Why culture code is important for any company? If you’re asking yourself that question, I’m sure you’re not alone.
You may hear these words thrown around a lot, but what do they really mean? And why does company need them?
Truth to be told, I strongly believe company culture has a significant impact on the success of any business. It creates a bonding with your employees and ensures that they travel along with company until the vision is achieved. And, job seekers should look at their culture code more than anything else before they decide to join the company.
What is company culture?
It is the sum of an organization’s ethics, attitudes, vision, mission and core values. Although it isn’t a tangible asset, it’s one of the most important things about your business. Every business has a unique culture and it helps to shape your company.
Think culture code like a employee handbook that explains your company’s culture. It could be in any form like e-copy, hard handbook or video. But, it should be well documented and clearly pass on the values across the company.
Why is it important?
Your employees should look forward to going to their job. It shouldn’t be a dreaded place. Your culture should help your employees to unburden any work related stress. Basically, it should infuse enthusiasm.
What are its benefits?
Without going into too much detail, here are a few benefits of culture code
It attracts talent. Though the code is important, the employees in your organization will talk about it outside the workplace. And, this itself will attract the applicants to work for you when they feel it is the match for them.
It sets the tone for your employees. By understanding core value, vision and mission the employees will know the direction of the company and what is expected out of them. They become brand ambassadors of your company while interacting with your customer.
Happy employees mean happy environment and more productivity. When company culture facilities happy environment there is improved collaboration, satisfied employee, increase in retention and growth in business.
A culture code ensure that companies stays on course to achieve their vision. It creates a bonding with your employees and that means loyalty to an organization.
Although we understand the importance of strong company culture, many business struggled to implement an effective culture within a workplace even before COVID-19.
So, how is your organization able to implement and maintain company culture when most of us are working from home during this COVID situation? Share your thoughts in the comments section
SaaS growth rates are astonishing; just between 2015 and 2017, the number of SaaS apps averagely used by organizations doubled up from 8 to 16. This upward trend will continue as 73% of businesses have said all of their apps will be SaaS by 2020.
I wrote this SaaS Buyer’s Guide to help you understand what needs to be considered when purchasing a SaaS solution. You are about the read the last part of this series “The ultimate SaaS buyers guide”
Many SaaS organization offers 14-day or 30-day trial. So, you have got enough time to check if the product matches the business requirement. As part of the POC check the following.
Cloud Service Model
Features
Deep dive into the critical features set like this should tick the checklist of must-haves and deal breakers. Don’t compromise on the deal-breakers
Analytics
Business needs the ability to drill down the stats and make an informed decision down for the organization. Ensure that the product meets complexity of your reporting need.
Internationalization
When you have offices across global check the capabilities around internationalization and localization.
Mobile
Your application is not only for desktop or laptop devices but also on various mobile devices. Task reminders as push notification make more sense and add value.
Governance
Data Center
Mostly, data centers belong to a of third party. Verify the data center credentials and particulars. Check the policy terms with respect to who can access the data center? Does the vendor team has access to it?
Security
Apart from the physical and data center security, you need to consider the encryption methodology during rest and transit. Strict password policies need to be enforced. Does it comply with your org, country policy such as GDPR
Data Compatibility
Does the vendor allow customers to import data on to the tool and export data outside? If no, there is a big chance of vendor lock-in and it is a high risk.
Data Seggregation
Most of the time, the data is on the public cloud. So, check with the companies on how data is segregated from other business. Get the architecture plan.
Audit
The application should provide an audit trail of every changes made to the application. Also, SaaS provider has typically to comply with norms and also undergo detailed audits to ensure that sensitive data is completely protected at all stages of storage, processing, and transmission.
Data Protection
Check for the best security practices followed by the SaaS vendor to ensure that your application stays unaffected by attacks. How would they facilitate business continuity in case of attacks such as ransomware attacks and denial of service (DoS) attacks.
Disaster Recovery
When things go awry, it’s important to have a robust, targeted, and well-tested DR plan. Pay details to the RPO and RTO. Also, a few recent SaaS applications provide options for individual businesses to take their own back from the application.
Finally, we conclude
If you’re just starting your search for a SaaS product and wondering which products would fit your need, this guide is for you. Even if you’re midway or towards the end product selection, you may still want to check this guide. I have captured to the best of my knowledge all that I know about buyer experience and customer satisfaction.
Coming soon, DoyenThoughts will release a “The Ultimate SaaS buyers guide” pdf guide compiling all critical points for buyers to make their buying experience enjoyable and smooth.
Professional life, personal life – Balanced or Mixed?
Most professions in this world are not oriented with the personal attitude and personality of a person. For example, a civil engineer may be excellent at his job – planning, constructing, and so on. But, in real personal life, he may be liberal, relaxing.
There are a very small number of professions that involve great personality influence also. We can even say it this way, “these professions rely greatly on the real personality, the attitude of the persons being in those professions”. One concrete example of such a profession is “Product Support”. This role needs no personal, professional life balance because it’s already a mix of both.
What we are not talking about in this blog?
So, let’s tell you right here – This blog is not going to have keywords such as empathy, inquisitiveness to learn, problem-solving etcetera, that are used as constant keywords for product support roles.
So, what are we talking about?
This blog is going to encompass 5 elements that a product support person should have in his real life, which has a great impact on his profession. In short, it’s all about understanding the real personality of a person who aspires to become product support.
1) Thirst for winning the game.
Customer support is a game. It’s the game of happiness. An ideal product support person should have the capability to first understand the mindset of the customer, how he is talking. Normally, customers would come frustrated with the support person. This person should make his mind that the frustration is not with him but with the problem in the product. As said, it’s a happiness game. Now, it’s in the hands of the customer support to listen, grasp, find solutions for the customer. At the end of the day, he should make sure that he has turned the frustration into happiness.
So, the recruiters should look for this tendency in a product support aspirant. One who loves to bring happiness in people surrounding them, one who works to change the unhappy mindset of a person to a happy mindset is good to score.
Rating – 20% Done.
2) Lover of the product.
What? Love? Does it sound weird? Then ask these questions to yourselves, “Do we fight for what we love?” , “Do we work hard for a thing we love?”. If the answer is yes, the same ideology applies here – One who loves the product, will support it and play the happiness game for it.
Though it’s not mandatory for the aspirant to be well-versed with the product, it’s important that the recruiter should understand why the person wants to support their product. What are the things he loves about the product? How he heard about those products and so on. It’s one of the very crucial elements that the recruiters should look for in a product support aspirant.
Rating – 40% Done.
3) Being a friend or being friendly?
Would you like to be a friend or friendly to the customers?
This is another question to be asked to a product support aspirant. Though sound similar, there is a big difference to the context. If the support aspirant likes to be a friend of the customer then there is a high chance that they may get hurt during a rough stint, may be biased about picking tickets, apprehensive about giving solutions. Ideal product support should be friendly to all kinds of customers and all types of customers. Asking this question helps the recruiter understand the emotional intelligence of the aspirant and move it forward.
Rating – 60 % Done.
4) Proper/prompt communicator in general.
Normally, product support persons are required to be efficient communicators. Though it’s valid, it’s essential to first know whether they are proper and prompt communicators.
Want us to show real-life examples? How many times would we have got emails saying, “We will update you on this regard” but never would’ve got one?
Remember what we said in the beginning? The professional side of the product support person lies heavily on the personal side of them. Now, coming back here, it’s crucial to study this in the aspirant – “Are they a prompt communicator in their general life?” If this question may trigger the consciousness of the aspirant while answering, we may tweak this to be indirect. “Tell me about any incident where you were the point of contact to perform activities”, “Tell me about any event when you needed to collaborate with your friends/colleagues to complete a task”. Some questions like these will help us find and understand whether they have been a prompt communicator.
Rating – 80 % Done.
5) Affinity toward hearing stories.
Product support person would need to listen to a lot of use-cases, workflows, business models in a day. Forget about working on that. First, they should have big ears to listen to. Now, putting this into account, the recruiters should find the tendency of the support aspirant. Do they like to hear stories? Do they have an interest in knowing more about general stuff? The recruiter may tune the questions like, “Who are your friends?”, “What are their parents doing?” etcetera. This will extract the mindset of the aspirant and help the recruiters move the needle forward.
Rating – 100% Done.
You’ve got complete product support person. Now, score high on customer happiness and satisfaction with the team.
If you have reached here, then you may be also interested to know the “5 key ingredients to become a successful presales engineer”. Check this blog
Presales are an integral part of the Sales team. With the rise of digital transformation and SaaS, the role of Presales has become pivotal to business. Presales are SMEs who add value to the business (both to the customer as well as the organization) by providing expert technical advice throughout the Sales Process, thereupon influencing Sales.
In our previous blog, I have discussed the importance of presales. In this one, I would like to share the five key ingredients to become a successful Presales Engineer.
Understand the product from Customer’s perspective
There has been a tremendous shift in buyer’s behavior in recent years due to tighter budgets, increased competition, mobile habits, social media influence, unknown natural disasters and pandemics, and so on. To combat these, you need to understand why your customers buy what you sell, the value the product is going to provide, and how they make buying decisions.
So, understand your customer’s business and their respective industry trend. Assume, you are interacting with an E-commerce company, it is imperative to provide examples from their industry to establish rapport and then offer them the proof of concept on how your product could help their business.
Analyze the business with a ‘Why’.
Personally, I start any interaction with a Why? I attribute this behavior of mine to Simon Sinek. I believe that if the WHY question is addressed, then it is easy to get to the core of their business structure and requirement.
Analyze “Why” your customer needs a product like yours. This would help you to understand their requirements better and achieve the goal sooner. Having addressed this, you should be in a better position to pitch how well it will solve the challenges faced by their business.
Plan the roadmap
You have got the opportunity to get to the core of their problem by answering the WHY. Now, it is time to set the agenda right and plan the route.
Before the meeting, prepare an agenda to set the expectations right with your customer. This will help you to gather the information you will need during the business. Start working on a flowchart or mind map. This will help you, deep-dive, into your solution and keep you aligned with their customer business.
In today’s world, it is not possible to ban product demos. Customers have reached out to you to know more about the product and your organization. They want to see what the product offers. But, it doesn’t mean you have to spend the next hour or so boasting what your product can offer.
Break the ice with pep talks and try to find a common ground where you both get comfortable. This helps your customer to get into their comfort zone. Now, make demos successful by addressing the use case that was talked the most during the discovery phase. Show what is critical for their business instead of showing all features.
Winning demos begin with the most valuable part instead of building up to it.
Create your customer playbook
After the demonstration, every customer will have the question on “What next?”. Surprise them with “The Playbook”
A well-developed “Playbook” empowers and engages customers at every step of the buying journey and increases the likelihood of them reaching that winning moment. It prescribes corresponding workflows and sequences that have the highest likelihood of driving positive responses and business outcomes.
The sales playbook is a vital resource to help maximize sales efficiency.
In studying companies internationally, HBR came to this conclusion: Companies who were determined to have strong presales strategies consistently gained win rates of 40 to 50 percent in new business and 80 to 90 percent in renewals — significantly higher than average rates.
Monsterconnect.com
When you have presales with the above skills, you build a strong platform for the organization and helps the business grow.
If you want to discuss more on this topic, you can drop your comments. We will definitely get back to you.
By now, you all should have had a fair idea of the challenges faced by Buyers in the IT / SaaS market. In case, you missed my previous blogs, here is Part 1 and Part 2 of The ultimate SaaS buyers guide.
Organizations, these days – when the future of the pandemic is still uncertain – ought to be careful in their purchases. In doing so, they expect a long-term business relationship with a reliable and resilient vendor so that they get the maximum ROI.
By 2021, 73% of organizations will be using all or mostly SaaS solutions. Reference here
As a pre-sales, I have fielded questions to customers related to their business, demonstrated various products that fit their needs/requirements, handled many POC’s successfully, and guided customers until they achieve the ROI through the product/solution thus purchased. During this process, I have helped many customers overcome the challenges they faced in choosing the right product.
The choices for a decision maker are aplenty and that by itself, becomes a challenge during the buying process. Match your business needs with the software / solution capabilities is the primary motto during this process. Most vendors in the SaaS business are likely to keep the Customer Acquisition Cost to the minimum – that would mean the Salesperson will try to close the deal with minimal effort. Do your due diligence throughout the process to avoid surprises and frustrations.
Technology, Product, and Governance play a major role in the Buyer ecosystem. Let me share my thoughts on this, based on my experience. In this part, we will have a look at the technology aspect.
Technology
Understand your current eco system
It is better to understand the technology used by the vendor during the decision-making process. You will need a team of domain experts to help you during the process, lest you will have to be at the mercy of the vendor that will in turn add to your hidden costs.
Integration
Understand and review the integration capability of the application. Data should flow seamlessly between the legacy and on-cloud applications.
Most of these vendors could be focused on relatively smaller domains and this could make a customer subscribe to different products. Simultaneously, you may require data integration between certain mission-critical tools. Does the vendor provide APIs to achieve integration?
Service Availability
The Service Availability is perhaps one of the most important things to consider when signing up for a SaaS offering. Most service providers devise the SLA keeping their own best interests in mind, which makes it very important to evaluate the agreement before finalizing it.
Define Downtime
This should be part of the Service Availability. You need to clearly define what is counted as downtime. Does scheduled maintenance count as downtime? From a provider’s perspective it probably won’t, but things are different from the end user’s perspective. You obviously would not want to pay when the system is down, which makes it important to consider how the provider would compensate if something goes wrong.
Scalability
When you talk about availability, definitely you will have to consider scalability. Check the architecture with the vendor so that you ensure that there are no hiccups down the line.
Customer Satisfaction
The journey of a customer post-sales depends on customer support. So, check their support process, mode of contact, and operational hours. Are there ways to reach them during non-operational hours? SaaS organization, proactively, allocates a Customer Success Manager and Technical Account Manager when the deal value is high.
Emerging technologies are impacting business outcomes, especially in today’s unprecedented times. On-premises solutions operate in Silos and they take months of deployment. It lacks the agility, speed, interoperability, and simplicity required to tap into the business benefits of technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, etc. This is why many organizations are turning to SaaS consumption models to adopt the pay as you go model.
Subscribe to my blogs to get notified when the final part of “The ulimate saas buyer guide” is released in a couple of weeks.
When you start evaluating SaaS products for Helpdesk or CRM, there is no dearth of available solutions and the task of selection becomes tedious. Instead of evaluating all the solutions that you come across, it is better to be selective. There are a few steps that will help you find the right product/service relevant to your business requirements.
Apply the requirement criteria
You have loads of information from across the internet after the internal discussion. With the list of must-haves and nice-to-haves, start to narrow down your choice of software or solution by striking out those that do not fulfil your overall goal or requirements
Referral
Sometimes referral may work wonders. Before you jump to pick the referred solution thus, you may want to check how the solution helped improve the efficiency or increase the ROI. The problem statement or business need should be aligned before you decide on the referral.
Do the research
By this time, you should have narrowed down on a handful of products / software. Look at those successful use cases that aligns with your business requirements. Take all comments into account before you jump into a conclusion. Also, explore those solutions that businesses similar to yours are using.
DoyenThoughts did a poll on the selection methodology via LinkedIn and blog posts. 53% of the users agreed that the tool needs to meet the required criteria while 36% rely on the research.
Product Hunting
Once you have narrowed down your list of potential software/products, start evaluating each solution thoroughly. When conducting the evaluation, ensure to do the following.
Focus on long-term, not short-term
It is quite common to look at the short-term benefits and choose the most beneficial option, with little or no regard to the long-term potential of the requirement. When evaluating SaaS products, it is important to think big and look at the long-term benefits. For example, paying a little more upfront and getting a great ROI later down the line is better than buying at a lower price and regretting it.
Demo and POC
A product demo will help you to further narrow down the list. Go for a POC. All features such as workflow, automation etc, may look glossy during the technical discussion and demo, however, such features may struggle when put to practical use. Prepare use cases to be tested during POC. It is absolutely not a bad idea to go for a paid POC.
Ask the vendor to connect to similar customers
Do not be afraid to ask the vendors to connect to referral customers who have successfully implemented the product. It would be beneficial if such customers also belong to the same vertical as yours.
Do you agree with our above product evaluation technique? Help me by participating in the poll below. If you have anything else to add please share it in our comments section.
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You know your goals and the service you expect. This will help you choose the right solution. Never settle for good enough products. Go for the best that matches your business requirements.
Take a couple of minutes to answer the questions below before you proceed to read through the blog.
Have you been through a buyer experience?
Have you ever made a ‘not-so-right’ choice of a product or a service?
Are you willing to enhance the buyer experience of your customers?
Is there a scope of improvement in your software/solution procurement process?
If your answer is YES to one or more questions above, then this blog is for you. I have tried to gather all my years of IT Sales experience as a blog to help businesses and entrepreneurs for enhancing their buying/selling experience. [Your thoughts and feedback are welcome to enhance this topic so that I can publish this as a guide.]
My experience
Everyone, in his/her lifetime, is a consumer of goods/services and I am no exception to it. I decided to purchase a new refrigerator, as the existing one has functioned more than its capacity and warranty. I did research on the existing brands and models and headed to purchase one that fits my needs.
When I stepped into the store, I was surrounded by a swarm of salesmen and the manager had to step in to assign a dedicated Salesman to help me out. The Salesman showed all the existing latest models with smart features like mobile app connectivity, auto-connect to inverter during a power outage, dual door and sensor bundled with huge storage capacity, and much more. I was swayed by the smart features in this model and had totally forgotten on the model that I zeroed in on. I had to shell out a handful of my savings, way more than the budget that I had allocated for this.
A year later, to my family’s surprise and mine, we found that we have not used any of the smart features. The storage seems to be more than adequate for our lifestyle and most of the space in the refrigerator had been vacant all these days. Added to this, I have been paying heavily for the operation and maintenance costs.
SaaS buyer’s Guide
I am sure everyone had been through such an experience, on one or more occasions, with any product or service. If you are an Entrepreneur or a business decision-maker, you can draw an analogy to this incident in business opportunities. When you are looking to procure Software for your business, you should not be carried away by those smart and exciting features which do not really fit your needs. It is going to cost you more in terms of money and time, having chosen a Software that provides more than what you need. The scenario is no different when you must choose the right SaaS solution for your business. So, how do you ensure you choose the right one, without succumbing to the temptation of smart features and over promises?
This blog is a 4-part series that describes how to go about buying a product or service for your business or personal needs.
Identify your need
Firstly, try to find out the answer to this question – Is there an immediate need for the product or service? If so, what is the need? What triggered this need?
Secondly, draft the need and the requirement.
Budget
While you draft your need, keep an eye on the budget. Many products or services are left unused and have been unsuccessfully implemented due to budgetary constraints. Financial aspects of your need will help you narrow down on the potential vendors who will fulfill the requirement.
Are you addressing a pain point or improvising the process?
Identify the current fundamental issues that triggered the need for a new product/service. For example, as a start-up, I tracked my leads through notepad, spreadsheet, and email. However, as the business scaled, this was not working anymore. That is when I thought I will need a CRM that will help manage prospects and customers efficiently. Having used one, I found that the CRM software lacked automation capability, without which the work looked tedious and was prone to manual errors. In this case, an improvement in the process is necessitated.
Critical Features
List down the critical features/use-cases that you expect out of the Software or Solution. Differentiate between must-haves, good-to-haves, and so on. Deal breaker features must have to be identified and marked accordingly.
Involve the Stakeholders
This is mandatory. Identify the stakeholders who ought to use the software or service and gather their point of view. For selecting a CRM software, it is necessary to involve the Sales Director, Regional Manager, and the Sales Executives. Involve them in demos, workshops, and commercial meetings. Make them a part of the selection process.
The next part is the selection process and product hunting
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Let us see if we all are on the same page when it comes to Buyer Experience.
Trust doesn’t come with your title. It is the glue that binds a leader to her/his followers and provides the capacity for organizational and leadership success. As a leader of your organization, it’s essential that you establish trust with your team and continue to nurture that trust, for an increase in productivity, engagement, and accountability.
I have shared a few strategies that could help nurture that trust and develop a stronger connection amongst team members which is a win for everyone.
Trust by default
Human beings have a tendency to reciprocate. We do favors, give gifts to those who have done these things to us in the past.
In the same way, trust is a two-way street. You must extend trust in order to gain trust. You need to have faith in your employees if you want them to trust you. This feeling of trust from leadership empowers the employees to leverage their strength and expertise, nurtures loyalty, and improves retention. So, assign projects and tasks that reflect this trust.
Demonstrate a clear vision
Employees want to feel that they’re a part of something bigger than themselves. They look up to the leaders for vision and mission. And, a true leader will have a compelling vision that entices people to follow.
Share a vision that will energize employees by providing them with an exciting picture of the future. Get them on board with new initiatives and produce meaningful work.
As a leader make sure they’re well equipped with not just a mission statement, but a breakdown of how that translates to their team goals and objectives.
Pay Attention
Simone Weil the philosopher said ” attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity. “
It is the simplest and easiest form of leadership. Moreover, it is the foundation of trust. Yet it is underestimated, overlooked, and discounted as a true leadership skill.
The team approaches you because they believe you. Don’t turn them away. Make eye contact, smile, and listen to what they say. You may not solve their problem, but you have already given them your understanding.
Be transparent
Transparency is about communicating information at the right time and making information easily accessible across your teams.
Your employees don’t want to feel like they’re the last to know about big changes. So, keep them up-to-date with developments in real-time—even better, solicit their feedback as you go.
Own Mistakes
Mistakes are inevitable. Leaders are not immune to failure. However, they have the power to face the failures head-on. They neither avoid nor blame it on the employees.
Acknowledge the problem and work along with the team to find the best way to sort it out, how not to repeat it in the future. Taking responsibility shows that you are just as human as the rest of the team and that there is always room for improvement.
Give Credit
Just as important as owning mistakes is giving credit to the talented and hard-working employees who contribute to each and every win. Your teams come together to turn your vision into a reality, and they deserve to be recognized for their efforts.
Foster a culture of recognition. Make time to shine a light on achievements and encourage your teams to celebrate their wins.
Share Knowledge
As a leader, you would have accumulated a wealth of knowledge. Knowledge is power in any world, so share some knowledge with others. When you share knowledge, it instills confidence among your team members that they are led by the right person. They know you have worked hard to reach this position.
Teach people what you have learned over the years, so they can develop into leaders themselves. You want to surround yourself with the best people, and that’s easier to do when you share your training and knowledge.
Keep Promises
Leaders who keep their promises boost performance, enhance their credibility, inspire and engage stakeholders, and build trust; those who break promises lose credibility and trust.
When you make a promise or commit to do something, stick to it. You’ll be creating a more positive work environment for everyone.
Trust is at the heart of every relationship, and it’s especially crucial in the workplace. In fact, the primary factor affecting employee productivity is based on the trust built between the employee and the leader. Organizations that have high levels of trust have high levels of employee commitment, advocacy, and retention.
With over a decade of sales and presales experience, I strongly believe that the secret of success for a Salesperson is “Never to sell anything to customers”. People do not buy products or services, instead they buy you.
What do I mean by this statement?
A successful salesperson instills confidence and can charm everyone to sell any stuff. They usually are charismatic and passionate about their work.
“The #1 reason customers buy from you isn’t service, selection, quality or price — it’s your confidence! (Guerilla Selling)”
Most importantly, they focus to make their clients succeed by understanding their company’s mission, values, and vision. Clients want to know that you have understood their goals and business. They should feel assured that you care about them than your own sales numbers.
When the customer feels connected to the Sales opportunity, a close bonding is established. You cannot manipulate this bond. It comes out of legitimate interest and involvement and eases the gap to build a bridge between you and the client.
At this level of interest, you can sell anything to anyone. But paradoxically, it doesn’t come across as “selling” because there is no product or service at the forefront. Instead, there is a personality, an intelligent and compelling human being, developing a bond with one another.
So, how do you know when you have achieved this special bonding with your customers and clients?
Such customers with whom you have established this special bond, often approach you for advice on issues related to the service or product or business. This happens over a period of time and they will truly enjoy your company. They will be more than willing to refer you to their business associates for more business. Your relationship evolves into a form that cannot be defined by an order or a transaction.
Keep your customers close: Why customer success is important for business
The year 2020 – where normalcy is getting redefined.
No one could have imagined that the world would change drastically within a fortnight. COVID-19 Pandemic is something that the world was unprepared for. The outbreak has forced individuals and companies alike to rapidly the change the way they live and work. Many aspects of business and life are being challenged and the next new normal may look way different from what it was a year ago. Companies are doing their best to sail through the economic crisis thus generated by pandemic.
Customer success takes a new definition against the backdrop of this pandemic. Amidst the crisis, customer acquisition will be more challenging than ever before. For the near future, it is time for your business to focus on customer success. “Keeping your customers close” is the only mantra that keeps your business steady and the focus now shifts to strengthening the relationship with your customers. It is essential for your customers to know that you are there for them in the time of economic downturn and the relationship that you build during these times is going to be crucial for the long run. This is where the Customer Success Manager plays a major role.
Understand your customers
If you want to keep your customers close, you need to know them better.
Who are your customers? What is their line of business? Who do they interact with? What issues are they experiencing right now, in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic?
Businesses ought to face serious economic crisis during pandemic situations such as the COVID-19 or the economic slowdown that engulfs the world aftermath. During such times, businesses may be forced to shutdown due to rapid decline in sales, which will lead to chain of other unwarranted consequences like layoffs, discontinuation of service or product and so on. As a result, your customers will no longer need the product or service from you, thereby impacting your business as well. It is imperative that you and your team evaluate the customer impact during such crisis.
Segment your customers by industry, check their revenue pattern, sort them by priority, see who needs your help at first, address them (if not all, but a handful) with increasing business measures
Analyze the situation
The time is ideal for you to come up with the best solutions for your customer’s problem. But you should know where to begin. Start by performing an analysis. Brainstorm with managers and customer success representatives in your organization and evaluate the following.
Will your customers be able to continue normal operations, like before?
If not, how will that impact their business and their collaboration with you?
How long can you sustain with added benefits for your customers?
What is the likelihood your customer will go out of business as a result of this slowdown?
How has the slowdown impacted their cashflow?
The path becomes clearer once you have answers to these questions. As a customer success manager, use this opportunity to show that you care for your customers. Deliver amazing value and build strong relationships that will last long.
The Solution – Retention is the key
Customers will be willing to ward off all those unnecessary expenditures, may let go of temporary or extra staff, stop services and software purchases, and so on. This is where you can lend an extra arm to offer them assistance by extending your services. Your customers will appreciate the support and work that you did to help them when they needed the most. You will be remembered for a longer period.
Be proactive. Reach out to your customers in need, and let them know that you are together with them to overcome this crisis.
Offer discounts, if you can, to customers who are in deep financial crisis, until the situation improves.
Add more features free of charge, which you think is essential to run or retain the service.
Offer them a sustainable upgrade plan that will give them added financial advantages
Provide extra support through various communication channels.
A 5% increase in customer retention can lead to a 25-100% increase in profiles for your company (through referrals, upsell, upgrade or new purchase) – Source – Fred Reichheld, author of Loyalty Effect.
Retaining existing customers is the only way to keep your business afloat during crisis such as these.
Give your customers short-term free access to key modules or services to help them overcome the crisis. By doing so, they get a preview of these features and will see first-hand how it benefits them. There is a long-term benefit for you in terms of loyalty – they will be more inclined towards your business once the crisis is over.
Let your customers know that You are there for them, be it any time – either during the global financial crisis or the new normal world, that is getting redefined in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic.
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