Customer support teams have been in existence since IBM released their first desktop computers. In an economy where service has become the driver of growth, we try to evaluate where customer success stands when compared to customer support? And why we should move towards making the switch to customer success?

1. Make
the
Switch
Customer
Support
Customer
Success

2. Customer Success Vs. Customer Support
Customer Success Customer Service
Proactive Reactive
Customer Goal Achievement Issue/Contact Resolution
Driving Customer Value from Product Driving Customer Satisfaction
Long-term Perspective Short-term Perspective
Revenue Generating Cost Centre
Cross-team Effort between Sales, Support,
Service and Product
Owned by a single function

3. Customer Success Formula
A : Apologize Be sincere, no half baked or fake apologies.
R : Review Go over the complaint with the customer, so that they
can explain what’s gone wrong from their perspective.
F : Fix Fix the issue within 20 minutes or explain the progress
made after 20 minutes, to the customer
F : Follow Up Once the problem is resolved, follow-up to show
continued concern and appreciation.
D : Document Document the problem and the steps to troubleshoot
in detail to allow you to permanently fix the defect.

4. Customer Success at any organisation is driven by 3
driving mottos
The underlying principle is simple:
“Empowerment is the key!”

5. Everyone Owns the Customer, All the Time
What does it mean?
 Customer Success is a holistic process and the roles of every team member here is highly
fluid
 While every team member has a primary focus - responding to support tickets, on-boarding
customers, securing renewals etc. the lines between these roles are blurred
How to execute?
 Whenever a certain “trigger” is tripped, all team members should have the knowledge of it
 Some are directly enlisted with responsibilities to course correct
 A main owner (SPOC) is entitled to streamline communication with the customer

6. Everyone Owns the Knowledge
What does it mean?
 Switch to self-service resources: comprehensive knowledge base, interactive ideas forum,
recorded training library etc.
 Focus on providing seamless access to these resources and on continuously creating and
improving them.
How to execute: “3-R Approach”
 Resource: Investigate into what the users are searching for, and the results of those searches
 Research: Next check what they are interacting with, and whether or not they opened a
support ticket
 Repair: Searches where a support ticket is opened, fix the flow by either adding, updating or
restructuring resources.

7. Everyone Owns the Metrics
What does it mean?
 All team member are directly responsible for the customer success metrics, not just the ones
apparently responsible by virtue of their primary roles.
 Customer Success Metrics: MRR/Customer Churn, Ticket Deflection rate, NPS Score etc..
[More Here..]
How to execute?
 Record all metrics on a real-time dashboard, along with targets and trends for weekly
reporting
 Feedback loop: How operational changes are affecting the KPIs and how it can be improved
upon

8. Steps to transition:
“Customer Support Customer Success”
The Many Hats of Customer Success

9. Hat #1: Good ol’ Customer Support
 Handle Support tickets with utmost importance
 The onus should be on minimizing the First Response Time (Ideally it should be 20 minutes)
 Try not to bounce a support ticket between departments
 Ticket statuses should be marked diligently:
 Open: These tickets that needs to be answered. While the case is being
handled, the status should be “Open”
 Closed: When replying with a solution, mark the support ticket as “Closed”
 Pending: Wherever you need to wait for a reply from the customer, use the
“Pending” status
 Make your answers simple and clearly outline what needs to be done next
 Handle the old cases first

10. Hat #2: Invest in great documentation
 Carefully curate customer queries to build a Self-Help section, containing Help
Articles.
 In the future, whenever customers write-in questions, you can send them the
appropriate help article, which saves you time and shows the customer where to find
help next time.
 In the future customers will find answers on their own, thereby saving you time
 Gives you an opportunity to improve your SEO by including new long tailed
keywords.

11. Hat #3: Conversion Optimisation to narrow the
funnel
 Identify the right folks who will drive the maximum value from your product and onboard them
as customers
 Steps to ensure that you only onboard the right customers:
1 Offer a free trial
2 Add a Product Demo Video
3 Add a FAQ section on your website
 This will improve your churn rate and also keep your refunds mostly flat
 The right customer has the tendency to find their own way through, thus reducing support
overhead
 They offer valuable feedback for product improvement

12. Hat #4: Demos for proactive customer
education
 Investing 15 minutes on a demo during Onboarding, can save a lot of time down the
road
 Address the following during the demo:
 Answer common questions
 Show off the most popular features
 Show them where to seek help if they have questions
 This will create more independent customers
 Stats suggest folks attending a demo, have a higher probability of becoming a paying
customer

13. Hat #5: Automated User Onboarding
 Customers finding their way by themselves is good, but don’t expect everyone to do
that
 Set-up an educational email and in-app message series to educate and increase
engagement
 This will allow customers to discover your product and decide if it is a worthwhile
investment

14. Hat #6: QA & Product Development
 Constructive Criticism: Analyze Support Tickets, Help Centre’s Search History to
understand your customer’s pain points
 Start addressing the most common issues faced by the customer by either fixing the product
or improving on-boarding
 A good stat to measure this is: Most Common Issue
 This will help you to orient your product team on how to prioritise their project
 Also will help you to find out what’s eating up your support team’s time
% of interactions with [tag] =
Number of interactions with [tag]
Total Number of interactions

15. Customer Success is more than delivering
service or support.
It is the
Power to delight your customers.