Many companies hire salespeople to generate revenue, but the truth of the matter is that salespeople only fulfill leads. They don’t drive the true growth of a business. A happy customer equals a loyal customer, which is why many Software as a Service (SaaS) companies have started to devote entire departments to customer success.
Businesses depend on customer loyalty in order to survive. More than just a support team, a customer success department’s primary objective is to keep customers happy. Nowadays, there should be three executive positions in a company: a head of sales, a head of marketing, and a head of customer success. All three roles should be equally important, but some companies have a hard time seeing customer success as a worthwhile investment.
There are many reasons why customer success is important. A customer’s relationship with a company begins with the very first contact, but every interaction following the first touch will also have an impact on the success of the customer’s experience. This means that every department should be responsible for a customer’s happiness together. For example, a customer-focused organization ensures a clear plan for client departmental handoffs, ensuring customers are fully cared for as they meet new teams and faces.
When every department is involved in maximizing customer satisfaction, every employee can work towards the same, connected goal. Key performance indicators (KPIs) should always be dependent on customer success, and all areas of a company should do their part to increase customer happiness. Sales teams and customer success managers (CSMs) can work together to follow leads and get new accounts started, marketing departments can work with customers to develop campaigns, and product teams can help build solutions whenever issues arise.
At Gild, for example, customer success teams handle renewals and upsells. They also show new customers the value of a product within a 90-day timeframe. The first 90 days are crucial to getting users onboarded, trained and liking a product -- three key factors that, if accomplished successfully, increases the likelihood that a customer will renew. Because customer success teams maintain a close relationship with clients, they can also provide product roadmap feedback to internal teams, to help build the product around customer interests and requests.
Having a catalog of satisfied customers is every company’s dream. However, organizations looking to become customer-centric must maintain relationships with customers long after the purchase is made. When an entire organization rallies together to champion a client and solve their business challenges, the result will be a much happier customer.
