How to break through the C-suite barrier and get buy-in
Customer Success Collective
Connecting and empowering passionate customer advocates. Click ‘Sign Up’ below to join our Slack Community.
Breaking through to the C-suite in any business function is often regarded as the ultimate milestone.
The C-suite isn’t just a group of top executives sitting around a boardroom table; they’re the architects of a company's vision and the driving force behind its customer experience initiatives.?
Their decisions shape the strategic direction, influence critical resource allocation, and determine the success of your company’s customer-centric efforts.
For customer experience and customer success leaders , forging strong connections with the C-suite isn’t just beneficial – it’s mission-critical.?
It’s the key to driving transformative change and securing long-term success in customer experience and success endeavors.
Why the C-suite is so important
The importance of the C-suite in customer success cannot be overstated. These executives have the power to champion a customer-centric mindset throughout your entire organization.?
By setting the tone at the top and emphasizing the importance of putting the customer first, C-suite executives can create a culture that prioritizes customer success.
This alignment between the C-suite and the customer success team is essential for driving sustainable growth and ensuring that the customer’s needs are at the forefront of all decision-making processes.
One of the key reasons why the C-suite is so important in customer success is its ability to provide the necessary resources and support.
This includes allocating budget, staffing, and technology resources to enable the customer success team to effectively engage with customers, drive retention and loyalty, and achieve business outcomes.?
Without the backing of the C-suite, customer success initiatives may struggle to gain traction and deliver the desired results.
But it doesn’t stop there. The C-suite is in a unique position to provide invaluable insights and strategic direction to the customer success team. By working closely with the C-suite, customer experience and customer success leaders can ensure that their initiatives are aligned with the company's overall strategy and goals.?
This alignment is crucial to gain the support and buy-in needed to drive lasting change and achieve long-term success in customer experience.
The challenges of getting the support of the C-suite
Most people usually face a variety of challenges when trying to reach their organization’s C-suite.
One common challenge is the lack of understanding and appreciation for the value that customer experience and customer success bring to the overall business strategy.
1. Understanding the value of customer experience and success
Many C-suite executives who don’t come from CX and CS backgrounds may not fully grasp the importance of customer retention and loyalty in driving long-term growth and profitability.?
Unfortunately, as a result of this misalignment, customer experience and success leaders must work even harder to educate their colleagues on the critical role they play in the success of the organization.
2. Customer success is hard to measure and quantify
Another challenge is the difficulty of measuring and quantifying the impact of customer success efforts on the bottom line. Unlike more traditional departments like sales or marketing, customer success can be erroneously viewed as a cost center rather than the revenue generator it is.?
Understanding the significance of new logos? Sure, tangible revenue targets are much easier to compute – everyone understands the value of new business.
But showing the value in a well-oiled onboarding process and vetted ROI framework, and linking that to retained customers and ARR? That’s the tricky part.?
This can make it challenging for customer experience and success leaders to demonstrate their value in concrete terms to the C-suite. CSMs can overcome this challenge by tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) that tie their work directly to business outcomes.
3. Siloed departments
Getting through to the C-suite can often be compounded by this commonplace problem: siloed working. CX and CS can struggle with breaking down silos within their organization that prevent effective collaboration with other departments.?
To deliver a seamless and cohesive customer experience, it’s crucial to work closely with sales, marketing, product development, support, and other teams. However, organizational barriers and competing priorities can make it difficult to establish strong cross-functional relationships.?
To address this challenge, CX and CS leaders must proactively seek out opportunities for collaboration and communication with other departments.
Building bridges to the C-suite
Developing strong relationships with C-suite executives is crucial for any CSM looking to break through the barriers and gain access to the highest levels of decision-making within an organization.?
These relationships can open doors, provide valuable insights, and help drive strategic initiatives that are aligned with the company's overall goals and objectives.
To build these relationships, it is important to approach them with a constructive mindset and a genuine desire to collaborate and add value.
1. Understand the C-suite’s priorities and challenges
One key aspect of developing strong relationships with C-suite executives is to understand their priorities and challenges. By taking the time to listen and learn about what matters most to these leaders, CX and CS leaders can tailor their approaches and solutions to meet their needs and address their pain points.
This shows a level of empathy and understanding that can go a long way in building trust and credibility with top-level decision-makers.
2. Demonstrate value
Another key factor in building relationships with C-suite executives is to demonstrate value and results. When you highlight the impact of CS initiatives on key metrics such as revenue growth, customer retention, and overall business performance, executives will see the tangible benefits of collaborating closely with customer success.?
This helps to establish credibility and establish a track record of success that can lead to further collaboration and partnership.
When communicating your value proposition to C-suite executives, it is important to focus on the benefits and outcomes that your solution can deliver.
Avoid getting bogged down in technical details or jargon that may not resonate with your audience. Instead, highlight the tangible results that your offering can help them achieve, such as increased revenue, improved efficiency, or enhanced customer satisfaction.
领英推荐
One effective strategy for communicating value propositions is to tailor your message to the individual needs and priorities of each C-suite executive. By taking the time to understand their specific challenges and goals, you can position your offering as a valuable solution that can help them achieve their objectives.?
This personalized approach demonstrates that you have done your homework and are genuinely invested in helping them succeed.
3. Proving your worth with data
Leveraging data and metrics is essential to demonstrating success to the C-suite. CX and CS leaders must understand the importance of using data and metrics to highlight the impact of their efforts on the bottom line.
By effectively utilizing data, customer success teams can provide concrete evidence of their value to the organization and secure buy-in from senior leadership.
I touched on this earlier in this article when discussing the challenge of quantifying customer success, but one of the best ways to prove the value of your customer success or experience function is via tracking your KPIs and making sure they’re directly tied to your organization’s goals.
?When customer success teams measure metrics like customer retention rates, customer satisfaction scores, and upsell and cross-sell opportunities, they can provide tangible evidence of their impact on the company's overall success.
These metrics can be used to create compelling reports and presentations that clearly demonstrate the value that customer success brings to the organization.
Another important aspect of leveraging data and metrics is the ability to identify trends and patterns that can inform strategic decision-making.
Through analyzing data over time, customer success teams can identify areas of opportunity for improvement and make data-driven recommendations for how to better serve customers and drive business outcomes.?
This proactive approach to data analysis can help customer success teams stay ahead of the curve and continuously improve their processes and strategies. CX and CS leaders should also focus on aligning their data and metrics with the broader goals of the organization.?
By connecting their efforts to key business objectives, customer success teams can clearly demonstrate how their work contributes to the overall success of the company. This alignment can help build credibility with senior leadership and ensure that customer success initiatives are seen as vital to the organization's success.
Enjoyed Raymond's article? Then keep an eye on the CSC Content Hub for Catherine’s upcoming update to this article. While you’re there you can find the latest CS insights, strategies, and advice - written by CSMs, for CSMs.
What did you miss?
Last call for $200 off Customer Success Festival Chicago ??
Early-bird pricing closes at midnight tonight - grab your pass before it's too late...
Happening next week, so don’t forget to register for our first Demo day :? Evaluate the best customer platforms to build a winning tech stack | September 26.?
This week, we hosted our monthly virtual meetup, and we had insightful conversations on how to manage large portfolios with ease. Huge thank you to everyone who joined, see you next month ;)?
What’s coming up?
CSCnow: Panel discussion: The customer compass - navigating organisational value with a customer-first approach | September 30 | Register here!
Customer Support Summit , October 9 Register now
Customer Success Summit , October 24 Register now
Community meetups:
???? Sydney meetup: October 3 | RSVP here
?? Virtual meetup: ?Boost your CS role with AI & automation | October 22
Register for our virtual meetups on our Circle page .
?? The Customer Success Collective Awards ! Voting ends on November 1, 2024.
???? New on Youtube?
For episode 3 of our Customer Success Convo series, our host Vish Walia, Customer Success Manager at Microsoft, is joined by Daniel Goldfeld,? ex-Global VP of Customer Success at Perimeter 81.?
In this episode, Daniel discusses how leveraging CS principles can bridge relationship gaps with customers.
Ready to elevate your customer success game?
See you all next week! ??
?
Customer Success | Revenue Cycle Consultant | Revenue Cycle Management | EMR Systems Trainer
1 个月Great Article Raymond O. This is spot on!
Marketer Of The Year | VP of Marketing Satrix Solutions
2 个月This is such a great topic. I put together a video and blog about this topic after I interviewed 16 CS Experts that I think you may like. https://www.satrixsolutions.com/blog/how-to-gain-buy-in-with-the-c-suite
Customer Engagement, Customer experience, Customer Journeys, Success across the Journey & Bottom line
2 个月Thanks for this great article Raymond O.