As a Customer Success Manager, you and your team take in a lot of efforts to connect and engage with your customers. Right from the marketing team which finds potential customers to customer success that implements strategies, you are putting in your best. But still must have come across several customers who, no matter what you do, will remain unresponsive customers. And if you’re wondering why, let us look at some key points.
What’s causing them to become unresponsive Customers?
Stacked up emails
Most SaaS business communication still relies majorly on email. A report found that “between 2014 and 2018, the average office worker received around 90 emails per day and sent around 40.”
This clearly shows the number of emails a company or an executive gets. It’s easy for your email to go unnoticed.
They are waiting for internal feedback
This happens when you are in the middle of the conversation. Your customer needs to get it approved by a higher authority. In this case, you can patiently wait and keep following up.
They are avoiding you
This is the worst-case scenario. Maybe they do not want to buy your product or wish to discontinue. It might also happen they were about to tell you but couldn’t find the right timing to do so.
In this case, you can assess the situation and move forward.
Strategies to tackle unresponsive customers
Structure Business Reviews
Executive Business Reviews (EBRs) depends primarily on how many the executive is asked to attend. If you are the first CSM that your customers have encountered, it’s novel, it’s new and there’s essentially a digital transformation for big energy companies. You can also have customers that have really been in a sad subscription relationship. So, EBRs work great because it’s new.
Make sure that you’re laser-focused on that. There are a couple of companies out there that are trying to automate the EBR so it will be like a three-minute video. So, the three-minute preview before the 90-minute movie is all about the basic stuff like usage, what package you’re on, adoption, tips, and tricks.
Send that to the executive and because it’s an interesting and newer approach to application technology, they are quite predisposed to attending the EBR because they’ve kind of been teased, so to speak, with three minutes of insight.
Suggested Reading: How to conduct QBR remotely?
FedEx over mails
Find something that interests your customers personally, maybe send them a handwritten note. This approach shows your customers that you really care about them.
You can also send them Personalized giveaways, like an example could be autographed books.
It is more about your customers than about you
It’s not just about the EBR. It’s about continuously engaging and creating that loyal executive group, especially in these times because of the virtual environments we’re living in. The question here is how do you bring more executives together and be more of a thought leader and innovator within your space.
But doing it in a way that’s more immersive for them that they’re getting something out of it. And it’s not just about you talking about your organization.
Invest in keynote speakers that’ll come in and do a 30 minute kind of presentation around the development of an executive. Explain how you do a Zoom meeting? How to prepare for public speaking?
And bringing them along on this journey of seeing you like that thought leader gets them to become more engaged when you ask them to do things like the EBR or an onsite visit. They already kind of see you in that light because you’re not always talking about yourselves.
Go old school
Try going old school, say wine and dine is always a great way to get to the executives and spend some time with them without necessarily making it focused on the business, but it makes them more interested in what you have to say when you have to say it.
Team building activities are great and can be scheduled as a team outing after the EBR. Also sometimes you can do scavenger hunts or other things that build within their team, but it also integrates you as part of the team.
And if you can’t wine and dine them, sending them an Uber eats gift card or sending them something in the mail too, always works.
Additional Strategies
Send a Calendar Invite
Calendar invites are magical in customer success. Calendar invites are something that no one can resist. You may have sent hundreds of invites and only a handful turned down with no explanation.
Invites can happen in a few ways:
a. Send a Calendar Invite on the First Email
b. Use a Scheduling Tool
c. Send an Invite with the Time You’re Going to Try to Call
Ask Only One Question
You need your customers to answer your questions so that you can help them grow. Some customers are always willing to answer your questions. But if your questions are going unanswered in their inbox, you have to do something about it.
Professionals in Marketing are familiar with the concept of “call-to-action.” If a page has too many CTAs or links to click, the conversion rates dropdown. This is because people get overwhelmed when they see too many options.
So keep it simple.
Give a Multiple Choice List
When sending an email or even a follow-up email, make sure you give your clients a multiple-choice list. Here they can select and accordingly reply to you. The chance of you getting mail back from them will be much higher.
Also, make sure the email is personalized. Your customers love when you know them and take efforts to solve their problems.
Delivering Competitive Insights
Here we’ll focus on three insights. The first one is, I think that one of the best gifts you can give a customer success manager is not including them in meetings that they shouldn’t be in. Telling them, letting them know that you thought about it, you respect their time and you’ll send them an executive summary afterward.
So exclude them from the meeting. If they want to come, they’ll tell you they want to come, but then send a very high-level executive summary to them so that they’re in the loop, they stay engaged, but they don’t have to give up their time and participate.
The second one is having conversations with them that discuss their company strategy and the critical obstacles that they’re facing getting in their way, making it all about them but at a very high level.
If they’re an executive, they’re involved in strategic planning and strategy in their company, and you want to talk about them. The more you understand about their strategy and the more they open up, then the more you can help them.
And then the third one is delivering competitive insights to them about their competitors at an executive level, something that might impact the direction of their strategic plan.
Customer Engagement Score Per Contact
One of the things you can be working on is the idea of a customer engagement score per contact and then you look at the customer engagement score per persona, and you can weigh the executive sponsor engagement versus the business users engagement.
The percentage of customers with at least one monthly active user can be your good one, but then you also must look at customer drop-off. You have to really nurture those that are in the community. So be laser-focused on it and get engagement and adoption of that community platform as well.
How can CustomerSuccessBox help
Net Promoter Score and customer satisfaction surveys can be used to satisfaction level but they are not leading indicators. A customer success software like CustomerSuccessBox helps you get a 360 view of your customers health with insights that allow you to plan your strategies.
CustomerSuccessBox tells you your customer’s behavior at every touchpoint which makes it easy for you to have a better understanding and communication with them.
