Customer Success is a broad term. It is important to begin by defining what we mean by it. From the companies I have met or worked with, different definitions can come. None of them are incorrect. It all depends on the how broad you look at it.
Customer Success is everyone's responsibility
Let's start with this statement: Customer Success is not just a role, it's a mindset. It must embrace every function of the company: from sales to support, including Customer Success Managers, product, legal, or finance. Just look at the number one indicator of Customer Success to understand this assessment: the Net Promoter Score (NPS) is not a Customer Success Managers dedicated indicator. Of course, NPS surveys are usually led by the CSMs, but NPS questions the customer about the entire company, not just CSMs. When we ask our customers "would you recommend my company to colleagues or friends?", it relates to the whole company.
It starts with Sales and Marketing teams: these functions will be the first contact the customer will have with your company. It is mandatory you make a good impression. It is also imperative that the sales function understands the customer's needs and proposes the right solution to the right customer. We can no longer afford to sell a product to a customer that does not meet his needs. This generates mistrust and disappointment. No matter how much effort we put into trying to satisfy this customer, he will never be satisfied and will eventually leave.
On the other hand, a customer acquiring a product addressing a well-identified pain will start his relationship with a strong capital of trust.
Product is obviously key in Customer Success. An innovative, user-friendly and scalable product will solve operational issues for the customer. But, a product that is difficult to use, presents bugs or recurring outages, will not give a nice image of your company. Try sending an NPS survey shortly after a period product outages, you will see the direct impact on the results!
Support also plays a major role. Everyone should consider which kind of support they want to offer their customers. Support strategy should focus on service commitments (ticket handling time, response time, etc.) but also on a support philosophy: how will you speak to your customers? Will you use the phone? How to develop a community? The type of customers you have will change the way you build your support. And support is in the frontline of any customer relationship.
Other departments are equally important for Customer Success: a smooth contractual negotiation with the legal team will create healthy foundations for the customer relationship. A simple and efficient billing process will avoid irritations that would avoid focus on more strategic discussions with the customer.
All company's departments must be customer-oriented. If a customer faces difficulties in his relationship with a single department, all their attention will focus on it and cancel all the great work provided by others.
To succeed in involving the entire company in a customer-centric approach, it must start from the top management and brought by all the management levels.
Let's focus Customer Success Managers
I intentionally omitted mentioning Customer Success Managers in the paragraphs above. Let's focus specifically on this role here. Beyond the mindset that the entire company must have around Customer Success, one function has particular role for Customer Success: the Customer Success Managers. Let's take some time to detail the role of a CSM here.
Customer retention: this is the CSM's number one challenge. In the world of SaaS, recurring revenue is the financial corner stone of the company. Protecting it allows a steady growth and extremely reliable budget predictions. I usually say that retention is based on two key pillars: satisfaction and adoption. A customer using a product he loves every day has no reason to leave. A customer who does not like a product and does not use it will certainly churn. A customer who likes the product but does not use it or uses a product he does not like is at high risk. The CSM must then measure the satisfaction and adoption of each customer and implement an appropriate action plan to ensure retention.
The voice of the customer: a CSM is a "Customer advocate". He brings the voice of the customer internally. The CSM must understand his customer challenges, the pain points that can be solved with the right action plan. Once understood, the CSM has 3 options:
The pain can be solved directly using the solution/product. The CSM helps the customer to set up the product, train him, and solve his problem.
A development is needed to solve the pain and it is compliant with the product roadmap. The CSM will then collect the customer need, turn it into a generic use case that can be shared with all the customers, and bring it to the product team to integrate it into the roadmap. It is extremely healthy for a product to grow thanks to customer needs.
A development is needed to solve the pain but it is not compliant with the product roadmap. This is the most complex situation. In the world of SaaS, it is impossible to make specific product developments for one customer. This would lead to maintenance problems that are impossible to manage when scaling. The CSM must explain this to the customer and find the best way to correct/find a workaround to his problem.
Expansion: CSMs are not salespeople. However, they are in a position where they can identify opportunities within their customer portfolio. It is today imperative for CSMs to constantly keep in mind opportunities to generate additional revenue from their customer base. Whether it's upselling or cross-selling. When a CSM detects a new opportunity, he should inform and start working with the account manager to propose the best solution that will answer the customer's need. Sales effort to an back to base customer is 3 times less important than the one to a new customer. This will generate revenue, and will contribute to customer retention.
As you can see, Customer Success is a very broad concept. It must be supported by the entire company. It is also personified by the Customer Success Managers who now have a key role in SaaS companies with a recurring revenue model.
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