Table of Contents
Customer success teams play a critical role in helping businesses retain and grow their customer base, and setting goals and making resolutions can help them succeed in this role.
New Year's resolutions can be useful for customer success teams to reflect on their past year and identify areas for improvement or new strategies to try. By setting specific, achievable goals, customer success teams can stay motivated and focused throughout the year, leading to better outcomes for the business and its customers.
Top 14 New Year's Resolutions for Customer Success Teams
It's no wonder the new year is the time to set personal goals. If you run your own business, now is a good time to start researching the business goals you want to achieve. Directing your efforts in this direction will help you identify the business value you can achieve.
1. I love my customers
The Great Slowdown of 2020 allowed many companies to stop and reflect on everything that worked and didn't work in their business. Many have taken the time to redirect their time and attention to their current clients, nurture those relationships, and learn more about what makes them happy and successful. It's easy to quickly revert to the old "new sales are king" mentality. Especially when growth stagnated in 2020. But CS executives know that sales are wasted when new customers come in, and old customers leave too quickly. Commitment to a 2021 CS that emphasizes customer love will go a long way.
2. I am not overwhelmed
How do you eat an elephant, as the old saying goes? When working on a CS strategy, it's a big, daunting task, and it's easy to fall into an all-or-nothing approach. There is a lot of work to do, especially if you are in the early stages of the customer success maturity model. Things get rushed and overwhelming. What should I prioritize? Which metric is most important? Where to start
Fortunately, the answer is simple. Start somewhere. Just get started. Don't let indecision paralyze you, and do nothing. If you still need to communicate proactively with your customers, find ways to take that action, even if it's a small step.
Overwhelmingly, we found that a little CS activity was better than no CS activity. Small changes can make a big difference. Adopting strategies such as the minimum viable product (MVP) approach or guiding your team through the vision-to-measure exercise to break down the work ahead into digestible chunks. can be divided into It can handle consumption data collection, personalization of each contact, and automation (to name a few examples from CS Toolbox).
Bonus points for this achievement New Year's Resolution - Anything you do will definitely succeed.
3. Imagine the Endgame
When you're making big plans, sometimes you have to work backward from your end goal to arrive at the right strategy. For example, imagine the result if your goal is to monetize customer success by the end of 2024. Then work backward to find the steps you need to take to get there.
4. Make Digital Customer Success a Core Strategy
Like the tool stack, Digital Customer Success (aka automation, tech touch, or whatever term you choose) is a requirement for scaling. Make sure your CS skills improve significantly as a focus for 2021.
With Digital CS, you can scale your organization quickly and efficiently by offloading the workload of your CSMs and increasing the number of accounts each CSM can manage. It increases the number of possible touchpoints with each customer and provides actionable data intelligence that can be used to analyze trends and improve overall business decisions.
5. Generate Revenue
More and more customer success organizations are including revenue targets in their mandate. If you haven't already, aligning your CS goals with your company's strategic growth makes for a great New Year's resolution for customer success in 2021. This is a great way to demonstrate the tangible value of CS and the business as a whole to company executives. influence decisions.
There are many ways to integrate revenue targets into the CSM role, but they don't necessarily require direct monetization. Familiarize yourself with all the options available and choose the best option for your organization.
6. Remember, customer success is not support
That's a big part of the job! But all too often, CSMs are inundated with customer inquiries and problems and get caught up in reactionary thinking. In 2024, break this self-destructive barrier by deciding to retire support and elevate the CSM role to a proactive, revenue-generating machine.
7. Focus on the Customer Journey
Mapping the customer journey is not easy. Customers are unique and have multiple funnels and paths. Focusing on different use cases, personas, and customer segments is key. Defining expectations helps customer success managers achieve desired outcomes for each customer. These unique customer journeys across different touchpoints make it easy for customer success managers to follow up.
8. Centralize Data
Customer Success Managers need to centralize data to provide the best customer experience. It is critical to keep your customer information up-to-date and know what your customers are getting in terms of content and issues they are experiencing. Finding out how they first became our customers, getting started, testing solutions, etc., will help inform later. Improve
Rethinking customer success metrics can help drive change. Understand metrics that help your business in predicting customer behavior
Systems like Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) help businesses track renewals, churn rates, and more. If some standard models don't work for you, you'll have to try something new. There are many new and innovative ways to acquire CS and CX data.
9. Monitor Customer Behavior
Another new aspect of your New Year's resolutions for 2024 is to monitor customer behavior. Check-ins and surveys are great ways to monitor customer health and satisfaction. Keeping customer experience metrics in mind, you need to monitor customer behavior. A complete dashboard of customer data makes it easier to improve customer success stories. Knowing how the customer thinks makes it easier to act in accordance with the customer's personality.
10. Monitor and Take Feedback Seriously
Collect feedback from your customers through surveys or direct feedback. This allows us to know your health status. Knowing what your customers think about your product makes it easier to implement tools that improve your company's reputation. As mentioned earlier, when a company is customer-centric, it becomes easier to gather good sentiment analysis. This helps improve the data aspect and get the right ammo for better targeting.
11. Creating Omnichannel Customer Experiences
Creating Omnichannel Customer Experiences is critical. Omnichannel customer journeys ensure all customer touchpoints are integrated. Separating sales, marketing, and customer support enables seamless operations. This creates a more connected customer experience.
12. Make it Easier to Contact
When a customer has a problem, they look for an answer quickly. Average response time varies by channel. The average response time should be short, but no longer delayed. Did you know that your customers aim to get a reply within six hours of their first message? Making it easy for your customers to stay in touch makes them feel more connected. Imagine having your complex questions answered instantly - it really helps.
13. QBR Optimization
One of the things Customer Success Managers need to do is QBR optimization. You need EBR or QBR to get answers to some important questions. Optimizing QBR helps you develop a list of metrics and design an action plan to reach your goals. A good workflow saves time and shows customers that you care about their purchases and goals.
14. Attend Community Events
Events and conferences are a great way to learn and network. Connect with subject matter experts, learn great tips and best practices, and grow together. The event will also help CSMs build their own personal brand and learn through future collaborations. In 2024, Customer Success Managers will be able to attend at least one of her events.
Bottom Line: Customer Success Must Be More Than The Solution
Customer success starts with everyone in your company. From the CEO to the employees, all team members should strive for one thing: long-term and sustainable growth. Ensuring that products deliver promised value and meet customer needs is critical to long-term growth. A good customer success manager tries to focus resources on the mission of customer success. By focusing on proactive product adoption, customers can understand the true value of your product.
This year, 2024, Customer Success Managers' New Year's resolutions should focus on protecting and securing renewals, improving communication processes, increasing upsells, improving customer advocacy, and improving customer health. Customer success should be viewed as a journey of a lifetime, not a one-night sale.
