Customer Success

In last week’s edition of “A Vest Side Story,” we talked about what it takes to successfully deploy technology or services for early customers. Once the customers have been identified, the business won and the implementation complete, what is the role of the founder or founders when it comes to successful, ongoing engagement? 

Accountability

First and foremost, your customers want accountability. No matter how much funding you’ve received, how great a team you’ve hired, or how transformative a product you’ve created, the buck stops with you as a founding team.  Early customer success equates to founder success. In fact, it’s the most important indicator that a founder is on the right track. 

Early customer success equates to founder success.

Really Know Your Customer

Your relationship with a customer can’t simply be with C-levels or peers, but with hands-on users who need your technology to work so that they can succeed at their jobs. As a startup founder, people are taking a chance on you. It’s important to build the relationships, know who is involved and bring a sense of humility to those interactions with a focus on feedback and support.  Identify all your stakeholders - detractors and your champions, and approach each with a specific strategy that demonstrates not only your value, but your willingness to work with them in a way that adds more, every day. Really know your customer. 

Understand the Industry

Step two is to understand the industry in which the customer operates, its challenges, its opportunities and where your customer fits within that bigger picture. It is easy, as a startup founder, to forget that there is a dynamic occurring outside the walls of your company.  This naturally occurs because you are doing a hundred things just to get your company off the ground.  What is most important to you and what is most important to the customer might not always line up. It’s critical to appreciate, understand and prioritize their challenges. This allows you to empathize and engage on a deeper, more positive level than other vendors. 

An extreme example, but one that effectively illustrates the point, is an oil and gas company like BP. Let’s say they were on your list of prospects when the Deepwater Horizon disaster occured. Would you really pick that week to cold call? Probably not. At best, they’re going to say, “No offense, but unless your solution is going to close a pipeline leaking oil into the ocean, let’s talk later.” At worst, you’ve demonstrated a complete lack of context in regards to their world, their challenges and their realities. While that may be an extreme example, just realize that each sector has a dynamic that affects decision making around budgets and priorities. 

Here, customer context and good research are key. 

• What are the micro and macro factors driving the industry? 
• Who are their customers, and how can you help them, too? 
• What is the culture of the industry when it comes to adopting new technology?

Understanding these factors can provide a major advantage when working with a new customer, and help you to avoid saying the wrong thing. 

Something I’ve encountered often as a CIO is a vendor or salesperson who illustrates what they’ve been able to do for a less successful competitor. That’s not always a great selling point. In some cases it represents a track record in understanding the industry. In other cases, it represents that your solution is not as impactful to companies that may not considered great competitors.

Your Vision of the Customer Experience

It’s also important to think about what makes a great customer experience from your personal standpoint as a founder and early stage team. 

• How do you want customers treated? 
• If one of your customers met an industry peer and one your prospects and your company name came up, what would you want them to say? 
• How are customers supported?  

Know what you would *never* want a customer to say about you. Clearly communicate those expectations to your entire staff. Everyone has varying degrees of patience, and you know that you, as a human and a founder, have your own pet peeves. Be sure you can articulate those so that your teams can align around customer success as a founder-led motion. 

A successful founder has to be near maniacal about customer success. Aaron Levie of Box responded personally to customer emails until well after the company would have been considered a “startup.” Eric Yuan of Zoom still responds to tweets from customers. That’s the level of involvement, passion and caring it takes to establish an early, loyal customer base. Success is dependent on a clear vision not just for where the product is, but where it is going. And that’s up to the founder to provide. 

Success is dependent on a clear vision not just for where the product is, but where it is going.