Customer Success

Customer Success Management: An Essential Guide

The need for customer success management is fairly new and fast becoming pertinent. With an increasing number of B2B and B2C companies switching to subscription-based models, businesses are facing new challenges.

These include the need to create value for customers on a recurring basis as well as lowering the switching costs for customers. 

Traditional customer support models will not cut it. Organizations need to embrace the CSM approach to build a trustworthy relationship with customers and track their performance using customer relationship management analytics.

What is customer success management or CSM? CSM allows you to manage the various aspects of the customer life cycle. It helps you streamline your approach and create a definite process for managing customers. 

Generating leads and converting prospects to customers is the first step. Customer relations and loyalty play an integral role after that.

In this blog, we will explore what customer success management is about, the instrumental role its software plays in driving customer success, as well as the various customer success management tools utilized in this endeavour.

What is customer success management?

Customer success management is a style of management that empowers companies to:

  • Build a more intimate and trustworthy relationship with their customers
  • Drive greater customer engagement, where end customers take on a more active role in the value-creation process 
  • Better sense the needs of their customers and cater to their requirements in real-time
  • Drive higher customer loyalty while successfully introducing new business models to the market

This is why customer success managers (CS Managers) are increasingly becoming popular. 

They utilize CSM to:

  • Improve an organization’s value creation
  • Drive quality relationships
  • Maximize customer value, particularly in the post-sales stage
  • Give customers a voice while providing stellar experiences and services

CSM can be thought of as the next development stage of customer engagement, which allows companies to move ahead with a greater focus on customer-centricity.

What is customer success software, and why use it?

Customer success software is a type of tool that companies use to:

  • Help their customers achieve the desired outcome
  • Leverage a detailed analysis of their customers’ past behavior to build a robust “health score” and predict the future satisfaction of a customer
  • Systematically grow their customer base while identifying red flags and boosting the customer retention rates

Typically, customer success software is used by the customer support and sales teams to help employees improve customer relationships.

When implemented correctly, CSM can:

  • Preserve and increase a company’s revenue
  • Increase customer advocacy
  • Drive profitability as well as growth

More importantly, customer success software can seamlessly integrate with your company’s existing CRM/help desk/social media management software to provide an in-depth view of the customer. 

Before we look at the top 7 customer success management tools, ensure that the CSM tool you select can: 

  • Identify and create accurate customer profiles
  • Capture customer data, history, and feedback in real-time. This includes collating information from surveys, marketing initiatives, and/or team interactions, etc.
  • Engage users throughout their lifecycle with respect to the company
  • Provide critical feedback and customer success scores based on the analysis of the historical data collected
  • Predict the future growth of your customer base and indicate potential red flags based on key data touch-points such as customer interactions, payments, concerns, etc.
  • Scale your CS and sales operations, depending on the size of your organization as well as the method of customer engagement used
  • Perform key functions such as:
    1. Drive customer engagement analytics
    2. Map product usage tracking and customer lifecycle analytics
    3. Log health scoring customer data, customer experience insights
    4. Carry out customer feedback collection
    5. Perform user profiling
    6. Obtain real-time insights of customer engagement

What Does A Customer Success Manager Do?

We can better understand the various responsibilities of a customer success manager from the list given below:

1. Customer Onboarding

The process of customer onboarding is carried out to make new users comfortable with the product.

As a part of this process, the customer success manager:

  • Organizes welcome emails
  • Sets up their account
  • Resolves queries, etc.

Additionally, managers also utilize the CRM software to help them standardize and automate these interactions. 

2. Customer Engagement 

Customer engagement plays a key role in developing and maintaining customer relations and developing a sense of brand loyalty.

A customer success manager builds relationships by:

  • Interacting with the customers
  • By responding to customer feedback
  • Sending out messages like email greetings, etc.

3. Customer Retention

Customer retention measures customer loyalty over time and indicates the overall success of a business.

As a manager, you an implement different processes to improve your customers’ experience and build customer loyalty, such as:

  • Relationship marketing (wherein you reinforce their loyalty by offering them special discounts on your product or service subscriptions, send personalized email on special occasions etc. )
  • Manage expectations by setting clear targets with respect to achieving a certain goal in your journey, as most customers end up leaving when not offered clarity on the same
  • Offer constant support by addressing customer grievances or issues faced with a product, offering help to resolve them, and maintaining a constant feedback loop
  • Analyzing the customer experience data to improve customer satisfaction
  • Be transparent regarding your company’s daily operations, etc.

Customer Success Management Strategy

1.Setting Objectives and Goals

The first step to customer success management is to set objectives and goals. Measurable goals like the number of new customers in a month or the number of purchases per customer help you track your customer success. 

2.Defining Customer Segments

Defining your customer segments allows you to create tailor-made strategies for each of these segments, thereby helping you adopt a more personalized approach. 

Segmenting your customers will also help you experiement with various strategies for each group, and come up with a solution that is best for that group.

3.Understanding Customer Needs and Pain Points

The key to developing a successful customer service strategy is to understand your customers’ needs and pain points.

You can do this through:

  • Customer interactions
  • Feedback processes
  • Follow-ups

Once you understand the specific requirements and issues faced with a product, you can adjust your strategy accordingly. 

4.Building a Customer Success Team

A customer success team includes all the people who are involved in managing customers and maintaining customer loyalty.

This team:

  • Promotes products
  • Builds customer relationships
  • Communicates customer needs to the sales and marketing teams

5.Developing a Customer Success Plan

A customer success plan should be based on the:

  • Target customer segment
  • Customer needs and feedback
  • Data reports about customers and products

It should also take into account the different stages of the customer lifecycle and the roles to be played by the different teams, such as the sales and marketing teams, etc. 

Top 5 Customer Success Tools Every Business Must Use

1. JustCall: The Best CSM Software for Quick Support

JustCall is an inbound contact center solution purpose-built for customer service teams that:

  • Empowers support teams to deliver 5-star customer experiences
  • Allows teams to leverage a robust cloud-based contact center solution, which seamlessly integrates with the existing CRM and Helpdesk software of your organization
  • Helps deliver round-the-clock support from anywhere, anytime, and on any device
  • Allows teams to effortlessly handle huge volumes of inbound calls through intelligent call routing and IVR
  • Automatically saves call details in its CRM, thereby saving a lot of time for your support teams

The verdict: As per data, providing quick customer service is important for 71% of consumers (ages 16-24).

They believe that a quick response from the service team can drastically improve their customer experience.

Moreover, according to Salesforce, “79% of customers are willing to share relevant information in exchange for contextualized interactions in which they’re immediately known and understood.”

This is where a tool like JustCall can help, as it effectively marries quick service with the right context to help organizations deliver a stellar user experience.

JustCall Key Features

  • More than 100 integrations with CRM and business tools 
  • The click-to-call option 
  • SMS workflows and automated messaging 
  • 3 different sales dialers to automate dialing processes
  • Call queueing and call forwarding
  • Analytics tools 

G2 rating: 4.3 out of 5. 

2. Help Scout: The Best Customer Success Tool for Educating Your Customers

Help Scout doubles up as an all-in-one, powerful self-service tool that your customers can use to:

  • Get critical help, support, and information on your company’s product/services at the click of a button 
  • Get extra support by using the tool’s live chat and messaging feature and chat with your CS team
  • Access an updated and resourceful self-service external knowledge base, complete with how-to videos, blogs, documents, and other forms of important content

On the business side, organizations can use the customer success platform to:

  • Send targeted messages to customers as they use your product
  • Nudge users in the right direction and improve customer retention
  • Integrate with mission-critical everyday tools such as Slack, HubSpot, and Salesforce, to name a few

The verdict: As per research by Forrester, customers prefer knowledge bases over all other self-service channels.

Another survey by Zendesk claims that 69% of consumers first try to resolve their issue independently.

However, less than one-third of companies offer self-service options such as a knowledge base.

This is why businesses need to integrate a customized platform with self-service features if they want to elevate their customer experience and improve customer success rates.

Key Features

  • A customizable platform with reporting and dashboards
  • Ticket creation and response for users
  • Workflow and automated response
  • Screencasts
  • Database of customer contacts 
  • Email and live chat support
  • Self-service with a knowledge base

G2 rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars. 

3. Wootric: The Best Customer Success Tool for Capturing Customer Feedback

For organizations looking to give their customers a valid voice, they need to get their hands on a tool like Wootric, as this customer success tool allows businesses to:

  • Gather quality customer feedback
  • Roll out in-depth micro-surveys such as NPS, CSAT, etc. to capture the pulse of the customer
  • Use the survey inputs to influence the product roadmap and focus on creating products that the customers truly need 
  • Improve product usage while reducing reduce customer churn
  • Help their CS team close the loop by reaching out to customers and updating them about their feedback

The verdict: Acting on customer feedback is the stepping stone to success for big and small organizations alike.

According to research by Microsoft, a staggering 53% of shoppers believe their feedback doesn’t go to anyone who can act on it — a big mistake.

Ignoring your customer’s feedback is the biggest blunder organizations can make, as it makes the customers feel unappreciated by the brand. 

Key Features

  • Analytics tools, including net promoter score (NPS) and customer satisfaction score (CSS)
  • Customization features including stakeholder management, multiple branding, and multiple languages, etc.
  • Solutions targeted at particular verticals

G2 rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars

4. Gainsight: The Best Customer Success Tool for Strategic CS Planning

Gainsight is a customer success management tool that is ideal for fast-growing companies that are looking for scalable software.

This tool allows customer success managers to:

  • Engage in strategic planning
  • Empower their team to analyze key trends in customer service and sales and drill down into more specific data as needed
  • Lay the foundation for successful employee onboarding–a priority for scaling CS teams, as their main objective is to learn the company’s key processes and systems on the job, and this tool empowers them with in-depth walkthroughs, video tutorials, etc., providing contextual guidance along the way

The verdict: If you want to get your new hires up to speed without creating a dent in the quality of customer experience delivered, you need a tool like Gainsight.

That is because, according to Salesforce, for 70% of customers, the service agents’ awareness of previous sales interactions is fundamental to keeping their business. In other words, hyper-personalization is the key to success.

Key features

  • Provides customer information like health scores and profiles
  • Allows for customer monitoring and surveys
  • Reporting and dashboards
  • API and integrations
  • Tools to import and export data 
  • Workflow 
  • Data security
  • Customizable and scalable 
  • Notifications
  • Features to manage users and access 

G2 rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars. 

5. Salesmachine: The Best Customer Success Tool for Automating Your CS Processes

If you want to automate your customer success initiatives, using a customer success tool like Salesmachine makes business and logical sense. as this tool:

  • Allows your CS team’s workload to be distributed evenly so that the agents can focus on delivering high value to disgruntled customers
  • Manually calculates and updates customer health scores and makes it easily available for the CS team to see at the click of a button
  • Helps cater to low-scoring customers and prioritize their needs to prevent churn
  • Integrates with important communication tools such as email and Slack, ensuring that the team is notified when customers reach out for help
  • Integrates with HubSpot, Salesforce, etc. so that the team can access actionable insights that are triggered by customer health data

The verdict: The era of automated CX support is upon us. The millennials of today prefer live chat for customer service over every other communication channel, as per Comm100.

Organizations need to regroup to understand how they can offer high-value automated services to customers and accelerate their customers’ user experience without compromising on the quality offered. 

Key features 

  • Segmenting customers
  • Product engagement 
  • Customer monitoring and profiles
  • Prediction features
  • Reporting and dashboards 
  • Tools for importing and exporting data 
  • Customizable 
  • Account-based engagement

G2 rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars. 

Customer Success Metrics and Analytics 

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Key performance indicators are quantifiable indicators of progress towards better performance or a particular result.

For customer success management, some key performance indicators include:

  • Customer churn rate (percentage of customers who no longer use a product or service)
  • Average revenue per user (average revenue received from each user over a period of time), etc. 

This data is critical for success in handling customers, as it allows you to make informed decisions that are tailored to their needs.

It also allows you to:

  • Gain a deeper understanding of customer behavior
  • Identify areas for improvement
  • Develop strategies that enhance customer satisfaction
  • Measure the effectiveness of your customer success management strategy

Understanding Customer Success Metrics

Robust customer relationship management analytics play an important role in choosing the best customer success management software. 

Analytics can help you understand customer behavior and preferences, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions that positively impact your business. 

Customer success metrics include customer satisfaction with overall service and with products.

They could also include customer experience of the purchasing process and any consultation, feedback, and troubleshooting.

Measuring Customer Satisfaction

Measuring customer satisfaction is a key step in collecting data to help you generate analytics reports.

This can be done through:

  • Surveys
  • Feedback
  • Automated data collection with the help of analytics tools. CMS software can also help you collect data and analyze it to help you finetune your customer success strategy. 

Integrating Customer Success Metrics with Other Business Metrics

Customer success metrics are closely related to other business metrics like sales performance and marketing.

So you should check whether your CSM software allows for the integration of data with data from other systems, as integrating data allows you to come up with more accurate and informative analytics reports. 

Inspiring Real-Life Case Studies To Learn From 

Real-life case studies of successful customer success programs are a great way to see how customer success programs can work well for a business. 

A study found that companies that implemented a customer success program experienced double the number of customer interactions as compared to before. This allows more opportunities for your team to upsell and cross-sell to customers. 

A customer success program can also help you gauge when customers are likely to churn.

Customer churn is an important customer success metric. It indicates the percentage of customers that stopped using a product or service during a given period of time.

For instance, an SaaS startup named Groove had been facing issues regarding their customer churn rate (which was around 4.5%) due to the amount of time it took customers to perform certain tasks on the platform.

To tackle this, they:

  • Performed in-depth research into the aspects of their website that led to the high churn rate, such as an extended duration for logins, time spent on certain tasks, etc.
  • Sent targeted emails to those customers who were able to login within an optimum time duration, which led to improved response rates
  • The improved response rates proved to be they keystone as they then implemented a system of sending targeted emails to troubled customer groups, which helped them solve their customer churn problem and prevent them from reaching out to their competitors

The Bottom Line

Customer success management is therefore the bedrock on which dynamic and high-powering organizations are built. 

If you wish to grow your organization, you can utilize the various customer success management tools to augment your customer success team’s efforts, as they can:

  • Help the team reduce your customer churn rates
  • Improve customer retention
  • Make your bottom line more profitable
  • Automate key processes of the customer life cycle, like interactions and feedback, which allows the process of customer management to be more streamlined and effective

Frequently Asked Questions

What does a customer success manager do?

Here are some of the key tasks that a customer success manager does:

  • Improving customer retention
  • Customer onboarding – helping new users to become comfortable
  • Improving customer engagement
What are the top priorities in customer success management?

Some of the top priorities in customer success management include:

  • Maintaining customer relations
  • Improving customer satisfaction
  • Building customer loyalty and improving customer retention
What is a CSM tool?

A CSM tool is software that automates various aspects of customer success management.

These include:

  • Customer interactions
  • Feedback
  • Storing information about customer relations, and data analytics, etc.
Which CSM tools can I use?

There are many CSM tools available that your business can use, such as:

  • JustCall
  • Wootrick
  • Help Scout
  • Gainsight
  • Salesmachine
What is the difference between CRM and CSM?

Whereas CRM refers to customer relations management and focuses on the different aspects of customer relations like feedback and follow-up, CSM refers to customer success management and includes CRM.

Anushree is a seasoned business leader with nearly two decades of experience in the SaaS industry, specializing in customer-facing roles across the globe. As the driving force behind our Customer Success division, she is committed to fostering a culture of customer-centricity within her team. Dedicated to maintaining a high-impact Customer Success function, Anushree serves as a vital conduit for open communication channels for customers, capturing invaluable customer feedback and aligning it with our product vision. Her focus on seamless customer experience ensures that customers enjoy a rewarding journey from start to finish.

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