Thursday, April 26, 2018
Attract the Right Job or Clientele:
Note: Today’s Guest Blog is provided by Pete Aldridge on the topic of customer success. Pete suggests you start with desired customer outcomes and work backwards. He enables organizations to better engage and build profitable relationships with their internal and external customers.
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Whats happening in this picture?
The Aldridge Family
When parting company with a client and each of you has a smile on your face, you achieved customer success.
We are all smiling, right? REALLY smiling! I was smiling the most, (that’s me in upper left)… don’t you think?
The photographer used a clever trick to get us beaming this way. Success! My parents were then motivated to purchase the premier package of photos. They shared with friends and family. And, they returned for additional photo shoots. They eagerly recommended the studio!
Why?
A Forbes article on the power of smiling noted:
“Smiling stimulates the brain’s reward mechanisms in a way that even chocolate, a well-regarded pleasure-inducer, cannot match.”
Every time I look at this photo, I smile again. Yes, we ALL achieved desired outcomes that day… we all succeeded. That was a kind of personal example of customer success. Let’s now look at a more professional scenario.
Imagine the ship is sinking and you only have a bucket to bail water
While not quite that dramatic, but when Sprint and Nextel merged, there were many challenges. Cultures clashed, and customer relationships suffered.
Amidst the troubles, I was part of a team engaged to help this evolving telecom giant understand the customer journey. We were also asked to identify risk to customer retention such as poor customer experience (e.g., escalated customer service issue). We built a “customer success” solution to monitor customer “health” and respond to client needs.
The result was this giant telecom proactively contacted customers, improved customer satisfaction, and reduced churn by 1 to 2%.
Why do these stories show “customer success”?
There are three key tenets of customer success:
- Understanding: knowing the customer’s vision and expected outcomes for their acquired solution
- Delivering: developing and executing against a customer success plan which helps the client maximize the value of the solution
- Expanding: communicating with critical internal teams. Include delivery, product management, sales, customer service, and partners to address challenges and ensure renewals. Last, also identify and provide additional services the customer desires
Start with the customer. Understand their desired outcomes. Then work backward. Be in their shoes. You have to “feel” your customer’s challenges. Be in the trenches with them solving problems.
Your customer is tuned to channel WIFM ( “What’s In It for Me?). You must deliver the answers. When you provide value, you strengthen loyalty. You are growing a mutually beneficial long-term relationship. They know this. They may even give you a referral in return or agree to be a reference.
What Questions Are Critical for Customer Success?
- How do you know the “health” of the customer relationship?
- How are you engaging with your client at every step of the customer journey?
Include practices for on-boarding, implementation, deployment and ongoing usage. - What education are you providing to promote customer adoption of your product?
- How do you manage customer problems that impact customer satisfaction?
- How likely is your customer to provide a referral (NPS – net promoter score)?
- How do you know if your customer would benefit from additional product offerings?
- Where do you build success plans for your most important customers?
- As the voice of the customer, how do you engage with other teams (sales, product development) to understand the customer’s needs and deliver the right solutions?
Your client expects more from you than to just be “nice” to them. They anticipate that you will drive value and help them reach their desired business outcomes. One way to be prescriptive in your customer success efforts is to understand where you are on the Customer Success Maturity curve. Gainsight is the thought leader in customer success, and Allison Pickens, Gainsight’s Chief Customer Officer, provides an excellent education on this topic.
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Pete Aldridge bio:
From his formative days with a strategic thought-leader in the Customer Relationship Management space, Pete has “lived” customer success with tens of Global 2000 organizations across industries. Pete’s helps teams maximize the value of leading Cloud and on-premises digital solutions so that those teams can achieve their desired business outcomes. Click here to visit Pete Aldridge’s LinkedIn profile page .
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