Looking for a Success Plan Template

EvaS
EvaS Member Posts: 18 Navigator
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edited August 2023 in CS Conversations
Is anyone here wiling to share a success template?

Also, how did you measure that the introduction of a success plan really improved the relationship with the customers?

Will you, as of today, till recommend using a SP?

Comments

  • Kimmie Harrington
    Kimmie Harrington Member Posts: 2 Seeker
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    Hi! We use the attached success plan.

    We measure this introduction by adding the Success Plan discussion into our CRM tool as a call/note and track Monday.com board our progress and status of the plan. Happy to sync and share more if you have questions.

    Kimmie Harrington (she/her)

    Customer Success Executive

    direct: 202-470-6144

    kharrington@higherlogic.com

    Schedule a meeting with me: Calendly - Kimmie Harrington

  • NickH
    NickH Member Posts: 9 Contributor
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    I am interested in this as well. I am looking to start bringing 'formal' success plans into our customer success function. These will be for new business but also for existing customers. We haven't had this before and I see the existing business as the main challenge for introduction. Purely because I will have to retrospectively populate the plan.

    Having some idea of templates could really help.

  • Elizabeth Italiano
    Elizabeth Italiano Member Posts: 12 Navigator
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    Hi Eva,

    I don't have a success plan template that I can share, as each has been tailored to my clients, and haven't had time to anonymize any but I'd be happy to jump on a quick call to talk through some of my best practices.

    In the meantime the most successful success plans I've seen tie overall stakeholder, department, and business goals back to the success plan. So essentially starting with a summary of what the client is trying to achieve.

    Next, break the success plan down into each component of your product that they can leverage to achieve those goals.

    Then build out milestones on how they can adopt each feature/component of your product. This is also a great place to add links to other resources and content that can help enable the client to learn and use your product.

    The success plan should be inclusive of action items, due dates, who the owners are, and KPIs that will be measured.

    Then once milestones and product adoption are achieved you can use the success plan to measure progress toward the ultimate goals and objectives that they and their business are trying to achieve. This is very helpful to have in EBRs as well as it provides data and info on goal attainment.

    I've measured success plans by measuring the impact on product adoption and retention.

    Although not a template, I hope this helps!

  • Fikret
    Fikret Member Posts: 3 Newcomer
    First Anniversary Name Dropper First Comment Photogenic

    Hi @EvaS,

    Below is what we use as a Success Plan template for any onboarding projects that we run.

    We start off by filling in as much as we can with the information that is available to us, and from there, we partner with our client to finalize everything and sign off on all deliverables, milestones, timelines, etc.

    Post-go-live Success Plan is built using the same format but different milestones and deliverables. However, it's the same concept - there's a structure, objectives, and timelines that both parties need to stick to.

    Both onboarding and post-go-live Success Plans are supported by Project Plans which define a clear set of action items, assignees, order of operation, etc.

    The last thing I'll say is that you would, most likely, want to start simple (what is the critical set of data that you need to help you guide your client to success) and build your way up to a Success Plan that will suit you the most. We've gone through a process of trial and errors (for example, overcomplicated Success Plans that have so much information that it's really hard to see the end goal) until we arrived at what we're using today (and I'm sure it's not its final version either 😅).

    Let me know if you'd like to chat more about this.

  • Brian Aherne
    Brian Aherne Member, CS Leader Posts: 12 Navigator
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    Hi @EvaS

    There are a lot of great resources at winning by design. You would need to adjust for your product and customers.

    https://winningbydesign.com/resources/the-customer-success-operating-model/