Why Customer Success is ALL You Should Care About

Regardless of the type of industry that you're operating in, you probably have one clear end result for your business in mind: you want to create a steady stream of happy, satisfied customers who can't wait to come back for more. One of the single best ways to accomplish that goal is by focusing on customer success above all else. By making sure that your product and service not only does what you say it will but does it well, literally everything else will fall into place. Your customers will be able to accomplish their goals and satisfaction levels will go through the roof. Customer retention then becomes easier because people want to go with what they know works - namely, what you're offering.

"The simple fact of the matter is that the single best way to not only get customers and keep them is to make sure that they're successful when using what you're providing them with" says Allen Stanley, President of Best Attorney Rankings. "If you focus on taking care of your customers above all else, they will in turn naturally focus on taking care of you."

Indeed, focusing on customer success creates an environment where everybody wins and success from all angles is an inevitability.

What is Customer Success?

Customer success in general involves a lot more than just making sure that your end users are "happy." It's much more akin to a philosophy or even a bold new approach to the way that you do business. It involves making sure not only that your customers are receiving a certain level of value from the product or service that you're offering, but that through innovation and through leveraging technology that level of value is increasing all the time.

"Customer success takes a one-time customer and turns them into a loyal follower" says Greg Taylor, President of Rehab Facilities. "By focusing on making sure that your customer's needs are taken care of, you won't have to worry about them looking towards your competitors to get what they need. After all, if you've proven that you care about value above all else, why would going elsewhere even cross their mind?"

The Major Components of Customer Success

From the moment that your relationship begins with a customer, customer success needs to be at the forefront of your mind. You should always be asking yourself two very important questions:

1.      What is my customer trying to accomplish right now?

2.      What can I be doing to help them accomplish it?

 

"If you had to boil customer success down to a single idea, it's that you should be always doing whatever you have to in order to make your customer's life better at all points of the lifecycle" said Cheryl Miller, President of Best Retirement Destinations. "Does that mean focusing on the early sales of your relationship through sales process engagement? Does it mean expanding the way you're handling customer intelligence? Does it mean focusing on customer renewal and retention? It likely means all of these things, often at the same time."

Note that it is also important to understand that customer service and customer success are two completely different ideas and should always be treated as such. Customer service is all about providing support in a technical sense. If a customer runs into a problem with your product or service, customer service steps in to help them fix it as quickly as possible.

However, customer service is also a very important part of the larger idea of customer success in the first place. The customer wants to know that if they DO run into any problems, you will always be there to take care of and help them get over any roadblocks that they may be faced with.

Perhaps the biggest benefit of customer success for your business, however, is what happens when customers are satisfied. “A happy and successful customer is an expanding customer.” Explains Barbara Higley, President of Franchise Rankings. They always want to know what else you've got to offer that could help them accomplish even more goals that they may not even have realized they had. This is a large part of how your own business will continue to grow as customers turn into advocates who generate new customers who are always on the look out for new solutions as a result.