Customer success is like a red dot on Google maps where it is the ultimate destination all companies want to reach. Planning plays a significant part here and getting it right is vital as the business reputation is on the line.
A customer success plan can be compared with pins that can be placed at the locations you want to cover on a map, the pins being customer requirements.
So, to define what a customer success plan is, it is a blueprint of what customer success can be visualized as and how businesses can help achieve it.
In the list below, we tell you why a customer success plan is needed and how to create a successful
one for your business.
We will look at:
1. Benefits of a customer success plan
2. How to create a progressive customer success plan?
- Define the customer’s end goal.
- Align to light bulb moments
- Having customer success metrics in place
- A strong customer success team
- Bringing the customer and product teams together
- Implementing Changes Slowly
- Assigning Agents for each Stage
- Usage of right tools
- Customer feedback
- Important points to Consider
1. Benefits of a customer success plan
Gartner says, “64% of customers find the customer experience (CX) more important than price when purchasing something”
Reduction in Customer Churn Rate
Higher the customer churn, the more the pressure to acquire new customers for your business. So, prioritizing customer retention must be on top of the priority list.
On the other hand, it makes it a challenging task to run businesses with a high customer churn rate and can affect stability in the longer run.
So, a solid customer success plan should be in place to focus on not just retention but the overall success of the customers from the start to keep the customers hooked.
Upsell and cross-sell of products
Upsell and cross-sell products are two of the most successful strategies implemented by businesses that are proven to increase customer value.
But, for these strategies to be successful, a satisfied or a happy customer experience is primary and it depends on your overall product experience as well.
After you have acquired a bunch of happy customers, a customer success plan that includes an upsell and cross-sell strategy for your customers will no doubt turn profitable for your brand.
Raising the recurring revenue
The above-mentioned points will absolutely raise revenues for brands if done right, but there are more ways that you can use to pump in more revenue into the business.
Building a stronger brand on Social Media Channels and the review boards will get you noticed and assist you in attracting some outbound leads.
Also using popular techniques like brand references will support your brand in getting you loads of inbound inquiries supporting the growth in sales numbers.
2. Ways to optimize your customer success plan
According to a study by SurveySparrow, “about 37% of the companies don’t have a clearly defined CS strategy.” As creating an effective customer success plan is vital, we’ve listed out ways to optimize it to achieve high customer satisfaction rates.
Define what your customer’s end goal is
To turn a customer success plan into an ultimate achievement, defining what your customer’s end goal seems imperative.
To curate an effective customer success plan, understanding what success looks like for a customer is a priority.
So, creating a smooth sales process with a sense of the customer goals and how they align with your business solutions can turn prospects into full-time customers.
With this clarity, any mismanagements between your prospect’s expectations and what your business offers can be eliminated.
Also, after the conversion of prospective customers into regular ones, these defined goals that let you convert the prospects can be included in the customer success plan.
Align to light bulb moments
One of the most critical moments in a customer success journey is to attain a light bulb moment or popularly called an Aha moment by many. This is a moment where your customer understands the real value of your solution for their businesses.
This is a point where the solution that you are offering no longer stays as just an attractive buy but is an active part of your customer’s business.
Personalized messages, a real-life example with a problem, and a solution that a product solves at the end can help customers reach the aha moments much sooner.
Reaching the light bulb or an Aha moment is important as people who know the real value of your solution will stay longer and not experience any churn.
Therefore, creating a customer success plan with strategies for these moments at the first glance or the minimal number of meetings will make a world of difference.
Have customer success metrics in place
First, start with tracking of key customer success metrics like (Source: Help Scout)
- Customer lifetime value
- Repeat purchase rate
- Customer retention rate
- Customer retention cost
- Churn rate
- Net promoter score
- Customer satisfaction score
- Customer effort score
Based on your product, the frequency (daily, weekly, and monthly) can be set to check the customer progress and numbers over time.
On the other hand, you can also set a preferred timing frequency level based on your product and customer goals that leads to the light bulb moments.
Analyzing the status of individual customers like the highest paying customer’s reports, or a prospect’s considering factors for a product will help you plan customer success journeys effectively.
Create a strong customer success team
This is something that is the foundation for a prolonged customer success journey offering increased value and trust in a brand.
A popular quote from Ken Lownie fits here perfectly, “With the shift to the SaaS model, your customer’s success and your success is much more direct.”
So, for a good customer success team, these are 7 traits that are most required of a manager as per smartkarrot.
- Ready to take on challenges
- Quick to respond to problems or queries
- A data wizard
- Time management
- Socializing skills
- Decision-making skills
- Effective problem-solving techniques
With this, consideration of suggestions from sales, marketing, and products teams will be effective when curating a customer success plan.
Bring the customer and product teams together
Aligning both the customer-facing teams and product teams will be an effective collaboration that can yield the best results for a business.
Customer-facing teams will always have a lot more understanding of the demands and requests of the customers and designing products based on that will be certainly rewarding.
Deploying strategies like sharing important team goals and bringing in tools that can let both teams converse and compare ideas will lead to a good alliance for the best solutions.
Implementing Changes Slowly
Once the customer success plan is ready, the urge to carry out changes will be uncontrollable. But, implementing multiple changes at once is not a recommended practice.
For instance, tracking feedback and selling products shouldn’t be done at the same time. A new customer might end up buying products they don’t need or move away from the brand.
Keeping a track of the buying cycle and recommending products that would be appropriate for the customers will get the brand or a business the appreciation they need.
Also, Implementing one change at a time will be easy to track, tell you what is working, and will offer you a view of what works with your customers.
Assigning agents for each stage
For a successful customer success plan, assign a person for each task to ensure that the goal of each customer stage is met.
Also, the assigned agent should track the progress of each customer stage and cross-check it with the ideal metrics.
Schedules for tasks must be assigned for different stages in the Customer success plan and any problems in achieving the tasks or changes in schedule must be rectified.
Use the right tools
Research by Forrester says that “Over 72% of the businesses say that improving customer success would be their top priority”.
To achieve this successfully, investing in a tool that effectively helps in tracking customer success metrics will make it easier for the teams.
For instance, tools like Kapture can assist teams in evaluating customer success metrics such as NPS and CSAT scores. Also, metrics like first call resolution and calculation of average customer handling time can improve customer satisfaction rates.
With an advanced tool in place, a customer success plan can be easily mapped with the results that can assist in improving the customer success journey.
Customer feedback
A feedback mechanism that can improve the overall customer experience is always welcome. Customer feedback scales like NPS and CSAT will leave you with a good understanding of customer satisfaction and experience.
With that, in-app feedback has also proven to offer good results as it gives you insights about some of the detailed customer experience features like feature fit index and customer effort score in an application.
In addition to that, generating in-app feedback through targeting new and high-value customers can assist in creating a successful customer success plan too.
Important Points to Consider
Now, a great customer plan is ready and needs to be presented. So, what should you do to implement it? Here are 3 points you should consider for improvements in the plan:
- Regular customer plan reviews (Monthly or Quarterly)
- Hold frequent meetings for issues and queries to be resolved.
- Ensure better communication and feedback from the internal teams.
Looking for a smarter way to achieve customer success?
SmartKarrot says, “Only 25% of customer success teams use a single consolidated tool and 64% have plans to simplify their technology stack.”
Kapture is an enterprise-grade SaaS-based Customer Support Automation platform that eases customer support processes for industries. With features such as Agent Assistant Window – a self-serve portal for the agents and AI-powered chatbots, our platform helps your business achieve high customer success rates in simple steps. You can get a demo from us here.
About the Author | |
 | Sunith Ramachandra |
| Sunith Ramachandra says, “Content writing is all about using the right words for the right audience”. At kapture he does exactly the same writing content to create conversations and conversions online. | |
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