PulseLocal Virtual Edition

We got to learn from one of the CS masterminds behind The Customer Success Economy book we’ve been reading. 

September covers Chapter 1, which discussed the purpose, evolution, rising demand, and current movement of customer success, as well as what we can expect to gain from reading the material, and finally closed out with an overview of the 10 Laws of Customer Success (their previous book).​

Some takeaways include utilizing your Activity Feed to gain recruiters attention, how to use the Rule of Reciprocity to gain a customer’s attention; or what behaviors can predict logo churn for SMB’s, as well as what’s needed to get Product to develop a new feature customer’s want, and  Mark Bangerter who advised asking the question “what is success to you?” 

Highlights from this month include: speaking Sales language to win them over, prioritizing feature requests with a matrixed graph that includes Health Score and MRR,  avoiding giving customers "The Hug of Death" with everyone reaching out to help by creating a Playbook, and ask where the customer is on the lifecycle, and change plays/interaction based on this.

Some ideas included: getting the PM and CSM involved earlier in the sales and implementation process, asking to attend the implementation kickoff meeting and doing a ride-along with the customer, thinking about segmentation by size and outcomes and having a dedicated support engineering on the biggest accounts.

Some highlights include: using a Time Value of Money Approach to demonstrate the value of Customer Success and help justify investments, usings a psychology trick called “mirroring” to help IC’s feel more connected to their leaders, and​  hosting monthly meetings to bridge the gaps between each group managing applications.

 Some takeaways included: Using shared OKRs to boost communication and create alignment among different teams,  Using metrics, like leading (engagement, ​adoption, outcomes) and lagging indicators (GRR/NRR), and having product leaders take more ownership in product adoption metrics in order to move from product-centric to customer-centric.

Some highlights include having a separate sales and CS team, but keeping a strong working relationship, ensuring your CRM platform helps automate CS duties, so CSMs can focus their time on customer health, and when renewal involves multiple people in a company,planning a meeting 1-2 months ahead of a needed change to help bring all stakeholders together.

 Some highlights include: investing in digitizing CS operations, ultimately helping to scale the business, creating a library of customer stories advocating their product and how Victoria Munneke’s company scaled by hiring less costly 3rd parties to handle surveys including both analysis and follow up.