What Is Customer Success? Concept, Process, Model and Examples

What is customer success and how can you measure it is an important question in today’s scenario. Every company is trying to find the right formula through which they can achieve 100% results.

Customer success happens when your customer achieves his desired outcome or aspirations directly through products and services or indirectly via interactions with your organization.

Remember the before and after matters a lot and hence it is important that a company pays special onus on how it deals with its customers. Customer success is not only about the product but the experience that a customer has at your store at each stage of the purchasing process.

Adopt a basic strategy to achieve customer success that includes process automation, the vision, the right people and careful planning.

In order to succeed in this competitive market, you need to appoint a team that will be responsible for achieving customer success. Make sure that all your employees have the necessary mindset, enthusiasm, and drive to engage with customers in an optimistic manner.

Make your customer success team a part of your culture so that they can encourage business growth and expansion through continued business. This is possible when your satisfied customers encourage their near and dear ones to visit your place through word-of-mouth publicity.

Concept of customer success

Customer success is focused on customer-centric actions and operations. It is basically an approach that establishes proactive programs, operations, and processes so that the customers have the best possible experience at a store.

Customer success is a service program that is initiated by companies so that they can utilize viable opportunities by taking care of the customers, creating long-lasting impressions, and making their experience count. This lays the groundwork for a successful association that converts into customer loyalty.

Once you have customer success in your grasp you can maintain and gradually increase your customer base by implementing related strategies like giving discounts, vouchers, or free gifts.  It will become harder for your competitors to shift their loyalty.

Customer success is needed to develop a strategic connection with customers. An employee must gauge from the queries put forward by a customer what are his expectations from you. Several organizations have a special team in place that is dedicated to customer success but in most cases, it becomes the vision of the company and is included in the job description of every employee.

It is better if the top-brass communicate their desires in clear and precise terms so that everyone understands the purpose and works towards achieving it. Every point where an interaction takes place both directly and indirectly with your brand is an opportunity to create customer success.

Examples of customer success

The customer success concept needs to be adopted on a large scale to understand its actual worth in today’s market conditions. Yes, times are changing and you cannot rely fully on customer loyalty because of high competition but remember the basic nature of human beings remains the same.

A customer success team helps the company to understand its customer in a better way so that they can take measures to improve their experience. It has its focus on customers and how they can succeed in fulfilling their desires instead of the wants of a business entity. There is simply a shift in mindset and now the center position is occupied by the customer instead of the brand.

Customer success helps to actually reap greater rewards in the long-term. The customer success team focuses on ensuring a better customer experience by understanding the basic concept of how and why.

My father was asked by his doctor to eat food items that were cooked in light oil. I went to buy the required oil from a supermarket that is located near my home.  I was directed to the counter by an employee but after reaching there I realized that it had as many as nine to ten varieties of oil that were considered light and healthy.

I was very confused but to my relief, an employee arrived and gave me the necessary information about each one so that I could make a viable decision. When a brand is proactive and can easily offer necessary information it helps to boost customer success because I surely was impressed by the employee’s knowledge. He made me a permanent customer of his company at that point-in-time.

Advantages of customer success

Customer success is an important aspect for any business entity as it lays the basic set-up for a long-lasting and fruitful association of a customer with the brand. There are several advantages associated with customer success.

1) Customer success leads to renewals

It is a fact of life that customers are fickle and they will be associated with your brand if they find it worthwhile. The first thing that an individual who has entered your store looks for is your services and then the products.

How you treat them matters a great deal as their subconscious mind will not let them visit again if they have had a bad experience and are not satisfied with the employee’s interactions. An important advantage of a good and trained customer success team is that they will encourage customer renewals through their efforts and interactions.

Spend more time and resources in retaining older clients than finding new ones. Stay connected with them and ensure that they are having a good and memorable experience at your door. Remember the customer appreciates your warmth and trust and will repay it by visiting your store repeatedly.

2) Customer success leads to the acquisition

Brands implement marketing strategies for successful customer acquisition. Remember existing customers are more valuable than initial ones hence never neglect them at any cost.  According to surveys, more than 70% of the revenues of business entities come from these repeated customers.

An important advantage of a good customer success team is that they will make additional efforts for increasing customer satisfaction so that it can result in customer success at your outlet.

3) Customer success leads to a decrease in overall pricing

Setting up teams and implementing successful strategies costs money. It is less costly to retain existing customers than to lure in new ones. The additional benefit of loyal customers is that they act as promotional agents of your company by publicizing your goods and services through mouth publicity.

Customer success results in a decrease in overall costs so that you are on the right side of the fence.

4) Customer success leads to growth in profitability

An important advantage of customer success is that it results in an increase in profitability. Customer success and revenues are interlinked because the first is the reason for the second. When you are able to achieve customer success through your products, services, and interactions you automatically increase your sales figures and this will lead to an increase in revenue figures.

This happens because of the repeated customers who also bring a group of new customers with them via word-of-mouth publicity.

5) Customer success leads to brand promotion

An important advantage of customer success is that it leads to brand promotion. Human beings are talkers by nature and it becomes imperative for them to share their experiences with their near and dear ones.

When a customer is happy he will automatically become one of your most vocal advertising tools. His testimony will be considered a full-proof sanction to visit a store. Make sure that you have been able to keep them happy because it will boost your brand image amongst consumers.

Here is a video by Marketing91 on Customer Success.

Disadvantages of customer success management

Customer success is a relative term with restrictions. Better understand the concept clearly before making a decision that can affect the company adversely.

1) Bound by limitations

Customer success is no doubt an important part of a company but it also has limitations of its own. You can either pay full attention to the company or its customers because it is not possible to think about the welfare of both together.

When you are true to the customer you will no doubt have to work to some extent against the company and vice-versa. This is a serious issue that needs to be sorted out before you start applying viable strategies on an everyday basis.

2) The consumer starts leaving if the customer support service isn’t fit

In the absence of any additional efforts on the part of a customer success team, the customers will not feel welcome at the place. An important disadvantage of not having customer success is that it will nudge the customers towards the exit point even if they have not bought any product or service.

Everyone likes personal attention as well as a bit of warmth during interactions. In its absence, the customers will feel as if they are not being listened to. This will force them to find better alternatives and this will give your rivals an opportunity to lure them away from your brand.

3) The difference in opinions and goals when there’s no customer success

The sales department is interested in high sales figures and revenues in profitability. Each department works towards achieving their personal targets. Customer success is a department that thinks first about the customer and then about the company.

An important disadvantage of being true to your department can lead to a difference in opinion and goals within the company.

How to achieve success strategy through customer success?

Continuous engagement with customers via positive interactions and nurturing the relationship is the reason for customer success. The primary function of a customer success team should be on ensuring that the customer realizes the worth of the product and services your company is offering through your journey in the outlet. It starts when you enter the store and are greeted with warmth and directed to an appropriate counter.

The subsequent interactions and dealings should take place in a favorable atmosphere so that the customers can relax and enjoy the experience. A good customer service team is always on the look-out for offering help if needed.

The role of a customer service team is very important. Remember it is the impression that matters wholeheartedly. It is imperative for customer success that the customers have a good first impression at your place.

They must be confident of the fact that if any issues occur the brand is there to help them by sorting it out in an amicable manner. The core thought behind looking after a customer is understanding their needs and giving the best possible services so that it can lead to customer retention.

If your company is looking for growth it should put its onus on perspective and strategies so that it can undertake feasible initiatives for customer success. Bring your teams together and direct them towards this path if you are really interested in making a positive mark on the customer mindset.

Yes, we have seen strategic changes taking place but the key remains the same and that includes treating it as a culture instead of a department.