It has now been almost 15 years since the start of cloud service startups such as Salesforce and Google, and today, businesses are moving towards Software as a Service (SaaS) with increasing subscriber’s demands from all over the world. The shift in product delivery has made it easier for businesses to find and commit to the right product which can help them achieve their goals at lesser investment and shorter time frame. Hence, cloud service providers are challenged more than ever to help their customers succeed in achieving their goals, and for that reason Customer Success function was introduced.
Customer Success or also known as Customer Advocate is playing a vital role for both ends of a B2B deal.
So, what is Customer Success?
Customer Success is the company success, whereby customer success managers play the role of injecting the success ideas into action. Yet, they are not the only ones navigating these ideas to create success for a business. Customer success ensures that clients are getting the most out of the product they invested in, and for that to happen, all functions within the company, from logistic members, to sales reps to customer support or service, and to Customer Success team managers have to work together towards achieving the goal. TimeTec Cloud is setting an example of this harmony between different departments, where sales reps, software implementers and customer success managers work together to know and understand their clients and their needs to grow.
Exploring the Role and Importance of Customer Success
With the growth of the subscription economy, customers are simply one click away from quitting your products. Although, it is much easier for them to quit on your products now with the availability of cloud services, they have to do it for the price of the time and money they have spent on the product not knowing that the service provided by your company does not align with their goals in early stages.
Customer success is to ensure this alignment is happening from the early stages.
At TimeTec, we identify the client’s business goals, their finances and resources as well as expectations before the product is even implemented. And with this, the customer success will need to connect the customer’s needs to the promises the product makes during the sales pitch. We came up with a designated implementation team, whose job is to design client onboarding process, from day 1 of setup to training to continuously working closely with the clients to solve any issues and solving them impeccably.
Products offered usually can operate in various ways depending on the users and the situations, and it is the role of customer success to understand the client’s needs and how the products can add more value to the customers. For example, by absorbing the clients’ feedback and concerns, customer success managers will need to communicate with the product designers, developers, support members and sales to improve the efficiency of the products in various ways. Consequently this process will lead to a production of better features that can be delivered beyond customers’ expectations and the customers are gaining more value on their investment and will remain loyal to the brand/company. With that said, Customer Success is indeed playing an important role in reducing churn rate and increasing revenue for the company.
Customer success managers also have to study into all the existing customers, and continuously measure their customer’s success rate with the products to ensure that they stay on their main goal of using the product for the long term.
In short, Customer Success helps tying loose ends and keep all stakeholders in check which brings a win-win situation for both ends.
- • It helps ensuring clients expectations are not only met, but also provide more values to their investment on the product.
- • It helps align company’s internal success between various teams, the product and the customer success for better results.
- • It is the wall against your customer decision to shift to that new startup that could disrupt your business success.
TimeTec believes in customer success because your success is our success and we want to embark on this cloud journey together.
