It's not easy being GREEN: Why your #CustomerSuccess green risk and sentiments doesn't mean they are fully adopted

Imagine looking at your client's scorecard and seeing a sea of green. Positive active user logins, check! No Customer Complaints, check! No outstanding tickets, check! Customer just renewed.

These are the customers that we need to start getting granular in our analysis to get the best results. Because beneath the surface, there were risks and opportunities for account growth that we were not able to see from the surface of a dashboard.

As a customer of a SaaS company, I use the application. I log in daily. I renewed the subscription. I find value in your software. However, I am not your biggest advocate. My gripes are big. I'm just the user, so I have no access to my Customer Success Manager. I have voiced many issues with the application with my management. This app doesn't do what I want it to do, but it has features I need that I feel is more secure than pen and paper. However, the features that I don't use happens to be your key differentiator between you and your competition or the features I don't use happens to be the direct correlation to the return on investment executives need to justify why they spend so much money for something they could do much cheaper.

THE EXECUTIVE BUYS BUT THE BOTH EXECUTIVE AND END USER RETAINS

So in my case, we use a software that is supposed to help us manage our activities productively while monitoring the health of each customer we have. Currently, we use it to take notes on our customers. It is nothing more than an overpriced software a binder and paper could have done. However, it could be something much more. Fortunately for this SaaS provider, our management is aware of our shortcomings in our usage and is aware of the key problem. They should be so lucky to have us as a client, because others would have just churned. Our data was out of date, inconsistent, and our integrations were never realized.

We ended up having to hire a third party administrator to manage the software. This was money that could have been spent on more product, more licenses, and maybe even a premium service who could have managed it for us.

The executive is making all the moves to make it work, but the customer success team is not meeting with the end users that are the ones that execute it. As a result, we are using an expensive product to take notes instead of taking advantage of all the automation available because we were not properly onboarded and set up for success.

UPDATE, EDIT: In my new company, they have dropped this SaaS provider for the same sentiments and do not excuse it for user shortcomings, but a failure at adoption and onboarding.

UPDATE, EDIT: The end user issues never got uncovered because according to the logins, time in app, and executive stakeholder engagement, this is a green account. At Duetto, it is a green account. At my current company, it became a churn.

So this company thinks we were fine the whole time, what could they have done to guarantee success? Well let's go over the issues, which metric is usually used, and what metric should be used.

We logged in, but we only used it for note taking.

Login rates are great for measuring individual accounts. But for a SaaS company, we should be measuring key feature usage. Had this company looked into our time spent in the application on certain features, they would see that we use it to log events with our customers and to change the account rep responsible for the customer. They would also see that we do not use Call to Action, Email Assist, Usage Monitoring, and Renewal Tracking.

These were the key features of the application and should have been a red flag for a CSM and triggered a call to action to either give training materials or personal training. It also could be because the user can't even use the key features.

Nothing could work because it was never set up correctly.

I wasn't there when they set this application up. All I know is that the application can ingest my google analytics to monitor my customer's app feature usage, trigger a call to action if it is not being used, and update my customer health score based on these metrics...... and it doesn't do that. I can see that one user is configured to give this data and that is it.

As a Certified Customer Success Professional, I could deduct that the CSM that worked with my company likely trained us how to set the application up to ingest this data. They used one user as an example and expected us to spend time to do it ourselves. This is fine, except they never checked to see if we did.

UPDATE,EDIT: There were available admin training courses that were free to help you set up the software. Yet, I had to hunt this information down because the CSM of this company never communicated with more than just the executive stakeholder. The program was quite long and it took me a long time to finish it without any instructor. It offered very little AHA moments you expect from a CSM leading you through adoption.

If the settings included some key features (it did), it needed to be added to the key milestones for onboarding. It needed to be monitored that it was set up and live. Also, it needed to be monitored for active usage. It likely was not a milestone they tracked, or it was checked off the checklist without verifying.

"If it was the responsibility of the user to do it, then it's not the fault of the SaaS company." Not true at all. This is why we need CUSTOMER SUCCESS. Our customer's failure to use the application to the best fit of their needs is our failure as well.

Remind them that the application will not work without their involvement.

But I am paying you all this money!!! I can understand spending money and having to set it up. My mother bought a MacBook for the first time and she had to teach herself to set it up. She failed miserably. However, she had the Genius Bar help her set up her MacBook. I can help guide you in the same manner, but you will need to do some work on your end to set it up. Once it is setup, it's smooth sailing from here.

We were never given best practices.

By failing to provide us best practices in using the application, we had several problems in using some key features. If there are manual tasks that need to be done, it is important to express the importance of healthy behaviors.

I wanted to check the application to check out this customer's record to see what they purchased and what opportunities they have for account growth because this record was being handed off to me when the customer's current CSM left. The record was inconsistent with what I saw in the user's application. Shows two products in the record but three products in the application. ARR was out of date. Even the sales manager in charge was out of date. Duplicate records were created and the Sales Manager was writing in one and the CSM was writing to the other. These are all failures of the user to update their records, but these updates were vital for key features to be optimal.

*if a user action or accuracy is critical for the application to work, that must be communicated early and often.*

We had to spend money to fix all these issues we had from not being properly onboarded

To undo the damage, we had to hire an administrator to comb through every record. We probably could have spent this money on building a tech touch model for our lower ARR customers. That may be a feature that this software we use already has that we could upgrade into. I wouldn't know, because our end users don't speak to the CSM if we have one.

So how do we fix this?

1) begin understanding your product's key features, identify milestones needed to make it operational, and monitor usage of those key features

2) Give best practices. Especially give advice on activities, behaviors, or accuracy issues that could lead to unsuccessful adoption or use of the application.

3) Communicate with more than just the person that writes the checks. It is important to speak to the end users from time to time. This is especially important when one of those end users becomes the check writer or when the return on investment into your application seems invisible.

4) Get granular. Always look for opportunities to do even better for someone who already has a high health score. Being 120% happy with the product will lead to 120% or more Net Retention by growing those accounts with more licenses and more products.

Seems like there is more work to be done to avoid false green ratings, managing green companies, and uncovering hidden business needs or concerns for green companies. So it is no wonder, it is not easy being green.

Good Luck!