Hot CS Trends: Shifting from Reactive to Proactive
It’s a hot topic right now, but how do you shift your CS organisation from reactive to proactive?
Well, you won’t be able to do it overnight, so the very first tip I’d give you is to manage expectations upwards and make sure you understand quite the scope of your CS org before you agree to this.
But how do you do that? You’re a VP of CS (most likely) who’s being asked to shift the gears in CS. Your CSMs are firmly a cost centre; they spend more of their time firefighting and defending churn, and your CRO wants to get on the front foot. Long term, this is part of a strategic initiative to make CS quota carrying, I would imagine.
TL;DR: the most important thing here is to manage expectations. There’s a good chance your team are working on a whole heap of things which are broadly customer-related, but have nothing to do with customer success. You’re going to need to find new homes and owners for these, and you can’t do that overnight. Coupled with the change curve your team will need to ride out, you’re going to want to give yourself plenty of time to turn this ship.
The good news is that it doesn’t have to be all that hard. I found there were three components to getting my team to shift focus;
-> Strategic Framework for Focus
-> Value Adds and Time Drains
-> Broader team accountability
Strategic Framework for Focus
Your team are doing what they think is best every day, of this I am sure. And what I am also sure, is that they’re doing things daily on the basis of reward, that is, that they are focusing on things which have been previously important and rewarded.
So, to elicit change, you need to change the story. Build a framework for your team that outlines why and what they need to do, and if you’re a first-line manager, you might also want to include how.
For instance, if I want my team to start focussing on creating qualified opportunities to hand over to sales, I’m going to create a framework for qualifying and logging these opportunities and reviewing them with the team week by week. People will focus on the tasks which correlate to the things you ask them about, and this is crucial to managing any kind of change. What’s equally as important is that I’m not just asking people about this over and over again, I’m going to explain why this is important and give them enablement to allow them to learn how to do something.
“We need to quantify the number of opportunities which are created via Customer Success, and the volume of new business revenue which is generated through Customer Success discovered opportunities. Therefore, we’re going to use this framework to log and manage all opportunities which you hand over to sales and track them through to close.”
Don’t overthink this process, but also don’t undersell it. People need to know why they’re doing something. But ultimately, focusing on something repeatedly and frequently will elicit changes in behaviour in your team.
Similarly, when I wanted my CSMs to build expansion pipe and risk plans for renewals at least six months before the renewal date, we shifted to a forecasting motion that ran six months ahead of time.
Focus your team on what you care about. If you can, align their compensation plans with outcomes based on the metrics you want to focus on. Do this consistently.
Value Adds and Time Drains
This is a really simple way of asking your team to think about what they’re doing on a day-to-day basis. I’m going to put my neck out there and say I reckon about 30% (at least) of your team’s time is going to support tickets per day. Wild. They can pack that in to start with.
There are plenty of reasons, from customers complaining that they haven’t had a response (or a response they like) to customers not opening tickets to CSMs just trying to be helpful and jumping into a ticket. All of these things need to stop.
Shift your CSMs' mindset from “Instead of creating that ticket for the customer, why don’t you show them how to do it themselves?”... Teach a man to fish, eh.
What I guarantee will happen when you ask your CSMs to do more stuff is that they’ll have a problem with how much stuff they’re currently doing. This is about making them recognise that yes, whilst a lot of “stuff” they do they really shouldn’t have to, there’s also a lot of stuff they’re picking up which really isn’t their job. In fact, there’s a whole team of people there to reply to support tickets. They really don’t need to read them.
Time drains are tasks which they’re taking on, that they either can’t get out of or don’t have to do. Ask your CSMs to assess these tasks critically. Can they be turned into value adds?
And here’s where this gets proactive: can you turn these things into proactive motions?
“Hey, customer, I noticed you had 3 support tickets open, and two were feature requests. I’d like to arrange for you to talk to a product manager about how you’re using our tool right now, and how it’s working for you”
If a customer comes at you with a how-to question, it’s a great opportunity to add value by asking them what that unlocks for them. What are they trying to achieve by doing thing? Align this to their success plan and value goals.
Don’t waste time prepping usage reviews for customers, dig deeper to find a story in the data that will resonate with the customer. Reviewing usage data is a time drain. No one cares. Reviewing usage is vitally important for a whole heap of reasons, but you can turn it into a value add by sharing something much more interesting than just usage stats. Engage your customers on improving their results and link it back to value.
Be warned, some people, when faced with change, will prefer to slip back into comfortable jobs which they know how to do. We all do this from time to time but be prepared to coach your team on where you see them spending their time. Keep your team focused on how they can turn their time drains into proactive opportunities by adding value
Broader Team Accountability
This is where it gets tricky because some of your team's work they can’t get out of, and there isn’t a whole heap of value to add.
This stuff is your job.
One of the biggest blockers to proactive CS departments is the amount of things they have to do, just because those things are sort of customer-facing. You need to challenge this thinking.
Product configuration is often one of these things. For sure, your team have been doing it, but why isn’t it self-service, whatever it is? You’ll need to build strong cross-functional relationships with your product leaders to explore why this can’t be automated or changed to remove the burden from your team.
If you want to generate product awareness, you’re going to need customer marketing content. If you’re anything like me, you’ve been taking the prospect content and tailoring it to a specific existing customer, but this isn’t scalable. You need to work with Marketing to generate specific customer content for your team to use which is aligned with your customer’s specific segments and value drivers. It’s nice when it works out, but often, you can’t talk to prospects like you talk to customers.
Work with your team to understand what their big blockers are, and build strategic relationships with your peers to knock them down one by one.
The final thing to acknowledge here is that reactivity isn’t in and of itself a bad thing. Some of the best work I have ever done and some of the best results I have ever seen have been reactive. The trick is to find the balance.
If you want your team to shift into proactive mode, you need to focus on the future and give them the framework and tools they need to plan accordingly. In my experience, the vast majority of CSMs work in reactive mode because they simply have too much on their plate. So work out what you can take off and redistribute because that’s your job.
Finally, be clear. Be clear about why, what and how. Be clear about the metrics that matter and what you want to happen.
Blog Photo by Charlotte Coneybeer on Unsplash
