In his memoir, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, Stephen King states “It’s best to have your tools with you. If you don’t, you’re apt to find something you didn’t expect and get discouraged.” It is strange how something written specifically for aspiring writers, ends up being applicable to all of us in the Customer Success world.
Having worked in both environments; with and without CustomerSuccessBox (CSB), I have gained quite a bit of personal experience and perspective. Let’s take a look at a situation from both perspectives and really understand how CustomerSuccessBox can empower Customer Success Managers (CSMs) and Customer Success (CS) leaders:
Sebastian and Mia are Customer Success Managers at two different SaaS companies. Mia’s company uses CustomerSuccessBox- a customer success software whereas Sebastian’s company is still far away from deploying any Customer Success software. Recently, they both faced a similar situation at work where one of their recently onboarded customers was at risk. Here’s how each dealt with the situation:
Sebastian, Customer Success Manager working with Excel sheets
The usage for Sebastian’s customer had been declining consistently for many weeks. However, he was unaware of the gravity of the situation till he received strong feedback during his monthly catch-up call with the customer. The next day, he received an email from the same customer with a notice to terminate the contract stating that they’d moved to an alternative solution. It was clearly too late for any action plans to help the customer realize the value of the product.
Mia, Customer Success Manager empowered with CustomerSuccessBox
On the other hand, Mia, using CSB, got notified of the first drop in the customer’s usage using Risk Alerts. As soon as the Alert was generated, a task got created for her to conduct another training session for the customer. Since Mia was able to catch the risk before things got worse and the customer lost interest, she was able to re-train them in areas they were struggling with. The customer was able to see value in the training session and it helped them in solving some critical use cases!
Key Differences between Sebastian and Mia’s situations:
1. Proactive Risk Identification
- Sebastian did not have visibility into how his customers were using the product and as a result, was unable to identify a potential risk which eventually led to a customer churn.
- Mia, on the other hand, was better prepared since she could regularly track product adoption for her customers. She’d also ensured she was able to identify potential risks by setting up the right Alerts.
2. Timely Intervention
- Sebastian was unable to identify the risk in time and as a result, was unable to intervene before it was already too late.
- Mia, however, could intervene soon after an Alert was generated. Before the customer could even begin looking for another platform, Mia was already ready with solutions to make them successful.
3. Defined Processes and winning strategy
- Sebastian did not have a clearly defined process for such situations.
- Mia, however, knew exactly what needed to be done because there was already a task created for her to conduct another training session for the customer at potential risk.
4. Customer success delivered
- Sebastian was unable to deliver value to the customer as a result of which the customer chose not to continue using the platform.
- Mia delivered success to the customer, she was able to intervene and ensure value realization.
5. Retention ($$)
- Sebastian was unable to retain his customer and lost a significant amount of revenue generated by them.
- Mia was able to retain her customer and hence increase their lifetime value.
| Sebastian | |
Situation (Day 0) | Product Usage Drops. | - |
Day 1 | Mia gets an immediate Risk Alert | - |
Day 1 | An automatic task is created for the Mia to follow up with the customer | - |
Day 1 | An automatic email is sent out to the customer asking about the drop in usage and also requesting a call for further discussion | - |
Day 3 | Mia connects with the customer to understand their concerns and sets up another meeting (a week later) to present an action plan | - |
Day 10 | Mia presents and finalizes action plan with the customer | - |
Day 15 | Both Mia and her counterparts at the customer’s end work towards a common goal to achieve their definition of success. | Customer starts to evaluate an alternative solution |
Day 25 | Mia notes significant improvement in the customer’s usage | - |
Day 30 | Mia’s customer turns to Green health! | Sebastian learns about possible reduced usage over a brief periodic call |
Day 31 | - | Sebastian offers a follow up to discuss further but the customer politely refuses, since they have moved on |
Customer Success Delivered | Churn 🙁 |
Takeaway
To be an effective Customer Success Manager, you need to have an oversight of your customers. You have to understand customer-specific engagement with your product else you’re doomed to fail. And with 2020 being no normal year, the era of high touch-low touch is no longer valid. It’s all about remote touch and that makes it more imperative to get the right Customer Success Software for proactive support to preserve and expand revenue.
CustomerSuccessBox can act as the 6th sense of your CS managers. Why just rely on your 5 senses when you can track, measure, and predict just by using Customer SuccessBox.
