Customer Success vs Customer Experience - What You Need to Know

Overview: Customer Success and Customer Experience teams share metrics that indicate customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention, but use distinct metrics that reflect their unique responsibilities.

Objectives of a Customer Success (CS) Team

Customer Success teams focus on nurturing long-term relationships and driving continuous value for clients. Key objectives include:

1. Maximizing Product Adoption: Ensuring customers fully utilize the product by providing training, onboarding, and ongoing support, so they reach intended outcomes.
2. Reducing Churn: Identifying at-risk customers early and implementing strategies to retain them by addressing pain points or providing added value.
3. Driving Renewals and Expansion: Promoting renewal of services, upsells, and cross-sells to increase account value over time.
4. Measuring and Communicating Customer ROI: Demonstrating the product’s ROI to customers by tracking relevant KPIs and communicating how the solution meets their objectives.
5. Building Strategic Relationships: Engaging with customers in a consultative manner to understand and anticipate their needs and ensure continuous alignment with their objectives.

Objectives of a Customer Experience (CX) Team

Customer Experience teams are dedicated to ensuring a positive, seamless journey across all customer touchpoints and maintaining an overall positive brand perception. Core objectives include:

1. Improving Customer Satisfaction: Tracking and boosting customer satisfaction scores (CSAT) across all interactions.
2. Mapping and Optimizing the Customer Journey: Analyzing each phase of the customer journey to remove friction points and ensure a cohesive experience.
3. Enhancing Brand Loyalty and Advocacy: Creating memorable experiences that convert customers into brand advocates, positively impacting Net Promoter Score (NPS).
4. Collecting and Acting on Customer Feedback: Gathering insights on customer preferences, complaints, and expectations and ensuring these inform product and service improvements.
5. Aligning Cross-Functional Teams: Working with product, marketing, and sales teams to ensure the customer experience is prioritized across departments.

Shared Focus. Approaches to Customer Journey

Both Customer Success and Customer Experience are important for business growth, but they focus on different aspects of the customer journey.

Key Differences in Objectives of CS and CX Teams

Despite shared objectives, CS and CX teams have distinct priorities based on their specific roles, including (but not limited to):

Trait #1. Relationship Focus (CS) vs. Journey Focus (CX)

• CS: Directly manage the post-sale relationship, guiding customers to achieve specific goals, focused heavily on personal, proactive engagement.
• CX: Ensures a seamless experience across all touchpoints, including pre-sale and brand interaction, and works to enhance overall customer perceptions.

Trait #2. Revenue-Centric Goals (CS) vs. Experience-Centric Goals (CX)

• CS: Primary objectives include renewals, upsells, and expansion—revenue goals directly tied to the account.
• CX: Objectives revolve around customer satisfaction, loyalty, and advocacy without direct emphasis on sales, though they contribute indirectly to revenue.

Trait #3. Immediate Satisfaction (CX) vs. Long-Term Value (CS):

• CS: Focuses on ongoing customer success through measurable long-term value creation.
• CX: Works to ensure immediate satisfaction with every customer interaction across various channels, including support, marketing, and onboarding.

Conclusion

Customer Success teams are primarily external-facing, working closely with individual clients to ensure users have the skills, resources, and tools needed to deliver effective customer outcomes and long-term revenue growth. While Customer Experience teams are primarily internal-facing, working cross-functional with Sales, Marketing, and Product to focus on enhancing the client's overall journey and customer perception within all brand touchpoints across the customer lifecyle.

Together, both are critical to a cohesive, value-driven customer strategy.

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FEEDBACK. Reader Question ??

Some say that that Customer Success is the destination, with Customer Experience (CX) as the the foundation. Both CS and CX have a shared interest fostering satisfaction, loyalty, and account potential.

?? How do you distinguish between Customer Success and Customer Experience?

?? How are they similar? How are they different?

Tags: #CustomerExperience #CustomerSuccess #CustomerJourney #SalesEnablement