EMBRACING THE WARM AND FUZZY IS A RECIPE FOR HIGH CUSTOMER LOYALTY AND EMPLOYEE RETENTION

If you have been paying attention to the news lately or have heard anything about the latest rumblings in the SaaS world. Then you have probably heard that another economic recession is either here already or on the horizon. Regardless of where you stand one thing is clear. Companies are tightening their budgets and preparing for the worst. From companies like?UBER?announcing spending cuts to funding organizations like?Y-Combinator?putting out ominous warnings to startups to prepare for the worst. Although no one is sure how big the recession will be or how long it will last. Every company big and small must have a strategy going forward.

THE IMPORTANCE OF EMPLOYEE AND CUSTOMER RETENTION

When it comes to customer success one could say no need to worry we have been here before and bounced back. When covid hit in early 2020 for some industries like hospitality and travel already faced a recession and we survived. As a forever optimist, I also sometimes subscribe to this way of thinking. But after doing a lil research myself I do think that this recession has the potential to be the first true industry agnostic universal recession since the rise of the Customer Success industry. Without getting into all of the history of how we got here and reasons why this potential recession is different. (That could easily be a 3 blog series by itself). Regardless of where you stand the key for all companies in this current economic climate is retention. Companies who can retain their employees will be better suited to also retain their customers.

As someone who is also a firm believer in finding ways to be action oriented. I wanted to use this exercise in written soliloquy to share some tips that might help all CS organizations to provide a service to their clients that helps their companies weather this upcoming economic storm. Plus I brought in a special guest to share some gems as well so stay tuned for that. I don’t know everything about what is going to happen. But what I do know is that customer success will be the department that separates the winners and losers from the “out of business’ers”. Read below to learn more about how:

I recently sat down with Andy Rogers, Partner Success Leader from Postman. See some excerpts from our conversation below to learn more about how you can get your CS organization to be ready to weather the storm.

CUSTOMER SUCCESS IS ABOUT PARTNERSHIP

Sam - 1)Andy, you have made a name for yourself at Postman and now a leader in your new role in Partner Success. You mentioned that “great customer success is about partnership”. Tell me more about what you mean by that:

Andy - Absolutely Sam. Partnership with your customers (and formal partners in the case of my current role) is fundamentally about earning trust: trust that you know what you’re talking about - from a technical perspective, a data perspective, product perspective, and from an outsider’s perspective trying to truly work towards their core business/team outcomes -, trust that you are working in their best interest and not just your company’s, and trust that you want to see them get real (not manufactured) value from your product and expertise.

If you can engage people with these fundamentals, then the relationship can start to grow into a partnership. A poor analogy for this journey is that the one-way work you do (to show competence, knowledge, interest in solving problems & helping affect outcomes, making data meaningful, etc) will turn into a two-way street, where your customer/partner will be able to give you more insight about their team/company, ultimately helping you increase value to their team/company AND yours. Vaidyanathan and Rabago have an entire chapter devoted to this in their Customer Success Professional’s Handbook. It also helps build trust that you will advocate on their behalf if value is diminishing for whatever reason - which correlates to risk and churn. Customer success managers get paid by their own companies, but really work on behalf of and for customers.

While it’s easy to say, “do these things” that I just talked about, the real secret of customer success – that few CS managers or directors talk openly about – is honesty and empathy. These are the simple, unnamed ways of being toward others that influence people trying to solve real problems and do their work every single day.

Sam, you and I talked about this as “staying human.” Empathy and honesty require you to recognize people and serve as the building blocks to earning the trust talked about above. When was the last time a manager or Director or VP dedicated a meeting to these topics? When have you ever seen a KPI around this stuff? We make up vanity metrics (maybe loosely associated with revenue or retention or some piece of data), rewarding or shattering people’s lives based on them, while missing the deeper point. This is much more the Mehta, Steinman, and Murphy approach to CS if anyone is keeping score on CS literature.

My view is that honesty and empathy driving learned skillsets are what foster the successful relationships to allow you to begin providing REAL value to customers and partners over time.

EMBRACING THE WARM AND FUZZY... A CASE FOR TRUST OVER TRANSACTION

Sam - I agree with that so much. My background comes from using data to tell stories and influence others. I found that having powerful insights was only half the battle. To influence leaders to follow my suggestions and make decisions on my findings. They had to find them valuable and trust in me as a partner who wants to share in their success. One of the things that made me so successful in working with CS leaders to drive change in their business was being able to boil things up to initiatives from data and findings. Instead of saying the data suggest Y and Z. I would show them findings but always end with some proven initiatives that can be run to solve problems across the border themes in my findings. This initiative based approach coupled with the things you mentioned above allowed me to position myself positively as a trusted partner who is action oriented and wants to see them win. If they win I win.

In our discussion you bring up so many interesting concepts that leaders can do to allow their team to level up their conversations with clients. In a time where everyone is over-scheduled and time deprived. You bring up this interesting concept of “Embrace the warm and fuzzy” when growing/upleveling your customer success teams. Can you explain what that means and why this will be critical for CS teams looking to thrive in this economic downturn:

To hear Andy's take on why embracing the warm an fuzzy is critical for companies who will thrive in 2023 and beyond; continue reading at my company DataPlant's Community Blog:?https://www.thedataplant.com/Blog/Posts/RecessionReadyCS.html#continue