Work in Progress
As the header above suggests, this is just the start of something I am pulling together on a few interrelated subjects which I need for work. Some working out loud, sense making in other words. Come back for updates or please add a comment with ideas.
And I am aware of the glaring omission in this exercise, that of product development led activities and the role they play. That’s a big subject for separate consideration.
Marketing
Creating customers
Customer Success
Retaining customers
Scale
Scaling the process
Marketing
A great place to start is with a State of Marketing report. Conveniently, Salesforce has just released one (registration required). Never in greater need for innovation, marketing is reinventing itself and battling for relevance and ownership (of the customer).
Empathetic Marketing
Marketers are shifting how they source and manage customer data
and ramping up use of technologies like AI that help them make the most of personalized, empathetic engagement. 186% increase in AI adoption since 2018.
Account Based Marketing
As businesses shift from crisis triage to recovery and adaptation, marketers have a unique opportunity
to turn trusted customer relationships into business value. 92% of B2B marketers
have an ABM program (incl. B2B2C.
Customer Success
A newer kid on the block, customer success is fast becoming the custodian of customer retention and lifetime value. I work as a customer success professional and write many posts on the topic but in summary:
Post Acquisition
Typically only engaging after the sale is made, astute CSM’s however, also set the tone upfront.
Customer Health
Customer satisfaction is not new but it’s a static notion. Health is more dynamic than that.
Post awareness
More education, crafting understanding and experience with products/ services.
Time to Value
Emphasis has always been on driving impact, measuring it and doing it sooner than the renewal cycle.
Scale: From Funnel to Flywheel
Hubspot has done more than perhaps any other company I know, to perfect the scale motion.
They have also with keen intuition, mapped customer success with marketing and wrapped it up in this motion – below in brief.
Attract visitors with useful content and eliminate barriers as they try to learn about your company.
Engage by making it easy to buy and enabling buyers to deal with you on their preferred timeline and channels.
Delight by helping, supporting, and empowering customers to reach their goals again and again.
Recent posts on related topics
State of a category – customer success 2021
I’ve been in this space formally for almost 10 years now. I say formally because I’ve been doing the work a lot longer, just under another name. I’ve been passionate about… Continue Reading →
Customer Success Operations – an excellent roundup
From this article over at Process Street which I just discovered. Very useful since I am doing so much work in this space at the moment and I am trending watching… Continue Reading →
Trending
Customer Success and Marketing functions are increasingly interrelated and working together. With scale motions and operations it’s driving customer experiences to new heights. I’m not sure its a new trend but I’ve started watching it here: Customer Success Marketing and Scale
A trend watcher is an innovator that spots trends and determines if they are here to stay and whether they should be incorporated into existing strategy. I enjoy it, it keeps me on my innovation toes and I dabble. I’ve captured this view with a few trends I’m tracking and published reports on already: Trend Watching
Customer success operations – some answers
I was asked by Brook Perry from ’nuffsaid if I would be interested in contributing to an article she was working on with others to get feedback on a set of… Continue Reading →
Customer Success is not about tech or human touch but about the right touch
By touch I mean the way and frequency of times a customer is touched by representatives of a company, whether by technology (think BOTS, automations, etc.) or a human. I would… Continue Reading →
The new customer success partnerships
Customer Success teams in SaaS companies (mostly what I am focusing on here) probably like to think they are the spearhead for making customers successful (as the name suggests). In truth,… Continue Reading →
Balance customer success at scale with high touch when new demand spikes
I’m extremely lucky to work in a space that supports remote working, where demand is booming. COVID-19 has driven demand in the opposite direction for many, effecting their very existing. For… Continue Reading →
Role of Self Service in Customer Success
Customer success teams were put in place in technology SaaS and subscription companies to ensure that customers are successful in their use of the technology they invested in. They have become… Continue Reading →
The Future of Customer Success is Not Human
It’s a pretty provocative statement, I know. To be clear, I’m not suggesting humans won’t be involved any longer or that there won’t be a need for them. If anything, humans… Continue Reading →
Scaling your customer success efforts online – a guide
I mentor startups that go through Microsoft Accelerator’s London program. Because of recent experience I focus on customer success management practices and enterprise software startups, but not exclusively. I recently joined… Continue Reading →
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