A "Must Know" for Strategic Customer Success: How To Do It Right

One of the most important lessons I learned in Customer Success came in my first mock Quarterly Business Review. It was with my Director and the new VP. It didn’t go well, but what I learned from it changed everything for me. Here’s why:

The SaaS customer for the role-play was my pick. There were many positive interactions with them in the past, and I had plenty to discuss. My QBR had amazing new features, expansion opportunities, and cool new ideas for workflow optimizations. So the presentation started with me doing a lot of talking…

About 15 minutes in, my Director held a hand up to stop me. “Hold on. So, you've showcased a lot of new features, but none of this applies to the customer. How do we know that they care about any of this?”.

That confused me until my VP interjected and told me exactly what Value-Ads I was missing:

• An understanding of the customer’s goals
• Knowledge of how they were using the platform to reach those goals
• A clear and concise plan from me, their Customer Success Manager, on how to help them achieve their goals.

In a SaaS-based subscription service model these Values-Ads are the foundation for everything that a CSM needs to drive success strategically. They can be applicable in such instances as:

• Meeting new stakeholders
• Reviewing cancellation requests
• Opt-Outs when customers are trialing your program
• On-boarding new customers

Be able to speak to these foundations well:

Understanding of the Customer Goals

The customer purchased your SaaS platform to achieve a result/value. You need to know everything about what they are willing to do to achieve that value, and how they expect to do it. It’s also important because customers need to know what is possible, and what's realistic.

How Are They Using Our Platform to Reach Those Goals?

It’s your job to understand exactly how your customers have been using your platform. Is usage and adoption in the right places? Do they need a review of best practices? Know the right questions to ask. This will require continuous monitoring in the early stages, with regular check-ins.

A Plan On How to Achieve Their Goals

This is where you need to insert yourself as the product expert and direct the customer on how to achieve their goals. You are their trusted advisor and should always have a game plan. As an extension of their business, you should consider their success, your success.

Now that you have your foundations, let's introduce you to some workflows that will help you deliver value strategically...

Here are three workflows that have been tried and proven:

1. C2M2 - Customer Capability and Maturity Model

This will be your blueprint for delivering real business value for your clients and being seen as a true trusted advisor. This model has its genesis in cyber security practices from the Department of Energy in 2012 . The original C2M2 concept was called the Cybersecurity and Capability and Maturity Model. Originally the model showed how as companies adopted certain security practices, their cyber security program would become more robust and impenetrable.

Over time CS leaders began utilizing it as the Customer Capability and Maturity Model for SaaS platforms. This model demonstrates how, a customer adopts certain platform features and functionality and interacts with their CSM, they will progressively achieve more value.

By creating a maturity model that’s built upon the usage and adoption of their most successful customers, CS leaders can demonstrate to other customers how they can achieve maximum ROI from their subscription. Typically upon on-boarding every customer starts in the Initial stage where processes are unpredictable, poorly controlled and reactive. Eventually the goal is to help them get to an Optimized state where they have proactive results and can focus on improving their existing process. How you specify this maturity model according to your platform is at your discretion.

2. OKRs: Objectives and Key Results

Objective: A Qualitative Statement (Ex: Achieve SMB Market Dominance)

Key Results: Quantitative, Measured Outcomes (what metrics are needed to achieve that)

Use OKRs to help your customers set goals! OKRs have been utilized for decades at innovative companies like Intel, Google, YouTube, and Adobe to achieve unprecedented growth. They can be applied for both personal and professional use cases. This OKR process involves a qualitative objective and the quantifiable key results you can use to help customers achieve them. Never use more than 5 key results per objective. You can even use stretch goals to help users achieve more, faster. The concept is that even if customers set goals of extreme magnitude and fail, they will still accomplish more than they ever thought possible.

It is important to align the customer to a qualitative objective and then use C2M2 to demonstrate how you intend to achieve the quantitative key results along the way to success.

For more extensive detail on this process and how to incorporate this into your business, I highly recommend you read “Measure What Matters” by John Doer.

3. BJ Fogg Behavioral Model

Dr. BJ Fogg founded the Behavior Design Lab at Stanford University in 1953. BJ Fogg’s theory states that Behavior Change = Motivation + Ability + Prompt. It’s a popular model used to drive behavioral change in Security Awareness culture today.

(B) Behavior: What behavior are you hoping to achieve?

(M) Motivation: Does the subject have the motivation to achieve the behavior?

(A) Ability: Does the subject have the ability to achieve the behavior?

(P) Prompt: What will trigger or prompt the subject to achieve the behavior?

As a Customer Success Manager, you’ll need to gauge how easily the customer can adopt the necessary behavior needed to follow C2M2 and crush their OKRs. Rate each factor (M+A+P) that influences behavior on a scale of 1-5. If the total is less than 9 you might want to reconsider proposing C2M2 to the customer. You can apply your standards, but always keep in mind that C2M2 and OKRs are not for everyone. Using this workflow you can better gauge how long, and how much effort it will take to help the customer reach full maturity, or if it’s even possible.

*It is not recommended that you share (B = MAP) with your customer.

If anyone is interested in how you can utilize the BJ Fogg successfully, I recommend reading “Transformational Security Awareness” by Perry Carpenter.

So now you know exactly how to:

• Use C2M2 as the vehicle to help you on the path to achieving your customer’s goals
• Position OKRs to influence customers’ objectives strategically
• Use (B = MAP) to gauge the customer’s capacity to adopt best practices strategically

With a strong foundation, you can use these workflows to deliver value strategically.

I’ve worked at a lot of different companies and I have seen these workflows executed to perfection. It doesn’t matter what stage your company’s maturity is. Early stage, hyper-growth, hitting your IPO, these are processes that scale no matter where your company is in its journey. Get these going for your CS team, and have at it!