Customer success is one of those often-overlooked areas that can make or break a business.
It is 100% fundamental to good business and yet, new as a formal discipline. We’re lucky Wayne McCulloch, the author, took the time to put as much about how it in writing as he could. “The Seven Pillars of Customer Success” is told from the viewpoint of someone solving enterprise-level SaaS problems and it still manages to be relatable for every industry and role.
Customer success management is the vehicle for all things related to reducing churn in a business.
Customer success management is a discipline that, when implemented well, enables one person or team to facilitate customer wins, reduce churn and turn customers into advocates.
Companies need to shift things within their culture from trying to own the customer to owning the moment.
“No one owns the customer, but someone always owns the moment.”
– Scott Hudgins, CCO, Walt Disney World Resort
Thinking you own the customer tends to crop up issues of overlap in responsibilities, credit and other discrepancies. When everyone in the company focuses on owning their moment with the customer, these roadblocks fall away.
“Many companies use chatbots and automated responses for customer support, and I strongly recommend thinking about the message this sends.”
In a world where technology makes it easy to have far fewer moments of direct interaction with people, customer support is probably one of the areas where people want a live human experience. I recently called my auto insurance company’s support and I probably won’t even consider another carrier for years. A live person was on the line in under 30 seconds, they were pleasant and directly helped me solve the issue I called about. That’s a W.
“Treat negative voice of the customer feedback as something that needs to be examined and solved right away.”
I usually see two things in a company that lead to customer complaints being ignored: cluttered process for handling feedback and responsibility for addressing feedback not being directly tied to a role. Nothing erodes customer satisfaction quicker than the perception your complaints are going unheard.
“Delivering on value one quickly is the best way to provide an exceptional onboarding experience.”
Onboarding is the first pillar for a reason – it’s your first chance to cement a positive moment with a customer, setting the tone of the new relationship. Look at if from the customer point-of-view: I agreed to give you my money and to trust you with an important thing, and the first thing you do is let me down? Not a good look. It’s going to be hard to recover from that impression.
A lot of customer success comes down to thinking of the customer first and unlocking the right resources in your company to facilitate customer wins.
I love that in first 100 pages McCulloch gives you the two essential building blocks for customer success – start with implementing something that can scale and learn the lingo.
Most of us are not CSMs, but we all have a touchpoint with customers. One thing everyone can take away from this book is own the moment for that touchpoint.
