Where do you draw the line between automation & interaction?

Sophie Quinn

Hey guys! 

Our company is aiming to go international and is focusing on how to improve our product and processes to have more no-touch sales. How does Customer Success fit into SAAS no touch? Where do you draw the line between automation and interaction? 

There's a lot of discussion on here about creating Success Plans with customers, mapping out goals with customers, having QBR's etc.

Are these processes that you implement for all customers? Or are these mainly aimed at Enterprise level customers? 

I would love to hear how these processes are implemented for different companies and what level of interaction you have with smaller customers compared to the larger ones. 

Looking forward to hearing from you, 

Looking forward to hearing from you all, 

Andrew Szmytka

Hi Sophie, 

That will vary on your product and industry. 

I would say the highest level of touch to your point is related to Enterprise Level Customers and then you can gradually segment down - effectively adding elements of automation as the account value drops / or the strategic value lessons. 

I came across this article on the CS Leadership Community which I found useful -> https://customersuccessnetwork.com/across-the-globe-customer-success-in-10-countries/

It focuses on the fact - a single global playbook is not effective in a international setting. Whereby regional nuances need to be considered. 

For example, at my company we could automate certain processes in Australia but accounts at the same level in SE Asia - we may need to include additional touchpoints that can't be automated. 

Kindly,

Andrew

Lisa Pratt

Another way to look at it, is what is the value of the touch?  If an interaction is of low value to the organization or to the customer, those should be entirely digital.  You can also try to digitize as step 1 and then only engage higher touch resources if the customer is not taking the desired action, or when personal follow up drives significant value on an as needed basis.

Brian O'Keeffe

When there is a need for an interaction, for example an escalation or it is clear the customer is getting frustrated, targeted direct interactions can make sense. Using a pool model, where a team of CSMs are available provides the right touch at the right time worked really well. 

I worked on a team that used this model and it worked well. The CSM pool team would work the customer lifecycle, which was all digital and when needed, stop and interact directly when necessary. Many of those interactions were super simple and identified process problems, like an unclear KnowledgeBase article, or a serious festering issue like a deployment gone wrong, where we could intervened and address those issues before they became fatal to the relationship and renewal. An added bonus is it helped to identify advocates and the team that was expected to contribute the least to the advocacy program became the single greatest identifier and enrolled more than all the other CSM groups, and any other group in the organization!