What is Customer Efforts Score?How can CSMs thrive in this party effectively?

As a CSM, firstly there was CSAT, then there was NPS. Moving forward it is the era for Customer Efforts Score to take over. This is the next advancement that in the data that a CSM would have to look at and start taking steps towards it. In simple words, Customer Efforts Score measures ?the effort customers put in to interact with your business. According to Gartner, effort is the strongest driver that enhances customer loyalty. This leads to a point where at any point if the product or the CSMs bring out outcomes that minimise the efforts from the customer, the easier it is to deliver customer delight.

However, isn't this the complete opposite of what a CSM must be doing, shouldn't we focus on having frequent interactions with the customer to check for their sentiment and understand how our product was delivering value to them? With this change, how can we go ahead and make an impact on this area in the era of Customer Effort Scores? To answer this, we must understand that CSM is at heart a proactive function rather than a reactive one. This means that we must be able to have all the necessary data points with us that will help us to predict a customer outcome and be prepared with the steps that would help us in proactively reaching out to the customer and delivering the value that they would need.

Here are some pointers on how CSMs can effectively engage in this party.

1. Identify the stage of the customer in the lifecycle and create a thorough "data based"evaluation: identifying the customer's stage in the lifecycle is crucial as this would help the CSMs predict the next steps of assistance that a customer would be looking forward to with regard to usage and engagement. For example, the chances of a customer asking for a training is higher when they are right out of implementation vs a customer who has been a user of the solution for over two years actively. Once when the hypothesis is made, put it to test by looking at data points. Look at the right data points to see if the hypothesis is correct or wrong. For both of these cases, have certain action items that can be recorded as a playbook that you could perform that directly impact the customer.
2. Action items must have clear next steps and must not at any point in time sound vague to a customer: With customers efforts being taken seriously, at no point in time should any communication from the CSM sound vague and confusing to the customer. This includes the links for solution articles that are shared over to the customer. The steps mentioned on the article should be crystal clear and at the end of it, the customer must be able to implement the solution easily all by themselves. In cases where workarounds are suggested to the customer, it is always better to showcase the workaround in a video recording rather than a lengthy email that the customer would have to read and implement.
3. We must remember that we aren't just solving a customer's problem, however, we are also advocating for the value that the product provides: In today's world, the knack lies not in the problem that our product is solving, however, it is centric towards "how" it solves the problem. To simplify, it lies in the value that it creates while solving the problem. Hence, every point that we address as a CSM for a customer must be coupled with the the value that we bring along with it. An easy way to think about what is it that we could do as a CSM is to take our customer's user-journey into consideration and map out all the areas of where we could be of value to a customer. This way, at all the steps we can ensure that both the product and the people in the company are value centric.
4. Proactively communicating the current state to the customer and showcasing the next steps for growth based on their interest: While having business reviews, it is always a must to seek what a customers' strategic initiatives are for the upcoming quarter/year are so that we can align resources at our end to help them achieve their goals. However, customers want to understand from us as to where we can see them improve. To have these pointers addressed, it is always better for us to clearly communicate the current state of the customer and come up with a roadmap as to how they can fare better with certain best practices. To identify the current state of the customer, CSMs must make use of data and internally try to see if benchmarks exist. In case of no benchmarks coming up with a scorecard and identifying areas of growth would help. This way the the effort taken by the customer reaching out the CSM looking for information is minimised.
5. Always remember that we are strategic advisors to the customer and not a customer service representative: No matter what we do, we must always ensure that we provide the customers with valuable advise. To have this done effectively, we must at all times look for indicators to advise value creation and growth. This involves the CSMs putting on their strategic hats and coming up with a roadmap of guidance.
6. Work closely with the product team and act as a sounding board for steps being taken in addressing product led onboarding: Ultimately, steps like product led onboarding leads to a lesser need for any interaction with the support or the CSM. Hence as a CSM it is a must that we measure the impact of the product led onboarding and validate the outcomes. Additionally, once we are able to witness these outcomes we must ensure to keep the product team in loop with regard to this and open the floor for feedback.

PS: This is the first version of this article, I will go ahead and keep adding more points to this article. Please feel free to comment your thoughts below