When assessing the ROI of investing in a Customer Success solution, a couple key questions you should ask yourself are:
1) Who are the key stakeholders?
2) In what ways will this benefit them?
Although these are simple questions, the answers aren’t always straightforward. When it comes to Customer Success, your goals should be to find a solution that:
1) Benefits multiple teams or user groups, and
2) Has a measurable improvement in the day-to-day performance of each user group and the health of your customers
Let’s take a deeper look at the answers to these questions as they relate to Information Services & Market Research companies, and examine why it’s valuable for companies in this space to invest in Gainsight to drive their Customer Success objectives.
Who are the key stakeholders?
Information Services & Market Research companies can have very complex organization structures — different groups are responsible for the performance of individual practices, products, or service offerings.
I’ve outlined 4 distinct user groups at these companies that can greatly benefit from using Gainsight. And although the naming conventions for these roles can differ from company to company, their key responsibilities remain the same.
- Practice Leads and General Managers (GMs):
Practice Leads and GMs own the P&L for their segment/practice and are responsible for the practice’s growth, content development, and product adoption. They are also responsible for ensuring customer satisfaction with their products or services, managing and addressing customer inquiries, and developing long-term growth strategies for their practice.
- Client Engagement Managers (CEMs) and Customer Success Managers (CSMs):
CEMs and CSMs are responsible for ensuring that customers get value out of the products and services they use. Their responsibilities include managing and directing customer inquiries to the appropriate internal resources, while also monitoring customer engagement and product usage trends over time to find opportunities to increase engagement.
- Account Managers:
Account Managers own the customer relationship at the account level, and monitor overall customer health and product usage across each individual practice. They are also responsible for conducting up-sell and cross-sell conversations to expand within existing customer accounts.
- Executives (VPs of Client Engagement, Chief Research Officers, Chief Legal Officers, Chief Information Officers):
Executives are responsible for managing key revenue and profitability drivers across all customer accounts, individual practices, products, and service offerings. Key revenue drivers encompass all customer-related data, and can include net retention, customer inquiries, consulting engagement levels, product usage, invoice history, and support tickets.
How will Gainsight benefit these groups?
As described in my previous blog post, Information Services companies’ involvement in the Subscription Economy is only becoming more prevalent. As a result, implementing Customer Success practices is becoming a critical way for them to ensure their long-term success. This is especially true given how easy it is for buyers to switch to competing providers or utilize free sources of information.
Gainsight’s solution works to support the 4 Customer Success user groups at Information Services & Market Research companies to execute their day-to-day activities and maximize their customer lifetime value (CLV).
Refer to table 1 for a detailed breakdown of how Gainsight can benefit each of these groups:
By assessing the benefits that Gainsight can have for each user group above, the question of whether or not an Information Services or Market Research company should invest in Gainsight to drive their Customer Success objectives becomes an easy one.
If you’d like to find out how your Information Services or Market Research company can leverage Customer Success, contact Max today.
