A CASE FOR CUSTOMER SUCCESS

A few months ago I got an interesting opportunity: train for a career pivot in something called Customer Success. I didn’t have to be any specific age, or have any particular experience or educational background. All I had to do was show up, commit, learn new things and embrace the idea of undertaking a training program with a novel approach to preparing me for this career.

Why not? I signed on the dotted line.

Then I asked, ‘So what’s Customer Success, anyway?’ ... because, honestly, if it was anything like the Customer Service roles I’d just done a whole lot of, I was also going to need a hard mental shift. Not from the idea of helping people, but from that exhausting, helpless feeling of providing a temporary patch to get them over whatever was their block when the problem needed to be addressed at the source, but I had no real power to influence organizational or product change.

"No” they said, “This is definitely NOT Customer Service”.?

Now, several months later, I’ve discovered that Customer Success is an idea, a movement, a profession that turns Customer Service on its head. Instead of selling something to someone and then waiting to interact with them when things have gone wrong, this field takes a proactive approach. The whole idea is about anticipating issues before they arise, putting the customer at the center of business decisions, seeking to form long-lasting, meaningful relationships with them, and doing everything in your power to prove they made the right decision to buy your product or service.

Sounds almost too good to be true, right??

Well, think about this. While it may have had its origins in SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) companies, modern business NEEDS Customer Success. Gone are the days when you could lock customers into your product, and if they were unhappy, with the cost, time and frustration of switching, and even lack of availability of alternatives, they had to grin and bear it, or sometimes choose to go without.

Nowadays, the consumer has options and good business includes making it easy for them to leave if they so desire. In response, good business now also involves treating your customers like valued partners whose attention and patronage are welcome and nurtured.

That is not to say that the tenets of Customer Success are practiced everywhere. They SHOULD, though. And not just for high-value customers, but for everyone. I’m sure we can all come up with a few industries that could use a little (or a lot) of this thinking & practice. That, I hope, is where I and my 30-odd co-trainees, like many other folk practicing and transitioning into this field, come in. With such a wealth of diverse backgrounds, interests and experience, the future looks promising for spreading Customer Success far & wide.?

The more I learn, the more engaged I become. So now I’m looking forward to having the conversations again. This time I can make the calls instead of waiting for them to come with their inevitable complaints and problems. I can be an active partner in discussing the issues, offering solutions and using a set of tools that will allow me to make things better before they have the chance to go bad.

That, I say, is a pretty decent gig.