Building on modern management consulting frameworks, Latviv has compartmentalized customer success into three interrelated components: people, process, and systems. This framework allows vendors to study, prepare, setup and analyze the effectiveness of each component one at a time, without getting overwhelmed by the enormity of the full customer success initiative. The model comprehensively covers all elements required to make customer success teams successful. While I cover representation from both customer and vendor, the focus is on the vendor to put their best foot forward and address all gaps in these areas. I will touch on a few challenges and mitigating aspects in this short chapter for each area to explain the concept. Readers will find area specific guidance throughout this book.
PEOPLE a brief definition of all stakeholders involved in buying, selling, implementing, supporting, and using an enterprise solution will help get the perspective of each party that affects the success of any project. The corporate world popularly calls each stakeholder class a persona. CSMs responsibility is to make sure that each persona is engaged, well taken care of, and pleased with the deployed solution. These personas are further explained in Part II, Circular Customer Touch point Phases, of this book as they interact with each other during the respective customer touch point phases described then. The prefix in the persona title indicates if it represents customer or vendor. Lastly these are the key titles. Based on the customer and vendor’s size and complexity, one or more persona could be combined into one or be represented by more than one individual.
Persona Definitions Customer—sponsor Provides funding for the purchased software, service or solution
Customer—DeCision maker Makes the final purchase decision. Typically, this is a core committee with representation from multiple customer side persona
Customer—influenCer Performs research on available industry solutions to address a customer need, makes a business case to consider one or more industry offerings, and presents to other customer personae
Customer—Champion Represents a body of end users with similar needs, defines and articulates requirements, tracks implementation and realization of these requirements, and finally is involved in testing, rollout, training, and ongoing hand holding post deployment
Customer—projeCt CoorDinator / projeCt manager On behalf of customer, manages timecards, project tasks across all customer touchpoint phases (refer to Part II of this book), issue lists, collaboration with all customer personae involved, escalations, execution of customer side tasks, customer side communications and vendor requests for information access
Customer—solution aDministrator Post deployment, is trained to administer the vendor’s product in collaboration with vendor’s support team
Customer—enD user Uses the vendor’s product after it is fully configured to achieve desired objectives
Customer—Due DiligenCe team Combination of procurement, information technology (IT), and legal group representations, that in collaboration with other customer personae, reviews vendor financial, technical, staffing, security, privacy, administrative, and all other relevant capabilities to continuously enhance and support sold product
VenDor—sales exeCutiVe Presents the products capabilities, vendor’s strengths to convince customer personae to invest in the product
VenDor—marketing Through marketing efforts, obtains contacts of customers that are in the market for vendor’s products, and sends the information to sales executive for follow-up (a simplified version of the role is provided here, where in reality multiple detailed roles are involved to execute these tasks)
VenDor—proDuCt marketing Prepares sales presentation guidelines, brochures, case studies, white papers and other marketing content for generating interest in vendor’s product
VenDor—sales support Collects presentation materials and product collateral (brochures, case studies, white papers) from product marketing, and tag teams with sales executives to provide technical information to customers
VenDor—proDuCt management Defines and tailors emerging customer needs, makes a business case to enhance product, collaborates with engineering and development teams to develop the enhancement requests, collaborates with marketing and sales to sell the features and provides guidance to implementation and support teams to realize the features for customer needs
VenDor—projeCt manager Executes vendor side project management tasks such as timecards, issue lists, collaboration with all vendor personae involved, escalations, execution of vendor side tasks and vendor side communications
VenDor—implementation manager Configures and implements the solution based on specific customer requirements as gathered from the customer personae outlined above
VenDor—senior management Monitors progress, provides guidance to staff to ensure customers are successful with vendor’s products
VenDor—internal auDit Audits all or shortlisted implementations using defined check- lists and procedures. Documents and presents observations and suggested remediation solutions for projects that are not performing or have not performed well
VenDor—support team Responds to customer queries, logs change requests or issues that limit end users from successfully using the product
VenDor—Csm Is responsible for defi ning customer engagement strategy and plan, represents one or more of the vendor personae roles, is involved in all customer touchpoint phases and is accountable for all customer-facing projects. Full set of responsibilities and expectations are outlined throughout this book.
VenDor—inVestor Constantly evaluates vendor fi nancials, retention rates, customer adoption, and success metrics
The quality, availability, attitude, compatibility, and incentives of all involved determine the outcome of any collaborative undertaking. While it is important for senior leadership to be involved for approvals, funding, and supervision, interests of everyone involved must be met. Representative challenges and mitigating factors are outlined in the following table.
People Challenges/CSM Recommendations
CHALLENGE: Competitive pressures from other vendors limit interest among customers in promoting your solution
RECOMMENDATIONS:
Engage all new management team members
Stay on top of your game and continually engage with all key customers
Don’t rest on your laurels; initial project task wins may not be enough for the full project success
Always go beyond talk, and show realized value in every interaction
CHALLENGE: Customer management priorities change, reducing availability of resources and information access
RECOMMENDATION:
For implementations and deployments, plan to do more using vendor’s resources with minimal help from customer
CHALLENGE: Insufficient skill set on customer side to adopt solution
RECOMMENDATION:
Plan to adequately train your end users, even at extra non-reimbursed vendor’s expense
PROCESS Part II of this book, Circular Customer Touchpoint Phases, outlines the five iterative phases, and related processes, where vendors and customers interact with each other. Suffice to say in this section that the quality of these processes will influence the outcome. Processes should be both designed and executed well. Vendor’s senior leadership should have visibility and contribute for the broader customer goals. While metrics for the vendor’s product may be realized, if the customer is not able to achieve its larger project goals, such project will still be considered a failure and the vendor may not be able to realize its revenue goals from the engagement. Borrowing from my previous employer’s (a large management consulting firm) engagement model, I propose that every CSM pursue these high-level activities for every customer engagement.
ACTIVITY: Build Relationship
Description: Using soft skill considerations outlined later in this book, personal charisma, and keen customer service mindset, make lasting friendships with customers. People see through false pretenses so make sure every interaction is genuine and well thought through.
ACTIVITY: Understand Business Context
Description: Look for the larger project goals in aggregate, customer and third-party resources allocated for the project, integrations with customer’s and third-party solutions, level of funding and visibility. This will help in understanding the dependencies, and risks facing the project.
ACTIVITY: Understand Real Problems
Description: Dig deeper to find out why the customer is investing in your product and other related initiatives. If it is not clear how the project and products under consideration will help resolve customer pain points, ask sooner than later. If a customer’s reasoning is flawed, call it out ahead of time, so that realistic expectations can be set, and approaches fine-tuned before the project is undertaken.
You may have noticed that McDonald’s installed self-order stations at its locations. What could be the real problems that these stations are trying to address? Is it to minimize the long queues, reduce labor cost for taking customer orders, reduce errors in manually collecting customer orders using service representatives, all the above or something else?
ACTIVITY: Visualize, Deliver, and Validate Value
Description: Before taking on the project, question the need and applicability of your product. Will it provide value to customer’s initiatives? Only when you have a convincing response, bid for the project. After winning the project, follow through to the point value is delivered through your solutions, validated, and acknowledged by all those involved with the project.
ACTIVITY: Manage Project Plan
Description: Document desired project outcomes, activities, tasks, and milestones to achieve them. Provide continuously visibility and track through completion till value is realized.
ACTIVITY: Deliver Exceptional Memories
Description: All the previous steps, if executed well, should result in superior customer experience and realization of customer end goals. When customer personnel get rewarded such as with promotions and or higher compensation, due to your efforts, initiatives, intellect, and wisdom, customer delight and gratitude will help you achieve your ongoing revenue goals outlined earlier in this book.
While I talked about the vendor end processes, customer end processes also influence the outcome of a project. Representative process-related challenges and mitigating factors are outlined in the following table.
Process Challenges/CSM Recommendations
CHALLENGE: Existing customer processes may not work well with your product’s capabilities
RECOMMENDATION:
If your product pricing is insignificant compared to the investments the customer has already made in institutionalizing its processes, don’t attempt to change existing customer processes to fi t your product capabilities
CHALLENGE: Modifying customer processes may be a time-consuming and expensive undertaking
RECOMMENDATION:
Choose the least resistant approach: Tailor your product to fi t the existing customer environment as much as possible
SYSTEMS Th e vendor’s product itself, along with all supporting technology systems— their access and data—from both vendor and customer end, fall under the systems category. It is important that all supporting systems provide seam- less adoption and enabling of the new technology solution to achieve a customer’s objectives. Systems underpin the interactions with the other two framework factors: people and processes. See Figure 2.1: Interaction Model—People Process Systems People should be trained properly on the relevant systems to use them effectively. Systems should be aligned with customers’ processes to sup- port on-ground operations—such as manufacturing, people interactions, buying, selling, and distribution. Secured transfer and access to data from operations should be provided to relevant parties.
The key element in all this mix of interacting technology solutions is a vendor’s product’s user interface. From a conceptual standpoint, I touch on this topic here to explain the interactions between people, process, and systems, and elaborate on detailed consideration such as simplicity and usability in the implementation section of this book. End users need to use the system for the project to be successful, and accordingly, the product should support end user preferences. While certain end users (typically younger generation users) tend to periodically upgrade and transition to modern interfaces, others don’t prefer change. The latter want to locate their information readily using familiar / memorized user views. Product user interfaces should be designed to cater to both categories of end users. “Skin” is a popular term in the software user interface development community and refers to the color, fonts, borders, and other cosmetic elements of a software product’s interface. End users should be provided the option to upgrade to newer skins with significant new releases. Once the product is readily accepted by end users and serves their needs, it will sell on its own. Champion end users will naturally talk about their successes with their colleagues and promote your solution through word of mouth selling.
