BUILDING

FROM THE TOP DOWNCUSTOMER SUCCESS

MAY 2015

WRITTEN BY AARON FULKERSON

EDITED BY MATTHEW BERGERGRAPHIC DESIGN BY FREDDIERICK MESIAS

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Defining Customer Success

Why Should I Care About Customer Success?

Building Customer Success From the Top Down

Making Your Customers Kick Ass

Customer Success Goes Beyond Support

What Does Customer Success Mean to the Other Departments in My Company?

Customer Success is for All, Not Just SaaS

Infographic: Quick Start Customer Success Builder

Advice From the Experts16 ....

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To define customer success, we’ve got to clear up what a business is first. A business is an organization that creates value for the customer (not money for the company). There is no way to sugarcoat this: customer success is EVERYTHING. That sounds hyperbolic. But if your company is serious about customer success, everything your company does will be infected by the drive to deliver customer success. From website design, to product documentation; from sales, to support — all parts of your company will be involved in customer success.

So what is customer success, besides everything? Customer Success is about driving user adoption and creating product experts. That's how businesses drive value for customers that improves retention and creates brand advocates. As subscription-model businesses have taken off, like the Software-as-a-Service industry, the need for customer success has become more apparent.

Creating product experts may sound simple. And it can be—if your entire company is in the customer success state of mind. But that’s rarely the case. Turning users into product experts requires companies to pay fanatical attention to the customer’s experience. It’s hard enough to run a business in an age of cost cutting, outsourcing, and (gulp) Twitter.

DEFININGCUSTOMER SUCCESS

Because on their deathbed, our users won’t be thinking, ‘If only I’d spent more time engaging with brands.’

Kathy SierraBlogger and Programmer

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But Really, Why Should I Care About Customer Success?

I’ve got a great product. Practically sells itself. Why do I need “customer success”?Great products are incredibly important. Businesses don’t survive long without a great product. But great products are useless without great users. A Swiss army knife is a limited tool if you don’t know what all the different tools do.

To have great products with great users, you need to deliver great content to put customerson the path to success. But so many businesses fail in this. A recent poll from Harris Interactive found that customer service agents failed to answer questions 50% (!) of the time. This is not only a bad customer experience, but it’s clear that the resources for customers to be successful are not available. When your customers fail, so do great products.

The biggest barrier to customer success is CEOs not making it an important part of the culture. It is just as important as new business.”

Nick Mehta, CEOGainsight

Customer success is about your company delivering value to your customers. You do that by making them product experts. All right, I hear you out there. So let me address your questions now before we really get started.

We’ve got great customer support—doesn’t that mean the same thing?No. Customer support is an important element of success, but the statistics overwhelmingly show that support interactions result in customers becoming detractors, and not promoters.

Customer success is proactive, whereas customer service is reactive. Customer service is a symptom of a company lacking a focus on customer success. With a customer success program that works to create expert users throughout the entire customer journey, you don’t need to rely on great customer support.

Odds are, your customer service sucks anyways. According to the Corporate Executive Board, customers are 4x more likely to end up disloyal than loyal after assisted support interactions.

Can’t we just delight our customers?Most companies dream of having a fandom swooning over new product releases. The glitz and glam of incredible offers like free shipping meant to delight and woo fans is not a sustainable business model. And if your product doesn’t live up to the hype…well, the customer (and your bottom line) won’t be delighted.

You know what’s delightful? Buying a product that you can use. Buying a product that makes your life easier. When you buy a product, you don’t do so for the experience of buying a product. Delight quickly fades when you cannot master a product.

Why does my business need “product experts”?Your business desperately needs product experts. The stakes are too high to not have your customers adopt your product. There are too many alternatives, too many opinions, and too little loyalty to not actively promote product expertise among your users.

Customer success is a SaaS thing. There’s nothing SaaS about me. Why should I care? I’ll forgo the tempting “Because I said so,” in lieu of “Because I will tell you”…in a few pages!

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BuildingCustomer Success...

Companies spend millions of dollars laying the proverbial foundation when building up their organization. Of course, things like lining up finances and finding the right staff and business partners are important to a company’s success.

But for companies who want to build their companies around customer success, the foundation is the wrong place to begin.

Jason Whitehead, CEOTri Tuns

When designing the Empire State building, William K. Lamb began his designs from the top and worked his way down. In doing so, he could “ensure that elevator shafts, pillars, and foundation all went through from the top to the bottom of the building.”

This struck me as a fantastic way to think about instilling customer success as a cultural cornerstone.

Hierarchies are not a new way to think of the structure of a company. Top-down hierarchies with the CEO at the top are common. According to Forbes, Fortune 500 companies have tried to imagine new structures to boost declining revenue.

Until you know what it takes to achieve success from your customers’ perspective you will just waste valuable time doing things that will have little long-term impact.

...From the Top Down

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The consensus is that the customer is king. They’re the ones who buy your products, who use your product, who promote your product. Their feedback should touch every part of your company. Whether it’s product, marketing, support, or executives, the customers’ habits, reviews, and purchasing decisions all tell you how your company is doing to make them successful.

That’s why building customer success from the top down means that the top floor is for your customers, and not the CEO. Your customers have got the best view, and the structure beneath it (your company) is what lifts them up.

And just like the builders of the Empire State building, it’s that top floor — the customers — that determines the structure and foundation below.

Every part of the building below the top floor is there to support it— to make it a successful top floor.

The more you build up your company to support your customers, the higher they will go with your products.

Brian Gladstein CEO & Co- Founder

Explorics

You ‘the business owner’ are not the hero. Your product or service did not make the customer successful. Your customer makes their own success. By accepting that, you put the customer first.

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Making Your Customers Kick Ass

Graphic via Kathy Sierra

So, we know customer success means your customers are becoming product experts. What does “product expert” really mean?

It means your customers kick ass. MindTouch began with this idea from Kathy Sierra, and we’ve been working to create product experts ever since.

In her article, titled “How to be an expert,” Sierra discusses the relationship between time and ability on the path to becoming an expert. People who are experts are constantly learning—the longer they learn, the more of an expert they become.

Taking this idea into the business world was like a light bulb erupting above our heads.

Turning customers into product experts was a shift from focusing on the bottom line to focusing on that “Kicking Ass Threshold.” If companies could make it easier to get their customers past the “Kicking Ass Threshold,” then the bottom line would take care of itself. These customers are not only more loyal, but they become the brand promoters your company desperately needs.

Companies invest millions of dollars into customer supportand technology to combat the effects of not making product experts out of their customers.

These technologies are excellent tools for companies, but taken all together, they still only treat the symptoms of a lack of customer experts. This is caused by their customers not being given the tools to become experts.

If you want the vaccine, you’ve got to lower the “Kicking Ass Threshold” for your customers.

Customers who don’t have the tools or the resources to effectively learn how to use your product don’t even make it past the “Suck Threshold.” These customers are detractors. They feel let down by your company, like they’ve wasted their money. And come time for renewal, they’re gone. Upsells? Please.

Investing in call centers, community forums, and solid onboarding techniques will help get your customers past the “Suck Threshold” and into the amateur territory. These customers are more than likely neutral towards your company. That not only doesn’t help your company, it hurtsit. Though customers at this level are capable with your product, there isn’t the investment in it that brand advocates have.

As our lives become more and more enmeshed with the Internet, customers overwhelmingly want to turn to online self-service to learn how to use your product.

If your company wants to make it easy for customers to get past the “Kicking Ass Threshold,” you’ve got to make online self-service your best, most complete, most awesome resource. If customers have easy access to authoritative, branded content along the entire customer journey, then you’ve drastically lowered the bar for the “Kicking Ass Threshold.”

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White House Office of

Consumer Affairs

It is 6-7 timesmore costly to attract a new

customer than itis to retain an existingcustomer.

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Customer Success Goes Beyond Support

Lincoln MurphyGrowth Hacker

Sixteen Venture

“Customer success is about more than delivering service or support.”

Perhaps one of the greatest misconceptions about customer success is that it is a “support” issue. Companies will rebrand customer service organizations to be “customer success” organizations. The name changes, but the objectives stay the same.

Remember the top down approach to customer success? Everything the company does is geared towards customer success. So every organization in your company is a customer success organization.

Customer support will be integral to your customer’s success. But if support is the only part of your company supporting the top floor, the view from the penthouse will be, well, sad.

When your whole company is supporting the customer’s success, that view will be marvelous.

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What Does Customer Success Mean to the Other Departments in My Company?

MarketingMarketing usually represents the first place your (prospective) customers interact with your company. They’re the front door to the skyscraper; they’re how the customers get involved with your company.

Marketing’s role is not just to make the doorway attractive, but to make sure customers come in the right doorway.

Content marketing is the key. It serves to effectively frame your products and educate your prospective customers. Attracting the right customers with the right content, controls expectations, and sets them up for success as they move into the sales funnel.

The other element here is branding. Brand recognition is important. But it shouldn’t be limited to marketing. If you treat all of your documentation (product documentation, training, etc.) as marketing touch points, you're controlling your messaging and promoting learning for your customer. Because, ultimately, you’re trying to show your customer how they can get value from your company. And that value begins with marketing.

Above all else, these resources need to be web accessible, and mobile optimized, because that’s how we consume content now.

Tom KrackelerCEO & Co-Founder

Frontleaf

Make sure that every single employee in your company, from the front line to corner office, knows precisely what value your customers are seeking and how he andshe can impact it.”

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SalesThe goal of the sales team is to get customers. Getting customers to be successful is a whole different ball game. But it has the desired effect (generating revenue), plus more. Like with marketing, Sales Reps need to put customers on the learning pathway towards becoming a product expert.

The further along your prospective customers are on the pathto learning, the easier the sales cycle will be. If prospective customers can learn your product before they’re even your customers, you’re creating the brand advocates who are going to help drive the negotiations within the organization. Show them the value of your product for them.

Aligning sales with customer success is about more than converting prospects into customers. You want your sales team to set up your future customers to become product experts. Your best resource is the documentation that is created for training, support, and onboarding. At MindTouch, we use the content from our Customer Success Center to help sell our customer on their own success with our product. Making this content easy to access, explore, and learn from will do a lot of the heavy lifting a sales engineer would usually do. Plus, you’re doing more to set the customer up to be successful throughout onboarding and beyond than just a simple hand-off meeting could provide.

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Production/EngineeringNobody is closer to your product than the Product team responsible for it. Yet, they can seem the furthest from the customer at times.

But these are the experts in your company with your product. They are the ones who have the knowledge to make your customers the experts.

The challenge for companies is making it easy for product documentation to be authored, published, and readily available for customers to learn from it. Overcoming those challenges and providing real-time content is crucial to your customer success.

Knowledge is a two-way street, though. The Product team needs to know how the customer engages with the product. Where are the pain points? What are the highlights? By tracking customer support interactions and online self-service usage, these things become clear.

This data represents a key way for your organization to measure customer success. Ultimately, with this information, the Product team should be able to develop the product into something that is going to make the customer more successful by delivering a more valuable product through more valuable content.

The Hershey Co. / IDC

Buyers oftechnology report

that interactingwith technical content is the second-most

important pre-salesactivity.

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Customer Success is for All,Not Just SaaS

The customer success movement developed alongside the rise in B2B Software-as-a-Service businesses. The traditionalbusiness model places all of the revenue upfront, with the purchase of the product. With subscriptions, revenue is generated over the lifetime of the contract.

The connection between customer success and subscription is obvious. If your customers are kick-ass-product-experts, they will be invested in using, renewing, and advocating for your product. If your customers are dropping out or just getting along, your revenue stream will dry up and you’ll spend a lot more money finding new customers.

Business-to-Business and Business-to-Customer relationships are progressively becoming more and more like a subscription model. Even the companies who offer physical products stand to treat their business as if it were a subscription.

The compelling piece for subscription models to succeed is that they’re constantly providing value to the customers. As soon as they’re not, the service is superfluous. That’s why there needs to be an obsession with customer success. It’s the product experts who are able to derive the most value from your products.

With the shift to a SaaS model, the connection between your customer’s success and YOUR success is much more direct and felt much more quickly.”

Ken LownieKen Lownie Consuling

Partners

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Non-subscription models should approach their customer’s success with the same zeal. There are two reasons for this.

The first is that consumers are changing. They’re fickle. Loyalty to brands is decreasing. The Internet, with all of its reviews and opinions, holds sway over the minds of consumers.

Consumers know there’s a choice. It is rare to have a monopoly on a market—and if you do, you’re guaranteed that you’ll have competition soon enough. Again, the Internet makes learning about companies and the competitors so much simpler than it would have been even ten years ago.

The second is that the products in our lives are becoming more and more technology based. Rapid developments in technology make product lifecycles shorter, because customers want to adopt the latest and greatest. Cell phones are the obvious example. The rate at which smartphone technology advances makes the latest models obsolete in a year or two. The constant advancement in technology helps deliver more value to the customers, but can leave companies in the lurch as customers jump ship.

With so many choices for consumers you need to associate your brand with value in the mind of the customer. If your company isn’t making your customers product experts, then you’re reducing the likelihood that they will be loyal users. And that’s no way to build a business.

Companies need to prove their worth – day after day, month after month, year after year – if they wish to win their customer’s loyalty,grow the relationship, and continue to earntheir business.”

Kaiser Mulla-FerozeCMO

Totango

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Quick Start Customer Success Builder

MARKETING

SALES

CUSTOMER

PRODUCT

Customers should always feel like they’re increasingly capable of using your product to solve their issues. If they feel this way, then they will be loyal to your brand.

Tear down the wall between Product and the customer. Provide customers easy access to the technical knowledge of the Product team. And use analytics to provide feedback about the user’s experience with the product.

Focus on more than ‘likes’ with marketing efforts that create value for customers through content marketing.

Put your customers on the path to becoming product experts. Give control

over the sales cycle by giving customers the authoritative product and help content they need to make purchasing decisions.

SUPPORTCreate a proactive model of support

through self-service that helps customers become masters of your

product. Invest in a consistent support experience across all channels.

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ADVICEFROM THE EXPERTS

Customer Success is the new Marketing. There’s no longer any

glory in building your logo wall unless there’s an evangelist and

referral engine behind each one.

Bill CushardHead of Training at ServiceRocket

@billcush

Our customers don’t buy our products so much as they buy our approach to helping them achieve some outcome. It’s about them, not us.

Anthony KennadaVice President of Marketing at Gainsight

@akennada

Aaron RossAuthor / CRO Predictable Revenue, Inc.

@motoceo

Customer Success isn't about increasing satisfaction, but

growing revenue.

Customer Success is the ultimate measure of marketing effectiveness.

Anne JanzerWriter and Content Marketing Consultantat Cuesta Park Consulting

@AnneJanzer

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ADVICEFROM THE EXPERTS

To me, customer success starts before any conversation and ends long after. It begins with

positive branding and messaging, in order to get the customer to the door. Customer

engagement is motivating and educational, and transactions are easy and user-friendly.

Customer success ends with the customer returning to that experience again.

@liamgooding

Customer success is simply ensuring your customers are achieving the ROI they pay you for every month. Anyone who over-complicates it beyond that is probably a ‘Customer Success Consultant’!

Liam GoodingCEO & Co-Founder at Trakio

Jodi BeuderDirector of Marketing at Impact Learning

@IMPACT_Jodi

Jenny DempseyCustomer Service Manager at Phone.com

@jennysuedempsey

Customer success is an ongoing dance party that never gets

dull — it's exciting, passionate and full of new moves to

learn.

Customer success is all about serving your customers in a way that builds meaningful and lasting connections and leaves them awe-inspired.

Jeremy WatkinsDirector of Customer Service at Phone.com

@jtwatkin

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ADVICEFROM THE EXPERTS

An organization can facilitate customer success by providing

meaningful value in every customer interaction.

David MitzenmacherVice President of Customer Service at Kareo

@davemitz

Customer success means understanding what success means for your customer and then delivering on that vision.

David HoffeldCEO & Chief Sales Trainer at Hoffeld Group

@DavidHoffeld

Catherine BlackmoreChief Customer Officer at Bluenose Analytics, Inc.

@catherineblckmr

Customer Success is more than a role or a department. It is a mind-

set the entire organization needs to adopt in order to create raving

fans of your product or service and secure customers for life.

Customer Success is more than a department. It should be part of the DNA of your organization.

Chad HorenfeldtVice President of Customer Success at Influitive

@ChadTev

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ADVICEFROM THE EXPERTS

Solve for the customer.

@MikaelBlaisdell

The Mission of Customer Success is: We build more value faster for the customer’s company and our own, and we can prove it.

Mikael Blaisdell Director, Customer Success Assoc.

Michael RedbordVice President, Global Customer Support

and Technical Service at HubSpot@redbord

Greg MeyerCustomer Success Champion at Rival IQ

@grmeyer

Customer Success means connecting the customer to the information they need with the least amount of effort. It's not

equal for every customer and shouldn't be a one-size-fits-all kind of process. You

should measure every customer's journey with the same end goal: did they

become a customer and did they stay?

Customer Success is ensuring your customers achieve their Desired Outcome through their interactions with your company.

Lincoln MurphyGrowth Hacker at Sixteen Ventures

@lincolnmurphy

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ADVICEFROM THE EXPERTS

Customer success is customer service on steroids. It’s more than solving your customers’ problems.

It’s working with customers to ensure their success before they

need your help.

Tom KrackelerCEO & Co-Founder at Frontleaf

@tomkrackeler

Customer Success means understanding, enhancing, and aligning the value your customers attain through utilizing your product, and the value your business gains by keeping and growing those customers. Our job as Customer Success technologists and practitioners is to complete that circle so everyone wins.

Shep HykenCustomer Service Expert

& NY Times Bestselling Author@Hyken

Mike WittensteinManaging Principal at Storyminers

@mikewittenstein

Customer success means ‘putting customer value creation ahead of profit extraction in the

design of your business.’

Customer Success is about empowering your customers to achieve success as they define it. I believe training is the best way to help your customers achieve that.

Sarah BrownConsultant at ServiceRocket

@SEBMarketing

MindTouch transforms the product and help content yourcompany already produces into a customer engagementchannel. Create a mobile-ready, search engine optimized site for all your company’s content. Turn your buyers and customers into kick-ass product experts.For more information, visit www.MindTouch.com.

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