We continue today, examining: How well does the visual scaffolding of the customer journey support the CS practitioner’s experiences and help guide our future actions?
The first four parts of this series examined 1) customer-centricity and Awareness, and 2) the in-between spaces and Education, 3) friction and Selection, and 4) Onboarding and time-to-value.
Today’s focus: Consistent Impact and intent to be in a long-term relationship. Just like with Onboarding, we are in the meat of CS work in this phase. Buckle up.
Our customer is thrilled that we proved to them – one time – that we could deliver as promised, within time and budget. That was a great first date. What’s that? We want to be in a relationship? In a relationship, trust is an ongoing process, not a single event in time like that first date. Relationships require that we deliver on our promises consistently over time.
How can we help our customers transition from a specific observation of trust to asking the broader question: “Can I trust your company consistently to deliver outcomes in our relationship?”
CS practitioners, we need to share with our customers our perspective on what it means to be in a relationship with our company. “Here is what you can expect, today, tomorrow, next month, next year … consistently! Here are the mutual promises we’re making to each other in terms of outcomes, value, assistance, etc. Here is the plan to deliver on these promises.” In short, we need to show our customers how our relationship will make us both better versions of ourselves.
Intent
To begin, we must establish our intention to be in this long-term relationship. To do so, we must ask honest questions of ourselves, including:
What is our intention in this customer-company relationship?
Have we communicated our intentions to our customer?
Do our actions match our intentions?
What would cause us to stay in the relationship? What would cause us to leave?
Do we intend to put in the time and effort required to maintain a relationship?
What expectations does our company have when it speaks using terms like renew; land and expand; segment; upsell; and cross sell?
How about our customer’s intent? Do they intend to be in a long-term relationship? Or do we merely infer their intentions based on their participation in the SaaS business model dictated by our company and treasured (pun intended) by our investors?
If we think of customers and companies as partners getting married, what would be our vows to each other - what are we actually saying “I do” to?
Clearly establishing intent internally is only the first part of the process. It’s just as important, if not more so, that we communicate our intent and let our actions illuminate it.
Consistent Impact
How might we help the customer from here to there during the Using/Impacting phase? What are we currently doing? Where are the opportunities to make it even better?
Listening
Listening is the most important part of our job, CS Practitioners. Be curious. Ask questions that show you value the relationship. Listen to learn.
Prioritize the experience. Take responsibility for delivering an experience that we are proud of and that leaves customers feeling heard, helped, and hungry for more. Identify and track over time good and bad experiences. Develop a list of “if this, then that” actions we will take in response to the good and bad experiences. Example, if a customer responds to an NPS survey with a low detractor score, then read their open-ended “What is your reason?” response and call them to discuss it further. In that conversation, empathize with the customer’s feelings and seek to understand the customer’s need that is not being met. Record these details in your system of record both for maintaining your understanding of this customer’s experience, and to identify, if applicable, whether it is a trend across your customers. Prioritizing experience over time connects us to the relationships with our customers. It is an antidote for transactional-only thoughts and behaviors.
Get curious about successes, but especially losses. We learn more from losing than we do from winning. Shifting to a curious mindset when we lose helps us identify what is not working. Take action to identify our weaknesses and work at them to make them strengths.
Eliminate defensiveness. If something is off in the relationship, take responsibility. Being defensive - which is a type of blame – destroys trust. A huge part of being “proactive” is to take responsibility when things go wrong. Hat tip to Dr. John Gottman who counsels us that defensiveness escalates conflict and deflects shared responsibility. Instead, try replacing defensiveness with getting curious about the co-created dynamic.
Usage & adoption metrics are proxies for impact. That said, these tend to be starting points on the path to identifying the true leading indicators for your specific long-term customer-company relationships. Obsess over finding the answer to this question: What is the one action during the Using/Impacting phase that ensures customers renew and buy more?
Understanding & Calibrating for Change
Nothing stays the same. Desired outcomes and the definition of success change over time, and, “The team that sees reality the best wins.” (Jack Welch) We must keep our eyes and ears open to change, and acknowledge it. We can also discuss internally and with our customers how to integrate changes into the current plan so we can update it, accordingly.
Prioritize. Identify the three items most important to the relationship between our company and the customer. When a fourth item surfaces, will it replace one of the top three? We can talk about this with our customer. Examples of other things that change and may shift priorities: our customer-champion leaves their company, new competition enters the market, price/budget fluctuations, customer’s needs drift away from our product’s value, and/or our slow innovation to customer feedback erodes trust.
Business reviews are an opportunity for constant recalibration of goals, value, outcomes, and experiences, as well as celebrating milestones and value. We can use them to tell a tale of value over time. Questions to ask: What does our customer like so far? Where are the opportunities to make it better? If this value was consistently achieved, what would that mean to our customer re: ROI, time saved, problems solved, trust, opportunities unlocked, forecast improvements updated, etc?
Track reasons for renewal/expansion. Find the themes related to why our most successful relationships are successful. Double down on what works here. Start asking our customers earlier in the customer journey, “You would expand your relationship with our company if …?”
Track reasons for churn. Did the customer churn? Y/N. What is the reason? Begin with open ended questions, and over time locate themes and patterns. How might we reduce the churn rates by theme?
Anticipate “what’s next?” Involve customers in our product roadmap discussion. Create our future together.
Gauge customer trust. Do our customers trust our company currently? Do they trust us to put in the work necessary to maintain and grow the relationship? If yes, they will re-commit to the relationship again and again. If not, seek to understand the why, including what needs are not being met. Reflect on how to avoid repeating the steps that led to the relationship dissolving.
Communication
Just because our company knows our intentions and plans, doesn’t mean our customers do. The better we communicate, the more solid the foundation of our relationship.
Communicate trust. When our customer has communicated a need, it is not enough for us to develop a plan to address that need. We must also communicate that plan to the customer. Clear communication followed by action is how we build trust.
Show the feedback loop! “You told us X. We listened. Now we are showing you we heard you and did something about it. Ta-da! Improvements based on your feedback.” Demonstrate to our customers our openness to their feedback and coaching, and our ability to take action on it.
Deliver valuable content. Don’t waste your customer’s time by reaching out to “check in.” All interactions should have momentum: help them know how to do something, what the path is to get somewhere they want to go, or what trends to plan for, etc.
Be honest about what our company wants: customers to stay and pay (and pay more). Make it known before the initial contract is ever signed. Remind the customer throughout the Impacting/Using phase that this is on the checklist of mutual success. Everyday we come to work, ask ourselves (and help our colleagues know this is the right question for us all to ask): what actions are we taking today to help customers know that we want them to stay and pay? And what actions are we taking today to help our customers decide that they want to stay and pay?
Celebrate wins. Anniversaries. Outcomes achieved. Progress made. When we acknowledge these moments with our customers it communicates commitment to our mutual success.
Update, update, update. Carry the cognitive load to understand the current state of the relationship. Communicate how you see both parties are having their needs met today, and discuss how upcoming changes will affect both parties. When we make changes to similar relationships (with other customers perhaps) how might we share those learnings and updates with our customers generally? Simple messaging like: “Here’s what’s changed. Here’s how it affects you. Here is the required next step.”
Community
Customers are on this journey, but they’re not on this journey alone. What can they learn from all the other customers also on the journey?
Connect customers to one another. Customers often ask: “Where do I stand relative to other customers?” Providing this comparative information can energize your customer – “I’m in the bottom 25%?!? What do I need to do to improve?” and “I’m in the top 10%, that’s great … who’s #1? and can you connect me so I can swap learnings with them?”
Recognize and uplift community members. Shout out customer experts in the community. Feature your customers on webinars, case studies, and at conferences. This promotes their personal brands and helps support your business goals, too.
Who or what else at our company is helping customers get from here to there in the Using/Impacting phase?
Sales/SDR – If, from the first interaction, we’ve properly set the stage for getting both our company’s and our customer’s needs met in the relationship, then Sales, Account Management, etc., can continue the “let’s take our relationship to the next level” conversation with the customer. “We promised we would do X. Customer agrees that we delivered on the promise consistently. As we’ve highlighted throughout our time together, expanding our relationship is a key measure of success. Let’s have that expansion conversation.”
Marketing - Customer marketing is huge. Customers that currently get value, and are on their way to getting consistent value, require different communication than front-of-funnel prospects that are not yet in a contractual relationship with us. The bad habit of a company sending front-of-funnel materials to customers in the Using/Impacting phase is an area ripe for improvement. Have you ever met someone multiple times and yet they don’t remember your name or that they have even met you before? Well companies do it on a whole other level. Seriously, we are in a relationship where I pay you money, and we have ongoing conversations, and I’ve done a case study for you, and spoken at your annual company event, and yet, I keep getting marketing material asking me to sign up for your service?! It leaves more than a bad taste. It makes me think you don’t really care.
How might we team up internally to improve our ability to help the customer get from here to there? Have we had this conversation with our colleagues in Marketing, Sales/SDR, Product, Engineering, etc?
Product meet customer, customer meet Product. Product metrics are gold, showing us what customers are doing now to use our product to solve their problems. But needs and relationships evolve, and the question becomes: where do customer want to go next? Product needs the input of customers to help make decisions on where to take the product next. As the trusted advisor, Customer Success understands the customer needs and challenges. Bringing together the customer, Customer Success, and Product improves the likelihood that everyone’s changing needs get met in the relationship going forward.
Create a cross-functional special project. Pose this challenge: “How might we improve the consistency (and frequency) of delivering value to our customers in the Using/Impacting phase?” Address the current status of the value we deliver today. Identify three suggestions for how each team (Product, Marketing, Sales, CS, Support, Services, Engineering, Leadership, etc) either individually or cross-functionally can help improve the customer-company relationship. Pick one suggestion, seek an opt-in project owner, run an experiment, and measure results. Repeat.
How have you helped customers achieve consistent impact? Share in the comments.