In this episode of Mastering CS: Candid Leader Insights, Irina Cismas sits down with Cameron Hogg, Customer Success Manager at Onetrace, a construction tech platform that helps subcontractors gain visibility, maintain compliance, and stay in control across live projects.
Cameron shares what surprised him most when he moved from licensing tech into construction tech, and why customer success looks very different when users are working on site, racing against deadlines, protecting margins, and often relying on quick phone calls rather than scheduled desk-based workflows.
He explains how Onetrace approaches adoption in an industry where many users do not see themselves as “software people,” why simplicity matters more than feature overload, and how CS teams must tie usage directly to outcomes like compliance, reporting speed, project visibility, and faster cash flow.
The conversation also explores the metrics that matter in construction SaaS, what healthy adoption looks like across very different customer segments, why retention is the clearest signal of success, and why person-to-person relationships still matter even as AI becomes a bigger part of the CS conversation.
What You’ll Learn
- What changes when you move from traditional SaaS into construction tech customer success
- What good adoption looks like for both small subcontractors and larger enterprise-style construction teams
- Why adoption in construction is tied directly to compliance, cash flow, reporting, and project visibility
- How to drive stickiness with users who do not consider themselves highly technical
- Why NRR and revenue retention are the clearest success metrics in this environment
- What a “health score” looks like when project risk is driven by low visibility, not just low login activity
- Why QBRs without structure fail to create value
Key Insights & Takeaways
Construction CS moves at operational speed. Users manage live job sites where delays affect budgets and timelines. Customer success interactions focus on fast responses and immediate outcomes.
Adoption must match how field teams work. Many users operate directly on site. Simple workflows and clear instructions drive faster adoption than complex feature explanations.
Fast onboarding unlocks value early. Customers typically go live in 14–30 days, which enables compliance tracking, project visibility, and faster invoicing.
Retention reveals true product value. At Onetrace, NRR and revenue retention remain the clearest indicators of customer success across different project types.
Visibility acts as the health score. When project leaders lack visibility into work progress and site activity, risks increase quickly. Software adoption solves that gap.
Relationships still power customer success. AI supports workflows, but construction remains a relationship-driven industry where direct communication builds trust and long-term retention.
Podcast transcript
Intro
Irina (0:06 – 0:30)
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, Serena Chismash, and today I’m joined by Cameron Hogg, Customer Success Manager at Onetrace, a construction tech platform giving subcontractors visibility and control across their projects. Cameron, I’m really happy to have you here.
Thanks for joining.
Cameron (0:31 – 0:32)
Perfect, thank you so much for having me.
From Licensing Tech to Construction Tech: What Changed
Irina (0:33 – 0:43)
Let’s start with your path. You moved from licensing tech into construction tech. What took you by surprise when you switched industries?
Cameron (0:44 – 1:40)
I think moving into the licensing space initially was quite an easy move for me. I had done some work at Disney during a university internship, so it felt like a natural path.
Then, when I moved into construction, one of the biggest differences was the speed at which everything moves. In construction, time is money, and subcontractors and anyone using the software are very focused on timelines and budgets. So aligning with those requirements is really important.
Another big difference is the communication style. You interact with a mix of users, many of whom are out on site, so communication shifts from more structured meetings to a lot of ad hoc conversations and phone calls. And naturally, you come across a wide range of personalities as well.
Customer Success in Construction tech
Irina (1:43 – 2:00)
Onetrace works with subcontractors running live construction projects. How is customer success different when your users are on site, juggling deadlines and margins and not necessarily sitting behind the desk all day?
Cameron (2:00 – 3:05)
We work with a wide range of users and customers, and “subcontractors” is a very broad term.
On one end, you have five-person teams where everyone is out on site. They need something quick and easy to understand, so communication has to be fast and straightforward.
On the other end, there are larger organizations that subcontract work but still have office teams in place. Those teams interact constantly with people on the ground, so response time is still paramount. We also have a strong product support team to handle technical issues and make sure the software itself is simple to use.
Clear and effective messaging is really important. One of the biggest things in customer success is delivering constant value. Our customers’ time is extremely limited, so every interaction needs to have an impact—whether that means resolving an issue, solving a problem, or helping free up some of their time.
What Product Adoption Looks Like in Construction SaaS
Irina (3:07 – 3:20)
We’ll speak about that value a bit later, but I want to talk about product adoption. And I’m curious, in your world, what does good adoption actually look like?
Cameron (3:20 – 4:31)
Yeah. So I think, again, our software is quite broad in terms of everything that you can do. So I think for some of our larger, more enterprise organizations, it’s full adoption across all of different potential product suites.
So we’ve got different elements from the traceability side and also managing their workforce. For some of the smaller accounts, it is a little bit different. That is just about, are they up and running?
Are they on the system every day and measuring that? So I think our value and adoption really comes from general, basic usage of the functionality and then building out effective forms to record work. And we can see customers up and running on Onetrace, typically within two weeks to 30 days.
Sometimes, quite often, we have people who sign up on a Friday who are looking to start and record something next week on a Monday. So really ensuring that there’s a really streamlined process to get them up and running is paramount to what we do. And then for some of these larger organizations with more KPIs that they’re looking to deliver, it’s more insights and their own reporting.
That does then take some time and integrations and understanding the real outputs that they’re looking for as well.
Why Fast Onboarding Matters: Compliance, Visibility, and Cash Flow
Irina (4:32 – 4:56)
And how do you connect day-to-day usage of the platform with actual business outcomes to your customers? You mentioned that it’s important to be up and running as quickly as possible. In some cases, this happens under one month.
But what else? Why is it important for them to be up and running first in your case? What happens if you don’t?
Cameron (4:57 – 6:14)
Absolutely. Onetrace originally started in the passive fire recording space. After events like Grenfell, it became extremely important from a compliance perspective to ensure that any installation of passive fire protection was properly recorded and documented.
If anything were to happen, you need a full log showing what was installed and where. Ensuring that these records are accurate and traceable is critical. In the industry, this is called the “golden thread of information.” It’s essentially a legal requirement, so for customers it’s absolutely paramount.
At the same time, construction is an industry that runs on timelines. Getting customers up and running quickly means they can evidence their work faster and get paid on invoices sooner, which directly supports their cash flow.
It also provides visibility. If someone on site isn’t recording work correctly or something needs adjusting, teams can spot that quickly and make changes. When you’re running ten different project sites, having that level of visibility is extremely important.
If issues aren’t caught early, it can lead to compliance problems with accreditations, or delays in payment because the work hasn’t been properly documented.
Driving Adoption for Non-Technical Users
Irina (6:15 – 6:39)
A lot of CS advises assumes customers are tech savvy. How do you drive this adoption and create the product stickiness into organizations where users may not see themselves as software people? I assume that construction is not one of them.
Cameron (6:41 – 8:05)
Yeah, I think as well, when it comes through the sales process, that’s typically one of the most heard things is that we’re not particularly technically savvy. For them, it’s about simplicity of use as well. And I think what we really drive on is building a software.
One of our values is building a software that is the simplest to use within the construction space. We’ve had feedback from users on site that almost if you can use WhatsApp, then you can likely use Onetrace at least for recording work, which I think is a really nice feedback from them. But I think communication style is really important, particularly within CS here.
If you try and overcomplicate and go down a sort of technical explanation of some of these outcomes and how to use the software, it can really overwhelm the users. So breaking it down into bite-sized pieces and making it relatable to the actual onsite outcomes that they’re looking to. Again, working out what their onsite terminology might be, how that maybe marries up into what we have in our own system.
And also then for any driving back for them to realize the outcomes, they still understand efficiency operations and et cetera. So rather than looking at engagement stats necessarily of how long the use has been active, it’s how long an inspection has taken a user to take place, the volume that they’re able to complete in a period of time or the time savings they’ve made when it comes to their end reports as well.
Measuring Success: Retention, Revenue, and Customer Segmentation
Irina (8:06 – 8:24)
I’m curious, what does it mean a successful CS organization in your case? How do you measure success internally through usage, project completion metrics, revenue retention? What’s your North Star metric in CS?
Cameron (8:25 – 9:19)
Yeah, I think for us in particular, it is NRR and revenue retention I think is so important to us. We typically find Onetrace users, once they do start with us, they do tend to be quite sticky, which is great to have, but ensuring that we have these periods of time where people are returning. In terms of how users engage with their projects, it’s maybe not as important because each one has different outcomes.
For example, some people may be working on massive long five-year projects, so it may take them a lot longer time compared to other users who are marrying up lots of smaller projects. I think really customer segmentation is also so key within the industry to understand the type of work that they’re completing, the specific type of projects, and then that ultimately leads us to help engage our own strategies for retaining that revenue, driving consistent value as well.
Irina (9:21 – 9:33)
If construction sites had a health score, similar as in the traditional SaaS companies, what would be the indicator that the project is about to go after?
Cameron (9:33 – 10:38)
I think it really comes down to visibility—how much visibility project leads have over the work that’s happening on site.
Without construction software, many teams rely on things like photos sent through WhatsApp or even pen-and-paper methods. That means there’s no immediate visibility into what’s actually happening. It might take two or three months for that information to be fed back, reported on, and reviewed internally, which makes it much harder to catch when something is starting to go off track.
There are different ways software can help with that. For example, features like time tracking ensure operatives are on site when they’re meant to be, and the ability to QA and approve work remotely frees up time instead of requiring someone to physically be on site.
If issues aren’t picked up at the time, it often leads to revisits, which costs our customers additional money. So in many ways, a project’s health score really comes down to how much visibility leaders have over the work and the people on site at any given moment.
From Onboarding to Expansion: The Construction Customer Lifecycle
Irina (10:39 – 10:45)
What does a good customer lifecycle look like from onboarding to expansion in your case?
Cameron (10:47 – 12:29)
It’s interesting because at Onetrace we have different commercial models, so the onboarding phase can vary. In many cases, we can get customers up and running within two weeks to a month, which involves building and setting up the system for them.
From there, customers move through an implementation and training phase within our broader customer experience function. Once onboarding is complete, they transition to the success team, where the focus shifts to ongoing value realization and looking ahead to the next annual cycle.
We often see customers expand before their renewal period. In construction, different teams within the same company may use separate tools for different services, so there are opportunities to expand into other areas of the business.
By the one- to two-year mark, customers are usually quite mature in how they use the platform, and many of them continue cycling through long-term usage. Onetrace has been around for nearly seven years now, and we still have customers who joined right at the beginning and are still on the platform today.
The success function has evolved a lot over that time. We’ve refined our processes to get customers up and running faster, and now we also look for expansion opportunities—not just through new product features, but also across other parts of the customer’s business where they may need compliance tracking or workforce management.
Lessons From Churn, AI, and the Future of Customer Success
Irina (12:31 – 12:34)
What’s been the hardest lesson you’ve learned in these years so far?
Cameron (12:35 – 13:42)
I think probably the hardest lesson I think probably came, I think everyone will remember their first big churn or something. I think that’s always one of the trickiest ones, where you think everything seems to have gone, then everything, the check-ins that you’ve had, everything’s going fine, and then you come through and there’s a notice that they’re looking to churn. So I think the hardest lesson comes off the back of that first churn, but I think it’s then maybe leading into, okay, where was the missing touch points, which I think then is the lesson learned has been just ensuring that you’re continuing to deliver value at each of those touch points.
I think QBRs without structure have really become a sort of thing of the past now. It’s really important to have clear goals when you’re coming into that, an agenda, ensuring that you’re meeting points that are important to those users as well, because if you just allow it to be an open conversation of, is it all friendly, are we getting on? You can be in a really nice CS and you can get on well with your customers, but ultimately, if you’re not driving value and providing them with the insights that they’re looking for, I think that’s where you can potentially lead into some struggles.
Irina (13:44 – 14:03)
We mentioned this earlier and we draw the conclusion that construction is traditionally slow when it comes to adopting tech, but do you see that changing and does the CS role, does the CSM play a role in that shift?
Cameron (14:03 – 15:41)
Yeah, I think we’ve definitely seen a large shift from multiple customers more and more now. It’s gone from that pen and paper and very much word of mouth and passing it on to, we need everything to be there and adopted and reduce our own time and output. I think success, particularly working closely with our customers, is breaking down, as you say, that barrier to apprehensive of using technology.
These users are likely engaging with technology in multiple methods, so they’re still using communication methods with WhatsApp, everyone on their mobile phones. So keeping it as simple as that and breaking it down for those users in that aspect as well, I think has been really key. And then building out the actual engagement and bite-sized methods as well.
We’ve really invested this last year in sort of product enablement as well, so that we can provide users with video walkthroughs as well. So maybe they’re not needing to talk to a user, they’ve got immediate access to walk them through their own solutions as well. And I think potentially for these users as well, they have an idea of what they want their goals to be.
It’s on they’re looking to reduce time and maybe initially it’s, okay, I’m still getting all of the information, but my job is just to make these reports at the end. But if we can free up our users two or three days a month, potentially, that they’re doing reports, it’s there and available at the click of a button and really present that back. That’s when it also allows, I think, our users to evolve their own roles and have slightly more ambitious looks for the company as well.
Irina (15:43 – 15:53)
And if a new CSM joins Onetrace tomorrow, what’s the one mindset shift you’d want them to adopt from day one, from the very beginning?
Cameron (15:54 – 17:03)
Yeah, I think it definitely would depend on the industry that they’ve come from. I think learning to pick up the phone, I think, is one of the biggest ones. I think we’ve got very familiar nowadays with sending emails and looking maybe to meet people in person, but I think industry-wise construction is very much people skills and using it that way.
So pick up the phone, talk to your customers from there, and also don’t let it get to these end touch points or the structured ones to require you to reach out to a customer. If you notice something, whether it’s through, you’ve noticed a drop in the number of projects that they’re picking up or a potential like lower usage, then reach out and try and understand where that may be coming from. Don’t wait until the structured points that you maybe have your QBRs or you’re buying your check-ins to be waiting to engage with the customers.
Really look to just reach out and build up there. We also found from CS that particularly some of the industry people move around quite a lot as well. So ensuring that you provide a really good value with one customer also then potentially leads to new business and then further opportunities for CS down the line as well.
Irina (17:04 – 17:11)
What’s one belief about CS that you’ve changed your mind about over the past few years?
Cameron (17:13 – 18:27)
Oh, I think there’s been a couple potentially. I would say recently there’s been a really big push on AI in particular and how much potentially AI can automate CS tasks as well, which I think AI definitely has its place, but I think success in itself is still a people-to-people and building that trust. I think while AI is definitely coming through, I think it’s really important to still focus on the value that person-to-person interaction has.
And one thing I think as well that maybe hasn’t changed about CS is that everyone still defines success in such different ways. I went to a conference recently and talking to different people with similar role titles, still had such different definitions of what everyone covers. Some people it’s fully focused on the renewals and the upsells, some of it’s a little bit more technical, some of it still has features of support.
So I think still having that open mindset if you are looking at what success is for any organisation, it’s there for you to define yourself, but making sure that you have a clear structure within there I would say as to what CS you really want for your organisation as well.
Irina (18:28 – 18:38)
Cameron, thank you for the conversation. It was great hearing your perspective on customer success in a very different kind of SaaS environment.
Cameron (18:39 – 18:39)
Yeah.
Irina (18:39 – 18:47)
And to everyone listening, thanks for tuning in. Until next time, stay curious, keep learning and mastering customer success.
Cameron (18:48 – 18:48)
Thanks, Irina.
