Customer Success and Customer Realized Value

In the course of preparing a research survey, a key question stood out: What is the biggest obstacle your Customer Success organization faces in helping customers achieve measurable value outcomes? I thought of some options for a multiple choice format, including “We don’t have the technology to track specific usage data,” “That’s not our job /charter,” “We don’t know what our customers want in terms of measurable outcomes.” and all of them frankly scared me. For a role whose mission it is to maximize sustainable proven profitability for both their customers and their companies, to not be able to measure customer realized value is a strategic flaw. The continuing obliteration of Customer Success groups tells us that our companies don’t appropriately measure our value to them. That we can’t prove our worth in practical terms to our customers either just hangs an At Risk label on the profession.

In a conversation with a company that has an Outcome Library, a list of specific, measurable value outcomes that they offer to their customers and that they are prepared to prove, I heard some vital comments. Their CEO noted that: “Our product has great breadth now, hence it is important to align on the outcomes the customer wants from us and focus on getting them to [realize] those outcomes.” Their VP of CS continued: “we came up with 11 different outcomes which includes margin control, revenue leakage, billable utilization, faster invoicing cycle, reduction in time to value, efficiency gains and a few more. We ask customers to pick 3-4 outcomes that are important to them in the current state of their journey. We then work with them to set the baseline in terms of where they are at the beginning. Each of the outcomes are linked to a set of features within [our product.] Our CS team ensures that we are not only focused on adoption but focused on adoption delivering outcomes they and we collaboratively have agreed upon. We have automation to measure these outcomes, and we use them in our meetings with the customers.”

Adoption as a Service

The above description, in a nutshell, is an “Adoption as a Service” product that every Customer Success group should be offering to their customers on a profitable basis. Not only does it offer the customer a reliable path to their specific desired value outcomes, de-risking the customers’ investment in the technology product, the revenues it generates for the CS group are dollars and sense proof of the worth of the team to the company. It takes away the guesswork of the “bundling” approach to recouping the costs of providing customer success services. And that is just the start of the potential benefits. Selling specific, measurable value outcomes offers a solid foundation upon which to build alignment between Marketing, Sales, Product, and Customer Success.

The Question

Let’s go back to the question: What is the biggest obstacle your Customer Success organization faces in helping customers achieve measurable value outcomes? What are the barriers? Can they be overcome in your company? What would it take? Are you willing to face the challenge? I think the answers are crucial in the process of taking the At Risk label away. Do you agree?

Some related questions: Do you have a role/position at your company that does Value Architecture / Value Design, etc. that creates specific value outcomes to be offered to customers? Have you started building a Value Outcomes Library? Do you have Forward Deployed Engineers? Adoption Operations?