Curriculum vitae English: / ˈviːtaɪ, -ˈwiːtaɪ, -ˈvaɪtiː/,[1][2][3][4] Latin for "course of life", often shortened to cv

Discovery. Professional skills

Building Next-Level Discovery Skills That Drive Retention and Growth

As a Customer Success professional, it’s your job to master the art and science of discovery to create meaningful customer experiences. Your discovery skills can mean the difference between significant growth and significant churn. 
In this article, we share our effective discovery framework to help you take your discovery skills to the next level. We covered this in our recent online workshop Next-Level Skills That Drive Retention & Growth featuring our Director of Customer Success Siobhan Alexander, and have included the key topics below, including:

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  Importance of discovery
  
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  Active listening strategies
  
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  An effective discovery framework
  
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  Leveraging the 5 Whys
  

Why is discovery important to CS?
Discovery involves examining things from different perspectives and uncovering something new along the way.
This concept is important to CS because it allows us to dig deeper into the customer's experience — drawing out ideas, challenges, and opportunities that we can’t otherwise see at surface-level.
Good discovery also allows us to:

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  identify potential risks
  
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  avoid misalignments, missed opportunities, and churn
  
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  come up with creative solutions to challenges
  
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  build relationships with our customers
  
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  advocate for opportunities
  
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  build trust
  

What’s great about discovery is that it doesn’t just benefit the customer — it also opens channels for personal learning and growth for CS teams. Sure, it might involve asking difficult questions or navigating tricky conversations, but at the end of the day, a strong set of discovery skills can help you gain confidence in your ability as a CS professional.
So, how do you do discovery the right way?
It All Starts With Active Listening

If you’ve been in CS for a while, you’ve probably heard the phrase “active listening” a bunch of times. The concept behind this term is deceptively simple: listen first, then speak. But there’s more to it than meets the eye.
Active listening is the core of our discovery framework, and we can break it down into the following parts:
1. Being observant
Being alert and mentally present for the conversation allows you to focus on what the customer is saying — or, in most cases, what they’re not saying. By closely observing your customer, you can take note of verbal and non-verbal cues, as well as the client’s overall mood and behavior.
2. Open-ended dialogue
Asking open-ended questions helps the client expound on certain points and ideas. It lets you uncover important information like their values, goals, pain points, challenges, and preferences.
When done right, creating open-ended dialogue can also be a great opportunity for constructive feedback.
3. Curiosity
Coming from a place of genuine curiosity creates a lot of opportunities during discovery. In many cases, curiosity can help you discover surprising details about your customer.
Be empathetic. Try to see things from their point of view and ask questions rooted in genuine interest.
4. Breaking it down
This aspect of active listening involves breaking big concepts into smaller pieces so you can understand them better. This works well when trying to solve problems or getting to the bottom of pain points and hesitations.
The trick to breaking it down is in asking specific questions and encouraging the customer to cite concrete examples.
5. Watching subtle cues
Actions speak louder than words. As mentioned earlier, communication is more than what a person is saying — feelings and ideas can also be conveyed through word choice, tone of voice, and body language. Active listening involves watching out for these subtle cues.
6. Checking in and rephrasing
This element of active listening helps you align with the client. By checking in and rephrasing what they’re saying, you’re establishing that you understand their concerns. This tells your customer that you’re on the same page and are eager to come up with creative solutions together.
Applying Active Listening Through Catalyst’s Discovery Framework
Now that we’ve established what active listening is, we’re going to apply that to our discovery framework. This framework serves as our guide in navigating discovery conversations.
Our discovery framework is made up of four major pillars:
1. Who are you speaking to?
We can’t stress this enough: you won’t be able to ask relevant discovery questions if you don’t know who you’re speaking to in the first place. To truly connect with your customer and have a meaningful discovery conversation, it’s vital that you determine your customer personas first.
For example, here at Catalyst, we’ve got three personas:

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  Executives and VPs of Customer Success
  
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  CS Managers and Directors
  
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  CSMs
  

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