Success from the Customer Perspective

The growth of Customer Success (CS) as a corporate discipline has been remarkable and continues unabated.  Fuelling this incredible growth has been the seismic shift from a transaction economy to the subscription model.  No longer do customers typically buy solutions for perpetuity but instead subscribe to them for a fixed period.  According to Forrester Intelligence, we are already 5 years into the "Age of the Customer”, where outcomes are expected, not transactions.  Customers don’t want to be sold a “product”, they want an on-going partnership with vendors who have a thorough understanding of their business needs and provide solutions that meet and exceed agreed goals.  Simply put, Customer Success teams makes this happen; they must constantly demonstrate that they are providing a tangible ROI (Return on Investment) to their clients or they will be replaced.  

A further illustration of this growth can be seen in recently published research reports by LinkedIn.  The Customer Success Manager was ranked fourth in its “2017 U.S. Emerging Jobs Report” and third in the “Most Promising Jobs and In-Demand Skills of 2018”.  What is even more staggering was that only a year ago, in the “Most Promising Jobs of 2017”, the Customer Success Manager was ranked nineteenth with significant increases shown in median pay (from $72,000 to $82,300), job openings and (in both years) a career advancement score of 10/10.
Given the increased importance of Customer Success as a corporate function and the Customer Success Manager as a credible, lucrative and meaningful career choice, it is absolutely imperative that it actually delivers on its promise to increase lifetime customer value.  In order to do this, each organisation with a Customer Success function typically uses checks and balances (i.e. metrics) to ensure that it is performing to an optimal level and if not, will make the changes necessary to do so.  Examples of these metrics include Net Retention, Churn rates, MRR / ARR (Monthly/Annual Reoccurring Revenue), Growth, Product Usage, NPS (Net Promoter Score), Surveys and Customer Health Scores.

However, what does Customer Success "excellence" really look like from the most important stakeholder of them all - the customer?  How do they view the importance of the work carried out by the Customer Success team?  Failure to understand this properly will be one of the biggest factors that contributes towards “green churn”, a term that describes an unexpected downgrade or cancellation requests from customers that otherwise appears to be healthy.  Here are some key recommendations on how you can ensure that your customers truly understand and appreciate the value that Customer Success brings to their organisation:

Collect Customer Success Criteria Subjectively & Objectively

• This should form the fundamental corner-stone of your approach.  Your customer made their initial buying decision on the basis that your solution solved a business pain and/or helped them reach a specific desired outcome.  An important part of the pre-sales process will focus on this however this rationale needs to be fully documented, understood and continually verified by Customer Success teams once they start the on-boarding process.
• It is imperative that your customer’s success criteria should be both subjective (i.e. anecdotal) and objective (i.e. specific data points).  When asking a customer how they will determine success with your solution they may answer with something along the lines of “we want to use it to be more successful”.  Whilst that statement is generally true, it gives the Customer Success Manager no effective way of measuring success and is wide open to misinterpretation.  
• Build on that conversation by also collecting objective qualification from the customer, for example, “we want to use your solution to help reduce our sales cycle by 2 weeks and improve year-on-year bookings by 25%”.  Not only do you have specific goals in which you can measure performance but you can also discuss any concerns if you believe that the customers’ expectations are not in line with what can be reasonably expected. 

Segment your Customer Stakeholders

• It is vitally important to distinguish and identify the various customer stake-holders.  It is possible that your solution will be adopted by different departments, end-user groups, geographies and teams; all of which may think differently about what “success” looks like for them.  Moreover, the executive team and/or Procurement may have completely different success criteria in mind. 
• As described above, the success criteria for each customer segment should be collected both subjectively and anecdotally and the progress shared with the executive team at every available opportunity (especially true during Quarterly/Executive Business Reviews).

Discuss Business Benefits not Features

• To ensure that the customer understands the value that your solution is providing, your communications needs to contextual, in language that is going to resonate and relates to their business objectives and desired outcomes.
• For example, communicating high product adoption rates is generally perceived as positive news however if you can discuss the impact of that usage it carries even more weight (e.g. usage of module “x” has resulted in reducing your sales cycle by 20%).

 
Identify and Communicate Early Wins

• Helping your customers realise early value in your relationship is critical to your mutual long-term benefit.  To succeed you need to have a clear strategy on how you are going to engage with customers, document the implementation mile-stones and look for any “early wins”.  The earlier that the customer understands the benefits that your solution brings to their business, the better – especially if the “full” implementation takes a considerable amount of time.
• From the customer perspective, the launch phase can be fraught and first impressions really count. A significant investment has been made in your business and as a new vendor, you have no track record or history of success.  Achieving some early wins helps alleviate some of those pressures and builds your credibility.

Use Every Customer Engagement as an Opportunity

• Change is inevitable in every relationship; the hidden, lurking danger is that even once you understand both the subjective and objective customer success criteria, it can get out of date – fast. 
• As organisations evolve (e.g. existing contacts leave and new ones join, M&A activity, etc), expectations of your solution - and your business - can dramatically change.  Use every conceivable opportunity to ensure that you are working to agreed goals and if not, ensure that these changes are communicated across your business.

Perform Win, Loss & Churn (WLC) Analysis

• WLC Analysis is the process by which in-depth interviews are conducted with your prospects and customers to understand the rationale behind their buying decisions. Detailed analysis of the results are provided as well as recommendations that will lead to improvements in your company’s win/renewal rate and customer satisfaction scores.
• It provides a thorough understanding of how your organisation is truly perceived externally and why your prospects and customers chose your solution or decided to go elsewhere. Moreover, it challenges long-held assumptions and provides answers that are fundamental to maintaining your competitive advantage and ensuring future growth.  The results of WLC Analysis can be incredibly insightful across the Enterprise.  For example, it helps Marketing Teams hone their key messages to different audiences, Sales to get deals over the line and Customer Success to understand what action is needed to keep and grow their customer base.

Taking Ownership

• As discussed previously, customers want an on-going partnership with vendors to help them be successful.  CS Teams should always aim to go beyond merely being advisors and instead consistently demonstrate ownership of their account – both tactically and strategically.    
• Your top priorities might not be matched in equal importance by your external stakeholders so take every opportunity to lead discussions and take as much weight off the customers’ shoulders as possible.  Help shape what the future relationship looks like based on your knowledge of your own solutions alongside that of your customer and their industry.  Also leverage the lessons learnt from other customers using your solution so that they can also benefit from that experience.  Customers will really appreciate the sense of ownership and this will help reinforce that they made a great initial buying decision and fosters future collaborative growth.

Align your Approach

• Your customer will regularly interact with other parts of your organisation throughout their relationship with your business.  Whether this is with Support, Marketing, Finance or Sales they need each department needs to exemplify that same “customer-first” attitude.  Customer Success is more than an individual’s job title or department, it is a philosophy that needs to permeate through your whole organisation.
• Customers will not make distinctions between different internal groups and will rightly expect the same high level of attentiveness, proactivity and support.  No-one wants to hear (explicitly or implied) “it’s not my job” or be passed around from one department to another.  Map out a full customer journey, look for every touchpoint and ask yourself, “If I was in the Customer’s shoes, what would I want?”

Asking your Customer to be your Advocate

• There is no more effective marketing messaging than having your customers champion your cause on your behalf citing powerful use-cases on how your solution has helped them achieve their desired goals.
• If you have worked in partnership with your customer, understood their success criteria and then proactively helped them achieve it, asking for them to advocate on your behalf is a powerful measure of their level of engagement.  This engagement can take many forms (e.g. speaking at a trade show, building a Case Study, being a reference client, etc.) but demonstrably shows a partnership relationship which if harnessed positively, will lead to future growth for all.

  
As the “Age of the Customer” continues to mature, it is imperative that you are able to step back from your day-to-day operations and understand your customers’ perspective of both your organisation and your CS function.  With that in mind and by the using the methods discussed above, make the necessary positive changes to help your clients truly understand the key business benefits that they are achieving in a language that is going to resonate the loudest.  In such a competitive landscape where new entrants are disrupting even the most established markets, doing this right could well be the difference between keeping/growing your customer base or face the risk of having them leave you entirely.  

Author Bio: Adam Joseph
Founder of CSM Insight who had previously spent 15 years managing Customer Success organisations for leading businesses.  Passionate about all things Customer Success and recently voted as a member of the "Top 100 Customer Success Strategists" in 2018.

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