How do you approach CS territory planning?

John Bosch

We've hit August and that's always been the kick-off to planning season for me.  I'm starting to think about team structure, customer tiers, and territory assignments.  I'd love to hear what others are doing in terms of the following:

Customer Segmentation:  How many tiers?  How do you determine tiers?
Territory Assignments:  Regional Considerations, tiers, skill level etc...?
Model:  High/Mid/Low/Tech Touch
Ratios:  Headcount vs Revenue Managed, Headcount vs. Number of Customers

I'm at an early stage company now but as we hit the accelerated growth curve, I'd like to have a staffing model in place that will help us simplify staffing needs (and budget requests) in 2021 based on hitting key milestones in our growth plan.   

Now I just need to build the model!  Easy right?  All help, advice, success stories, and lessons learned are welcome!

#customeroperations

Parker Chase-Corwin

Bosch - Couple of thoughts here:

1) Challenge previous assumptions on bandwidth... remote work and covid have had an impact on how much coverage you can expect from each CSM in terms of bandwidth and reach. Be sure to update your utilization and time allocation before assigning accounts.

2) If you are hitting accelerated growth, I'm imaging sales is going to be driving a lot of changes to their territory model... so will it be more important for you to preserve CSM relationships and focus on maintaining continuity, or will it be more important for you to align to account teams and partnering with the sales strategy?

3) What multi-channel ways can you leverage to augment customer engagement?  Help your CSMs with coverage with finding alternative ways to engage with customers that aren't CSM-reliant. 

4) Get super clear on ideal target customers and start with them.  If you can create a customer rating it will help you figure out where you need max coverage and where you can find alternatives (see 3 above)

Hope that helps!