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PrismHR Customer Success Manager John Hebert is the textbook definition of an extrovert. He’s not afraid to start a conversation.
It’s clear he has his finger on the pulse of his customers’ needs. His other digits are currently planted on his temple as he explains why he chose to hang several classic albums on the wall in his home office.
There’s Led Zeppelin’s powerhouse LP Physical Graffiti, Prince’s perfervid pop classic Purple Rain and an early pressing of Pink Floyd’s thought-provoking and now 50-year-old Wish You Were Here among his conversation-starter vinyls. A fan for life, he even remembers the exact date he saw Pink Floyd’s Division Bell Tour at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in 1994 without missing a beat. It was June 22, a Wednesday.
The Metrodome, of course, is the former home of the Minnesota Twins and Vikings, and Minnesota is the hometown of the artist formerly known as the Artist Formerly Known as Prince. Minneapolis is the place where John was born, raised and still lives with his wife, two kids and three cats. That trio includes a short-haired flame point feline that seeks human attention but only on his terms.
Yes, the Land of 10,000 Lakes runs through John’s veins, and his career has always been on his terms but not because he’s seeking attention. Instead, he’s seeking opportunities to make a human connection.
One album not on his wall is The Very Best of the Human League, but the title contains a clue to the riddle he seems to have solved in terms of how to make Customer Success work: Don’t become comfortably numb to the human side of things.
In fact, he used the word “human” or “humanize” 10 times in our hourlong conversation—and he wasn’t talking about human resources. He was waxing poetic on the human experience that is so vital but so easy to undervalue in a tech-driven world that’s built to Zoom.
Read our profiles of CSMs Tracy Anderson, Lesha Cyphers, Cody Jensen, Jason Ward, Michael Wolf and Matt Yuknis.
Is There Anybody Out There?
During the pandemic, when remote meetings were pretty much the only meetings, John was looking for a better way to connect with people. Most people had followed social-distancing protocols at the time, and many were feeling isolated due to the circumstances. What better way to start a conversation and reconnect with people than to have a wall full of records to discuss? Music is the universal language after all.
Of course, while riffing on the intricacies of an evocative David Gilmour guitar solo is an easy and fun conversation, John says he is just as comfortable having difficult conversations, too, when necessary.
For instance, there was the time that 2 inches of snow covered the usually clear—and obviously warmer—streets of Atlanta. The powdery precipitation is no big deal in Northern municipalities like Minneapolis that are prepared for a bunch of white fluff, but Georgia isn’t one of those cities. Things did not look peachy at all.
Remember those anything-but-perfunctory payroll days when HR-related tasks were all manual?The people who worked at the print center in Atlanta at the time, which one of John’s previous employers used, were unable to get to the office that snowy day because of the unsafe roadways. That meant there was no way to print and deliver paper checks to customers. Not good at all. There’s no easy way to spin that situation to companies whose employees are counting on collecting their hard-earned dollars so they can pay their bills.
You have to be comfortable having those tough conversations and be open and honest about that kind of rare situation. John is.
In times like that, “You have to be human, and you have to talk with people,” John says. “I think that we can really differentiate ourselves as not only individuals, but also as organizations by remembering that we’re dealing with humans and picking up the phone and actually having a conversation.”
In other words, John provides more than just the voice of reason but also the voice of compassion if situations arise. That’s how you build trust even in tough times, he adds, by showing that you care and that you will do everything in your power to make things right.
Thankfully, it helps that modern payroll solutions are much more streamlined via advanced digital solutions.
Echoes of an Earlier Time
Art is mathematical in nature.
Shapes have geometrical structure to them, and music, of course, is filled with patterns and structure as well. That’s why a sour note stands out; it just doesn’t fit the equation.
John originally wanted to be a part of the world of art.
In high school, he thought he would become a commercial artist—someone who creates visuals for ads, products and such—after seeing how computers were reshaping the artform, but he went in a different direction with his professional pursuits because of his numeric roots and familiarity. “I love numbers,” he proclaims. Adding, “Data is cool. It has the ability to tell a story.”
John likes to use data to paint a picture when he’s talking to customers, which is something he stumbled upon when a former manager asked him to use data to show “X,” but he quickly realized it showed “Y.” His manager immediately saw his point and asked him to figure out a way to tell a story that explained how to get to “X.” He has used the same type of data visualization approach ever since with customer-specific PowerPoint presentations.
Before he got into the Customer Success game, John cut his teeth in the family business: finance. It’s a place where—not to stereotype—you might be able to count the number of extroverts on a handful of hands. He really enjoyed working in the field until the recession hit in late 2007. The following year, the Great Recession would go down as one of the worst economic downturns in U.S. history. It was a time when just under 1 in 5 U.S. households had more debt than income, and 700,000 workers were losing their jobs each and every month.
John quickly realized it was time for a career change to help support his family.
He decided to apply to two jobs, and one had a family connection he wasn’t aware of at the time at an HR software company called Ceridian.
By the way, at the time he was living in the same house he grew up in. An unlikely purchase for a twenty-something, John bought the property from his parents after they confided to John and his two sisters that they were ready to move. At first, his parents had to get comfortable with the idea of their son buying their house, but they quickly got their heads around the idea knowing that John and his wife would be able to start a family in the home they, themselves, started one in all those years before.
By Chance Two Separate Glances Meet
He applied for that Ceridian job on a Monday even though he lacked experience in the HR tech space although he had ample Human Capital Management (HCM) experience as well as exemplary communication skills. John got an interview on Friday morning and an offer that very afternoon to work with some of the Software as a Service (SaaS) company’s largest customers. John had officially entered the HR tech space, and he has been working in it ever since.
When John was at Ceridian, someone told him something that proved to be prophetic: “Somebody had said to me, ‘Well, now that you’re in, you may not always work here at Ceridian, but you will never leave this business. You’re just going to go someplace else at some point in time. And it’s true. We get ingrained in this.”
He also later learned that Ceridian used to be called Control Data Corp., where his dad worked in the 1970s and ’80s. Like father, like son.
On that subject, after joining Ceridian, he got to meet Jim Jensen at an on-site meeting in Washington, D.C. Jim was a key software developer in the HCM space and later chief information officer at Ultimate Software. Jim is also the father of John’s current CSM colleague, Cody Jensen, but John and Cody hadn’t met in the flesh or otherwise until John joined PrismHR in August 2025.
Today, the HR tech field—from HCM to taxes to workforce management technology and more—is now unequivocally a part of John’s DNA as the human side of the equation spins round his world like a record on endless play.
“As a Strategic CSM, [John] doesn’t just manage an account—he shapes outcomes. We are excited to have him join and help set the bar on the direction of our Customer Success organization.”
—Aleksandra Boruk
PrismHR’s Senior Vice President of Customer Success and Client Growth
“John comes to PrismHR with over a decade of experience managing complex, international, enterprise accounts,” says Aleksandra Boruk, PrismHR’s senior vice president of Customer Success and Client Growth. “As a Strategic CSM, he doesn’t just manage an account—he shapes outcomes. We are excited to have him join and help set the bar on the direction of our Customer Success organization.”
Speaking of DNA, John has a riddle he asks people as an ice-breaker: “I am the youngest and middle child of three”
How is that possible? Just ask him. John loves a good conversation-starter.
James Tehrani is PrismHR’s content marketing manager. He is an award-winning writer and editor based in the Chicago area.
