5 Problems Customer Success Teams Face and How to Solve Them

Customer success is a key goal for most businesses. If you satisfy your customers, they will remain loyal to your company bringing you continued revenue for the foreseeable future. It’s also vital to scale relationships to eliminate friction, create value and gain customers faster. 

Unfortunately, not every company attains customer success easily. This is due to a variety of roadblocks that stand in their way. This article will review common issues and find solutions that are integral to business growth. 

Problems you may face

1. A Lack of Repeatable Processes: Repeatable processes are essential to maintaining good business relations with customers. For example, a Quarterly Business Review should be taking place to determine how each account is doing so issues can be identified and improvements can be made. Unfortunately, many businesses do not keep up with QBRs which can lead to customer dissatisfaction. 
2. Reactive Rather Than Proactive: Companies that do not use repeatable processes tend to take a reactive approach rather than a proactive one. They put out fires as they emerge rather than taking steps to prevent the fires from happening in the first place. In many cases, this can be a matter of ‘too little too late’.
3. Interactions with Customers Lack Value: It’s important for companies to interact with customers on a regular basis, but it’s also essential that these interactions add value. Often, reps don’t think out customer success meetings in advance. They may be scheduled on a regular basis, but when they occur, the reps find themselves simply asking the customer if everything is okay. They fail to come up with innovative ideas that can bring value to the relationship. 
4. No Strategy or Structure When working With Different Customer Success Tiers: Many companies categorize their customers according to tiers with tier 1 customers being high revenue accounts, and tier 2 and 3 customers being lower revenue accounts. Customers require different levels of engagement according to their tier. Sadly, businesses often fail to recognize this and treat everyone using a cookie cutter approach. This can be disappointing, especially to higher tier customers. 
5. No Expectations and Accountability: Consistency can be achieved when the next steps are clearly laid out and workers are aware of what they are accountable for. Sadly, many companies fail to assign tasks and make everyone aware of their goals. This leads to a lack of consistency and a lack of customer satisfaction. 

Solutions that can help

Creating Clear Next Steps: Companies can improve customer success by laying out clear next steps including follow ups after meetings and a process and system of tasks that must be followed by each team member.

Consistent Conversations and Dialogue: Communication is key. It’s essential that conversations take place on a regular basis both internally and externally. Additionally, these conversations should bring value to relationships. This can be achieved by reviewing current activities, discussing future growth, and determining pain points that require improvement on a regular basis. 

A Centralized Workspace: A centralized workspace is necessary. It allows for the sharing of documents and keeps everyone on the same page. It also let’s everyone know who’s accountable for what tasks. 

Increased Efficiency: The right strategies allow reps to do more with less. For example, regular meetings are not a significant company expense. But they can be quite beneficial in increasing customer satisfaction. They will also save companies huge amounts of time and money they may otherwise spend putting out fires. 

Visibility of the Team’s Performance and Impact: Teams should constantly be made aware of the quality of their performance and how it is impacting the customer. That way they will know how to improve processes to increase customer success moving forward. 

Optimize Customer to Rep Ratios: Customer to rep ratios refer to how many reps are assigned to each customer account. While it’s ideal to have a variety of reps seeing to customer needs in theory, it can also lead to mixed communications and an over-utilization of the employees’ time. It’s essential to work out the perfect balance. While Tier 1 customers may have more reps working on their account, Tier 3 customers may have just one rep assigned. 

Tools Seamlessly Integrated into CRM: The technology the business uses should provide a seamless experience. Integrating tools into the CRM will allow companies to get a better handle on Voice of Customer reporting to come up with a strategy that’s best suited to customer needs. 

Getting started

The right tools can make a huge difference in customer success rates. Using a centralized workspace for communication, collaboration, and document sharing is a great next step. Having a workspace that gives you the ability to allow for the sharing of quarterly reviews, Mutual Action/Account Plans, agreements, and renewals helps develop more meaningful relationships is essential for scaling and retaining relationships.