“92% of companies that improve their CS see improved Customer Loyalty and 84% report increase in revenues.” Source” PRNewswire
Trust, Customer loyalty, and the bottom-line all benefit when brands focus on providing a streamlined customer experience. The data above proves the point. But how do we create that seamless customer experience? And most importantly, how does Customer Success fit into this picture?
As the business grows, numerous departments expand and new services emerge in your firm. But the truth remains: clients must see you as a single entity. This is why your brand’s customer experience (CX) must be connected, tailored, and seamless. Successful businesses achieve this by following three simple steps:
- Instead of using technology, lead with a personal touch.
- Identify and understand the customer
- Provide seamless customer support
Silos hinder the improvement of the CX strategy. You must ensure that all functional leaders feel a sense of ownership, ensuring that everyone in the firm is capable of analyzing and acting on data insights. Look beyond the typical CRM duties, transforming it from a system of record to a platform for better managing client relationships over time with AI (artificial intelligence) and predictive abilities.
This is where a Customer Success software gains relevance! You need a platform that lets you access data and prescribes the next best actions that you need to take. As a CSM, using this information can be a game-changer for your business.
It’s all about collecting, connecting, and scaling high-quality user data. At every step of the customer experience, it’s about bringing together cross-functional teams to own responsibilities in acquiring data and providing vital insights to enable key decision-makers to realize what customers actually need.
How does Customer Success help cross-functional teams in improving Customer Experience? A lack of knowledge and understanding about the processes, products, people, etc. creates a gap. This gap can be easily bridged through communication and effective cross-team collaboration with your Customer Success team at the hub.
Marketing
The marketing team is in charge of promoting the offerings/product across multiple platforms in order to produce a significant number of leads that will help increase revenue. While they’re working on campaigns, real-life use cases from existing customers can help add credibility to the campaigns, resulting better quality leads and lower client acquisition expenses.
Customer Success can assist the marketing team with the above activity because they already work closely with customers to achieve their company objectives. CS can help marketing with data and resources that can facilitate building customer advocates by providing:
- Data-backed ICPs (Ideal Customer Profiles).
- Testimonials for products and services
- Case studies that reflect on successful KPI accomplishment
- Webinars/Fireside conversations with existing customers’ industry experts
- Material for customers, onboarding resources, and a knowledge base
- Events
Sales
Sales is the front line of the revenue stream, connecting with potential customers and helping them to see how and why your product will help them achieve their business objectives.
At the very least, Sales and Customer Success should collaborate on the following:
- Creating a Buyer Persona for Success
- What makes a customer successful
- which of your customers have achieved their objectives, and which branches and organization sizes work best for your product?
- Who are the best and worst customers for us?
CS may share all f these attributes with Sales to assist them in better validating their leads, ensuring that the customer is not just a great fit for you, but also the ideal vendor for them.
The sales process is not the only place the CS team can be involved. What happens after the sale?
- Handoff - a lot of information is transmitted in the sales process: culture, decision-making process, communication, red flags, and so on. These insights should be shared with the SCM at all times to expand the customer’s account history
- Long-term relationship - customers that have had a favorable experience with your company and consider it to be a part of their success are more likely to generate referrals for the sales team to use!
To facilitate a smooth handover, a clear process for taking over the customer should be in place, which includes the answers to the following questions:
- A thorough business use case with quantifiable business KPIs
- Why did they decide to buy from us in the first place?
- Have they ever used anything like this before? If so, what were the constraints?
- Stakeholders engaged and the customer’s point of contact
- An order form/invoice with the details o the plan selected
- MRR/ARR
- A prospective upsell opportunity that must be addressed
Product
This collaboration is crucial for refining or enhancing the product in response to customer expectations. It also ensures that the product roadmap corresponds to the needs of the end-users.
In the following instances, the CS team can assist the product team:
- Constant product feedback
- Requests for features (general/industry-specific)
- Feedback on new features
- Customer calls on a regular basis to discuss use-cases
- According to the consumer, the most loved elements of the product are the most hated/unused/not so useful characteristics
- Bugs or issues that recur in the product or platform
Additionally, the product team must guarantee that the CS is constantly updated on the following points:
- Enhancements to the product
- Product strategy
- New Feature development timelines
- Product feature requests status
- Showcase new features
Regular meetings with the product team are necessary to guarantee that the above-mentioned points are understood with each task documented and updated with comments in terms of timelines and next actions at each meeting.
Customer Support
Customer support is responsible for resolving technological issues for customers. Customer Success can acquire useful information from help to better understand the customer’s experience:
- The number of tickets a consumer raises on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis
- Ticket service level agreements
- Total number of tickets resolved and pending
- Platform bugs that keep recurring
To grasp segment-specific information and focus on the red zones with high impact, these tickets can be segmented into plan type, industry, revenue, and region.
Key Takeaways
Considering how your work supports each of the other teams is the foundation of an efficient cross-collaboration. Havin such an approach helps in:
- Increased recurring revenue
- Decreased churn
- Improved referrals, etc.
Sales, Marketing, Product, and Customer Support will have different viewpoints and needs than you. Since you’re in a Customer Success function and have a customer-centric view supported by empathy and EQ, you the ability to make the first move towards building team connections that will strengthen the customer value across all contact points.
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Sruti Satish is a Content Marketer with CustomerSuccessBox
