Over the past couple of months we have been hard at work revamping and enhancing our customer support pages to help our users find quick answers and solutions to their most common Surveypal related questions.
The process got us inspired to write this article which reflects our customer success managers’ best practice insights on enabling and achieving customer success.
Why do people buy products?
Because they expect to get desired outcomes when using them.
In a time when the customer experience is a definitive competitive advantage it only makes sense to enable the customer to get their money’s worth when using your product or service. This is why customer success matters. The more successful your customers are when interacting with your company the more successful your business becomes as a result.
Customer success has the power to transform your business and drive growth. The problem is that everybody has a different definition of success and these days customers make decisions based on personal needs and standards. Simply offering a product or service will not cut it. You need to come up with a customer success plan that prioritizes the customer and sets in motion a process of meeting expectations and delivering value.
How to create a customer success plan
We asked Surveypal’s customer success managers to give us their insights on customer success. We used these insights to compile a guide to creating a realistic customer success plan. This is what we learned:
Plan ahead
Customer success requires proactive thinking. You need to establish different processes designed to enable success. Get your customer success team to document the most common scenarios they are faced with on a daily basis. This will
- create a data pool from which to draw the necessary information to deal with customer issues
- ensure consistent customer experience management, and
- enable your team to scale their efforts
C to the R to the M (CRM)
You cannot achieve customer success without customer relationship management (CRM). The way you manage your relationship with your customers has a direct impact on satisfaction levels and perceived success. Customer relationship management is a business process implemented via CRM systems and it enables you to effectively manage customer related data, gather insights, and design customer- driven processes.
It’s a team thing
At any point along the customer journey, when customers interact with your company they are dealing with representatives of your business. Make sure you hire the right people to do the job and train them accordingly. Your customer success team makes customer success happen. Start with onboarding. Make sure every member of your team is familiar with the processes that you have already established and understand their role and responsibilities.
Access to information
Your customers have no time to waste. It is your job to make it easy for them to access information that helps them make the most of your product or service. For example, Surveypal’s customer support pages offer an array of information in relation to the product that customers can access at their own convenience.
APIs
The use of APIs (Application Programme Interface) is one of the easiest ways to maximize value for your customers and increase customer success. APIs provide the customer with possibilities to use your product in a way that suits their needs and integrate it with other tools they might be using. Take a look at Surveypal’s developer pages to get an idea of how useful APIs can prove to be for customer success.
Metrics & KPIs
As your customer success efforts scale it is important to track your progress. Customer success metrics and KPIs are designed to help you do just that. When it comes to customer success you need to track two types of metrics: productivity metrics and satisfaction metrics.
Satisfaction metrics track just how successful your customer success team really is. Metrics such as the NPS, CSAT, CES indicate that your team is achieving its goal of making customers succeed.
Productivity metrics, such as call resolution time or first response time ensure that your team is efficient in doing their job.