Blog | BrainStorm

Customer success — how to stop making renewals feel like they were just good luck.

Written by Catherine Gutierrez | October 7, 2022

The buck stops with you.

After all, you’re the backbone of the company. Right? Without you, there's no ARR.

You've got to: 

  1. Drive active usage. 
  2. Find and fix customer issues.  
  3. Build extremely loyal relationships. 

That’s a tall order.

Let's sprinkle in the challenges you deal with on a daily basis. Like the fact that you need to help customers become strategic owners of your product, but you have (literally) thousands of end users who need to be actively engaged.

Often, you're so buried by questions about features, and requests for data, that you simply can’t be strategic with clients. You need to be proactive, but you’re stuck in reactive mode. You may want more time to meet with your top-tier accounts, but you're inundated with tasks that limit your ability to be strategic.

All too often, client success gets stuck playing whack-a-mole. If they can regain control, renewals won't just feel like a stroke of good luck. 



Step 1: Do it better.

Make it easier for your stakeholders. Put your POC in the driver's seat.

Put the wealth of learning materials you've invested in building in a customer-centric environment. Give customers the customization they crave. Then, sit back, as your customers start leading the way on their own product education and adoption. 

When you automate customer education, clients really can train themselves. 

When clients take ownership of onboarding, roll-out, and ongoing adoption, they become invested. And invested POCs will champion your product to their stakeholders. They'll renew your software for you. All they need is a flexible, automated platform to empower them to lead the charge.

 

Step 2: Do it faster. 

If you can't quickly show a customer how essential your software is, your chance to renew them drops dramatically.  You need to drive active usage immediately.

So, be proactive. 

Engage the users who aren’t thinking about your software, right away. Attract users with communications sent from their own company domain. Give your POC's ready-baked communications templates that highlight the end-user "what's in it for me." Allow them to see open rates and measure engagement over time.

Set role and behavior-based triggers to fire off communications that engage end users just-in-time. Deliver 'do-this-instead' training to help users catch the broader vision for a feature in your software. Land your differentiators.

During a roll-out, include a video slot for your customer to add their own executive sponsorship clip. Because according to Prosci, the number one indicator of a successful workplace change is the presence of an active and visible sponsor.

Finally, once you caught end-user attention, teach them with dynamic, multi-modal learning that's rooted in adult-learning theory and change management methodologies.

Accelerate active use. Let the data renew for you.

Now, let’s talk about how you can do it with less.


 

Step 3: Do more with less.  

You can't scale growth by adding headcount.

Rather than build a giant implementation team, up-level your existing client success managers to be more strategic. Increase each of your CSM's account loads as you give them a platform that automates the tasks that are a time-suck. Re-allocate your resources and double down on what’s working, like reaching into high-touch accounts, developing more contacts in an account, or driving strategic initiatives with clients.

You’re about to hit a recession. This is the time to find creative ways to do more, with less. With a way to multiply and empower your POC, a healthy customer LTV is in reach. 

Now what? 

Get started. This is a great time to try out customer training automation. 

References: 

  1. https://froged.com/blog/saas-churn