Building a Customer Centric Business with Robbie Baxter, Author & Subscription Expert
Join hosts Jay Nathan and Robbie Baxter as they discuss building strong subscription businesses, being obsessed about customers, and strategies for every business.
Sign up for Subscription Heroes 👇
Sign UpIn this episode, join host Jay Nathan (COO of Churnkey), with Robbie Kellman Baxter, a subscription business expert, consultant, and author. Robbie discusses her career journey, starting from consulting for Netflix to becoming a leading voice in the subscription economy. Her work spans industries like healthcare, automotive, and retail, focusing on building scalable, customer-centric businesses through customer success principles and data-driven decision-making.
About Robbie Kellman Baxter:
Robbie Kellman Baxter is a leading expert in subscription-based business models, customer success, and membership strategies. As a consultant, speaker, and author of The Membership Economy and The Forever Transaction, she has helped companies like Netflix, Microsoft, and the Wall Street Journal build customer-centric, recurring revenue models. With over 20 years of experience, Robbie advises businesses across industries, from tech and media to healthcare and automotive, on driving long-term customer loyalty and sustainable growth.
Here is what we cover:
1. Robbie’s Career Journey
- Early work with Netflix sparked her focus on subscriptions.
- Wrote her first book in 2015 to formalize her expertise and attract clients.
2. Subscription Economy Insights
- Early challenges convincing businesses outside traditional subscription industries.
- The shift from unbundling to rebundling in industries like automotive and healthcare..
3. Customer Success Principles
- Focus on customer outcomes, not just product features.
- Apply customer success beyond SaaS to consumer businesses.
4. Scaling Customer Success
- Customer Success Team: Identifies customer issues.
- Low-Touch CS Team: Communicates scalable solutions.
- Marketing: Sets customer expectations.
- Product Development: Builds solutions into the product.
5. Business Strategy Tips
- Avoid silos; collaborate across teams.
- Focus on retaining ideal customers and reducing churn.
- Use data for decision-making and avoid assumptions.
- Test ideas before scaling and learn from results.
The episode highlights the power of customer-centric strategies, data-driven decisions, and disciplined execution in scaling subscription-based businesses.