SaaS Strategies for Improving Customer Experience

If I found Alladin's magic lamp, the first thing I’d wish for (after an infinite number of extra wishes, of course) would be an extra “untimed” month between the end of the year and the beginning of the next so we could have some focused time to plan as a company.

Sadly, there's no such thing as wish-granting genies. And unless we develop the technology to hold our year-end budgeting meetings in orbit around a neutron star, we’ll have to keep doing what we’re doing—planning for next year while simultaneously wrapping up the current one.

Why Customer Experience Need to Be a Priority

Most SaaS companies today know they need to take Customer Experience (CX) to the next level next year. I'm sure you've read the reports on how Customer Success and Customer Experience are key to growth in the Subscription Economy. And you’ve probably made some progress. Maybe you hired a Customer Success (CS) leader. And maybe you hired some Customer Success Managers (CSMs). You may have even checked out a conference or book on the topic.

But as we move into the new year, it's time to get serious and make CX a differentiator for your business. That means you're probably wrestling with the questions like:

1. People: Who owns the various parts of CX/CS next year? In particular, who owns revenue from CX/CS (e.g., renewals and expansion) next year? Do I need a new leader in CX/CS and, if so, what should I look for?
2. Process: What Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should I think about measuring next year? What new processes should I implement?
3. Technology: What technologies should I consider to accelerate our progress?

Let's answer these questions and a few others methodically.

People

In the early days of CX and CS, most companies' first attempts were exclusively through hiring people. They brought on mid-level team leaders or retasked existing employees to spin up self-contained organizations to "do" CX or CS. Maybe this was alright as a start, but there were two unintended consequences to the approach:

1. It created yet another siloed team.
2. It tasked the CSM team with a job that had almost infinite scope.

As our knowledge base has grown more established and sophisticated, however, I’ve seen more and more companies adopt two concepts I first started describing at our Pulse 2018 conference, when thinking about people and Customer Success:

1. CS > CSM: Certainly, Customer Success needs a CSM team. But it’s got to be bigger than just CSM alone.
2. CS = CO + CX: Customer Success is the combination of nurturing clients to achieve their desired outcomes while having great experiences, and the experience part requires everyone in the company to be involved.

Bringing Customer Focus to Each Department

With those principles in mind, it's time to consider the following ownership changes at your compnay (if you haven't already):

• Customer Experience: Appoint a czar to project manage CX across the company. Often the Chief Customer Officer or head of Customer Success is best suited for this. In some cases, the Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Operating Officer, or Chief Product Officer are also appropriate stewards. Typically, the tactical step is to create a Customer Experience Council involving Marketing, Sales, Product, Services, Support, CSM, and other functions. We did some research on who this person might be in this post.
• Marketing: If your existing subscription business is substantial, Marketing needs to go beyond lead generation and customer acquisition. Give them accountability—for expansion leads, for adoption marketing, for customer advocacy, or for some combination thereof. In addition, ensure Product Marketing is spending time with the Customer Success team to enable them—not just with Sales.
• Sales: As we’ll discuss below, it's time to define how much you want your Sales leader involved with your existing customers. Be clear on whether you want a pure “hunting” organization or full revenue management. (More on this later!)
• Finance: Make sure the Finance team is treating the Customer Success team as a partner in terms of forecasting, metrics, and the like.
• People: Customer Success often ends up being a person-intensive business. As such, your Human Resources team needs to plan for adequate time around hiring, career pathing, development, and retention.

Who Owns Recurring Revenue?

One of the biggest "people" decisions to make for next year is who owns recurring revenue. By that statement, I mean which organization is accountable for renewals and which is accountable for expansion sales (upsell/cross-sell).

For some context, many organizations built Customer Success as a peer organization to Sales without changing anything about the Sales role. Hence today, you have:

• Customer Success people charged with minimizing churn and maximizing retention as well as with identifying upsell/cross-sell opportunities.
• Sales people being paid (like they were before) on new business, renewals, and expansion.

So when a customer doesn’t renew, who’s accountable? When a client doesn’t expand, who takes ownership?

If you’re like me, you really value knowing who is responsible for what in the company.

Click here to read more.