Congratulations! You’ve made the decision to start a Customer Success department at your B2B SaaS company. Isn’t it because you want your customers to get more out of your product? So, where should you begin? In other words, with a Customer Success strategy. As you gain some experience, optimize your customer success plan.
What is a Customer Success Plan? Why is it important?
It can be a tremendous task to build a customer success plan when you hire your first Customer Success Manager. Because this is your first time, deciding what you’ll work on can be a daunting undertaking. So you begin by defining what customer success means to your company.
A customer success plan is a road map that your customer success team will follow to meet specific objectives. But it’s not only about figuring out what customers want or need. This strategy is critical in the following areas:
- Reducing Churn
- Achieving customer outcomes at lesser costs
- Demonstrating value to your customers,
- Generating predictable revenue,
- Increasing recurring revenue, and
- Turning customers into advocates.
How do you create a Customer Success plan?
The first step is to figure out what your customer’s ultimate goal is. It’s critical to match your value proposition to the expectations of your customers. Create a path map, set customer success KPIs, align your cross-functional teams, select the right tools, and establish a robust feedback loop.
Check out the 90-Day Customer Success Plan Template, which outlines what, when, and how to execute your customer success strategy. The first 90 days are divided into 30, 60, and 90-day plans. This will ensure that a new Customer Success Manager’s or customer’s first 90 days are productive. We’ll assume you’ve already devised the best strategy possible.
5 best ways to optimize your customer success plan.
Creating a well-defined plan will no longer suffice. You must demonstrate that you can walk the talk. A well-thought-out strategy is only as effective as its execution. However, many customer success specialists fall short when it comes to putting the plan into action.
That means you’ll need to devise an easier-to-implement strategy. However, simpler does not always imply easier. A plan that lacks a fundamental strategy or fails to produce outcomes is a complete waste of time and resources. The plan should include the capabilities that your company will need to start or streamline its customer success unit.
Everyone enjoys a “how-to” guidebook that outlines all of the best practices for implementing, optimizing, and expanding their customer success function. So, here they are, which we believe will make a significant difference in your business. Optimize your customer success plan first.
Optimize the roadmap to ensure client satisfaction.
It’s 9:30 a.m. on a Monday. How do you know where your consumers are right now in their journey? You do if you have a client journey map. It’s vital to have the map in place so you can figure out when and how to create a CS roadmap.
A Customer Success roadmap differs from a customer journey map in a few ways. A Customer Success roadmap is a blueprint for your company’s and customers’ objectives. It outlines the short- and long-term strategic strategies and actions that will help you achieve your objectives. This is required by your success team in order to streamline the process of establishing a strong CS practice.
At first glance, this route map appears to be simple. Your ambitions will grow in scope as you grow older. Sales, marketing, product, support, and, of course, customer success will all be part of the ecosystem. It makes sense to optimize this ecosystem in order to provide a better client experience.
Bonus resource: The Customer Success Leader’s 30 60 90 Day Plan
Optimize your Frameworks and Analytics
These two are the pillars of successful customer success functions: analytics and frameworks. Consider the following questions:
- Do you have the skills to get a complete 360-degree perspective of your clients’ performance?
- Are you proactively developing a plan to enhance the adoption of your technology based on the data you have?
- Do you have a system in place for evaluating how successfully your technology aids clients in establishing value?
- Have you considered a method in place to collect consumer feedback?
- Do you have any mandatory playbooks that will help your consumers on their way?
The answers to these questions will give you a good picture of how advanced or mature your customer success operation is. Optimize these frameworks to assist your customer success department in delivering results.
Optimize and Scale with Tools and Systems
Without the necessary tools and mechanisms in place, scaling Customer Success is impossible. True, the tools you have can offer you some level of insight. However, you won’t be able to truly alter your company until you use specialist customer success solutions. These are simple to integrate with your systems in order to improve customer satisfaction, increase productivity, and improve your entire customer success strategy.
You can’t function without digital communication tools. This is due to the fact that technology changes on a daily basis. It can automate a number of your CSM’s tasks, allowing them to focus on more critical issues. This is critical for business scalability and a sign of a well-developed customer success team.
Implement Change management
Simply said, change management entails doing things better. It’s all about coaching people to do things differently in customer success. Most of the time, CSMs have to battle customer attitudes that want to be in a happy place with their product adoption.
Change management is all about encouraging adoption in order to reduce churn and increase retention. However, you must first change your client’s behavior. It’s critical to remind clients how your solution may assist them in achieving their ultimate objectives. A strategic CSM can even go one step further and show clients how the product can help them achieve goals they haven’t thought of yet.
It’s critical to be able to explain the value to cross-functional teams if you want to speed up change at your customer’s company. In this manner, everyone engaged will be able to keep the customer’s goals in mind at all times. This will assist clients in overcoming the stumbling block posed by the interruption of change. Get them to a point where your product is well-known and integrated into their processes.
Optimize your Account Expansion strategy
The best strategy to boost revenue from your existing customer base is to expand your customer account. It’s no surprise that people put their all towards making this strategy successful. A customer account expansion strategy must be carefully organized in order to succeed. Add-ons, upsells, cross-sells, and other growth techniques can be a steady and long-term driver of revenue. You can’t expect it to happen on its own or organically.
Begin by bringing rationality to the process of expansion. In addition, by embracing technology, outstanding SaaS companies are optimizing expansion plans across all consumer categories. This is typically done for tech-touch customers, with dedicated employees being provided for high-revenue or high-touch customers.
Customer expectations should be managed, and CSMs should inform customers about expansion opportunities that will arise at various intervals. Keep an eye out for upsell signs that can help you plan your next steps. To avoid unwanted surprises, a conversation will be initiated when they occur. Identify and capitalize on these opportunities to improve your account expansion process.
Suggested Reading: How should a Customer Success Manager plan the day?
In conclusion, customer success is your success.
Customer success is still a hazy concept. In most SaaS companies that have it, it is still a developing role. However, in the tech business, this growing concept is swiftly becoming an integral aspect of day-to-day operations. To thrive in this field, you must prepare meticulously and optimize your customer success plan to the best of your ability.
Remember that a customer success plan is equally as critical as, if not more important than, any other plan. It aids in the development of a framework for your plan, ensuring that it adds value and achieves success for your customers.
P.S. – The main image has been taken from pexels.com
