Customer success has become buzzword in SaaS industry. It does not only act as traditional customer service, but also acts as the backseat driver of company growth. Through up-selling and renewals, customer success plays a role to increase recurring revenue for the businesses.

As SaaS companies are growing and getting more ‘mature’, the roles of customer success are becoming more crucial. According to Eva Klein, VP of Customer Success of Hubspot, sales is the first growth engine, marketing is the second growth engine, customer success is the third growth engine. If we compare to the other two, revenue that come from up-sells and renewals are more cost efficient. Moreover, existing customers who are happy with the product/service could advocate and spread a positive word of mouth. These could amplify the growth and scalability of the company at the same pace.

In general, the roles of customer success include building stickiness to the product, making sure product adoption, managing feedback loop, preventing customer churn, renewals, and up-selling. At first, i thought these all rely on the product itself and it could be automated in the future. In hindsight, we require authentic human touch in order to connect with stakeholders. In my journey as customer success, i found 5 things about customer success along the way, which are:

1. Determine which one is the decision maker and which one is the user. Maybe sales are more likely to deal with the decision maker, while customer supports usually deal with the user. As customer success, we deal with both of them. So, we need to figure out who’s who in client’s company in order to get jobs done efficiently. What’s the point if we have done the best possible guidance to the user, but it feels nothing in return to the company? Make sure that our sincere help have impact to the decision maker as well. At the end of the day, we have to think win-win, right?
2. Begin with the end in mind that i got from THE 7 HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE book by Stephen Covey. After we know the key person and gather as much information, we can build our negotiation scenario upon these data. I learned this from the first month i took this role (thankfully it happened early). It was started where i didn’t recognize who’s who in that company. I was trying to hard to negotiate with the user, instead of the decision maker. As our negotiation weapons were running out, the decision maker just arrived at the table with full ammo of gun to negotiate deeper. Finally, the renewal reached its deal. However, we could perform much better if we start with the scenario plan in mind.
3. Seek first to understand, then to be understood. From Hostage Negotiator, Scott Tillema, this principle could be applied in any type of negotiation. As the customer success, we negotiate with diverse types of customers. Each of them got their own problems already. They come to us with the purpose to solve their problems. Sometimes i kept pushing our product without understanding the root cause of the problem first. I didn’t realize what’s really matter is to understand and fulfill what they need.
4. Mirror customer behavior. Jonah Berger mentioned in his book, HOW TO BE MORE INFLUENTIAL — INVISIBLE INFLUENCE, that mimicking our customers could bring positive impact to the negotiation itself. Based on what he said, it can lead to bigger deals in all sort of context. To illustrate that, waiters who repeat the customer order get 70% higher tip. In email context, when they start with “Hi..” instead of “Dear”, we could mirror what they do. In other case, i trained the customer using fancy and technical terms related to our product. If i imitate their terminology, i could save much more time finishing product training.
5. Defend both sides to gain the best outcome. Not only defend our product in front of our customers, but also defend our customer to our internal team like product team and operation team. We can’t over promise features to the customers, but we also stand up against our internal team. We represent both side of the equation. But, it’s still difficult to be the middle man.

Those are just my 2 cents. In our customer success team, all of us have different take on what works and what’s not.

In Sleekr and Talenta, customer success and customer support work together in endless journey of retention (unless they churn, we hope not!). Without customer support who relentlessly solve our clients problems, all those growth and magic numbers will never be achieved in the long run. By working together and continuously share our experience, hopefully we could improve.

Sources:

Berger, J. (2017). Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior. Simon & Schuster.

Covey, S. (1989). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Free Press.

Klein, E. (2017, August 7). Customer Success: The Third Growth Engine of Business. Retrieved from Think Growth Medium page: https://thinkgrowth.org/customer-success-the-third-growth-engine-of-business-8c8e0e2c78b8

Skok, D. (n.d.). Managing Customer Success to Reduce Churn. Retrieved from For Entrepreneurs: https://www.forentrepreneurs.com/customer-success/

TIllema, S. (2016, December 6). The Secrets of Hostage Negotiators. Retrieved from TEDx Talks Channel: