It is widely known that a successful business requires a high-quality product and an effective sales and marketing team.
However, in order to conserve this growth, it is crucial to stay ahead in the fast-paced market.
To maximize the lifetime value of their customers, businesses recognize that they must first ensure that those customers feel successful when utilizing their products.
The focus of customer success is not solely on satisfying customers. Rather, the success of a business is directly linked to the success of the customers, as they are essential.
In this blog, we provide a comprehensive guide to understanding customer success and its importance.
What is customer success?
Customer success refers to the actions made by a company to ensure its clients achieve the greatest success, both in utilizing its product and in their own business activities.
It involves foreseeing potential issues or inquiries from clients and proactively offering solutions and responses.
A company’s customer management approach consists of two components: customer support and customer service.
Client success emphasizes proactively collaborating with clients during their entire journey as a customer.
Which involves assisting them in deriving more value from their purchase and encouraging them to provide feedback.
To find out more, read this blog: “3 Best Ways to Collect Customer Feedback Surveys and How to Use Them.”
Customer success is the idea of making sure your clients are highly satisfied with your offerings, leading them to continue buying your products or services in the long term.
Why is customer success important?
37% of firms lack a well-defined customer service strategy. Customer success brings together the objectives of both customers and businesses to establish a long-lasting, mutually advantageous relationship.
The following reasons are why customer success is essential for your business.
1. Reducing expenses by prioritizing retention over acquisition
Customer success is crucial to your business for several reasons-one of which is its impact on reducing expenses by prioritizing retention over acquisition.
According to Invesp, 70% of respondents agreed its cheaper to retain customers than acquire new ones.
Retaining customers is significantly more cost-effective than acquiring new ones, and customer success ensures that your customers are happy, satisfied, and continue to do business with you.
Acquiring new customers is often more expensive due to:
- Marketing costs
- Sales efforts
- Onboarding processes
By focusing on customer success, you invest in keeping your existing customers happy and engaged, which is typically more cost-effective.
2. Increasing lifetime expenditure and reducing customer churn
Customer churn often occurs due to unmet customer needs and insufficient support, which can result in a significant loss for a business.
A higher churn rate indicates a greater percentage of people cancelling their subscriptions to a business’s products or services, resulting in a decrease in the business’s revenue.
Customer success emphasizes identifying churn warning signs while also proactively utilizing data to improve a customer’s experience.
When experience becomes the primary focus, people are prepared to spend extra if they believe that the brand genuinely cares about their experience with the product.
This reduces churn and prevents your customers from leaving your brand for a competitor’s.
3. Facilitating a development cycle driven by feedback
An essential aspect of the connection established between a customer and a customer success manager involves a transparent feedback cycle.
As this relationship is personalized, customer success managers frequently have access to vital feedback that, if utilized properly, can lead to significant improvements in the product.
Customers are undeniably at the heart of any business, and it’s essential to integrate them into all aspects of the organization.
Integrating customer success solutions can bring customer voices to the forefront, aligning your organization’s product roadmap and efforts with the customer’s needs at every stage.
By utilizing customer insights, you can fine-tune products and services to achieve desired results, ensuring exceptional customer experiences.
4. Boosting business expansion through favorable customer success stories
In today’s competitive market, simply having the best products and services is not enough to set you apart.
Discovering innovative methods to boost ecommerce sales is becoming more challenging.
By satisfying customers, small enterprises can leverage word-of-mouth marketing by empowering clients to serve as individual representatives.
A highly efficient method for persuading customers about the worth of your company’s products and services is by utilizing customer success narratives.
Following a favorable encounter with a business, 47% of clients would suggest it to a friend.
Your business’s prior instances of delivering satisfactory customer service can serve as an appealing factor for future customers.
5. Increasing revenue with repurchases and upselling
The potential for upselling and repeat purchases is one of the clear benefits of customer success.
Additionally, customer success management gives you access to consumers who may benefit from a software update or extension but are not currently doing so.
You may uncover chances to upsell, cross-sell, and provide clients with proactive assistance when you are able to estimate customer health, that is, the possibility that a customer would upgrade to that new SaaS option or renew after the initial trial.
6. Increasing customer satisfaction rates
Client success strategies may assist firms in successfully maintaining client relationships across the whole lifecycle of a product.
To reduce customer attrition rates and thereby boost corporate sales and revenue volume, firms can adopt customer success techniques.
Clients that are satisfied with your products or services are more likely to do business with you again.
Customer success teams focus on ensuring that customers achieve their desired outcomes using your product or service.
This leads to higher customer satisfaction, as clients feel that your company is genuinely interested in helping them succeed.
7. Reducing support costs
Reduced support costs refer to a decrease in expenses associated with providing customer service, technical assistance, and other support services to clients or users of a product or service.
By proactively addressing client needs and assisting them in achieving their goals, customer success teams can reduce the number of support tickets and requests, leading to lower support costs.
Ultimately reducing support costs can lead to:
- Increased profitability
- Customer satisfaction
- More efficient business operation
Customer success vs. customer service
Customer success and customer service are related concepts, but they have distinct focuses and roles within a business. Following is a breakdown of customer success versus customer service.
Focus
Customer success primarily focuses on the long-term success and satisfaction of clients throughout their entire journey with the company, while customer service focuses on addressing and resolving customer issues, inquiries, and problems at one time.
Interaction type
While customer success is proactive in nature, aiming to understand customers’ goals and actively guide them toward achieving those goals, customer service is reactive in nature, responding to customer-initiated interactions or addressing problems as they arise.
Tools
Customer success relies on tools such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems, customer success platforms, and feedback mechanisms to manage the customer journey.
Customer service relies on tools such as help desks, ticketing systems, and communication channels for issue resolution.
Goal
Customer success aims to maximize the value customers receive from what they purchased, leading to long-term customer retention.
Customer service aims to provide resolutions to customer problems, ensuring satisfaction in specific transactions.
Responsibility
Customer success involves cross-functional collaboration, with teams working to understand and meet customer needs holistically.
In customer service, responsibility primarily falls within the domain of the service team, addressing customer needs on a case-by-case basis.
Customer success vs. account management
Customer success and account management are related but distinct functions within a business, each with a specific focus and set of responsibilities.
Following are the key differences of customer success versus account management.
Focus
Customer success primarily focuses on ensuring that customers achieve their desired results and derive maximum value from the product or service.
Account management focuses on the success of the broader business relationship, including revenue growth and overall account health.
Interaction type
Both are proactive. Customer success proactively engages with customers to understand their goals and challenges.
Account management proactively engages with customers to understand their business needs, identify upselling or cross-selling opportunities, and address any account-related issues.
Timeframe
While customer success involves ongoing engagement throughout the customer lifecycle, from onboarding to continued product usage, account management involves ongoing relationship management, ensuring that the customer’s overall experience with the company is positive.
Goal
Although customer success aims to foster long-term customer satisfaction and loyalty by guiding customers toward success, account management aims to grow the account, increase revenue, and ensure customer satisfaction by understanding and meeting the broader business needs.
Measurement
Customer success is measured through metrics like the net promoter score, customer churn rate, and customer lifetime value.
Account management is measured through upsell and cross-sell revenue, account growth, and customer satisfaction scores related to the overall account relationship.
Customer success vs. customer experience
Customer success and customer experience are two concepts that are often intertwined but have distinct differences in their focus and approach within a business context.
Focus
Customer success focuses on guiding and supporting customers so that they can realize the full value of a product or service.
This involves understanding customer goals, providing tailored advice, and helping them use the product more effectively.
Customer experience, on the other hand, focuses on the quality and the subjective response of the customer to interactions with your brand.
The aim is to ensure that at each touchpoint, the customer has a positive and seamless experience, which in turn can lead to higher satisfaction.
Scope
Customer success aims to foster long-term customer relationships and reduce churn by ensuring that customers are successful with their purchase.
Customer experience encompasses all customer-facing aspects of a company, including website interactions, ease of use, customer service, branding, communication, and emotional connection.
Responsibility
Customer success involves collaborating with various internal teams to ensure customers receive the support and resources needed for success.
Customer experience involves collaboration to ensure a cohesive and positive experience at every touchpoint, including with marketing, sales, IT, product development, and customer support.
Measurement
Customer success is often measured through customer retention rates, churn rates, and customer lifetime value.
Customer experience is often measured through metrics such as net promoter score (NPS), customer satisfaction score (CSAT), and customer effort score (CES).
Key responsibilities of the customer success team
Onboarding
Onboarding is the phase in the customer journey in which the foundation for a long-term relationship is established.
A customer success team plays a fundamental role in ensuring that new users are effectively integrated and comfortable with the product or service.
It’s important to ensure that as soon as a customer begins their subscription or receives their product, your team is there to steer them through best practices and advise them on how to use the product features that will be most advantageous for them.
Providing support with renewals
The customer success team has a responsibility to build and maintain relationships with customers, ensuring that the product or service aligns with their goals.
In certain organizations, the customer success department may take on full responsibility for renewals, overseeing the entire process from contract negotiations to finalization.
However, it is often more appropriate for customer success to provide support in the renewal process rather than to handle it in its entirety.
This is because customer success managers excel at ensuring clients achieve their desired outcomes with the product, rather than focusing on sales expansion or increasing monthly recurring revenue.
Preventing customer churn
The customer success team is tasked with identifying reasons for customer turnover and developing strategies to improve retention rates.
A study by Gartner revealed that customers had an 82% likelihood of remaining with a company after experiencing a service interaction that enhanced the value they received.
If customers have a committed ally to assist them in fully leveraging the benefits of their purchase and achieving their long-term objectives, they’re less inclined to switch to competitors.
Discovering new opportunities for cross-selling and upselling
Customer success teams prioritize building rapport with clients, placing them in a prime spot to introduce additional purchases or upgrades.
While their core responsibility is to help customers achieve their desired outcomes, cross-selling and upselling can also fall under their purview as part of a broader strategy to deepen customer relationships and expand business opportunities.
Your team should only recommend additional products when they are confident that these offerings will address the customer’s problems or support their expansion.
Customer success strategy
There are many different customer success strategies that businesses can implement. Some of the most effective strategies include:
1. Setting clear goals and objectives
What do you want to accomplish with your customer success strategy? Do you want to enhance customer retention, better customer satisfaction, or generate more revenue? After identifying your desired achievements, you can develop a plan to attain your objectives.
2. Getting feedback from your customers
The best way to improve your customer success strategy is to get feedback from your customers. Inquire about their preferences and dislikes regarding your products and services. The input received will aid in pinpointing aspects that can be enhanced.
3. Offering ongoing support
Customer support doesn’t end when the sale is made. Continue to offer your customers support throughout their relationship with your company. This could include providing training materials, offering webinars or tutorials, or simply being available to answer questions.
4. Personalized service
The first step to establishing a successful customer success strategy is to understand your customers:
- What are their needs and wants?
- What are customer pain points?
Take time to understand your customers and their individual needs.
Once you understand your customers, you can develop a strategy that addresses their needs and helps them achieve their goals.
This will allow you to provide more customized service and assistance.
Conclusion
It is essential to recognize that the success of customers is not the exclusive responsibility of a single person or team; instead, it is the collective responsibility of the entire organization.
Prioritizing customer success is an effective way to reduce expenses in your business.
By ensuring that your customers achieve their desired outcomes, you can increase lifetime expenditure, reduce churn, and enjoy numerous other benefits that will contribute to the long-term success of your business.
Arrange a live demo to learn how BoldDesk can assist your company in enhancing its customer success. Begin a free trial to investigate its numerous features.
If you have any inquiries concerning the product and its functionalities, don’t hesitate to reach out to the BoldDesk support team.
