4 Myth breaking Customer Success ideas (Part 2) Product Value

Fact #1 Customer Satisfaction (CSAT, NPS, CES) does does not drive Customer Loyalty ?(Link to article)

Fact #2 Your product does not create Customer Value

Fact #3 Training won’t install empathy in your front line staff (Link to article)

Fact #4 Negative responses from customers are a cry for help, no response is the real danger! (Link to article)

This is part 2 of a 4 part series that will cover the myth busting facts above.?Please provide your feedback by liking this article and/or commenting below.???

Last week we spoke about the Customer Experience and how following our natural intuition leads us to believe that as the Customer Experience improves, so too does Customer Loyalty.?In other words, the better experience your Customer has, the more likely they are to stay with you.?While it feels good to believe this and no one would suggest treating your Customers badly, this is not actually true in B2B SaaS or subscription models. (See the article here). This week we take on Myth #2 - Your product creates Customer value; Fact#2: Your product does not create Customer Value.

"Your product does not create customer value"

Many sales professionals talk about the value their product provides as if you plug it in and the thing just starts spitting out gold bullion.?Someday modern science will probably get there but it’s probably safe to assume your product doesn’t do this today.?Most of the time, these same sales professionals don't really understand what is required from the Customer to actually capture the value being sold.?If they are convincing enough, it doesn’t really matter because the Customer purchases the product anyway.?Guess who’s problem they are now; enter the Customer Success team.?As much as I’d like this article to be about the misdeeds of the Sales team, we all need to take a sobering look at ourselves and our approach to successfully deliver our product’s value.?If sales gets them to you, it’s your job to keep them.

"If sales gets them to you, it's your job to keep them."

Your product, by itself, does not provide value.?The product only provides value when it’s used in a certain way.?What is required to use the product in that certain way is most often some sort of change in your client's behavior.?The bigger the change, the harder it is to achieve the expected value.?Stick with me, this is more than semantics.?The real value your Customer gets from your product is in the way they use it.?Many Customer Success onboarding teams have training about how the product CAN be used, but they don’t help the Customer with how the product SHOULD be used.?It’s almost an ultra passive position: “Well who am I to tell you how to run your business?”?(Answer: “You are the person I’m paying to tell me how to run my business!”)?In some cases, this requires a professional services engagement, but in the majority of cases, it sits with Customer Success - and rightly so.??

"The real value your customer gets from your product is in the way they use it"

Quick story: A pre-employment candidate screening company (background checks) I worked with lost their largest Customer.?Not because they weren’t satisfied with the product and not because it wasn’t meeting the KPIs that were set out during the onboarding process.?The product was definitely providing value to this Customer.?They lost this Customer because a competitor showed them HOW to use their product better, in this case, integrated with the HR system end to end.?The competitor understood the hiring process, not just the background check process.?I’ll never forget the response from the CS team. “They never told us they wanted to do that.”?Of Course they didn’t, they didn’t tell anyone.?The reason they didn’t ask for this is because they didn’t know - they aren’t the experts.?The competitor figured it out on their own and understood how the Customer could use their product differently to provide more value.?My client’s product was clearly the better product, and the CSAT was off the charts.?But because the competition knew how best to use their product to accomplish this Customer’s goals, the lessor product won.?This situation directly supports my earlier article’s position that Customers leave because they are no longer receiving enough value.???

"The lessor product won"

During the onboarding process is the time to really understand the details of what your Customer expects from the product and how they define success.?It’s also a time to validate everything that has come before you (aka: promises from sales) I’ve written an article on Customer Onboarding you can access (here) that goes into some detail.?During the onboarding process (and before) it’s important to understand the different ways Customers achieve value from using your product, and how you should recommend they use it.?It's complicated, but like most things in Customer Success, it’s not infinite - there are not an infinite number of ways Customers use your product.?At some point, it starts to repeat.?If the team knows this well enough, they can articulate the change management required to achieve the Customer’s expected value.?They may also be able to identify professional services opportunities.?This isn’t selling, it’s providing value to your Customer!

Closely aligned with HOW the Customer should use your product to best achieve the results they are looking for, is the Customer Value Formula.?I’m still working on that chapter.?Tune in next week when we discuss how training empathy, won’t cause your CSMs to be empathetic.??????

Please don't forget to like this article or comment below!

Have questions??Book 30 minutes with the author here to discuss Customer Success topics of your choice.??

About the author: Daniel Hoesing is an accomplished leader with over 20 years experience in management & leadership; working in the SaaS B2B industry for over 12 years for fortune 100 companies as well as pre-equity startups. He is the creator of the Predictive Customer Behavior Index? assessment, a tool used in assessing Customer Success capabilities of SaaS, ecommerce and subscription based organizations, that is indexed specifically for the size of the organization. The tool identifies gaps in current capabilities and reduces the complexity by providing a list of prioritized projects, as well as a roadmap of future capabilities to consider as the organization scales. Daniel also specializes in Customer Success leadership development and coaching. Please reach out to him for more information Daniel Hoesing on LinkedIn