March 22, 2024 - Week in Review

Heather Wendt

March 22, 2024

Hi all! So many things going on in these last few months, and it is exciting to watch the desire to continue to improve and strengthen the value of the Customer Success team. As with most departments, you really don't 'arrive' at the full-fledge destination, and instead look for ways to make processes and interactions better. We are glad that you find GGR to be a space to help you along that journey, and look forward to continuing to grow and improve to continue to be a space of value.

🗨️ GGR CS Leadership Office Hours

The GGR Leadership Office Hours are a great way to connect with your peers through conversations about leading CS topics.

Wondering if it is worth it? Here is some feedback from our latest event:

These present a unique opportunity to bounce ideas off other professionals. The format is great, just enough of a start to get us in the right mindset, time for collaboration and close with key takeaways. Thank you for hosting these, I look forward to more!

Our 2024 schedule is now available here, and our next meetup is Thursday, April 4 and will led by Nisha Baxi from Gong.

Be sure to register!

----------------

Office Hours Hosting Spots Available

Have a topic you would like to bring to your peers for discussion and collaboration? Our Leadership Office Hours are a great way to start the conversation, and the good news is, you are spending just a few minutes introducing it to kick off the conversation. Sound interesting? Take a moment to share your interest here.

----------------

Community-Driven Strategies for Expanding Your Customer Success Team

Join us on March 27 to hear about scalable solutions to support the often heavy load carried by CS teams that can be supported and enhanced by a community.

Register here

---------------

Live in the Bay Area? SAVE THE DATE

✨ GGR Live events are coming back for 2024, and we are excited that our first event will be the evening of April 24th in San Mateo. Keep an eye out soon for registration information!

----------------

💥 Higher Logic Super Forum 2024

Higher Logic's 14th annual Super Forum returns April 10-12, 2024 to National Harbor (near Washington DC), with two full days of sessions to help you discover the SPARK that connects the dots between community and your customers.

This event is not limited to Higher Logic customers, and will have sessions focused on using community to support 1:many programs, build brand advocates, and drive engagement, all through the power of reaching your customers with the information they need when they need it.

Learn more and register!

Best Practices (Conversations)

Check out some of the great conversations happening on GGR. Click the title to see the full conversation and share your insights!

NEW SERIES!

CMSs as Content Providers

@Pam Micznik kicks off a discussion about whether a current trend of having CSMs write content or whether that should be left to the content experts. Take a moment to share your thoughts on the value of including time to write in your CS team schedule.

---------------

CSM and CAM interactions (Customer Success Managers & Customer Account Managers)

In a blast from the past, @Mark Sims reached out a few years ago to talk about best practices and processes for a CS team that has both roles under it. Have some experience with making the most out of each role without confusion?

----------------

Tracking Risk Mitigation Plans

@AnthonyEm@Justin Voellmann posted a great question about how to help teams embrace processes that allow better insight into churn risk that includes the ability to quickly see progress on plan implementation. How are your teams addressing this common issue?

----------------

Digital CS: What is your ratio of employee:customers? What do you have in place to support this?

@AshleyGarza123 is curious about how you are handling a large book of business outside of communication templates in a CSP. She would like to hear about how others might be preventing a reactive process from dominating, allowing her team to be more proactive as well. How are you ensuring a large book of business is still receiving a strong CX experience?

---------------

1st Quarter Introductions

One last week for this quarter's Introduce Yourself Threa GGR has grown dramatically just in the 2 years I have been here (we have added 5,200 new members in that time!) and it can be difficult to know who else is in the community.

If you haven't taken time yet to hop on and share a bit about who you are (regardless of how long you have been here), click the link and learn about your peers and share a bit about yourself!

Content

📃Blog Post

8 Reasons Your Customer Experience Improves with a Customer Community

Higher Logic Vanilla shared a content piece that deals with the customer experience and how a community can improve it. Knowledge sharing, Support Ticket/Case deflection, 24/7 availability, product improvement are all areas that this article dives into. We know that that customer experience is important to customer loyalty (retention), and Gartner shared that 67% of customers prefer self-service. Learn how a customer community takes that customer experience to the next level.

Read more here

---------------

Customer Success Compensation Models

@Jeffrey Kushmerek shared a content piece that brings the value! There has been conversations both within GGR and outside in LinkedIn, etc. surrounding incentive-based models. This document helps you determine whether this is something that is relevant based on your teams' maturity and walks you through building a program that works.

Check it out here!

Community

Have a GGR story?

Has the GGR community inspired, helped, or impacted you? We would love to hear how! Share your story here.

_____________

Now Launched! CS Leaders Group

Are you a CS Leader who has been missing the ability to connect directly with other leaders? GGR hears you and wants to help. In this new group, members are vetted before being allowed to join, ensuring that you 1) know that you are talking directly to peers, and 2) have conversations that are not part of the entire GGR membership (your conversations are private!)

If this is something that you would benefit from, take a moment to fill out a quick form so we can review your request and get you in this private area within GGR! Access the form here.

Member Highlights

Welcome to Our New Members!

@himanshu @ryantessier @keertijeeva @Lois @csouza14 @NatalieMC @Kath_APAC_TB @tedfostermusic @nicotec @IlyaKiselev @alisonkulkarni @Tia @Esther Ita @Caterina @Amber91 @laura.buchholz @Ciara Kansiime @jhsuccess @Adrian @ashleyconway

Congratulations to all of our Members Moving Up the Ranks!

Navigator

@Arun Nair @himanshu @Eric Cheshier @pclore1225 @todd.smith @IlyaKiselev @Amber91 @jhsuccess @Adrian

Seeker

@Diane Gordon @Allastair Meffen

Celebrating Anniversaries!

1st Year

@pclore1225 @dhija01 @soniyaj

2nd Year

@phenry93 @Diane Ratigan @alane189 @Cinthia Silva @RonaldFLiu @Craig Myers @tsmeallie

3rd Year

@William @Eric Cheshier @matmoody @ngwarren @shuts

Keith P

Great Week Heather! I particularly enjoyed 8 Reasons...blog by Nick from Higher Logic! It is a fantastic breakdown of the value online communities bring to the customer experience! I especially like the point about customer advocacy. Empowered customers who feel they have a voice are much more likely to become vocal brand promoters.

Kudos on the week!

Heather Wendt

Thanks @Keith P - I completely agree that community supports the identification and nurture of advocates...something every company is looking to utilize...really appreciate your feedback on this!