Why digital customer success is not the answer
I keep reading that companies need to push for digital customer success to increase efficiency. The first thing that came to my mind was how it could possibly become even more digital.
9 out of 10 SaaS companies I’ve talked to don’t know whether their customers are successful. Because there’s no app in place that provides them with the information. Talking to customers and asking them seems only the most obvious thing to do to me.
I don’t dismiss the idea of digital customer success and you should automate and “personalize at scale” what you can. There are a lot of generic inputs and tasks that would otherwise be a waste of time.
But the most value for the customer comes from solving complex problems. The more complex they are, the more human touch is required. Automatization is only one piece of the puzzle. Period.
(yes, there are exceptions if you have a product like Calendly or Zoom that can be used effectively by common sense.)
1. What you need are better results
Customers are looking to cut their expenses and they will stop paying for everything that does not live up to their expectations. And their expectations have never been higher.
Your top priority is not to become more efficient but to deliver, grow and monetize customer value. There’s nothing to gain in failing at low costs.
Saas companies sit on piles of data but have few meaningful customer insights. Because they don’t below the surface what their tools deliver. They lack context and don’t understand customer goals, challenges, needs, and journeys well enough.
So let’s make this abundantly clear that there’s no more space for guessing and assuming. Customer success needs to be methodically engineered.
2. Improve the quality of your inputs
Most SaaS companies provide customers with mediocre-quality of inputs, tools, and services. It happens because
CSMs lack the subject expertise to build customer success plans that outline how their customers bridge the gap between where they are now and their desired outcomes
Their content does not have a specific goal in mind. There are 60min tutorials that introduce customers to specific functions but none that show customers how they solve specific problems in a 3min walkthrough
They evaluate the effectiveness of these inputs, tools, and services with quantity metrics. But it does not matter how many customers participate in your training. What matters is how many of them are able to complete a task or solve a problem afterward.
“Deliver value with every interaction” is something everyone talks about but few ever come even close to it.
3. Focus on the right customers
As a CSM time is your most scarce resource. That’s not exactly rocket science. If the CS team has been reduced in size it’s even harder. I know, it’s the nature of a CSM that you want to help everyone become successful.
But the harsh reality is that not everyone is meant to be. With high certainty, your portfolio consists of customers who lack the skills, knowledge, and mindset to succeed.
You need to focus on scoring the big points now. That means you need to distribute your resources according to every customer’s success- and growth potential. Even when that means losing customers.
You simply can’t afford to waste your time on customers that will most likely churn anyways while you can’t spend enough of it on working with your highly valuable ones.
The companies (and CS teams) that will be the winners of the recession are the ones who put their customers front and center in everything they do.