A few words about managing customer success

In our post ‘Seven Deadly Sins of CRM Adoption’ we covered major impediments on a way of successful implementation that are linked with user adoption. The symptom of these problems is a sustainable explicit or hidden resistance of employees to work in a CRM solution.

In today’s post I want to share a solution that really helps to solve this issue. I am pretty sure about this, because we have been using it for about a year. In our case there was no need to force users work in the system. The main challenge for us was to make people use all the features that our solution provides, including user customization and reports.

That is why we came up with an idea to create a Customer Success Management (CSM) department that will continuously and systematically teach our customers how to use the solution to reach its full potential.

Why not to use training department or service desk department for this purpose? Well, there are three big differences between CSM and old-fashion way of helping customers.

1. Service desk expects a problem to come, CSM is about to vanish the possibility of problem to happen. A well-trained user does fewer mistakes, and has fewer chances to get in trouble.
2. CSM training goes far beyond standard training classes. These classes are usually made during an implementation project. Our CSM team helps users long after they started using our solution and this help never ends.
3. CSM service is a lifetime option and is a part of our Premium Technical Support Package. Once you became our customer, you can always count on our CSM team.

Indeed, the company pays for entire department that doesn’t generate profit. But a CSM team generates more valuable fabric – extremely positive customer experience. When a user starts working in BPMonline solution, he or she gets more than just a tool – they get a firm assurance that they can always ask for help, and a CSM staff member will help them find a solution from any problem. This is more than just software, this is trust-worthy relationships between business and customer. That is what every company strives to build. As a result, we have drastic growth of user adoption rate, as it was planned.

BTW, 2,3 October in the National Hall, London Olympia at Call Center Expo you can personally talk to people who brought the idea of CSM into life. They will gladly tell you all aspects of this. Don’t miss this opportunity.