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In today’s marketplace, attracting new customers and keeping old ones have been the cornerstone of any successful business. It’s because if you succeed in helping your clients reach their goals, you also give them a reason to stay, which helps your business thrive. Thus, a lot of companies are quickly embracing this new strategy centered on helping clients flourish, called customer success. And in this blog, you will learn more about what it is, why it’s important for business, and the role of your customer success team. So let’s get started.
Understanding Customer Success And Its Importance
Customer success is a term used to describe the process of providing an exceptional experience to customers throughout their entire journey with a business. It is an approach to customer service that focuses on helping customers achieve their goals rather than just solving their problems. The ultimate goal of customer success is to ensure that customers successfully use your products or services. If you make it work, they’ll have a reason to stay and foster their relationship with your company. That reduced churn can boost sales as you also generate more leads.
However, know that your commitment goes beyond closing a deal and making them use your products. You should focus on forming a strategic partnership with customers. But “how will I be able to do that?” You may ask. Well, you must:
- Get a better understanding of your customer’s needs and goals
- Demonstrate how they can be successful in using your product
- Monitor customer journey and use their feedback to help you provide better service
To give you a better overview, let’s take a closer look at the job of your customer success team.
Key Responsibilities of Your Customer Success Team
Onboarding
Onboarding is the most crucial part of customer success. It is where you need to make a good impression on your customers. And there are two main strategies you can take for the onboarding process: one-to-many or hands-on.
A one-to-many approach involves those email campaigns, in-app onboarding, and webinar series that walk your customer through how the product works and how it can help them.
Meanwhile, a hands-on approach is more of doing kick-off calls with each new customer checking out your products and services. For each interaction, your success team must create an implementation plan that outlines their needs and expectations.
When choosing your approach, always consider your team size and ability to scale. It would be difficult to use the hands-on strategy if you have a small team that caters to a growing number of customers. On the other hand, having a large team can cost you a lot if you’re just starting your business.
Regardless, as soon as your customers begin paying, ensure your team instructs them on best practices and which features of the product will benefit them the most. This way, your customers know what’s coming as they start building a relationship with your company.
Help in Customer Support
While you have your customer support team dealing with the “my product is broken” type of tickets, your success team still plays a significant role in this task. Initially, the customer success team answers questions that start with “how to.” These how-to questions are essentially related to product adoption, which is crucial to get new prospects on board.
However, occasionally, your success team may still receive reactive inquiries. And since winning customers’ trust and loyalty is the success team’s mantra, they must still answer these concerns. But if it’s too technical or out of their scope, they must hand it over to the department that specializes in the customer’s issue.
Finding Opportunities To Upsell
This is a common strategy salespeople from the supermarket do to increase the value of the customer’s initial purchase. However, knowing how most sales clerks you encounter offer unrelated items, your success team should do it the right way. They must first assess the customer’s needs from their purchase. Then, start positioning new solutions and upselling. It can be an offer of a better version of the product or additional products related to the purchases.
For instance, a customer buys a laptop. Your success team could suggest upgrades such as additional memory or a larger hard drive. They could also offer accessories such as a laptop stand, a mouse, or a carrying case. By providing these options, the customer success team helps increase the value of the customer’s purchase.
Monitoring Customer Health Score
A data-driven business has more advantage than those who do not look at statistics when it comes to making better decisions. Thus, proactively monitoring customer health scores is crucial because it will guide your success team to understand consumers’ experiences and know if they’re at risk of churn. While the scoring system may vary, you usually calculate it based on the product/service usage, login metrics, and reviews. It serves as an excellent indicator of the customer’s tendency to renew or leave.
Sharing Insights To The Right Teams
No one knows your customers better than your customer success team. Thus, after they see feedback and identify areas of improvement from it and the health score, they must connect with the appropriate department to address these concerns. For instance, if the issue is specifically about the product’s features, your success team must share the insights with the product and engineering team. That way, they can fix the bugs and other issues as quickly as possible. Additionally, doing it may provide them with some spots for innovations that the company has not yet considered.
Assist In Renewals
Renewals are critical as it also means a reduced churn rate. Given this, your success teams must proactively reach out to customers before their renewal date to improve retention. They should discuss customer experiences and see if you need to make changes to the product or service. Additionally, they should provide renewal options and help them make the best decision for the situation. That way, you ensure that their needs and goals have been met and that they are satisfied with the product or service.
Help Your Business Grow With Customer Success
Customer success is a strategy that can help get any business off the ground. Because by providing customers with the support they need to get the most out of your products/services, you also build their loyalty and trust. As a result, you improve retention, which leads to increased sales and revenue.
Moreover, customer success also promotes customer satisfaction. If you get more positive reviews, your brand may create a buzz that would generate more leads, allowing your business to grow. So, start building a customer success team now, and watch as your business thrives as time goes by.
