Other than products and services, customer experience is the prime factor that will set you and your company apart from your competitors. In the customer-focused era over the globe, every other company is giving utter importance to understanding their customers, trying to provide top-notch experience and support through customer success software.

Today, the customer holds the card and not the seller. They have become more modern and tech-savvy than before and are available with an ocean of options to choose from. And thereby, customer success carries a significant amount of weightage. It also gives an opportunity for up-sells and cross-sells.  

PWC in their recent report has found that the number of companies investing in omni-channels experience has jumped from 20% to 80% since 2010.  

Many companies who have focused on creating strong customer success teams have found it difficult to settle for the perfect customer success software that fits their necessity and lets them add value to their business as well as their customer. But with these 6 tips, you can select a perfect customer success software, without any hassle. 

1. Determine Your Business Requirements

• Once you are ready to search for the optimum customer success solution, you need to step back and analyse your business needs. Walk through your business goals and envision your targets. 
• Purchasing a customer success solution is a commitment within itself. Hence, it is inevitably essential to capture all the information that you can, in order to carve out the exact needs of your organization. 
• To consider some examples, you should be able to find out which customer are at the risk of churn for whom you are looking for the solution, or, how is the scope for expansion amongst your existing customers. 
• Identify what is lacking your CSMs right now and how can a software solution increase their productivity. 
• Figure out how customer interaction can become a boon for your business and where exactly do you need to leverage this. 

2. Draft a Checklist for the Required Functionalities 

• When you are contacted by vendors for customer success solutions, or when you contact them, you have to be ready with the functionalities you are seeking in your customer success software. 
• Look for features such as: 

1. The horizon of the dashboard – overall view of customer activity, product adoption, sales data, payment log, CSM interaction, and other relevant metrics.
2. Option for automation of customer success activities and plans. 
3. Maintenance of KPIs such as ARPU for all customers.
4. Integration with third-party systems and separate logins for each user. 
5. Alert, trigger or notification system for monitoring customer data and taking timely action. 
6. Reports and customizable records of customer usage. 

• Since the software is to be working closely with your business data, evaluate it in terms of security and control. 
• The capability of the software is as essential as its functionality. Find what level of customer success maturity the solution offers, how many accounts per CSM it allows, and what models it follows. 

3. Identify and Analyze System Requirements

• To select the best customer success software, you need to ask a lot of questions to ensure the software addresses your  system requirements.  
• Retrieve fundamental information about the software, such as, what integrations would it require, or which ones are necessary at the basic level. 
• Understand how the tools would be configured and adopted on the platform. 
• Question the security of the system again, to ensure no technical detail skips your attention and becomes a great havoc later. 
• Also find if the software would be scalable and allow reconfiguration, if need be.

4. Build an Implementation Plan 

• With all the vital information, you can ponder upon the implementation then. Like any other technological solution, the customer success software would need to be developed prudently. 
• Chalk out the clear goals for the software which you would have already ascertained when you developed the roadmap for the requirements of your customer success solution. 
• Craft a process for the measurement of the success of goals.
• The implementation would also require a time-bound map to put systems and executives in line for the project. 
• During implementation, put essential use cases into action and test their results and hence, the software’s capability.  

5. What Should You Expect in Turn? 

• A powerful customer success solution would make your customer success plans actionable and would also drive intelligent analytics from them. 
• You should be able to measure the account health score through your solution. 
• If need arises, you should be able to automate a few services through your software, to reduce the unnecessary burden on CSMs and also ensure better results and customer service. 
• Your software should have distinct segments for records and customer information. 
• The software must have each CSMs portfolio as this is where you can read between the lines and track your team’s overall and well as individual performance. 
• An NPS score is always good to have as a feedback mechanism as well as an indicator of account health.  

Did you know, an NPS promoter score has a customer lifetime value that’s 600%-1400% higher than a detractor? 

6. Evaluate, Detect and Address Loopholes 

• Even though, we have carefully highlighted some of the most critical things to look for in customer success software, you need to be proactive while selecting one for your business.  
• To avoid any kind of misfortunate circumstances, like integration faults, or reporting issues, it is always advisable to opt for a use case creation to test the capabilities. 
• A use case would just mock for you how to perform a certain task on the software. This not only gives you a hands-on experience on the software, but also brings you peace of mind that the software is bug-free. 

As per a recent study, it is found that companies with a 2% reduction in churn or a 2% increase in upsells saw a 20-28% rise in shareholder multiple. 

The right customer success software can do wonders for your business. But the choice is tricky and a variety of options make it look difficult. So, the next time you are thinking of purchasing a customer success software, you know what to look out for. 

Is there any rocket science behind any of these tips? No, definitely not. With minimum efforts and an elite game plan you too can achieve sheer customer success in no time and this would be easier with a good software solution. 

So, what are you still wondering about? Use these tips as your guide and win the hearts of your customers out there with your excellent software at work. 

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