Customer Success Management (CSM) for IT Service Providers

In past interviews, we have spoken to CIO and IT Leaders who consume IT services from service providers, but not to someone who can provide a service provider's perspective on current market trends and customer strategies.

I'm pleased to say that I recently spoke to Darren Elliston about his perspectives and views on the growing importance of CSM and experience based metrics for service providers and here are the highlights -

?Question 1 - What do you think the key Service Management trends will be in 2025

??Darren

It's easy to jump into a reflex reaction for this type of question, where you start talking about AI and automation and tooling, but I do think there are some core service management processes that have been around a long time, which have been quite labour intensive and will be transformed through using better tooling, and I guess AI in terms of interpreting data.

Problem management is an obvious one, as it’s hard to move from that reactive problem management space into that proactive problem management space and understanding the data you get from all your interactions with your users and the service desk, etcetera. I think being able to take some of that legwork away will be transformative for many companies.

As I mentioned before, proactive problem management has always been quite hard to achieve, and it's always been one of the last processes to mature because of the amount of legwork and vast amounts of data involved. For me, this shift will start to generate real value and allow teams to make better use of trending data. So, I think that utilising AI and automation for those core processes will make a huge impact.

?Question 2 – To what degree do you think service providers will embrace Customer Success Management (CSM) going forward?

??Darren

It's a shame that we've had to start talking about customer success management within the service provider space, because ultimately what we're trying to do is ensure that our delivery is producing the very best outcomes for our customers which aligns to their overarching objectives.

I think historically service providers have had a delivery focus and account growth mentality and have lost the focus on the customer. What is it we're trying to achieve? What are you trying to achieve as a customer? What are your desired outcomes? What are your measures and how can we align everything we're doing to make you successful? If you're successful, we're successful.

Do what you say you are going to do, from a customer, contractual and service level perspective. That then gives you the right to have that broader conversation with a customer to find out if the service being provided is working for them.

This elevates the discussion away from red, amber and green, to what we're trying to achieve together.

?Question 3 – How do you think that ITSM and CSM need to align?

??Darren

I think it follows on from my previous answer in terms of that alignment. I think initially when we were talking about a customer success function working alongside additional service delivery teams, some people were wondering what the CSM function will be doing and ultimately if it will tread on anybody’s toes. So, it’s critical that all areas know what the other is doing and are aligned in achieving the best outcomes.

The Customer Success Manager needs to bring customer intel and insights to the service delivery team, to let them know what our customers are actually trying to achieve so that we can endeavour to support them in the best possible ways.

It's about delivering the best outcomes, so the alignment of CSM and service delivery is crucial.

If you think about the role of a customer success manager, having a customer success plan is a basic artefact which we would expect each one to have. There may be things, that aren’t immediately obvious, that we can focus on to improve the whole experience for the customer.

?Question 4 – What are your views on the emergence of XLAs as a counterbalance to SLAs?

??Darren

Again, this plays into the picture of understanding what's important to companies.

It's a bit of a cliche that we want to move from the traditional watermelon kind of SLAs to a more kiwi coloured outcome. For a long time, service providers have presented monthly reports showing everything as being green, with targets being hit, but with the customer not being happy as these types of measures aren’t telling the whole story. ?

There must be something in addition to an SLA allowing the service provider to elevate the conversation through truly understanding how the service feels to the people who are consuming it.

XLAs can really open your eyes. Has the SLA been hit? Yes, but how many times did the service provider have to call that user back? How many visits did we have to make? So, something may well have been resolved within the right period of time, but the experience for the recipient wasn’t great.

Thanks very much to Darren for an interesting and insightful discussion. To see more content like this in your feeds, please hit the subscribe button.