Customer success managers need to implement the right tools to help them manage customers who are users of their software. This requires an intimate acquaintance with customer success tools which can help CSMs take care of a large number of customers. However, it might not be possible to implement your customer success software right out of the box, and requires a number of steps to launch it within your team successfully.
Without customer success software, CSMs will be handling a high volume of customers manually and this will result in bottlenecks. Using this type of software, you can keep track of customer health and how they are engaging with your product. CSMs can organize their tasks and understand which customers need help, at the right time.
Choosing your customer success software successfully drastically reduces the amount of work that CSMs need to do, enabling them to drive product adoption, increase customer satisfaction and customer retention.
Does it Have the Right Features?
Customer health scores
Become acquainted with your at-risk customers easily using health scores, which gives you a 360 degree view of a customer through analyzing different factors about them.
Factors analyzed might include their usage information, licensing information, license utilization, billing status, credit card expiry date, NPS, CSAT survey responses, key sponsor relationship and more.
If a CSM were to monitor these factors constantly it would be very time-consuming, so health scores do the work for you and let you know which customers are thriving and which customers require intervention.
Plays and automations
You can use plays to automate parts of your customer success processes that do not require manual intervention. Plays allow you to create tasks, meetings and send personalized emails at scale, allowing you to manage more customers.
Plays mean you can build milestones, activities and tasks to execute your customer success process, making it simpler for CSMs to understand their required tasks for the day and what tasks are upcoming.
Plays enable your CSMs to become more efficient instead of personally attending to each customer.
Customer campaigns
Your customer success software should allow you to build customizable surveys that can be sent via email or through in-app communications. You can capture real-time feedback and insights from your customers, and include it in the health score which tells you how well your customers are doing.
Combining surveys with plays and automations, you can launch surveys to customers based on pre-defined conditions. You can trigger a survey when health score increases, when a support ticket is closed, or when an action is completed on your product.
Integrations with third-party software
Customer success software unites your customer data that is held in various sources into one single view, making it easier for CSMs to gain a full picture of your customer. There is no need to log into multiple systems to obtain an understanding of each customer.
From credit cards expiring to a fall in active users, you can get all the information in one place, and customize the view based on what you most want to see.
Steps to go Through for Implementation
Choose a system administrator
Choose a dedicated CSM to be the system administrator of your new customer success software. Without a team lead, the launch will be a failure and you won’t be able to update and maintain your new system.
Your system administrator will be responsible for leading the charge in replacing all outdated systems with your new software. They will take the initiative in resolving all technical issues and liaising with the customer support team to ensure the software is working correctly.
Work closely with your onboarding specialist
There is likely to be an onboarding specialist working for your new customer success software who will be in charge of onboarding. Work with them to ensure that you understand your new software and can make the most of every feature to help your customers.
Take advantage of all the help available for implementing your new system and ensuring that it delivers on everything that was promised. Ideally the system will be intuitive and you can learn on your own, but it never hurts to work closely with the onboarding specialists when you’re in the early days.
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Train your CSMs in using the software
CSMs who are well-trained in your new system are more likely to adopt it and implement it in their daily work. Set the time aside to show them how everything works and help them understand how it can assist them in helping customers.
Training never stops, even when your new system has been implemented. New features might require more training and system overhauls means your CSMs might need a refresher in how to use the software.
Keep the team informed about upgrades and updates
If you invest in the right software, it’s likely to be regularly updated with new features and more streamlined workflows. To keep your team engaged, make sure that CSMs are consistently informed about new features that will make their work life easier.
Before committing to your new software, find out about the product roadmap and the improvements that the team intends to make in the near future. Regular updates are vital to continuing value for money and ensuring that the software keeps providing useful features.
Wrapping Up
Customer success software is essential if you want to help more customers be successful with your SaaS product. While many tools are easy to work with, it’s vital to take deliberate steps to achieve a successful implementation of your new software. Customer success managers need support if they are going to properly manage high volumes of customers, especially with a small team.
If you haven’t heard of Churn360 already, we insist that you check it out. It offers all the features mentioned in this article and is amazingly easy to set up. Churn360 is already helping many customer success teams to improve the experience for their customers.
