Ways to run customer success at scale
Customer success is human-focused. Scaling is dicey because you don’t get one-to-one consumer interaction. You are forced to get targeted, flexible, active as well as data minded. But, the first thing is that you should know when to scale and then look out for the right process, people and technology to allow it to work.
Knowing the right time to scale is equally important as doing it. It has got do everything with customer success and you need to plan for your growth and not be reactionary.
First know the yearly contract value of every customer. It is industrial standard for CSM (customer success managers) to see around $2million in yearly revenue of their customers. The results may differ. How many of the clients equalize to $2 million per year depends on your business. Some SaaS businesses generate $2 million from just few customers, but a single one of them may require more time, training, objective alignment etc. Losing such a customer may damage you financially so don’t overwhelm your CSM.
If you have smaller customers, then a CSM can tackle thousands of customers. As every customer doesn’t have a huge portion of total income, and may not need a lot of investment, a single CSM may manage all of them.
Secondly, you should also consider the complexity of the product. The most complex the product is, the more time training, configuration and deployment is needed, so you require more CSMs.
Own a procedure which supports your purpose
A well-defined purpose is a highly effective thing to do to make your customer success team work well. Without a purpose, you cannot create a procedure to get it done. You will just be spinning around. Processes make scaling simpler because you will have something solid to grow and not some nebulous idea of what customer success is in your company. Open processes helps you bring CSM easily in the workflow.
The three processes which customer success team requires are:
Annual lifecycle: It is what you are going to do on an annual basis for your clients. You fix your objectives here. Don’t permit the customer to dictate your objectives. You know your product best. Give three outcomes to your customers to accomplish which make renewal likely along with a timeline to accomplish them.
Onboarding: This is how you get the customer from nothing to realizing value. It is more than learning how to use the product. Be careful, you don’t overload them with info.
Quarterly business review: It replaces the conventional check-in phone call which customers don’t pay heed to. The product value gets reinforced by a review. Send the report to client which how much value the product has provided them with your own commentary.
Scaling is all about using the right technology
Being a SaaS business, you need software to properly scale. Some people resist customer success automation. Hence, you can hire professionals who can take care of your customer success. SmartKarrot is a platform which gives you 360 view to actionable insight of your customer’s journey. You can know about customer engagement, retention, income growth and life-time value.
