Scaling Customer Success On a Budget

@William Buckingham the tools we currently use are Freshdesk for CRM and ActiveCampaign for Marketing Automation activities. We currently don't have a CS specific tool honestly speaking, so if you suggest doing a deeper research into that, I definitely will. 

Hi Kabhatia!
It all depends on how healthy your customer success team is in terms of metrics imo.
- ARR/CSM
- NDR
- Client churn rate
etc.
If the numbers are satisfactory, the real problem is not you, but the budget.

Start with digital for all customers. Map out the customer lifecycle and create a digital communication plan. I have used Gainsight and Totango. Work into those digital touch points an ability for the customer to respond, this will allow you to catch the most vulnerable customers and then have your team work according to responses. These are the customers that need help the most. High ARR customers may also get a monthly scheduled account review with an assigned CSM.

It's tough when resources are limited but a fairly effective and strategic use of resources and ability to address customer needs can be achieved using an almost all digital approach with a pooled CSM customer assignment. The myth is it must be one to one and follow a traditional playbook or that digital will be less than or less effective. 

I am happy to talk if you have questions! 

kabhatia, but also think about customer tiering to ensure you provide the right level of service for each customer based on their subscription. Other questions to consider: Are there things I can push to the customer to do? Can we optimize the platform to automate in-app? Are there things we can charge a premium for? All fun possibilities.

kabhatia, but also think about customer tiering to ensure you provide the right level of service for each customer based on their subscription. Other questions to consider: Are there things I can push to the customer to do? Can we optimize the platform to automate in-app? Are there things we can charge a premium for? All fun possibilities.

Before thinking of tooling I'd take a look at activities and processes you have today -

• How do they map onto your Customer journey? Do some activities naturally occur together?
• What are your desired outcomes for each activity?
• How is the activity performed today? (is their consistency in how the team tackles each one?, does one method have a better outcome than another? or is more time efficient?)
• As Dianaj27 said - look for where there's repeatability and consider options to innovate: a webinar, an onboarding meeting, a FAQ doc, built in data extraction? Where does the human add value?

Then start thinking about your desired state:

• Are these activities what you want your CSMs to spend their time on?
• What's the goal for your team? Cover more customers for these activities? expand / shift where they spend time? 

Like @William Buckingham said, it would be great to know what tools you have. My first thought is that you should check out what your team is doing that can be automated. For example, if "Sign Up Conversion Follow Up" is generally sending the same email every time, you could set that up to go automatically.

Hi @kabhatia

I think it would be helpful to know the following so we can better answer your question:

1. Does your company currently use a CRM tool (i.e. SalesForce, Hubspot)?  If so, which CRM?
2. Do you currently use a CS Specific tool (i.e. Gainsight, ChurnZero, Client Success, etc.?
   
3. Any other tools currently using in your practice? 

Understanding your current resources is likely going to help us best understand what that next efficiency could be.   

Hi Mukhtar, mainly from a volume of activities perspective. Our team has 5 people only and we want to be more proactive, but then we realise the tasks per person is too much for a team of our size, yet we don't have the budget to increase it right now. That's basically what I want to figure out.

Hi kabhatia,

I'd love to know how you are currently managing the actions and takeaways that comes from your CS Activities?

Any particular tools you use that you are struggling to scale etc?

Thanks,
Mukhtar