What is the biggest challenge your working on over the next 30 days?

Jeff Breunsbach

Let's develop a dialogue among leaders as to the biggest challenge that we're facing in the next 30 days. If you see comments that you can help with, let's start to create a thread and keep the discussion moving forward. 

My biggest challenge: Launching an online community that can be valuable, actionable and impactful for customer success leaders. 

Rich Watson

Jeff, great dialogue. 

The most significant thing I'm working on from a CS perspective - re-mapping the customer journey in partnership with sales operations. It's a massive cross-functional task - but I feel each stage of scale / growth requires you to re-visit this.  

Jeff Breunsbach

Such a great exercise for alignment and a way to "re-center" the organization on thinking about the customer first. What's been your method so far?  Lots of virtual 'whiteboard' sessions? 

Brian Hartley

Trying to apply a methodology to help us understand if we have an appropriate CSM/Customer ratio.  Thanks to @Shari Srebnick and @Kristi Faltorusso sharing their insights, my challenge isn't as daunting.

Jeff Breunsbach

That's awesome @Brian Hartley - what's your approach thus far? 

Brian Hartley

Trying to incorporate the top down/bottom up analysis that Shari mentioned.   She shared the link below which has been helpful.  Also looking at HVAs and activities in general to try to quantify where CSMs are spending time across their segments.  Trying to understand the appropriate benchmark of ARR per CSM.  Lot of different takes online, trying not to get swallowed up...paralysis by analysis!

https://www.thesuccessleague.io/blog/2018/11/6/when-to-hire-your-next-csm?rq=hiring%20model

Kevin Mitchell Leonor

Where do I start?

1. Creating a customer journey map for RingCentral
2. Piloting the program with a few CSMs to gain feedback and buy-in
3. Department wide launch

Then I also have:

1. Documenting a repeatable process for how I created the journey
2. Improving on processes where I can
3. Developing a methodology for measuring value based prioritization

Lastly,

1. Create a playbook for this process to be able to implement as a Customer Success consultant for companies looking to standardize a Customer Journey.
2. Uncover effective layering strategies to make the journey more dynamic, actionable, and informative

Okay so maybe this will all be longer than 30 days, but these are all top of mind for me right now aside from even managing success for 4M in accounts.

 

Kevin Mitchell Leonor

Hey Rich, would love to get on a call with you to share processes.

Rich Watson

@Jeff Breunsbach I find that smaller group sessions with each business unit to comb through existing process is the first step. Folks are much more 'honest' in 1:1 settings. From there, we will expand the group. All the while, I'm keeping my executive team counterparts aware of the progress until we ultimately have a large sign-off and implementation meeting. 

Scott Smith

Over the next 30 I will be working on drafting a new success planning process as well as refining the QBR template that is used by the org. I fully expect that the biggest challenge will be around transparency... 

Since this is for the company's top tier account, will the leadership team open up and be transparent in providing the full history with this customer (good and bad)?

Will the customer also provide the same transparency around their previous pain points, future goals and strategies? 

Jeremy Donaldson

I'm right there with you @Scott Smith  with Success plans, specifically easy to replicate objective specific success plans that can be quickly be built out in mass for all customers as a phase 1 than revised in phase 2 and 3, etc.

Jeffrey Nadeau

Being that I joined my company as the VP of CS 3-months ago and a lot has changed in the world, it's staying focused and connected to my team. 

We are working on:

1. Building out our help center documentation
2. Enhance our automated replies for support to enable CSMs to be more proactive and less reactive
3. Building our lifecycle customer marketing

These are things that we have not done before and doing it remote comes with its own challenges. I will add that I am excited to take these on as I know we will be in a better place once we launch everything.

Matt Myszkowski

A major focus is around how I will address feedback from our Employee Engagement Pulse survey. We are not making progress on the Leadership Trust NPS style question. Each team member will be asked "How likely is it that you will recommend your manager as a manager you trust?". I have 5 Regional Directors across EMEA all with very different scores.

Does anyone else measure Leadership Trust in their EE survey?

Jeff Breunsbach

That's a great start Kevin, this seems like 90 days worth of work but it becomes valuable to the business. 

To get tactical, how're you starting your customer journey work? Workshops? Do you have a standard version mocked up? 

Jeff Breunsbach

Scott - these are awesome.  @Matt Myszkowski could share some insights on the QBR deck that he just rolled out with his team. 

@Kristi Faltorusso has some great thoughts on a success planning process as well. 

Jeff Breunsbach

Love that you have this type of survey internally Matt.  

@Ziv Peled @Peter Lyon @David L Ellin curious if you measure any Leadership Trust similar to Matt and can lend some discussion. 

Jeff Breunsbach

Help center is a great initiative - can help alleviate some of the engagement that CSMs may be getting from customers. 

Gabriel Fallas

This is a great topic @Jeff Breunsbach  - you should keep posting it every 30 or 60 days.

I've been suffering from trying to do much at the same, instead of tackling projects in a more organized manner. I'm the first "CS" hire at the company I work for so everywhere I look there's opportunity for process improvement. Last week I finally came to my senses and realized I was spreading myself too thin and began creating a CS Roadmap for 2020.

 These are the two side projects that ended up as top priority for this month:
 

 

Essentially, complete all essential phases of our Salesforce CRM migration and finalize our customer segmentation process.

This is added to my two high priority projects from the executive team which are to 1) run point on some of our COVID-19 policies/initiatives and 2) on-board an additional 60 clients by the end of the month (currently I got about 90  in the pipeline).

Effie Mansdorf

Biggest challenge by far is establishing relationships with exec level contacts. Our CS model is very high ARR and therefore high touch. Exce by in and contact is important, and also a KPI. Pre corona, the relationship could be established by an in person meeting and schmoozing with dinner and drinks ( I know, makes us sound like floozies).

Contact is kept up by EBRs, "Pop -ins" when traveling to other customers ( we'll be in your neighborhood) or conference meetups. Without that initial in-person contact those high level execs are hard to contact and get that relationship going. This is one of the challenges I'm focusing on right now. 

Peter Lyon

@Jeff Breunsbach 

My top Priority over the next 30 days :

Establishing a Prioritisation Methodology of Product Enhancements and Defects so we ensure our Engineering team only works on our most urgent customer issues. 

Or simply put, how do we help our Product Managers prioritise engineering work. I want Customer Success to prioritise (to a large extent) which defects / new features we bring to Product, rather than just "fling" everything into them. We (as a business) only have so much Engineering Resource so CS has to play its part in the CS to Product to Engineering cycle. 

Our intended Outcome is that Engineering can plan better which leads our business achieving our Product Roadmap timelines which leads to greater adoption which drives more successful outcomes for our customers. 

This is pure Process / Operational Re-Engineering work. It is a long term play.

Silvia Yancheva

In my startup so far we've been relying on high-touch customer success only. However, we are growing at tremendous rates and we finally reached the point where further development of our engagement touch model is a necessity and a priority. Hence why my biggest challenge in the last 30 days was to draft, review and establish a tech-touch model to allow us to scale our ways of working. However, we want to make sure that we deliver the best possible value to the clients in that segment, so my challenge will flow into the next 30 days as well, while evaluating and continuously improving the new process. 

Patrick Kalie

Hi Effie! We're also looking into how we go about executive level relationships. We've been trying to brainstorm any tech touches that could be appropriate in addition to personal relationships. Any ideas?

Effie Mansdorf

In parallel, I'm working to formalize and executive sponsor program for our customers ( you can see a separate post on that!). To help us get the foot in the door. 

One idea that came up is to send the exec a take out dinner delivery and set up a remote dinner/lunch meeting. Or do the same with drinks.

The challenge in general is to get the exec to respond to contact, which is what we are hoping with exec sponsor project. 

Gabriel Fallas

@Cameron Pocock it seems I'm about 3 - 6 weeks behind you. 

I have version one nearly completed, but only in a template format. I'm initially creating a manual health-score with just a handful of clients, which I will then present to leadership to get buy-in for automated score via SalesForce. 

What metrics are you applying for the health score? Are you breaking them into buckets or combining it all together into one "macro" score?

Cameron Pocock

We have a "version one" of our customer health score done in SalesForce. Our challenge over the next month is making a plan for how we action on the health score, and making adjustments to how things are weighted and measured for better accuracy. It's a lot but definitely exciting! 

Simon Cundall

Layoffs (Yikes). We let go most of our Support Team. How does this impact our CSM team? Most of them have been promoted internally and carry with them most of the skills and knowledge to perform support at a high level.

The big issue? Helping balance CSM & Support responsibilities without making sure to take a back step in either team. 

Cameron Marijosius

@Cameron Pocock and @Gabriel Fallas it seems like we are all in the same boat.  

I started in my role in mid March and when I joined the team had established a "version one" of a Health Score that was to be rolled out in Q2 and would be manual until we were able to automate it into Salesforce in Q3/Q4.  With COVID we put this project on the back burner but it has resurfaced this week.  I have just started to revisit the metrics that were selected for V1 and I'm finding that the team built the Health Score based on available data and not necessarily the best data to indicate customer health.  

I would be interested in hearing how each of you are selecting your metrics and if you might be dealing with data that isn't readily available that would make your score more complete.  

Cameron Pocock

Sounds like we're in the same boat!

We're a marketplace instead of a SAAS, but we do have a new subscription plan for purchasing customers as well. We've built out two main sub-scores, Financial Health made up of how much and how frequently clients are spending, and Product Adoption on the self-service platform. There are other bits and pieces we're throwing in for now too (like dual usage of both self-service and full-service offerings, whether they're subscribed to our new subscription plan, support tickets etc) but those are the pillars.

How about yourself?

Dennis Geelen

I have a lot on the go at the moment.

1. Working with clients to help them map out and implement improved customer experience strategies
2. Working with my editor on the manuscript for my book about customer centric innovation
3. Developing an on-line game to help businesses be more innovative (while having some fun)
4. Turning my CCI Assessment for businesses into a more robust tool with analytics and automated recommendations based on the results

Happy to be a part of this great group!

Andy Sietsema

Love this prompt. 

1) Closing out remaining Q2 Renewals (6 contracts to go)
2) Getting go/no go for cross sell opportunities, finish Q2 pipeline and push others to Q3
3) June webinar planning: get demo ready, iron out the script, practice
4) Record updated training videos; goal is to get a process for a quarterly updated training recording
5) Finalize our on-boarding email campaign for new users based on their job titles

All gotta be done by 6/30!

Dave Epperly

Spring cleaning our CS platform. Clearing old plays, segments, scores, alerts, tags, etc.