What is a Customer Objectives Review Meeting?
This Customer Objective Review(COR) meeting is a redesigned version of a partnership strategic conversation.
A COR meeting can be referred to as a conversation to keep in touch with the customer for a good discussion of the ongoing tasks and accomplishments. It can also give an idea of the satisfaction level of the customer and presents a chance to design policies with mutual understanding of the Customer Success team which is the vendor here and the customer also called as the user.
It is very similar to Quarterly business reviews(QBR) and Executive business reviews(EBR) but with a different approach. A COR meeting is an engaging discussion of how the vendor is helping the user advance their business.
Customer objectives review meetings involve everyone who is related to the customer success services, unlike the EBR which only includes the executive. Everybody whose input would be valuable would be considered as a potential participant of this meeting.
Customer objective reviews meetings don’t have a set calendar it is organised depending on several factors such as:-
- The leading factor is when a discussion is most required.
- The executive’s schedule should allow him/her to attend the meeting.
- The appropriate timing to organise the meeting.
The outcome of the customer objectives review meeting is far better than what a regular QBR or EBR would have delivered.
Why not a QBR or an EBR?
The question arises that if all these forms of interactions have the same objective then why not the regular QBR or EBR? The answer lies in the names of these reviews, QBR which is the quarterly business review only takes place 4 times a year, which can be beneficial for some businesses whereas not at all fruitful for some other businesses.
Talking about the EBR which is Executive Business Review Only takes place with the executive but if we see closely it’s not just the executive which is involved in the whole process there are other people as well who need to know about the progress and their opinion is equally important. Taking all that into consideration a new format of engagement or meetings is formulated and is termed as Customer Objectives Review meeting.
In general business models, QBR and EBR are seen as responsibilities or tasks which need to be completed but what the customer success platform really needs to focus on is if these kinds of reviews are really giving the values, if not, then we probably need to formulate a new strategy or a new way of engagement that is exactly why customer objectives review meeting came into being.
Setting the stage for the COR meeting.
If the COR meeting is executed well then it is going to drive a lot of value for both the customer and the customer success business. Setting the stage has been segmented into 5 different parts explained down below:-
1. Get buy-in early
Introduce the COR meeting early in the partnership. Making the customer aware of the value this discussion is going to deliver would make them more interested in investing their time in it. The timings and agenda of the COR meetings should be clear to both parties and also try to seek alignment and support for future discussion.
2. Set expectations
Clarify the agenda and objectives of the meeting before the engagement. Set the right expectations for the meeting. While setting expectations for the meeting., each participants should be considered.
3. The right people
The right individual should be available and participate in the meeting. making the right people aware of the value they are going to get from the discussion is also important. Including Individuals from all levels is the key to a good customer objective review meeting.
4. Be conscious
Be conscious about who is going to be a part of the meeting. The content and discussion should relate to them. As an organizer of the meeting, one eye of yours should always be on the clock making sure that you are not taking any extra time.
Getting all the relevant people in the same meeting can be challenging and also making sure that their calendars allow them to be in the meeting for what amount of time you want them to be there is a big task.
An ideal figure of time to organize a meeting should not be more than 60 minutes. As a proposal of the meeting of more than 60 minutes would most probably get rejected by the executive.
5. Execution
The execution should be seamless. A good COR meeting is the one in which the customer talks more than the customer success team. Solutions should be formulated at the end of the discussions. For a meeting to be called a good one, it is not necessary that you complete all the topics in one go, taking small steps is advisable. And that would also work as a way of organizing more COR meetings in the future.
How to have an effective COR meeting?
It is very important that the COR meeting serves its purpose and to ensure that executing COR meetings perfectly is the key. To make sure that the execution works effectively ,list down the 3 segments-
The segmentation is:-
COR meeting Preparations
- Planning should begin at least 4 weeks before the meeting as aligning each of the participant’s schedules is difficult.
- Proper homework is required along with relevant research.
- You can ask any of the CSM to co-present the meeting along with you as it would be more effective and interesting. Make sure to make the CSM go through the data in the deck before presenting it.
- Confirm attendees and allocate time 48 hrs in advance.
- Get your deck checked by someone.
COR Execution
- Be early to check for any technical issues and solve them timely.
- Try to make your customer comfortable, try to create an atmosphere where they are free to express their thoughts at any point of time in the meeting.
- Create a discussion and try to involve everyone in the conversation to get everyone’s point of view of the services and the product.
- Always keep an eye on the clock.
COR Follow up
- Send a follow up after the meeting as soon as possible. It would be good if a follow-up is sent within 24 hrs.
- The summary of the discussion should be included in the follow-up email. Mention the next step with the owner and timeline.
- Ask for feedback and make the changes accordingly.
- Try to create the next engagement and lock it down.
What is a deck?
The deck includes every detail about the meeting such as the customer’s details, timings, tasks, customer journey, timelines, milestones, and the agenda and objectives of the meeting.
What should be included in a deck?
- Information about the customer, their joining date and the date of the meeting along with other important information which varies from business to business.
- List down the agenda of the meeting.
- Give emphasis to customer’s business
- Updates of the customer should also be in the deck.
- Provide a journey map in the deck specifying where the customer is in the journey along with the goals and performance updates. It is to keep the customer updated about the journey and keep them in touch with the journey map.
- Dedicating a separate slide to the Business objectives is a good idea as it keeps reminding the customer why a customer success department is important for the growth of their business.
- Specify your top 3 partnership goals along with the KPIs of each of them and those KPIs should be according to the customer. This slide would help prioritise tasks. This slide can also work as a reason to align with the goals of your customers, figure out if there is any update on them and work on it.
- Progress till date: write in words or create a diagram to show the progress. Display the progress goal wise, task wise or project wise.
- Usage of the customer success platform:- It gives the customer an insight into how their activity looks like in the customer success software. To make the customer aware of Which are the places they need to work on and what is going efficiently.
Some of the insights are:-
- Daily pageviews
- NPS
- Users
- Integrations
- Active users
- Module usage
- Customers
- Customer success platform adoption rate:- It is to make the customer aware of the Customer Success services. The way the customer has adopted the customer success platform and to inform them if they are not using the platform efficiently along with the measures the customer should take in order to make complete use of the customer success platform.
- Success cycles
- Make a list of all the next partnership steps.
Takeaway
- Introduce Customer Objective Review meeting early in the partnership. Set proper expectations around the timing and participation.
- Prepare well for the meeting along with the deck. Be ready for a discussion and try to engage with the customer to drive some value out of the meeting.
- Always ask for feedback, it will force you to be better and prepared for the next meeting.
- Do not force the meeting or the engagement on to the customer, not every customer wants to engage this way. Try to figure out the way your customer wants to engage and follow that up.
