The Customer Success Plan

Create value with your customer by planning for success

There are very few things we do as a Customer Success Manager as important as the customer success plan, sometimes referred to as the Account Sucess Plan.

I prefer the former because isn’t it ironic that we are “customer success managers” and the ‘customer success’ plan is the most pivotal part of what we do. I want to talk about this plan and lay out several ways in which it truly is a make or break moment for the longevity of your customers.

What Is A Customer Success Plan

A customer success plan is your roadmap, or guide, to where your customer is at today, where they what to be, when they want to be there, and how you will help them get there.

Note that in the absence of a plan, chaos can, and will, take over. When we are so busy fighting fires, then we view a plan as somewhat of a burden. I would argue that if all we are doing is fighting fires, there’s a bigger issue. Instead, reframe this plan as your next great adventure with the customer. It’s your chance to shine.

All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination — Earl Nightingale

The entire goal of customer success is rooted in the word ‘success’. We are trying to help our customers achieve their version of success. When we do that, we deliver value. When we deliver value, we keep them as a customer, reduce churn, and hopefully turn them into advocates as well as increase their use of our products/services.

It’s super cool to see this in action. It’s even better to see your customers’ business benefit. You will feel like a hero.

A few things about the customer success plan. They are typically done during onboarding and I would argue they need to be started immedately. It needs to be one of the first things that gets started as soon as you learn about a new customer.

Learn > Plan > Success

And here are important things to know about customer success plans:

1. They enable a proactive approach
2. They are most powerful when shared with the customer
3. They are a living document and should alwasy be up to date

The Customer Success Plan Framework

1. The company highlights — this is an overview of the company, their environment. What they do, what vertical they are in, what should everyone know? It’s just an overview to get people up to speed.
2. Objectives — It’s critical to nail this. What are we working towards with the customer? How do we know when we have reached it? When do we want to achieve it? What major pains are we resolving? What is value one?
3. Key Challenges — What drove the customer to try your product/service? What happens if they don’t use it? What are any potential constraints or challenges we have ot mitigate or overcome?
4. Key Benefits — What are the key benefits the customer is expecting? What pains are we solving? Are any of these measurable?
5. Milestones, Actions & Dates — What actions will be needed to achieve value one and/or the next success milestone? What needs to be done and by whom?
6. Success Criteria — At a high level, explain what the company defines as success; this is a longer term view.
7. Success Measures — How do we quantify success? What meausres can capture this? These should be able to be mapped back to the key benefits and be directly relatable to the success criteria established.

The Framework IRL (In Real Life)

Here is a sample layout and customer success plan.

Customer Success Plan for Acme Supply, Inc.

This is a fairly simple plan. But the fact that this plan exists, and is presumably shared with the customer, will provide the right footing as you prepare to embark on a new relationship with this customer.

The Timeline Of The Customer Success Plan

Before this plan can be created, we need to know how the timeline. Though nothing is perfect in the real world, here is how you could “try” to achieve this:

1. Learn — try to learn from Sales everything you can about the customer. What were they sold, why were they sold it, what is this customer expecting? Hopefully this is in the CRM, however most often you’ll need to establish a really good and trusted working relationship with Sales to obtain this.
2. Set up a discovery session — Do this as quick as you can. Realize that you want to approach this in a consultative way and use a lot of active listening. This is your first opportunity to provide a lot of value and build a trusting relationship with the customer. You want to seek to better understand what the customer is seeking, what their pain points are, and when they expect to achieve it. Ask what success looks like to them.
3. Assessment — With the information we got from sales and the customer, take some time to assess everything and evaluate it to determine the likelihood of a successful outcome. Note that this is the time we need to be transparent. If we see any flags, this is not the time to hide that from anyone.
4. Presuming we feel that the customers’ goals are achievable, we establish milestones and begin to build our plan.
5. Success Criteria & Measures — Here is where we really dive deep. We want to identify the customer’s definition and measure of success.
6. Build the framework
7. Share the framework — After we have the framework filled in and built, then we want to share it with the customer. This is another moment of truth where we can build value, trust, and deepen our relationship.
8. Update — The framework is meant to be updated. When things change, always go back and update the framework so others that access it know exactly where things are.

The road from here should be a lot less bumpy. No customer success plan can ever be perfect and the fact that we take the time to do it and make it a priority means we have that much more chance to create value and hopefully a deepening (advocacy, expansion) relationship.