CSM from the Trenches - 4 Ways to Bring Value to Customer Engagement
Four ways CSMs can bring value to every customer engagement — organize a customer plan, focus on their needs, prepare for questions, and review each meeting.
TL;DR
- Coming prepared with a plan or agenda for each customer engagement helps both parties make and keep commitments, stay focused, and achieve goals.
- Four practices bring value to every engagement: organize and summarize a customer plan, focus on customer needs, prepare to answer customer questions, and review and evaluate the engagement afterward.
- After each engagement, evaluating what went well — whether you focused on the customer's needs and secured a follow-up commitment — lets a CSM adjust and improve.
For those just joining my blog series CSM from the Trenches, welcome. In this series I discuss trends, best practices, and advice for frontline customer success managers. You can read my last post here.
Being on the CSM frontline allows me to directly influence the success of my clients. I love that; as my clients are successful, I’m successful. Each day I learn from the trenches what it takes to make clients happy and successful. Let’s move forward with this week's blog post!
**Be Prepared for Each Customer Engagement
**
When it comes to SaaS, keeping clients engaged and actively progressing through their “lifecycle” can sometimes be a challenge. For this reason, it’s important to come prepared for each engagement; successful customer management requires desire and action.
I’ve learned that as I prepare for appointments (whether they be on-site or via conference call), having a plan or agenda enables me to help others make and keep commitments, remain focused, achieve goals, and become successful. Even if it’s a last-minute plan, this helps heading into an engagement.
However, an agenda won’t tell you everything to say or how to say it. Instead, customer success managers are responsible to thoroughly understand their clients and coach them according to their needs; effective CSMs are always working to improve their knowledge and abilities.
4 Ways to Bring Value to Customer Engagement
In order to make each touch and engagement meaningful, I focus on these best practices:
1. Organize and Summarize a Customer Plan
To help me prepare for an effective engagement, I try to organize and summarize what I will talk about into some sort of agenda or plan. Keeping it focused is key, enhancing each conversation with client-specific questions and examples. Strive for simplicity; leverage experience.
2. Focus on Customer Needs
I always adjust my approach to meet the needs of each client. As I prepare for an engagement, I try to review and refine these adjustments.
3. Prepare to Answer Customer Questions
As a CSM, we hear many questions. I try to record these questions and follow-up with answers. If I don’t the know answer, I ask appropriate co-workers to point me in the right direction. I keep track of frequently-asked questions and their answers for future reference.
4. Review and Evaluate the Engagement
After every engagement, I evaluate how well it went. Did I bring value to the engagement, if so, how? Did I focus on their needs? Did I leave my client with some sort of commitment for follow-up? Did I properly address their questions? Did I use effective questions? Based on my performance, I adjust in order to improve.
These 4 things will help you bring more valuable as a customer success manager to each engagement. I look forward to sharing more best practices, advice, and learning from the CSM trenches.
If you missed my last “CSM from the Trenches” post, here it is:
5 Habits to Become a Proactive Customer Success Manager
Check out our eBooks below for more customer success best practices and advice:
**Customer Success as a Culture: Product Leaders Edition **
Customer Success as a Culture: Marketing Leaders Edition
Learn more about how ClientSuccess can help your company develop a strong customer success methodology and strategy with easy-to-use customer success software by requesting a 30-minute demo.
Frequently Asked Questions
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