Emma Lo

Customer Success & RevOps Leader | Podcast host of CS In Focus | Help businesses accelerate in customer-led growth

Results-driven Customer Success executive and SaaS startup founder with 13+ years of experience in tech and e-commerce. Passionate about leveraging data-driven strategies to boost customer satisfaction, retention, and revenue growth.

💼 Career Highlights:

- Founded and scaled customer success teams, increasing NPS from 79% to 89%
- Drove $35M+ in revenue, achieving 40% increase in retention
- Built and led high-performing remote teams across customer success, marketing, and operations
- Developed strategies resulting in $7MM ARR from enterprise B2B accounts
- Maintained 119% Net Revenue Retention with zero logo churn

🚀 Expertise:

- Customer Success Strategy & Operations
- Revenue Growth & Retention Optimization
- SaaS Startup Leadership & Scaling
- Cross-functional Team Management
- Data-Driven Decision Making


🔧 Tech Stack:

ChurnZero, Gong, Salesforce, Zendesk, HubSpot, Atlassian, and more

Combining a unique background in healthcare research with tech leadership, I bring an analytical approach to solving complex business challenges. 

--------------

🤝 Let's connect if you're interested in:

- Customer-centric growth strategies
- SaaS scaling and operations
- Revenue optimization in tech startups

Always open to discussing new opportunities and sharing insights on customer success and revenue growth in the tech industry.

#CustomerSuccess #SaaS #RevenueGrowth #StartupLeadership

Manager, Customer Success

- Organize Quarterly Customer Advisory Board
- Implement digital customer success strategies to provide scalable support.
- Utilize data analytics to understand customer behaviour and needs.
- Ensure effective onboarding and adoption of Noibu's platform by customers.
- Proactively identify risks and reduce churn.
- Enhance customer satisfaction and retention through targeted digital interactions.

Emma Lo 🧩

My first Thanksgiving memory is not the turkey. 🦃

It is a teacher.



I was 5.
New to New Jersey.
New to English.

Mrs. Johnson asked us to cut out paper turkeys.
She talked about harvest and pilgrims.


A local newspaper came that day.

They took a picture of me dressed as a pilgrim,
sitting at a tiny table, eating pumpkin pie.

I do not remember how the pie tasted.
I remember her kindness.


After school, she would sit with me one on one.

Point to an apple.
Say “Apple.” 🍎
Wait for me to repeat it back.

Day after day, she gave me something my grades could not show yet.

Belonging.

——————————-


Life moved on.

I grew up, built a career, moved countries.

But I never forgot her.


Years later, as an adult, I wrote a letter to thank her.

The school forwarded it to her family. 

A few weeks later, a reply arrived from her retirement home in Florida. 

She still remembered me.
Almost 40 years later.

——————————-

When people talk about opportunity, this is who I think of.

Yes, my parents worked hard.
Yes, I worked hard.


But before all of that, there was a teacher who made room for a quiet five-year-old immigrant at the table.

Who slowed down.

Who showed me, in a new country, that I was not an outsider.



This Thanksgiving, I am grateful for the Mrs. Johnsons of the world.

The people who:

→ Explain the simple things without making you feel small

→ Notice who is struggling and stay a little longer

→ Remember you, even decades later



If someone did that for you, this is your reminder.

Write the letter.

Send the message.

Say thank you while you still can.


#thankful #gratitude 

P.S. do you still remember the cords  📞

Emma Lo🧋

CS & RevOps Leader | Driving Scalable Customer-Led Growth Across GTM | Top 100 CS Strategist 2025 & CS In Focus Podcast and Owner

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Meet James Alarcon 


We first met at the ChurnZero event 

Since then, he has been the friend who checks in, calls when you are in town, and makes time to connect.

I watched him move from team lead to director. 

He built with what he had.

Tested, iterated, and defended his team when it mattered.


Everyone can talk strategy.

Few can influence a vision and get people aligned.

Even fewer roll up their sleeves and do the hard work. 💪


Now he is in a new role, with his playbook tested and the land mapped.

He is hiring for CSMs🔥


If you want to work for a leader who grows both people and revenue, talk to James Alarcon. 

#hiring #gta #customersuccess

Took my kids to see Wicked 2 this weekend.

I walked out thinking about all the themes

Living in a bubble.
No place like home.
Finding something worth fighting for.


My kids? 

Flying monkeys.
A green girl finally learning to use her powers.
And a lot of very loud singing. 🙉

P.S. Have you seen the movie?

AI in CS is stuck in the messy middle. 


At NY Success Week, I asked Brent Grimes from Reef.ai a simple question:
Where are GTM teams really with AI adoption?

His answer: 
Plenty of AI projects.
Very few signals strong enough to change a forecast, renewal plan, or board slide.

For GTM orgs, that is the real execution gap
→ Fewer signals, higher conviction.


What we should look into with AI: 

1️⃣  Revenue signal

Churn, down sell, and expansion probabilities 6 to 12 months out 
that influence your commit, not just a health score.


2️⃣ Value signal

Proof that customers are achieving outcomes 
that tie directly to renewal and expansion, not just logins or activity.

3️⃣ Coverage signal

Clear visibility into which champions, buyers, and users are engaged with those outcomes, and how recently.


If AI cannot help you see risk and expansion early enough to change the number, it stays in the experiment bucket.

Are you growning in dashboards and still guessing on renewals?

#reef #ai #GTM #renewals #cs

What happens when Tamagotchi grows wheels and runs on GPT?



As a kid, my “robot” was a Tamagotchi. 🐣

A few pixels on a keychain, and you had to remember to feed it.


Now we have Loona. 🐶 

A robot pet that follows your kid, remembers their face, reacts to emotions, chats with GPT, and helps with homework.


Cool, yes.

However, it subtly changes the meanings of “friend,” “play,” and “help.”


I’m excited about robots like Loona in kids’ lives. 

I’m just not sure I want them replacing relationships and learning. 

P.S. Would you let your kid have a GPT robot best friend?

The truth behind “healthy” accounts that still churn


Your post-sales pipeline is not a calendar.
It is proof that you are solving real business problems.

On CS in Focus Live, Roland Griesmayer and Anthony DeShazor said the quiet part out loud about forecasting:


Money follows problems.
Predictability follows clarity.


Roland’s bar for a real deal was simple:

If a rep cannot clearly explain the business issue the customer is paying to fix, the deal is not predictable.

“Making someone’s job easier” is not a business issue.
“More intuitive” is not a business issue.

You need answers like:

This fixes X.
This prevents Y.
This unlocks Z in revenue or removes Z in cost.


Anthony pushed the harder truth. 

Most teams don’t fail at delivering value.
They fail at telling the story of that value in a way a CFO will repeat in a budget meeting.

With just over five weeks left in Q4, post-sales pipeline reviews need to tighten up:

1/ Start with the business problem

For every renewal and expansion, ask:
What problem did we solve and how does the customer describe it?


2/ Tie the forecast to a real sponsor

Has the person with budget and authority engaged on that problem in the last 90 days?


3/ Require a written value story

One short paragraph per account: problem, impact, and why it matters now.

If your CSM cannot write it, you cannot forecast it.


4/ Use signals, not sentiment

Swap “they love us” for proof: outcomes achieved, milestones completed, risk removed, executive alignment.

5/ End every review with ownership

Each renewal and expansion needs an owner, a next action, and a date.
No “we will keep an eye on it.”

-------------------
That was the through line from the live:

Real problems make deals real.
Clear stories make revenue predictable.

P.S. What's your non-negotiable when reviewing a deal? 

#gtm #pipeline review

Forecast this in 30 seconds. 


DAUs are up 18%.
Your champion just left.
Procurement took control.
A second product POC is live.

What’s your renewal probability now...and why?


Most teams default to pipeline. 

However, operators weigh three things first: 
relationship health, user outcomes, buyer control. 

Which one would change your forecast today?

-------------------------

This Friday Eleanor (Ella) Eng and I will interview Anthony DeShazor and Roland Griesmayer on how they build forecasts that survive board inspection. 

We’ll dig into signals, weights, and the inspection cadence that keeps accuracy high.

Join us on CS in Focus LinkedIn Live

📆 Friday, Nov 21 · 12:00–12:45 ET

🔗 https://lnkd.in/gthvhXX5

P.S. What’s your non-negotiable metric in a 2026 forecast, and why?

#gtm #forecast #linkedinlive #cs

Feeling overwhelmed by Black Friday deals?

Same.


Yesterday, I was browsing the Apple website like a lost child in a corn maze.

So many models. So many chips. So many display options.

And then I met Cierra over the phone.

The best Apple Sales Rep a confused customer could ask for.



I told her all my fears:

What if I pick the wrong chip?
What if I regret the memory?
What if I’m stuck with a machine that hates me by January?

She didn’t rush me.
She didn’t push a promo.

She listened.
She broke down the decision.
She made sense of my chaos.

With the kind of calm only seasoned retail heroes have during BFCM.

But the part that stayed with me?

She shared my excitement.

I told her I’m starting a new chapter. A new season of life. 

She lit up and cheered me on like I was Dorothy stepping onto the yellow brick road, with a brand-new MacBook and ready to click my red heels. 👠 

Somewhere in that call, I realized something simple:

You don’t need the most expensive laptop to get the best outcome.
You need the one that actually fits your work, your life, and your next chapter.


It reminded me that good customer service isn’t about the product.

It’s about the person who helps you believe you’re making the right choice.


Cheers to you, Cierra. 🎩 

You turned Black Friday chaos into a little moment of courage.
And I’m grateful for it.

#blackfriday #apple 

P.S. The best email I got from BFCM.

Michael Ocean

SellMeThisPen

No more...

👎 CRM update dilemma
👎 Irrelevant & generic coaching & training

SellMeThisPen AI eliminates non-revenue tasks for sellers and helps leaders scale personalized coaching and practice so everyone can focus on what matters most: revenue growth! 

What SellMeThisPen can help you with: 

✨ Automated CRM updates ✨ Real-time and post-call AI coaching ✨ Role-play practice sessions with AI

Founder & CEO

GoWest.ai

Providing strategic insights on new and ongoing initiatives.

Member of the Board of Advisors

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Entrepreneur In Residence

Antler

Hopin

Online Event Platform - SaaS

80% Inbound | 20% Outbound - Founding Sales Team

- Helped build the initial sales playbook 
- 900k USD closed-won opportunities created.
- Helped scale the company from 40 Mil USD series A to 400 Mil USD series C.
- Worked closely with the marketing, support and sales ops teams to refine the sales development processes.
- Recognized as the "Pacesetter" in the last month of service.

Founding Sales 

Schedulehead

Event Scheduling Automation - SaaS

50% Inbound | 50% Outbound - First Sales Hire

- Built the initial sales playbook.
- Assisted the CEO with overall sales and marketing strategies.
- Closed, onboarded, and trained 48 SMB & Enterprise accounts in the first five months 
- Hired & trained LDRs & SDRs.

Founding Sales

Bunz

Digital Marketing - Social Media

100% Outbound - First Sales Hire

- Created the V1 outbound playbook
- Helped surpass the Q1 goal in the first month
- Brought in GTA-based clients such as Maple, TruLocal, Flexday, Workhaus and York Region Municipality
- Signed an agreement with the first outside of province client MissFresh

PayamBox

Mobile Marketing - Enterprise Software

*Iteration from M-Theory to an enterprise software solution for the Telecom industry. 

- Raised 400k seed capital 
- Implemented the solution for MTN - one of the largest operators in MENA 
- Worked closely with the technical team for two fully operational products - MBOX mobile marketing SaaS and Telegram MusicBoxBot.

Co-Founder & CEO

M-Theory

Content Production | Mobile Marketing - Telecom VAS 

*Pivoted to PayamBox.

- Helped sign a partnership with "MCI" the largest operator in the middle east
- Acquired 200k+ subscribers - Resulted in $1.2 mil USD revenue.
- Reduced the operation costs by 50% - Built an in-house video production team
- Grew the team to 10

Co-Founder

PCM: The Right Technology, Delivered.

Direct Marketing - Microsoft Cloud

100% Outbound - First batch of Microsoft licensing specialists 

- Surpassed the monthly closed deals KPI month after month
- Helped position the company as the new Microsoft Gold Partner to clients

Account Executive

Two things bugged me the most when I was a sales rep!

👎 Receiving irrelevant & generic coaching & training
👎 Feeling out the CRM 

That's why I am building SellMeThisPen AI to eliminate non-revenue tasks for sellers and help leaders scale personalized coaching and practice so everyone can focus on what matters most: revenue growth! 

What SellMeThisPen can help you with: 

✨Role-play practice sessions with AI ✨Real-time and post-call AI coaching ✨Automated CRM updates

🤝 Feel free to reach out if you would like to chat.

Natural talent is the worst predictor of sales success.


So why do so many teams still hire for “the vibe” instead of the mindset?


On the latest SellMeThisPen AI Podcast, I sat down with Thomas Waites of TW Sales, operator behind 3 successful acquisitions, and someone who’s built multiple high-performance sales orgs from scratch to unpack this exact mistake.


"I watched 'natural' salespeople plateau while awkward, determined ones surpassed them."


Thomas learned this early. He’d onboard 20–40 reps at a time and assume the charismatic ones would win.

They didn’t.

The “naturals” coasted…then stalled!


The “awkward but hungry” reps kept grinding then sprinted past everyone.
That observation shifted everything for him.
Because the real problem wasn’t skills.
It was the system those skills lived inside.


He told a story about inheriting a team where people complained about 9 a.m. meetings because it interfered with their morning golf routine.

That wasn’t a skills issue.

That was a mindset and behavior issue and no amount of training fixes that.

So he rebuilt the culture from the ground up.

Reps stopped blaming leads.
Ownership went up.
Performance followed.


Here’s the framework Thomas shared for building a winning environment instead of a “talent-dependent” one:

1️⃣ Hire and bet on mindset first
If someone owns their performance, you can develop everything else. If they blame the world, nothing you do will matter.

2️⃣ Create systems that lift the entire team
Peer-to-peer pairing, shared wins, and simple metrics make improvement unavoidable not optional.

3️⃣ Lead with belief, not fear
High performers don’t need pressure; they need support. If you treat them like losers, they’ll play like it. If you treat them like champions, they rise.

4️⃣ Reward behavior as much as outcomes
Crushing quota isn’t enough. If someone poisons culture, they’re a short-term win and a long-term loss.

If you want a team that keeps improving, you don’t build around the naturals.
You build around the mindsets that scale.


Swipe through the carousel above for the full breakdown! 👉

CEO @ SellMeThisPen.ai - AI Roleplay & Individual Sales Coaching at Scale.

 7 Pillars for Building Winning Mindset - SMTP

AI didn’t make L&D easier, it exposed who’s been coasting!


So the real question is…are you actually using it to level up, or just hoping it replaces the work you don’t want to do?


The other day on the SellMeThisPen AI Podcast, I sat down with Jen Rutsky an L&D leader with a legal background who’s been hands-on with AI long before it went mainstream. She’s worked across tech, law, finance and she’s one of those  operators who actually experiments instead of theorizing.


Jen described a shift she’s seeing: most L&D orgs still cling to e-learning modules that nobody remembers 20 minutes later. Meanwhile, learners want interactive, kinesthetic, real-time practice. And AI finally makes that possible.


She told a story about managers preparing for tough conversations. Traditionally, they’d wait for Jen to role-play with them assuming her calendar wasn’t booked for the next two weeks. Now? They can fire up a tool, simulate the scenario, and get coaching instantly. No embarrassment. No bottleneck. No excuses.

That’s the shift:

We’re not building courses anymore. We’re building systems that adapt.

Here’s the core idea: L&D relevance now comes from teaching people how to use AI not from producing content.

1️⃣ AI is the new practice field.
Your learners shouldn’t wait for workshops. They should rehearse critical conversations, pitches, and decisions inside AI-driven role-plays, the reps are unlimited, judgment-free, and instant.

2️⃣ Your value is orchestration, not instruction.
Jen’s building workflows, coaching layers, feedback loops. AI handles the repetition; humans handle the nuance. L&D pros who cling to “content creation” lose. Those who build systems win.

3️⃣ Real-time relevance is now the standard.
If a document, process, or naming convention changes, AI can update onboarding flows instantly. No more outdated links, stale PDFs, or credibility-killing errors. L&D finally becomes current instead of catching up.


In the full episode we cover:

– Why e-learning as we know it is fading fast
 – How managers should approach hallucinations with “trust but verify”
 – Building AI champion programs inside companies
 – What modern onboarding looks like when every persona gets personalized learning from day one

L&D pros -> what’s one AI use case you’ve tried that actually moved the needle?

P.S. Link to the full episode in the comments! 👇

Your L&D team isn’t slow. Your workflow is outdated.


The other day on the SellMeThisPen AI Podcast, I sat down with Jen Rutsky, Senior L&D Manager at Yext with 15+ years across banking, tech, fintech, and law. We dug into what’s actually breaking L&D’s speed and what AI is finally fixing.


“It’s helping me amplify my ideas and catch things I might’ve missed.”

Jen shared a moment every L&D leader knows too well: juggling too many trainings, rewriting the same ideas 10 different ways, and manually hunting inconsistencies across documents.

It’s exhausting. And worse, it slows down how fast the business can move.
Then she stopped doing it alone.


AI became her always-on co-author, spotting patterns, surfacing repeated themes, and keeping messaging tight across every training touchpoint.
 The shift wasn’t about shortcuts, it was about finally removing the parts of L&D that shouldn’t be manual anymore.


Here’s the core idea: L&D isn’t broken, old workflows are. AI gives you back the time to think, not just produce.


1️⃣ Offload the grunt work, keep the judgment.
Let AI scan PDFs, books, and decks for themes so you can focus on designing experiences, not cleaning data.

2️⃣ Use AI to maintain consistency across everything.
Jen uploads materials and instantly spots mismatches, outdated details, and messaging drift something humans miss simply because we’re too close to the work.

3️⃣ Turn brainstorming into a real collaboration.
Instead of staring at a blank doc, she uses AI to challenge her thinking, propose angles, and pressure-test concepts. You get better ideas, faster.


The result? Faster content, tighter messaging, and an L&D engine that finally matches the speed of the business.


Swipe through the carousel above for the full breakdown! 👉

6 Practical Ways to Use AI in L&D - SMTP

Most sales leaders don’t coach…they command.


Why are we still defaulting to “just do this” leadership when coaching creates the real top performers?


On the latest SellMeThisPen AI Podcast, I sat down with Thomas Waites, 3X acquisition CRO and the guy who keeps turning messy early-stage teams into record-breaking ones.


"Telling solves the moment. Coaching changes the rep." 


Tom shared something most leaders don’t want to admit: the majority of “coaching” inside sales orgs is actually just instructions with better punctuation. 

And when you lead that way? You create a team that waits for answers instead of creating them.


The shift came when he realized his team wasn’t lacking talent, they were lacking belief, ownership, and a system that helped them think.


Here’s the real difference between telling, training, and coaching. pulled straight from Tom’s winning-culture framework:

1️⃣ Telling -> One-way and urgent.

When a rep asks what to do with a deal, you say: “Send the contract today.”
Fast? Sure. But now you’re the crutch they lean on forever.

2️⃣ Training -> Knowledge without judgment.

You run sessions on your pitch, your product, your frameworks.
Helpful until the deal goes sideways and the script can’t save them.

3️⃣ Coaching -> Two-way, empowering, and culture-shaping.

 Rep: “What should I do with Acme?”
 You ask:
 – “What’s the real blocker here?”
 – “What options do you see?”
 – “Which path gives us the highest leverage?”

Now they think. They decide. They grow.
And suddenly, the whole team levels up, together!


In the full episode we cover:

 – Why mindset beats sales skills (and why “naturals” often plateau)
 – How to build a team culture where “we all win together” actually means something
 – The CEO–sales leader dynamic that predicts success
 – The simple, four-metric system Tom uses to scale without chaos

AND he tells the tattoo bet story, the moment his team realized their limits were self-imposed!! 

Link to the full episode in the comments 👇

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