4 Proven Customer Success Strategies (+ Best Practices)

Want to improve customer experience? Start by having powerful Customer Success Strategies in place.

As a leader, you know your Customer Success Team's goals while having your own vision and goals, which could be:

• Maintaining (and improving) customer relationships

• Mentoring your Customer Success Managers

• Decreasing churn

And the list goes on and on...

The problem is - these goals are simply too general to be achieved.

I mean, do you know every single customer and their relationship with their CSM? Do you have a proper measurement for churn?

If not, you're not alone.

CS Leaders, Customer Success Managers, and even Leadership Teams sometimes struggle with setting achievable goals.

With 4 proven strategies below, you can:

• Define your Customer Success Goals

• Come up with practices and actions to achieve your goals

What is a Customer Success Strategy?

I've recently come across a quote that truly captures the meaning of strategy:

In his quote, Mark Zuckerberg teaches us that a strategy is a plan with long-term goals.

Put simply, a good strategy includes three elements:

1. Long-term goals = where you want to be?

2. Actions = how are you going to get there?

3. Resources = what do you need to get there?

Why do you need a Customer Success Strategy?

A CS Strategy guides you through the year and keeps you focused on the actions required to achieve your goals.

With a well-defined strategy, you will have everything you need to help your customers succeed.

I promise I'll write a blog post about creating the ultimate Customer Success Strategy,

but now, a promise must be kept.

4 Proven Customer Success Strategies for a Successful Year

#1: Empower your Customers

Did you know that poor onboarding is the third most important reason for churn (source)?

Over and over again, we hear customers asking for better onboarding and self-service resources.

Every year, so many reports show that customers will take their business elsewhere if companies don't properly show them how (and why) to use their service.

This year, be better than everyone else and empower your customers.

You can do so by giving them all the information and tools needed to:

1. Make a decision.

2. Achieve their desired outcomes with your product.

This is how you create an excellent customer experience and earn loyal customers.

3 easy ways to empower your customers:

1. Include videos in onboarding and help center.

2. Create a community where customers can ask questions and help one another.

3. Host live training webinars.

#2: Measure Your Metrics

Customer Success is about ensuring the success of your customers throughout their lifecycle.

You do that by creating strong relationships with them, releasing new features, fixing bugs, and so much more.

But if you don't measure key metrics, how do you know if your customers are successful?

CS metrics provide you with critical information on:

• How your customers are doing

• What is working well in your team and product

• What is not working well enough

3 metrics you NEED to measure:

1. Churn rate: the percentage of customers who canceled their subscriptions and no longer use your product.

2. Customer Health Score: a scoring system based on customers' likelihood to expand, renew, or churn.

3. Customer Lifetime Value: how much revenue you can expect from a single customer during their lifecycle.
   

#3: Personalize the Experience

According to Gladly's 2022 Customer Expectations Report, 72% of customers are willing to spend more money with a brand that provides a great experience.

Long story short -

Customers want to be seen and treated as human beings.

If you want loyal customers,

You must treat them as individuals instead of segments or numbers.

Here are 3 things you can do today to personalize the experience at scale:

1. Use the information they provided whenever possible. More specifically, ALWAYS use their first name when talking to them.
   

2. If you offer a chatbot, make sure that the transition from the bot to a real person is easy and fast.
   

3. When talking to customers, be aware of their previous interactions with your company and ALWAYS remain friendly.

#4: Create a Customer-Centric Culture

The three strategies above are actually components of the Customer-Centric approach,

which gives us, Customer Success Professionals, the right to start CS Teams and ask for budgets.

Customer-Centric companies put their customers at the very core of their business strategy

so that decisions are made with the customers in mind.

It forces us to

1. Continuously improve the customer experience at every stage of the Customer Journey.
   

2. Prioritize our customers and their desired outcomes.
   

3. Always revisit our strategies and processes based on our customers' health scores.

Creating a customer-Centric culture across the entire company is no easy task,

it involves office politics, buy-in from your Leadership Team,

and lots of patience.

Here are my top 3 Customer-Centric practices:

1. Reserve one empty chair for the customer in every meeting to help you keep your customers in mind during every single discussion.
   

2. Collect and implement customer feedback.
   

3. Make sure your Customer Success Team is proactive through phone calls, emails, or any other communication method.
   

Wrapping up

Now that you know my top 4 Customer Success Strategies, let's review the basics so you're fully equipped to ensure customer success:

• If you want to succeed, you need to know where you want to be, how you're going to get there, and the necessary resources.
  

• Empower your customers by providing them with everything they need to be successful.
  

• Ensure Customer Success by measuring key metrics.
  

• Put your customers at the very core of your company and CS Team.

If you found these strategies helpful, please share this post to help others in the Customer Success Community.