50 Phrases Customer Success Professionals Hear – Part 1

Business colloquialisms are frequently made fun of for how vague they are, but they are so prevalent, that it’s always useful to know what they mean. Sometimes, it’s even necessary to use them in order to match your colleague in conversation. Customer Success isn’t the only department guilty of using these phrases, but it’s a good idea to avoid the vague ones when working with customers, so that they know transparency and specificity are emphasized in your organization, and that you’re their trusted advisor on the inside.

Generally, when we think of a Customer Success Manager, we expect them to possess the best customer management and business consultancy skills. Having a strong passion for customer engagement and expansion of customer use cases, and also impeccable relational skills that can create a win/win environment for everyone. Nowhere in the role of a CSM can you find a sales focused model. The objectives of sales focus model are meeting sales numbers and increasing market share. What comes to the surface, when we analyze the role of a CSM is that, his responsibilities are mainly customer focused. Therefore, Customer Success professionals need a robust set of tools that give them a well-rounded view of the customer throughout the customer lifecycle. They need access to best practices, libraries and playbooks that help them adopt a systematic approach to customer management.

On the other hand, a Client Success Manager (CSM) plays an essential role in developing and managing ongoing partnerships with the client base. This role is responsible for building relationships with clients in an effort to maintain a high level of client satisfaction and loyalty. CSMsl identify opportunities to optimize the use of the product. This position will collaboratively work with Implementation, Support and Sales teams.

Customer retention analysis includes strategies and analytics, whereby, data is analyzed to get a 360-degree view of your customer’s needs and behavioral patterns. This understanding of who your customers are and a clear view of their requirements is crucial to retain them as long-term users. Building a strategic vision, with a plan to holistically engage your customers will strengthen relationships and ultimately build emotional loyalty. A strong emotional connection with a brand is a bigger predictor of loyalty than factors such as effectiveness or ease. Customer retention analysis involves the application of statistical techniques to understand the customer lifecycle data such as whether they were an active user before churning, was this product a fit or misfit for their problems, were they able to fully explore, understand and use the product in the right manner and so on. The information generated by this analysis helps improve customer acquisition and retention activities