Playbook for Organizational Change Centered on Customer Success
The most effective skill a Chief Customer Success Officer can have? The ability to recognize that you are not the source of answers but are there instead to bring ideas together and work out how to allow them to be implemented with the constraints you have.
To really make an impact on the Customer Success team as well as the company as a whole, it is imperative that you realize that the true power of knowing the answers and solutions to problems resides in the people who are doing the work.
So how do you move into a space where you are the ‘Guide on the Side’ rather than the source of all knowledge? Here are some practical tips:
Conversations
- Meet with as many employees as you can
- Focus on listening and getting feedback and take notes
- Meet with customers and do the same from their perspective
Trends
- Identify any themes from these conversations
- Create problem statements for each theme
Solutions
- Bring the org into the problem-solving process
- Use a google doc to track (and allow asynchronous work regardless of location) with the following sections
- Here is the issue (problem statement)
- What does ‘great’ look like to fix this issue
- What should the end result/experience look like
- What do we need to do to get to that utopia
- What can I do as CCO to help make that happen?
- Give specific time to accomplish this
- Ex. 1 hour per week for 3 weeks
- Adjust workloads to accommodate this schedule
Planning
- With entire leadership team
- Review insights
- Develop initiatives
- Keep this reasonable
- Prioritize based on what will move the needle
- Develop metrics for tracking execution
Implementation
- Assign owners
- Heads of teams that are over programs being revamped
- Those that went above and beyond due to their passion
- Utilize a volunteer program and engage the employees
- Partner to help with execution
- Shift job description so this becomes a part of their role and not an extra duty
Timelines
- Determine components of this process
- What are the broad areas of focus
- Ex. Foundation/Infrastructure Building/Scaling
- Define timeframe for each area of focus
- Set clear expectations on the timeline for each area of focus
- Set metrics for each area of focus
Communication
- Regular communication with initiative owners
- What’s working
- Where are they struggling
- What are the roadblocks
- Metrics
- Story sharing
- Regular method of communicating progress and impact to employees
- At least monthly
- Share wins and roadblocks for each initiative along with any team stories
- What do metrics look like
- Focus on impact and recognition
Adjustment
- Prioritize metric and timeline discussions as a leadership team
- Decisions on removing roadblocks
- Adjusting priorities
- Aligning impact
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This content was created from the January 9, 2023 Gain Grow Retain podcast with Wayne McCulloch, CCO at WalkMe
