World has changed. Organizations have more information about us than we ever imagined they would and that information allows them to provide highly customized experiences.
The one thing that is consistent and central to success in customer success is your corp values.
Here's how making customer success a part of your company's DNA from Okta's Chief Customer Officer, Krista Anderson-Copperman.
7. Make it Real with a Playbook
Deploy
Design the architecture.
Integrate applications.
Go live.
Adopt
Use their subscriptions.
Success planning.
Strategic consultation.
Learn
Ramp & certify their teams.
Continuous product education.
Grow
Expand their architecture.
Grow business value.
Introduce yourself
The leader in Gartner
Companies like Albertsons and Jetblue use Okta to secure their customer experiences and companies like Adobe, McKeeson, Splunk and Hitachi
Been in CS/SAAS my whole career so well versed and passionate about this topic
Transition: Before we get into the how, we need to talk about why CS is so critical to the livelihood of your business.
World has changed. Organizations have more information about us than we ever imagined they would and that information allows them to provide highly customized experiences.
Adoption of cloud, mobile and millions of apps = more choice + allows for access to information anywhere/anytime.
Enterprise software/buyers and consumers are bringing that expectation to work.
65% of buyers find a positive experience with a brand to be more influential than great advertising
And by 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator.
Transition: Nailing this experience is key to winning and keeping customers for the long term.
Examples:
Banking, transportation, shopping.
All of these things I expect to do on my phone whenever and however I want. And the quality of that experience determines my relationship with that brand
Example with bank. Couldn’t wire transfer alert about travel.
Choce with uber/lyft. Couple of clicks, you have changed and then shopping. Highly personalized, anywhere and just a few clicks.
Consumers expect technology to make every part of their experience tailored and easy.
Transition: And they are bringing that expectation to work with them everyday.
Expectation is personalized experiences and that is becoming a critical part of decision making process for consumers.
And the same is becoming true in the enterprise.
Rise of cloud and subscription = choice. Choice = evaluate every year.
Relationship and experience determine that choice.
They want to see innovation and regular updates, share feedback and partner with you. Investing in customer success is the way to make this real.
If relationship and customer expectations aren’t enough to convince you, the economics speak for themselves.
The Temkin Group…
Transition: Additionally, at some point the renewable revenue in a high growth organization will meet or exceed that of the new business targets so investing in customer success is investing in the future growth and health of your company.
I’ve led customer success teams and organizations at some of the largest enterprise software companies so I have learned a lot and am proud of the work I do.
The one thing that is consistent and central to success in customer success is your corp values. It starts here.
Transition: We have talked about why it is important to customers and buying behavior as well as why it is important to building a sound future proofed organization, so lets talk about the how…
CEO Sponsorship is a must:
The CEO should speak regularly and often about customer success as a part of your culture both internally and externally.
Everyone should know and understand why customer success is a core value to the company and what that means function by function - scalability exercise example.
Reporting structure. If not, spend time.
At Okta, one of our core values is “love our customers,”
Think of your customers as partners and treat them as such.
Two way street where products, services and solutions, the problem you are trying to solve both now and in the future is a constant dialogue.
Not a one time solution or discussion. Regular check ins and deep collaboration amongst a set of teams that are equipped to support customers at every stage of their journey.
When you approach CS this way, customers win and you win. More business and higher renewals. We see these results illustrated q/q at Okta. Customers who interact with Customer First in a meaningful way have higher renewal and higher upsell rates with us than customers that don’t.
The customer isn’t always right, especially as you mature.
Unlike the common belief that you learn at any retail or service job growing up, the customer is actually not always right. This is especially true as your company matures.
Telling customers what they want to hear or agreeing with them when you don’t actually agree is a recipe for disaster. It will always come back to bite you.
This applies to every function in your company. Customer success but also sales, sales engineering, product, etc. JB example
Prod/Eng and customer success relationships are critical to success.
50/50 reaction when I talk about this one. Some say ‘sales is your most critical’. When CS is a core value, you don’t get ‘bad deals’.
CS measured/perceived’ by how the organization responds when things go wrong.
Responding with urgency, transparency, and partnership, requires strong relationship with the teams building the product.
Transition: It’s a lot of work to nail these four item, takes multi years. Now that you have laid the ground work, whats next? How do you make it real?
POINT #3 Here’s how we think about customer success at Okta.
You need to make it real with a common vernacular and playbook that everyone at your company understands and uses in their interactions with customers.
At Okta, this is how we think about it and talk about it with prospects and customers.
Go through the wheel.
Transition:This will change as your customers change and as your company grows and I guarantee its not the best out there but the point is we have a very clear structure for talking about customer success at Okta and if you want to be a company known for its customer experience, you should too.