Customer success software will help you reduce churn, build lasting long-term relationships, and delight customers from day 1. This kind of software is critical to ensuring your new customers have the best experience possible – and that is an essential part of your business. As customer expectations increase each year the importance of customer success software will only continue to grow. An efficient customer success team will only drive long-term growth. But you’ll make a costly mistake if your CS only have the resources to deliver an unsatisfactory or inconsistent experience to your users. Here’s everything you need to know when picking a customer success software tool.
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Customer Success Software: How to Pick the Best
process.st/customer-success-software
Customer success software will help you reduce churn, build lasting long-term
relationships, and delight customers from day 1.
This kind of software is critical to ensuring your new customers have the best experience
possible – and that is an essential part of your business.
As customer expectations increase each year the importance of customer success software
will only continue to grow.
An efficient customer success team will only drive long-term growth. But you’ll make a
costly mistake if your CS only have the resources to deliver an unsatisfactory or
inconsistent experience to your users.
At Process Street, we understand our customers are the bloodline of our company. And if
we don’t do help them get the most out of our product, we might as well kiss these
customers goodbye.
That said, customer success isn’t straightforward work. Our CS team run like a well-oiled
machine because they have:
The knowledge to support our customers
The customer data to make informed decisions
Efficient cross-departmental collaboration
And more
All this is housed within a customer success tool that’s connected to the rest of
organization apps and creates a transparency and centralized knowledge base. But it
would be a completely different (and inefficient) story if we didn’t have this CS software.
Here’s everything you need to know when picking a customer success software tool.
Signs you need customer success software
Here are some major indicators that your company is ready to invest in customer success
software:
You need customer success software to scale business
When your organization is still relatively small, it’s easy to manage your customer base
and form stable relationships with them. But developing these meaningful connections
with your customers can become more challenging once your business begins to grow.
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Alongside nurturing your new customers, you also need to maintain existing
relationships. That’s where a customer success tool would be incredibly helpful in
managing both existing and new customer relationships.
Are you over-reliant on your CRM?
It’s typical for SaaS companies to regularly use CRM platforms. And there’s no doubt
these platforms can significantly help manage customer success work. But the problem is
that CRm isn’t designed for customer success.
You can use CRM tools for customer upselling, client onboarding, and other CS tasks but
you’re not getting the most out of your customer success efforts if this is the tool you’re
primarily using.
Why?
You aren’t supported by a tool that can offer all thcue functionalities of a customer
success tool.
Your team lacks important access to CS knowledge
Your team members might not have the right knowledge to provide adequate support to
your customers. This can leave your entire team in the dark about their patterns and
actions.
Not only does this create inconsistent experiences for your customers, but it can also
negatively affect your business. These inconsistent and inadequate experiences can cause
customers to then leave in search of a more personalized experience.
Your CS team is stressed
Your business can suffer if your customer-facing team is stressed with an overwhelming
volume of customers (and the repetitive tasks that accompany each customer
relationship). You set your team up for success when they’re given the right software.
With an effective customer success tool, your team can easily manage tasks and
streamline any recurring tasks.
Customer success software also has the power to increase personalization with limited
effort while repetitive work is eliminated. Employees can then spend more time building
connections with customers without feeling overwhelmed.
You have processes (without effective process management)
Customer success processes are crucial if you want to deliver consistently good
experiences to your customers. If you don’t use a CS software tool, you likely need to:
Construct these processes yourself
Perform them without any automation capabilities
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Conduct data entry
Manually make sure tasks are carried out (by the responsible employee)
Report metrics
You could do all this but you’ve got your own work you need to focus on. Plus, it wouldn’t
be the most efficient way. Using a customer success software would be.
You’ve noticed a decrease in upsells and cross-sells
Your team might not have an accurate of staying up-to-date with customer metrics. A CS
platform can do this for CS teams. This means reports from the CS platform can be used
to inform employees when it’s time to speak to customers about upgrading their
subscriptions.
Is customer success software right for you?
Customer success software is an amazing tool for any type of business. The real reason
you might not see value in a CS software platform is because it’s the wrong time to invest
in it.
Here’s how to see if it’s the right time to look at a CS tool for your business:
Your business is developed and you understand what your customer needs from the
get-go.
Your business is grown and you’re at a point where you might need to hire new CS
employees to manage the growing load of work.
Your customer success metrics aren’t accurate.
Your processes are documented or in place but aren’t actionable.
Most of your employees send time completing recurring tasks.
Your customer churn has radically increased.
You’re missing upsell or cross-sell opportunities.
Questions to ask yourself before you buy
Now that you’ve clearly outlined that customer success software is something your
business needs, it’s time to look at the questions you should consider before you make
your final purchase:
How will you track the results of using new customer success software?
You want to quantify the benefits of using a customer success software. That means
setting specific metric goals. The more specific you are, the easily it will be to decide what
CS software would be right for you.
Here are some metrics to consider:
Customer retention (churn rate): The rate that customers stop purchasing or
subscribing to your product/service.
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Customer acquisition cost: How mich you spend to gain new customers.
Conversion rate: How well your sales calls, inquiries, and other lead conversion
methods turn into paid customers.
Do you have the resources to integrate the customer succes software?
You might find the perfect CS software but that means nothing if you don’t have the
required resources to implement this new tool into your business. Some software
solutions can take months for employees to get the hang off.
During this time, your team wouldn’t receive all the benefits this software has to offer. Not
to mention, this training period will have your employees working at somewhat of
reduced capacity. All these aspects need to be considered to ensure that your CS solution
won’t bomb out before it fully intergrated into an organization.
Must-have features to look for in customer success software
You have a massive variety of customer success software tools to choose from. So, how
can you be sure you’re picking the right one?
Here are the must-have features to consider when picking a CS software vendor:
Integrating customer success software with your tech stack
You should have a list of wanted integrations before you choose a CS software tool. You
want to get the most out of your CS solution, and integration functionality is the deciding
factor.
By integrating your customer success tool with CRM solutions, marketing automation
software, communication platforms, and digital training tools, you can boost the
efficiency of all these different software.
The greatest benefit of integrations is that different organizational tools become more
connected. This leads to more visible data, which makes it easier to track customer churn,
satisfaction, training, growth, renewals, and product adoption.
Customer success software vendors should champion customer
success!
You want a CS tool with a dedicated support team. If you’re faced with an issue that’s
stopping your team from working, you need that problem fixed ASAP. And that can only
happen if your CS solution comes requipped with an effective support team.
But it’s not just about issues you might have. You also want a CS solution that will provide
you with a knowledge base of educational content. That could be blog posts, tutorials,
frequently asked questions. This content is a great way for you to better understand the
product you’re investing in and how you can use it to maximize your return.
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No-code platform
Your chosen CS platform will house tons of your process documentation and help you
create effective workflows from these recurring tasks. You want to easily input this
documentation into your chosen platform. That means creating personalized workflows
specifically for your business needs without writing the code yourself.
This might seem impossible but no-code platforms do just that for you. Creating a
customized workflow can be done with a drag-and-drop interface that’s easy to use. For
this reason, picking a no-code CS software platform would be an ideal choice.
Strong user-identification and analytics
The goal of each customer success team is to have each user satisfied with their product
and coming back for more. Your team will have difficulty satisfying your customers if they
don’t know who exactly your customers are.
That’s why an analytics suite should be included in the CS software you choose. You also
want a tool with robust user-identification features. This could include linking phone
numbers or emails with accounts or more advanced functions like segregation options.
With these features, your team will have a clear understanding of what content your team
should create for customers, who to target next, and how your team is performing.
Data security
You want to avoid leaking your customer’s confidential information at all costs. This can
only happen if your customer success tool is designed with effective data security
features.
When you put this security measure in place, you ensure that your business and its
customers are protected from any leaks. The customer success tools you want to look for
are ones that use encryption techniques like two-factor authentication and SSL
encryption.
5 tips to get the most out of your customer success software
Now that you know what CS tools to look for, it’s time to dive into how you can get the
most out of your investment:
Automate any manual outreaches
Your team is likely relies on email communications with your customers, as most
customer-facing organizations do. But sending emails is tedious. Especially when you’re
likely sending the same email to each customers (and having to spend time entering
relevant data of that specific customer).
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When you use a customer success software, you can streamline this emailing process with
email widget. This functionality can help you construct a email template that inputs
variable information specific to the customer. This information is automatically entered
and you can send through directly to your customer within your CS tool.
Watch for important customer milestones and news
Things happen quickly in a business environment. That can make it difficult to keep track
of your various customers’ news and milestones. You want to watch customer data that
directly relates to your product.
Your CS tool reports of various metrics about your customer. You can highlight what
metrics are “rewardable” or “problematic” and then send out consistent messages to share
your congratulations. The same can be done if you notice inactivity. In sending a message
to your customer, you’re showing that you notice and value them as users.
Keep tabs on customer health scores
Customer health scores are an excellent way to prioritize your customers. These metrics
help identify which users need help, which you can use to focus the right resources on
these customers. Without these health scores to prioritize your users, you’re at risk of
these customers churning.
As a CS team, you’re given the responsibility of anticipating the support your users will
need when using your product. Health scores provide an accurate analysis of what users
need the most help, so you can prioritize your resources more efficiently.
Integrated with other customer tools for more visible data
Your company collects tons of useful data from your customers. This includes support,
training, surveys, and usage/telemetry. But this information isn’t collected through a
singular platform, but rather, multiple sources. Because of this lack of transparency, your
CS team can suffer inefficiencies in decision-making.
That’s where a CS tool can be useful. By integrating your CS software solution with your
other work platforms, you can easily push valuable customer data into each application
and create a single source of truth. This ensures your user data is accurate and easily
accessible.
Ask for feedback from your CS employees
The best way to get the most out of your CS software is to see how it’s working from the
people who use it daily: Your customer success team.
Sending out a survey is a great way to assess how they find using your CS software.
However, open discussions in meetings could also work as long as everyone gets to
discuss their point of view. Pay close attention to what they like and what they think could
be improved.
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Effective customer success software helps boost performance
and satisfaction
Customer success is invaluable because a business is nothing without its customers.
That’s why CS teams need to be well-equipped to deliver a stellar performance to each
user. But this isn’t an easy task.
Customer success software can be what separates your team from being disorganized and
overworked to being efficient and prepared for anything.
Picking the right software is crucial to its success. And the biggest consideration to make
is the specific needs of your team and its customers. Once you understand this, you’re on
track to skyrocketing customer satisfaction.
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