Building low/tech touch CS operation from 0

Yuval Danieli

Need your collective wisdom on the strategy for the best/quickest/most efficient way to build a low/tech touch CS team.
The intention is to have a PLG go to market with simple installation, and with simple tech support.
Strategy? planning? Which CS platform? Which tech support platform? 

Any help and contribution will be appreciated!
Thanks

Sara Bochino

Hi Yuval, 
We've just contracted with pendo.io and selected churnzero for our CSP to support PLG for a customer success at scale program. While tech is important, segmentation of your customer base is key. Will engagement be the same across all your tiers? Will staffing be the same across each segment? 

To me, this is the foundation and it is different at every company. Happy to talk more about this if you'd like.

James Stuart

Hi Yuval

Really simple low tech/cost-effective techniques you could use are

• Customer Webinars on specific topics
• Open office hours, A dedicated time once a week whereby customers drop in if they have any questions
• Combined with marketing, Newsletters/Marketing reports/guides giving customers information on insights, tip/tricks etc
• FAQ's and Userguides 

Hope this helps
James

Nicholas Ciambrello

Hey Yuval

If youre looking to do something in-app, theres a great new software out there called candu.ai. Check them out you're, they were built for CS teams to build their own in software banners and videos. Here you can determine for specific segments of users that perform specific actions you can trigger pop ups that drive the customer to take action.

Another great tech touch approach is something I have seen from drift with their conversational marketing. These 2 tools work great together to navigate your users to where it makes the most sense for each individual user. Theres more upfront work by using these 2 softwares BUT you can have a pretty powerful tech strategy for your users that would prefer to not talk with a human.

One last thing I have found is this webinar from Pulse 2 years back. Its from a company called 8X8 the guy talks about how he built his tech touch strategy for a very big long tail customer base. I consistently refer back to this webinar almost monthly as we work through our own tech touch strategies

https://www.gainsight.com/pulse-everywhere/tackle-your-long-tail-how-8x8-scaled-cs-through-a-holistic-tech-touch-strategy/

Jeff Heckler

Before evaluating tools, strategies, etc. - you really need to may your Customer Journey and segment your customers.
Choosing and building tools, playbooks, CSPs, automations, etc. will cause you a lot of future headaches with re-engineering, reverse engineering, wasted spend, and poorly allocated resources.
Select a Moment of Value (Moment of Truth) from your Customers' Journey that can be scaled.
Find low overhead and cost ways to automate it, maybe in a Zapier-like automation model.

@Yuval Danieli, great question, thank you for establishing the conversation.

Yuval Danieli

Nicholas, thanks for the response. highly appreciate it.
Have you had any experience with https://www.pendo.io/? it seems as candu.ai is similar (maybe even limited), isn't it?
Drift seems as a robust platform with lots of functionalities.

Will check them and the webinar. 
Thank you very much!

Yuval Danieli

Hi Mellisa, thanks for pointing me to your solution and demo (and for the spoiler...)

Yuval Danieli

Jeff,
Thank you very much for this answer. i fully agree with this point of view and actually presented it to the CEO....not sure he likes this.

@Jeff Heckler thank you for a great answer

Yuval Danieli

Hi Sara,
Thanks for listing Churnzero it seems there's a consensus in the industry about their fit for the job.
I also agree with your point of view (and Jeff's) about the need to map the journey, segmentation, and moment of truth before actually implementing the tech stack.

[Deleted User]

No problem! Here's a video of @Andrew Marks and I chatting about leveraging technology to help CS scale: Melissa Kwan: Leveraging Technology to Help Customer Success Scale

YouTube		remove preview
Melissa Kwan: Leveraging Technology to Help Customer Success Scale In this Moments of Truth interview, Melissa Kwan of eWebinar shares advice and tips for leveraging technology to allow CS teams to scale operational tasks an... View this on YouTube >

Hi @Yuval Danieli - check out eWebinar where you can automate your webinar strategy using videos. Disclaimer: I'm the cofounder of eWebinar.

Most our customers are PLG companies that are resource strapped and automate all their onboarding and training with eWebinar. Would love to share more if you're interested.

Here's a 2min video on how this solution helps scale CS efforts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOX0mwmZ8so&feature=youtu.be 

Jeff Heckler

You're most welcome, @Yuval Danieli - good luck!

Nathan Terrazas

Yuval, there's a TON you can do to implement scaled CS. My question is, what is your goal? Are you looking at your first go at CS like an MVP?

You might look at an in-app chat solution like Drift or Intercom so you can spark conversations with users in real time, track those conversations and have analytics to help score users activity. 

My advice would be, if you want to launch an a CS MVP, keep it simple and launch something that enables proactive "tech touch" reach outs and also allows your users easy access to your team to give feedback, ask for support, etc. 

Yuval Danieli

Nathan,
Thanks for the pointers. Building the function step by step makes sense (Don't try boiling the Ocean) and probably will need to be revisited continually to adapt to changes in needs and user journeys.