Here at TrackMaven, we put a lot of pride in our effort to walk away from different customer success scenarios knowing that we tried to not only find a solution to a problem, but that we also actively added some sort of business value to the interaction.
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We know that the ability to go above and beyond for each customer brings about the opportunity, to not only leave our customers with smiles on their faces and warmth in their hearts, but also the chance to develop customer champions. This opportunity to develop long-lasting relationships is something that our whole company values from the top down.
The numbers tell the real story of how valuable a customer-centric priority is and 81% of consumers are more likely to give a company repeated business after good service. The question then is how can we start guaranteeing that is happening instead of hoping for the best?
As we know it’s the little things, the added effort, that separates customer service organizations from customer success organizations. We thought to share some different examples of how we attempt to do just that.
Scenario #1 – “Help! How do I get this information. . .”
At TrackMaven we’re lucky enough to have a phenomenal Product team who have put together some of the coolest features for an analytics platform. With these new features or when a customer asks how to get certain information, we like to take it a step further than just explaining it in an email.
We’ll instead try to create a custom video walkthrough of how to navigate through TrackMaven to achieve their desired goal. We’ve found that this makes the process much more efficient and welcoming compared to writing it out. The video leaves no room for misinterpretation and is more personal.
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Screencast-O-Matic and QuickTime both offer very easy to use screencast features that might come in handy next time you receive a question about how to navigate your software!
Scenario #2 – Resolving Bugs
Murphy’s Law is no stranger to the SaaS world. With the many moving parts that software relies on, things never go as planned. When that happens, your customer success team has to put on their game faces and do what they do best. At TrackMaven, as we attempt to go above and beyond what’s expected for our customers, we make every effort to combine speed, accuracy, and friendliness to unsettling situations.
For example, when customers email about bugs in their account, the ideal response is one that shows empathy by relating with the customer’s concern, an explanation of how the problem will be fixed, and how it will be remedied from ever happening again. If something isn’t a quick fix, then the key is in the follow up and ongoing transparency about the fixing process. The mission of the customer success team should be to have each customer know they always have someone on the other end looking out for their best interests.
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Companies that prioritize the customer experience generate 60% higher profits than their competitors and our customer success team could never account for the whole process. We also owe a great deal to our engineers on the backend for being as meticulous and expeditious in driving the fix as we attempt to be when bugs rear their ugly heads.
Scenario #3 – Retention Emails
A customer success organization will always have customers in the green, yellow, and red end of the customer champion spectrum depending on what metrics an organization uses to base the success of each customer off of. Retention emails serve as just one tool in the customer success toolbox and is one that if not done well, has the potential to gather dust and bring no true value to your customer.
In an attempt to avoid this pitfall that some organizations find themselves in, and that we have personally been on the receiving side of, we’ve unsurprisingly found that the best retention emails are relevant, unique, and carry some sort of business value with them.
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One of the things we’ll do is actually go into the customer’s account, cross-reference with what we know their ongoing marketing goals are, focusing on which competitors keep them up at night, and what primary channels they’re working with. After identifying that information we’ll find an interesting campaign their competitors are publishing for a new product, or some sort of industry best practice that will actually be of value and share that with them in an enjoyable way.
We’ve found this process more welcome as it provides business insight, and is relevant, relatable, and actionable for our customer’s goals.
Bonus Scenario #4 – Kill Them With Cuteness
We’re not sure everyone else in the world is as infatuated with corgis as we are, but we’re on a never-ending quest to make sure that happens. And we’ve started that journey with our customers!
Each TrackMaven customer has probably come to expect by now that many of the communications they receive from us, either via email, screenshare, or in-app-messaging will more than likely have a random corgi picture attached.
That’s one sleepy Maven
We do this for good reason though and there is science behind it. Viewing cute pictures seems to actually promote careful behavior and narrows one’s attention for subsequent tasks.
All in all, taking the extra time to personally reach out and connect with your customers and to build those long-term relationships can be your best bet towards yours and their ongoing success.
Remember that it is those unscalable processes you do for your customers that truly separates a customer service organization from a customer success organization.