Is Customer Success the same as Support?

Nope. I like to think of Success and Support as the yin and yang of working with customers. You need both in order to have a balanced and positive relationship with clients. But are they the same thing? Absolutely not. Here’s why:

The Approach of Each Team is Different

Support = Reactive. Reactive isn’t bad, it’s tactical. It is great when reactive means responsive and responsive means customers get answers to their questions quickly. Support at its best is your rapid response team for customer questions, problems and needs. Customers need quick answers sometimes, and support is where they should go to get them. Support is the backbone of customer care.

Success = Proactive. Proactive is strategic. Proactive elevates the conversation above your product and directs it to the business value a customer receives from a solution. While reactively helping to redirect a customer’s tactical questions toward support is inevitably a part of the role of a success professional, the bulk of their time should be spent on proactively measuring, driving, and demonstrating the value a customer is receiving.

The Goals of Each Team are Different

Given what I just described, the goals of each of these teams need to be radically different from each other.

Support needs to be measured on responsiveness. How quickly was a support issue addressed? How long did it take for a resolution to come about? How satisfied was the customer with the answer they received? All of these are great customer support metrics and can easily be turned into goals for a support team.

Success needs to be measured on value delivery. Did the customer renew their agreement? Did the customer expand the work they are doing with the company? Has the customer been willing to serve as a reference? Has the customer referred other companies to the organization? These are excellent proxy measures of a customer receiving value.

Can you be a Customer Success Manager and handle support tickets too?

Also no. Here’s why. If you are a person who is faced with a task that is coming at you (reactive task) and another task that requires you to take action (proactive task) you will always choose the reactive task first. It seems like you’re doing what is best for the customer (what every support and success professional ultimately cares about). However, you aren’t thinking about the opportunity cost.

Every time you choose a reactive task over a proactive task, you are sacrificing the customer seeing long-term value in your solution to a customer getting an immediate need met. That said, the customer absolutely needs their immediate need met, but they also need to see long term value in your solution. If your CSMs are spending all of their time working to help customers with their immediate needs, they won’t be helping to demonstrate long-term value. That will hit your business hard; by increasing churn, decreasing expansion revenue, and decreasing customer advocacy.

You need both Support and Success to ensure that your customers are cared for now, and well into the future. It is worth the investment in both teams to be sure that reactive and proactive customer engagement is positive, speedy and valuable.