Customer Success Hacks: 3 Tips for Providing More Value Today
When an executive-type says, “we need provide more value to our customers,” my ADD side drifts to that episode of Star Trek where Scotty says “we’re givin’ all she’s got, Jim!”
The issue is that “providing value” is a nebulous term at best. It can mean many things; frankly, I’m not sure that people even know what they are really asking for when they ask a CSM to be valuable to their customers.
Yet we remind ourselves that when our customers get value from our products, we get much higher retention rates.
Here are three easy ways to add value:
Have a purpose for your outreach
I once was on the receiving end of a CSM’s services. He reached out to me three times in a month to introduce himself. Not only did he forget that we had been introduced previously, but he didn’t recall our previous conversations (and he had action items that he committed to from the prior calls). Not only did this guy waste my time, but he also made himself and his company look pretty ridiculous. Needless to say that experience alone turned me off of his company because of it.
I’ve also experienced the CSM who has reached out to me just to “check in” and “see how things are going.” Don’t fall victim to this. It’s a time waster for you and won’t gain you favor with your customer. You’re actually better off not reaching out to a company if you don’t have something legitimate to discuss.
I’m a huge fan of finding great reasons to reach out to customers. Try some of the following topics:
- Usage – up or down?
- Licenses – have enough? Are all users adopting the Product?
- Surveys – happy?
- Marketing events – interested in attending <x> event?
- New product/module/feature – do you know about it? Need help with it?
- Share creative use cases from other customers
Ask about outcomes
Ask your customer to define the outcomes they are hoping to achieve with your product. You are then in a prime position to be the expert on helping them achieve those goals with your solution. By getting your customer to define what is valuable to them, it will make your job of helping them to receive it easier:
- What are the customer’s goals?
- Do they have any key performance indicators (KPIs) or metrics that could be used to track success against those goals?
- What are their key use cases and how does your product match their use case?
- What are the actions required of them – and you – to achieve the goals?
When defining action plans for your customer’s desired outcomes, employ the use of SMART goals to ensure the client and vendor’s equal accountability.
Don’t forget to document each of these items. It will provide excellent content for your Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs), and it will also provide you with a “get out of jail free” card if your customer is ever questioning the value that your service is or is not providing them. Matching up their goals to their achievement of those goals is sure to prove your value.
Expand your contacts
Most often CSMs focus their relationships on the executive sponsor, the admin, and maybe a few power users at an account. Wherever possible, expand your relationships with the other end users at an account. While time consuming, it will pay dividends.
The end users make up the majority of the adoption of your technology within an account. If you have great relationships with your end users, the executive sponsor will often judge your product’s success on the basis of the users’ sentiment.
There are a lot of other ways to provide “value” with your accounts. However these are the top three that strengthen relationships and will keep you and your customers talking for many months to come.
