A great deal has been written in the past couple of years regarding Customer Success Operations (CS Ops) and Revenue Operations (Rev Ops). The overlap of and synergies between these two organizational departments are straightforward, as they both are highly engaged in the shared goal of measuring financials. A relationship between the two is also quite beneficial, particularly when we explore how CS leaders and departments can use this shared line of communication to best suit their needs while building autonomy and authority within their respective B2B companies and inside the executive suite.
In a typical company, CS also interacts with two other teams—Product Operations (Product Ops) and People Operations (People Ops, or POPs)—that are gaining traction as they increase their viability by affecting positive change for their companies and customers.
Let’s explore these winning combinations.
#1: Customer Success + Product Operations
Customer Success is perfectly positioned to drive organizational efficiency, company-wide operational excellence, and cross-functional unity to the highest levels to achieve optimal revenue and profitability for both customer and company.
The emergence of Product Ops over the last few years, as a result of the need to unite remote workers, operationalize and automate administrative and frequently performed tasks, and govern an ever-increasing tech stack, has created valuable CS Ops collaboration opportunities. With a focus on automating traditional processes, Product Ops takes a product-centric business approach that emphasizes infrastructure empowerment to drive growth. Product Ops also shifts attention away from tactical administrative work toward people and productivity. Together, Product and CS Ops teams can deliver measurable revenue and profit gains by fostering product success and operationally, by supporting feedback loops and advocacy channels.
Why does this combination work so well? For starters, rather than being limited to SaaS, Product Ops is becoming a staple organization within all industries. This progression is not surprising, as it closely follows in the footsteps of the CS Ops explosion that we’ve experienced over the past couple of years.
What does this mean for your business?
Imagine a world within your company, where you have a 360-degree, company-wide view via internal processes, a technology engine, and a talent team that can give you, your leaders, your C-suite, and your board…
Actionable metrics to measure, track, benchmark, and compare:
✓ Customer interviews
✓ External reviews (Reddit, G2, etc.)
✓ Support ticket turnover rates
✓ Track usage patterns
✓ Goal completion rates
✓ Workforce productivity
✓ Forecasted retention rates
✓ Performance alignment
✓ Median time users spend completing a task
✓ Total number of interactions (clicks, form changes) it takes to get things done
✓ % of users that use three or more product features
✓ % of daily, weekly, or monthly active users that use a particular feature
✓ In-house, DIY, and third-party outsourcing comparisons
The complete unification of Product Ops with CS Ops gives you the opportunity to affect operational changes at a scale never seen before, resulting in higher customer satisfaction levels, maximized internal efficiencies, a greater employee experience, faster product development and shipped deliveries, and higher revenue and profitability yields
#2: Customer Success + People Operations
People and operations are the two most critical components of any business. People are simultaneously a company’s most valuable asset, opportunity, and expense. Operations refers to how the company delivers on its very purpose and reason for being. Combined, People Ops (POPs) makes magic. A growing organization within the HR world, POPs is a people-centric business approach that emphasizes workforce empowerment to drive growth. With a focus on automating traditional HR processes, like Product Ops, POPs shifts attention away from tactical administrative work toward people and productivity.
Like CS and Product Ops, because of its ability to drive efficiencies and revenue growth, POPs has exploded in popularity in the past two years. Companies are realizing that when they combine their POPs with CS Ops functions, they create significant opportunities to foster employee success—a long-time CS driver—to realize measurable gains in revenues and profits.
Just as the marriage of CS and Product Ops offers, combining POPs and CS Ops can provide you and your leadership:
Actionable metrics to measure, track, benchmark, and compare:
✓ Time to productivity
✓ Voluntary & involuntary turnover rates
✓ Hiring costs
✓ Training expenses
✓ Workforce expense details
✓ Time-to-hire
✓ Employee engagement details
✓ Workforce productivity
✓ Forecasted retention rates
✓ Performance alignment
✓ Salary benchmarking
✓ Benefits benchmarking
✓ Peer cost benchmarks
✓ In-house, DIY, and third-party outsourcing comparisons
The complete unification of People Ops with CS Ops gives organizations the opportunity to affect operational changes at an unprecedented scale, resulting in higher employee satisfaction, maximized internal efficiencies, greater customer experience, and higher revenue and profitability yields.
In conclusion, by working cross-functionally with your colleagues in other operations units within your organization, you can build new partnerships and drive efficiencies that will result in new and expanded profits for you and your customers.
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Jeff Heckler is a senior Customer Success leader with over 20 years of running customer-facing revenue teams for such organizations as SAP, Accenture, and Stanford University. Jeff is the Director of Customer Success Solutions for MarketSource, Inc., a leading global provider of Sales and Customer Success innovation and solutions.
Jeff is an author, advisor, speaker, instructor, and recipient of numerous industry awards. Most recently, Jeff has been recognized as a “Top 25 Global Customer Success Influencer, 2021” (SuccessHACKER), “Top 50 Global Customer Success Influencer, 2022” (SmartKarrot), and named as “One to Watch in SaaS, 2022” (The Future of SaaS).
Jeff serves on the Board of Advisors for The Customer Success Performance Index™, the Product Advisory Board for Cast.app, and is the Principal Thought Leader – Digital CS for Practical CSM. He is also a Customer Success instructor, mentor, and coach for The Sales Impact Academy.