Customer Success Planning: 3 Things to Keep in Mind for the Remainder of 2020
Three customer success planning priorities for an uncertain second half: help customers move forward, keep a flexible strategy, and strengthen communication.
TL;DR
- Customers are looking to move forward, so CS teams should help them succeed over the coming months rather than dwell on past disruption.
- Flexibility, in both strategy and technology, proved essential during early 2020 and should remain a permanent part of how CS teams operate.
- Strong team communication and clear accountability, sharpened by remote work, should carry forward even as teams return to the office.
For many of us, 2020 has already been the longest year on record – and it’s only June. These past six months have brought on a slew of global challenges and changes, and SaaS organizations are definitely feeling the impact. While some of these topics, like workplace health and safety or increased racial diversity in tech, aren’t going away anytime soon, the national conversation has started to refocus and start looking ahead to the rest of the year.
For customer success leaders, the remainder of 2020 presents a unique opportunity. While many of your customers (and your internal team) may be still adjusting to the changes that have occurred over the first half of 2020, now is the time to showcase what you’ve been able to learn during this time. Here are three things to keep in mind for the remainder of 2020:
1) Your customers are looking to move forward as well.
** **There is a lot going on right now and it has been incredibly overwhelming for many people. While important discussions are still happening and will continue to occupy headline space for the rest of 2020, now is not the time to dwell on the past, especially in the SaaS customer success space. Your customers already know how challenging the first half of 2020 was for their team and for their business. Now, they are looking to your organization and their other vendors to help them move forward and succeed over the next six months.
2) Having a flexible customer strategy shouldn’t go away.
If there is one thing that the first half of 2020 really highlighted for customer success teams, it’s that flexibility is key. So many project plans and customer strategies were forced to pivot due to extenuating circumstances, and customers were able to see ‘behind the curtain’ and experience first-hand the flexibility of their CSMs. Additionally, this also allowed many customers to experiencethe solutions and tools that CSMs rely on for the first time. As your team prepares to get your customers back to normal, flexibility – and flexible technology – should never go away
** 3) Team communication and planning is as important as ever.**
One interesting focal point of the first half of 2020 has been the rise of remote work across many industries, but especially for SaaS-based technology organizations. If your team is working with multiple technology customers who are also working remote, you’ve no doubt realized the importance of a strongworking from home strategy. As offices start to open up and even if you get the chance to see your coworkers (finally!) in person in the next few months, keep the lessons learned during this time in mind. Customer success teams have had to rely heavily on communication tools and be explicitly clear when allocating projects and holding team members accountable and this shouldn’t change! If anything, these clear lines of communication should only strengthen and become more important in the second half of 2020.
How ClientSuccess can set your team up for success for the rest of 2020
Hopefully, your customers have been able to see the power and flexibility of your customer success team over the past few months. WithClientSuccess, your team can focus on delivering amazing customer experiences without having to worry about the tools your team is relying on.
ClientSucess offers a single source of truth for all of your customer needs and data, making it easy to be flexible, communicate with your team, and set your customers up for success. You can learn more about ClientSuccesshere.
Frequently Asked Questions
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