1. Define Your Top Customer Success Goals before building out your plan.

High-level goals can include:

1. Reduce Client Churn!
2. Identify/Improve problem areas
3. Identify new selling opportunities
4. Actively engage customers by lifecycle and persona

4. Aligning Client Success Programs and Strategies
When you begin to plan all of your programs, make sure they include measurable targets aligned to achieving your departmental goals that are in turn pointing to business objectives.

For example, 4 programs are designed to achieve #1 Objective – Reduce Churn in our Q4 plan. These are in cohort #1 of your report. Other programs being implemented will help achieve Objectives #2, #3, and #4 and classified accoringly.

5. Add emotion to the Customer Journey.

Layering the emotional landscape with the “Customer Perspective” paints a clear picture of your customer’s mental state and enables your success engagement programs accurately address their needs.

To the right is a rudimentary Customer Journey overlaying emotion for each stage. Technology adoption was huge problem at one of my previous employers. One of the common concerns from users was ensuring our technology platform was easy to train on, so we developed self-paced online walk-through tutorials in addition to the standard “live” online meetings.

These short-form videos improved on-boarding customer satisfaction significantly and reduced the number of follow up training sessions necessary to properly onboard customers. It also reduced churn caused by onboarding missteps. And, we wouldn’t have known to create these videos if we didn’t integrate customer emotional feedback into our Customer Journey.  

7. Set up Client Success Performance Metrics
Client Success metrics can help determine how your team is performing weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually. Some common metrics to track include Net Promoter Score, Monthly Churn, Recurring Revenue, Onboarded, Trial Conversion, Renewals, Upsells, Product Utilization score, etc. Marketing automation includes configurable scoring models so you can track the right KPIs for your Small-Medium business. 

8. Marketing’s Editorial Calendar needs to fuel Client Success.

Hopefully, your SMB business has a marketing person or outsourcing with marketing firm that can focus on delivering high-touch client success experiences.

Customers are your number one asset, so you need to dedicate Marketing resources for nurturing and delivering on that brand promise.

The important point is to listen to what customers need, where they’re active and get into the conversation.

Here some examples of Client Success marketing programs:

— “Quick Tips” and “How To” Webinar Series

— Client newsletters – highlighting module of the month, Covid-19 impact, support staff, new customers, etc.

— Automated Customer Satisfaction Surveys; Spot Surveys

— Customer Advisory Board newsletter

— Virtual Events – User Academy

— Create an online Community (influencers, customers, partners, etc.)

— Advocacy and Rewards programs

— Social media live streaming

9. Activate Your Plan

Its time to consider a new Client Success approach, so you’ll need to develop a comprehensive project plan that identifies all stakeholders, new processes/workflows and the tech stack to support your grand initiative.

As mentioned before, Marketing Automation/CRM software can revolutionize the level of customer experience you can offer clients. The days of organizing all-hands blitz call campaigns should be replaced with continual digital engagement to keep in touch, educate and deliver more value at half the opportunity cost.