Sitting in client-facing roles, the majority of events we end up attending are (more often than not) areas of interest to our clients - less so focused on developing our skills within a customer success capacity. 

This morning however it was nice to break the routine and spend time with other passionate client success folk at the Customer Success Cafe West London! 

Over a few of cups of coffee, we looked to tackle the world of customer success and address some of the challenges that are arising within this relatively new business practice. Superbly hosted and compared by Rashmee Thiyagalingam, Chris Mitchell, and Adam Hardwick from ON24 with companies like IBM and  Sli.do in attendance, there were some thought-provoking ideas discussed around how to add value along the customer journey and build processes that enable you to effectively scale your service and/or team. Below we have shared our notes: 

The Customer Handover:

• Provide your clients with formal documentation reviewing the service your CS team will deliver, get the client to agree on measurable KPIs for the programme and importantly get them to sign it. This keeps all parties accountable to the agreed metrics and provides your client with clear direction
• Consider having a customer success plan in place that helps you clearly define the path ahead with your client and ensures that they understand the process involved
• Be clear with your commercial teams that you will not engage in the handover until all the relevant documentation is in place

The Onboarding Process: 

• Identify stakeholders and champions early in the process to make sure your service is aligned to internal business objectives
• The importance of human touch throughout customer onboarding is essential. Whilst it is great to try and scale your service for low-touch clients, the human element in speaking with clients over the phone/in-person helps them to connect with your brand and service at a personal level.
• Creating a "Train the Trainer" environment is really valuable in terms of making effective use of your onboarding time
• Sending out reminder emails 15 mins before the initial launch meeting/ or training session is an effective way to confirm users’ attendance, get them in the right headspace and engaged when onboarding 
• Offer various training assets and styles as people learn in different formats
• Accreditation and e-learning assets can be used to help users to self-learn and speed up the time to value process

Engaging with Customers who have Dropped Off:

• Once again the value of human touch is a really important aspect of building successful relationships with your clients. If you aren’t getting much feedback or response from emails, pick up the phone and give them a call. Also look to leverage other mediums to contact your clients, for example, in-app messaging (personalise your messages for more effective engagement)
• Creating a sense of community for your clients is key in getting them engaged with you and your product. Clients really enjoy the opportunity to hear about how others are making use of your services and the unique ways in which they are using them. Set up a couple of events or meet-ups for your clients and watch the magic happen! 
• Providing consistent feedback on performance to your customers based on the original KPIs set by them is great for clients to see the value in the relationship and your service. Make yourself worth their time by always feeding value when contacting them.
• Leverage usage data, client NPS scores, and built-in ROI management to constantly add value to your key stakeholders. If you can make them look great internally, they are much more likely to lean on you as a trusted source of information 

Overall it was a massively insightful session spent with all of the attendees today. A great opportunity to get together as a community and share more ideas about how we can best serve our clients. Looking forward to the next meetup already!