Scale Your Customer Success Team Through a Digital First Engagement Model
We should all be celebrating that we are finally at a point where Customer Success is no longer perceived as a singular department with the sole purpose of supporting customers in a product-driven SaaS company. Customer Success is now understood as a critically important discipline that needs to be at the center of every company’s growth strategy, regardless of stage. And if you want to build a successful SaaS company, you’ll need to invest early in Customer Success. Not only does this mean hiring the right people and creating the right processes, but this now means that every product, feature, service, marketing initiative developed should be centered around customer value, customer retention, and customer growth. It’s now a customer’s world. But what happens to your Customer Success discipline when your business starts to experience real growth? You set lofty targets, you understand your ideal customer profile, you're selling into that ICP and winning, and you’re suddenly meeting and exceeding those growth targets.
It’s time to scale.
The fabric of Customer Success teams – team size, team structure, CSM profile, number and value of accounts managed – varies from one organization to the next and is very much dependent on the stage of the company and the business type. One constant, however, is that each Customer Success team will inevitably reach this type of a tipping point where it has to scale and evolve to align with company goals, support new business growth, and be successful; however, deciding where to start can be quite daunting.
Where to begin when scaling your Customer Success Organization
The sale doesn’t end when we celebrate a closed deal – all new customers will cross the pre- to post-sales bridge, and fall into the welcoming hands of the Customer Success Team. If your post sales teams are not prepared to manage the flood of new accounts – from onboarding to adoption to retention and upsell – then risk of churn is high and the health of your business is in jeopardy.
It’s common for companies, particularly in the early stages, to try to solve the problem of new business growth and a rapid influx of new customer acquisitions by hiring more Customer Success Managers to take on more accounts. Throwing more bodies at the scale problem is not only a costly investment, but is also a bandaid over the underlying issue and will undoubtedly fail. It’s not about more people, it’s about finding greater efficiency at scale.
You need to look for ways to optimize existing workflows, standardize your processes, automate tasks, and find ways to do more with less human intervention, all while ensuring all of your customers are still reaching their goals and finding value in what you provide.
It's common for Customer Success teams to provide the same high level of strategic engagement and support across all customers regardless of complexity, ARR, strategic value, or growth opportunity. It feels good to hold your customer’s hand but simply put – it does not scale. This is where we apply the concept of high touch and digital first engagement models and look at how to align those with different customer segments to help scale an organization. You may be familiar with the term “tech touch”; we’ve adopted the term “digital first” instead, as we recognize that there is always an option for human intervention when certain activities are triggered in the customer journey (i.e. churn risk), but we seek to first find a way to solve using technology. We know these are not new concepts, however our differentiator is we’ve used our Customer Success expertise and in working with B2B Saas companies at various growth stages to develop a step-by-step framework to guide companies through where to start and how to scale effectively and efficiently.
The Digital-First Customer Engagement Model
Customer engagement models define how a company manages its customers across various touchpoints in the customer journey. A high touch engagement model should be applied to the most strategic, high value customers. This is where dedicated Customer Success resources are assigned to manage a smaller portfolio of these customers, and to deeply and personally focus on building strategic long term relationships through multiple value-driven, human-led touch points.
A digital first engagement model is a 1:many data driven communication strategy that is applied to the long tail of customers, meaning those who do not demand 1:1 account management due to factors such as technical acumen, team size, maturity, goals and objectives. This model focuses on highly personalized data and automation first to support these customers. While these customers are typically a lower ARR or revenue potential, collectively they are an impactful portion of a company’s revenue and therefore can’t be forgotten.
We have successfully built digital first engagement models using our framework with a focus on automating every possible aspect of workflows and processes that are applicable to the long tail, but in a way that those customers feel supported and find value from your product. If a digital first strategy is done right, customers will rarely need human interaction. Furthermore the high touch model will gain efficiencies from the digital first model, adopting automation and standardized processes that allow those CSMs to focus even more on high value, human led activities.
Below is an overview of our framework and how we’ve built a digital first engagement model for our customers:
Customer Segmentation: Define or revise your customer segmentation model as a critical first step (and a topic on its own for a separate blog post). It is important to spend time to get segmentation right for this framework to be most effective for the lowest tier of customers (a little tip: your customers should not be segmented on just ARR).
Success Metrics: Understand how customer’s defines success across the customer journey, and then apply these success metrics to the automation and standardization of processes you create for the digital first strategy. This ensures value is being delivered and customers are meeting desired objectives and outcomes. Think about the customer personas who are a part of the customer journey, especially in the early stages of onboarding and implementation. How an executive or a buyer defines value will be very different from a project manager or user.
Deep Dive Discovery: Analyze and document the highest touch engagement model being used to service the most strategic customers. Create an output of detailed milestones, goals, timelines, owners, tools, and human vs automated tasks. It may seem backwards at first when the goal is to build out a digital first model, however a top down approach that starts with the highest valued (and most demanding customers) will help to identify customer needs, gaps and problems in existing workflows, and highlight where automation may already exist or where there are new automation opportunities.
Define the Digital-First Strategy and Engagement Model: Once the high touch model has been documented, then design the digital first model. Circling back to what we said above, the digital first engagement model is really a data driven communication strategy that is highly personalized to the customer. This involves identifying which customer touchpoints are required vs. optional, where we can use automation vs. human intervention, what processes will be run at various points of the journey, and what tools are required for enablement. The model leverages multiple communication types to support and guide customers through their journey.
Some specific areas that we look to gain efficiencies through automation and tools are:
Onboarding
Training, Certification
Product Knowledge
In-app Tools
FAQs and How To’s
Business Reviews
Customer Satisfaction
Cadence Meetings
Customer Health
Customer Marketing
Investing in a Digital First Engagement Model
Naturally there are areas of investment a company will need to carefully consider when rolling out a new engagement model, and often there is a prioritization exercise needed to determine short and long term investment. It is important to get executive level buy-in on the strategy early on so that the investment in tools and resources down the road is supported.
Some areas of investment that you may consider are:
Customer Success Platform
Learning Management System
Project Management System
Document Management System
Content Knowledge Base
Product Enhancements
In summary, scaling your Customer Success team is really about focusing on efficiencies in how you work with customers, maximizing your resources, and maximizing your customer’s potential. Please reach out to us to learn more about our digital first engagement strategy and how we can help scale your Customer Success organization.
