My name is Lane Greer. I am the antecedent Customer Success practitioner and practice strategy ideator at FullStory. Though unconventional, my background has perfectly suited me to be highly attuned to the needs of large segments of customers to design, direct, and evolve a comprehensive Customer Experience program to address the growing and changing needs of customers in a variety of industries and focuses.
The purpose of this page is to provide you with my career story in an informal context. If you prefer bullets, the next page is a list of my Employment history. Also, if you'd like to simply download my resume, find that link above as well.
I am an innovative thinker. A strategist. A puzzle solver. I only take risks when the potential payoff justifies those risks. I analyze everything, always seeking to optimize the efficiency of my given workflows and responsibilities. According to Gallup, my top 5 strengths are Analytical, Learner, Strategic, Achiever, and Futuristic, and I believe the strengths ring true:
Analyze - I approach everything in my life with constructive criticism. I seek to challenge every person I meet to think more outside the box and look at every problem from as many different perspectives as possible. Since assuming my position at Accenture, I have reworked and redesigned the entire Customer Success Offering, standardized on this practice globally, and now we have one of the most successful Customer Success practices in the world with close to 400,000 seats under Customer Success management Globally. Also, our Customer Success program has a 96% retention rate year over year.
Learner - I love to learn and am a strong believer that everything I do should be done to the best of my ability. If there is a knowledge gap, nothing stands in the way of my own success besides my own willingness to close that gap. About a year ago I perceived a lack of a cyber security focus withing Customer Success and within our entire team. Therefore, I studied for several months and am now the principle cyber security specialist within our business unit performing on site Executive Google for Work Security workshops around the country. I have delivered 16 from January 2016 - August 2016.
Strategic - While I do enjoy the tactical aspect of my job, high level strategy is where I'm passionate. Following instructions isn't hard for me, but it becomes easier if I understand the big picture. Where I really succeed is when placed in a position dependent on understanding the high level and crafting practices and strategies that flow toward large organizational success. We all know Google for Work migrations are becoming scarcer and scarcer. I perceived this 2 years ago and began crafting our Customer Success practice to have broader appeal at the executive level from an adoption perspective than a narrow appeal at the IT level from a support perspective. As a result, my program is the only program we have that hasn't seen any decline in retention or recurring revenue so to slowed on-boarding of new customers. Actually the opposite has occurred. We are adding new Customer Success customers faster than we are adding new Google for Work logos.
Achiever - In order for me to be the most successful I need clear goals. "Providing a clear, effective Customer Success Experience" is not a clear goal. "Ensuring each Google for Work Customer Success Customer has at least a p=quarantine pct=100 DMARC policy by the close of 2016" is a clear goal. I create goals and compete against myself to achieve them. My goals are always set far above my superior's expectations of me and that is the way it should be.
Futuristic - All companies seek to future-proof themselves with regards to technology, but I think future-proofing is less about striving to accomplish something than it is a state of mind. I DO NOT accept the status quo as static. There is no process that is being done one way today that I can't imagine a more efficient way to accomplish the same thing. Just because it's out of reach today, doesn't mean the puzzle pieces that need to be in place in order take the right steps in the right direction can't be placed today. This is probably the reason I've spent so much of my professional career working with Google products. This is exactly how Google operates. They create solutions for tomorrow's problems. 2048-bit encrypted DKIM keys, forced TLS encryption for all mail, end-point focused security practices as opposed to VPN/Proxy/Firewall based, and even Google's investment in Machine Learning. These are all technologies that are ahead of their time, which is exactly where I think as well. If you're not the first to market then you're late.
I am an accomplished Customer Experience practitioner passionate about helping large enterprises realize their business goals in measurable ways. I am a firm believer that only countable, indisputable evidence of return is enough to truly convince a customer you cannot be replaced. My chief reward is introducing a culture of true innovation and collaboration to companies who didn't realize there was a better way to do what they were doing, and then instilling a culture of data oriented performance indicators specifically tailored to that company in that industry at that stage of maturity. Professionally, I provide a voice of direction and systematic thought rooted in logic an efficiency enabling myself, my team members and my colleagues to contribute to our customers' ability to out perform and out maneuver their competition.
My current career objective as the founding practitioner of Customer Success at FullStory is to ideat, design, execute, and adapt a comprehensive Customer Experience consistent in it's abstract missional framework but bespoke to each customers' needs. I had a VP of Customer Success once say to me "We charge for services. We execute services. We charge again. Customer Success isn't rocket science." Well... one part of that is true. Only Rocket Science is actually rocket science. There are few things I abhor as vehemently as this myopic perspective to Customer Experience and Success, because to approach Customer Experience flippantly is to disregard one's customers.
Past experience includes Enterprise Account Management, Technical and Consultative Solution Sales, and Program Management. Strengths include advanced interpersonal communications, project organization, problem solving, and synthesizing highly technical and complex concepts into usable, workable data.
Prior to FullStory, I directed the Customer Success program within Accenture's Cloud First Applications team focused on the Google Cloud practice. While at Accenture I learned, as in Agile software, the only Customer Success practice that is done evolving is one that is deprecated. As at FullStory, Accenture's Google Practice Success program went through heavy iteration and with each version, our Customers' elation and joy became more the center of our focus.
Before Accenture, my employment was most recently with Tempus Nova, a Google Enterprise Premier Partner and IT consulting firm in Denver, CO. Tempus Nova has been responsible for some of Google's largest Enterprise deployments and migrations including but not limited to Kohl's Retail Stores, State of Colorado State Government, the General Services Administration, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
While at Tempus Nova I held the position of Senior Account Manager. I engaged enterprise clients between 750 and 3000 users to guide them through their evaluation of Google Apps. This process involves C-Level decision makers as well as Directors and Senior Vice Presidents. The majority of these companies were supporting aging legacy messaging and collaboration infrastructures such as MS Exchange 2003-2007, Sharepoint, Groupwise, & Lotus Notes. Though I enjoyed my time at Tempus Nove, technically the role was un-interesting to me, strategically I didn't feel sales was where my talents were needed. Adoption and Customer Success is my passion and where I felt I could offer the most value.
It was during my time at Tempus Nova that I began to explore my long standing fascination with leveraging cutting edge technology at an enterprise level. I continued to exercise my technical aptitude and help with domain configurations and administration. This experience is what let me to take and pass the Google Apps Deployment Certification.
Prior to pursuing hosted solutions, I was the Colorado Field Sales Consultant for Google's SMB Commerce division. This position was contract based and laid the groundwork for what is now Google+ Local which integrates Google+, Google Maps, and local businesses. My responsibility was to communicate the vision of Google to small and medium sized businesses and launch such products as Google Offers, Punch'd (now Google Loyalty Rewards) & Google+ for Business. I maintained and average of 106% of quota while serving in this role. The contract expired in it's 11th month with renewal dependent on relocation to either San Francisco or New York. I declined due to my wife beginning her final year of graduate school in Denver.
Before working for Google, I helped launch a start up venture for ReachLocal which leveraged the popularity of the discount incentivized mass marketing campaign, otherwise known as "daily deals", for reputable online publishers such as Forbes, Facebook, theknot.com, and Yelp. I was the only field sales rep in the state for this division of ReachLocal and performed well above 120% of quota during this time. Fourty-five days after the concept was launched, the entire division was dismantled and all associated personnel were laid off.
Before making this transition to web services, I spent several years, after graduation, working in boutique wine distribution as a Specialty Sales Consultant for Wine Connections (no longer in business), Southern Wine & Spirits, and Pioneer Wine Co. both in Texas and Colorado.
I graduated from Dallas Baptist University (GPA 3.46) in 2007 with a degree in Business Administration with special emphasis on marketing and consumer behavior and a minor in Music Business.
I married my college sweetheart, Hannah Elise Greer, on September 5, 2010 and we currently reside in Atlanta, GA.