Moving Beyond NPS and implementing a comprehensive approach to Customer Success

The divide between sales and Customer Success departments is at least as well known as that between sales and marketing.

In the Bold Sharp Sales Marketing Index, customer experience is assessed in the “Alignment” sub-section of the “Excellence” category of the “Engine of Growth” cluster. Customer success is indeed a crucial element of the activities and processes in which organizations must “excel” to create and capture value. Hence the importance of understanding that the customer experience begins with the first business contact. It should continue naturally, thanks to seamless collaboration between sales and Customer Success departments, and be reflected in indicators that go far beyond NPS.

We invite you to review the prerequisites for moving from a basic measure of customer health to a total experience of customer success.

The customer experience is real:

The following criteria must be met.

It all starts with sales:

A simple way to improve the customer experience is to align your sales process with how your customers buy, not with how you sellor wish to sell. Value must be part of every milestone.

A great customer experience is also measured by your ability to share a different perspective with your customers, from the first point of contact to closing. A different perspective can be as simple as storytelling or sharing experience in a specific industry or with specific stakeholders. It can also be surprising or provocative, and introduce your customers to a new way of approaching the problem they want to solve, conducting their purchasing process or prioritizing their decision criteria.

It may be that you don’t have any insights, carefully thought through and adjusted as you go along, to share at this stage to support your sales effort. In that case, make sure your sales people have the right skills to instinctively personalize their approach and differentiate themselves in the light of a wide variety of business situations.

Customer value is delivered and measured:

If your sales experience is excellent but you don’t deliver on your promises, the customer experience is simply awful. And so will your NPS. On the other hand, if you get a decent NPS and your customers churn, you’re no better off.

Selling value is a two-way conversation that doesn’t stop at the closing stage. Value creation begins precisely on the first day of implementation. It requires relentless commitment until the promised value is measured and corrective action taken accordingly.

NPS is not enough to measure customer satisfaction. Value needs to be validated with the right people (Power) and confirmed by irrefutable evidence such as the willingness and commitment of key stakeholders to a common roadmap of collaboration and expansion.

Keep it smooth across the board :

In the Bold Sharp Sales Marketing Index, customer success is also part of the “Remove friction and foster collaboration” cluster. What does this mean?

Sales and Customer Success teams are aligned:

Aligned, even integrated. The Customer Success team must be involved in the basic activities of the sales teams. They attend forecast sessions that matter, at least current quarter opening and closing sessions. Major business opportunities are shared, and customer success managers are welcome to chime in. They are actively involved in opportunity war rooms, not just as informed observers, but as active participants in the resulting decisions and actions.

The Customer Success team must also be involved in strategic activities such as territory plans and key account plans. The first step is to ensure that the CSMs’ territories are aligned with those of the sales team. While available resources can sometimes represent a constraint, ideally the matching process should take into account the following triptych: competence, seniority and account complexity. The aim is not to have two teams – one for sales, the other for customer satisfaction – but one united team in charge of revenue. To achieve this, avoid imposing more than two contacts on your sales force, with skills that are, to say the least, variable.

Look for complementarity and partnership: winning pairs who work as One team and can challenge each other in expansion or retention discussions. Align systems to stimulate the right attitudes. For example, the commission plan should motivate CSMs on project performance, organizational alignment, customer commitment, access to key decision-makers and value delivered. Bonuses? Why not on their proven contribution to revenue generation?

Responsibilities and tasks are clearly defined:

Theoretically, job descriptions are a good starting point for defining missions, roles and responsibilities between sales and Customer Success. There should be no overlap. This is where theory comes up against the reality of human nature, ego and, ultimately, organizational silos.

Unless you’re a start-up and your sales people are focused solely on the new business, no matter what happens after closing, let’s be clear: the higher the revenue stakes, the more responsibility for the value cycle should fall to sales people, from revenue generation to customer success. This includes internal -transversal- and external -customer- communication. Think of them as orchestrators, and recruit them accordingly.

If silos and egos are still hurting your organization, get the two departments together to redefine roles and responsibilities by account tiers. Stay flexible. For strategic accounts, make sure the account plan clarifies the “what” and the “who”. This is where decisions need to be made jointly to go beyond the job description. Other business imperatives influence the adjustment of roles between sales and Customer Success. This is particularly true for strategic up-sell and cross-sell opportunities. The objective is to sell the Big, not to stick to a job description or a RACI matrix.

Roadmap: Sales or Customer Success?

CSMs’ actions and priorities must be focused on maximizing retention through value realization and validation by the customer.

CSMs can take ownership of the post-sales customer journey if the sales team is focused on rapid growth and new business. However, the more mature the organization, the more relevant it is for sales people to master the entire revenue cycle. CSM objectives and priorities therefore become part of the sales strategy, especially for Tier 1 accounts, and must be validated as such by the sales organization. Account scoring, targeting and account plans are driven by sales.

The CSM’s focus and efforts on delivering value, creating a shared vision of the solution and high-level commitment are all part of an overall sales effort. These actions can generate frictions and therefore require a certain level of assertiveness. CSMs need to get out of their comfort zone and raise their game: so what are you waiting for to train them in the fundamentals of negotiation and sales?

No customers, only ambassadors:

Truth is in the doing:

Retention rate may be your preferred ratio, and hopefully marginal. While it’s essential to monitor it, it shouldn’t be the only indicator. Exceptional Customer Success departments go far beyond this.

They seek to create a sense of belonging among customers, so that they feel proud to share their link with the community you’ve created. Customer satisfaction is therefore measured usingkey indicators and concrete actions. For example:

Metrics:

• Customer gross lifetime value: this is calculated as the Average Order Amount × Average Purchases per Year × Average Retention Time in Years.
• Customer net lifetime value: This is CLV minus the costs of acquisition, retention, and those associated with future growth.

Actions:

• Leads passed on by customers: these are true indicators of customer sentiment and their sense of belonging.
• Customer testimonies: customers testify through press releases, business cases or evangelize for you on social medias.

The combination of these metrics and actions defines overall customer health and represent the true measure of customer success. This is what we call Customer Life Value in Real Life. In our next article, we’ll explore these metrics in more detail.

Customers are seated at your table:

If we agree that measuring customer success goes far beyond NPS, we can go further. Business metrics are important, but that’s not the point here. The aim is to measure the extent to which your customers belong to your community, and how you reciprocate. The questions below can help you determine whether customer success is truly embedded in your organization’s DNA:

• What happens to the good ideas shared in your Customer Advocacy Board? Are you ready to admit that you may have made a mistake, and modify your roadmap or product strategy accordingly?
• When customers adopt your new products and share data that helps you improve or adjust your offering, what do they get in return?

It’s not the job of the Customer Success team to give PowerPoint presentations on products usage or to make customers happy. NPS scores, especially when awarded by users or middle management, don’t tell the whole story. True Customer Success requires aligning sales and Customer Success teams, fostering transparent communication and prioritizing value creation, from the first sales interaction through to implementation.

In Part 2 of our Customer Success article, we’ll be taking a closer look at measuring customer success, and sharing some unconventional ways of monitoring it. Stay tuned!

Looking for creative ways to boost your sales and operational performance?

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