Convoso’s Director of Customer Success shares insights from his many years leading teams that support customer growth.
Successful Customer Success
by Ron Griguts, Director of Customer Success at Convoso
I’ve put myself to task lately on defining a certain subject: Successful Customer Success. Wow, what a rabbit hole that effort took me down… I don’t think the phrase “multi-faceted” does it justice. If you continue reading, don’t hold your breath – it’s a long one!
Though all of the answers and criteria seem basic and common sensical, think about the severe impacts all of it has on really any business practice.
Things like a bullet proof product, an information rich and practical onboarding experience, stellar product & support team(s), and the start of it all, a diligent and honest selling strategy.
When you are able to hit strong on the above high-levels, you’ve got the infrastructure to hire in the individuals that complete the puzzle.
Product managers that love engaging one on one with customers and CSM’s to digest where the product can improve or just hear a story of a product release that truly had an incredible impact on a customers experience.
Sales AE’s that know the product and have Sales Engineers and SDR’s that set them up for success to answer the correct questions of why our product is needed for that potential customers business to grow.
Support teams that have the necessary tools and education/training in place to provide quick response times, behavior competencies for handling tough customers, handle disagreements, etc., and providing solutions!
Marketing team that loves understanding both sides of the customer relationship: Gaps, what works and what doesn’t work; and use that knowledge to develop collateral to address: case studies, testimonials, webinars, etc…
LMS function to work in parallel with the CSM team to deliver a world class training course to new hires as well as customers.
Last but not least, the CS Function!
Making sure the CSM/IM/OBM role is clearly and accurately defined cross functionally as well as to customers. Understanding that we are not an extension of the support team nor a point of escalation, rather a product expert, the customers advisor or advocate, a relationship manager. Every single point I’ve made above directly impacts these various CS roles. Whether it’s sales gaining the knowledge around where the customer is at with our competitor and why they are choosing us and delivering that to onboarding/implementation, onboarding delivering the current state of the customers performance to the incoming CSM, and the CSM delivering customer feedback to marketing, sales, product, and engineering – it’s all important and it all connects.
There’s so much more to the Successful Customer Success architecture, but it’s my belief that the above is an excellent framework to get you there.
