The more information you can gather, the better.It’s important to remember that effective customer success addresses each customer’s specific goals and definitions of success.But if you have a general idea of what your customers are after, you’ll be able to build it into your product and be better prepared to start the customer success process.Send out short email surveys when people sign up for your service. Call leads and customers to ask about their goals. Talk to people at conferences and events. Get in touch with your contacts in the industry.

Understand What Success Means To Your Customers

It is important to document this. Because customer success agents are human. They forget things. They miss steps. Having this documentation available makes everyone’s job easier.A customer success journey map plots out every step of the customer success process. That includes all of those handoffs that can trip you up. It can also include information on the tools and systems that you use, feedback loops, decisions, and anything else that needs to happen during the customer success journey.

Create A Customer Success Journey Map

Address two questions in your customer success playbook: what to do, and how to do it. For each customer touchpoint, lay out detailed instructions on how to make the interaction as successful as possible.This could be instructions on upselling, suggested tactics for solving problems, resources for moving a customer along the journey map, and anything else that your employees might find useful in successfully executing their responsibilities.

Develop A Customer Success Playbook

If you can add value to your relationship at every interaction, you’ll have loyal customers that appreciate your product or service.What sorts of things add value? Here are just a few:<ul><li>Recommending new features</li><li>Suggesting best practices</li><li>Offering training</li><li>Sharing marketing resources (like blogs and podcasts)</li><li>Highlighting industry news</li><li>Congratulate them on successes</li></ul>

Add Value With Every Interaction

Have a customer success manager reach out to an existing customer to share the results of a study you just ran. Or let them know about a new training that you’re offering. When your product or service is updated, make sure your customers know about it.If you’re monitoring your customer’s use of your product (which we’ll discuss in a moment), you can also reach out to help them with problems that they might not even know they have.

Proactively Contact Customers

Using customer success software will give you deep insight into how your customer success team is performing. Are customers moving through the onboarding process smoothly? Are they using the product regularly?Monitoring all of these metrics will show you where your strengths and weaknesses are. If onboarding is often a problem, for example, you can spend time improving that process. If you’re seeing a specific type of churn, you can put new practices into place to reduce it.The more you can automate the monitoring and reporting of these metrics, the better

Monitor Metrics For Continuous Improvement

Custify Insight: 7 Customer Success Best Practices You Can Put Into Action

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

product

Product & Design

Best Practices Customer Success You Can Put Into Action

The 3 major components of trust are: Authenticity, Empathy and LogicIf you sense that I am being authentic, you are much more likely to trust me. If you sense that I have real rigor in my logic, you are far more likely to trust me. And if you believe that my empathy is directed towards you, you are far more likely to trust me. When all three of these things are working, we have great trust. But if any one of these three gets shaky, if any one of these three wobbles, trust is threatened.

3 Pillars of Trust

People just don't believe that we're mostly in it for them, and they believe that we're too self-distracted. And it's no wonder. So here's the prescription: identify where, when and to whom you are likely to offer your distraction. That should trace pretty perfectly to when, where, and to whom you are likely to withhold your empathy.And if in those instances, we can come up with a trigger that gets us to look up, look at the people right in front of us, listen to them, deeply immerse ourselves in their perspectives, then we have a chance of having a sturdy leg of empathy.

When your empathy wobbles

It's often the case that our logic is sound, but it's our ability to communicate the logic that is in jeopardy. Super fortunately, there's a very easy fix to this.Start with your point in a crisp half-sentence, and then give your supporting evidence. This means that people will be able to get access to our awesome ideas, and just as importantly, if you get cut off before you're done, you still get credit for the idea, as opposed to someone else coming in and snatching it from you.

When your logic wobbles

We as a human species can sniff out in a moment, literally in a moment, whether or not someone is being their authentic true self. So in many ways, the prescription is clear. You don't want to have an authenticity wobble? Be you. Great. And that is super easy to do when you're around people who are like you.But if you represent any sort of difference, the prescription to "be you" can be super challenging.Wear whatever makes you feel fabulous. Pay less attention to what you think people want to hear from you and far more attention to what your authentic, awesome self needs to say.

When your authenticity wobbles

What if trust is broken despite our best effort at managing and building trust? Here are some ideas on how to handle that 😊

Trust is the foundation for everything we do. But what do we do when it's broken? In an eye-opening talk, Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei gives a crash course in trust: how to build it, maintain it and rebuild it -- something she worked on during a recent stint at Uber. "If we can learn to trust one another more, we can have unprecedented human progress," Frei says.

philosophy

Philosophy

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

communication

Communication

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

Frances Frei: How to build (and rebuild) trust

In the gym, sometimes you feel like it’s an “off day”, and then you hit a personal record anyway.  15 minutes of warm-up is often all it takes to get out of that “off” state of mind.  Applies to a lot of other things too.

15 mins is all it takes

<ul><li>Alignment: Where is the Customer Success team fits in the organization and how does it influence (or not) the corporate’s processes and policies</li><li> Team: The services and capabilities your CS team provides</li><li> Segmentation: Your customer classification</li><li> Playbook: What is included in your playbook and it’s used</li><li> Resources: Resources that you provide for your customer’s success</li><li> Onboarding: How are you helping your customer to ramp up to full productivity</li><li> Relationship: Your customer engagement model</li></ul>

The eight (8) pillars

How and when do you demonstrate that your solution generates value I classified various choices in each pillar into four buckets from Undeveloped via Emerging and Expanding to Conquering. Based on where you are in each pillar provides a score and allowed me to quickly identify the weakest points in the status quo, and a roadmap of milestones to implement improvements.Based on where you are in each pillar provides a score that allows quick identification of the weakest points in the status-quo, and a roadmap of milestones to implement improvements.

ROI - 8th Pillar

<ul><li>Alignment: CS influenced the operations and compensation corporate-wide to align all teams around  Customer Success via a Chief Revenue Officer or Chief Customer Officer.</li><li>Team: The team is organized around customer goals (see next item) and provides a variety of services spanning account management, implementation, onboarding, training, support, marketing, and analytics.</li><li> Segmentation: You shift your review of your customers from internal to external and segment them around   common goals</li><li>Playbook: You have a documented playbook for the entire customer journey that is used by your partners.</li></ul>

Examples of the ultimate Conqueror state 1/2

<ul><li>Resources: You have a vibrant and managed community for specific customer goals and lifecycle stages.</li><li>Onboarding: You have an integration partner network that uses your implementation playboo0k.</li><li>Relationship: You define together with your customer stakeholders the frequency of touchpoints to improve their business and what progress was made towards these business improvement goals.</li><li>ROI: You establish benchmark baselines around customer-defined goals and present to stakeholders how they perform against your baselines.</li></ul>

Examples of the ultimate Conqueror state 2/2

The CSPI is a framework with eight pillars, used to detect weak points, define new strategic goals, enhance the team, tune the customer engagement process and optimise the technology landscape.

In the summer of 2018, I received a call from one of my favorite customer success community leaders, Dave Blake who is the CEO of Client Success. Dave asked me if I might be interested in taking part as a judge for The Customer Success Innovator of the Year Award that takes place each year during th

Customer Success Performance Indicator


You can focus on adoption, retention, expansion, or advocacy; or you can focus on the customer's Desired Outcome and get all of those things

Desired Outcome

Revenue hunters develop an Account Plan. It sets out how they plan to sell more to an account. It identifies where more products or services may be sold. And how they will make those sales. From an Account Plan, the vendor expects to achieve higher revenue.

Account Plan

A success plan has a different purpose. It sets out a plan to deliver a measurable outcome for the customer. Prepared jointly with the customer, it specifies what needs to be done to achieve the outcome. It defines tasks, responsibilities, and timing. And it includes what the customer will buy from the vendor, and when.From a Success Plan, the customer expects to achieve a measurable business result. And the vendor expects to achieve higher revenue. The Success Plan contains both.

Success Plan

An often debated topic. What is the difference between an Account Manager and a Customer Success Manager?

Account Manager vs Customer Success Manager

You cannot live your life in fear, or you will forsake the best parts of it

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

movies

Movies & Shows

House of the dragon 🐉   ep4

Recent statistics show that an average person consumes about 10.5 hours of media per day - watching movies, shows, surfing the internet, social media, listening to the radio/podcasts, playing with an app & much more.In a world where zillions of bytes of content is created every single day, we are bombarded with options screaming for our attention.The world’s consumption engine is led by - Youtube, Netflix, Tiktok, Instagram…

Consumption Engines

Consumption is convenient - streaming your favorite shows with no commercials, and on your own timetable - what could be better.Creation is stopped before it could even get started because it is hard and it requires effort, focus, motivation & determination.When you create you have to fear failure, ridicule, or criticism, you hold yourself back as that could leave you feeling bad about yourself.Creation = Work & Work = something to be avoided.

Consumption vs Creation

There are only two main reasons we consume1. It is useful &2. It makes you happyAfter a certain point the more you consume the lower the returns from the new content - less fun, less enjoyment, no happiness & not useful eitherI call this the “Blue Dot” level

Blue Dot level

- don’t feel +ve after consuming more- Seen/heard/tasted all of this before- Cribbing & complaining about creators- Missing the “good old days”- Losing curiosity- Feeling downIf you have lost interest in what you are consuming, you have reached the “Blue Dot”.

Indicators that you have reached the blue dot

What do the most successful & intellectual people have in common? Do we look up to people who are constant consumers or passionate creators?Coincidentally wealth also needs to be created!

It is time to create 💪

<ul><li>Recognise Consumerism - marketing is oriented towards one thing – making you believe that consumption will make you happy & successful. No iPhone, movie, book, car, dress, bag or shoes can make you happy/successful. </li><li>Track your time - Watch where you you spend time and track it like you track you expense, understand the spend patterns & budget for important things</li><li> Rule of 10 - When starting a new activity/project, commit to 10 attempts and don’t analyze the results of these first 10 attempts - That’s your buffer to iterate, learn & begin.</li></ul>

How to make the switch? 1/2

<ul><li>You Vs. You - You don’t need another productivity app, another book, another video, the only thing that ruined your plans in the past was your own resistance.</li><li>Short-term planning - Plane the progress in short sprints, here’s a frame works that can be used. Create Something – Ship it – See the Real Feedback – Adapt – Repeat</li><li>Time & Place - This really helped me - Schedule some time time and decide a space for constructive deliberate reading. The combination of fixed time & space helps overcome the resistance and helps in building a habit.</li></ul>

How to make the switch? 2/2

Understanding when to make the switch from consumption to creation.

productivity

Productivity

creativity

Creativity

Creation To Consumption Ratio

If your business is a bucket, you can keep pouring as much water (customers) as you want into it, but if you have a lot of leaks, you’ll never fill the bucket. Without filling the bucket, you’ll never achieve growth.

<ul><li>Customer churn refers to how many individual customers have deleted their accounts, cancelled their subscriptions, or not logged in for X amount of time.</li></ul> <ul><li>Revenue churn focuses on the value of these customers, and measures the monetary loss of the future transactions rather than the loss of relationship.</li></ul>

Customer Churn vs Revenue Churn

<ul><li>Competitors. If a new competitor has appeared in your industry and is making some serious waves, it’s natural to expect a peak in your churn rate as customers shift.</li><li>False advertising/disingenuous marketing. This is why marketing teams deserve a lot of credit for customer retention. Bad marketing leads to churned customers, who may arrive at your product with the wrong expectations.</li><li>Usability/accessibility issues. An interface that isn’t easy to use, appealing to look at, or adaptable for those with special needs, will be dropped like a hot potato.</li></ul>

Identifying The Source of the Churn 1/2

<ul><li>Bloated price point. If the price isn’t justified by the value the product provides, customers will likely search for an alternative.</li><li>Reduced functionality. Did you scrap a feature that you thought no one liked? If you then see floods of users abandoning your product, it’s probably missed!</li><li>Unmet needs. Quite simply, your product doesn’t meet the need or solve the problem the way the customer thought it would.</li><li>Poor customer service. Word of mouth is a powerful thing, and a bad customer service experience can ruin a customer relationship for life.</li></ul>

Identifying The Source of the Churn 2/2

<h3>Damage control</h3>Recovering from a loss of trust is hard, but not impossible. The key is not to shy away from the conflict, but to lean into it. Pretending that the controversy doesn’t exist will only deepen the distrust between you and your customers. <h3>Rewarding loyalty</h3>While many companies focus heavily on providing discounts and freebies to new customers, it’s a grave mistake to ignore your existing customers. They should be rewarded for their loyalty just as much as you reward new customers for taking a chance on you.

How to Reduce Churn 1/2

<h3>Re-brand</h3>While not a step that should be taken lightly, if your product/service is one of the older ones on the market, it could have fallen out of fashion. <a href="https://productschool.com/blog/product-management-2/branding-builders-netflix-vp-product/?utm_source=blog&utm_medium=blog&utm_campaign=WeeklyArticles">Branding is a very powerful thing</a>, and customers are paying attention to design now more than ever! <h3>Talk to your customers</h3>If you’ve ever cancelled a subscription before, you’ve most likely been on the receiving end of a ‘we’re sorry to see you go’ message, along with a short survey about why you’ve decided to cancel.

The first step in getting your churn rates under control is to understand them. Here's everything a Product Manager needs to know...

business

Business

What To Do With a High Churn Rate

Different times call for optimizing different things.Learning - You might be trying to learn something specific about engagement, interest among a certain target audience, monetization, etc. Learning is typically the priority when your startup is a pre-product-market fit or when you are expanding to a new target audience. Volume - There will be a time in your business when you will want to prove that you can go from a certain base amount of customers to moving the needle in a meaningful way. Cost - Optimizing your CPA to get more out of your budget.

Step 1:   What Are You Optimizing For?

Your constraints will differ depending on the product, stage, funding, industry, etc. The most common constraints will be:<ul><li>Time - Do you have a specific optimal window to reach your audience? Do you only have 3 months of cash left? </li><li>Money - Are you well funded, or bootstrapping? Do you need to extend your runway?</li><li>Target Audience - Do you need to reach someone really specific? </li><li>Legal - Are you taking on an old industry with litigious stalwarts? </li></ul>

Step 2: What are your constraints?

Building a channel matrix helps give you three things:1. A methodical process to evaluate each channel2. A way to compare each channel on the same attributes3. A visual organization of the information for each channelStep 3.1 - Open your favourite spreadsheet tool (google docs, excel, numbers)Step 3.2 - List Out All Potential Channels In The Header ColumnCertain channels can be broken down into more detailed tactics. For example, content marketing could be broken down into blogging, guest blogging, infographics, webinars, ebook, etc

Step 3: Setup Your Channel Matrix

In the header row fill in the attributes of each channel that you are comparing. At a minimum, there are 6 attributes you should have: <ol><li>Targeting - The depth of ability to target different audiences. </li><li>Cost - The upfront and ongoing cost to acquire users in this channel. </li><li>Input Time - The upfront time required to start running experiments with this channel.</li><li>Output Time  - The time it takes to start getting data around your experiments. </li><li>Control - The control you have over turning the channel on/off at will.</li><li>Scale - The size/reach of the channel.  </li></ol>

3.3  List Out Channel Defining Attributes In The Header Row

The next step is to research each channel so you can fill in each cell with “low”, “med”, or “high” values. You aren’t trying to predict exact values.  Get enough information to make educated comparisons of each channel relative to each other.   The matrix looks very different for different companies. For example, “Low” will mean different things to different companies (i.e. A enterprise SaaS company with a high LTV vs a consumer mobile app monetizing with ads).

Step 4:  Fill In Values Of Channel Matrix With Low, Med, High 

Targeting: Does the channel have the type of targeting you need? How close to your exact target audience can you get with this channel?Cost: Are there upfront costs? Minimum spends? Input Time: How much time is required to get to the first experiment? How much time to run each additional experiment? Output Time: How much time will it take to start getting results? How many experiments do we have to run to get meaningful data?  Control: Can you turn the channel on and off at will? Is there a middleman between you and the knobs you turn?Scale: How large is the channel in overall volume?

Explore the value for each channel

In a perfect world you want channels with the following values:Targeting - High, Cost - Low, Input Time - Low, Output Time - Low, Control - High, Scale - HighYou will rarely get a channel that fits those values perfectly so the question is how do you prioritize? This is where the work you put into Step 1 and Step 2 come in. Sort your channels using your constraints as a guide. If your biggest constraint is money, then look at channels that have a low cost as the first priority and come closest to the ideal values for the other attributes.

Step 5:  Choose 1 - 2 Channels As Hypotheses

SEO, SEM, Facebook Ads, content marketing, affiliates, partnerships, email 
marketing, app stores…the list goes on. With so many marketing channels to 
choose from, a common question is “where do I start?” or “what channel 
should we use next?”  I get it.  The information is overwhelming but there 
is a better way than picking pieces of paper out of a hat.  Here is a step 
by step guide that should help you go through the exercise of comparing, 
contrasting, and choosing the right marketing channel for your company. 

Best Practices Customer Success You Can Put Into Action

Frances Frei: How to build (and rebuild) trust

15 mins is all it takes

Customer Success Performance Indicator

Desired Outcome

Yug Jain