The 3 Important Habits In Customer Success
Customer Success is a mindset, not just a department.
That’s why a part of our role as Customer Success Managers is to also activate our colleagues: Everyone needs to be aware what is happening with our clients!
Renewal, churn, upsell – we need to constantly nudge our colleagues towards understanding these key concepts of Customer Success.
Here’s why:
If Sales, Marketing, and the Product department understand what’s driving the 3 core KPI’s in Customer Success, they can do their part to improve them. Marketing and selling to the right customer profile. Building features that drive engagement and reduce churn. There are so many ways everyone will benefit from you taking these 3 simple steps!
Celebrate renewal achievements (e.g. in a Slack channel)
It’s the little things that matter, right?
Successful renewals are our bread and butter as Customer Success Managers… But I barely hear anyone talking about them.
But there is so much gold in talking about your renewals!
The key questions I like to start with:
- Was this renewal a low, medium, or high effort for Customer Success?
- What made this customer stay?
- What could risk their next renewal (in terms of user experience and products)?
You can start with a standardized question after every successful renewal.
Learn from churn
You can also do this in a Slack channel, or in a team meeting – Share your learnings behind every churn with the Sales and Product teams. The key questions:
- Was this customer a fit with the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)?
- Why did they churn?
- How long did they stay with your solution?
- How much ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) was lost?
This will make your Sales team more aware of the business we are losing, and how closing bad-fit customers influences long-time revenue goals. You can read Reduce Your Customer Churn – The 17 Types of Churn
Upsell
Upsell can come in many forms, but here are the key things you should share with your team after successfully upselling a client:
- Was it simply organic growth (e.g. user seats were extended because of a growing team) or a “real” upsell by the CSM?
- Did they sell any extra services and spot “unconventional” growth opportunities that might influence the company strategy?
- How much effort did it cost them? And can Sales learn from this upsell success?
Have Too Many Customers? Do This
If you have too many customers to talk about all the retention, churn and upsell cases, make it a habit to create a regular aggregated report, e.g. weekly or monthly. This way you can proactively address what’s happening in your customer base and ignite a conversation with the entire team.
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