Customer Success is supposed to focus on the customer. But what about the customer? We talk about ensuring a customer’s issues are resolved, they renew their contracts, they rate our products and services high, etc.
Do you know what the customer’s real perception is of your products and services across all the team members? Do you know the real reasons behind their dissatisfaction?
There are customer surveys with lots of information, but perhaps still missing the real problem and therefore the approach your team may be taking to get them back on track may not be the right one. How do you find the real story?
There are several approaches to gathering more customer information from a wider representation of the customer’s team members. The following are my favorites that provide transformational information to create a future roadmap to get your customers to a fully entrenched state with your products:
Customer Tour
Quarterly Roadmap Review
Engagement Validation Meetings
Customer Tours are usually done on a quarterly basis. You would create a list of customers in a particular regional territory that is a cross section of your customer segments and sizes. The meeting is scheduled as a 2-hour minimum with a representation of team members across the customer. The agenda is a combination of listening to what are the top concerns of the customer, a review of new or changes to products or services, marketing events they should consider and then asking the team what would they like to see you do better in the future to make the product more valuable and consumable for their organization.
The Quarterly Roadmap Review is usually conducted quarterly by the Customer Success representative and the appropriate expert team members. The meeting is usually an hour with an agenda that discusses their current state on the roadmap to a successful customer state in which the product is indispensible to their organization. The team would discuss the next phase on the roadmap and the plan to execute and timing. It also asks how the services teams can provide a better experience with the products and services to help their team to become more knowledgeable and committed users.
Engagement Validation Meetings are held on a regular basis with the services team during their engagement or implementation. These can be weekly meetings to validate the solution is meeting their requirements, delivering what was expected, and providing a solution the team is excited about utilizing to transform their organization. Again, you would be clarifying what their perception has been of your services to this point and if there is anything you could do to meet their expectations regarding the agreed to deliverables and outcomes. You would validate the results delivered a solution that is critical to optimizing their organizations and that they love how it has transformed their organization.
Using these types of opportunities to gather more details about your customer’s real perception will help drive your own internal transformations to improving your product and service offerings, methodologies and approaches to delivering consistent customer success that ensures 100% renewals and sets them up for expansion on the roadmap to the vision.