The Only Three Processes your Customer Success Team Needs
One common mistake we see from Customer Success leaders is that they only focus on the output of their processes. Instead, we challenge you to critically and repeatedly analyze whether your processes serve your purpose. If it doesn't, adjust it or get rid of it.
Let's say your Customer Success team is committed to driving satisfaction. Where is their time better spent during onboarding?
Understanding the needs of the customer, learning why they bought the software in the first place and knocking their #1 use case out of the park
or…
Trying to understand the landscape of their business and hunting for expansion opportunities from the very first call.
Even though a) is the highest and best use of the team's time when they are focused on satisfaction, it's amazing how frequently we see processes completely out of alignment with purpose. Here are some of the reasons this happens:
1) Implementing new processes give you an illusion of control. As a leader, this puts you at risk of becoming a process-jockey who implements processes without a second thought. When you take on this role, your team will start to expect you to throw processes at problems instead of diving into why things aren't working the way they should.
2) 95% of online Customer Success content focuses on processes and abstract minutiae. Therefore, it's commonly accepted to 'test out' a new process, even though it's usually a waste of your time because it has no alignment with your purpose.
3) There is always one more process to create. When you take an undisciplined approach with process, all you do is add more and more complexity to an already difficult working environment.
Now, how do you think your team will feel when you hit them over the head with new processes? Checked out, bored, disengaged, and distracted are some of the feelings we see from the frontline. It's decision-time for you.
Would you prefer to operate in an environment with:
a) 20 half-baked processes that no-one on really understands
or
b) 3 perfectly-tuned processes that your entire team executes like
clockwork?
You can save yourself from endless headaches, frustration and firefighting by choosing the second option. Here are the three processes that will protect you from pain:
That's it. Until these processes are bulletproof, you don't need to go any further. In our experience, most Customer Success team fumbles dozen of processes instead of doing three well. Make the choice to be different!
Next up, we'll show you how to create these processes.