The smooth running of the Tech and Customer Success teams is essential to ensure fluidity within the organization. Simple processes and regular communication are the key to ensuring continuous optimization of the solution and, ultimately, customer satisfaction. This article lists 6 tips to help you get these teams to work together effectively!
Tip #1. Organize focus groups
Because it's essential (and much more fun!) to understand what our colleagues in the next office are doing, set up short times to explain what you do to people in the company.
Indeed, it is important to understand everyone's job: what is their role, their day-to-day mission, the challenges they face, their objectives... If these elements are not defined and understood by everyone, it will be difficult to work together effectively.
The aim is not to devote hours a day to it. It can be done:
- informally during a coffee break or aperitif;
- through "lunch & learn" lunches;
- more formally, at the end of a meeting;
- during a "vis ma vie" event, where the CS spends half a day with a member of the tech team, for example, and vice versa.
In short, any way you can to talk about what you do!
Tip #2. Structure feedback
The CSM is the voice of the customer. Whatever his role (support, onboarding, account management...), he is closely involved in the customer's use of the solution. He therefore has a good vision of the functionalities expected by users, and of the value they will bring in their use.
It is also the CSM who hears user feedback, and is aware of recurring support requests made by customers. The role of the Customer Success team is therefore decisive in passing on information from the field to the technical teams. They will then have the information they need to improve existing functionalities, optimize the use of the solution, and identify new functionalities to be created according to the value they can bring to end-users.
But beware: the aim here is not to interpret the customer's needs, but to transcribe what the user has said, so as to obtain the most "neutral" elements possible.
In addition to the standard ticket elements (customer name, date of feedback, CSM behind the request, etc.), it is particularly useful to indicate :
- background information on the request;
- demand typology (via a tag system, for example);
- the number of interested customers, in order to assess the legitimacy of the request;
- if necessary, estimate the ROI of the requested optimization, for example by rating the added value that the feature can generate.
To avoid the all-too-frequent disconnect between market reality and the product, feedback can be the occasion for an exchange between the customer and the Product Department. The aim is for the customer to substantiate his needs, and for the technical teams to confront the demands of the "field".
Then it's up to the product team to classify and prioritize the elements that come up, in order to build the roadmap!
Tip #3. Manage bug reporting
In the SaaS world, as we all know, bugs can occur at any time during our customers' use of the solution: new functionalities, updates, or even bugs not identified during testing phases... Whatever its origin and cause, a bug is a very frustrating factor for the user who is confronted with it.
For a bug to be dealt with quickly by the technical team, the CS needs to provide as much useful information as possible to make it easier to understand. It is also important to reproduce the bug described by the user, before filing a ticket.
And be careful to distinguish between bugs and exotic requests! Users are sometimes fond of all kinds of requests. It's up to the CSM to qualify and filter customer requests, so as to spare the technical team. If the CSM performs its role well and transmits sufficiently detailed information, the ticket is more likely to be resolved quickly!
Don't forget to use the ticketing tool to track the progress of the ticket, so that you can notify the user when the bug has been resolved.
Tip #4. Set up a watchdog
When a developer is focused on his task, it's often difficult (and inadvisable anyway) to disturb him to ask an urgent customer-related question.
In addition to setting up a ticketing tool to track the resolution of customer requests, it may be useful to set up a "watchdog".
A watchman is the CS team's main point of contact, for a defined period of time. A member of the technical team who is available to answer urgent day-to-day customer queries that a CS would find difficult to handle. Ideally, the watchman is located close to the Customer Success department, and can be called upon for all technical questions related to customers. He or she may also be required to conduct customer calls with the CSMs, to manage and understand complicated requests. He/she will also be responsible for qualifying tickets submitted by support.
Implementing such a role increases ticket management productivity, reduces CSMs' frustration over technical issues they can't resolve, and makes it easier for the technical team to understand complicated customer issues.
It's up to the technical team to define the functioning, rhythm and scope of this role!
Tip #5. Create forums for sharing between CSMs & Techs
In addition to ensuring that each team understands its own business, regular inter-team exchanges should be organized within the company. For example, it might be a good idea to involve sales people and CSMs in product roadmap meetings:
- The CSM will be able to contribute its user vision, and share its opinion on the added value of a feature to be developed from a "usage" point of view.
- As for the salesperson, he or she will be able to contribute his or her prospect/customer vision, and share his or her opinion on the added value of a feature from a "sales" point of view.
The product and technical teams will share the level of difficulty required to develop the feature, and thus communicate on the workload and define the roadmap. This last point is important: all too often, technical teams are afraid to give visibility to the roadmap internally, as it contains feature delivery dates, and is therefore synonymous with commitment.
Even so, this information is essential for the company as a whole. It is possible to share a roadmap by not giving precise dates, but rather a target time period (e.g. quarter), as well as an overall vision. This sharing will make teams more efficient, and avoid creating silos.
It's also possible to involve CSMs in pre-prod testing phases, asking them for their opinion on a POC of a feature, or asking for their input in conducting user interviews. Last but not least, why not get business teams to attend sprint reviews, which often include a demo of the product, with the latest developments to come?
The aim is not for some people to do the work of others! But rather to favor a cross-functional approach to team collaboration, because each business insight has its own impact on development decisions and the evolution of the solution!
Tip #6. Give visibility to completed and upcoming tasks!
As we all know, transparency is now a real performance lever for a company, and a good way of understanding the challenges faced by each team, and their contribution to the company's overall project.
On the tech side, systematize release notes! For each release, via a Slack notification, a few slides or a simple email. This shows the work accomplished (which is very gratifying for the team), and helps CS realize the state of progress on current subjects. The best thing is to combine it with a demo to present to the teams, to make the information concrete and punchy!
On the Customer Success side, there's also relevant information to share! Key KPIs, usage trends, number of customers onboarded, number of onboardings planned, upsell / cross sell figures, churn, blocking situations, positive or negative customer shares!
Transparency is a great opportunity to create synergies, to challenge each other, to understand each other, but above all to make information accessible. In fact, why not go as far as setting up a public or collaborative roadmap, to bring objectivity and dispassion to tech/business debates?
