I had the pleasure of speaking at Microsoft’s Team learning hour at their UK head offices in Reading. Microsoft offers their Customer Success Manager and Customer Account Manages a day of learning per quarter. Within that day they also invite outside experts on panels for the team to continue to learn about best practices within the customer success field. I had the privilege of speaking to the CSAM UK team in Reading and aside from the opportunity to network in person Microsoft created an amazing hybrid environment for over 300 CSAM leaders to join in person or via Teams call to learn from leaders at Microsoft and yours truly. I was invited to speak at this event by members of the CS community that asked if I would share my knowledge with a larger organization that is trying to navigate customer success in what has proven to be a tricky economy. A big thank you to Marco Carrubba, Neil Sparkes, Russell Lewis, Michael Thomas, and the wider UK Microsoft Customer Success team for having me.
The main questions within the panel were a lot to do with industry best practices in customer success, but also around “how to do more with less” which is the theme in the wider customer success community for 2023. The entire world seems to be feeling the pressure of the current instability of the global economy and tech giants like Microsoft are not immune, nor are their customers. As the Microsoft Customer Success team moves forward they need to become more agile, creative, and quicker at delivering value to their customers. This is of course much easier said than done, but how is the question? Which is one of the questions we touched on in the panel. Below is an outline of the top questions asked at the panel and my summary of the answers that were shared.
What is the power of Customer Success?
The power of customer success is being able to help your customer’s businesses succeed while helping your own business grow. Customer success has become so much more than the customer support or customer happiness department. As strategic business advisors, we are now helping businesses around the world understand, implement, and become experts in our product offerings. Not only are we helping customers achieve their business goals by using technology but we are now (more than ever before) revenue leaders in the business. We are responsible for ensuring our customers correctly implement and get started with our product, but we are also responsible for the growth of the accounts and just as sales have quotas we are now held accountable for cross-sells, upsells, and renewals. Speaking for myself personally revenue has always been part of customer success but due to the current economic climate, now more than ever, we should be highlighting the revenue we drive for the business.
“Doing more with less” — What does that mean in Customer Success?
It doesn’t mean working more, but rather working smarter. When budgets are tight and businesses are more mindful of everything that is happening in the wider market it is time to get creative. Do more with what you currently have. Do you use a marketing tool for customer acquisition, use the same tool and think of how you can create customer advocacy through the same tool. Invest in things that you already have, stretch the resources you have, not people but tools you already have. Think of the way things that you can be doing with your customers to drive even more value with the time you have. Just because your department is not using a specific tool or not doing customer meetings in a certain way should not stop you from trying something new. In previous teams, I have led my teams to get creative with Video and created short-form content business reviews, and sent videos rather than PDF decks to customers in order to save time and get the same point across. If you want to read more about how this is done, I was awarded Most Create CS leader of the year by creating short-form business review videos with my team. You can read more about this here.
Also, make sure your math makes sense when speaking to customers. In a tricky economy, you have to be proving a return on investment (ROI) of why they purchased your software and why it makes business sense to keep your software at their business. You need to do the math for them. Ensure they understand that paying for and using your tool is saving them X number of hours at work, or X number of dollars, etc. You have to make the ROI and the math make sense for them, especially when companies are looking at every line item when it comes to spending.
How to manage customer expectations in a downturn economy?
Find a way to say yes. Most times when there are economic uncertainty people and businesses want something for free or at a discount as they are worried about how much they will have to pay for a product or service when they are possibly strapped for capital. This was evident when the global pandemic kicked off in March 2020, companies were so unsure how long the pandemic would last and what effect it would have on their businesses as such they were watching every dollar spent and wanted to ensure they were cutting where necessary. Likely your customers will ask for a free product or service as a sweetener to their renewal deal or because they assume you are a tech giant like Microsoft you have the cash to spare to give away free products or services. But as I shared earlier no one is immune to what is happening in the world right now and every business wants to hear yes more than they want to hear no. So my advice would be to find a way to say yes to your customers rather than saying no. What I mean by that is to figure out a creative way to find a yes for your customer. If they are asking for free products or services as part of their renewal and you cannot give away the product, think of other ways to be creative. Connect them with other like-minded customers (free of charge) to learn from each other on a specific topic.
What key considerations should CSAMs take when working with customers in the current economic climate?
Be human and ask what can I do to help. We are all human, everyone is struggling. No one is immune, small businesses or larger Fortune 500 companies are making tougher and tougher decisions. Ask how you can help. Be the strategic advisor your customer needs you to be and do this while remembering that you are not just working with a customer but rather a human being. Working in customer success and being human first seems almost natural to some, but many times we forget that we are working with humans and we forget to ask how can I help, but rather we push our own agenda onto people.
If they do not open up how you can help? Do your research. We can no longer sit in our comfort zone that they need our software, more times than not customers will cut what is not being used and there are usually parts of software that are not used. So help them use these things by showcasing best practices and what others are doing. Understand what your customer’s business is going through and suggest how you can strategically help. When people are asking how can I be more proactive, the easiest way is to research your customer’s businesses and prescribe what you think they need to be based on their business objectives in today’s economic climate.
What will customer success look like in 2023?
Ai will become not a nice to have in the tools we use daily, but rather a natural part of everything that we do in business. Remember that we work in technology and new tech will only help us if we utilize it correctly. Chat GPT for example, do not shy away from using this tool. It is powerful and can help alleviate a lot of admin for a CSM. Learn how to use this tool to your benefit. Remember we work in tech and think about how our customers use our tools and tech to make their lives easier. Apply the same principles to using a new tool like Ai to help you.
Overall the future is bright for Customer Success in 2023, we are continuing to evolve as a function and practice and the practice of customer success will only become stronger and more valued this year.