It calls out to be a win-win situation for all when your customers thrive. Your clients tend to have a remarkable experience and your company is constantly on the lookout to build a relationship that lasts beyond time. And the roles of client success director and client success specialist have a larger say in it.
Simply put, it is your customers’ success which is your success. As it is their sole job to ensure that the customers are getting the maximum benefit from your product or service. And also the unmentionable churn that needs to be at a minimum.
In the following article, we discuss how you can succeed in the roles of ‘client success director’ or as we call it ‘client success specialist’.
Understand the Customer Club
Even before you join your desk as a customer success specialist, you must by-heart the fact that the customer is everything in this business. He is the one who makes or breaks a deal. It is very much possible to be distracted by the newly formed incentives, which in turn might pave the way to eclipse your business outcomes and your client’s goal. Do not fall for this trap.
In order to truly succeed, you must strike out an even balance between doing what is right by the client with helping your brand pull out extra profit via expansions, renewals, upsells, and cross-sells. Over and above, you might have gotten a training where you would be asked to check-in and drop a customary email every now and then to the clients. Now there could not many reasons why that should refrain.
To begin with, it is pragmatically not as effective as it sounds. A ping which asks them about how are they, or how the weekend was or how are the kids doing is not quite insightful, so to say. The client would immediately know that you are perhaps running out of innovative agendas to talk about and hence the question. Therefore, commit to provide value in each of your interactions.
Ace the skill of Management
Not just as a client success director, but also as a human, it is of high pertinence that you learn to hone your managerial skills. Your job role demands you to be at a sea of responsibilities – answering calls, attending meetings, a few trainings over the months, etc. to name a few. So how would you like to swim through this sea?
Begin with brainstorming to scale your efforts. Set up messages that could be automatically sent to the customers to encourage deeper feature adoption. Also, you can allow some time to be invested in the infrastructure that will allow you to manage your time better. Creating a library of training tutorials or manuals is also something you can take up as well.
Understanding is the Key
As a client success director, you already have the leverage of being in constant touch with your customers. This puts you in a position to know them better than anyone else in the team. Your role gives you the additional advantage of having a stronger understanding of your clients’ demands. You would be the first to know if they face any hurdles on their way.
That is exactly when you step in to provide value to your bond. You should be able to influence decisions from across the company to shape your ideal customer profile.
As the voice of the customer, you should use your leverage to optimize the pricing model of the company and decide which features your team should enhance next. Pep up this opportunity to spread client insights in such a manner that all the teams’ take up this opportunity to respond to customer needs.
Extra Heed to the Feedback
In order to succeed in your role as a client success specialist, customer feedback is something you cannot take a backseat on. You must regularly check how your service is meeting up with the customer’s needs. It is going a good job or is it deviating from its purpose. Throw a keen observation of the areas which need special attention.
Some of the other things that you will have to pay heed is paying greater focus on the feedback of the product and also on the entire experience of using the product. You will have to constantly check whether the transition in using the product was easy, or does it need some changes.
In addition to that, ascertain whether your product requires a documented user manual, and just in case you have already launched the training guide in the market, is it reaching your expectations or is it taking a notch down. Answering these questions will take you a long way through customer success.
And the Diplomatic Fire-fighting
Regardless of any nature of customer issues, dealing with the complaint aspect is definitely the most challenging. It is also something which is the least predictable of all. Responding to a client compliant demands you to be adaptive and to use the instant usage of the presence of mind.
Nevertheless, the exact course of action that should be taken is difficult to ascertain. As every customer complaint differs from the other in some way.
Although this process entails you to listen to your customer’s issue, you must not forget the fact that you are also the customer’s advocate. Client advocacy is something that is accounted for as one of the greatest jobs that you will have to take up in order to succeed in the role.
Final Take
As you can see, understanding the factors that drive customer success or instead act as barriers at each and every step of the ladder makes it a practical scenario to enhance the customer experience with you.
This later helps you to pull down churn to a minimal extent and climb the ladder of customer satisfaction. The aforementioned points should help you how to increase customer stickiness and also the mantra to succeed as a client success director.
Kaustubh Sangam is a Customer Success Analyst with 2 years of experience. Committed to delivering exceptional customer experiences and driving business growth. Proficient in leveraging data analysis to optimize customer success strategies.
Published June 13, 2020, Updated June 07, 2023
