It’s no secret that there is a very wide range of activities that fall under the generic label of Customer Success. There probably still are Customer Support groups that got suddenly re-titled as Customer Success with no change in the work, or groups where the tasks are shared and the dividing lines are few. There are CS groups at the enterprise and small startup levels where the process is completely different due to the size/phase of the customers. Add in the variances coming from the needs of different industry sectors. Consider the differences between high-touch, low-touch and medium touch. This is why there are no, and there will be no, “industry standards” in the global Customer Success professional community. The only data that counts in making defensible decisions in your company is your own. How are you going to get it?
The PIN System of Process Management
An early job of mine was working for a training company that taught sales effectiveness to real estate agents and stockbrokers. One of the key points in the training was Time Management, wherein the attendees were taught about Productive time, Indirectly productive time, and Non-productive time. The PIN system in the sales environment was that Productive time was what you did directly interacting with clients and prospects when money was involved. Indirectly productive time covered those things that you did to necessarily get you into direct interactions with customers. Non-productive time was everything else. The goal was to get the sales people to the point where if they set themselves a goal, X new customers in Y time, they would know very accurately just what that goal meant in terms of their daily activities. Do you have this kind of data in order to reliably predict the same? Do you have it about your team members?
In a recent article, I asked about planning if the Sales team committed to bringing in Z numbers of new customers next quarter. What will that goal, if successfully achieved, do to the workload of your Customer Success team? How would you answer that question? Using what for proof?
The Constant Question
How many CSMs do/will I need now or next quarter/year is always being asked in various ways across all of the online discussion groups dedicated to our profession. It’s been a constant query for years. Often somebody will respond by referring to the Lemkin Rule about the two million dollar man/woman — as if that supposed Rule ever applied to anything other than Lemkin’s own companies at one time. (if then) Sorry, no. What might have worked in one company is no reason to think the same will be true in yours.
So what are you doing, or going to do, to gather and verify the data appropriate for your company, customers and CSMs? Let’s talk, or you can join in the discussion in The Customer Success Forum on LinkedIn.
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