Data. For a business, it is like oxygen – we need it to make good decisions, drive our strategy, and to survive. As a Customer Success team data is used to determine the health of our customers. But our data is valuable for other teams as well and can be used to help formulate plans and identify opportunities.
Unfortunately, this can also be an area of frustration as customer data and insights can live on various platforms that often do not talk to each other well. This means that information can become very compartmentalized, each source giving a partial view that may not be accurate or may take a lot of resources to combine into actional insights.
This is the focus of our Gain Grow Retain Office Hours led by Anita Toth.
Driving Innovations
Shared data and KPIs help align goals. For example, using retention metrics can help the sales team identify good fit customers. One CS team was able to help redefine the ICP using this data to show that moving outside of this focus led to most retention issues.
There is a need to clarify what CS is/does. This education must happen first to move into a collaborative space. The holistic view that CS often has to offer can help broaden the focus for other teams. CS teams are the glue and face of both customer (to company) and of company (to customer), bringing insights that other teams do not have.
How can you help teams daily to help increase the awareness about the value that can be shared?
Sales
- Drawing clear lines between activities/engagement and retention/revenue is a valuable discussion to have with the Sales team, especially when focused on predictive indicators.
- Identification of Advocates through conversations and interactions.
Marketing
- How can segmentation based on customer behaviors improve marketing messages?
- Thought leadership content sharing.
Account Managers
- Share information that allows opportunities for expansion plays to be successfully applied.
Other Departments (Support, Product, Customer Education, etc)
- Conversations, data usage, surveys, and other interactions that can help identify friction points or gaps to be solved.
- Reasons for churn are often known by the CS team due to conversations.
- Time to value with new functionality.
- Time to activation information.
Barriers of Insights
Often the information being brought to teams is negative (what isn’t working well) which can color the intent. It is also a challenge to tell an impactful story with the data to overcome any feelings of being ‘picked on’. The lack of data science discipline and experience can create a situation where either the data just doesn’t apply or can feel like a search to find a scapegoat when things aren’t going well.
It can be difficult to wade through all of the data and identify what is most important to each group. Often the data isn’t clear on causation or correlation, making it feel like guess work and undermining the importance that is there.
It can also be challenging to help other teams see that the information isn’t there to showcase failures but to drive changes that improve the customer experience. Building trust is necessary to move into a space where the aligned goals are being scrutinized to identify areas that can be strengthened and improved. Problems identified and solutions created so it is a team effort.
Conclusion
It is important to adapt metrics as the company grows to emphasize a customer-centric approach to outcomes. Being able to customize these outcomes and allow customers to help identify their ROI Is important to customer satisfaction. There is a lot of value in aligning the customer and company perspectives on what metrics help identify the effectiveness of programs and products. These insights can drive better outcomes for both the customer and the company.
When implementing new processes, it is important to note that there is value in testing new workflows or strategies with a smaller subset of customers before rolling them out to the entire customer base to make sure you catch and identify issues early on.
