The customer success manager’s function is evolving and expanding, and the reason for this transition is- DATA. The best customer success managers (CSMs) or customer success data analysts — or whatever their official title is – are masters of customer data measurement and analysis.
CSMs must be able to pull data together to create new ways to generate profitability in this data-driven world. Managers may create profitability for their companies and their customers by
- Understanding what makes them successful,
- How to best engage with existing and new customers, and d
- Developing customer health scores that guide engagement for both customers and the company.
But how do you achieve it? How can your customer success management leverage customer data to take things to the next level? Let’s look at the how.
Customer success should be built around customer data. Customer success professionals are continually studying and learning from their customers’ actions.
Product Usage Data is Customer Success Goldmine
Customer success metrics and usage are plotted on a map. This simple question is the most basic beginning point for deciding whether or not a customer will be successful with your product: What is your product’s value proposition, and how does that value proposition map to its actual use? With precise metrics for what your customers should achieve with your product, your team will be able to link those data with how customers use it to uncover a wealth of fresh and helpful information. Furthermore, having easily accessible usage statistics can often assist you in determining where your clients are succeeding—or, more crucially, where they are failing.
Consider the value proposition of boosting the speed and accuracy of creating a sales order as an example. Customer success managers can delve into things that tell us a lot about whether they’re achieving speed and efficiency—and what’s holding them back or accelerating it—by looking at usage statistics across the base of consumers who are completing that process. Trends in utilization data like as runtime and feature usage, when associated with system properties or geography, highlight potential barriers posed by either the user’s or the system’s use of the product.
Perhaps it becomes clear that a large number of consumers are skipping over a new feature and finishing the transaction outside of the system. Customer success managers can utilize this data to create and distribute best practices and educational content that both teaches new users and empowers current users to use the product more efficiently and effectively. This offers a number of advantages, including discovering and implementing best practices, as well as identifying and cultivating connections with power users who may become product evangelists.
Learn more about product data analytics here
Detailed & tailored targeting/approach
Product teams are constantly working to improve their product’s capabilities and develop new methods to provide value to their customers while also generating new revenue streams for their company. However, 80 percent of product features are rarely or never used. While new product features improve the customer experience, feature weariness is a drawback to new feature launches: Customers just do not have the time or the energy to learn about every new feature you introduce and how to use it.
Targeting fewer customers, but the appropriate ones is a terrific approach to see a healthy uptake and retention rate for a new product feature. Data is the most effective approach to accomplish this. Customer success specialists should always examine data, learn from their findings, and use what they’ve learned to find new methods to improve their customers’ perceived value.
Customer success should be more focused than product marketing, which aims to educate as many consumers as possible about the whole product offering. To put it another way, see marketing as a “mile wide, inch deep” landscape, whereas customer success should be an “inch wide, mile deep” strategy.
With access to data on usage across the base and the ability to split that data down by system attributes and region, we can observe that the defect may only affect users running a specific operating system version, while those using a different OS or version aren’t experiencing any issues. The customer success manager can reach out with targeted information across communication channels, preventing a molehill from becoming a mountain, and, most crucially, lending their customer a short-term solution to avoid disrupting their business.
Follow this customer segmentation guide to help boost your business
Customer Health levels with data analytics
Determine the relevant customer health levels. Customer health is a challenging statistic to track, but it is critical, and it varies depending on the product given. However, at the most fundamental level, it necessitates assessing the frequency of use translated to feature usage. Information on feature utilization that can be split down by specific characteristics such as runtime by module provides us with a solid foundation for communicating with clients about their needs and determining what constitutes a satisfied customer.
Targeted, in-app messaging is one of the most inventive ways customer success managers do this. Customers, that fit into various usage patterns can receive the same message, which asks, “How would you rate your level of satisfaction with the software?” The results are used to identify the characteristics of individuals who are extremely satisfied, those who are not, and the many people who are somewhere in between. This data can be used to identify satisfaction levels and the best activities to increase engagement within each group.
These are just a few of the best practices that customer success managers can employ. It is clear that by delving deeper into data usage analysis, managers can use data insights to:
- Help define best practices identify patterns for meaningful upselling and cross-selling,
- Provide feedback on relevant content creation, and
- Turn customers into advocates for their brands.
Find the right tool for measuring customer health
Data connects the entire organization
Taking a real data-driven approach to customer success necessitates having a holistic view of your consumers. You can learn more from your customers if your data is thorough and correct. Of course, customer data should be shared between teams and departments with the appropriate safeguards in place. The customer journey involves multiple parts of the business, therefore it’s critical to eliminate data silos and consolidate this information into a single location that serves as a single source of truth for the entire organization. As a result, every team that interacts with the consumer gets access to the same information.
After you’ve all of your customer data, it’s time to let your customers teach you! Keep a watch out for fast-growing companies that are leveraging your product to achieve large business goals, and communicate with them to learn more about their path. Customer success professionals can use these insights to discover similar accounts that would benefit from the same approach. Customers value actual, concrete evidence that provides simple, actionable directions for achieving a validated business result.
Takeaway
These are just a few of the best practices that customer success managers can implement, it is clear that by delving deeper into data usage analysis, managers can use data insights to help define best practices, identify patterns for meaningful upselling and cross-selling, provide feedback on relevant content creation, and turn customers into product advocates to drive new customer acquisition. Look at how our product leverages data analytics to give you Customer Success insights.
