Customer success has been gaining more popularity in recent years. This is evident because a whopping 72% of businesses put improving customer success as their topmost priority. Overall, it is a good trend because we have been seeing massive job postings for customer success managers and experts in the industry, which ultimately is beneficial for businesses and the job market.
The concept initially started with SaaS and B2C programs, but it has taken over the B2B market, bringing on an industry-wide shift. We have seen an emphasis on providing better customer care overall, which many have termed a customer-centric culture.
This culture is more attentive to enhancing and evaluating customer-related functions such as customer satisfaction, customer relation, customer experience, customer retention, etc.
But all of that aside, what exactly is customer success?
What Is Customer Success?
Customer success simply means putting your customers first. It’s a long-term business strategy professionally driven towards maximizing sustainable profitability for both the
customers and the company. This profitability needs to be proven and not just be a set of predicted numbers for a pitch.
Putting customers first has long been a slogan and a marketing strategy; however, customer success uses this ideology as the primary strategy for business growth.
It is geared toward making sure that the customers are getting their desired results from the company’s product or service and that all customer-success initiatives are mutually beneficial for the company as well when it comes to revenue and growth. This focus on customers, not just the target consumers and the audience a company needs to market to, results in an overall boost in customer experience.
According to Dr. Emmet C. Murphy, concentrating on customer experience provides companies with 60% more profit. Additionally, Bain reports that companies with better customer experience generate 4% to 8% more revenue than their competitors.
Understanding the Customer Journey
Customer success includes a thorough understanding of the customer journey, obstacles, and the relationship pattern that the customer maintains with the company. This translates directly into active listening by the company as a whole and not just the customer service agents.
As a company, when you begin mapping customer journeys, you should focus on finding out customer expectations that match your business objectives. Once you know these details, coming up with a product strategy to cater to these needs gets much more structured and focused.
Having data on what the customer wants is crucial in developing any product or service, as it allows you to factor in your audiences’ needs while achieving all your business goals, leading to customer success.
Why Should You Develop and Implement a Customer Success Initiative?
1. It Leads to Company Cohesion
A customer success strategy ensures the integration of all departments and company functions, from sales and marketing to finance and service management. So, everyone in the company has access to valuable information and knowledge regarding their roles.
The focus on bringing the customer the best experience can build cohesion on all fronts in the company, bringing unity to the workspace and directly impacting the organization’s growth.
2. It Establishes a Strong Renewal Process
All industries have their ways of locking in customers through renewal contracts and subscriptions. In the B2B industry, this process is even more integral to many organizations’ revenue and growth. However, with the abundance of options available to the consumers, companies now face a pronounced need to ensure smooth renewals from their customers.
Customer success initiative such as value realization helps maintain customer loyalty and keep the clients coming back for more without shopping around every growth season for new software services.
3. It Minimizes Customer Churn
Every company is going to experience customer churn at some stage of its business. However, according to Ameyo, 67% of customer churn can be prevented if companies address customer dissatisfaction-related problems the first time they occur.
Keeping that churn to a minimum and dealing with it proactively is what sets the customer success methodology apart from the traditional approach to your SaaS business.
1. It Leads to Company Cohesion
A customer success strategy ensures the integration of all departments and company functions, from sales and marketing to finance and service management. So, everyone in the company has access to valuable information and knowledge regarding their roles.
The focus on bringing the customer the best experience can build cohesion on all fronts in the company, bringing unity to the workspace and directly impacting the organization’s growth.
Conclusion
Technological organizations have to go beyond traditional marketing and strategy to generate leads and maintain a company presence in the market due to the booming industry. In the cutthroat market, you first need a minimum viable product to get yourself in, and then it is a battle of the feedback loop and reviews that you mostly do not have much control over. Due to online processes and the involvement of customers in the tech industry, the churn cycle is also very fast in this space.
Having a customer success strategy ensures that you have a team that is predicting the churn and already has a plan in place of how to deal with it. For example, a dedicated and skilled helpdesk system can set your company apart from another that takes days to get back to their clients for their issues or isn’t generally helpful.