If you’re looking to turn your Customer Success (CS) team into a proactive, scalable, revenue-generating machine, then don’t sleep on Hubspot’s new podcast, This is Growth.
Hosted by Daphne Costa Lopes, Director of CS, Hubspot, This is Growth helps SaaS businesses scale using customer-led growth strategies. The most recent episode explores the art of defining and measuring customer value—featuring our own expert on the subject, Tori Jeffcoat, Senior Manager, Marketing Strategy, CS and AI, Gainsight.
If you’re the TL;DL type (Too Long; Didn’t Listen), don’t worry, we got you. Let’s dive into the main points.
Defining Customer Value
To define customer value, you first have to ask: What does success look like to your customers? Success is more than just a checklist of features adopted or a routine engagement—it’s the tangible business outcomes that customers achieve with your help.
These tangible outcomes include quantifiable efficiency increases, booked retention and expansion revenue, or even a reduced cost to serve (CTS). To nail this down, you need to get up close and personal with your customers’ business processes and challenges. Focusing on the customer’s needs and aligning your strategy with their overarching business metrics is essential to defining customer value.
Additionally, you need clear communication and documentation of customer outcomes across teams to help ensure that the customer experience is smooth from the first interaction through the entire customer lifecycle.
Measuring Customer Value
Okay, so you’ve defined what value means to your customers. Great! But how do you know if they’re really feeling the love?
Spoiler: It’s all about the metrics. To measure customer value, dive into usage stats, satisfaction scores, and health indicators. For the more adventurous, aligning customer-specific business metrics (like sales growth or operational efficiencies) with your product can be incredibly enlightening.
Regular Executive Business Reviews and Value Reviews are your best friends here. They provide a forum to celebrate wins, adjust strategies, and keep that value proposition as shiny and appealing as ever.
Scaling Up While Improving Team Performance
Growing your Customer Success team doesn’t just mean hiring more people. It’s also about smart scaling with systems and tech that amplify your reach without diluting quality. The magic happens when digital and human interactions mesh perfectly, creating a customer experience that feels both intuitive and personalized.
How can you achieve this at your company? Automation and AI.
Using a Human-First AI approach, you can automate routine tasks and allow your Customer Success Managers (CSMs) to focus on building extraordinary relationships. But that’s just the tip of the AI iceberg. By using thorough health scoring and AI analysis to foresee customer challenges, you can scale your CS team while positioning them to proactively reach out to customers with solutions before the account ever becomes a churn risk. This forward-thinking approach not only prevents issues, but also deepens trust and commitment from your customers.
TL;DR? Key Takeaways You Don’t Want To Miss
If you skipped to the bottom or scanned this post because you’re the TL:DR type, here are the clear takeaways to consider as you evolve your CS strategy to optimize customer value:
- Cohesiveness and Consistency: Ensure customers receive a uniform experience that builds trust and satisfaction across their entire journey, including hand-offs and interactions between Marketing, Sales, and CS.
- Aligned Messaging and Outreach: Improve customer retention and encourage product adoption by delivering consistent, relevant messages online, offline, and in-app.
- Investment in Digital Tools and AI: Determine how Digital Customer Success, inclusive of AI, can get incorporated into your approach. Digital CS has the potential to increase CSM capacity by 50%, enabling them to focus on higher-value interactions, while enhancing personalization and customer engagement.
- Flexible Service Options: Digital and AI tools enable self-service options so customers can find quick solutions, enhancing your efficiency and scalability. But, if a more hands-on approach is required, think about tiered-options with paid plans that support your staffing and revenue needs as you grow.
Ultimately, customers should never feel your org chart. Every experience should feel cohesive, focused, and customer-centric. In this way, you can create experiences that are not only efficient, but also deeply rewarding for you and your customers.
Learn More
Ready to take your customer-led growth strategies to the next level? Join us for our webinar series Empowering Teams with The Human-First AI Playbook.
