Organizational Transition

We have a model right now that evolved as we have grown and now want to make the change to a more standard organization. We currently have Account Management responsible for renewal/upsell and Customer Success responsible for adoption success but it is messy with AMs and a lot of mixed responsibilities.

We are looking to move to a model where we have a renewals team, a CSM team and sales handles all upsells.

Has anyone made a big organizational shift like this? Any guidance or areas I should really worry about from Roles/Responsibilites to protecting the Customer Experience?

Love any thoughts!

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Comments

Ed Powers

Hi @Renee Bochman--

One of my favorite questions is "How does your organizational design facilitate the accomplishment of work?"

I've learned that the best CX designs are anchored by the customer, starting with a deep understanding of their goals, value drivers, and workflows. Then the company maps the tasks and "jobs to be done" to deliver on those customer needs and requirements. Only then does the company decide who does what, specifically which roles and functions are best suited to complete specific tasks. This is an "outside-in" approach that minimizes turf battles and politics that are inevitably part of the process.

At the appropriate time, role and organization decisions are based on:

optimum customer experience
maximum clarity of responsibility
division of labor based on required depth of skills and expertise
minimum number of handoffs
optimum span of control
minimum layers of management
minimum cost

Perhaps this approach and these criteria can help along the way.

Ori Entis

Hi Renee,

I have gone through several reorgs working closely with the sales team to determine who owns what and how to collaborate. Some things to think about:

Renewals team - are they going to be disengaged from the customer and only appear a short time before the renewal ? (if so take into account the relationship aspect or rather absence of).
Upsells - we defined a process and a spiff for the CS team for identifying and driving upsells/expansion of existing accounts, while sales took care of the actual commercials. You want to make sure both CS and sales are motivated to upsell.
Number of stakeholders - in the new model you are adding another stakeholder which can confuse the clients and also the commercial (what if you have a renewal and expansio - who deals with that?)
Renewal team - report into CS or Sales ?

I'm a strong believer in relationships and minimizing touch points, so I would consider each customer has two main stakeholders to work with: CS (al things related to product, journey and value), sales (all things related to commercials).
Hope that helps ! and happy to discuss further !
Ori Entis (I lead global CS for www.kenshoo.com till recently before starting something new).