3 Most Important CS Strategic Issues dollar for dollar in 2021

Just curious what the feeling is here at this current moment.

Currently in 2021, from purely the point of view of retaining the most customers and revenue, dollar for dollar what would be the most strategic things to invest in or do?

What would be your top 3?

How would you rank them?

Scaling with Automation (increasing capacity?)
CS operations?
Proving Value?
Charging for Customer Success Services?
Customer Education?

Others?

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Comments

Sean Wilkes

Important point that you make. The RoI is hard to bring in to your thinking in early stage businesses because you often have to provide an expensive whiteglove high touch approach.

Sean Wilkes

Great insights Jessica. Supercharging CS team with data and insights from dedicated Ops function can be really powerful. Great happy customers providing fantastic references also kicks on sales growth. You can change what you are not measuring, so some of the other initiatives could result in wasted effort without the upfront investment in this.

If PS sits within CS, then charging for services is often the only way to tie the value delivered to a measurable RoI. There has to be a threshold for gaining access to a dedicated, named CS resource. But this could be a higher subscription level or a minimum ACV level, which technically results in the CS resource being "paid for". But I too am not a fan of treating CS as a paid for function. Increased revenues and reduced churn is how the costs of this function get covered. Great happy customers providing fantastic references also kicks on sales growth which contributes to the internal value calculations.

Morgan Pottruff

@Srikrishnan Ganesan think I see a pattern emerging! Really appreciate your perspective, and its interesting how the order is different for a startup!

Pam Micznik

All companies put Customer Education first. But, Customer Education can be loosely defined. It is only in the later stages, that companies can pay for first rate Customer Education, and then it is a business accelerator.

I created a Customer Education Roadmap as a graphic way to understand where CEd comes in. Feedback is always welcomed.

Srikrishnan Ganesan

We are a very early stage product (about to launch). So right now our top 3 for the year would be:

1. Customer Education - Ensuring every customer is set-up for success through a 5-star onboarding process so we can ensure proper adoption

2. Proving Value - working closely with these initial customers to showcase ROI and make them "case study worthy"

3. Establishing our playbooks and the CS function itself.

If I think about my previous stint, where I was handling a mature business (Freshchat @ Freshworks), my top 3 would have been:

1. CS Operations

2. Proving Value

3. Customer Education

Josh Rosenthal

Well-said and completely agree with your list, @Jessica Carroll.
Once the (1) #operations are in place and (2) value calculations are available and as automated as possible, it's time to focus on (3) #CustomerEducation as part of your #adoption strategy. Lower the viscosity of high-touch customers by offering as many options for #self-service as possible across multiple mediums.

Morgan Pottruff

Thank Jessica. I completely agree with your take,especially on the Customer Education front. I know the people folks in the Customer Education world would agree too, there seems to be a sentiment out there that SaaS companies tend not to prioritize Customer Education they way they should. Do you agree?

Do you think automation makes sense (or do you think like charging for services, it undermines what Customer Success actually does?)

Jessica Carroll

Morgan, I would say 1st, CS operations. There is no doubt that if done properly, the CS discipline is the catalyst for growth within current accounts. And a sub-set of that is the 2nd strategic item, Proving Value. Your customer will have patience with the warm and fuzzy feeling of CS for only so long, before clear value is demonstrated (value in the customer's eyes). Third, I would say is Customer Education. We know that the more the customer understand the product, the more value they can gain.

I am 100% not a fan of charging for CS services - my belief is that you gain the trust of the customer because you are NOT sales, and you are NOT asking to take from them "theoretically." Keeping CS agnostic and focused on the best interests of the customer is how they win, and ultimately your business should grow from this loyal and beneficial relationship.

Jessica