We all want Customer Success to drive value . . . but for who? For our customers? For our company? For our employees? Let’s talk about the need to create value for customers, shareholders, and employees.
Who cares?
If we focus on our sales and our profits we often end up with customers that feel nickeled, dimed or like we don’t care about their success but only care about their wallets.
If we focus on customers value, we often fail to charge reasonable fees (give away the farm) or have great relationships with poor profit margins or have a great understanding of what they need with no real organizational capabilities to help them.
If we focus on value to our employees we may fail to remember why and create unrealistic expectations and frustration that drives retention issues and adds additional costs while we lose our incredible advantage of knowledge and experience.
Today’s Expectations are High.
In today’s world, customers expect you and your team to have knowledge and understand and partner with them to help them drive value. You can only do that with knowledgeable, motivated employees and informed products. Only then will you grow profitably and meet shareholder expectations.
It is possible and imperative to understand and balance the value proposition for Customers, Shareholders and Employees.
Customers care about outcomes and experience. What have you done for me lately? Great customer outcomes and experience drives customer advocacy.
Advocacy drives sales and revenue – both retention and growth of your current customer based as well as net new customer growth.
To create great experiences and products – you need knowledgeable people that are interested in a variety of things that will advance their career to where they want it go. These people should be proud to drive great customer relationships on behalf of your product and company.
The goal is value for everyone through the entire core customer journey of sales, onboarding and business as usual (BAU).
How Do you Do it?
It’s easy to have people in your organization focusing on making technology & product or focusing on marketing or focusing on sales or focusing on customer success or focusing on financial returns. It requires orchestration to create a truly customer centric organization that works together, each brining their owns skills and specialties to the team in order to maximize lifetime value of the customer and long term growth and financial success for your company.
Marketing only gets great customer stories if they are developed jointly by customer success managers and a product team that understands the customer’s business and requirements. Sales only gets great numbers if they can point to great outcomes you’ve created for others through great marketing stories. Sales only renew if the customer has a great onboarding experience and the product genuinely helps them achieve their objectives.
This blog is dedicated to me sharing my experiences in Big 5 Consulting, IT application management, IT management, and SaaS customer success to explore the idea of how do you do it? How does an organization create a truly customer centered team that drives NPS, revenue retention, revenue growth, lots of net new customers, high experience scores, high margins, and long term employees. It’s built on the foundation of a great product. But to maximize the value of that product takes a great vision of how your organization fits and works together to achieve value for your customers, your employees, and your shareholders.
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