How to launch a Customer Success function
Get started today and avoid common mistakes
The earlier you launch your customer success initiative the better — it will save time, money and boost your growth engine alongside sales and marketing from the start. Investing resources to help your customers achieve their goals with your product is one of the best investment you can make. It will help you lay the groundwork for sustainable growth by getting a handle on churn, unlock expansion opportunities contributing directly to revenue generation, improve product development through quality customer feedback and even create new business opportunities via referrals or good word of mouth.
However, companies tend to launch customer success initiatives in reaction to a problem — most often high churn or low product usage. This is the opposite of the customer success DNA which is to be proactive. Faced with a hostile environment, it will require more resources, extra energy and a good deal of patience to reap the rewards of customer success. This is usually what the majority experience — myself included — and that’s ok. You can still build a great customer success team and capitalise on its benefits by getting a few things right from the start and staying focused on execution.
0 — Time is of the essence
You start enjoying the benefits of customer success only once you begin engaging with your customers. So while preparation is paramount to execute well and fast, it is best not to lose sight of the ultimate objective.
The longer you wait, the harder it will be to establish relationships and there will also be more processes to alter as customer success is intrinsically linked with sales, support, implementation but also product and tech.
1 — Set the direction : identifying your first goals
This will enable you to design a stronger game plan. It will guide your decisions as you go and avoid hindering your operations’ future growth. Determining how your customer success team will contribute to your growth will be different depending on your business and company structure — it could be to reduce churn, boost engagement, create brand ambassadors, etc.
Make sure your goals are aligned with your current customer base state— for instance, do not try to upsell at-risk customers. Seems to go without saying but I’ve seen it happen!
2 — Track your progress : choosing your KPIs
It is important to have 1–2 strong KPIs to evaluate if you are indeed heading where you intended — gross churn, net churn, product usage, referrals, etc. If you need help from other teams to track these metrics such as data or tech , make sure you negotiate resources in advance and set up a recurring reporting that is not time-consuming.
Here are a few resources on key churn metrics customer success teams tend to use.
3 — The power of segmentation : focusing on high value work
Determine where you can have the highest impact. Your segmentation will again differ according to your business, operations and product maturity — it could be to secure large customers to avoid impactful churns, cultivate growing account to unlock upsells or improve the activation of new accounts to protect their lifetime value.
Once you have identified your target segment, you will often realise the Pareto principle often applies and that 80% of your potential growth gains are scattered across 20% of your customers.
4 — Start with new customers : closing the loop
This may sound counter-intuitive but it is actually better to start engaging with new customers fitting your identified segment first. This way, you are establishing the proper relationships from the moment they sign on which will enable you to reap the benefits from them faster than with existing customers you have never really engaged with before.
This means that one of the first steps to launching a customer success team is to create a proper handout process from sales or implementation so that no new customer falls through the cracks.
5 — Attend to your existing customer base : cleaning up
If you have never spoken to your existing customers in your identified segment, it will be tedious at first to try to get them engaged but it still needs to be done. It will take time and you need to make sure you are bringing clear value from your first interaction otherwise they won’t maintain the relationship — for example, help them master a feature relevant to their usage.
To remain motivated during this phase, it helps to establish a few short-term goals such as moving customers from an old set-up to a higher value one or trying to salvage very high risk customers.
6 — Start the conversation: engaging with your customers
Strangely, many companies are afraid to interact with their customers — there is however no better way to kickoff the relationship. If possible go visit them, set up a video conference or pick up the phone — the most important here is to start the conversation. Emails are a good way to set up meetings, share information or answer simple requests but they are only a supplement.
It may seem resource-intensive to go visit customers but it can definitely be manageable if done smart. Just visiting your top customers once a year can have a huge positive impact on their lifetime value and your brand image.
7 — Consistency and value are king : building healthy relationships
First set up a frequency for your interactions and stick with it — you will realise soon enough if the recurrence needs to be adjusted and your customers will often be the ones to point it out. Being consistent is key to establish trust. Then always focus on providing value - whether it is by optimising their product usage or even act as an industry expert when needed.
These two principles are simple but decisive. If you are sporadic and not providing clear, actionable value, you might do more harm than good — customers will be reluctant to engage and worried you are wasting their time.
8 — An ambivalent skills set : finding the right people for the job
The ideal “launcher” is a key person in the organisation that knows the company and product well — founders, first employees, etc. It is essential they possess a strategic business vision while being very empathic, relationship-driven people. If they do not have previous customer success experience, it would be useful they get outside help to lay the groundwork.
As for your first CSMs, they might have different backgrounds (sales, service or even tech) depending on who your users are. There are however some non-negotiable qualities to look for: empathic, curious, solution-oriented and very rigorous.
9 — Over-communicate internally : setting the proper expectations
It is usually best to over-communicate on why there is a need for a customer success initiative, what it is and how other teams will also benefit from it. Since it is a relatively new function, some people will often not be aware of its role or scope so don’t be afraid to over-do it.
To conduct a smooth transition, try not to break what already works at this point — for instance if sales have been successfully handling renewals, don’t change it for now. Making sure your customer success initiative is embraced internally will be determinant in how successful it can be.
Each section could have its own dedicated article but this should give you a good snapshot of the different steps to launch your customer success function. It is tempting to set-up processes meant to last but try to build only for the next 3–6 months and experiment with things that don’t scale. At this stage, the most important is to start engaging with customers as soon as possible so start simple.
As you begin to see results and get a sense of what works for you, it will be time to think about how to structure and scale your operations. This will mean looking at tools to automate low value tasks, cover additional customer segments, deliver more value by creating a 360º customer view and customer journey or elaborate customer profiles to tailor your approach. That is the next phase and where the growth benefits can be the highest.
While building the customer success function, try to be ambitious but realistic — you won’t build a world-class customer success team in a week. You will learn through trial and error which is normal but the most important is to get started. It is also always better to start small and lay the proper foundations — adjusting quickly will be strategic especially in high speed environment such as startups.
I hope this helps — good luck and please feel free to reach out directly if you have any questions ;)
