Moments of Truth: Accountability is a Two-Way Street

Moments of Truth: Accountability is a Two-Way Street

Our Moments of Truth interview series provides bite-sized Customer Success advice designed to drive out-sized impact.

The Moments of Truth interview series is all about connecting you with Customer Success professionals with direct experience in the trenches so you can learn how others are approaching everything from strategy to the daily grind.

These short format, raw interviews were recorded so you can gain access to some of the best minds in the Customer Success industry. In this series, you’ll get their take on hot topics and key experiences that have shaped how they are thinking about Customer Success and its related disciplines.

In this Moment of Truth, Nimesh Mathur talks about how holding your customers accountable for their part in the partnership plays an important part in driving customer outcomes and a positive customer experience.

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Moments of Truth Session Transcript

NOTE: The following transcript has been edited for clarity and content where necessary to improve readability.

Andrew Marks: Hello everybody. This is Moments of Truth with Andrew Marks, the COO and Co-founder of SuccessHACKER. And today with me, I have Nimesh Mathur. Nimesh, thank you for making time for me.

Nimesh Mathur: Thank you, Andrew. Thank you so much for having me here.

Andrew Marks: So Nimesh, one of the things you wanted to talk about was why Customer Success is a two-way street from an accountability standpoint. Tell us more.

Nimesh Mathur: Well, I think if you look at how Customer Success has evolved in the last few years, everybody wants to say “Hey, we are not your vendors. We are your partners.” But the sad thing is, nobody behaves like a partner. And that’s a lot of times because you don’t treat your customers as partners. You don’t hold them accountable for things they were supposed to deliver in the relationship.

I’ll give you an example. I get to review a lot of success plans, which Customer Success Managers make with their customers. And if you look at those desired outcomes, and review the action items against each one of them, if you look at all objectives, everything ends in terms of ownership for the Customer Success team member, for the vendor. There’s nothing which customer owns at times. And that’s the relationship which is not very scalable, because if you’re working on a modern SaaS product, you will encounter cases where your product is transformational. This will require a culture change at your customer side, as well.

And while it looks all cool to say that, we care about your success more than you, it doesn’t work that way. If your customer is not invested in making themselves successful, there’s no way you can run on that one-way street and help them reach their desired outcome. And that is where I think, right from the success plan discussion, you should make sure that your customers partners with you in the entire journey. And that’s the first step you should take. And if you do not set those expectations at the beginning, you’ll have a tough time in making the engagements successful.

Andrew Marks: So what you’re saying is that Customer Success goes beyond just teaching them about the product. It becomes almost a change management exercise?

Nimesh Mathur: Definitely. And I heard a very interesting story, which one of my colleagues was telling me. Imagine a room or imagine call where you’re talking to your customers and your three, four of you from your side and there are multiple stakeholders from the customer’s side. If there’s a neutral person sitting in that room, in ideal scenario, the neutral person should not be able to tell who is from which party. And that’s where the real partnership angle is visible. Your conversations are like partners and not like a typical erstwhile of a vendor and a customer relationship.

Andrew Marks: Yeah, and achieving that true partnership, you establish this level of trust with your customer, the customer trusting that you’re doing everything that you can to make them successful. And conversely, you trusting your customer to do what they need to do to be successful as well.

Nimesh Mathur: Absolutely. And I think what happens is, the moment you ask questions to your customer, it’s suddenly put you more accountable because you are pushing them that there’s no way you can slip on your deliverables. So actually it works both ways. You can only hold your customer accountable if you are delivering on all what you have committed. So if you look at it, indirectly it helps you get better, because the only way you can demand that respect is when you are doing your job beyond the call of duty.

Originally published at https://successcoaching.co on November 4, 2020.