The first of this series of articles discussed the purpose of customer success, which might seem obvious but is often lost among business priorities. This second article looks at preparing for customer success: how to prepare your organisation to deliver customer success effectively, for your customers and for your bottom line.
The rest of the series will focus on measuring customer success, engaging for customer success, and delivering customer success – which is, of course, what we all want to achieve.
Preparing for customer success
customer success doesn’t just happen. Like most worthwhile things, it needs preparation. This is where many customer success programs go wrong: they work hard to prepare materials, processes and timelines, and then they expect customers to follow these and buy into a vision which they do not share.
Instead, I recommend that companies prepare all their customer success collateral for use in a flexible way to suit the needs and preferences of each customer. Think of it like planning a date – you need to be ready to make a good impression, but you don’t want to scare the customer by demanding too much commitment. On the other hand, if the customer wants to move fast, make sure your house is in order, and you are ready with a full onboarding package and all the necessities for a long-term relationship.
This second post in our series on customer success provides advice on how to be ready for each customer’s different expectations of a relationship.
Here’s a list of things you should prepare specifically for customer success:
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A vision – do you have one? What is it? Is it generally known and agreed?
The vision for customer success should describe what you are trying to achieve. It may also describe what benefits a customer will derive or what the characteristics of a gold standard customer might be. Some of my previous employers have expressed their vision in simple terms, ranging from the ambitious “improving the customer experience on Planet Earth” to the more realistic “making payments convenient and secure” and the straightforward “we keep the lights on”.
A vision should make sense internally and externally.
B2C organisations tend to put more thought into their vision, sometimes too much: “I’m lovin’ it” and “just do it” have a punchiness and yet a vagueness which seems to work for McDonald’s and Nike, while “Vorsprung durch Technik” (BMW) and “the world’s local bank” (HSBC) are both clear and aspirational. A vision should make sense internally and externally and might be personalised based on, e.g. the size of the organisation involved or the products and services they have chosen. Visions may also change – sadly, HSBC, for instance, has been forced to reduce its aspirations.
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A value model for the customer – you may have described value during the sales process, and if so, the reality should measure up to that description.
The customer will certainly be expecting to realise any promised value. Customer success should show the path to that value and perhaps some additional value along the way. Business cases for further investment might also be included. Bear in mind that the model needs to be flexible enough to match the customer’s reality. Some customers cannot cut staff numbers, or they might not be able to share data with offshore providers. These factors need to be reflected in the value model. Like other aspects of customer success, the value model should be personalised for each customer, scaled and tailored to their needs.
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A value model for the supplier – it’s also important to know what you expect from the relationship, although you might not share this in detail with the customer.
Whether this deal is a whale or a sprat to catch a mackerel, you should have a model of what value it brings to you as the supplier and how that value can be achieved. How hard do you need to push? How fast do you expect the customer to progress? What counts as success for you, as well as for the customer? Document this for each customer.