The 5 Must Have Customer Success Processes

Editor's Notes

1. Hi Everyone. Very happy to be hear today. My name is Anaal Patel and I’m the director of product marketing at Totango. I’m going to speak about the 5 customer success processes that every company must have.
2. Let me start by introducing you to Totango. Totango is the leader in customer success management for online subscription services. We help companies like yours take a data-driven approach to reducing churn and driving customer acquisition, onboarding, renewals and upsells.   How do we do this? By monitoring customer behavior and usage in applications -- along with other critical relationship data -- to generate insights on customer health and engagement In a nutshell, we tell you which customers needs your attention and why and then give you a way to do something about it. Come talk to either Bill, Dustin or myself if you want to learn more. If you are a Totango customer, please come by after to say hello as well – always love talking with customers!
3. Here’s a small list of our awesome customers including swipely and insightsquared.
4. How many of you here today are in the process of buying a customer success technology platform? Well, if you are, you have to download this guide
5. The 5 processes I’ll cover today include the following. I’ll be asking questions of the audience during my presentation, so please be sure to participate!
6. How many of you know what that means? How many of you have already done that in your teams? To level set everyone - This is a framework that maps the stages of your customer’s lifecycle with your product Because knowing your customer’s journey will enable you to pinpoint which stages to nurture, help move customer’s forward, and improve your customer’s success with your product.
7. Totango’s customer journey map. It is important to understand which stage your customers are at in the customer journey. For instance, someone who has just started using your product will likely act entirely differently than an expert user who has had the product for months. The stages you define are totally unique to each individual company, but generally companies have at least the following three stages: onboarding, adoption, pre-renewals STAGE #1: ONBOARDING It is often said, that the first 90 days decide the fate of most implementations. Depending on the complexity of your product, this timeframe may be shorter or longer. If the customer feels let down during onboarding, then the journey ahead could be precarious. EXAMPLES: Is the customer fully utilizing their subscription? Administrator completed system setup New users have been added to the account 20% of license have been used First “wow” moment with product Implementation not completed in set time period No activity since purchase
8. When determining how successful your customers are, it’s important to understand which stage they are at in the customer journey. For instance, someone who has just started using your product will likely act entirely differently than an expert user who has had the product for months. The stages you define are totally unique to each individual company, but generally companies have at least the following three stages: STAGE #1: ONBOARDING It is often said, that the first 90 days decide the fate of most implementations. Depending on the complexity of your product, this timeframe may be shorter or longer. If the customer feels let down during onboarding, then the journey ahead could be precarious. EXAMPLES: Is the customer fully utilizing their subscription? Administrator completed system setup New users have been added to the account 20% of license have been used First “wow” moment with product Implementation not completed in set time period No activity since purchase
9. STAGE #2: ADOPTION Once a customer has begun to see value from your product on a regular basis they become an established user. Ongoing milestones should be based on establishing goals around product usage and adoption, increased user engagement, user growth, and advocacy. EXAMPLES: Consistent and frequent user logins More users have been added to the account Administrators are viewing reports daily Use of advanced features has increased Decline of use by champion user Adoption of a new module
10. STAGE #2: ADOPTION Once a customer has begun to see value from your product on a regular basis they become an established user. Ideally, at this stage your product and the value it delivers would be integral to the customer’s success, but it still requires monitoring by your success team to make sure the customer stays on track. Ongoing milestones should be based on establishing goals around product usage and adoption, increased user engagement, user growth, and advocacy. EXAMPLES: Consistent and frequent user logins More users have been added to the account Administrators are viewing reports daily Use of advanced features has increased Decline of use by champion user Adoption of a new module
11. Every stage has different requirements/expectations from customers. For example, when onboarding, customers expect more hand holding or a strong process to help them get up and running. Meanwhile, those who are established may wish to be left alone and get updates on new releases, etc. Additionally, customers in that segment are probably the best to approach for case studies, references, beta testing, etc. How do you do it? Start with understanding the key milestones that customers need to reach in order to stay on track for success. What are the major drop off points? Where do they stay?
12. How many of you are familiar with the term health score? How many of you already use them in your organizations? How have you defined them? An account health score should provide you with an overview of how your customers are doing with your product - are they in good, average, or poor health - and to warn you when a customer is at risk. Good customer success teams use objective, data-driven leading indicators and alerts that help them identify: - Which customers are in trouble so they can proactively reach out and intervene for the better. - Which segments of customers are doing well so the team can identify good upsell candidates.
13. Key components of health: An accurate health score should be built on the foundation of primary indicators which consist of application-based metrics such as product engagement, utilization, and ROI metrics that cover your entire customer base. Secondary indicators such as support and survey information should be layered on if/where available.
14. Every stage has different requirements/expectations from customers. For example, when onboarding, customers expect more hand holding or a strong process to help them get up and running. Meanwhile, those who are established may wish to be left alone and get updates on new releases, etc. Additionally, customers in that segment are probably the best to approach for case studies, references, beta testing, etc. How do you do it? Start with understanding the key milestones that customers need to reach in order to stay on track for success. What are the major drop off points? Where do they stay?
15. How many of you have some sort of automated guidance for your teams in place? How do you onboard new team members? Particularly if you’re all spread across different cities or countries? As team leads, how do you make sure that everyone follows the best practices or recommended actions that you have in place? A key part of scaling your team and your processes is to think about building a coach into your solution. That is, putting automated guidance or plays into practice.
16. STAGE #1: ONBOARDING Account is in good health: This is great! Let the customer continue along their journey. Onboarding has not started yet: Reach out to stakeholder to make sure they get started. Schedule a progress review to follow up in a week. 10 new users joined the account: Schedule training session for new users. STAGE #2: ESTABLISHED Started using new feature: Send best practices and power tips documentation. Schedule an adoption review in 30 days. Low engagement with reporting functionality: Invite executive sponsor to a complimentary review session. Account is in poor health: Escalate this account. Schedule a meeting with key stakeholders to understand what the issue is. STAGE #3: PRE-RENEWAL Open support tickets: Escalate tickets within support to make sure they are resolved quickly. Reach out to key stakeholder and notify about progress. Account is in average health: Set up business review with key stakeholder and establish plan to ensure renewal. 20% decline in active users: Add this account to watch list to keep an eye out for further decline. Escalate internally to create win-back plan. Invite all users to training webinar.
17. Does this look familiar? How many of you are using spreadsheets, google docs, etc to try and create consistency in process? Customer Success Engagement Plans are customized, defined programs that help your team target the right set of users and move them on to the next stage in their journey. These plans can be as simple as a phone call or more complex including automated email campaigns and in-person training. Many leaders rely on spreadsheets and one-on-one meetings with their Customer Success Managers to go over what has been done with customers. This method works fine as you’re getting up and running, but it can quickly get out of control if you’re scaling Customer Success from 10 to 100 customers, or from 10 to 10,000 customers.
18. As with all other parts of the journey these key plays must be tailored to your customer journey but below are some examples of customer success plays that you can implement STAGE #1: ONBOARDING Account is in good health: This is great! Let the customer continue along their journey. Onboarding has not started yet: Reach out to stakeholder to make sure they get started. Schedule a progress review to follow up in a week. 10 new users joined the account: Schedule training session for new users. STAGE #2: ESTABLISHED Started using new feature: Send best practices and power tips documentation. Schedule an adoption review in 30 days. Low engagement with reporting functionality: Invite executive sponsor to a complimentary review session. Account is in poor health: Escalate this account. Schedule a meeting with key stakeholders to understand what the issue is. STAGE #3: PRE-RENEWAL Open support tickets: Escalate tickets within support to make sure they are resolved quickly. Reach out to key stakeholder and notify about progress. Account is in average health: Set up business review with key stakeholder and establish plan to ensure renewal. 20% decline in active users: Add this account to watch list to keep an eye out for further decline. Escalate internally to create win-back plan. Invite all users to training webinar.
19. Every stage has different requirements/expectations from customers. For example, when onboarding, customers expect more hand holding or a strong process to help them get up and running. Meanwhile, those who are established may wish to be left alone and get updates on new releases, etc. Additionally, customers in that segment are probably the best to approach for case studies, references, beta testing, etc. How do you do it? Start with understanding the key milestones that customers need to reach in order to stay on track for success. What are the major drop off points? Where do they stay?
20. How many of you currently have a customer nurturing marketing program in place? How have you set it up? Are you able to track whether it is helping to drive your goals? Customer marketing or campaigns are essential in helping your team drive product adoption at scale. Think about it help your team drive adoption and advocacy using automated marketing. Rather than rely on a separate marketing platform—which only gives limited insight into what customers are actually doing with the application—a smart CSP will include customer nurturing tools. Automated marketing features, such as email campaigns and in-app messaging, are an effective channel to improve adoption, add value, and drive success over time at scale.
21. Examples of campaigns: Automatically send “welcome and get started” emails to any new user of the application and follow up within a week if the user hasn’t engaged a specific feature Run a drip campaign to get new accounts to set up/configure their application interface within 30-days Run a campaign targeted to power users to give them extra tips and tricks Send automatic “check in” emails to individual users on behalf of CSMs if usage drops by 50% over two weeks
22. Every stage has different requirements/expectations from customers. For example, when onboarding, customers expect more hand holding or a strong process to help them get up and running. Meanwhile, those who are established may wish to be left alone and get updates on new releases, etc. Additionally, customers in that segment are probably the best to approach for case studies, references, beta testing, etc. How do you do it? Start with understanding the key milestones that customers need to reach in order to stay on track for success. What are the major drop off points? Where do they stay?
23. Who has something like this in place? Do you all have measurable goals in place around specific activities?
24. Every stage has different requirements/expectations from customers. For example, when onboarding, customers expect more hand holding or a strong process to help them get up and running. Meanwhile, those who are established may wish to be left alone and get updates on new releases, etc. Additionally, customers in that segment are probably the best to approach for case studies, references, beta testing, etc. How do you do it? Start with understanding the key milestones that customers need to reach in order to stay on track for success. What are the major drop off points? Where do they stay?