The customer success (CS) team is critical in today’s customer-centric economy. The purpose of the team is to keep your hard-won clients and help them grow by strengthening the customer relationship. You need to assure that they are getting value from your product at every stage. This results in higher customer satisfaction, which lowers churn and improves renewals.
So, how can you put together a customer success team that delivers the results you desire? Lets’ take a look at the top hacks and tips that can help you build an efficient customer success team.
8 tips to build a great Customer Success team
Start with the right leader!
Try to bring someone to the table who
- has domain expertise,
- is familiar with your industry, and
- can empathize with your consumers’ challenges.
Customers value this quality, which is typically not appreciated. In the end, the consumer hired your product to solve his or her problem, not just to accept it.
Next, choose an onboarding expert who can ensure that clients receive the assistance they require when they first use your product
The onboarding specialist is an instructional role that gives knowledge to your clients to help them get off to a good start. Finally, fill out the remainder of your team with people who are knowledgeable but not overbearing, and who have the in-depth product knowledge that your clients demand.
Suggested Read: How to start a Customer Success department
‘Customer-Centric’ attitude
It may seem obvious, but the greatest approach to setting up your customer success team is to communicate with them as often as possible. You should not only talk to them about your product and any comments they may have, but you should also grow comfortable with being uncomfortable and asking difficult questions.
Ask your clients what they’re looking for in a Customer Success Manager (CSM) if they’re likely to renew their membership, and what else you can do to make sure they’re a huge success.
Create a list of customers who’ve already expressed satisfaction with your product as well as customers who have canceled or provided unfavorable comments. When you have those lists, contact the customers to discover more about why they feel the way they do. After you’ve jotted down all of your thoughts, draw attention to the patterns of happy and unsatisfied clients.
Plan the detailed Customer Journey
Create a map of your customer’s journey map from several angles – Now that you’ve spoken with your customers, it’s time to figure out how to help them succeed with your product. Consider the complete experience a customer has with your product, from the first demo to the kick-off call, onboarding, and renewal.
It’s critical to consider not only the actions you hope your customers will take with your product but also the customer journey from their perspective. What are their objectives, and when do they hope to achieve them? At what point of their journey will they need help and what kind of help- tech touch or guided? Accordingly, assign a CSM. What use case are they solving and depending upon the core strengths you need to assign. Also, taking into account the psychographic segmentation, your CSM needs to know the customs and the culture while interacting.
Don’t forget the ‘joint success’ plans
A customer success plan is not only for your customers but also for your team. CSMs can maintain track of an idea’s viability using a collaborative success plan or a joint business plan. It also provides clients with a more precise analysis of expected progress and outcomes, lowering the possibility of abrupt and unexpected changes.
As a result, they now have a set of different use-cases for their technology, as well as a well-defined action plan to assist clients in achieving their goals.
Suggested Read: Joint Success plan
Segment your customers!
Breaking down your customers into different segments based on similar criteria is a terrific approach for your team to break things down. Members of the team can concentrate on specific segments, and by splitting up the work, they can make more targeted efforts in each one.
Moreover, each segment may have its own distinct requirements, enabling your team members to tailor their strategy accordingly.
When you segment your clients, you can provide them with the assistance, information, and tools they need to succeed. One of the most key things is that not all consumers are equal, and when you segment your customers, you’ll begin to see this.
Collect Feedback
Collect client feedback on your customer success team’s performance once it’s in place. A simple but effective technique to increase engagement is to ask for feedback. Customers enjoy sharing their thoughts and desires, and they appreciate knowing that you value what they have to say. Use that information to improve customer success practices, and then track the results of your new initiatives.
Consider feedback on the efficiency with which a customer renewal was handled, for example. This allows you to assess the effectiveness of individual team members. It also allows you to determine whether your renewal processes are well-received. Feedback can help you fine-tune your customer success members of the team and the regulations that govern them over time.
Read: Customer Feedback Loop
Define the KPIs clearly
As a CSM, you’re constantly monitoring your accounts for potential churn as well as retention and upsell chances. This, however, should never be done alone. Organize team meetings regularly to figure out how you can best help one another with your unique issues. If necessary, include leadership when things need to be addressed.
The team members should be able to define the KPIs clearly, and these KPIs should be quantifiable. In the same way that the customer success team defines the metrics used to measure the performance of the team. The team should then be able to measure the success of the team as a whole in relation to these KPIs. A team with clear KPIs defines the value of the team’s efforts to the customer and helps to ensure
Suggested Read: 10 Customer Success KPIs every SaaS company should track
Create Scalable Customer Success features.
It’s natural to be enthusiastic regarding your new customer success program. After all, you’re forming a win-win connection with your clients that will result in a cycle of mutual success. You must, however, ensure that this relationship can be sustained as both your firm and your consumers evolve and grow. Your customer success efforts can be working now, but if they aren’t scalable, you risk failing your present customers in the future.
Adopting customer success tech that your team can utilize to automate their everyday chores and functions is one way to assure scalability. A ticketing system, for example, can handle inbound service requests and assign them to various members of your customer success team.
You can also create email templates that employees can use to communicate with new customers in a consistent manner. These can save your customer success team time and increase their bandwidth for other meaningful tasks.
Final thoughts on the Customer Success Team
These are just a few of the most important tips for creating a customer success team from the scratch. If I could give you any advice as you begin to expand your team, it would be to continue to support them by focusing on creating a customer-centric culture throughout your company. If you do so, you’ll notice a significant increase in your customers’ success, growth, and retention rates. It’s not easy to put together a highly efficient customer success team, but if you implement this advice, you’ll be well on your way to achieving your goal.
P.S. – The main image has been taken from pexels.com
