Digital touch Customer Success approach (1000+ customers)

Hi, TSIA community!

We are planning to set up an automated workflow (using the CSM platform) with no personal interactions. Our product portfolio does not have a usage statistics feature and it will not be possible to understand how products are being used on the customers' side.

Do you have any recommendations on the following:

  1. How to ensure that the customer has clarity on the Product, Solution and Services they bought from our company?
  2. How to understand the customers' goals and to ensure that they are following the plan to reach and achieve those goals?
  3. In general, how to gather feedback knowing that we do not have usage statistics?

Have anyone faced such challenges before?

Thanks in advance,

Pavlo

Answers

  • StevenForth
    StevenForth Founding Partner | Expert ✭✭✭

    I kind of think you need to fix the usage tracking problem first. We are having great success using Pendo for this.

    That said, I guess you are going to need some form of structured survey. Before you do that though, make sure you have a formal value model and know how it connects to your pricing model. Normally I would say 'know how how value, pricing and usage are connected, but ...

    Once you know that you can weave in surveys but ...

    Make sure the survey is designed so that taking the survey provides value to the person taking it. And keep the survey short and not too frequent (many people are feeling over surveyed).

  • Spencer Hancock
    Spencer Hancock Moderator | mod
    edited March 2021

    Hi Pavlo,

    I agree with Steven 100%; usage tracking is pretty much table stakes to develop a sustainable digital touch customer success strategy. With-that-said, if usage tracking is not available in your products current state, I think you'll need a strong onboarding process. I'd recommend working with your sales team to build a mechanism to capture your customers most critical reasons for buying your product. That will help you take action on Steven's survey recommendation. @Gavin O'Leary , @Ron Ozment , @Kerri Wienbeck any insights on creating a digital customer success strategy with minimal usage tracking?

  • Jeff Plumer
    Jeff Plumer Member | Enthusiast ✭
    edited March 2021

    @Pavlo Paoliahushko here is a great article on consumption analytics.

    https://www.tsia.com/resources/tsia-consumption-analytics-framework

    "In this context, we position consumption analytics as a key capability that enables organizations to proactively help their customers consume and adopt their products and services and, ultimately, maximize their customers' abilities to achieve their business outcomes."

  • I agree with the need for usage data as table stakes. To get started, you can use standard engagement metrics (email open/click throughs, web content engagement, etc.) to measure as leading indicators. I'd expect that these are out of the box metrics in your CSM platform and your website. Surveys can then be tailored based on engagement data. it's a way to get started while you work on the usage.

  • Doug Caviness
    Doug Caviness Member | Expert ✭✭✭

    Hi @Pavlo Paoliahushko, speaking of Digital Customer Success -- I just viewed this terrific TSIA TSW session recording entitled, "How to Incorporate Digital to Scale Your Customer Success Practice", by Teresa Anania, of Autodesk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7ry2KGdzJg

  • Doug Caviness
    Doug Caviness Member | Expert ✭✭✭

    @Pavlo Paoliahushko, I did an interview with a customer success leader at PandaDoc in a blog post that deals with arming customer success teams with product data, digital scale customer success and PLG. Thought it might be interesting to you based on your previous question. https://www.cleverbridge.com/corporate/building-digital-scale-in-customer-success-and-renewals-for-plg