Customer success plan
The value you get from a customer success plan isn’t just when you make the sale; it’s throughout the customer journey
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Provide value through the entire customer journey, not just during the sale
Every business can benefit from a customer success plan. The value you get from a customer success plan isn’t just when you make the sale; it’s throughout the customer journey. By providing value throughout their lifecycle, you increase loyalty, retention, and ultimately revenue.
Renewal Reminders
Renewal reminders are one of the most important elements of your customer success plan.
Customers should be reminded that they need to renew their subscriptions well in advance of their renewal date, as this gives them time to make sure that their company budget is fully allocated for next year.
Setting up email campaigns or automation within your CRM system can help you reach out to your customers with these timely reminders. These emails should include a link where customers can pay for the renewal directly from within the email or from a landing page on your website. You may also want to include:
- The expiration date of their current subscription
- Information about how much time remains before it expires
- A list of benefits that only subscribers receive
Training and Education
Provide training, education, and other resources that are easily accessible and easy to understand. Make sure you have a variety of resources available (e.g., FAQs, user guides, etc.) so that customers can find the information they need quickly.
Make sure your customer knows how to access these resources. At the end of a demo or after an in-person meeting, it’s a good idea to send out follow-up emails that include links to relevant documentation.
If your customers know how to use your product, they will see value in it faster and will be more likely to renew their subscriptions or continue buying from you year after year.
Customer Adoption
Customer adoption is so critical to customer success that I believe it’s the single most important metric that a CSM should track.
Adoption is essential to the customer experience, which in turn is essential to both customer retention and customer satisfaction. As such, it’s an important topic.
Most SaaS provide panels that you can track usage and adoption. Present these numbers to your client, so you can both come up with an action plan to raise adoption. It is also their best interest to make the most of a solution they are already paying for.
Product health and usage metrics should be used as leading indicators of future activation, and thus retention
Product health and usage metrics should be used as leading indicators of future activation, and thus retention.
Product health and usage metrics can be used to judge CSMs. Product health and usage metrics are the most effective metrics to use for future activation and retention
Upsell Opportunities
Upselling is a great way to increase revenue, retain customers and grow your customer base. It also plays a role in improving customer satisfaction. As a general rule, the more you can do to make your customers feel like they’re getting their money’s worth, the more likely they are to keep paying for your service.
There are plenty of ways to get SaaS users to upgrade their subscriptions:
- offering additional features or services
- offering a plain and simple discount on the next subscription;
- offering a free trial for the next subscription
- bundling with other products
- giving discounts for bulk purchases
- incentivizing upgrades with rewards programs (such as points redeemable toward future discounts or free trials);
- giving away gift cards or other rewards for upgrades
- offering free consultation services
Measuring CSM performance is about successfully measuring long-term goals in short-term milestones
Let’s take a look at some of the various ways you can measure your CSM’s ability to retain customers, grow revenue, customer product usage and customer upsells.
- Renewal rate – The percentage of customers who renew their contract or subscription with your company
- Net Promoter Score (NPS) – Measures how likely customers are to refer your product/service
- Churn rate – The percentage of customers who don’t renew their contract or subscription with your company
- Overall usage/adoption -The increase in the number of users feature usage, and adoption over time by segmenting organizations into those that have reduced churn or didn’t churn over a certain period
- New business MRR- Monthly Recurring Revenue from new business within an established base.
Do not use one metric alone as it would be flawed and can lead to poor decisions
You should use multiple metrics to determine your ideal customer success objectives.
Using one metric alone is flawed and can lead to poor decisions.If you use only a single metric, you may end up making poor decisions. For example, if you measured success with only the number of new customers acquired each month, it would be easy to get lulled into a false sense of security.
The best way to solve this problem is to never use one key metric in isolation. This will always give you a flawed view of what is happening with your customers because there are multiple factors within different areas of the business that determine overall engagement, health, adoption, and growth across a customer base.
Instead, focus on long-term goals like driving higher lifetime value from each account and use short-term metrics from multiple areas of the business to measure progress towards those goals.
Customer Feedback Tools
When it comes to getting the most out of your Customer Success Plan, one of the best ways to ensure that you’re running a successful program is to take advantage of customer feedback. After all, if you don’t know how your customers feel about your company, then there’s no way for you to know what improvements can be made.
But gathering that feedback doesn’t need to be difficult. In fact, thanks to tools like SurveyMonkey, it can actually be easy and insightful.
You can ask your customers for feedback on the product, on customer support, or even on the company itself. This will give you insight into what they think about the different services that you provide and allow you to improve those services.
Additionally, asking them for feedback can help you discover which parts of your business are working well and where there may be room for improvement.
Next Steps
At this point, you’re armed with all the information you need to create your own customer success plan. It’s important to note that not all customer success plans are one size fits all, though they should always take the needs of each individual customer into account.
While there is no “right way” to structure or document your customer success plan, I do recommend making sure it includes the following elements:
- A list of action items and next steps across departments
- Goals and objectives for both parties in the short-term and long-term
- A timeline so both parties stay on track
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