Rethinking Trust and Customer Success in a New Era
Strong relationships are at the heart of every organization. Whether it’s the close coordination between product, sales and marketing teams or the bond between customer-facing teams and customers, fostering trust leads to success.
Our customers’ success is our success. However, that success is contingent upon helping customers identify and achieve their goals, often with the help of unique insight.
Here are four things to keep in mind when building customer relationships and trust in a new era of customer success.
1. Happiness Isn’t Everything
A customer doesn’t want to be happy with your service, they want to succeed with your solution. Your most valuable asset isn’t your product, it’s your knowledge of your customer’s business. Understanding your customer means broadening their horizons and providing insights to problems they didn’t know existed.
This notion of ‘success’ centers on understanding it on your customer’s terms, rather than your own. Ditch the idea of ‘happiness’ for a truthful customer experience. Emphasize your capacity to truly understand them.
Challenge previous ideas, identify opportunities and strive to be an indispensable part of their growth as well as your own.
This notion of ‘truth’ is integral to how success should be measured. A customer ‘liking’ and potentially ‘recommending’ your product might sound positive, but it says nothing about the level of trust you build, or the tangible value you provide.
Avoid vanity metrics. Focus on measurable business results that emphasize the ROI, Cost of Inaction (COI), business value and the ‘return on expectations’ you are delivering.
2. Rectify Mistakes Quickly
Like any relationship, first impressions are absolutely vital. You want to delight your customer from the outset and validate their faith in your company. However, trust is also key to any lasting partnership and this is usually forged in an environment of transparency and open communication, which includes owning missteps and course-correcting swiftly.
This means clearly defining — and agreeing on — the outcomes from the very beginning. Frankness is critical. If your solution isn’t suitable for your customer’s current needs, this could mean recommending alternate suppliers or solutions. This boldness yields lasting relationships based on trust, as opposed to transactional ones based on a single sale.
Once on board, this environment of trust and transparency can be cemented through your response to any initial errors. One setback can actually be an opportunity to leap several steps forward.
Learn from the issue, take feedback from the customer and clearly communicate that their issue has been acknowledged, understood and addressed.
A great practice, based on the Starbucks LATTE Method, is a simple five-step process: listen and acknowledge the issue, tell them what you’re going to do, do it, thank them and explain why the issue surfaced in the first place.
Implementing a strong feedback loop of this nature is a wonderful way to support customers, ultimately providing growth for all parties.
3. Reconsider How Success is Measured
A customer succeeds with your product when they achieve their desired aims. However, the relationship itself should not initially be centered on measurable outcomes alone. Intangibles also can play an important role. Gut feelings and sensations.
Create an environment that amplifies the customer’s specific objectives, building a long-term bond based on trust and shared success. Whether it is via training programs, proactive support or tailored marketing, embed customer success into your entire organization, across all departments.
Driving the best possible results also means tracking the impact you’re having on customers. What metrics do you use to gauge ‘success’? Despite your best intentions and positive conversations, the proof is ultimately in the renewing and tangible growth.
A thriving relationship can also be a gateway to expanding your revenue via upsells, cross-sells, upgrades and referrals. Typically, customer teams own both the relationship and the partner organization’s growth potential. Are the proper mechanisms for identifying expansion and growth opportunities in place?
4. Customer Success is Evolving
Human relationships have always been at the heart of customer success and growth. However, the increasing impact of AI and market volatility have placed an emphasis on aggressive renewals rather than traditional relationship building.
With staff turnover in large companies increasing, surely it’s time to reconsider the importance placed on one central point of contact. Furthermore, if customer success is now being more closely aligned with sales, this is the perfect moment to hone your messaging and embrace collaboration.
Delivering true insight helps customers find their ideal solution by challenging them in ways they hadn’t previously considered. It requires intimate knowledge of a their business. This brand of expertise is invaluable and enables customer teams to deliver game-changing insights that build lasting trust and growth for organizations as opposed to specific individuals.
This deeper knowledge is further exemplified by sharing other customers’ success stories and use cases. Insights delivery supports relationship building, extending the importance of customer teams. It unifies an organization around a tailored approach to sales that always prioritizes the customer’s success.
Your customers’ success is your success. But separating yourself from your competitors means rethinking your approach to achieving that success and redefining what it means for your customer. Is your product having a transformative impact on your client’s organization? If not, why not?
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A relationship built on substantive goals, rather than superficial product features will always be a meaningful one. As automation and AI fight to minimize the importance of human interaction in an organization, this is the time for Customer Success to demonstrate its power. Collaborate. Unify your company around a shared approach to interacting with the customer. Replicate it. Challenge conventional wisdom and modify your strategy.
Your customer might dictate your ultimate success, but you define the initial terms. It’s not on them, it’s on you…
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