Taking a leaf from one of the established software maturity model frameworks from the industry, customer success framework at a given organization can be rated using Carnegie Mellon’s Capability Maturity Model (CMM). While actual definitions are not important, key considerations outlined here will help the company’s customer success teams mature with periodic investments in people, processes, and systems.
Carnegie Mellon’s Capability Maturity Model has 5 levels that I outline in this section. I have repurposed these levels to outline the state of each level and key considerations required to move up the maturity curve, in the context of the customer success capabilities of a vendor organization. This characterization is by no means a formal accreditation framework and serves only to guide any vendor to get better in executing its customer success responsibilities. The maturity levels are distinguished by the following characteristics:
1) Initial
2) Repeatable
3) Defined
4) Managed
5) Optimizing
Level 1 – Initial (Undocumented, Reactive, and Ad hoc)
The customer success setup is not well-defined or organized. Dedicated customer success resources are not allocated to customers. Company resources from other departments such as implementation, product management, sales support, or marketing are requested to manage customer relationships when the situation has already aggravated. There is no reference documentation on the process, customer accounts, and historic interactions with customers.
Minimal success is dependent on a few skilled and passionate company employees who keep customer relationships afloat with part-time responsibilities. New employees find it difficult to onboard themselves and require extensive shadowing with senior colleagues.
Level 2 – Repeatable
Skilled customer success resources take the initiative to document a few key success stories and supporting process documentation such as typical implementation steps, customer success metrics, root causes, and remediation efforts. Key company personnel interacting with customers are tasked with the consistent execution of these processes. However, adequate monitoring of process execution is not undertaken due to limited management bandwidth.
Level 3 – Defined
Experienced resources define and document all processes relevant to interacting with customers. Expected outcomes and success metrics as defined in this book are documented. Metrics are expected to be collected, analyzed, and shared for instance, among other customer success process expectations as previously outlined. All relevant customer interaction resources are required to follow these set processes. However, with not enough customer success examples to build on and validate, the processes are not fully tested and validated for enough future customer implementation possibilities. Inexperienced resources need to reach out to senior colleagues for impromptu guidance in unanticipated situations.
Level 4 – Managed (Capable)
Consistently collected process metrics validate the effective achievement of desired outcomes across a wide range of customer profiles and implementation setups. A company has invested in audit and quality management resources to test defined and documented processes across a wide variety of conditions. Processes are found to be competent and have variability by design to adapt dynamically in environment variations without compromising quality.
To achieve this level, companies must have implemented their solution successfully at numerous customer accounts under varying customer circumstances. For example, the product is implemented at customers representing numerous industries—such as retail, finance, and manufacturing—for a range of users. The data set representing these implementations could also vary from small to extremely large databases. The number of metrics and their relationships to each other for consideration could likewise vary from a handful to a sizeable number. A few examples of these metrics could include the number of users, their login frequency, impact to customer’s revenue or cost figures, leading and lagging indicators that collectively or individually predict customer success.
Level 5 – Optimizing (Efficient)
With the previous maturity levels under the company’s belt, companies focus on constantly evaluating and executing process improvement opportunities without adversely affecting desired outcomes. The goal is to constantly enhance the customer delight factor with cost-effective investments in people, processes, and systems factors. Better team alignment, more skilled resources, dedicated personnel, clearer, and visually appealing documentation, and better technology systems are just a few of the many opportunities that companies can invest in to continuously optimize their customer success capabilities.