Customer-centric companies are 60% more profitable than those that do not place the customer at the heart of their priorities (source: Hubspot). But achieving this level of performance with a Customer-Centric strategy is not something you can improvise: you first need to lay solid foundations. This includes building an effective Customer Success team that is cohesive and aligned with the rest of the company.
In this article, Antonin Bigot of the Customerz collective gives us 5 levers to boost the performance of a Customer Success team... Before this performance rubs off on the whole company. Follow the guide!
1. Define and share Customer Centric objectives
Do you want to deliver memorable experiences and boost customer satisfaction? Step one: define Customer Centric objectives. Not just for your Customer Success team, but for the whole company!
The aim of these objectives is always to put the customer's interests ahead of immediate, short-term business gains. How can you integrate customer satisfaction into your quantitative and qualitative objectives? How can you deliver an optimal experience and service, which are always in the customer's best interests?
These objectives will serve as a guideline for your Customer Success team. To achieve customer success, it's essential to know your customers' expectations, needs and disincentives. It is these objectives that will help maintain the performance of your customer service team in the first place.
Then remember to regularly communicate these objectives internally, to make all teams aware of the importance of good customer relations. As a ripple effect, sharing Customer Centric objectives will boost the performance of the whole company!
2. Create a plan for success within the company
Setting Customer-Centric objectives without a plan for success is like putting petrol in your car, but never getting it running. In other words: objectives are essential fuel, but the engine of your overall performance (and that of your CS team) lies in action.
Here are our tips for driving customer relations and boosting the performance of your Customer Success team:
- Share and align KPIs between different departments. Just like objectives, KPIs for measuring customer success should not be defined in silos. For example, the Sales and CS teams can measure and share the number of active customers, NPS or Customer Health Score on a monthly basis, rather than just tracking sales.
- Review sales methodologies before handing them over to the Customer Success team. The way salespeople sell (and are encouraged to sell, by the presence of a variable) has a direct impact on the performance of Customer Success teams. If salespeople are motivated solely by figures, there's a risk of underestimating the quality of the customers to be acquired... As a result, once the customers have been handed over to the CS teams, it's difficult to optimize the quality of relations and customer service. Make sure you always use incentives intelligently, to prioritize quality over quantity!
- Establish a Customer Service SLA: a contract can be drawn up to define the relationship between the Customer Success team and other departments. Its aim is to formalize the role and actions of each party, so that all teams are aligned. Well-known for its use in commercial relations, the SLA can also be used by Customer Success teams! Good alignment always boosts performance.
3. Promoting co-construction
To boost the efficiency and performance of a Customer Success team, here's a golden lever: co-construction.
Behind this notion lie various actions to be taken, such as :
- Co-construction with customers: a Customer-Centric strategy and a high-performance Customer Success team can't be built blindly. Customer involvement is an essential ingredient, throughout the entire relationship. For example, we advise you to consider the Voice of the Customer in your strategic decisions. Use feedback from the field to better understand your customers. And don't hesitate to create a user club, to co-construct with them the best possible experiences.
- Co-construction with other teams: to be effective, useful and efficient, the Customer Success team must interact and co-construct with other departments. After all, the CS team is not solely responsible for the entire customer culture, customer relations or after-sales service delivered! To encourage internal co-construction, we recommend setting up a customer experience steering committee. Another good practice observed at XAnge Family (an investment fund): every week, two developers are chosen to write answers to technical questions raised by the Customer Success team. Their involvement helps the CSMs to pass on the right technical information to customers.
At a time when 21% of customer service professionals admit that they don't work closely with sales teams... And 27% make the same observation with product teams: it's time to co-construct more, to boost internal performance! (State of Customer Success, 2022)
4. Investing in tools is good. But investing in people is better!
The Customer Success team is the backbone of any company. It ensures that customer relations are always optimal, and that customer service is memorable. That's why it's essential to invest in this team, in a variety of ways:
- Make management understand the importance of recruiting profiles.
- Invest in a motivating remuneration model, with a clear career path.
- Strengthen team performance by investing in regular training.
Customer Success Management is a fairly recent concept, which is constantly evolving. Training and participation in specific events, webinars and meet-ups are crucial to keeping teams up to date, progressing and improving their performance.
Finally, a word of advice: in addition to the need for "human investment", there is also the need for "material investment". Good performance also depends on deploying the right tools... and, above all, on using them properly. Examples: a CRM, a Customer Success Platformautomation software, ticketing software, data visualization software, a webinar platform, etc.
Today, 56% of Customer Success Managers admit that the budget allocated to them is insufficient. So, to improve their performance, it's time to act... and invest!
5. Don't wait for the customer... but surprise him!
The performance of a Customer Success team depends on its proactivity. To achieve good results, there's no need to wait for customer problems to multiply... Be proactive to avoid them.
Here are a few best practices for surprising customers and boosting team performance at the same time:
- Don't succumb to the "always right" syndrome: no, your customers aren't always right... And it's the role of a customer service department to make the right decisions. One of the keys to performance is successfully reconciling the interests of each stakeholder. Both the company and the customer. This positioning may come as a surprise in the short term... but it's beneficial in the long run!
- Replace the obsession with the transactional with a more relational approach: in B2B as in B2C, customers are increasingly aware of the techniques used by companies to sell them products or services. A commercial newsletter no longer comes as a surprise. Neither does an upsell attempt. So, to score points with your customers, learn to pamper them... without any business undertones.
- Take care at every stage of the customer journey: customers generally expect onboarding to be "just right". onboarding. But have you thought about creating an equally meticulous offboarding, should they ever leave you? The Customer Success team needs to think about every stage of the customer journey, to boost user satisfaction... and not panic if something unexpected happens.
The performance of a Customer Success team is based on various levers: from Customer-Centric objectives to action plans, team alignment, investment in appropriate tools and ongoing training.
It's no longer a secret: the performance of the Customer Success team has a major impact on the performance of the company as a whole.. CSMs are at the heart of your success. So take care of this team, and boost its performance... and reap the rewards for your growth!
