Customer Success!
A new customer was visiting the consulting services company’s headquarters. This Customer implemented a large packaged application to automate and integrate all their functions. The going wasn’t that easy post the implementation and that gave him sleepless nights.
He and his 2 people team put together all the key issues raised by all the stakeholders, understood the issues and wanted to meet the teams both at site and remote location working on these issues. After completing their meeting the onsite team, they traveled to the consulting company’s location to meet the remote team and understand firsthand how and when these issues can be resolved.
They planned to stay for 2 days and on day one customer was shared a long list of meetings beginning with the center head. Post the meeting with the center head, he had many meetings lined up with various managers. Not sure whom he was meeting he asked the following questions to his local guide.
Who is this manager?
Sir, he is the regional head and he manages delivery for all the projects in your region.
Ok, does he have all answers to all the issues we are facing?
He is aware of the issues and he can work with teams and solve those issues but he may not have all the answers.
Ok, who is the next manager I am meeting?
Sir, he manages delivery of your projects and other large programs similar to yours.
Ok, does he have all answers to all the issues we are facing?
No Sir. He is aware of the issues and he can work with teams and solve those issues but he may not have all the answers.
He had another couple of meetings with different managers in his schedule for the day and a similar conversation ensued with the local guide.
He looked at the local guide and said, I would like to meet the team and the manager who are working on my project and those who have answers to the issues on my project.
Yes, sir we have lined up a meeting with them later tomorrow few hours before you leave.
Customer replied, I would like to meet my team now and with all due respect to your management I can meet them later if I have time. please let me know which floor does this team sit. I will find my way.
That would be 3rd floor sir. Team ABC
Thank you, said the customer and hurried off to meet the team that matters to him the most!
Pondering over his conversation with the customer the local guide went back to his boss ,shared what happened and said “Organizational structures should not only make business sense to us but should also be relevant to our customers tooâ€
Lead DevOps Engineer at LLOYDS
5 å¹´Hi Joy, I am Madhukar, Hope you remember me.
Business Transformation
5 å¹´It is so true. Once a customer is on-boarded, the customer is owned by organization (one out of many other existing customers) and it's success by customer success manager (shared resource - as same CSM is taking care of multiple clients), customer engagement by engagement manager (again a shared resource). The customer visit to off-shore facility should be owned by each and every team member who is full-time working on the project and they should be driving the customer's calendar. Irrespective of the objective of the visit - be it focused on the issues or to reward the best performing team members - keeping the visit as objective independent, the idea is to match the customer's enthusiasm (with which customer has planned the visit to offshore) with equal or more excitement. The zeal to utilize customer's time and apprise him with everything ongoing should be at its peak in each & every team member of the project.
IT Infrastructure Management | ISMS | ISO27001| SOC2| Service Delivery | ITIL | The Open Group
5 å¹´It's a reality that many organisations easily miss out on