The new normal - How have CS leaders coped, adapted and managed through the past 3 months and what's in the future for Customer Success?

During the months of May & June, Customer Success leaders tuned in to talk about how COVID-19 has impacted to world of Customer Success and what's in our future. In prior earlier CS talks, we discussed short term changes to business, which were more focused around the pandemic. This time around we really delved deep into how CS has been impacted long term, both good and bad, and how we can get back to the new version of "business as usual".

Some of the topics include how companies are handling the ever changing political climate, the shift in focus from new logo acquisition into helping out and keeping existing customers and how the roles in companies are shifting around to accommodate this, ways to show appreciation for your clients to drive advocacy and loyalty, and the big shift we are seeing to all remote businesses.

We recorded these conversations and you can watch them on Youtube. Here is a list of the videos:

The Customer Success Comeback Plan - with Jocelyn Brown

Finding the moments that matter in your customer journey - with Bronwyn Smith, Jon Herstein and Amanda Schmidt

Customer Success leader discuss change and pivoting to what customers need right now - with Deena Zenyk, Heather Foeh, Truman Tang and Alia Pirani

From VP of Sales to VP of CS - with Emmanuelle Skala

For a quick summary- here are the top 10 insights from our CS talks

1. Existing customers have become the main focus

"The whole world has reoriented around the customer because of a crisis, when this should have been what we were doing all along" - Jocelyn Brown, Allocadia

With logo acquisition down, businesses are shifting their focus from acquiring new customers to retaining their current ones, especially your best clients. 

“People are in need right now, and we need to help them right now” - Bronwyn Smith, Shopify

2. How can sales and marketing support Customer Success at this time? 

With less new business coming in, we have seen a shift in resources from sales and marketing to Customer Success. It’s now more important than ever to support your current clients. 

Truman Tang from Tru Group Inc. describes his experience with CS from a marketing perspective, and the importance of conveying the value that your company can deliver to your clients, new or existing. 

“It’s marketing’s responsibility to provide aircover, and to be able to tie all the departments together to tell a singular story” - Truman Tang, Tru Group Inc.

Heather Foeh proposed shifting data resources from marketing to CS in order to retain clients and avoid churn during this time. 

“Spend as much time and effort on customer post-sale data as you are on pre-sale data” - Heather Foeh, Workfront

Sales make customers love the company, and CS make the lifetime profit. 

3. It’s time to get creative to retain your current clients

During this time, it’s important to put your client’s needs first, and address any hardships with compassion and understanding. But what does this look like? 

Can this zoom meeting be a video that you send and they can watch in their own time? This gives your client more flexibility and a chance to review as needed. 

"You need to give customers the ability to get the resources they need when they need it" - Emmanuelle Skala, Toast

Being more lenient when it comes to payment deadlines. Putting trust in your clients now can pay off big in the future. 

“Have the conversations with your customers and try to find the win-win instead of letting them churn because they think we’re not gonna be flexible” - Amanda Schmidt, PandaDoc

Jon Herstein from Box mentioned changing product or adding short-term capabilities to product that would be useful right now. 

Giving clients the option to temporarily disable accounts if needed, and come back to it when they are ready. 

“We’re just trying to help, that is our genuine motivation. I think it rings true to customers if you’ve been an authentic company” - Jon Herstein, Box

4. Business in Parallel - Black Lives Matter

Right now it’s more important than ever for businesses to use their voice. We must make sustainable and lasting change. 

"Companies can’t knee-jerk react to this, we have to weave it into a new normal. If we just check a box with a statement or a one time event, then we’re not actually going to make change in a systemic way." - Emmanuelle Skala, Toast

How can we give back from a dollar’s perspective as well as a service perspective, and keep the momentum going? Are there any changes your company can make in their business practices to support the current political movement? 

5. Clients are becoming better advocates

Your best clients will want to see you succeed. Now is a better time than ever to identify your best advocacy clients and build it into your business practices early on. 

“The exchange for advocacy is now more overt in the last couple of months than before. Just ask!” - Jocelyn Brown, Allocadia

Deena Zenyk from Captivate collective talked about identifying advocacy clients early on and preparing them to become advocates, even before the sale happens. 

“We really should have prospects intermingling with advocates in a much more programmatic way all throughout the sales cycle; Kind of like at a party!” - Deena Zenyk, Captivate Collective

6. Give clients thoughtful gifts that matter

During our conversations with The Advocacy Group we heard about creative ways to create “magic moments” for your clients. The more thoughtful, the better. Gifts don’t have to be expensive but they do have to be timed well. From having a coffee or pizza delivered in time for a zoom meeting, to remembering a client’s graduation date and sending a heartfelt video message. 

“I think the most meaningful things you can do for your customers and for your advocates is to connect to what’s important to them in their real life, not just their professional life.” - Deena Zenyk, Captivate Collective

“A little listening is really what makes the difference when it comes to those surprise and delight moments” - Heather Foeh, Workfront

But how can these simple acts of kindness scale to a larger client base? Can we make gift-giving a part of our collective culture and keep the kindness going? 

7. Businesses are focusing on what really matters

There has never been a better time to clear out unnecessary and outdated and archaic business practices. In the shift to digital, companies have had to rethink their processes and adapt to the new normal.  

“What has been a silver lining in the last few months is seeing the agility and creativity coming out of companies. Companies are pivoting really quickly to address needs, they’re adapting their product to have better product market fit” - Bronwyn Smith, Shopify

Bronwyn Smith describes companies letting go of the fixed mindset of the way things should be and moving from “We can’t do this” to “How can we do this?”

"Let's break it down - why not? What would make that possible?" - Bronwyn Smith, Shopify

Jon Herstein from Box discussed the way that the pandemic helped him speed up his project of moving all onboarding courses to online. 

8. Despite facing multiple obstacles - worker productivity is up

When the pandemic hit, there was a real sense of urgency in business to get back on track. Due to this, many have found that their businesses have had their most productive months to date.. 

“To have the workers shift immediately to being remote - they didn’t skip a beat!” - Amanda Schmidt, PandaDoc

We are all going through so much right now - parents at home with children, younger workers at home with roommates or living alone and feeling isolated. Each of these scenarios poses its own individual struggles.The pandemic has been an equalizer - all of us are going through uncomfortable change. 

“This is the worst version of “work from home”. Imagine in time when you can have childcare sorted out, and figure out what an office space is, what that level of productivity could be?” - Bronwyn Smith, Shopify

It’s important to remember to take care of mental health and keep in contact with loved ones. 

9. Digital by default - is it the future?

Since shelter in place orders have moved the majority of the workforce in our fields to work from home, businesses are rethinking if office spaces and hubs are a necessity. Amanda Schmidt from PandaDoc talked about it briefly during our meeting, and how opinions on working remotely full time have changed over the course of the lockdown. 

“We did a survey and the first responders were good with working remote. Fast forward to two weeks into the survey, some people had very different opinions” - Amanda Schmidt, PandaDoc

Aside from physical office spaces possibly becoming obsolete, we have seen a shift from physical forms and paperwork and a large move to filling out and signing documentation online. Let’s think of the impact this will have on the way we run our business. 

10. NPS have been overused and misused

Emmanuelle Skala from Toast describes how in the restaurant industry, NPS does not correlate to churn- but it does correlate to referrals. However, NPS metrics can be used along your funnel to find what product should focus on, as it’s linked directly to revenue.

Not only does it save cost if we can reduce tickets but it also will result in more upsells, stickier customers and adoption.” - Emmanuelle Skala, Toast

CS typically are far too focused on retention scores rather than expansion revenue. Instead of focusing on NPS scores, Heather Foeh from Workfront describes attributing revenue by influence, for example if a customer speaker influenced the viewers in the room to purchase, it’s much more powerful than simply tracking NPS and asking clients for referrals. 

“This is real influence, they actually have an impact on the bottom line” - Deena Zenyk, Captivate Collective

Final Thoughts

Although these are unprecedented times and we are still unsure what is coming in the future for our business, we have found that our community is resilient, and there has never been a stronger community feel than there is now - we are all in this together.

What changes over the last couple of month have surprised you the most? How do you think these changes will affect the world of Customer Success in the long run? I'd love to hear your thoughts!