Hi all - we're (finally!) building out lifecycle tracking for customers in Salesforce after the initial close.
We're starting off fairly broad since we have quite a bit to go with our SFDC build-out, but curious where customer stage design has gone well / been problematic for others that we can learn from.
Here's how we're thinking about it so far:
- Deliver: implementation (3-6 months) against SOW + first QBR
- Adopt: target 90-day program to drive value. Exit criteria include hitting baselines for customer health + complete set of stakeholder engagement activities.
- Optimize: lots of variability here at the moment. We have multi-year contracts, so assuming delivery and adoption go to plan, we could be in this stage for ~2+ years. We plan to monitor customer health + define key activities throughout (and expansion opps can be opened in parallel), but any challenges you foresee with this long of a stage? Does it lose it's meaning?
- Contract: negotiate order form terms with business and/or procurement depending on customer type.
A bit about our customers/contract cycles:
- Working with financial services primarily
- Initial contract term typically is 3-5 years
- Legacy contracts had auto-renewals so the renewal event wasn't much of an event, but with new customers, we're moving to a model where new order forms will be written up for subsequent periods
- I think this will be beneficial for securing multi-year renewals, but curious if others have had issues with this leading to churn
- Switching costs are high so customers would have to be prepared in advance, but that doesn't mean there's no risk
Borrowing from this post on dashboards (
Customer Success Leadership Community), we're thinking we can get more granular with renewal stages (initiated, proposed, negotiating, etc.), but maybe there's a better way to incorporate that in the overall stages?
Look forward to hearing how others are tackling this!
