Customer Success is a term that you might hear ever so often, but what does it mean?
Is it just an alternative, cooler name for a regular customer support? Maybe in some cases, but the organizations that really gets it and that have embraced the Customer Success spirit have enabled themselves to truly improve their product and strengthen their customer relationships. As a result of this, the chances of your customers speaking highly of you and your products to others increase and thus, you’ll get new and hot leads!

Three birds with one stone, sounds pretty fantastic, doesn’t it? So how does it work? Keep reading to find out.

Customer Experience/Service vs. Customer Success

• Customer Experience/Service
  Customer Experience is about how you deliver your products, how the customer feels about it and their overall experience with you as a supplier. You tend to solely focus on being reactive and providing a good service on a short-term basis rather than being proactive and think long-term.
• Customer Success
  With Customer Success there is of course focus on the experience but also the after care and proactively trying to analyze your customers’ challenges even before they contact you. That is what Customer Success is all about – fulfilling the promise you made to the customer when they purchased and provide value of the product as they use it. Helping them understand the value will in turn increase revenue and reduce churn.
  Customer Success is also exceeding the customers expectations and create a wow factor.

Proactive vs. Reactive

Customer Service organizations is a reactive business strategy that centres around solving problems as they come in.
Customer Success oriented businesses use a proactive strategy which means identifying and addressing problems preventing the customers from reaching their goals.

Communication

It is vital to communicate with your customers on a regular basis. Touch base with them ever so often and ask them if they are happy with your product.
Is there a customer you haven’t heard from in a while? Pick up the phone or open up a new email. Check in with them, ask about their current needs and objectives and let them know you are there and that you care! In a lot of cases the customers who you haven’t heard from in a while are probably having trouble with seeing how your product can add value to their business and are unsure on how use it. Maybe there is a new CEO that doesn’t know how your product works and that you haven’t had the pleasure to meet yet? This is a perfect opportunity to be proactive and conduct a needs assesment.

TIP! A CRM is a great way to set automatic reminders to contact your customers regularly. Click here to find out if a CRM would suit your business!