“We’re too reactive!” was the complaint the new VP Customer Success heard over and over again from Sr. Mgmt. The Customer Success team had been tasked to retain customers and grow the installed base to capitalize on new multi-product solutions the company was now bringing to market. What’s more, the company had aggressive growth targets, and the VP’s mission was to scale operations profitably and meet the demand. Could this be done?
An Independent View
The first step was to get a clear view of the current state of the group’s operations. Could more be reasonably be asked of the current level of staffing? How were the CSMs spending their time? Were their activities effective? Would the current staff have the bandwidth to take on the increased number of activities for the new products? The VP wanted an independent view of their operation, so an experienced consultant was retained to do an assessment. The deliverable would be an impartial report and recommendations for a presentation to the C-Suite.
The engagement began with the consultant interviewing the CSMs and observing them as they went about their daily activities. The process revealed that the concern over the appearance of the Customer Success team as being too reactive was well-founded. To the VP’s surprise, the consultant showed that 48% of a CSM’s total time was spent supporting customers, not advising them. That’s because the Customer Support team was struggling, causing customers to look to their CSMs for help. The consultant said Customer Support had to be stabilized before even thinking about scaling Customer Success.
Re-Engineering Customer Support
The initial assessment led to a second project to re-engineer the Customer Support process so that ticket backlogs were eliminated. This step reduced the need for customers to escalate their issues to their CSM. Over the next six months, the consultant facilitated dramatic improvements in contact center performance, boosting agent availability 7x and reducing wait times 82%, even while handling 33% more inbound volume. This new level of performance freed up agents to offload the support burden from CSMs.
Combined with a new account tiering structure and greater job specialization, 91% of a CSM’s time could now be spent proactively working with 63% more accounts: higher CSM productivity plus more time to grow the business.
The Company: A B2B Software Company
Consulting Resource: See Category 15; Customer Support Operations on the Services Catalog page
The Outcome: Removing the Support burden from the Customer Success group, freeing up 48% of their time for more productive Success activities.
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