I wanted to share two recent experiences that I have had with Customer Success teams and what this has highlighted to me about customer success and getting it right in scaling businesses.
I am sure you have guessed by now that one of these is positive and the other has room for improvement.
The role of Customer Success is becoming more and more important in organisations and although it started in SaaS businesses, we are seeing the role begin to take hold across all industries.
HubSpot describe Customer Success as
‘the process of anticipating customer challenges or questions and proactively providing solutions and answers to those issues prior to them arising. Customer success helps you boost customer happiness and retention, increasing your revenue and customer loyalty.’
So, let’s start with the not so great experience which was through an Airbnb management agent who was looking after my property for a four-month period. All started well talking to the sales team who sold me on the amazing service and technology I would have at my fingertips to track my guests and income as I travelled.
I am then passed to Customer Success and things begin to go wrong. I can’t access my dashboard, cleaners show up before I’ve even left the property, emails are not responded to. I notice a 4-star rating on my property and a negative comment (no action from the managing agent) and no satisfactory outcome when I chase it with them.
On my return I find items broken, missing and the property still presented for guests even though the Head of Customer Success had personally emailed me and said all outgoing checks had been completed and the property was ready for handover back to me.
A detailed and heated 30-minute call with said Head of and I’m informed “it’s a complex business with lots of stakeholders to manage – cleaners, guests, hosts so things occasionally go wrong” …aren’t all businesses complex? And of course, they were taking 20% of my income for this service.
Now compare that to the experience I have just had with the team at Ometrics whilst building a chatbot for my website.
The Ochatbot is a build it yourself chatbot that can be used on pages of your website to engage with prospects and customers. The first thing you’ll note is I said, ‘build it yourself’ and it does exactly what the product says.
Within 30 minutes I had built a chatbot for my website – excellent. However, for some reason (the way I had built my website) I could not get it operating and so I emailed the Ometrics team and within hours they had responded, a few emails back and forth and they got my chatbot working on the website.
A few weeks later John at Ometrics messaged me to see how things were going and just 2 weeks ago I had a message from John as follows….
“I added some “back” buttons to your intents to make sure users don’t get stuck at dead ends and could make it back to the default questions easily. I also added your email to the alert tab to ensure you get the leads coming in through the bot when users fill out your lead form/contact form. Just wanted to help polish your bot a bit and hopefully get more interactions so your users give you some insights into what they want!”
How good is that? Oh, and did I forget to say that I pay nothing for my chatbot which is free to individual users through Ometrics!!
So, what are my learnings of customer success in these organisations?
1. Have the right systems in place
However complex your business, if you leverage the right technology, train your staff well and have clear documented processes you can create an amazing customer experience.
2. Highlight the functionality of your product
Make sure your customers get the most from your product. Onboard them well and be sure to review how they are using your products and services to ensure they are getting value.
3. Proactive regular engagement
Touching base with your customer on a regular basis keeps channels open, brings to light any issues that you can resolve and keeps you front of mind – ensure that these interactions add value.
Now I have not seen the inner workings of these organisations but from the perspective of a customer I’ve had two very different experiences. Both are scaling organisations and one appears to be struggling with their growth whilst the other is embracing it and has the right systems, frameworks and processes in place to create an amazing customer experience.
Most worryingly, one is taking 20% of my income in fees, the other as a single user of their product is doing all of this for FREE and has turned me into an advocate.
Think back again to HubSpot’s definition of Customer Success and I am sure you would agree that Ometrics have nailed it.
‘the process of anticipating customer challenges or questions and proactively providing solutions and answers to those issues prior to them arising. Customer success helps you boost customer happiness and retention, increasing your revenue and customer loyalty.’
If you want to know more about Ometrics and their chatbot Ochatbot – click here – No affiliation – just their amazing service has turned me into an advocate.
Want to find out more about how I help frontline teams in sales and customer success then you can find out more here.
Chris Ellis is the founder of Ellivate Consulting who focus on providing consulting, training and coaching support in the field of sales operations and enablement for SME’s.
Chris has over 20 year’s senior executive experience in the UK, Australia & USA, within financial services and fast-growing technology businesses.
