5 Factors to Consider When Choosing Your Customer Success Management (CSM) Technology
Regardless of your industry, the rate of technology adoption and competition is increasing substantially year over year, which can make it difficult to keep your customer retention rates high. Yet, reducing churn while keeping customer health scores high is critical for long-term company growth.
While you can’t control your company’s pricing or product features which are often cited as two of the top reasons accounts churn to a competitor, you do have the ultimate control of the experience your customers receive when they are speaking with you or another member of your customer success team.
Choosing the right CSM technology to manage and grow your accounts can make all the difference. With the best CSM technology available, your team can easily and more effectively connect with customers. Consider the following five factors when choosing your company’s customer success management technology:
1. In-Depth and Actionable Customer Profiles
Your customer success team members can’t manage an account effectively or build engagement with users if they aren’t able to connect with those actually using the product or service. By combining user information, such as key contacts, users, and executive sponsors within organizations with information about how often your company has engaged, your CSMs will gain a clear picture of who is actually purchasing or subscribing.
Without key user stats, CSMs aren’t able to build effective relationships with those they are responsible for nurturing and growing. Instead, by having all the right information that extends beyond simple demographics right at their fingertips, they’ll be able to foster relationships with the right people at the right frequency.
2. Historical Data and Robust Reporting
Without reliable and up-to-date data, CSMs can’t make effective decisions – or timely ones. And in this hyper-competitive day and age, a single day can make all the difference between growing an account and losing it. Each team member should be able to provide reports on customer data including history, survey feedback, invoices, engagement on marketing campaigns, interactions with the customer, and so on.
This data is invaluable as it can and should be used to make decisions over the course of the customer’s relationship with your company. The more data you and your CSM team have to reference, the more opportunities your business can capitalize on down the road across every department – product enhancements, improved accounting efficiencies, better marketing campaigns, and so much more.
3. Customer Success Cycles
Your CSM technology should provide you and your team a complete view of the customer lifecycle. When your CSMs are able to define, manage, and measure your methodology for driving success throughout the lifecycle, they’re set up for success from the very beginning.
From initial onboarding all the way through the renewal, you should be able to identify where your customers are at in the customer journey at any given moment. Armed with this information, you and your CSMs can together identify the key points where customers must be engaged so that they’re constantly realizing value from your product or service offerings.
Additionally, your CSM technology should have built-in engagement guidelines specific to your company so that your CSMs – regardless of how seasoned or new they are to your team – succeed at keeping customers healthy (and happy). And any time a CSM engages with a customer, interactions should be automatically logged in the customer success technology so you’re able to see exactly what touchpoints consisted of – and how the customer responded.
4. Customer Success Scores
Just like a thermometer measures our temperature to help us gauge how healthy sick we are, the best CSM technology will provide you with a customer health score based on the information compiled from historical data.
This customer health score helps you and your team identify who is at-risk, which in turn can help you proactively reduce your customer churn. The best CSM software will allow you to have control of how these weighted scores are actually calculated.
ClientSuccess’ proprietary SuccessScore can be completely customized to metrics that matter the most to your business rather than out-of-the-box metrics that aren’t relevant.
5. Predictive Decision Tools
Predictive customer growth can only be determined with clean data. Your CSM technology software must effectively log interactions with your team, calculate customer payments received, keep track of various inquiries or help desk tickets from your services team, as well as other information that paints a clear picture of the customer’s journey. With the right level of data, you can better anticipate red flags and determine where clients are gained/lost during the cycle, which ultimately makes it easier to predict how many customers you will retain.
ClientSuccess was founded by individuals who know what it’s like to be a CSM on a small team. Our technology consistently delivers on our promise to help improve your customer success, retention, and growth. Don’t just take our word for it – see how our customers are solving real challenges in their business!
Our CSM technology was designed to be easy to use and fully customizable. Your CSM team can save valuable time and more effectively engage with your customers. If you have questions about these five factors to consider about your CSM technology or would like to see a demo, contact us today!