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2016 was a busy year for customer success leaders. A growth in innovative technologies, creative engagement strategies, and interdepartmental collaboration revolutionized the role of customer success. New education materials, thought leadership, and programs brought a jolt of urgency and creativity to the customer success landscape.
It’s now possible for customer success leaders to know what their customers want before they ask for it. To plan workflows and campaigns for unparalleled engagement. To position Customer Success as a foundational pillar of an organization’s success. For these achievements to be reached, however, customer success leaders must have the right tools at hand to perform at the highest level.
So what did we learn in 2016?
We sorted our blog by the most popular viewed posts and the following topics emerged. We summed up the posts with a link to the original content and what to remember for 2017. Enjoy!
Here we’ve outlined the 5 biggest customer success topics of 2016, plus what you should remember heading into 2017:
In order for customer success teams to continue to grow proactively, organizations should implement Quarterly Business Reviews, or QBRs. QBRs help teams, from sales to customer success, highlight what went well in the past and pinpoint where processes could be improved upon. These meetings are often a structured ‘meeting of the minds’ where key stakeholders discuss strategy and ideas for the future quarter.
For customer success teams, internal QBRs are a chance to discuss challenging customers, outline business plans and goals, and learn from fellow leaders. The internal QBR is a way to ensure Customer Success Managers (CSMs), executives, and others are fully aligned on action plans, goals, and other critical metrics.
Make sure you have a process in place! Whether or not your process is a formal QBR, it’s extremely important to take historical data, events, and processes and use them to shape future strategies. Your entire customer success department should be involved to discuss any changes in workflows, brainstorm plans for improvement, and celebrate any big wins.
Learn 4 steps to build out internal QBRs for Customer Success
For any competitive customer success team, compensation plans are a source of interest and focus. Here, ClientSuccess CEO Dave Blake discusses three popular CSM compensation plans and his thoughts on each.
Here are some questions customer success leaders should think about when choosing a compensation plan for CSMs:
As a customer success leader, there will always be questions about compensations plans and renewal goals. It’s important to remember that compensation plans can change easily with minimum disruption to your team. Keep in mind that the best course of action is one that aligns the goals of your entire company with your CSM’s goals, ensuring everyone is working towards the same end. This makes it easy to know when people are on the right track or not.
Learn the 3 most popular CSM compensation plans
While the terms ‘customer success’ and ‘customer support’ are often used in similar contexts, the roles they describe are vastly different. Customer support is a group who work towards solving product issues or providing product guidance for customers. Customer support is often more reactive, working on an incoming ticket system from customers.
Customer success, on the other hand, is a real-time, proactive sales approach that consists of building relationships with existing customers, understanding their goals, and helping them reach these expectations. Customer success teams are hands-on, and help customers throughout their entire customer journey.
These two functions are both crucial to the success of any organization. Oftentimes, these two roles work side by side, and this can often lead to higher customer satisfaction rates. Both customer success and customer support teams are on the front lines of customer interactions, and it’s important to remain professional, attentive, and engaged throughout the entire process.
Learn more about Customer Success and Customer Support teams
For new customers, building a journey map is critical. These maps allow customer success leaders to identify where customers are at in their journey, what they should have already accomplished, and what they still have to complete. Here are 5 best practices to build a customer success journey map:
Focus on the entire journey! Every single touchpoint matters - and not just in the first 90 days. It’s important to realize that successful customers are hopefully in for the long haul, which means they will reach and pass specific milestones over months and years, not days. It’s up to customer success leaders to create this seamless customer experience that makes customers feel valued and respected, not rushed or pushed aside. Developing this long term relationship will help lead to renewals and upsells down the road.
Five best practices to build a customer success journey map
And now to the big picture item in every CSM’s pocket: renewals. While customers and CSMs should interact often, high-level, strategic conversations are the time and place to discuss the heavy-hitting topics. These conversations are a chance to get out of the ‘in-the-weeds’ conversations and focus on long-term strategies.
You may be thick as thieves with your customers, but how do you really know how they’re feeling? Asking strategic questions during these high-level conversations can help uncover and even save potential renewals:
It’s important to have these difficult conversations with customers. While it might be awkward at first to ask these questions, it can actually deepen your relationships and uncover hidden pain points. Often these strategic conversations can lead to team-wide education opportunities and new best practices being formed.
4 strategic questions CSMs should ask to save a renewal
What was your favorite topic of 2016? What customer success tips should others keep in mind for 2017?
eBooks:
5 Ways to Surprise & Delight Your Customers
Customer Success as a Culture: Customer Success Leaders Edition
Blog Posts:
Customer Success in the C-Suite—Aligning the Board and Exec Team
The Four Fold Mission of Customer Success
Learn more about how ClientSuccess can help your company develop a strong customer success methodology and strategy with easy-to-use customer success software by requesting a 30-minute demo.
