What Is Customer Success? Understand The Concept, Its Importance, And How To Apply It In Your Company

Do you know what Customer Success is? Customer Success is the name given to the sector responsible for ensuring that customers of a product or service obtain the best possible result after purchase. It is a great ally for customer satisfaction and enchantment, and, above all, retention and loyalty. 

Here, it is worth remembering that if a company increases the retention rate by 5%, it can achieve approximately 25% growth in profits, according to Bain & Company‘s calculations.

We found another piece of data that reinforces that customer retention is more profitable than searching for new ones on the Neil Patel website. For him, focusing on acquisition tends to cost up to 7 times more for a business.

However, to achieve this loyalty, it is necessary to ensure that the customer achieves what he wants through the relationship he has with your company.

That is, it means working so that your audience has their pain and needs met and that they realize that this happens thanks to the service or product you offer.

To help you understand what customer success is and how the sector contributes to business results, we have prepared this article. Continue reading to find out: 

1. After all, what is Customer Success?
2. What makes a customer successful?
3. How to promote customer success? 
4. Customer Success and Customer Service: Understand the difference 
5. What are the importance and benefits of Customer Success?
6. Companies stand out for their Customer Success strategy

Good reading! 

After all, what is Customer Success?

To know more fully what Customer Success is, it is necessary to quote Lincoln Murphy, a world reference on the subject:

“Customer success is when customers achieve the desired outcome through their interactions with your company.”

To make this concept clearer, we can use the following definitions:

Desired outcome: something the customer needs to achieve (the real solution to their problem) and what experience will be offered to get there;

Interactions with your company: go beyond the purchase of a product or service from your business. This interaction includes all the customer’s contacts with your brand, from the search for the solution, going through the moment of purchase, after-sales, loyalty, etc.

Before continuing reading, here is our tip for 8 CS books with incredible insights on the subject. Go beyond “what is customer success” and dive headlong into the subject, preparing your business to deliver an even more complete shopping experience to the customer. 

What makes a Customer Success? 

In addition to knowing what customer success is, it is important to keep in mind the duties of the professional in the area. 

In summary, we can understand the role of the customer success specialist as being to keep the focus on the result desired by the customers and do what is possible to help them achieve it. 

But in practice, knowing what makes a customer successful is not that simple. This is because the professional takes on many different tasks in the process of ensuring customer satisfaction and building a solid relationship to retain and build customer loyalty. 

Ensure customer integration with the purchased product or service

One of the first steps of customer success in post-sales is to make yourself available to the customer to help with the integration of the purchased product or service. 

The idea is for the customer success professional to help answer questions and give tips to optimize the product’s performance according to the customer’s objective. 

Nowadays, with the help of technology, the telephone is no longer the only means of communication between a CS and the client. There are even companies innovating and creating customer success webinars to reinforce steps such as customer onboarding during service implementation. 

Follow up on the customer experience

Yes! Follow-up is not an exclusive attribution of service agents. It is up to customer success to closely monitor all the customer’s familiarization with the purchased product and demonstrate (to the right extent) that it is available for consultations and support.

As in the sales process, CS follow-up can be done through different service channels: telephone, chat, WhatsApp, e-mail, etc. 

Monitor indicators

In addition to helping customers with their experiences, the customer success professional also needs to be able to parameterize customer success rates.

To do so, he uses indicators and metrics that help compare post-sale moments and direct approach and follow-up strategies. 

Later on, we will talk in detail about some of these indicators. 

Recapture lost customers

Yes! This is also an attribution of the CS professional. By being close to the customer after sales — which, in some cases, is the last touchpoint between the customer and the brand —, it is up to this professional to identify the reasons that lead to churn and devise strategies to “refish” strategic consumers. 

Identify new sales opportunities 

Being in contact with the customer after the conclusion of the sale is quite an opportunity to perceive openings to indicate new products or an upgrade in the purchased product. They are called cross-sell and upsell, respectively. 

How to Promote Customer Success?

Now that you know what Customer Success is, you must be wondering how to promote it in your company, right?

In general, Customer Success is based on three pillars: engagement, churn rate (cancellation rate), and metrics.

Engagement

The level of customer engagement with your product or service depends a lot on what you offer.

For example, a customer service solution tends to be used daily. One for stock control, depending on the size of the company, may have the right day to be used.

However, customer success is only achieved when he understands the value of the proposal your company offers and how much using your solution regularly helps to solve their problems.

Churn

Churn, or cancellation rate, is another important factor to be discussed when trying to understand what Customer Success is.

This is because it is indicative of how many customers are giving up using what is offered by your company. That is, precisely the point that needs to be modified with this strategy.

Here, it is worth remembering that a customer does not decide, overnight, to give up on some service. This is a possibility that crosses your mind long before the final decision.

An example of this break in a relationship can be the service received. According to Neil Patel, 71% of consumers tend to end their relationship with a brand when they are treated badly.

One way to identify points like this is to closely monitor the customer journey, identifying patterns of behavior and, in this way, being able to anticipate problems that could lead to cancellations.

Customer success metrics

Another important tool to promote Customer Success is metrics.

These indicators help, among other points, to check how the customer’s relationship with your product or service is, what can be improved so that it achieves more and more results, etc.

Several metrics can be applied, according to your business. However, the most common ones are NPS, Health Score, Expansion and Activation:

• NPS (Net Promot Score): used to check the degree of customer satisfaction and retention;
• Health Score: helps identify the “health” of the customer, that is, who is at greater risk of cancellation, who needs more attention, who is the most engaged, etc.
• Expansion: is the rate that measures the increase in recurring monthly revenue; 
• Activation: Identifies the number of customers actively using the solution.

, in addition, it is interesting to mention that companies that know what Customer Success is and its need, usually have an exclusive team for this function.

Thus, these professionals are focused on promoting customer satisfaction, helping them to obtain the best results and the best experiences with the solutions offered by their business.

Therefore, some duties of the Customer Success team are:

• Make, in the best possible way, the integration of the client to the offered solutions;
• Seek to avoid cancellations, seeking to identify the reasons for reversing them;
• Cultivate a relationship of trust and empathy;
• Promise only what can be delivered and ensure that it happens.

Customer Success Tools

A great ally in the sales process, technology also helps to understand, in practice, what customer success is and how to optimize the service offered to the customer. Choosing the best customer success tools can help your company manage and optimize its customer success strategies by analyzing information during touchpoints and detecting their degree of satisfaction.

Having the help of good customer success software is essential to plan assertive actions focused on the needs of each client in a personalized way.

Some examples of customer success tools are CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software and a ticket management platform, which helps organize customer demands and resolve them. them with agility.

Customer Success and Customer Service: Understand the difference 

It is not uncommon, when knowing what Customer Success is, to confuse it with CS  or Customer Service. However, these two sectors have very significant differences.

The first is that Customer Success is usually a more active job, in which your company seeks out the customer both to engage them and to identify points in the service offering that need to be improved.

The CS is reactive, that is, it is the consumer who contacts the company whenever they need something, whether related to a complaint, request, or guidance.

What are the importance and benefits of Customer Success?

But to learn more about Customer Success, it is also important to talk about its benefits, which end up linked to its importance.

Promoting Customer Success, in addition to retaining existing customers, also helps to win new ones.

According to Strikedeck, 1 satisfied customer usually tells 9 people how happy they are with the solution they found. This action, in turn, can lead to the acquisition of new customers.

The same research shows that word of mouth is the main factor behind 20-50% of all purchase decisions.

As for loyalty, Strikedeck found that:

• On average, loyal customers are worth 10 times more than new ones;
• 2% customer retention has the same effect as 10% conversion;
• 48% of consumers say that the relationship established in the first purchase determines loyalty or not.
• Regarding the impact of the Customer Success strategy on the consumer, 55% say they would pay more for better experiences.

Companies stand out for their Customer Success strategy

As we said, according to Lincoln Murphy, the customer’s desired outcome is the sum of the required outcome and the right experience.

Considering this, which companies understood this formula and can be seen as good examples of Customer Success?

Netflix

One of the founders of the world-renowned Netflix, a provider of movies and television series via streaming, realized that the relationship between customers and rental companies was bankrupt after having to pay a fine for the delay in returning a tape.

With that, the idea of ​​launching a platform where people could watch what they wanted, as many times as they wanted and without worrying about deadlines, solving one of the biggest pains of those who used the old service.

Nubank

The well-known digital bank stands out in terms of Customer Success due to its more humanized service, until then uncommon among financial organizations.

Its Xpeers, as the attendants are called, are responsible for carrying out each service in a unique way, maintaining total focus on Customer Success.

Watch the following video to understand how Nubank delights its customers throughout the purchase journey with “WOW moments”: 

Spotify

Offering music, podcast, and video streaming services, Spotify joins this list by allowing customers to create their own and fully personalized playlists.

With this, your audience can meet their “musical needs” with a few touches on the screen, in addition to having a wide range of music and content that they can listen to whenever they want.

After all this information, can you see how Customer Success has become a major differentiator for the businesses that develop it?

But to achieve good results, it is also important to have the right tools.

Zendesk offers a variety of customer service solutions. You can use the tools both together and separately. Visit the Zendesk website and learn about them all.