The art and importance of customer business reviews

I've recently observed a trend of downplaying business reviews. At Wi-Tronix , we have successfully conducted these sessions, applying a broad spectrum of best practices, such as those outlined by Success Canvas from Success Hackers , tailored specific to our industry.?

Led by Matthew Madden , our Manager of Customer Success, we've implemented a success plan that involves segmenting customers appropriate for the right level of engagement. Interestingly, most of our customers proactively book their business reviews, send out invites, and even save the date for the next one before we leave.

Our success plan has become a model that our customers have implemented with other suppliers (yes, we give them our template to share). These interactions are designed to focus on the past 90-day actions, outline forward-looking objectives, address escalations, and curate an overall theme which is where the art from the Customer Success team comes in. It is crucial for Customer Success to understand what the right theme is for each customer.

Given the dynamic, evolving nature of our customers, agility is an essential skill in order to provide proper guidance. One of our team's significant achievements this year has been the incorporation of SaaS growth into business objectives, which customers present to both peers and leadership teams post-review (an amazing accomplishment!). This addition has seamlessly become a vital component of our business reviews, even being written into renewals as part of the contract governance.

During recent visits to FERROMEX and Aurizon with our Customer Success Managers, both CSMs crafted business review decks focused values and outcomes rather than mere pitching. These meetings resulted in executives extending the discussions due to the insights our team was able to shed light on, with new business ideas being requested by the customer, not pushed by our team.

To the Wi-Tronix Customer Success team: this journey has been extensive, marked by experiments, failures, learnings, and the constant pursuit of innovative approaches. Take a moment to celebrate all we have achieved together.

As we approach the close of this year, I challenge the CS team to consider what we will do differently in the coming year. The success we have achieved yesterday is now in the past; the focus needs to shift to what actions are being taken today, as today is where we currently stand. It's the actions we take in the present that will shape our future.