Forged in Fire: A Path to Growth #7

I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s found myself in this position. I had just taken over a CS program and jumped right into action. For me, that means getting involved with customers as quickly as possible. I typically say that in any role, you should spend at least 30% of your time with customers. But when stepping into a new leadership role in CS, I offer the opposite advice: spend 70% of your time with customers and 30% analyzing what you’re learning. Customers will always tell you exactly what you need to know. This is where you’ll find the foundation for your first 90 days and quick wins.

One of my first challenges? I couldn’t get past my first question. “How are things going?” Customer after customer took this as an opportunity to chronicle every issue they had, followed by a desperate cry for help. This wasn’t what I expected, but I knew one thing: it was a problem I was going to solve.

To do so, I stepped back and asked, “Why?”, not just once, but five times. The “Five Whys” method helps uncover the root cause of an issue.

The Five Whys in Action

1. Why are customers so upset and overwhelmed with issues?
2. Why aren’t technical issues being resolved efficiently?
3. Why aren’t tickets receiving initial responses, and why isn’t the knowledge base being utilized?
4. Why is the team overwhelmed? Is it due to ticket volume or lack of process?
5. Do we have the capability to fix this, and is additional investment needed?

By following this process, we quickly tackled the core issues. The results were remarkable:

• 77% improvement in initial response times, bringing human responses (not just automated acknowledgments) to under an hour for a team of four managing 1,200 customers.
• 40% improvement in ticket resolution times?within three months.

Taking Control: Proactive Customer Engagement

With the foundation stabilized, the CS team went on the offensive. We launched a targeted campaign focusing on our top recurring revenue customers based on?two criteria:

1. Upcoming renewal dates
2. Number of tickets submitted

Was this a complex plan? No. Was it the only thing that mattered for rebuilding satisfaction? No. But it was what we could?control, and it was the biggest, quickest win we could secure.

Here’s what we did:

• Reviewed each account for notes, tickets, emails, and created a?customer issues log.
• Partnered with Support and Product teams to track updates, bug fixes, and known resolutions.
• Prioritized issues based on operational and revenue impact.
• Held?customer calls?with CSMs, tech leads, and customers to reset expectations and establish a partnered approach to the solution.
• Most importantly, we?followed through?on our commitments. We didn’t promise to fix everything, but we committed to transparency, persistence, and excellent communication.

The Outcome: Rebuilding Trust, Retention, and Revenue

By simply?doing what we said we would do, we restored customer confidence. The results:

• 10% increase in customer satisfaction.
• Significantly contributed to the retention jump from 85% to 98% within six months.
• After a year, the campaign was retired and replaced with a?proactive customer success planning initiative, moving beyond firefighting to?strategic growth conversations.

Instead of sitting down with customers to troubleshoot issues, we were now discussing how to maximize their revenue and support their business growth.?We had earned the right to do so.

This wasn’t rocket science. It was about mastering the basics and executing them exceptionally well.