No One is Immune to Customer Success

I often speak about how Customer Success (CS) permeates an entire organization when done correctly. As true as that statement is, what does it really mean? It means, nobody is immune to CS within an organization.

There are companies that either don’t know, understand, or acknowledge the value CS can make to their business. Even if you don’t know the rules of the road when driving, you still risk getting a ticket if you break them.

Your Role as a Responsible Customer Success Leader

CS affects everyone at every company because it impacts the bottom line. The question is, “Are we going to embrace it, so it works for us or are we going to deny or ignore it, and have it work against us?” As employees, we must place the responsibility of implementing and following CS practices and methodologies squarely on our shoulders.

Using the blame game of “My manager doesn’t incentivize or ask me to apply CS methodologies and principles to everything I do,” is unacceptable. In fact, employees have a responsibility to take ownership of CS and demand it run rampant throughout our organization like a virus that can’t be stopped. Otherwise we’re just part of the problem and don’t really have a sincere interest and commitment to our company’s success and that of our customers.

This may sound harsh, but it’s true. We can make a difference and be the driving force that creates a transformational change that catapults our company to the market leader position. If we’re already the market leader, then CS will ensure we maintain that success. Reaching and maintaining a market leadership position requires us to be an example, promote, and teach CS to everyone within the organization at every opportunity.

Mahatma Gandhi basically said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Someone must take a stand. To do nothing, means we’ve made our decision.

Our choice, and that of our fellow colleagues, to be adamant about driving CS within our organization speaks clearly based on our actions. The actions we take or don’t will determine if our company flourishes or flounders. Without CS, our company will die on the vine, and we’ll have to endure the pain of that experience. The decision is ours and yes, it’s that important. Which situation do we want to live through?

I don’t know about you, but I’ve worked for companies that were growing like crazy and others who just didn’t make it or did poorly in the market. I can assure you that it’s a lot more fun to be on the winning side, just like when you’re at a sporting event.

Keep in mind, if our company grows by leaps and bounds, then we’ll have more opportunity to grow our career too. If we demand taking CS seriously within our organization, and that results in a huge positive effect to our company’s success, who do you think will be offered a great promotion?

What Can We Do To Show Customer Success Loyalty?

We can do more to drive CS in our company beyond raising our hand and notifying every one of the urgencies and importance of incorporating it. One thing we can do is lead by example. When we do, we show our commitment to those principles and practices. We can also promote the right activities and recognize people when we catch them doing the right things as it relates to CS.

Additionally, we can teach others in our organization about CS so that they understand what they can do to contribute and benefit from having implemented CS methodologies and strategies into their workflows. We may need to get management support and approvals prior to sharing, but our initiative towards this worthy cause demonstrates our commitment to CS and its value.

I recently posted LinkedIn group notifications about my latest LinkedIn article. I’m usually very selective which groups I notify. In the past, I would target only CS related groups. Then it dawned on me that everyone within an organization needs be held accountable, use CS strategies and methodologies, and therefore, needs to learn about CS. So, I posted notification of my article to nearly all my groups instead of a select few.

“Awareness” begins the change we are after. It’s hard to believe there are so many people who don’t fully understand CS. One thing that makes it so challenging is the range and depth that CS covers. I get that, but there are some simple things everyone can do to help make a difference. Here are three.

Business Outcome Focus

One of the easiest and most power ways to support CS efforts is by answering the question, “What does my customer really want?” Once you identify what they want, deliver it. If what you’re doing doesn’t meet this test, then stop doing it and switch to an activity that does. To create a company-wide CS mindset that is optimized, every action taken by every employee needs to address our customers’ business outcomes.

For example, an office building janitor cleans an area where company employees do their craft. It could be correctly argued that the janitor is in alignment with CS principles. This is because without the service they provide, the employees of that company would not be able to do their work. At the very least, these employees would be distracted while doing their work, because of the miserable working conditions not having a janitor would create.

Improve the Customer Experience

A second way to contribute to CS is to find ways to improve the customer experience. Delivering only to customer business outcomes doesn’t mean we’ve fulfilled our CS responsibilities. Activities and interactions delivered by our organization must be enjoyable.

Customer Centricity – Apply Projected Customer Lifetime Value to CS

A third way to contribute to CS is to implement a customer centric perspective to our CS efforts. This is a new concept to my teachings that I’ll go over in depth in an upcoming LinkedIn article, so keep an eye out for that. However, a summary of customer centricity is to segment and provide different product offerings/value based on projected Customer Lifetime Value (CLV). This innovative approach to CS is very thought provoking and insightful.

Activities targeting one of these three goals adds value to the customer and therefore represents a productive implementation of CS principles and methodologies. Company departments can easily modify their activities and move toward adopting CS principles without raising eyebrows. This is because adding value to a customer who in turn creates value for our company is never frowned upon.

Testing for CS Adherence

As a CS leader, we must be able to approach anyone in our company and ask them what CS means to them, how they incorporate it into their work, and a few recent practical examples of having done so. If they can’t answer this question adequately, then we have some work to do to ensure they will be successful at answering this question correctly next time. If we get a great response from every employee, then we’ve done an excellent job at incorporating CS into our organization. Reaching this accomplishment will yield our best CS results.

The Benefits of Employee Customer Conversations

Anonymous inquiries help us to understand how widespread our CS reach is and can be easily and quickly determined through employee and customer conversations conducted by 3rd party vendors. With an 85% average response rate, we get an accurate and complete understanding across our entire organization. Alternatively, automated surveys can be effective too, just not as comprehensive and delivers lower coverage results because feedback is more restricted and lower response rates of typically 7 to 15% are achieved.

An additional benefit to conducting confidential third-party customer conversation inquiries is in providing a safe space to share thoughts and ideas. Nobody wants to be caught not knowing something they should. But it’s important as CS leaders that we know where our teams stand, regarding their understanding and implementation of CS so we can achieve and maintain company-wide CS excellence. These conversations can be a great source for new ideas too.

CS conversations can also uncover important issues that were previously unknown or unaddressed. We can learn a lot by asking the question, “What one thing would you change to make our company better?” Outsourced services like Respana is a great resource to facilitate CS conversations. These services make our ability to gather data that drives change easy and quick. Perform these inquiries regularly to create continuous value and improvement. Knowing our customer and employee thoughts and suggestions is extremely valuable.

Apathy towards CS is unacceptable and for CS to work correctly and effectively it must be fully supported by the CEO and leadership teams. Even so, you should challenge anyone who doesn’t incorporate CS strategies and principles into their workday. When infractions are found, explain, teach, and ask how they might have done better and why it matters. CS is too important and valuable for anyone “not to know.”

I Challenge You to Make a CS Difference

It’s important to make customer success not only a business initiative, but also a rewarding experience for employees. If it’s considered just another pain to deal with in addition to everything else, then implementation, adoption, and effectiveness will fall short of meeting our expectations and will deliver subpar results.

The question we need answered is, “How do we bring out the best in everyone within our organization so we can deliver outstanding customer business outcomes?” The solution is tricky, but doable. First, I recommend bringing CS into most of our discussions. Don’t make CS a single conversation or event, but instead a long play that we continuously work on. Second, apply the suggestions outlined in this article. Third, incentivize employees in ways that elicit the CS behaviors desired.

Most importantly, explain why we focus on CS and what it will mean to our company, employees, and customers. Go deep here by emphasizing every benefit and reason CS is a critical aspect of our business and remind everyone that there will be detours and changes as lessons are learned. Set expectations that as a company, we will all contribute to these improvements. It must be a company-wide effort. Are you up to it?

Change Takes Time So Keep Working on it

Everyone would like to enjoy the benefits CS has to offer after a few days or weeks. However, realistically it takes hard work to spread the gospel and reap the rewards. Evaluate your organization’s progress as it progresses from a basic understanding to employees embracing and owning CS for themselves. Use KPI data to provide an unbiased accurate assessment of your CS progress.

Practice patience over a 9 to 12-month period before expecting significant transformational changes to take place. This is because it takes time before:

·        Renewal and expansion results begin to show

·        Customers notice your transformational improvements

·        Benefits from internal behavioral and process changes begin to show

·        Customer perception is influenced

Change takes time, don’t force it, but do encourage it on a regular basis. Start by defining where we want to go, as it aligns with our customers’ wants. Then, determine by department which activities are necessary to achieve those customer outcomes. Share your plans and explain how they’ll positively impact our company. Be transparent and don’t miss or overlook anything. This sharing of who does what, when, and where, will foster a better company-wide understanding of CS and hold teams accountable.

If you liked this article and we aren’t already connected on LinkedIn, let’s connect now.

I’m here to serve the CS community and love sharing CS ideas. Please reach out if you’d like to chat about CS and get better acquainted.      

Kevin Levine