17 Customer Success Don'ts
I’ll skip the introduction today and dive right into the matter.
There are 17 common practices I’ve encountered that hurt CSMs’ performance in every industry, market, and location.
1. Don’t guess your customers’ needs
Many CS teams don’t know what kind of services and inputs their customers need. What’s worse is they spend little time to find out because it does not “scale”. What they don’t know is that (almost) all the time they spend on firefighting, quick-fixing, and band-aiding results from making guesses that turn out to be wrong.
2. Don’t check in with your customers
If your customers are not engaging with you, there’s either no relationship or your customers don’t value it at all. It’s also likely that they are not making any progress. Spamming your customers’ inboxes and wasting their time with generic outreach will not solve. If you invite your customers to start a conversation, send them something that’s worth their time and attention.
3. Don’t follow an eat-or-die-one-size-fits-all approach
There are no two customers that are exactly the same. Even when they are from the same industry, have roughly the same size, or share the same problem. They start with different skills and knowledge and consequently require a different mix of services and inputs.
4. Don’t wait for customers to reach out
Take charge of all your customer communications to be in control. Research says that most customers don’t reach out if they run into a problem they can’t solve on their own. Yes, even when you tell them that they should not hesitate to contact you if they need help.
5. Don’t talk about features and functions
I really hate the term “product adoption” because customers don’t care about it. The real question is not whether customers are using your product frequently but whether they continuously get value from it. Don’t create hours-long product tours, educate your customers on to solve a specific problem in a 5min video.
6. Don’t treat QBRs as a checking-off list
QBRs are not dead, most of them only suck because they are a waste of your customers’ time. Used right, they are a powerful asset to increase the odds of success and strengthen customer relationships. A QBR your customers will not want to miss consists of
reviewing progress based on your customers' success metrics
evaluating what worked, what didn’t, and why
planning the next steps, determining additional needs, and possibly adapting the customer success plan
7. Don’t turn customer onboarding into a product demo
The goal of customer onboarding is not to introduce your customers to every feature and function. It’s to give customers quick wins to verify their purchase decisions and get their buy-in for playing the long game and investing the time, effort, and money required.
8. Don’t assume customers are successful
High product usage is not a guarantee that your customers are successful. Your best-performing customers may appear as a churn risk because they are using your product only twice a week. On the other hand, there are customers that use your product night because they are trying and trying but get nothing done. If you want to avoid “surprise” churn, you need to measure/ask.
9. Don’t settle for the first response to why customers churn
“The product is too expensive” is arguably the most “classic” reason customers give when they stop paying for your product. But here’s the thing: If your product was too expensive, they would have never bought it in the first place. What they are really saying is that they didn’t get enough value for what they paid. You need to find out why.
10. Don’t prioritize efficiency over quality
“How does that scale?” is what I often get to hear when I suggest trying something new. Your goal is to make customers successful, not make your services and inputs scalable. Of course, it’s great if it can be both, especially when you can automate somewhat generic stuff. But failing to help customers achieve their desired outcome in a cost-effective way is not an option.
11. Don’t rely on surveys
Your customers get dozens of generic surveys every month. They have survey fatigue. Ok, there are better and worse versions of them but all of them share the same limitation. And that’s the ability to ask follow-up questions to get additional context. 10 meaningful customer conversations can deliver more value than 1000 survey responses.
12. Don’t count on customers finding success on their own
I see it happening over and over. CS teams throw tons of guides, tutorials, templates, etc. at their customers and hope that they will be able to adopt the knowledge to solve their problems. And there are certainly customers where it works. But some of your customers require more - they need someone who leads them all the way.
13. Don’t waste time and energy on bad-fit customers
As a CSM, you are wired to help people. It’s in your DNA. But the sad truth is that not all of your customers are meant to succeed. If they lack basic skills and knowledge, discipline, or attitude there’s little you can do to change it. Focus on working with customers that are easy to work with instead. It will also help you to prevent burning out.
14. Don’t skip building customer relationships
Connecting with your customers is not surplus to requirements. The stronger your bonds the higher the odds of success. Because gaining your customers' trust will give you access to invaluable insights into their business. These insights allow you to tailor your services more precisely to your customers’ needs.
15. Don’t make promises you can’t uphold
Your customers don’t need someone who tells them what they want to hear. They require a trusted advisor who tells them what they need to hear. If they ask for a feature that makes no sense - tell them upfront. If it takes weeks to achieve a specific goal, don’t tell them they will get it done in no time.
16. Don’t let your tech stack dictate your strategy
Too many CS teams have built their strategies and processes around the products they are using. But here’s the problem: Almost every single one was designed to help you manage your customers. Only a handful are built for making customers successful. They are built from an inside-out perspective and not from the customers’ point of view
17. Don’t dodge commercial responsibility
Your mission is not to optimize NPS, CSAT, health scores, and other feel-well metrics. Because at the end of the day, the customer success team has to deliver ROI. Don’t be afraid to sell expansions and upsells to your customers because it’s your work that created the additional demand in the first place.
Got any questions? Let’s make this a 2-way street.