The customer is king and, of course, always right.
Just two from a multitude of reasons why, if you’re looking for a third-party technology provider, you should employ one with a dedicated Customer Success team.
A relatively new term, 'customer success' was coined in 1996 by a customer relationship management company that discovered its software as a service (SaaS) subscription model had high failure rates. The company created a new department, comprised of so-called customer success managers, who were introduced to prospects prior to the signing of contracts, which was a novel concept at the time.
The company understood that with one-off sales, such as for a TV, once the transaction was complete, the user would essentially be on their own, but with recurring-revenue businesses, such as a SaaS solution provider, a more long-term approach of aftercare was required.
In his co-authored book, 'Customer Success: How Innovative Companies Are Reducing Churn and Growing Recurring Revenue' Dan Steinman writes: "As SaaS companies mature and virtually every company tries to become a recurring revenue business... the value and visibility of customer success will rise. In those recurring revenue of businesses, customer success is an imperative and, as such, will always have its place in the spotlight."
Indeed, the importance of customer success cannot be overstated, as according to Forrester, 70% of companies with a customer success program said they had improved retention.
This is because the complex and evolving nature of technology means that users of such technological solutions and products need regular support and assistance to help them make full use of such products and fully realize their value.
Clearly, as acquiring a new customer can cost five times more than retaining an existing one, your customer’s success is invariably your success.
All Aboard for Customer Success
One of the first and potentially last things a customer success manager does is onboard new clients. By engaging the user from the offset, they can help them see the value in the product, and how it actually works – which buttons to press, and when etc. If the user doesn’t see the value or finds the product too difficult to use at the onboarding stage, they are unlikely to persevere. It is the customer success manager’s role, therefore, to explain the benefits of the solution and how it can make their job easier, while providing better customer experiences.
A customer success team focused on adding value to their clients, will bring about numerous benefits, not least that happy customers are more likely to become a champion/ advocate/ ambassador for your product and ultimately refer other customers. These warm referrals are often the strongest leads. In fact, 70-80% of new customers at large corporations are through referrals or advocacy.
Adding Value, Keeping Customers Happy
The customer success team’s job is not only to add value, but perhaps, most importantly, show their customer that they are adding value.
The best way of indicating potential for growth and renewal is by being able to show significant customer usage, which largely depends on ease of adoption and perceived customer value. Happy customers will, in turn, pass on that positivity to the end customer, improving agent satisfaction (ASAT) and customer satisfaction (CSAT) in the process.
When implementing customer experience technology, in particular, the agents who are using the solutions need to know the full functionality of the technology in order to be able to pass on the knowledge to their customers and create an optimal customer experience.
When to Replicate Success
A customer success team enjoys unparalleled access to their clients; as well as insights into their customers; and overall strategy. As such, they enjoy a unique understanding of when to push the clients to replicate the success with other journeys and areas of the business.
Why Vizolution
A customer contact agent plays a huge role in creating the optimal customer experience. By using our technology, whether it’s live-sharing screens, creating cases, or initiating self-service journeys, our innovative solutions enable agents to replicate the qualities of a face-to-face interaction.
Our fully dedicated customer success team focuses on ensuring our clients are making the most of our solutions. Vizolution’s unique proposition, which marries the high-touch benefits of face-to-face interactions with the convenience and low cost of digital channels, relies on the expertise of our customer success team to convey just how pivotal our clients’ customer contact agents are.
As a comprehensive customer success strategy should be ingrained into the corporate culture to ensure full buy-in, a customer success team can often act as an invaluable bridge between each department, from marketing and pre-sales, all the way to product management, ensuring an ultimately stronger and more successful company.
