June 16, 2024 | Read Online
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I'm fired up about customer success in enterprise SaaS after a couple of conversations I had this week.
One with a friend of mine who leads customer success at a giant, publicly traded company. They decided to move to a paid model because the white-glove customer success model devolved into a "jack of all trades, master of none" situation.
The second with CX leader in a much smaller company looking to build customer success for the first time. Their first hire into this role is already falling into the same white glove trap.
Enterprise customer success teams are usually built with the noble goal of improving customer experience and providing proactive engagement and support.
But all too often, here’s what actually happens:
CSMs get roped into weekly or monthly “check-in” calls with their customers.
CSMs coordinate internal resources and teams on behalf of their customers.
They help to prioritize which support cases are most critical to their assigned customers at any given point in time.
They handle product feedback and enhancement requests.
They manage escalations.
All of these are important jobs to be done for the customer. But the combination of all these tasks is not a job, much less a career.
Furthermore, they represent a collection of broken customer service processes within the areas of the company that should own them. For example:
CSMs bravely run toward the fire when any of these problems arise. They work to smooth the rough edges of the customer’s experience despite the fact that they have little control and limited influence over the resources who can solve the problem.
This style of customer success management, let’s call it Concierge Customer Success, is an expensive and inefficient way of delivering basic service to customers. Despite the cost, Concierge Customer Success only serves to maintain acceptable customer service levels. There’s little incremental value-add above the customer’s baseline expectations.
But the worst part is this: In the process of covering gaps, Concierge Customer Success management makes customer service mediocrity invisible to the rest of organization. And because these deficiencies are unseen, their root causes are rarely addressed.
So what’s the answer? Should we do away with customer success altogether?
No.
But we must rethink it.
In the early days of SaaS, customer success was conceived around this idea of using data to drive proactive engagement with customers. If you detect a customer isn’t getting results, you can intervene.
I use the acronym ABC2AI to describe the customer success process in abstract:
This is a management consulting motion applied to technology customers. Plain and simple. Especially in enterprise.
But Concierge Customer Success diverges from this approach. It’s difficult to be a service concierge in one moment and then be a strategic consultant in the next. In order to build, scale, and retain a strategic success team, the other parts of the organization must improve, step up, and do their part.
Customer success leaders often say that “customer success is the whole company’s responsibility.” And they’re right. But let’s get real and let’s get specific. We have to close gaps in the core customer service processes before we begin to deliver ABC2AI.
Like Maslow’s hierarchy, you must address customers’ basic needs for survival first; guided onboarding, ease of product use, product enablement, release communications, and support. Only then do you earn the right to talk about self-actualization — value and results.
SaaS companies are still siloed and ineffective at taking care of their customers. It’s time for everyone to step up and take on the full responsibility for ensuring that customers successful, whatever department they are in.
Customer success isn’t dead. Successful customers are a leading indicator to a successful company.
But let’s stop leaving it up to Concierge Customer Success teams to cover the gaps that customers fall through on their way to success.
Every department needs real programs and real processes that demonstrate true empathy for the customer across each touch point and stage of the relationship.
How is your whole company delivering customer success?
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