What is the biggest challenge your working on over the next 30 days?

1. Finishing hiring 4 more CSM's (7/13 start date) in addition to 1 who just started on June 1st
2. Onboarding this new team
3. Rolling out a new Customer Communication Cadence/Journey plan by Tier
4. Not losing my mind! 

Great topic!  We are focused on: 

1. Finalizing our Client Journey Map and onboarding process, 

2. Setting up Business Review framework

3. Creating a Client Advisory Board structure and plan

4. Surviving

Yes. We included several questions about trust and credibility in our employee engagement surveys. We provide every people manager with an Employee Engagement Score and published our leadership trust score.

For the next 30 days, my priorities are:

1. Taking care of my people as they are in a state of rapid change, with a lot of tough hardships and realities going on in the world, working fully virtually
2. Navigating my product & development teams through a merger integration of two $1B+ SaaS companies as the integration priorities start to become clearer
3. Building some new product experiences that help employers understand the security, safety and needs of their workforce during times of crisis 
4. Creating a business case for 2021 to make product investments in the highest revenue retention risk areas of our product 

We're doing the same. The challenge was for CS to highlight the 'top problems' which we document as notes inside of a tool called Product Board (expensive - may not be worth it but its decent) that helps give some kind of an impact score per feature that can be used as a dialogue for product to hear from CS about which problems are most important.

If anything is not adequately captured in product board we try to have a meeting in which we capture those, although there is recency bias in there. 

Our product prioritization framework takes into account our particular company objectives relating to which segments we want to tackle, in addition to which dev resources are available, and lastly which features are 'must have' that need any bugs fixed so they can operate at a par level, in addition to what's been coming up lately per CS's feedback. 

In short, the balance between 'urgent customer issues' and 'achieving feature milestones' is key

For the next 30 days my three biggest priorities are:

1. Finish sending out our NPS survey and outreach program. I am pulsing out the survey and have sent out about 1100 and have another 1100 to go. The program I am using allows customers to schedule a call with me if they would like to discuss anything, this has been a great way to connect and get a pulse on how our customers are doing. Even a couple of customers that scored us a "10" have scheduled a call just to let me know how happy they are.
2. Complete the onboarding process overhaul. One of the biggest pain points that was identified when I came onboard with Sierra Interactive back in December was the experience that the customers were having while in  implementation. There was no one point of contact and they were confused with who to work with. Project managers were not good responding back to them and customers were wanting to quit before they actually got started. I have created a new process where they have one point of contact who is the liaison between the customer and the project managers, this is mixed with the use of automation that helps the customers to go through the steps of the set up, do their part and then check-in with their onboarding specialist. We have been testing the process and tweaking it along the way. Now we are tracking the amount of time that is spent on each customer so we can gage capacity. Currently we are using this with influential customers only but we are hoping to expand to all customers in the next few months.
3. The next priority is to complete the journey mapping of the Success team and implement a low-touch with a hi-touch feel for our customer success program.

The next 30 days will be spent thinking about and implementing a strategy to make sure my team (and my customers) come out of COVID madness ahead of the pack. 

This is our chance to pass the competition - going into the curve is where weaker competitors wipe out. Coming out of the curve is where you pass more conservative competitors.

We pivoted fast enough not to be affected (yet!) by the shift in markets - we need to capitalize on the momentum and pick up the pace even further. 

No rest for the weary

@Cameron Marijosius I'd be really curious to hear a) what data they thought was good enough that wasn't and b) what your process for coming to that conclusion was

Statistically significant indicators of health are so hard to qualify, we're in the same challenging boat

Rebuilding our entire Customer Success Engineering onboarding and enablement program

Hopefully only 90 days.

No standard version mocked. I am in a discovery flow right now where I am taking every feature and classifying/organizing them.

With our product being robust, I am choosing to do a modifiable journey map based on static phases that can be reordered while still maintaining an optimal value progression.

Whiteboard sessions and workshops. I am even working with a shadow who is learning through my thought processes.

Spring cleaning our CS platform. Clearing old plays, segments, scores, alerts, tags, etc.

Love this prompt. 

1) Closing out remaining Q2 Renewals (6 contracts to go)
2) Getting go/no go for cross sell opportunities, finish Q2 pipeline and push others to Q3
3) June webinar planning: get demo ready, iron out the script, practice
4) Record updated training videos; goal is to get a process for a quarterly updated training recording
5) Finalize our on-boarding email campaign for new users based on their job titles

All gotta be done by 6/30!

I have a lot on the go at the moment.

1. Working with clients to help them map out and implement improved customer experience strategies
2. Working with my editor on the manuscript for my book about customer centric innovation
3. Developing an on-line game to help businesses be more innovative (while having some fun)
4. Turning my CCI Assessment for businesses into a more robust tool with analytics and automated recommendations based on the results

Happy to be a part of this great group!

Sounds like we're in the same boat!

We're a marketplace instead of a SAAS, but we do have a new subscription plan for purchasing customers as well. We've built out two main sub-scores, Financial Health made up of how much and how frequently clients are spending, and Product Adoption on the self-service platform. There are other bits and pieces we're throwing in for now too (like dual usage of both self-service and full-service offerings, whether they're subscribed to our new subscription plan, support tickets etc) but those are the pillars.

How about yourself?

@Cameron Pocock and @Gabriel Fallas it seems like we are all in the same boat.  

I started in my role in mid March and when I joined the team had established a "version one" of a Health Score that was to be rolled out in Q2 and would be manual until we were able to automate it into Salesforce in Q3/Q4.  With COVID we put this project on the back burner but it has resurfaced this week.  I have just started to revisit the metrics that were selected for V1 and I'm finding that the team built the Health Score based on available data and not necessarily the best data to indicate customer health.  

I would be interested in hearing how each of you are selecting your metrics and if you might be dealing with data that isn't readily available that would make your score more complete.  

Layoffs (Yikes). We let go most of our Support Team. How does this impact our CSM team? Most of them have been promoted internally and carry with them most of the skills and knowledge to perform support at a high level.

The big issue? Helping balance CSM & Support responsibilities without making sure to take a back step in either team. 

We have a "version one" of our customer health score done in SalesForce. Our challenge over the next month is making a plan for how we action on the health score, and making adjustments to how things are weighted and measured for better accuracy. It's a lot but definitely exciting! 

@Cameron Pocock it seems I'm about 3 - 6 weeks behind you. 

I have version one nearly completed, but only in a template format. I'm initially creating a manual health-score with just a handful of clients, which I will then present to leadership to get buy-in for automated score via SalesForce. 

What metrics are you applying for the health score? Are you breaking them into buckets or combining it all together into one "macro" score?

In parallel, I'm working to formalize and executive sponsor program for our customers ( you can see a separate post on that!). To help us get the foot in the door. 

One idea that came up is to send the exec a take out dinner delivery and set up a remote dinner/lunch meeting. Or do the same with drinks.

The challenge in general is to get the exec to respond to contact, which is what we are hoping with exec sponsor project. 

Hi Effie! We're also looking into how we go about executive level relationships. We've been trying to brainstorm any tech touches that could be appropriate in addition to personal relationships. Any ideas?

In my startup so far we've been relying on high-touch customer success only. However, we are growing at tremendous rates and we finally reached the point where further development of our engagement touch model is a necessity and a priority. Hence why my biggest challenge in the last 30 days was to draft, review and establish a tech-touch model to allow us to scale our ways of working. However, we want to make sure that we deliver the best possible value to the clients in that segment, so my challenge will flow into the next 30 days as well, while evaluating and continuously improving the new process. 

@Jeff Breunsbach 

My top Priority over the next 30 days :

Establishing a Prioritisation Methodology of Product Enhancements and Defects so we ensure our Engineering team only works on our most urgent customer issues. 

Or simply put, how do we help our Product Managers prioritise engineering work. I want Customer Success to prioritise (to a large extent) which defects / new features we bring to Product, rather than just "fling" everything into them. We (as a business) only have so much Engineering Resource so CS has to play its part in the CS to Product to Engineering cycle. 

Our intended Outcome is that Engineering can plan better which leads our business achieving our Product Roadmap timelines which leads to greater adoption which drives more successful outcomes for our customers. 

This is pure Process / Operational Re-Engineering work. It is a long term play.

Biggest challenge by far is establishing relationships with exec level contacts. Our CS model is very high ARR and therefore high touch. Exce by in and contact is important, and also a KPI. Pre corona, the relationship could be established by an in person meeting and schmoozing with dinner and drinks ( I know, makes us sound like floozies).

Contact is kept up by EBRs, "Pop -ins" when traveling to other customers ( we'll be in your neighborhood) or conference meetups. Without that initial in-person contact those high level execs are hard to contact and get that relationship going. This is one of the challenges I'm focusing on right now. 

This is a great topic @Jeff Breunsbach  - you should keep posting it every 30 or 60 days.

I've been suffering from trying to do much at the same, instead of tackling projects in a more organized manner. I'm the first "CS" hire at the company I work for so everywhere I look there's opportunity for process improvement. Last week I finally came to my senses and realized I was spreading myself too thin and began creating a CS Roadmap for 2020.

 These are the two side projects that ended up as top priority for this month:
 

Essentially, complete all essential phases of our Salesforce CRM migration and finalize our customer segmentation process.

This is added to my two high priority projects from the executive team which are to 1) run point on some of our COVID-19 policies/initiatives and 2) on-board an additional 60 clients by the end of the month (currently I got about 90  in the pipeline).

Help center is a great initiative - can help alleviate some of the engagement that CSMs may be getting from customers. 

Love that you have this type of survey internally Matt.  

@Ziv Peled @Peter Lyon @David L Ellin curious if you measure any Leadership Trust similar to Matt and can lend some discussion. 

Scott - these are awesome.  @Matt Myszkowski could share some insights on the QBR deck that he just rolled out with his team. 

@Kristi Faltorusso has some great thoughts on a success planning process as well. 

That's a great start Kevin, this seems like 90 days worth of work but it becomes valuable to the business. 

To get tactical, how're you starting your customer journey work? Workshops? Do you have a standard version mocked up? 

A major focus is around how I will address feedback from our Employee Engagement Pulse survey. We are not making progress on the Leadership Trust NPS style question. Each team member will be asked "How likely is it that you will recommend your manager as a manager you trust?". I have 5 Regional Directors across EMEA all with very different scores.

Does anyone else measure Leadership Trust in their EE survey?

Being that I joined my company as the VP of CS 3-months ago and a lot has changed in the world, it's staying focused and connected to my team. 

We are working on:

1. Building out our help center documentation
2. Enhance our automated replies for support to enable CSMs to be more proactive and less reactive
3. Building our lifecycle customer marketing

These are things that we have not done before and doing it remote comes with its own challenges. I will add that I am excited to take these on as I know we will be in a better place once we launch everything.