Blog Jan. 30, 2018
Customer Success: Vital to your Business Growth
He loves you, he loves you not
With today and the next day’s information, options and possibilities, it has never been more pressuring for businesses like picking one petal off a flower to know whether your customers love you or not.
And with the competition just around the corner, it’s going to take more than just pulling petals to make “him” stay. Most technology or software companies are so focused on generating new leads or starting a connection with a new customer that they forget a secret recipe: to maintain a good relationship with their existing customer.
Yes, acquiring new customers is obviously an essential part of revenue growth but let’s not forget about customer success because it is just as important. Customer success is not a walk in the park. We worked hard to get each of them but just like every relationship, keeping them isn’t that easy.
As fast as the rise of technology for the past years, everything goes along with it including the customer-business relationship. Nowadays, customers hold the terms and can have far more demands or options than ever. If they want water, you give them water. It’s easy for them to leave and switch to the competitors as it is a tough competition out there and one business is no longer the only one offering what the customers need. And what they need the most is our fullest dedication; TLC (tender loving care, as they call it!) but with results equals customer success.
Before, companies in the industry focus on an organizational structure of building and training teams, developing processes and tools, reach goals or missions and deliver tasks, but did they cover every possible thing to attain success? Perhaps not, they skipped the importance of knowing the customer’s feedback and stance in receiving their services.
Luckily for all of us, it was introduced in 1996, a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) company called Vantive observed that enterprise CRM systems had a high failure rate in the industry. They set up a goal of getting their customers’ 100% willingness to serve as their reference whenever they need but using the traditional organizational structure wasn’t enough so they used a new approach. They hired someone to lead their services group, who then created a new department called Customer Success. The Customer Success team is the one to ensure that the customer is successful in using Vantive and their compensation is based on it. To measure or define the success, the approach was followed by a new documentation process of customer’s expectations in their system. After six months, the team will be reviewing the expectations with the customer, asking their satisfaction with the services and other more concerns that could be explored and developed.
No Customer Success = No Your Success
“Increasing customer retention rates by as little as 5% can increase profits by 25% to 95%, and Gallup says B2B customers with high customer engagement scores achieve 50% higher sales revenues and 34% higher profitability than other companies.”
(Customer Success Best Practices: The Ultimate Guide, 2017)
They may have the right to demand but it’s not only up to the customers and their demands on how to achieve the success, it’s the customer service leaders’ chance to implement and prove on how effective their strategies are to keep both the customers and them happy especially when it’s needed for sustaining.
But if you’re so worried (which is normal, by the way) about the growth of your company, there are strategies you might’ve already implemented that doesn’t feel like a mystery case to solve such as brand awareness, acquiring new prospects, going onboard with a client, value realization from client, expansion with the client.
If your customer is happy, the company will be smiling all the way too and what underlies this certain happiness multiplies such as reduce churn, increase in existing revenue and possibly influence new sales, it’s a win-win situation.
Customer success is not a trend nor hype. It’s definitely not a marketing strategy but will grow your business like you’ve never imagined. Aside that it’s very effective in sustaining a business, it’s also the most cost-efficient. It differentiates from investing in big resources to produce such as ads (print or online), social media campaigns, user-interface (UI) and the likes, while it is good and very helpful to devote on these areas as well. But if you have the chance to upscale on the concept of customer success, don’t let the opportunity disappear. When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Treat your customers like your best friend who has your back and they will have yours. Take care of the customers because the results are just as incomparable.
