How does the customer define value?

One of the first questions you need to ask yourself - and your clients - is what success looks like to them. Every one of your customers comes with certain expectations for desired business outcomes. If they don’t know how to clearly articulate those, it’s a cause for concern because it can result in churn down the road. In many cases, especially in early-stage startups, the customer success team is bridging the client’s expectations with the reality of the product/technology. Missed expectations can be due to a salesperson overselling to win the deal or due to inexplicit, preconceived expectations of the product. If your company is facing such a challenge, I suggest adding a discovery phase to your onboarding process to fully understand your client’s desired outcomes and identify gaps. Then come up with a plan to achieve the desired business outcomes while shortening time to value by developing best practices, templates, and guides. Whenever you identify gaps, you should a) provide feedback to the sales team so they can improve their discovery process and address it early on, and b) share those gaps with the product team so they can consider adding it to the roadmap and minimize the gaps.

In any case, it’s the customer success team’s responsibility to make the client satisfied and increase the value your product and services provide. It can take the form of additional training, working closely with product and R&D to deliver on high-priority feature requests, off-loading some work from the client, and, as much as possible, being a trusted advisor.

I know that every CS team wants to be a trusted advisor but what does it really mean? For me, it means: a) providing additional value to your client beyond the fundamental value they get from using your product, b) make the customer feel like you have their best interests at heart and are representing them to other teams within your company, and c) help the customer qualify and, if at all possible, quantify the value they get from the solution, so they can assure their management they made the right decision to purchase and work with your company.

Here are few examples of how to achieve the above:

●     Program Expansion: To be a true “Trusted Advisor”, a CSM must be able to show the customer a path forward to maximize the value from the vendor’s solutions including a clear plan that evolves over time (phase 1-2-3, etc.). Presenting such plans, is a great way to engage in an advisory type discussion over how we, the vendor, can further assist the customer in maximizing value, thus increasing their efficiency.

●     Showcase their success: Enable your champions to demonstrate to their executives the successful partnership by developing methods and reports that prove the value they get from using your product. This can be in the form of usage reports, QBRs etc. In cases when value is not tightly coupled with usage, it can be hard to measure the value. Make it a priority to work with your customers to find a method to quantify it, even if it is based on some assumptions. This is crucial to your buyer, since it helps validate that they made the right decision in choosing you over the competition and helps them justify the next renewal.

●     Ease of doing business: Make it easy for your customer to navigate inside your organization and get the answers they need. That includes interactions with support, finance, product, and sales. In a recent interaction with one of our strategic customers (a Fortune 500 FinServ company), our executive sponsor mentioned that we have become the gold standard for how they measure partnership value with their vendors. He thanked me for our transparency during our third renewal with them (which included an upsell), making sure to also note the fact that he felt we went above and beyond to understand their needs and provide them with the most appropriate solution in a cost-effective manner.

●     Thought Leadership: Share best practices and other content that will educate your client and improve the way they use your service. Strive to position your company as a leader in your domain - beyond just a software provider - as that can set you apart and your customers will surely appreciate it. This can come in the form of newsletters, blog posts, webinars, conferences, articles, roundtable sessions, etc.

●     Benchmarks: Customers assessing their performance and potential against other customers, especially if those other customers share some of the same characteristics as them. Developing a framework for benchmarking customers is always highly appreciated by customers (especially executives) as a means to understand the value and where there are opportunities to extend it.

●     Community: Building a community of professionals and connecting your clients with one another, allowing them to share challenges, and learn from each other.

●     Network: Let customers tap into your network by recommending another vendor/product that the client can benefit from to solve a different business problem.

To summarize, you should design your engagement model and train the team in such a way that every interaction is an opportunity to increase both the actual and perceived value in the eyes of your customer; every small increment is a step in the right direction. I call this type of approach a “value based relationship”, and for me this is the essence of Trusted Advisor.