Project goals in customer success parlance are also commonly referred to as outcomes or objectives. Irrespectively, they mean the same. Project goals are tied to expectations either preconceived or set by vendor sales teams. For context, sales conversations are largely driven around what exactly customers want and or the possibility of implementing differentiating and innovative solutions that customers haven’t thought about yet. Vendor’s marketing and sales teams collectively strive to capture customer contacts’ imagination and motivate them to make the purchase decision. “Art of the possible,” “project vision,” and other similar terms are used to achieve this goal leveraging a vendor’s capabilities during the courtship period between the vendor and the customer.

To build a sustainable foundation between the two parties, it is important that first vendors only communicate what is possible, well thought through, and tested with vendor’s products. Unrealistic ideas will either fall on deaf ears or cause heartburn later during implementations, affecting the relationship irreparably. Second, all portrayed possibilities are captured clearly, realistically, and adequately as project goals with all supporting documentation. CSM’s responsibility is to start here and work toward shaping the desired outcomes using the techniques outlined in this book. They need to ensure that this vision or promised outcome is realized during implementations and is monitored post-rollout on an ongoing basis.

The next two sections will focus on measuring progress after the project moves into the execution phase and beyond. Collected success metrics outlined here will and should influence the CSM team’s compensation. Senior-level customers (such as sponsors) will accordingly review and compensate for the performance of the operational customer end personae (such as project coordinators and champions).

Customer Satisfaction Ratings: Net Promoter Score (NPS) or Equivalents

Management terms from the Harvard Business Review and other publications have influenced the corporate world’s thinking for a long time. Customer satisfaction scores, net promoter scores, and other variations have evolved or morphed into one form or other. As a caretaker of customer success departments, my focus has always been on the objective behind these scores. What actions can I take with this information? Can I prioritize my customer accounts meaningfully so that I can focus my energies on the ones that are most at risk? For the ones that are at risk, is it worth the effort to retain these customers? Are they the right customers given my company’s capabilities and the current or expected revenue from the customer? Are the scores a true reflection of my company’s capabilities? What is the likelihood that the formula used to calculate the score is accurate and comprehensive enough to provide me the desired information? Am I getting blindsided by using this score? Finally, is it worth the effort to analyze everything quantitatively, when a combination of discrete qualitative groupings combined with descriptive information can do a better job?

My general recommendation is to build customer prioritization models specific to your situation. Templates included in the appendices include several score, filtering, sorting, and grouping categories as examples. You could provide weights to each category and compute aggregate scores if management prefers; however, be aware of the risks as previously outlined. Companies with very large numbers of customers may find it worthwhile to segment their customers using these scores and to distribute the accounts by seniority to customer success staff. Likewise, companies with limited management bandwidth could establish thresholds and escalate attention to senior executives when overall scores deviate from expected norms.

A detailed analysis of net promoter or customer satisfaction scores is outside the scope of this book. However, there are many good resources, including free online content that you can find via an Internet search.

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Indicators are a potent tool for large organizations to track and manage the health of the company. They are used to prioritize attention, allocate, and compensate resources. Indicators typically fall under two groupings: leading vs. lagging and performance vs. risk indicators. For instance, the increase in the number of users is a performance metric, whereas an increase in the number of support cases is a risk metric. Performance metrics reveal improving trends when scores are higher, whereas risk metrics show improving trends when scores go lower.

Indicators are designed to have thresholds, to auto-notify indicator watchers when values go above or below designated thresholds. Customer success software platforms automate this capability, making it easier for company management to watch for trends and be notified when both desired and undesired outcomes occur.

An indicator metric in isolation may not be a good reflection of its intent. An increase in the number of support cases could reflect the deteriorating quality of software if the number of customers and users are the same. Whereas the same increase in the context of a simultaneous increase in customers and users may not necessarily be a deteriorating condition. A skilled business analyst will be better able to interpret indicator metrics in the larger scheme of events.

Leading indicators forewarn the occurrence of an event before it occurs, and therefore have a predictive element in their definition. For example, a reduced number of weekly user logins over a multi-month period could indicate that the customer is not seeing the value in the product implementation and may sooner or later decide not to renew the software license agreement. Lagging indicators, on the other hand, reflect a deteriorating situation explicitly. Dropping revenue numbers of an organization is a lagging indicator and simply conveys the fact that the business is not doing well. Management teams are therefore more interested in leading indicators because they allow them to act before it is too late.

A few of the many indicators that are applicable to customer success departments are:

Red Flags

In addition to the quantitative factors represented by customer satisfaction, NPS, and indicator metrics, qualitative information is equally important, if not more so, to ensure the continued success of the customer in the context of a company’s products and continued revenue stream. Customer success professionals are advised to watch for negative indicators, or red flags, such as attrition of customer resources involved with the project, ongoing budget allocation pertaining to the vendor’s product, customer’s financial health, reputation, or other significant risks applicable to the customer’s industry. Each one of these risks can have a potent impact on the health of the project. Customer-facing resources such as customer support, implementation, and sales teams should always be on the lookout for such developments in every interaction with the customer. Vendors should provide appropriate forums to disseminate this information across all customer-facing resources.