The Five Biggest Customer Success Challenges
As we discussed in How to Create a Better Customer Experience customer success is comprised of many touch points: Sales, marketing, on-boarding and training, and customer service. Companies are realizing that it is essential to have a unified team charged with managing valuable long-term customer relationships across all areas of the companies. We asked our own customers what are the most common pain points and challenges facing their teams.
Customer Success teams are being asked to look at companies holistically. They need to understand the customer, accurately assess their company’s product, identify customers’ most common pain points across all divisions, and enact improvements. This is a tall order!
Not surprising, the position of Customer Success Manager was the third most rapidly growing job in 2018 per LinkedIn. To be fair, its high growth rate primarily stems from the fact it started from a very low base — an increase of 1000 jobs year over year. However, we believe that this high growth rate will continue throughout the next several years. Customer Success Managers are in demand because companies need managers who have expertise to address challenges across many channels: sales, customer service, leadership, and relationship management.
Based on our research, we have found these to be the top 5 most common Customer Success (CS) pain points and challenges:
Speed and Accuracy of Information
Today’s customers expect instant access to information. Whether it’s product recommendations or just finding the right answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs), customers primarily turn to online resources. Companies are finding that conversations are the best way to address specific customers needs.
To ensure that customers are able to find information quickly and easily, companies need to be able to access customer data and purchase history. Companies that implement Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered platforms can help their CS teams resolve issues faster. At the same time. CS teams can tailor and personalize their customer experiences.
Listen to Your Customer Voice
“Companies don’t listen to me” is a common customer complaint. Not only do customers want to find answers immediately — they want their voices heard.
Customers want brands to listen to them with empathy and with the intent of acting on the information. A certain way to upset your customers is to force them through a long journey with many conversations or interactions just to find answers to common questions.
Customer Education
Companies often overlook Customer Education when they analyze their Customer User Journeys. In a recent installment of Bill Cushard’s podcast series, Helping Sells Radio, Cushard interviewed Dave Derington and Adam Avramescu of CELabs . They helped us understand how and why Customer Education is an often-overlooked pillar of Customer Success.
Customers have negative experiences with products because they simply don’t understand how to use a product to its fullest potential. We recommend creating a suite of easily accessed, bite sized Customer Education resources. Further, using AI to facilitate easy search and access to those educational assets is key to generate positive customer experiences, keep customers happy and ensure effective product use.
Ease of Connection
How easy is it to navigate your online resources and connect to your customer service team? Not long ago, customers were content to email a company or wait on the phone to resolve an issue. Customers now expect immediacy. They are looking for 24/7 availability to resources and assistance. Companies now experience abandoned carts and churn if customers cannot find the right answers immediately.
Respect
Unhappy clients not only want ease of connection when searching for solutions, they want an empathetic ear.
Further, they want courtesy and respect with every interaction. This is key to fostering long term contented customers. Did you know that 13% of dissatisfied customers will tell 15 or even more people that they are unhappy, according Esteban Kolsky? On the other hand, 72% of customers will share a positive experience with only 6 or more people. This is an amazing opportunity for companies and brands. Treat each customer with respect, create enjoyable experiences for your customer and you can create long-term brand advocates.
This can be difficult to achieve for rapidly growing companies who have Customer Success teams that are stretched too thin. CS teams that use AI to automate FAQs and provide 24/7 access via an intelligent assistant frees them to handle more complicated customer issues.
How can a company overcome these five customer success pain points?
Today’s customers expect the best at every touchpoint with your business. As a small or growing company it can be a challenge keeping up with customer inquiries, requests, and conversations. Customer Success team resources are often stretched. The swivl team believes that the solution is a combination of human plus machine intelligence.
Our AI-powered platform can help automate and scale Customer Success teams, yet bring a Human-in-the-Loop when needed.
We invite you to meet Hoover, our Intelligent Assistant and learn how swivl can help you implement AI into your Customer Success solution, help the team scale and better address your company’s pain points and challenges.
Scale your Customer Success with Artificial Intelligence.
Originally published at tryswivl.com on November 21, 2018.
