Customer Required Attention - Quantitative Measurement

Jeremie Halimi

Hi all, 
My first post in the community ;-)

In my company, today we're assigning CSMs to new signed accounts based on a mix of parameters such as  ARR, Region, Vertical, Industry, Product-Expertise.
But we are realizing that none of these parameters would actually reflect the amount of time/attention that particular customer needs/requires.

So my question is:
Are you giving a "Customer Attention Score" to each customer, in order to assess how much time consuming it is?
It might definitely be handy when assigning CSMs to customer.

And if the answer is yes:
- How is it done ?
- Which parameters are you taking into account ?
- How frequently this score is reviewed ?
- Do you have clear boundaries with customers that are demanding too much?

As stated by a CSM in my team: "The # of customers doesn't matter. I'll just spread my attention and the level of proactiveness differently depending on it".
Should it be the case ? Or should we create a list of actions that should be done by a CSM in order to reach the 100% for each customer?

A bit long, so thank you if you got to here ;-) Your feedback will be highly appreciated ! 

Ed Powers

@Jeremie Halimi, I've also found some accounts are 'needier' than others, regardless of their renewal risk. In a past life it totaled 15-20% of accounts, so it's not insignificant. We did factor this into our CSM loading, but somewhat informally, arriving at an optimal account ratio that included the few that would naturally require more attention. 

Another thing we learned is that CSMs don't always know how to set and manage boundaries, as you note. CSMs want to say yes and help everyone, but it's easy to train customers to get into the habit of choosing the path of least resistance. Soon the CSM is taking care of everything--support, custom reporting, special favors, etc.

Behavioral economics can help in this case. It turns out that if you want people to create a healthy habit, lower the friction, but if you want them to break a bad one, raise the friction. One handy trick is the 'qualified yes.'  Rather than immediately respond to everything with "Sure, I'll look into that right away," teach CSMs to reply with the conditions under which they can say yes and offer customers a choice. For example, "Yes, I can get to that Friday afternoon. But if you'd like that issue addressed right away, remember we have a terrific Customer Support team. Here's the contact info..." Notice the CSM didn't flatly say 'no' which creates a bad customer experience. Instead they raised the level of friction, which in turn directed the customer to choose a different option. Eventually the contact will learn and modify their habits. The 'qualified yes' takes some practice, but it works remarkably well and helps set boundaries without lowering customer satisfaction. 

Hope that helps! 

Ed