- What changed at each stage of Anastasia’s journey from senior CSM to Head of CS to Chief Customer Officer
- What advice she would give to first-time CS managers making the switch from individual contributor
- What she focused on in her first month as CCO and what comes next
- What KPIs she watches week to week to know the team and the business are healthy
- What good onboarding looks like in a video commerce context and how it gets measured
- How she uses AI and automation in practice, including a churn dashboard built with Claude
- Why curiosity is the one habit that has shaped everything in her career
Key Insights & Takeaways
The shift from CSM to leader is about perspective, not workload. The biggest change is learning to ask why something happened rather than just solving it, and building systems so it doesn’t happen again.
Step back before you react. As a leader, not everything is urgent. Learning to pause, assess, and delegate is one of the hardest and most important transitions.
The human side of leadership takes more than you expect. Managing a team means being there for people beyond the work, and that takes real time and emotional investment.
Curiosity is a career strategy. Every role Anastasia has held, she asked more questions than required, looked for the why behind every issue, and used that curiosity to grow. People came to rely on her for answers because she always went looking for them.
Good onboarding proves value, not just process. At Videowise, onboarding ends when the customer has real data showing conversion improvement or revenue impact. A/B tests make that measurable.
AI is a knowledge base, not a replacement. Claude helps analyze churn data across years of history, scan Slack channels for customer activity signals, and surface industry best practices. But Anastasia is careful not to lose the human skills in the process.
NRR is the north star metric. Net revenue retention tells you whether customers are genuinely happy, because happy customers renew and expand.
Podcast Transcript
Intro
Irina (0:06 – 0:25)
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 Anastasia Veriga, Chief Customer Officer at Videowise, a video platform for e-commerce brands. Anastasia, I’m really happy to have you here!
Anastasia (0:25 – 0:35)
Thank you so much for inviting me, Irina. It’s a pleasure.
You know how much I love all the activities that you guys have, so always a pleasure.
Irina (0:36 – 0:52)
Let’s start with a bit of context for those of us who do not know about Videowise. So paint us a big picture. What does your role look like day to day and what kind of brands are you working with?
Anastasia (0:54 – 3:23)
VideoWise, as you mentioned, is an all-in-one video commerce platform. We basically offer everything when it comes to visual representation on the website. It can be any type of video and we can place it anywhere on a website. So if you want to have a strong, consistent video culture, VideoWise is the go-to.
The cool thing about VideoWise is that we do not affect page speed. Page speed nowadays is a huge topic, right? We all want everything to load fast. This is one of the things that VideoWise is very good at. We’ve had multiple people test the dashboard, the platform, the widgets, compare the results, and we have clear results that VideoWise is not impacting page speed in any way, shape or form. And on top of that, VideoWise offers a large level of customization for the widget, which is important for our brands.
When it comes to the brands we work with, we work with all sorts of brands from all industries, D2C type brands mostly, and we cover all types of industries. Some cool brands that I personally managed in the past include Skullcandy, Sculpted by Amy, Dalstrong, Andar, and Wonderskin. If you’ve heard of Wonderskin, it’s the purple lip stain brand. You probably saw it at some point, it was all over social media.
My role sits at the intersection between revenue and relationship. It’s a mix of managing strategic accounts closely, while also leading the CS team when it comes to day-to-day operations. And obviously there’s the cross-functional cooperation with multiple teams, because CS sits in the middle between sales and product. It’s important to communicate the feedback we get from customers to improve the product. Long story short, my role is strategic with big accounts, managing the team, and making sure we cooperate across departments.
Irina (3:25 – 3:29)
And in that setup, what do you spend most of your time on?
Anastasia (3:30 – 5:01)
Most of the time is, to be honest, expansion and retention. We have onboarding roles and dedicated support, but the biggest part is expansion and retention. Because customers want real data, real results, measurable results. And it’s a matter of being there for them, showcasing the product value proposition, explaining how things work and why it’s important to do it a certain way.
Social media, conversion funnels, all of that. Most of the time is spent talking to the customer and making sure their business is successful and they have results. And this is literally a matter of improving the flows. If it’s an onboarding type of flow, talking to them, understanding what their priorities are, and not just long-term priorities. What are you working on in the next six months? Is it a summer campaign? You need to be strategic and try to make the user flow for your customers, shoppers in this case, engaging.
So being there for the customer, understanding their needs, continuously expanding product usage, and retaining them by proving the product value through results, A/B tests, metrics, ROI, and so on.
From Senior CSM to Head of CS to Chief Customer Officer: What Actually Changed
Irina (5:02 – 5:35)
Yes, it is. To the book. You joined the company almost three years ago in 2023, and you joined as a senior CSM.
Then you moved into the head of CS and now you are Chief Customer Officer for over one month, if I’m not mistaken. What changed along this journey?
From CSM, head of CS, now Chief Customer Officer.
Anastasia (5:37 – 8:32)
Responsibility and priorities, right? You literally need to switch from being the person who solves the problem or answers a ticket or an email, to the person who understands why that question was there in the first place and why it happened. Do I need to optimize the process? Do I need to make it clearer? Do I need to create a help center article?
It’s not about the workload. When I was a senior CSM, I maybe had a bit more workload because I was managing a bigger portfolio. As my role changed into a more strategic one, I started managing bigger customers. That’s what changes. You need to change your perspective and how you see things and start being a bit more strategic in terms of helping the team and the company. It doesn’t matter what form that takes.
It can be a short answer, an SOP, or a quick meeting. Hey guys, I realize you don’t know this, let’s jump on a quick call and I’ll explain everything.
So what’s changed is seeing the bigger picture, anticipating the next step, and as a leader, sometimes stepping back and not reacting to things, which I sometimes do. It’s like everything seems a bit urgent. In this current role, which is brand new, what changed for me is I need to step back and say, okay, I can do this, but I don’t need to do it myself. What is the issue? Please do this. What can I address and what can I delegate?
So that is one part: not workload, but the bigger picture and trying to be upfront and understand what is going to happen.
The other thing that I anticipated to a certain degree but didn’t know would be this hard is the human factor and the emotions. I’m managing a team of six people, best team ever, love them a hundred percent. But it does take a lot of time. I am your typical millennial manager: you take a day off, you’re sick, I hope you’re feeling okay. What changed is I started better relating to certain emotional situations and being there for the team, supporting them not just work-wise. Because from my point of view, this is the role of a true leader: being there for the team, not just replying to an email, but also offering support. Life is life, people have things going on.
So it’s a mix between the two. From the person who answers the question to building the system so that question doesn’t exist in the first place. And obviously the emotional part as well.
Advice for First-Time CS Managers Making the Switch
Irina (8:33 – 9:01)
I’m hearing that a lot of first-time CS managers struggle with switching from individual contributor to manager. If you were to give advice to someone making that transition, what would you tell them? What worked for you to settle into the new role more easily?
Anastasia (9:03 – 10:23)
One big thing that helped me is being curious and asking questions. I didn’t know all the metrics from the start, all the NRRs and ARRs and whatnot. So one thing is: be curious, go ask. There is so much stuff on the internet. Dig deeper, understand what it is. If you don’t know how to handle something, read an article, read a book. Don’t stop.
If you’re curious and you want to grow, follow that curiosity. Don’t just say, oh, it’s not my job, I won’t do this. Yes, I work in a startup and I do a bit of product, a bit of sales, a bit of everything. But I see this as an upside because it helps me learn things I didn’t know for free, because I have experts in the company sharing knowledge with me. And obviously AI as well. In a couple of clicks, you can get the information you need in a short summary, and it’s up to you how deep you want to dig into that particular area. AI is also a big tool for learning.
The First Month as CCO: Priorities and What Comes Next
Irina (10:24 – 10:45)
We’ll also talk a bit later about the AI part. Now I’m curious in this new role that you just stepped in and you are almost in the first month. What was the priority for the first month?
What was your objective? What’s your plan moving forward? From this new role.
Anastasia (10:45 – 11:02)
So the first thing is that the first projects that I worked on was mostly optimizing existing processes, especially customer facing or boarding processes that we had for a while. And I don’t bullet proof them, right? So that is one.
Irina (11:02 – 11:13)
And the other thing, staying on that, you’ve been in the seat for one month, yeah? What was the number one priority for the first month? What comes next?
Anastasia (11:13 – 12:32)
The number one priority was optimizing the existing flows to make it easier for customers to get onboarded. Number two was optimizing some internal flows because there was some miscommunication between the product team and the sales team. And number three was understanding exactly what the bottleneck was.
Working in a startup, we had a couple of bottlenecks in some internal processes. So one of my main priorities was understanding where the bottleneck was and where communication was stopping, and trying to solve that. I did it. I think I did a good job. Things are smoother now. We also have some automations in place, which is also part of my day-to-day now.
AI helps you analyze big chunks of data, understand trends, and see what is working and what is not. As Head of CS, I was still managing the portfolio, so we worked on small internal updates, upgrades, and flows to work better. But now as Chief Customer Officer, I am focusing on the big picture, seeing the big trends, analyzing the data, and seeing where something is not working.
The KPIs That Tell You the Team Is Performing
Irina (12:34 – 12:43)
How do you measure whether the team is performing well? What are the KPIs that you watch week to week and tell you that things are working?
Anastasia (12:45 – 14:24)
The main KPI is revenue, specifically net revenue retention. That is an important metric in CS because it literally shows that customers are happy with you. They are renewing, there is a continuous renewal flow, they are upgrading because they love the product and need new features.
When it comes to KPIs at the company level, it’s revenue and social proof. We care a lot about social proof and VideoWise is the best rated platform across Shopify, G2, Trustpilot, and Gartner. We have this cool VideoWise Moves series that our CEO does, where we interview people and they share their experience with VideoWise. So at the company level, it’s revenue and social proof, for brands, not shoppers.
When it comes to KPIs for the team, there are multiple metrics we check and most of them are related to the customer health score. Do they use the product? Did they leave a review? That is also a metric we monitor because social proof matters and it shows that customers are happy with the product. And last but not least, NPS, the net promoter score, which we send out to understand the health of the customer relationship. These are the main metrics. Obviously there are more detailed metrics that I cannot necessarily share.
What Good Onboarding Actually Looks Like
Irina (14:25 – 14:52)
Yeah, basically this answers my question. You mentioned earlier about tweaking the processes at a high level, focusing on improving what you have and fixing the bottlenecks. And you mentioned onboarding as one of the things that you started with. I’m curious, what does good onboarding actually look like for you? What are you aiming for and how do you know when you’ve got there?
Anastasia (14:54 – 17:42)
How do I measure a good onboarding? I consider a good onboarding to be one where, at the end of it, the customer understands what you do and you can prove the results. One thing that VideoWise introduced about a year ago that helped us a lot is A/B tests.
To have a good onboarding, there should be a CS manager who guides you in terms of next steps. Hey, this is what you need to do, once that is completed here’s the next step, and so on. So you feel guided at all times. You are not left alone with a dashboard not knowing how to use it or what to do with it.
A good onboarding is being there for the customer and explaining the product value proposition. Here at VideoWise, we also help with the widget implementation and the initial setup, specifically to help them go live faster. Another metric that we monitor is time to go live. It’s important to activate the customer as soon as possible because you don’t want to lose momentum. Work on it and build on it.
Going back to good onboarding, from my point of view, a good onboarding is when a customer sees the real value. This is how we do it: CS gets involved a bit earlier in the sales process. We have the context from sales on what was discussed, what are the pain points, what are the priorities, what are they focusing on. And from there, short guides that say, hey, this is what to expect next, this is what I’m going to do, please do that step by step.
What I noticed is that this step-by-step guidance helps speed up the process because when you give someone a document with 10 items to do, it puts all the pressure and effort on them and there may be delays. A good onboarding is a guided onboarding with clear data on what is going to happen next, depending on how long the implementation takes, a week or a month. And at the end of the onboarding, the customer should have clear data and understand the clear conversion impact or revenue results.
How we do that: we assign a CS manager early in the sales process, we have documents with details on what is going to happen next, we do A/B tests, and we have metrics that the customer can access anytime in their dashboard to see their data, revenue, everything related to their account.
How Anastasia Uses AI and Automation in Practice
Irina (17:44 – 18:04)
Let’s share some concrete AI use cases because you mentioned that you do leverage it. And you mentioned that you also implemented some automation. So let’s give our CS audience some concrete examples that they can learn from your experience.
How do you leverage it in your day-to-day, the AI part? And what type of automations did you build?
Anastasia (18:05 – 20:49)
I do use AI a lot in all operations and tasks. We offer and use AI in our dashboard as well. We have different AI tools to tag products, generate videos, and so on. There is a big AI component within our dashboard itself as part of the product. And then there is the AI that I use in my day-to-day operations.
There are multiple use cases. Number one is transcribing and all the details that come with that. Number two is everything when it comes to reporting. We have big data, we have Excel, we have Drive everywhere, but AI helps you analyze the data. For example, the latest dashboard I worked on was a churn analysis dashboard. We know what the charts and metrics are, and with Claude we managed to build a very detailed dashboard with trends and historical data, different types of graphs, and patterns that as a human would have taken me a while to notice because it’s data from years and years ago. That’s one use case, reporting.
Another thing I’m currently working on with AI is analyzing customers’ Slack channels and getting a short summary of what happened and what the current status is. We create Slack channels for our customers to make sure we are in touch with them and they can reach out with just one message. So I use AI to scan certain channels, understand the activity level, and flag if we should check in.
And I encourage the team to use it as well. Two days ago I had a chat with someone from my team who was working on an implementation and asked what type of videos they should use. I said, well, you can use this and that, but you can also ask Claude, because Claude will tell you what the industry best practices are, what the trends are, what type of videos work best for glasses or pens and so on.
Irina (20:49 – 21:00)
It’s like a huge knowledge base that you have there available, and it would be a pity not to use it and access it every time you need it.
Anastasia (21:01 – 22:04)
While I do use AI a lot in my day-to-day work, for reports, for improving processes, for data and recommendations, industry best practices and so on, I do think that with heavy use of AI, we are losing a bit of our touch when it comes to certain creativity. I do the same thing. When I need to write something, it’s easier for me to say, hey, I want to say this and that, please write a polite email. I can type a million typos to Claude and he will understand what I need to say.
But sometimes I see this as a downside. I think we should definitely use AI to streamline processes, analyze data, and see how things are working. But we still need to sometimes write our own emails, just to not forget how to write a proper one.
Irina (22:05 – 22:32)
If Claude is down or ChatGPT is not working, I think I for sure will have a problem in writing an email because I’m basically addicted to all the emails. Everything is basically revised and improved to sound a bit better than how I would basically put it.
Anastasia (22:34 – 22:35)
Yes, exactly.
The Habit That Has Carried Anastasia Through Every Role
Irina (22:36 – 23:06)
Anastasia, you’ve been in customer success for close to a decade now. You started as a customer service rep at 2checkout, you climbed through sales and CSM roles, and now you are basically running the whole customer organization at VideoWise.
Is there a habit or a way of thinking that still shows up on how you run CS today?
Anastasia (23:09 – 26:11)
Close to a decade. You don’t realize it until someone says it out loud. And if there is a habit of thinking, the habit is exactly what I mentioned earlier. Why did this happen? Let me go look for the solution and fix it. This is the habit. This is what helped me the most.
I’ve been through multiple roles. My first job was a call center agent. Hey, you’ve reached payment support, how can I help you? And I was always curious. If someone asked something, I would reply to the question, but then I’d think, oh, but why did they ask? How does it work? Is this okay? Maybe I should have checked this or said that. And I would go look for additional information, additional answers.
This proactivity was always there. But I’m not doing it for people to notice that I am proactive. I’m doing it because I’m curious and I want to know things. You don’t treat a customer interaction as something that comes and goes. You treat it as a starting point to understand and build the relationship with them.
Being curious, talking, and asking questions is what helped me get to this role. I never said I will never do that. I was always curious how things work. Can I do it? How can I do it? Is this good for me? Can I learn? If yes, I went ahead and looked for the answer.
This proactivity around understanding customer experience and asking questions, not backing down, is always appreciated in this industry. Because customer experience, generally speaking, is about talking to people, internal and external, and understanding where the gap is. Okay, I need to go and connect this to that to make the process flawless.
So if there is one habit of thinking, it’s always be curious and ask questions, internal and external, customers, shoppers, bosses, managers, and so on. Because that way you will get the information you need, you will grow, and you will inevitably reach a position where people come to you for answers because you were curious and you asked. People tend to connect and rely on people who are there to answer their questions and give them expertise. If you give them expertise, they see the value and will come to you for advice.
So the habit is being curious, asking questions, and never backing down.
Irina (26:12 – 26:18)
Anastasia, this was a really interesting conversation. Thank you so much for joining me.
Anastasia (26:19 – 26:22)
Thank you too, Irina. It was lovely talking to you. Always a pleasure.
Irina (26:23 – 26:30)
To everyone listening, thanks for tuning in. Until next time, stay curious, keep learning, and mastering customer success.
