Category: Customer Success

When looking at the difference between customer service and customer support many people confuse the two. Not every Customer Service function will support the customer and not every Customer Support function will adhere to general definitions of Customer support.

When this is looked at in the details you find that the root cause of this is Customer Support is there to provide answers to questions and Customer Service is there to reinforce positive feelings and emotions.

We can think about this in simple terms of ordering a coffee. Customer support is telling the customer what flavors and options are available. If the Customer asks for vanilla and there is not an option for Vanilla then you effectively cannot ‘support’ the customer in giving them what they want, but you can still provide Customer service in suggesting other options and doing so in a polite and courteous manner.  In this way all customer support is customer service but not all customer service is customer support.

It is an understanding of this that underpins ‘Customer Success’ because when you break down Customer Success into its core values you find that the Success element is about a feeling that the Customer gets at the end of their interaction with the Business.

This is why a Key factor in Marketing is defining the ‘Story’ of the company to the customer. It is also why many Companies have seemingly generic or ‘Cookie Cutter’ values because at the core they want to sell their Story about giving a successful interaction to their customers.

Before we can dig deeper we need to understand what Success looks like from a Businesses perspective and the Customers perspective.

A successful business interaction can usually be quantified. This is either via a Lead generation, opportunity for sale, Sale and PO recept or conclusion of an after sales operation such as a deployment of software or closure of a service desk ticket.

From a customer perspective this is generally less quantifiable as it opens up the world of feeling vs provision of service. The emotional state of the customer have have a large bearing on whether they perceive the interaction with a business as a ‘success’. For example, a mechanic servicing a car can go from a ‘success’ from the customer perspective to a negative if an unexpected fault or mechanical issue occurs and bill increases. Such an interaction while still a success for the business(the mechanic) can change the emotional state of the customer from a positive to a negative by no fault of the business

It is for this reason that marketing advertising and post sale aftercare is so important. Marketing and advertising is designed to entice the customer to purchase and the post sale aftercare is there to solidify the relationship between the customer and the business. 

Using the above example a mechanic can explain that they can knock money off or get a discount on parts or charge only for their work to soften the blow of an unexpected bill on the customer site. Alternatively they can explain why the problem needs to be fixed and benefits of doing so. Equally the negatives of not fixing the problem can be explained to advise on why the issue does need fixing. 

In this manner the emotional state of the customer can be changed to view the problem as a positive rather than a negative. 

It is how this information is conveyed, it’s professionalism and its depth or conciseness that plays the most part in how a customer can view a business interaction as a negative or a positive.

The idea of End-to-End Customer Success is in most cases seldom understood due to ineffective viewpoints. The use of Key Performance Indicators, Sales Targets and Department Goals can quickly erode the businesses ‘Customer Success’ as internal staff aim for their own targets at the expense of the concept of “Customer Success’

In the SaaS environments this is particularly evidence when an upcoming or new feature is sold as complete when objectively this may not be the case. Within a situation like this several Targets are trying to be met with the customer ultimately taking the brunt of the fall and being mis-sold in many cases. 

• Customer wants feature X
• Sales says that feature X is available
• Feature X is not fully completed by the Product team
  • Work on Feature X may not have been started
• Sales and Product Development teams create a Demonstration that Feature X is operational. 
• The customer purchases based on Feature X being available 
• When feature X is then used in a real world environment holes are found and Feature X is considered ‘not working’ by the customer.
• This then causes friction between the customer and Account Management Teams to either placate the customer, to stall, offer remittance or wait until the feature X is considered ‘complete’ by the customer. 

I will stress that this is not the fault of either the Sales or Product development teams processes. Referencing Figure 1. We know that Product Design comes immediately after identification of customer needs. Ultimately the customers are identifying their needs and it is the role of the business to address those needs. 

Those with experience also understand that there are times when the speed of execution can be the deciding factor and that not everything can or will be complete before the need to execute on a sale. The concept of Customer Success can still be achieved in situations such as these by the use of clear communication and identification of potential stress points. To use the above example the concept of customer success can be implemented by communication.

• Customer wants feature X
• Sales says that feature X is able to be implemented 
• Feature X is not fully completed by the Product team
• Sales and Product Development teams create a Demonstration that Feature X is operational.
  • This is the key stage where potential stress points and caveats must be properly communicated to the customer. This is a step that most Sales roles will wince at as it does work with the ‘say anything to get a sale’ that alot of sales teams work from.
  • At this stage if work on the feature is still ongoing a rough time line should be provided to the customer
  • This is also the stage where what Feature X does not do is identified and explained.

The above points are a deviation from the way many teams like or want to work however if the above is followed trust and integrity are established with the customer and this is at the heart of Customer Success. Customers will not trust you if you do not act with integrity and this sometimes means telling them all the facts as they are rather than stretching the truth.

With the advent of modern technologies businesses are having to find new paths to outperform their competitors. This has caused innovation with new technologies and has forced the legacy principles of business and industry to be looked at in a new light. 

From the blacksmiths of antiquity, to the advent of the assembly line to the proliferation of advanced pattern recognition and Artificial Intelligence, the thread we see pass through all of these processes of construction is that the speed of delivery and satisfaction of the customer have always driven advancement.

At the turn of 2020 a new term started to penetrate the business markets within the operational departments. The term was ‘Customer Success’. This term led to a change in both operational processes and staffing decisions when delivering products or services to customers.

Customer Success, unlike operational processes such as Service Operation Procedures(SOPs), Service Level Agreements, Sales Funnels or Agile Development processes is a principle rather than title or business process. 

Management within sales and operational roles may not be able to articulate Customer success words however it is evident that they understand the principles when you look at hire practices and the change or roles within the Modern IT sector. Titles such as ‘Technical Account Manager’ and ‘Customer Success Manager’ typically bridge the gap between the nontechnical sales and account management teams with the operational side of the business. This is most evident with IT sectors such as SaaS and PaaS from where I have drawn my experience.

Within the Software development environment, regardless of sector or function of software being developed there are key steps that businesses have identified.

• Customer Need
• Product Development
• Marketing
• Sales Funnel
• Product Demonstration
• Sales Pricing
• Sales Agreement
• Product Deployment
• Product Delivery and User

When looking at the most successful businesses of the 2020s all major players have perfected this process. This is a process which I call End-to-End Customer Success. 

Businesses such as Elon Musks’ ‘Tesla’ and particularly ‘SpaceX’ are perfect demonstrations for this End-to-End thinking. The Customer needs, product, pricing and continual improvement of the product by physical and non-physical updates has led to Tesla and SpaceX being leaders in their field.

The identification of needs, product processes, sales, delivery and aftersale support are all what modern businesses industry are calling ‘Customer Success’. What separates businesses who understand this to the ones that don’t is that each step is not necessarily ‘customer focused’ (as this can lead to excess resource consumption) but ‘optimized’ for the delivery of the answer to the customer’s need.

The advent of Uber in the UK is a prime example of this principle, while generally more expensive the ease of access to services(Taxis and transportation) outshone the legacy business patterns of a phone based booking service. The customer need ‘Getting transport’ was executed in an easily consumable way and the delivery of the service was simple and efficient. This eventually led to the downfall of many private hire services as Uber absorbed the market share due to an optimized service delivery.