There’s been a lot of confusion surrounding customer success and customer service. Success is about cultivating a long-term relationship with your customers. The main goal is to get your customers to purchase more products over time and refer their friends and family to your business. This can lead to an increase in loyalty and profits.
Customer service, on the other hand, is about helping customers with their challenges so they can achieve success. Here are some tips about creating a perfect success team.
1 – Build a Team of Successful Individuals
Your customer service team is different from your success team. Even if their responsibilities are different and require different skill sets. Think of your success team as individuals who get intimate with your customers. They rely on interpersonal, problem-solving, and social skills. If you’re actively building a success team, then you need to find individuals who possess these skill sets.
If you’re looking to build a customer service team, focus on cultivating them. They should be familiar with your brand, including your products and services. They should also be used to work in a fast-paced business that requires juggling multiple responsibilities.
2 – Create a Sound Structure
The success role is a combination of sales and support. Success used to be a part of sales. Now it has become its own team. Increased knowledge about your customer’s problems leads to increased efficiency and better outcomes with your products and services.
But your success team needs to serve a specific purpose. That means you’ll have to create a structure that includes a combination of the right practices, tools, and oversite.
3 – Understand that Timing is Everything
If one of your customers is already successful and doesn’t have a required need, then you’ll want to provide more solutions. With improved success, cross-selling and upselling can deepen the customer relationship. It benefits you and the customer. But upselling when a customer is upset can hurt your business.
You should be aware of their satisfaction with your products and services. If they’re not, then you shouldn’t attempt to cross-sell or upsell them. That’s why having an open line of communication with your customers can help improve the customer experience.
4 – Think of the Long-Term & Be Patient
Customer support has become an additional cost for most businesses. That’s not the case with a success team. When your customers are happy, your business thrives. Most C-level executives skip building a success team altogether and focus on increasing their ROI.
Research has shown that success is a cost-effective measure that focuses on retaining customers than acquiring new ones. You want to ensure that your existing customers are happy with your products and services. If they’re not success, then you’ll experience churn – a scary moment when customers end their relationship with your services. An increased churn rate can lead to loss of revenue and the costs involved in acquiring a new customer.
Business is about more than getting as many customers as possible. It’s about keeping happy customers. You’ll see a big difference in your ROI when you keep this thought in mind.
5 – Invest in the Right Tools
This is a valuable tip for both B2B software and service companies. According to a study conducted by Forrester Consulting and FPX, 92% of B2B want to include high-quality customer experience with their sales strategy. In addition, 70% of customers set high expectations for that experience. Success teams provide experience while customer service teams deliver results.
Customer success has become one of the most important components of a successful business. If you’re creating a success team, you’ll have to be patient with them. Provide them with the training, support, and tools they need. It’s worth the investment in the end. They’ll work hard to deliver the results you’re looking for in the long run.