Many companies want to experience hypergrowth for themselves. But when a company reaches the hypergrowth phase, where, Compound Annual Growth Rate, CAGR is more than 40%, it’s challenging to maintain. And can frequently backfire for everyone involved if not correctly managed.

For customer success teams, the change and uncertainty around hypergrowth are challenging since CS is one of the critical ways of obtaining and maintaining it. So, you must focus your efforts on managing hypergrowth.

In this blog, you’ll learn how you can foster a predictable, positive environment that allows for accountability and team growth during a hypergrowth phase.

The Ultimate Customer Success Leader’s Guide to Managing Hypergrowth

Below are some of the best practices you can use to manage hypergrowth.

Hold Regular Team Meetings

As a team grows, you need to hold regular meetings to keep every member on the same page.

But that’s not enough; you’ll need to ensure that everyone is getting value from it and help keep their morale up by sharing every win, big or small. Also, in a hypergrowth phase, you need to discuss and acknowledge your team members’ concerns which can also help keep them productive and motivated.

Build Trust and Collaboration

Look for ways to build collaboration and trust. When you’re experiencing hypergrowth, there’s tons of pressure placed on your team to sustain this growth and scale with it. So, be transparent and communicate with them.

Don’t just tell them what task to complete. You’ll need to show them what’s going on, why it’s needed, and how you came to that conclusion. And eventually, your team will take the initiative to handle tasks because they’ll be personally invested in them. Plus, this can also help increase accountability and expansion efforts.

Use OKRs Regularly

Objectives and key results framework, OKRs, need to be set up so everyone can see the big picture and what they’re working towards. With them, you can align their responsibilities towards maintaining and improving your company’s growth surge. One way to do this is by using defined KPIs.

Have a Process Plan

Your team members need to be ready to act on various processes during hypergrowth. So, create a process plan to make them document what they do, allowing them to shift responsibilities quickly when needed. You can do this by using leading and lagging indicators.

Be Flexible and Understanding

Hypergrowth is a period of uncertainty and rapid development. While this period is fast-paced and exciting, it’s overwhelming for your team members to constantly meet expectations. So, you’ll need to be understanding and flexible with them at every turn.

Identify Key Patterns and Segment Customers

You need to test and identify key usage patterns and features, making it easier for team members to segment customers. In some cases, you need to help them find key points that will revolutionize communication.

Being supportive of that and making each message count is important. Also, these key patterns will help deliver succinct messaging about the product.

Note What Counts as Success

It’s essential to communicate and clarify what counts as success. Customer success is a new field. So there is no defined notion of what it is. The point is to identify metrics that will measure success properly. There’s a need for the right metrics to measure success and be shared across teams and boards.

These critical metrics need to be the core of any effort. If any initiative or drive is not improving key metrics, you can scrap it. Prioritizing the metrics that count as success should be your top priority.

Learn Constantly

A customer success leader needs to be constantly learning. They need to evolve based on the changing market dynamics. Because ultimately, by learning about your customers constantly, you can serve them better, which is essential during hypergrowth.

And besides yourself, to maintain and go beyond a growth surge, you’ll need to coach your team members to develop skills that will drive them in the right direction as well.

Analyze the Customer

Learn everything you can about your customers. To help them succeed and stay in a hypergrowth stage, you’ll need to go beyond basic information about their demographics, company size, etc.

You’ll need to be proactive and find out their goals, what features will best help them reach their it, who would benefit from each feature the most, etc. And to get this information, you can conduct surveys, schedule phone calls, or message them.

Personalize Everything

Identify usage patterns and personalize upgrades accordingly. Personalize communication and messaging to suit customers’ needs. While you want to decrease time-to-value, product adoption still takes time, so consider offering personalized packages alongside proactive onboarding. Some examples of what you can offer are training credits, 1:1 assistance, and subscription discounts.

Bottom Line

Customer success is the key to hypergrowth. In this period, customer success managers face a lot of challenges. But, handling them is crucial, and this guide and keeping your customers at the center of everything you do while experiencing hypergrowth can help keep you afloat during this time.

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