Do you know what it means for your customer to succeed? Do you know how your product or service causes your customer to succeed? With the answers to these two questions, you are well on your way to building the steps to create a customer success strategy. Let’s look at how we can do it.
What is customer success?
Some may think customer success can be found in the customer’s experience or your customer support but these all form part of customer success, but it is more than that. Customer success looks at the whole journey the customer takes with you to achieve a goal they set for themselves. They can achieve their goal because of the interactions they have had with your product or service. This has moved them from being a satisfied customer to a successful one, and they have gained value in their life from their interaction with your product or service.
What are the steps to building a customer success strategy?
Like with any strategy, certain steps that need to be taken for you to build a successful strategy for both you and your customer. The ultimate goal will be to make a sale and for the customer to have achieved their goal through engaging with your product or service.
STEP 1: Identify your client and their goal
Like with any plan in business, you need to have a clear customer persona. You may have a few different personas, but they need to be clear and agreed upon by every department in your business.
Next, you need to understand the goal of the customer. What do they want to achieve and does your core product or service help them to succeed in this goal?
Lastly, do they have success potential? According to Lincoln Murphy, there are six areas to consider if your customer will have success potential. They are:
- Technical fit: Does the customer have, or can they acquire the technology they need to use your offering?
- Functional fit: What base features or functions does your offering need to have for your customer to achieve success?
- Resource fit: Does your client have the resources available to invest in your product or service?
- Competence fit: Do they have knowledge or are they able to hire experts to use the product?
- Experience fit: Does the business have the resources to ensure the client receives that experience which will lead them to experience their desired outcome from being in business with us?
- Culture fit: What beliefs, morals and attitudes do they have, and are they in line with our company’s beliefs, morals and attitudes?
When analysing your client in the beginning stages of your business, you need to only look at two to three aspects for potential success, but as it grows you may want your clients to fulfil more of the areas.
STEP 2: Find the “stroke of genius” moments
There are times during the sales process when your client will have a moment when they think your product is excellent and they must have it. They will go from thinking it is a nice-to-have to essential for their business to be successful. These are the moments you want to happen early in the sales process. Find them and see how you can make them happen as early as possible.
STEP 3: Work together
Often a company’s different sections work in isolation without a clear common goal. It is important to have regular conversations with your whole office and ensure that everyone is on the same page and align towards helping the customer reach optimum success.
STEP 4: Check you have the in-house resources
When assessing your product and how you will offer it to your client, ensure you have the resources to do what you advertise. If you plan to personalise your offering, ensure you have the software and manpower to offer a bespoke solution.
STEP 5: Get customer feedback
You will never know if you have truly helped your client to succeed unless you get feedback. It is important to make this process smooth and to listen attentively to what your client is saying. This feedback can also help you to design additional offerings with your core product in mind.
By following these five steps, you will be well-equipped to focus on helping your customer succeed, which in turn will let you succeed.
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