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What is Customer Success?
It is an organizational function that helps customers get the most value from a product or service while working closely with the sales, marketing, and development teams to achieve their goals. It is a team that, like the marketing or sales team, is focused on increasing revenue.
Customer Success offers proactive reach that seeks to increase recurring and cross-sales, increase positive referrals, and improve results for customers.
Why is Customer Success so critical today?
The sales area was the first growth engine of the companies.
At the start of the 21st century, deals were still the main growth engine for B2B companies. Marketing wasn’t that important yet, as sales reps had all the power over the flow of information. At the time, marketing amounted to buying email lists, printing a company logo on pens, and attending conferences.
The service wasn’t that relevant either, as the contracts guaranteed customer loyalty, both for software and professional services companies. You just had to maintain a certain level of consumer satisfaction with a support team in a call center lost somewhere in the world.
Marketing was the second growth engine of companies
With time, the internet opened a great door to information. We found that if prospects have a choice, they prefer to do their research and turn to a sales rep only when they’re ready to buy.
These changes gave companies a new opportunity to attract potential customers much earlier in the buying process. Marketing teams grew like never before as companies began hiring professionals to write blog posts, manage lead generation campaigns, online launch ads, and build large fan bases on new social media channels.
Sales reps need, but the main obstacle to growth was no longer the size of a sales team but the number of leads the marketing team could transfer to representatives. While it was always important to satisfy the customer, companies relied on contracts for some assurance. Also, acquiring new customers was inexpensive, so it didn’t make sense for companies to spend too much budget on retaining customers.
Customer Success consolidated as the third engine of growth
Shoppers today have a myriad of options that would have been unimaginable in the past – they have more options and information than ever before, and all brands are competing for their attention. Power shifts from businesses to consumers, and customers no longer have to accept annual contracts. More and more software firms are switching to premium models. They allow customers to try the product before buying it and cancel the service at any time.
In addition, buyers are paying less and less attention: only 19% consider that sellers are trustworthy. 92% of consumers trust user-generated content (such as reviews) and recommendations from friends and family more than marketing.
Features :
There are many obstacles we face today: ad cost per click continues to rise across all channels, and users hear less of marketing messages; The leading social networks, such as Facebook, have become the kings of the business and require payment if you want to reach your audience (even if it is an audience that decided to receive your news voluntarily).
Because acquiring new customers is much more expensive than before, and it is now easier for consumers to leave a business relationship. Companies try harder to satisfy and delight their customers.
It would help if you still had sales teams to close deals and marketing teams to capture leads. However, the biggest obstacle growing companies face in advancing to the next level is not related to the size of the sales or marketing teams. But to their effectiveness in stopping customer churn while building a base. Solid of loyal and satisfied promoters. According to a study by our research team, growing companies are 21% more likely to say that customer success is “significant”. And also, compared to companies with stagnant or declining revenue.
Customer Success is not similar to Customer Service
Companies have always been aware of the importance of customer success. Still, that task used to fall exclusively on the service area. Usually a team with a low budget that was in charge of helping users when a problem arose. Attention is responsible for solving problems once they appear; it is a reaction to specific customer requests. It has been around for a lengthy period as the only place users could turn to after a problem.
One of the significant disadvantages of care teams is that members notice that the same problem appears repeatedly. They can solve the individual situation, but the organization is generally unwilling to invest enough to find a systematic solution. That is where customer success strategies come into play.