Is Your Customer Success Team Reactive or Proactive?
If there is one thing that customer success managers have learned throughout the ups and downs of 2020, it’s that there is no such thing as being too prepared. The SaaS industry has gone through a ton of instability this year, and seasoned CSMs know that this time of change is far from over. The best way to stay on top of changing customer sentiments and shifting account goals is to put proactive strategies in place to better handle these kinds of situations.
Your team may be REACTIVE if…
It can be difficult to recognize internal processes as reactive, especially if they’re currently working for customers. There is a difference, however, between eking out a passable customer service strategy and actually building the foundation for a long-term, scalable customer success function.
Do any of the following situations sound familiar?
- Your team wasn’t prepared for a customer changing direction mid-term.
- Executive leadership, directors, and mid-management all have different insight into customer health and next steps.
- A customer churn has ‘come out of nowhere’ with little warning, leaving your team wondering what went wrong.
- Your team has been confused on a customer call due to misplaced notes or information.
- An account has been stagnant – not growing or expanding – for well beyond the normal amount of time.
If you said yes to any of the above points, your team is probably operating with reactive customer strategies.
Steps for a PROACTIVE customer success team
If your team is looking to turn things around from reactive to proactive, here are a few things to keep in mind:
1. Build a customer success journey map: Understanding the entire customer journey from onboarding to adoption to renewal to growth is key for proactive customer engagement. Visualizing every step of the customer relationship can help CSMs anticipate where to guide accounts as well as identify potential red flags in account management.
2. Anticipate customer needs: Staying on top of customer needs is one of the most important things a CSM needs to do, and proactive management is the only way this is possible. Tracking customer interactions, building dashboards and trend maps of requests, and measuring customer sentiment across different metrics can ensure that CSMs are on top of customer needs at every turn.
3. Track internal communications so nothing slips through the cracks: One of the roadblocks that customer success teams have on their way to becoming proactive is internal communication issues. Having the right processes and workflows in place makes it easy to stay on top of customer interactions and ensure nothing slips through the cracks.
In order to deliver amazing, proactive customer service to modern SaaS customers, CSMs need the right tools and resources in place to take action and put forward-thinking strategies in place. With a customer success management platform, CSMs can build a single source of truth of all customer information to make better decisions and facilitate account growth.
You can learn more about proactive customer success with these other resources: