Differentiate with Digital: Boost Customer Value and Outcomes
Welcome back to the Success Stories Newsletter! We’ll be sharing real success stories from our customers and how you can share in the success, too! You can learn more about Totango and what we do here.
Annie Stefano, Head of CS Education at Growth Molecules, met with Karen Budell, CMO of Totango, to host a webinar, Differentiate with Digital: Boost Customer Value and Outcomes. While tech touch can be dismissed as impersonal, the reality is that when some parts of the customer journey can be automated, CSMs can focus more time on partnering with customers and strengthening relationships.?
The pacesetters of customer success are sprinting ahead by prioritizing onboarding, adoption, and the entire customer journey. These companies are experiencing more loyal customers (with a churn rate of 3%), superior net revenue retention (with 125% growth efficiency), and faster growth (with 10x faster generation).
Like any good product, your customer journey should evolve based on what you learn, and those findings should be shared across your entire organization. Customer success is more than just a dedicated team—it’s a company-wide operating model focused on driving shared customer value throughout their journey. This requires shifting from an acquisition-driven to a value-driven approach, as we discussed in Recession-Proof Your Business.
At Totango, we make building shared customer value easy with our Composable Customer Success Platform so you can visualize and collaborate on each step of the customer journey through onboarding, adoption, expansion, and renewal.?
Taking a digital approach to scale your efforts across the customer journey is key, and that’s why we’re prioritizing how to differentiate with digital. One way to do this is to create a map for your customer journey.
Where do you start with your journey mapping?
Whether you have a journey map or not, it’s important to take stock of where you currently are. Here are some of Annie’s tips for getting started:
A map can help you visualize every part of your customer journey. When you can better understand it, you know the long-term impact of each step along the way, and everyone can get onboard with how to make the experience more successful.?
Here’s Annie’s example of a journey map from launch to renewal:
You’re probably thinking: there’s so much more that happens between these phases! Only 31.5% of customer churn is about products and service underperforming, which is out of our control. But this means that the remaining 68.5% of customer churn is within our control, which means there’s a ton of opportunity for expansion and renewal.
Annie points out that one great place to begin is what we call “the trough of disillusionment.”
This usually occurs somewhere between training and adoption, and customers can get stuck. So strategically, it’s important to check in with customers at this time.?
领英推荐
How often should teams revisit and update their customer journey?
Annie recommends addressing the customer journey every quarter. Depending on your customers and your industry, this can be as often as every 6 weeks. You may not need to change it drastically, but it’s important to check in, see if it’s working for you, and be sure that your map is accurate, all while communicating with your team so that they’re gaining value from the map as well.?
After mapping your customer journey, that’s when you can hone in on how to differentiate and provide value with digital experiences.?
What does digital experience mean?
When it comes to tech touch, there’s a misnomer that not everybody needs it or that it’s reserved for small insignificant customers. But tech touch is a great resource that can be used across all customers in combination with in-person. So start by asking yourself, what digital experience does everybody need?
Next, check in with trigger-based and time-based tech touch. Communicate with your customers when they need it, not when you think they do. As you advance in the data you’re collecting, you can get more specific about exactly when digital communications go out. This creates a much more proactive process.?
When you build these strong digital experiences, your team is empowered to focus on building relationships. You’ve already collected the data to drive your digital experiences, so when team members connect with customers, their outreach is strategic and intentional.
Finally, look at personalized outreach. Customers are 85% more likely to engage with you when it’s personalized and intentional, which will build a much stronger relationship with your customer.?
Key takeaways:
Annie suggests navigating the customer journey with P.A.T.H.
Want to learn the latest CS industry trends??
You can catch the full Differentiate with Digital: Boost Customer Value and Outcomes webinar here!
Sign up for our next webinar, Online learning strategies to grow your customer training program, December 8th at 9 AM PST / 12 PM EST.
Our SuccessBLOC bundle can provide you with all of the information you need to drive customer growth. Ready to take the next step in retaining your customer base? Use our Invest in CS SuccessBLOC bundle to engage customers, detect risk, and analyze customer health.
Subscribe now for more Success Stories from our customers!
Top 100 CS Strategist (2023), Thought Leader CS Watchlist (2022), Head of Education, Coach, Advisor @ Growth Molecules | Customer Success | Client Experience
2 年It was such a pleasure talking with Karen Budell about boosting customer value!