Customer Success Tiering: Servicing Tier 1 & 2 Accounts

In my previous article, I discussed the importance for a SaaS company to understand the second funnel supported by Customer Success and its effect on customer tiering. Here, I’m going to dive into definitions, questions and practices that relate to servicing your higher tier accounts.

 

Providing the right definitions around what services are to be provided to each tier, and then asking your company and customers to operate within the confines of your service ability takes discipline and proper preparation. The services that any Customer Success team offers have real business value; defining the service offering for every customer tier will help identify the time and effort required internally, along with any other resource requirements.

 

Likewise, it affords the critical opportunity to highlight the value you are offering to your customers. The value provided to clients supports the assumption that they would (or should) pay a premium for your services and technology.

 

When creating a service strategy give consideration to the following:

• How do you know that you’re providing the right level of service to the right Tier?
• Are Net Promoter®/CSAT rates different per tier?
• Are service requests more frequent per tier?
  • Review any metrics around your Customer Success program: Are they different per tier?
• How do your adoption (or penetration rates) vary per tier?
  • What is your investment of services per customer?
• Are you getting ROI? Or are you losing money due to over-servicing?
  • What are both your customer and you getting out of your efforts?
• Is your customer going live quickly?
• Is your customer renewing on time?
• Does your CSM team consistently have to follow up?
• Is your customer purchasing additional services (where applicable)?

 

Defining the exact services for each customer Tier is typically dependent upon the complexity of the technology; the more complicated the product the more services required to make the customer successful. Optimizing your efforts for the best possible experience can include the following services per Tier. When looking at the top two Tiers of the customer-base, we see a few different service types.

 

Below you will see examples of services typically provided for Tier 1 and Tier 2 customers for later stage companies with more complex technologies:

 

SERVICES PROVIDED	Tier 1	Tier 2	Definition of Services
Executive Sponsorship	x		Executive persona is the acting CSM for the Client and will perform proactive communications and strategy sessions
Quarterly Business Review	x		Review of Client’s KPIs and SaaS vendor’s performance to meeting them. Analyze & review Client’s ROI of the SaaS vendor’s product.   Review of any open issues and go forward planning for issue resolution (as applicable). Review of new feature/functions (as applicable).   Review of any other project work that might be underway
Proactive Communications	x	x	Communications to Client for any reason involving account health, usage, billing, Q&A, support, etc.
Assigned CSM	x	x	Client has direct access to dedicated CSM
Assigned Technical Resource	x		Client has direct access to dedicated support personnel (this is usually a Customer Success Engineer or a Technical Success Manager)
Adoption Monitoring	x	x	CSM will monitor usage and track trends to ensure proper product adoption and determine opportunities of upsell, training needs, use case expansion
NPS®/CSAT Survey Monitoring	x	x	Monitoring and tracking NPS / CSAT survey responses. This service includes following up on surveys where appropriate
Best Practice Advice	x		CSM will proactively provide best practice advice for product usage optimization
Training	x	x	CSM will engage with Client to provide training. Typically this type of training is not associated with paid services
Health Check	x		CSM will perform a detailed review of Client’s use case and instance to validate best practices are being adopted and all technical detail is correct for optimal use of the product (technical detail could include settings, implementation, reporting, product performance, etc.)
Renewal	x	x	CSM will engage with the Client to ensure that their contract is up to date
Escalations Management	x	x	CSM will be the first point of contact for any escalation needs and ongoing communications. CSM will also track and manage remediation plan back to the Client
Support Case Monitoring	x		CSM will monitor number of open/unresolved cases and become involved when Client reaches <n> threshold
Upsell	x	x	CSM will monitor Client for opportunity for upsell and either close the upsell deal or hand off a lead to the appropriate party to close the upsell
Program Management	x		CSM will manage any programs with the account (onboarding, product rebuild, professional services, etc.). Typically these are not paid services

 

An example of Tier 1 and Tier 2 services for early stage or less complex technologies:

 

SERVICES PROVIDED	Tier 1	Tier 2	Definition of Services
Executive Sponsorship	x		Executive persona is the acting CSM for the Client and will perform proactive communications and strategy sessions
Quarterly Business Review	x		Review of Client’s KPIs and SaaS vendor’s performance to meeting them. Analyze & review Client’s ROI of the SaaS vendor’s product.   Review of any open issues and go forward planning for issue resolution (as applicable). Review of new feature/functions (as applicable).   Review of any other project work that might be underway
Assigned CSM	x		Client has direct access to dedicated CSM
Adoption Monitoring	x	x	CSM will monitor usage and track trends to ensure proper product adoption and determine opportunities of upsell, training needs, use case expansion
NPS/CSAT Survey Monitoring	x	x	Monitoring and tracking NPS / CSAT survey responses. This service includes following up on surveys where appropriate
Best Practice Advice	x		CSM will proactively provide best practice advice for product usage optimization
Training	x		CSM will engage with Client to provide training. Typically this type of training is not associated with paid services
Renewal	x	x	CSM will engage with the Client to ensure that their contract is up to date
Escalations Management	x	x	CSM will be the first point of contact for any escalation needs and ongoing communications. CSM will also track and manage remediation plan back to the Client
Support Case Monitoring	x		CSM will monitor number of open/unresolved cases and become involved when Client reaches <n> threshold
Upsell	x	x	CSM will monitor Client for opportunity for upsell and either close the upsell deal or hand off a lead to the appropriate party to close the upsell