How well does the visual scaffolding of the customer journey support the CS practitioner’s experiences and help guide our future actions?
The first three parts of this series examined 1) customer centricity and Awareness, 2) the in-between spaces and Education, and 3) Selection and friction.
Today’s focus: Onboarding and Time-to-Value.
Sales has helped our customer decide to contractually commit to the relationship. Now we navigate the *pause* (the gradient below).
You told me.
I believed you.
*Pause.*
Now show me, so I can trust you.
I’ve purchased your solution because I believe (and/or you’ve led me to believe) it will solve my problem. Now it’s on your company to deliver on that promise in practice. If you do – and do so quickly – we’re off to a great start in our relationship. You’ve earned my trust by making true that which I believed to be true.
Time to Value
Bold prediction alert: We will look back at this moment in the history of business – the SaaS-years (or the how-business-learned-to-have-long-term-relationships years) – and realize that time-to-value is the single most important factor in company-customer relationships. The reason: time-to-value is the proxy for trust. Trust exists when your customer would agree that your company delivered on its promise within time and budget. The quicker the better, because results correlate with trust more so than elapsed time of undelivered promises correlate with trust.
A note on this diagram:
“Conversion Rate 4” – What percentage of customers that sign the contract make it to the point where they go live and can therefore make an informed assessment that the product works as promised, within time, and budget? If less than 100%, then we must work to identify why, and what needs to be fixed to improve the conversion rate in the Onboarding phase of the customer journey.
“Time 4” – The time-to-value, or elapsed time between the customer signing the contract and receiving the gains (and/or reduced pains) they were promised. Always work to decrease time-to-value.
A tip for startups: if we are entering a market with established leaders, choose time-to-value to differentiate our offering. Organize our entire service offering to win along this dimension. Established market leaders, deep in the rabbit hole of managing and optimizing efficiencies, will not be able to keep up with our customer centric strategy. It. is. the. play.
Onboarding
Let’s add a human back into the picture. How might we help the customer from here to there during the Onboarding phase? What are we currently doing? Where are the opportunities to make it even better?
CS Practitioner -
Track conversion rate – Know how many customers that sign a contract make it to the end of our definition of Onboarding. Build a culture where everyone is motivated to experiment to continuously improve the conversion rate.
Tip: include in our Company’s definition of when Onboarding ends, the customer affirming that, “Yes! Your product works as promised, on time, and on budget.”
Time-to-value - As discussed above, introduce this unifying metric and work to remove all obstacles to it. We are on the right track here … so keep going, Customer Success.
Implementation - Line it up. What technical prerequisites have to be completed such that value can be realized? Carry the cognitive load even as we delegate tasks to our customers or colleagues. It is on us to make sure we have gathered and prepared all the materials necessary for the customer to use our solution to solve their problems. We can’t make dinner (and solve our hunger) if we don’t have, or have not prepared, the ingredients.
Mutual success plans - What does success look like? How are we measuring it? We need to capture, track, and communicate what success look like from both sides - customer outcomes and metrics and the company outcomes and metrics. Update as we go. The Success Canvas is an easy way to put this into practice.
Outcomes - Tools extend the will. That is the point of a tool, a product, a service. Make sure we know the will of our customers: their mission, what they value, how they make money, and how they retain and grow their customers. Know the customer’s will and constantly reevaluate how we help them extend it.
Celebrate value - Set the destination: here is where we are going. Cheer the work that delivers progress (and jump in to help if things go off the path). Throw a party when we achieve the goal! Be proud. Be a cheerleader. Be ready to show customers how far they’ve come and what value they have received.
Behind every great customer is a collection of humans - Exec, Buyer, Admin, User, etc. Our product has a roadmap; our customers should have a roadmap, too. Create a map showing each human how they will be better off individually and collectively as a company because of their relationship with our company.
Project management and accountability - Get clear about the purpose, the plan, and responsibilities. Be ready to manage the plan so as to have our actuals match our forecasts. Carry the cognitive load to make sure each human knows how they contribute to the overall success of the relationship. How might we help humans (customer-side and at our company) be motivated to continuously contribute to having our mutual needs met in the relationship?
Who or what else at our company is helping customers get from here to there during Onboarding?
Sales/SDR – Kickoff meeting and Sales < > CS handoff. We have come so far from the days where Sales would “throw it over the fence” to Customer Success. Now we have a handoff and a kickoff to facilitate alignment. This is an area ripe for continued innovation to better align customer and company so we both have our needs met in the relationship. Fence < Handoff < whatever comes next! Keep going, Customer Success…
Implementation – Technical products may have prerequisites that only Engineering/DevOps can deliver. Find the best way forward and work to constantly improve it. How will we know when we’ve achieved a superb implementation offering? A suggestion: ask both the engineers at your company and your customer if they enjoyed the process of working together, if they are proud of the implementation, and if they think the relationship is likely to succeed. Listen and adjust.
Leadership - Sometimes there is nothing like attention from the founders to reassure the customer 1) of our commitment to helping them achieve their desired outcomes, and 2) that we will put in the effort required to maintain and grow our relationship.
Product/design - Onboarding flows in the app help users learn how to accomplish their jobs-to-be-done using our product. Allow economic buyers, champions, and admins to monitor success criteria, usage, adoption, etc., so they can assess the relationship and manage the team.
Support - If the customer gets stuck, or has a problem, make it easy for them to get help. Customers may need extra attention when they are getting started. Let them know we’re here to help.
Community and Community Management- Say to the customer, “New here? We’ve all been there. We’ve got you. Here’s where to start! You are not alone. Join us, as we journey together.”
How might we team up internally to improve our ability to help the customer get from here to there during the Onboarding phase?
How might we get our colleagues in Marketing, Sales, Product, Engineering, Leadership, etc., to say this to CS: “I’m interested in helping customers onboard to our solution to solve their problems. It feels like an area of overlap between us. How is what I’m doing today helping? What could I do to make it better?” As a CS practitioner, if you think it’s wishful thinking that your non-CS colleagues will ask these questions, then own that conversation and approach them. “Dear non-CS colleagues, here is how what you are doing today helps customers succeed at the Onboarding phase. What do you think you could do to make it better? Are you open to coaching? If so, here is what customers are saying and doing and here are three suggestions for things we can both do to make it better.”
Learn by doing and learn by watching. How might we put colleagues through the onboarding process and challenge them to improve it. How might we have a constant stream of customers to watch so internal teams can learn by watching? Use a user-testing style set up, and gift to our colleagues the ability to watch and learn from real customers in context. Organize a cross-functional pod of colleagues to hang out. Let them observe customers using our product to solve their problems. Embrace the many perspectives in the pod. And we have a wonderful recipe for innovation and continuous improvement. Also, have internal colleagues use the product for its intended purpose. Example, Square employees treat their HQ visitors to a trip to a cafe where people use the Square product/service to complete the checkout transaction. Every day employees are using the product for its intended purpose as it exists in the real world. Have feedback? Give it. Do it. Do it. Make it better.
Ask our CS colleagues, “what is your peak moment with Sales, Support, Marketing, Leadership, Product, Engineering, Legal, Services, etc? What is your pit moment with these departments?” Adopt and amplify the peaks. Get curious about the pits. Keep a running list of what we believe to be the three most important things between CS and these departments to help customers onboard. Share and discuss the list with our colleagues.
Foster relationship breadth and alignment. Map relationships of internal teams to their various customer counterparts: Exec < > Exec, DevOps < > DevOps, CSMs < > Champions and Admins, Users < > Support, Billing < > Accounts Receivable, etc. Make sure our colleagues know how their IC responsibilities and behaviors help the customer succeed on their journey. Think of it like assigning guests to a table at a wedding – I bet these two would hit it off, have lots to talk about, and form their own relationship.
How have you helped customers onboard?