Customer success: Nobody cares about your product, but this is what they will pay you for
The customer is always right . . . everyone in sales/customer support knows that concept. The problem is, it’s hard to really understand that if your attention is divided. If you’re trying to be all things to everybody, what usually happens is everyone gets something but no one gets everything.
A great starting point is to have an ideal customer in mind and speak to them about their desired outcome — suddenly you’re having a more useful conversation. As you dig deeper learn how your ideal customer speaks and use their language about their desired outcome — that’s setting the tone for a great conversation starter and interaction with your product. You also have to do it in a way that’s not overselling.
Side note: I highly recommend reading The Mom Test if you want to learn more about having useful conversations.
If you’re having early-stage issues and you could hear what your users are thinking you would probably hear something along the lines of “I was promised things you couldn’t deliver,” “expectations were mismanaged,” etc. This is what your landing page, website, and value propositions promised them. Of course these companies aren’t usually trying to mislead, but when they are not thinking about the customer’s desired outcome they usually end up confusing them instead.
By shoving your features and packages them right at the beginning, they’ll notice when they can’t use everything. And they will probably leave.
One of the ways you can use customer success in your marketing and sales is to enter the conversation already taking place in the customer’s mind.
When it comes to understanding the term customer success, I learnt a lot from Lincoln Murphy.
From the moment a new user interacts with your company, all the interactions should be designed towards getting them to their Desired Outcome — this is what success looks like for your potential customer and getting them towards it is why you exist in their world.
It’s not your product they are about — it’s the outcome it achieves that matters.
You should asking yourself whether the journey you take your customers on is focussed on you or them?
The word “customer lifecycle” is so synonymous with sales/marketing teams it has the ability to move us away from understanding that all the interactions your customer has with your company should be getting them to their Desired Outcome.
Understand that they need more than the explainer videos, the docs, automated onboarding flows, and workflows in your email campaigns for you to live up to the promises made on your website and landing pages.
Customer Success is when your customers achieve their Desired Outcome through their interactions with your company — Lincoln Murphy
Desired Outcome = Required Outcome + Appropriate Experience
I’ll share the airline analogy that Lincoln Murphy used airline analogy here…
I can fly on any commercial airline to get from Point A to Point B and be assured I’ll get there fast and safely. Fast and Safe are the baseline.
But there is a huge difference in the experience of achieving that Required Outcome depending on if I fly Southwest, Spirit, or Virgin America.
Required Outcome is the thing your customer needs to achieve, the thing they are trying to accomplish; helping them achieve that is why you exist in their world.
If you can’t help them achieve their Required Outcome, that’s a non-starter. It’s an outcome that matters — often deeply and even emotionally — to the customer.
Required Outcome is really nothing without Appropriate Experience.
For long-term success — yours and the customers’ — you need to not just help your customers achieve their Required Outcome, but you need to help them do that in a way that is appropriate for them.
Appropriate Experience is your differentiator; it’s why you exist. It’s why customers choose you over the next best alternative.
Customer Success is tied to Desired Outcome
It’s our job to understand what the customer is trying to accomplish, but moreover, it’s our job to understand how they want to accomplish it.
A practical way of doing this is by mapping out the Customer Success Milestones
Note: Every customer segment will have a different appropriate experience
SAAS Companies like Salesforce and Unbounce have built engagements and health scoring against Desired Outcome.
For the data-focussed, Chargify wrote a data focussed blog about how to reduce Churn and increase MRR by keeping customers happy check it out here
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