Customer success is a big deal. It’s not just something that happens at the beginning of a relationship and then goes away. If your business is going to be successful, you need to have a team that focuses on keeping customers happy and buying more products from your company.
Keeping customers for life
You’ve heard it before, but customer retention is more profitable than customer acquisition. It’s a fact. And when you look at the numbers, it makes sense:
- Customers who are satisfied with your product are less likely to churn out of your funnel and go elsewhere—so you get more repeat business from them.
- When you have a loyal stream of customers coming back again and again, they may be willing to pay more for additional features or upgrades because they know how much value your product provides them.
- Plus, happy customers tell their friends about their experience using your app or service—which allows you to grow organically by word of mouth.
Consistent reporting and tracking
As you no doubt know, there are many ways to measure the success of your business. Customer success managers collect data on everything, and they use it to drive decisions and make better business decisions. They use it to improve customer experience and retention.
When used correctly, data can be a powerful tool for making more informed decisions about products and services within your organization. And when you look at that from the perspective of a customer who wants nothing more than to feel valued by your company, you’ll see that collecting this information is vital—and worth doing well.
Collecting high-quality feedback
Customer feedback is the lifeblood of your business, so it’s important to collect high-quality feedback from your customers. A few ways you can do this include:
Surveys: Surveys are an easy way to ask users how they feel about their experience with your product or service. When sending out surveys, make sure you’re asking questions that will help you improve your product/service and not just simply gather information on user satisfaction. You can learn more about creating effective surveys in your blog post here.
User interviews: User interviews give you a chance to hear directly from customers at the end of their journey with your company—and they might reveal some surprising insights along the way. you wrote a blog post on conducting user interviews here if you’d like some tips on how best to approach them (and record them).
Customer support tickets: Not every piece of customer feedback will come in through surveys or interviews; sometimes there’s just no better place for customers than emailing you directly. Take note of what kind of feedback these communications provide so that next time around it’s easier for you all – you’ll be able to address common issues much faster when those voices have been heard before.
Customer success managers are a long-term investment
Customer success managers are an investment. They’re a long-term investment, not just because they provide value to your company today, but also because they help you identify and retain your customers tomorrow.
Customer success managers provide value to the customer by acting as a liaison between them and the rest of your team. They can act as a customer advocate when problems arise or when new features need to be rolled out so that both parties are happy with the outcome. As such, they help build trust between your company and those who use it most—the end-users.
Conclusion
Customer success is not a one-and-done kind of thing. You need to be prepared to stick with it for the long term, and you need to be willing to make changes as your needs change. That means investing in tools and techniques that will help you stay on top of your customers’ needs now, but also later down the road when those needs evolve into something new.