Key Insights
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Customer experience has become the top priority for businesses and the reason is simple: companies that focus on customer experience reduce churn and increase revenues.
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Effective customer success strategies offer a way to significantly improve customer experience
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An effective customer success strategy requires supporting your customer at every step in their journey to get the result they want. This begins even before the sale is made and sticking with them until they achieve their desired result
It’s no surprise because customer experience has taken center stage in the current business landscape. It has become one of the key differentiators for any brand.
Improving customer experience should be your prime focus to make your brand stand out.
When 74% of customers are somewhat likely to buy based on experiences alone, customer experience improvement can have a major impact on your bottom line.
Considering the mounting need to improve customer experience, customer success has become more critical than ever. Although there are differences between the two, they are inevitably connected.
The customer is at the heart of both disciplines—and each shares the objective of helping organizations understand customers better.
Consequently, when you focus on customer success, you make progress in enhancing customer experience.
7 Practical Customer Success Tactics to Improve Your Customer Success Program & Transform Your CX
1. Build Buyer Personas
A staggering 90% of organizations are able to understand their customers better by using personas, with 82% of them having improved their value proposition.
Buyer personas are often considered a marketing tool.
It helps the marketing team figure out what potential customers are looking for. However, the same information can be used as a customer success tactic, creating an improved experience throughout the entire customer journey.
With better personas, you know what your customers are going through, the problems they face, their communication preferences, their pain points, and so on. You can then tailor your interactions to suit them, and in the process, improve the customer experience.
2. Personalized Customer Interactions
Twilio Segment’s The State of Personalization 2021 Report highlights that 60% of consumers will become repeat buyers after a personalized purchasing experience.
The first step in personalization is identifying each customer’s unique goals.
If your Customer Success Managers (CSMs) can show your customers that they understand the unique situations and desires of each individual, you will build a base of customers who want to stick with you in the long term.
If a new feature can help your customer, have your CSM call that customer and talk to them about how it will specifically help their business. You can also send them an email congratulating them on an accomplishment that you saw in the news.
3. Guided Onboarding
Onboarding is perhaps the most critical stage for any B2B company.
You can smoothen out the shift from acquisition to onboarding by having internal operations involved during the last leg of the sales process. Similarly, your sales team can stay involved during the beginning of the onboarding stage.
Remember, your client has shared a lot of useful information with your sales team and they are excited about their decision to work with you. You can help buyers by having one person oversee all onboarding activities and ensure that these are carried out in a timely manner.
4. Proactive Outreach
Customer success takes a proactive approach.
Your customers should have your solutions before they run into a problem. Thus, you need to get them the information they need before they ask for it.
You can enhance your customer experience through proactive outreach.
A leading example of this type of approach is the welcome email series. You get these when you sign up for a free trial. Such emails include communications encouraging you to use the tool or service to its maximum potential. It might also contain tips on how to get the most out of the service.
Take this approach a notch higher by letting your customers know about industry trends, and even, changes to your products.
5. Chase the “A-ha” Moment
It will be rare for any customer to immediately understand the value of your product.
But you don’t have to wait around for them to figure it out. Actively showcase your best product features during the onboarding process and work with them through its implementation.
Don’t forget to have a full grasp of your customer’s expectations in order to successfully chase their ‘a-ha’ moment. It will be advantageous if you can anticipate their needs at every stage of their engagement.
6. Make Use of Educational Content
Educational marketing materials like eBooks, case studies, and others can help you bring in leads and at the same time drive solid returns.
Publishing educational materials about your product and its features should be a part of your customer success strategy. When you post content about issues your target audience deals with daily, you establish a stronger relationship and pave the way for brand loyalty, even before they become your customers.
Later, this will help you not just minimize any potential roadblocks people might find themselves in when using your product, but it will also create a more user-friendly customer experience in the long term.
7. Get Feedback
It is easy to get caught up in high-tech tools that monitor keyword searches and web metrics. But an effective feedback system can be as simple as asking your customers what they need.
Once you have collected all the feedback, you’ll need to implement changes before customer churn becomes a problem.
Furthermore, training and offhand conversations can be excellent routes to get a better understanding of the gaps in your product, thereby helping you to enhance and deliver a superlative customer experience.
Final Thoughts
While each company has a different journey, it’s vital to commit yourself to customer success.
You can start by implementing any of these strategies with the relevant adjustments and necessary tweaks.
The entire customer lifecycle benefits from a customer success mindset. And when you start making improvements, you will see a marked difference in how your customers are benefiting from your product or solution.
