Customer success is an undeniably important component of any business, whether you have thousands of customers worldwide or you’re just starting to build a small network of early leads. Having a strategic and comprehensive plan for addressing all elements of the customer success journey is an easy way to make sure you’re meeting the needs of your users while also maximizing the benefits to your company. From on-boarding to technical support and everything in between, creating a Customer Success Playbook can help young companies identify milestones, objectives, and signals across key areas while also mapping out action steps and delegating tasks to appropriate team members.
Here are the four areas you should consider when creating your company’s customer success playbook:
- Lifecycle
When thinking about customer lifecycle with your company, first ask yourself a few key questions: What must a customer do for the implementation to be successful? What do users need in order to reach full adoption? And, by what point should customers reach full adoption in order to maximize value? If you have a goal to reach a certain percentage of active users by a certain date after initial adoption, action steps may include weekly usage monitoring and communication with your customer’s decision makers. Ultimately, having a strong understanding of various milestones, objectives, and signals within the broader area of “customer lifecycle” will allow you to create a playbook with actionable steps and and clear task delegation.
- Customer Driven Growth
The largest percentage of new business comes from existing customers. Whether it’s through referrals or existing customers buying additional services from your company, it’s important to understand the role of customer driven growth when creating your customer success playbook. Think about milestones that indicate upselling and cross-selling opportunities and identify which of your existing customers may be your best sources for potential referrals. Next, identify objectives and signals. If your objective to to boost upselling or cross-selling, you may find that looking at usage and satisfaction metrics or planning based on your knowledge of approaching budget seasons may serve as valuable signals. Once you have these components clearly outlined, you can identify action steps and determine who on your team will be taking charge to meet your desired customer driven growth objectives.
- When Things Go Wrong
While unpleasant to think about, this area is critical to have a strategy for. Take a look at your company’s metrics. When does adoption slow? At what points in the sales journey do higher percentages of potential customers go silent? Think about these moments, and identify signals that can help you identify low points and strategize for improvement. Maybe you identify that users are becoming less active after two months of implementation. You may want to outline action steps that include additional coaching sessions and outreach at these moments of user drop-off. Being able to act strategically when things aren’t going in the direction you’d like to see is one of the key roles of a good customer success manager.
- Enrichment
Lastly, consider what your company can provide to ensure that customers are getting the most out of the services your company offers. Think about what types of intel might be helpful for all of your customers. Consider reaching out to your customers and finding ways to identify and capitalize on high customer satisfaction rates. For example, your company may consider holding a micro-event for customers to interact not only with each other, but also with other elements of your company, such as different products or services or recent research your company has gathered.
By simplifying the customer success through a straightforward, process-oriented playbook, you can ensure that your company or organization is efficiently and effectively managing relationships with customers and potential customers alike.
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