Do you remember the time before the pandemic? How did your business look then? It is almost insane how much change each business has been through for the past couple of years. I have something to tell you, the change hasn’t stopped yet. Now that we have adapted to the new virtual systems in business, it is time for them to become more efficient. Here are some of the Customer Success trends in 2022 that will help you make sense of the incoming changes.
The world has understood the need for customer-centric systems and customer success at once. If you are still unfamiliar, Customer Success is all about being proactive in reaching out to customers and improving their experience at every point in their customer journey.
Customer Success trends in the year 2022
1. Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Customer Success
AI is piercing every business in some way or the other. It is necessary because the amount of data that requires sifting through now is inhuman.
Traditional Customer Success Software works on a traditional rule-based engine to generate early warning signs. Although you have access to the data, if the configuration of the rule is not correct, you will miss out. The reality is most traditional rule engines use only 1% of data to set up rules as with hundreds of data points, it is impossible for the human mind to comprehend, analyze, correlate and configure rules for Account health and alerts with accurate thresholds. Even, if you arrive at a decent rule configuration, your product features and customer behavior keeps changing making old rules out of sync.
New Customer Software powered with AI will scan thousands of data points, past user behavior, CSM’s activities, and engagement with customers to learn what actions and behavior lead to retention. It then uses and generates smart recommendations, the next best action for CSM for every account to unlock LTV that is otherwise at Risk.
Let’s get to the details…
Customer Success AI is all about leveraging big data, Artificial intelligence(AI), and machine learning(ML) to give unprecedented powers to every Customer Success Manager (CSMs) and team. It enables CSMs to retain customers with confidence, drive adoption to deliver value, and make sure shot upsells.
At its core, the AI takes all of
- Metadata data from CRM, Helpdesk, and subscription and
- Engagement data from Email, meetings, QBR, engagements, support tickets
- Product adoption data from product telemetry of each and all the features consumed by every user
It correlates all of these, i.e. hundreds of data points and millions of tracked feature events with renewal history, to learn what really drives renewals and upsells. Powered by its advanced AI model and big data crunching, it learns once and keeps learning with every new renewal, upsell and even churn.
You can learn more about how CustomerSuccessBox leverages this technology to give you the perfect tailored solution for all your customer success needs.
2. Automation
With an increase in AI, there is a parallel increase in automation as well. Businesses are looking for ways to automate simple and repetitive processes so that teams can focus on more complex tasks at hand. We have written an extensive guide on automating onboarding that might give you the gist of how advanced automation has become in Customer Success.
Some common customer success automation tools include:
- Welcome emails and follow-up messages
- AI chatbots
- Design automated customer workflows throughout the customer lifecycle
- Drive product adoption with automated engagement like sharing high value action steps with new user over self onboarding Drip
Upcoming Customer Success trends in 2022 state that automation will not stay limited to simple tasks. This is the right time to jump in.
3. Customer Journey Mapping
Mapping customer journeys are going to be one of the most booming trends in 2022. Throughout the customer journey, there are various touchpoints and with the smart technology and data-driven comprehensive, these insights are easily available.
The journey of a customer doesn’t end when they buy your product, but it actually is the very beginning. Throughout the entire journey, understand your customers, their behaviours, and their needs. Also, it is important to get their feedback and improve your service.
Customer journey post-purchase is a lot of unexplored territories. Customer success begins after purchase and understanding the story of the customer journey, then visualizing it will be the best way to assist them.
Why is Customer Journey Mapping so important? Determine the touchpoints based on the feedback, deliver accordingly, and drive feature usage. Build alignment between teams for a better success rate. With customer journey mapping, you can:
- Create better alignment between teams
- Measure and enhance customer experience
- Define milestones and work towards them
- Execute better customer success strategies that are more likely to be successful
4. Customer Success continues to grow and focus on Customer Value
In a survey, 16% of respondents stated that they report directly to the Chief Revenue Officer, up from 9% last year, which further demonstrates the weight companies are putting on CS teams… In recent years, organizations have been trending away from trying to simply gain as many customers as possible and focusing more on how to retain and expand revenue from each individual customer.
During the initial years of Customer Success, it was just a small team duking everything out solo. As the space has continued to grow and evolve, we see it becoming both enterprise-wide and cross-functional. More and more customer success individuals are getting involved in the marketing and sales processes. This tells us how customer success will evolve in 2022 to become a company-wide strategy. In 2022, customer success might be seen to be breaking departmental silos so that companies can have a holistic, personalized experience ready for each customer from the first touchpoint to the end of their journey.
5. Advocacy and Expansion become core jobs for Customer Success
Although it has always been an important aspect of customer success to focus on expansions, it will get even more interesting now. The flywheel re-envisions the customer’s experience to emphasize the continuity between the pre-sale and post-sale experience and between the way successful customer retention sets the stage for customer advocacy and getting new prospects. Essentially, when a customer sees value from a product, they will want to continue to increase that value by purchasing more products and becoming loyal repeat buyers who advocate for the brand, thus increasing overall revenue for the business.
This flywheel concept and the enhanced focus on customer advocacy and expansion are also reflected in the growth of collaboration efforts between CS and other teams . According to survey participants, the amount of time CS teams spend collaborating with Marketing has increased significantly this year with 43% of respondents stating they spend more than 50% of their time working with marketing, which is up 33% over last year.
Additional Resource: Customer Advocacy template
6. Customer Success Community
“Communities are on the hockey stick growth trajectory in importance and value.
Jeff Heckler
The Community ownership would move from Marketing to CS, specifically CS ops. Communities are evolving from a transactional Q&A forum to a hub of strategic, current, and emerging content. Going ahead it will be supported by many different personas with wide-ranging skills sets. For example- technological experts, industry analysts, business practice advisors, vertical-specific leaders, operational practitioners, and content aggregators. Communities will provide valuable quantitative and qualitative feedback loops for internal Product, Marketing, Sales, and Research teams thus leading Product Led Growth (PLG) for organizations.
Takeaway
Customer Success is growing at a rapid rate and your company should be getting ready to adapt and improve. The Customer Success trends show the emergence of AI and automation for increased efficiency. They also show how customer-centric businesses are becoming. They are focusing on the value aspect, building strong relationships and communities. 2022 is going to be a big year and we hope that you contribute maximally to it!
