Customer Success Play by Mark Fordham, VP Services at Central Desktop, at the 2014 Customer Success Summit.

1. Produced by
Customer Success Summit 2014
Customer Success Summit 2014
Title:
Moving beyond account
management to customer success
Presenter:
Mark Fordham, VP services at
Central Desktop
Email / Twitter
mfordham@centraldesktop.com
@cd_support
@itsmark74

2. Produced by
Customer Success Summit 2014
Won Ralph’s “Bagboy of
the Year” award with the
motto - “cans on the
bottom, eggs on top”
Lived in South Africa
for 2 years
Can flawlessly belt out
the high notes of the
popular 80s song “Take
on Me” by the band A-HA
at local karaoke bars
Founders came up with the
idea of Central Desktop
because of a flash drive
Our system is used to save
coal miner’s lives, feed yogurt
to the masses, track cow
inventories, entertain children
and adults, and run much of
MLB.com
Winner of “Stevie” award
last three years
2
About me About Central Desktop
About me and my company

3. Produced by
Customer Success Summit 2014
• 15+ years in service related
industries – CPG, agency account
services, SaaS
• 4 years with Central Desktop
as VP services
• Built out Support, Implementation,
Training and Professional Services
disciplines
• Annual renewal rate at around 101%
• Consistently hit or exceed average
of 45 NPS
• The perfect cocktail for great
service - add ingredients in
this order:
• First, add great people
• Then design the process
• Then acquire the right tools
3
What led me to Customer Success

4. Produced by
Customer Success Summit 2014
Over time, our customers have changed in size, complexity
and expectations. We needed to pursue continual
transformation to stay ahead (and catch up).
2006
2009
2011
2013
support
client services
acct. mgmt
renewals
cust success
A C C O U N T C O M P L E X I T Y
OPPORTUNITYSIZE
Our customer evolution

5. Produced by
Customer Success Summit 20145
Increasing customer complexity outpaced our
available resources and expertise
Customers were more disposed to a transactional
relationship than we expected
Every year, our customers were evaluating whether
to ‘re’ buy us. We needed to be front and center in
that discussion
Strong usage was NO guarantee for a happy or
renewable customer
No system or tool was ever going to replace the
need to develop strong, durable relationships with
our customers
Our early leanings

6. Produced by
Customer Success Summit 20146
People
• Acquired senior talent
• Trained existing talent
• Developed user community
• Rolled out CSM and Renewals Manager
Process
• Developed SLA
• Built repeatable onboarding methodology
• Operationalized NPS
• Prioritized and tiered service coverage
Productivity Tools
• Salesforce
• ZenDesk
• CD University
• JIRA
• Totango
Our response

7. Produced by
Customer Success Summit 2014
The engagement team - a dedicated team by tier
responsible for:
• Unlocking an accounts full potential (land/expand)
• Securing the renewal (renewal accountability)
• Creating value (user adoption)
7
A C C O U N T
M A N A G E R
E N G A G E M E N T
M A N A G E R
Our next adventure

8. Produced by
Customer Success Summit 2014
Shared customer goals:
8
Renewals
Upsell
Expansion
Adoption
A C C O U N T
M A N A G E R
E N G A G E M E N T
M A N A G E R
The engagement team

9. Produced by
Customer Success Summit 20149
P R O V I S I O N I N G
T O O L
Customer issue
tracking
Customer risk
abatement
+
Opportunity
harvesting
Using technology
Relationship
history

10. Produced by
Customer Success Summit 2014
• 4 month learning curve to “fine tune” risk factors
• Defining common use cases critical to tuning
risk factors
• Customers segmented by:
• Tier
• Size
• Customer lifecycle
• Renewal date
• Totango now prioritizes risk and team’s efforts
10
Using Totango

11. Produced by
Customer Success Summit 201411
Winning in 2014!
Think
Big
Start
Small
Move>>Fast!