But what, exactly, do you need to know about each type of customer?

Look beyond buyer personas

Buyer personas are commonly used to describe the types of people who are likely to buy from you. The problem is, personas are primarily a selling tool—so they aren’t designed to be useful after the initial sale. They don’t offer the right insights to help improve the customer experience, build loyalty, or provide the right support at the right time.

For that, you need to understand customers on a different level—their relationship to your company or product, their buying behaviors and motivations, and what makes them happy. While every customer is different, they often share certain characteristics that can help us group them into broad categories that we call types of customers.

Here are six of the most common types of customers, along with recommendations for meeting their unique needs.

6 common types of customers

1. New customers

New customers are those who have just joined your customer base for the first time. When a new customer makes their first purchase, they tend to be more engaged and more receptive to your message than at any other time in the customer relationship. So be sure to make the most of every touch point.

First-time buyers have some unique needs, but they also present unique opportunities. This “honeymoon period” is your best chance to reinforce the purchase decision, build loyalty, and set the stage for repeat business. 

How to embrace new customers:

• Welcome them properly. A well-crafted welcome email (or email series) can help new customers feel appreciated, provide important product information, and ensure they know where to go for help.
• Set them up for success. New customers often need help learning how to use your product or service. Self-serve onboarding resources like walk-throughs, blog posts, demos, and tutorials can help new customers understand your product better and increase stickiness.
• Make help available. There will inevitably be questions your onboarding doesn’t address, so customer service is a must. Make sure your contact information is prominently displayed in all new customer support materials.
• Deepen the relationship. While this probably isn’t the right time for an upsell, new customers can be great candidates for future testimonials, product reviews, and case studies. Build feedback requests into your new customer communications to help identify happy customers who might be willing to sing your praises soon.

2. Potential customers

Potential customers—also known as “lookers” or “prospects” —aren’t actually customers yet. They’re gathering information and exploring their options before making a buying decision. Since they haven’t made a purchase, they’re still somewhere toward the middle of your sales funnel.

Lookers may not be ready to buy yet, but they’re typically looking for a specific product that meets a specific need. That interest level is what separates potential customers from casual website visitors.

The following are some things you can do to move potential customers deeper into the sales funnel and assist with their decision-making.

How to convert potential customers:

• Make a great first impression. You need to create the right experience for your website visitors if you want to turn browsers into buyers. Start with beautiful design and a good user experience (UX), then remove any elements that could be confusing or distracting—like pop-up ads and complex navigation.
• Demonstrate value. Potential customers already have some degree of interest in your product or service, so make it irresistible! Assets like white papers, testimonials, and case studies can show the benefits of your offering without making an overt sales pitch.
• Nurture warm leads. If your potential customer downloads a resource or fills out a contact form, be sure to follow up on that touch point. Adding them to a nurture campaign gives you more opportunities to share information and demonstrate value.
• Offer to help. Make it clear that you’re available to answer any questions a potential customer may have.

3. Impulse customers

Impulse customers make buying decisions in a snap. They are highly emotional buyers who typically don’t spend much time researching their purchase—so they don’t need to be “sold” with a compelling value proposition.

When the mood strikes, the best thing you can do for an impulse customer is get out of their way. Here are some suggestions for appealing to this valuable customer segment.

 How to influence impulse customers:

• Keep things simple. Impulse buyers value an easy and enjoyable shopping experience. The fewer steps required to complete a purchase, the less likely they will lose interest. Remove distractions (like pop-ups) on your landing page and expedite the checkout process with streamlined forms and autofill functionality.
• Offer timely upsells and cross-sells. Once you know what an impulse shopper likes, upselling and cross-selling offers can help you capitalize on their urge to buy. Consider adding “related product” recommendations to various touch points, including the checkout screen, order confirmation, shipping notice, and follow-up emails.
• Enable self-service. Impulse buyers don’t always read the fine print, so they’re more likely to need help with returns and exchanges. Anticipate these interactions and provide easy, self-service processes to keep impulse customers happy (and reduce customer support tickets).

4. Discount customers

Discount customers are the polar opposite of impulse buyers. They know what they want and they recognize the value of your product, but they’re willing to expend a lot of time and effort to find the best deal. Bottom line, they refuse to pay full price.

It’s hard to cultivate loyalty among bargain hunters, as they’re likely to drop your product or service once the discounted pricing expires. Discount customers can be tricky to manage, but here are a few tips.

How to satisfy discount customers:

• Explain the deal. Most discount seekers enjoy research, so give them clear and complete information about the terms of your deal. Make sure they understand exactly what they’re getting, in terms of discount pricing and/or increased value.
• Deliver exceptional service. This is not a customer who’s just going to “let it go” if a coupon or promo code doesn’t work properly. Keep your customer support team up to date on the details of every promotion so they can ensure a smooth transaction every time.
• Provide added value. Before your discounted pricing runs out, reach out with a new or extended offer—especially if it’s something they can’t get anywhere else. Going the extra mile might be enough to keep the discount customer satisfied.

5. Angry customers

Whatever your business, angry customers are inevitable. And while they may be difficult to handle, unhappy customers are a valuable source of feedback. When managed properly, their complaints can uncover critical flaws in your product, service, or processes.

It’s important to remember that angry customers are frustrated for a reason—and delivering good customer service can turn angry customers into your biggest fans. Here are some tips.

How to handle angry customers:

• Have a plan. A confident, positive approach can go a long way toward defusing a difficult situation. Make sure your customer support staff is well-trained, so they aren’t caught off guard by angry customers.
• Practice empathy. One of the most effective ways to handle an angry customer is to simply hear them out. Try to see things from their point of view. Wait to offer a solution until you fully understand the issue, or the customer may end up feeling dismissed.
• Take appropriate action. The resolution to a problem should always fit the circumstances—whether that’s a refund, a replacement, or even a letter of apology. For example, a discount on future purchases will only frustrate a customer who never received their order.

6. Loyal customers

Loyal customers are the gold standard for any business. They love your company and your product. They make repeat purchases year after year. And if you’re lucky, they’re also devoted brand advocates who share their positive experience at every opportunity. 

That said, customer loyalty should never be taken for granted. Long-term customer retention requires deliberate effort, to ensure your fans don’t lose interest over time.

 How to retain loyal customers:

• Highlight their success. Featuring your best customers in a spotlight article or case study can help to increase their exposure, while providing you with a valuable sales asset. You may also consider offering an incentive for referrals and testimonials.
• Invest in loyalty programs. Offering a loyalty discount or bonus program can help to strengthen a long-term relationship. Depending on how they’re structured, loyalty programs can also be a valuable source of behavioral and purchase data.
• Learn from your best customers. Ask for feedback from long-term customers. Find out about their experience; ask how they use your products. Then apply your learnings to improve the customer experience for others or shape future product enhancements.

Delight every type of customer with a customer-centric solution

Today’s customers want relationships, not transactions. At the end of the day, knowing each customer at an individual level—and giving them what they need—means having the right data. From basic contact information and purchase data to deeper insights like customer behaviors, attitudes, and preferences, the right CRM puts customer data at your fingertips so you can deliver an exceptional experience, every time.

Insightly CRM was designed to help teams build lasting customer relationships through a simple, scalable platform. Insightly’s unified solution aligns cross-functional teams like sales, marketing, and customer service on a single, shared data platform with a single customer view. The result? Unprecedented transparency, better decision-making, and a seamless end-to-end customer experience – for all types of customers.

Get started with a free trial of Insightly CRM today, or request a personalized demo to see how it can help your company achieve its business goals. 

The post 6 Types of Customers and How to Delight Them appeared first on Insightly.

If your current CRM isn’t working as well as it should, making a move isn’t easy.

Despite the compelling reasons to switch, organizations continually find themselves settling for what’s familiar. The simple truth is that switching CRMs can feel risky and costly at first glance – which means staying put feels like a safer choice than taking this leap into uncertainty. But flip that script and think about what you’re missing out on by staying.

Why switching CRM can be a good thing

If you’re looking into a new CRM, chances are you are experiencing some or all of the following issues:

Frustrated end users – It’s hard to gain value from your CRM when end users aren’t happy. Spend time to understand the concerns of your end users. Whether you stay with the status quo or try something new, end users must feel comfortable with your CRM. If they don’t, you’re fighting an uphill battle that you can’t win.

Constant data roadblocks – Getting data flowing into your CRM seemed like a monumental achievement. Keeping it up to date has proved to be even more complex. Integrations aren’t cheap to build, What’s worse is that they always seem to break at exactly the wrong moment. 

Unavailable or restricted features – It’s not a new story. Your plan level doesn’t include that particular feature. And, since the vendor doesn’t publish its pricing, you’ll get to sit through several more pitch presentations, only to learn that you can’t afford the features you need most. 

Disillusioned administrators – You demand a lot from your CRM administrators. With so many custom integration projects, data synchronization issues, and other fires to put out, delays are commonplace. Requests for updates/dashboards/reports are always backed up. All of this puts unnecessary strain on your administrators.

Stagnant product development – When was the last time your CRM vendor released an innovative feature? Wouldn’t it be refreshing to have a CRM partner that actually cares about your success? One that understands your business and designs (and thoroughly tests) solutions, aimed at making your company more profitable?

Negative (or questionable) ROI – Measuring ROI from your CRM (whether negative or positive) can be a multi-faceted endeavor. Developing a cost-benefit analysis can seem daunting, which is why many in your situation take the path of less resistance and stick with the status quo. Do some digging to see if your CRM has a negative value proposition. Your finance team can help. CRMs are priced per user and it can vary; pricing can be anywhere from $12 to $300/month. You’ll need to consider the size of your business. If it’s one of your biggest bills, chances are you may be overpaying. 

Preparation and planning are key

Whether you’ve already decided to leave your CRM or are just exploring options, one thing is clear—the status quo is not working. Having invested time, money, and effort, your leadership might be wary of change, dreading the entire data migration to a new CRM and worried that it won’t be as scalable or powerful as your current CRM. These are all valid concerns, and you’ll need help to navigate the decision-making and buying process with knowledge and confidence. You’ll need to approach this like any project – getting a plan together, selecting a new CRM, running an implementation program, and staying on track. 

16 steps to switching your CRM

Unlike most software investments that are department-specific, a CRM touches nearly every aspect of your business, so there is a higher level of complexity and accountability to consider. Every company and situation is different, but the steps below are universally applicable to organizations in this situation. 

Before Switching

This is the phase where you lay the groundwork for a successful transition. 

1. Assess your current situation

Put together a plan for soliciting feedback from across the organization. You’ll probably get a mix of detailed and brief responses. For a more data-driven approach, design a brief survey that addresses the common pain points, such as disorganized information, poor client and supplier management, inefficient collaboration with team members, and difficulty managing projects. As you collect feedback and begin to analyze the data, you might notice a few common threads. Consider using the following categories to group ideas, issues, and feature requests:

• Important features
• Cost and licensing
• Scalability
• Integrations
• Support. 

2. Prepare for CRM switching costs

Monthly subscription fees – If you’re already using a cloud-based CRM, there’s a good chance that you already budget for this. On the other hand, if you’re using self-hosted software, it’s important to note that most CRMs these days are priced on a monthly or annual subscription model.

Infrastructure & device upgrades – Do you have enough bandwidth, or is your WiFi connection somewhat spotty? Is it time to upgrade your sales reps’ outdated smartphones and tablets? The best CRMs offer a variety of desktop and mobile interfaces, so you’ll want to give your team the best connectivity and mobility possible. 

Data accessibility costs – Some CRMs make it difficult to export your data. Others offer export functionality, only to output a file that requires significant modification and formatting. Check to see if your current vendor permits (or charges extra for) on-demand data exporting. 

Data import & de-dupe costs –  Some CRMs provide in-depth data migration guides and concierge onboarding services. Other software vendors provide minimal documentation or community-only support. Quality of support will definitely impact your team’s ability to make a smooth transition.

Early cancellation penalties – Does your current vendor agreement demand an early cancellation penalty? If you prepaid for a full year, can you request a partial refund? 

Training & onboarding expenses – Who should have access to what? Should you train everyone at once? Or, does it make sense to do a series of several role-based sessions? How much in-house documentation will need to be updated as a result of the switch? There are costs associated with training that you should anticipate.

Downtime risks – How confident are you that your team could guarantee minimal downtime? Do you need to bring on additional resources to ensure a seamless changeover? Each day spent between CRMs could translate into untold lost opportunities.

3. Get internal buy-in

It’s not possible to overstate the importance of getting buy-in from as many people as possible. Without buy-in the CRM switch will fail. 

Decide on who is going to be involved in the switchover process. Consider forming a cross-functional team that includes senior leaders along with mid-level and frontline users, so you have both big picture and daily user perspectives across different business lines. Make sure to include current/future CRM administrators and an IT person in your CRM needs assessment task force. It’s also helpful to have at least a couple of outside-the-box thinkers on the team. 

While you need a cross-functional team to collect feedback and execute the plan, you also need someone who will rally the troops, hold everyone accountable, and ensure successful delivery, i.e. someone who will own the project. This might be someone from your PM team, your lead IT resource, a sales leader, or a data and operations manager. When selecting a project owner, look for someone who is detail-oriented but also understands the bigger picture and is a good communicator.

The person or team who recommended the current CRM (or the current software being used as a de facto CRM) may be the toughest nut to crack. Ensure these people feel included in the discussion and that the research and effort they put into the initial decision is validated and harnessed for this new project. Perhaps some of the same issues still exist, or the issues have merely shifted. 

4. Define your needs

It’s likely that people have special requirements and needs that they couldn’t fulfill with their previous CRM. Based on steps 1 and 2 above, your team should have a clear list of these needs. It’s important to know what the new CRM will bring and it will help with internal buy-in.

This guide contains a CRM needs assessment checklist that can assist.

Having acquired an in-depth understanding of your needs, you’re in an excellent position to begin comparing vendors. Vendor selection typically starts by identifying those solutions that fit within your cohort group. If you’re a growth-oriented company with 50 or so employees, you wouldn’t want to waste your time on systems that only support a handful of users. Likewise, you probably shouldn’t consider systems designed (and priced for) Fortune 500 companies or systems that are actually ERPs (enterprise resource planning systems). 

So, how can you quickly identify CRMs that truly fit your business? Word-of-mouth referrals and online research are a good start, but SaaS (Software as a Service) vendor trust maps can be even more beneficial (see TrustRadius, G2 and similar vendors.) As you narrow your vendor list, drill down and seek comparative reports that aggregate candid feedback from actual users. What are users saying about your “must-have” features? Which vendor seems to check the most boxes?

Set up demos with the most qualified vendors, consider the budget and then have your selection team rank their choices. The top vendor will likely rise to the top for the whole group.

5. Set your success metrics

Increasing sales is an admirable goal, but is it specific enough? Probably not. Just because you have a new CRM, there’s no guarantee that it will magically impact revenue – especially if goals remain vague or unknown. Do some team brainstorming with the expressed intention of defining (or refining) top-level CRM goals. For example, is a 20% increase in cross-sell revenue feasible this year? Could your implementation team cut project-related expenses by 5% over the same time frame? Challenge your departments to consider lofty, yet attainable KPIs. A KPI should be more than just a buzzword. Establishing best practice KPIs will help your company monitor progress toward the achievement of its goals. But remember, defining a bunch of KPIs offers minimal value without transparent reporting. Your CRM should be able to help with that. Check to see if your CRM offers a library of pre-built reports and dashboards. Get to know your CRM’s reporting interface. You might be surprised by the many ways you can slice and dice the data. 

Bring these success metrics to each demo and have your sales rep talk you through how exactly this solution fits your needs.

Then, sign your contract.

6. Tell your Sales Reps to clean their data

Think of this transition as a ‘spring cleaning’ of sorts. You’ll do a global data examination in Step 8 below, but before that can occur, you’ll want to ask your reps to clean up their individual records. You may ask a sales leader to set time with each rep to do this process with them. Encourage them to get rid of dead opps, be realistic about timelines, and clear out duplicates. It will make the first few weeks of the new CRM much more efficient. 

7. Communicate on the migration date

When choosing a migration date, consider end of month/quarter/year timeframes that may make for an easier transition, but don’t draw out the process any longer than it has to go. Consider a brief period when systems may run in parallel. Also, plan a final cut off date when your old CRM will no longer be accessible. (Don’t panic about this. You can store the data in a file in perpetuity.)

Data migration

8. Clean and prepare your data

After your reps have made a pass at data clean-up for their own records (step 6 above), it’s time to act globally. A new CRM is your opportunity to start fresh and leave the junk behind. Bad data creeps in over time. Common examples of bad data include duplicate records, unused custom fields, overlapping tags, confusing dropdown menus, and various hacks/workarounds. Before switching CRMs, challenge your team to identify only those records, fields, and objects that are truly needed. You can always save the “extras” in a CSV file, in case someone needs that data later. You can easily clean your data in your new CRM, but it’s best to start with a clean slate. Taking a somewhat minimalist and deliberate approach could offer additional clarity, reduce confusion, and expedite CRM success. 

9. Export your existing CRM data

When it comes to migrating data, you’ll start with an export of your old CRM data. Your new CRM should offer a migration tool that transfers all data for all fields from all standard objects, such as calendars, tasks and events, emails and notes, leads, accounts, users and roles, contacts and opportunities. 

10. Import your data in the new CRM

Most modern CRMs will have a migration tool that imports exported CRM data into your new instance. You should not have to import the data manually or do any mapping. The migration tool does all the hard work for you so you can have a smooth transition. Great measures must be taken to preserve all existing data relationships you have in your old CRM and migrate your data over with high fidelity. If the set up is done properly, this step should be a breeze. Log in to your new instance and start to look around!

11. Set-up your integrations

Your data is in…great. You know that integrations are just as important as data. They ensure everything keeps working together without disrupting people’s current habits and tools. In your plan, you identified your integrations, so now it’s time to link your new CRM with other apps in your business. Depending on the CRM you choose, this can be a long, technical process, or it can be a ‘drag and drop’ no-code or low-code experience. However you accomplish it, you must test these integrations as part of your migration process. Common integrations to HR apps (e.g. BambooHR), communication tools (e.g. Slack), and sales tools (e.g. Docusign) will need to be up and running immediately.

12. Verify everything and test

You cannot send people on the new CRM if you are not 100% sure everything works as intended and everything promised is there. Your project team’s individual areas of expertise should come in handy here. Each team member should be responsible for testing the CRM and integrations for their team. Then, each team member should walk through the test with another team member as a back up. This adds a layer of accountability.

13. Make the switch

If all of the above steps are followed, the actual cutover should be fairly smooth. People will start work one day and be in the new system. You may run the two systems in parallel for a while, just to ensure that the data is all migrated. 

Just After Switching CRMs

14. Onboarding and training

Every CRM is different. Although there may be some similarities between systems, your end users are bound to encounter countless differences. These differences inevitably create questions – and, if not answered, can cause confusion. Be proactive and put together a rock-solid training and onboarding plan. If you’ve picked a good vendor, you may be delighted by their robust support documentation and user community, which definitely helps.

You’ll want to subscribe to a “just in time” training philosophy where users are trained as close to the cutover date as possible. Experts say they need to get hands-on with the system just after the training to increase the rate of adoption. Plan multiple sessions and record them for those who can’t attend.

If there are specific areas or terminology where the new CRM and the old differ, it may be a good idea to have a ‘cheat sheet’ of sorts to highlight those trouble spots. 

Effective training will be a big factor in the success of your CRM implementation. Don’t skimp in this area. Those who attend training sessions are more likely to report positive experiences with the new system.

15. Pay attention to user feedback

How will you collect feedback in the first days of the implementation? This will be the most crucial time. What do they like about your CRM? Are users creating unnecessary workarounds? Collecting this type of qualitative data will supplement the quantitative data found in your CRM reports. Although there’s no one-size-fits all formula for quantifying return on investment, you can reflect on your goals and KPIs to see how you are measuring up. Circle back to your CRM goals (which you set during the needs assessment stage of the switchover) to track progress. Get specific. Consider open door office hours (in-person or virtual) to be available during the first crucial days.

16. Iterate and improve your CRM migration

No CRM is perfect. Your new CRM will evolve over time as the needs of your business and your people change. Keep your feedback loops open and make use of people’s feedback and recommendations to improve their experience. Remember that their use of the CRM will ultimately help them be more efficient in their work. Your CRM implementation team should continue to meet regularly for the first few months post-implementation to assess needs and follow-up on requests. Meeting frequency can slowly reduce over time, but quarterly check-ins should remain in place for a year at a minimum.

Measure your CRM migration success

Now the migration is done, it’s time to track and measure the KPIs and goals set before the migration. Your plan comes in handy here because you have pre-determined your success metrics. Meet as a team and look at how your implementation measured up. This will give you a quantifiable answer. In terms of qualitative answers, that may be more difficult. In reality, there is no off-the-shelf formula to determine if switching CRMs is a good idea. Rather, you must do the work, ask questions, gather data points, and synthesize the data through a lens of your organization and its needs. 

Your finance team should be able to provide a report of costs associated with the change and any forecasted expenses/savings.

Join the thousands of companies that successfully switched to Insightly

Switching CRMs is a big project – but one that’s well worth the effort. With today’s limitless options for CRM technology, “settling” on your current platform just isn’t a viable path forward. 

With the right team, migration doesn’t have to be difficult. Insightly has migrated thousands of companies from other CRMs (including Salesforce) and can help you too. The Insightly Professional Services Team is ready to assist you and wants to be part of your success. 

Ready to switch CRMs? Get in touch for a free needs assessment and personalized product demo to see if Insightly CRM is the right match for you.

The post Switching CRMs: the No BS, No Headache Guide appeared first on Insightly.

With the power of an enterprise CRM, you can carefully examine each link in this chain.

How do you know if your customer interactions are as healthy as they could be?

What are customer interactions?

Customer interactions come in many shapes and sizes.

For example, service and support teams connect one-on-one with customers via phone, email, and chat. Chatbots act as first responders and direct customers to web resources. Social media teams respond to questions and concerns on public forums. Sales teams reach out for upsell opportunities.

Customer interactions aren’t easy; they require product/service expertise plus exceptional listening skills.

Why are customer interactions important?

Solid customer experiences define brand relationships after the initial sale. A single interaction can make or break a customer’s perception of your company. Your customer service/support teams are the face of your brand.

Every company should measure customer interactions by tracking important KPIs. Different KPIs need to be checked at different intervals; some are hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, etc. Once you establish a baseline and a plan, your team can set goals for improvement. Below are practical ideas to help your team move the needle.

6 Ways To Make Every Customer Interaction Matter

Healthy customer interactions and speedy complaint resolutions create better outcomes for all stakeholders. Positive customer interactions increase revenues and improve brand reputations. They also contribute to healthy corporate cultures.

When employees make customers happy, their morale increases. Good customer service and support create a positive feedback loop that can spread across your entire organization.

1. Show empathy

Empathetic customer interactions build brand trust. This increases positive outcomes like return business and referrals.

In a 2021 study, researchers at Belgium’s Ghent University found employee empathy statements increased brand trust. When customers felt understood, they believed their complaints had been handled well.

University of Pennsylvania senior fellow Annie McKee recommends three tips for demonstrating empathy. First, listen carefully to the customer without getting defensive or accusing them of being wrong. Second, be present with the person you’re helping and their specific situation. Third, don’t multitask when dealing with customers. Make them feel heard, special, and understood.

Customer satisfaction begins with empathy.

2. Solve problems quickly and efficiently

Speedy customer support and help desk outcomes can dramatically impact brand trust. All interactions matter, but fast first responses and final resolutions have the most impact in showing that you respect your customers’ time and result in an increase in their satisfaction.

In a 2020 study, researchers used a machine-learning algorithm to predict response times. They anticipated the messaging rates of both customers and customer service teams. These experts pointed out the utility of this analysis for support staffing since adequate staffing has the biggest impact on appropriate response times.

3. Make it easy for your customers

Examine each step of your customer journey and eliminate all unnecessary obstacles. All customers want convenience; new customers need smooth user experiences most of all.

Provide frictionless brand interactions by fixing all the little things that can damage brand trust:

• Make your contact information visible on all customer-facing content. 
• Have your web and social media teams hunt down broken links.
• Provide clear and concise pricing options.
• Make sure your support ticket autoresponder functions properly, so customers know they’ve gotten through to you.
• Have a human being follow up as quickly as possible.
• After resolution, ask for quick customer feedback on their support experience.
• Follow up a few days later with a second feedback request.

4. Act on customer feedback

As you resolve individual support cases, collect customer feedback for analysis. Then, integrate this knowledge into your products/services.

According to these Swedish academics, organizations with supportive workplace cultures do a better job of sharing customer feedback. These researchers encourage organizations to value this knowledge base as much as they do their technical expertise.

Identify broad trends in your feedback data but don’t neglect individual experiences. 

Remember, your customer base is your knowledge base.

5. Be where your customers are

All of your departments have a stake in your social media presence. 

For example, your tech team needs to see comments from people griping about bugs, glitches, and inefficiencies. You don’t just need to identify and fix your faults; you need to interact with users, acknowledge their frustrations, and let them see you addressing their issues in a timely fashion.

Your social media team can encourage people to interact both with your brand and each other. Help your loyal fans connect over their common interest in your product/service. And make sure to track your customer-to-customer interaction metrics.

A recent outage by the Slack app played out in social media with frequent communication, plus humility and empathy. Rather than stale, programmed status updates, Slack chose to communicate with messages like these: 

We’re digging into the problem with the highest priority. Thank you for your patience as we work on this.

Sorry for the panic. We’re working towards a resolution asap and will provide another update as soon as we can here: https://status.slack.com.

So sorry for making your morning harder. We’re doing everything we can to get everything back to normal as quickly as possible.

6. Be transparent and communicate often and effectively

Of all customer service outcomes, a positive feedback loop is the most desirable. It’s far easier to maintain healthy customer relationships than to repair your reputation.

By providing operational transparency, you can create a workplace culture that keeps getting better and better.

In a 2016 study of food service workers, researchers observed operational transparency benefits for both customers and employees. Customers who could see workers making their meals reported higher perceptions of employee effort. They were 22% more likely to rate their experience as high quality.

Workers in this study who experienced customer transparency felt their efforts impacted others. Researchers reported a 19% reduction in throughput times from employees who felt seen and appreciated. They pointed out the power of transparency to create reciprocal value for all stakeholders.

Not every business can make its operations publicly visible, but every company can communicate more often, own its mistakes, and share milestones. Demonstrate honesty and transparency to create loyal customers, and take care to track this customer communication.

Get creative: How can you provide genuine, transparent interactions between your customers and your employees?

Improve your customer interactions with Insightly

Use Insightly Service to foster customer relationships. Analyze feedback on centralized customer interactions dashboards. Close tickets and share mission-critical information across your organization faster than ever. Get a timely read on current and historical customer status and spark more engaging, relevant conversations. Empower internal teams with the data they need to perform their roles effectively. 

When you use Insightly CRM and Insightly Marketing with Insightly Service, you align your teams and provide unified help desk, marketing, and sales experiences. Your team is empowered to identify, meet, and exceed customer needs, in real time.

Get your free trial of Insightly today.

The post 6 Ways To Make Customer Interactions Matter appeared first on Insightly.

Engagement is a predictor of whether or not that customer will stay with you, and possibly even refer you, so it can be a leading metric for future revenue and growth.

So here’s how to use your CRM to track customer engagement and the appropriate Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for your business size.

What is customer engagement?

Though a sale or a subscription is a landmark in a customer’s relationship with your company, it’s just the beginning. Engaged customers create emotional bonds with your brand, and can create a valuable feedback loop for product improvements. 

You can elect to add engaged customers to customer or member councils who can get early access to new products or services and provide candid feedback in both one-on-one and focus-group style programs. If you’re in software, your engaged customers can be the ultimate beta testing group. 

In the positive cases, engaged customers become brand champions who are willing to provide referrals, testimonials, and enthusiastic reviews. In the best cases, they become brand evangelists who regularly engage in a positive manner with your brand on social media, and may even speak on your behalf at events, effectively functioning as an extension of your marketing team. 

Why measure customer engagement?

While engagement is a major revenue predictor in recurring revenue businesses, all businesses can benefit from surfacing these metrics. No one will argue that engaged customers create lasting value for your company. Knowing you can count on positive references and referrals from clients will help you compete for more and bigger deals. While some of this will likely be qualitative in nature, there are tools and metrics available today that can quantify engagement and track it over time, giving you insights into past, present, and future performance.

Five customer engagement metrics and KPIs that matter

There are five top customer engagement metrics that matter to nearly all companies. Each is described below. If you are wondering which matters the most to your company in particular, read on. At the end of each KPI summary, you’ll see a list of which kinds of companies typically prioritize it.

Start-ups defining and implementing their Unique Selling Points (USPs) will track different KPIs than mid-market companies working to scale up, gain traction, and win market share. Massive corporations typically focus on metrics that reflect their dependence on established brand reputations. That said, these metrics surface at the top for nearly all organizations.

1. First-week engagement

Engagement is often at its peak at the start of a contract. Make the most of your customer’s initial enthusiasm with streamlined setups, progress tracking, and solid support.

In a 2021 study, Linköping University’s Gustav Fridell examined SaaS best practices. He found that reducing friction and monitoring progress increased first-week retention.

Consider guiding, tracking, and displaying your new user’s progress through the onboarding process. They are more likely to stick with your solution if they can visualize a successful customer journey, especially during their first crucial steps.

For example, these tips can improve the new customer experience and lower abandonment and unsubscribe rates in the software industry:

• Make your platform or tool intuitive and easy to learn.
• Offer fast page load speeds.
• Prioritize addressing bugs and glitches that emerge during onboarding steps.
• Demonstrate ‘quick wins’ and value early on.

No user experience is perfect. Inevitably, people will have some trouble adopting your products or services. When they reach out, you need to offer reliable customer service to promote customer retention. Invest in robust support and show new customers you care about their success. 

Chatbots can be a great tool when implemented thoughtfully, but nothing is better than interacting with a deeply-knowledgeable support person. Short term churn can be avoided by quickly showing value to your customer in the onboarding phase. You have to get it right.  

Best for: Mid-market companies, especially startups, should hyper-focus on frictionless onboarding, user journey tracking, and responsive, knowledgeable support. At a small scale, individual customer success equals corporate viability.

Large brands with solid reputations enjoy more initial customer enthusiasm than smaller organizations. Their positive legacy marketing efforts mean users are less likely to jump ship when frustrated.

2. User Activity

SaaS companies, mainly social media platforms, eCommerce brands, and game manufacturers, pay close attention to their Daily Active Users (DAU) and Monthly Active Users (MAU) metrics. However, DAUs and MAUs aren’t just about competing for market share. Together they create an early-warning system. 

Think of MAUs as benchmarks and DAUs as indicators. If you see a significant difference between your daily numbers and your monthly averages, something unfavorable is happening. DAU valleys or spikes could be your first signal of a major problem or win.

Best for: Companies of all sizes should compare DAUs to MAUs to stay ahead of news events and emerging trends. Small and medium-sized companies can track this metric to acknowledge marketing strategy milestones. However, MAUs are crucial for large companies to maximize their market share for bottom-line profitability.

3. Stickiness

You can use DAUs and MAUs to measure “stickiness.” This metric represents how happy people are with your product or service based on how frequently they are returning. It’s an effective way to predict how likely users are to stick with your brand.

Typically, stickiness equals Daily Active Users divided by Monthly Active Users.

Stickiness = DAU / MAU

However, you may want to consider alternative formulas that account for unique users. Unique users represent the number of visitors to your site. An increase in this metric shows your company and website are growing. 

Businesses often look to churn rate as a measure of stickiness, but keep in mind that churn is a lagging indicator that doesn’t allow you to be as proactive as the formula above. 

Best for: Stickiness matters most for startups that need to build momentum and raise brand awareness. 

Mid-market and large businesses also want to limit turnover, but they are typically better positioned to tolerate variations in customer engagement and have more varied marketing campaigns.

4. Net Promoter Score (NPS)

You’ve likely seen NPS in action even if you’ve never heard the term. If you’ve ever been presented with a scale from 1-10 asking how likely you are to recommend a company, you’ve been NPS’d. The idea is that the most satisfied customers (those who rank you as a 9 or 10) will spread the word about your product or service. 

When you survey your customers, some will say they’ll probably promote you to their peers. Some will say they won’t. And some won’t feel inclined to share positive or negative information about you. The scale lists scores of 0-6 as “detractors”, 7-8 as “passives,” and 9-10 as “promoters.”

To calculate your NPS, subtract the percentage of survey respondents who would say negative things from those who would offer positive things about your brand.

NPS = Promoter % – Detractor %

For example, if 70% of people share positives and 20% share negatives, your NPS would equal 50. Many popular brands struggle with their NPS score. Apple, which is considered world-class when it comes to NPS, sits at around 50.

Best for: Large companies with massive ad budgets need to track brand health with the NPS metric carefully. Experts consider this a fundamental KPI for predicting near-term revenues, especially your target audience. Smaller and emerging businesses that rely less on brand recognition and more on networking and feature-driven ad campaigns rely less on this KPI.

5. Customer satisfaction (CSAT)

SaaS companies often measure CSAT by asking users for short one-to-five star or emoji ratings. You can use these quick check-ins to measure the customer experience with the features they use. 

This is different from NPS, which provides a more general satisfaction rating of your product, service, or brand. In short, CSAT tracks customer satisfaction, and NPS measures customer loyalty.

Best for: Because they focus almost exclusively on new solutions and USPs, startups must measure CSATs. Small SaaS businesses need to know specific user preferences when offering suites of new tools. Larger companies need CSAT data when adding features but depend more on NPS scores for predictions.

Track user engagement and much more with Insightly Service and unified CRM

There are other metrics out there, but this list represents a good batch to focus on first.  

With Insightly Service, mission-critical customer data is available to all your teams, in real time, empowering them to have more relevant conversations that drive customer satisfaction and success. A dashboard view gives you rolled-up access to the data that’s important across the organization and to measure the KPIs that are vital to your team. 

Break down silos with a robust view of the customer. Empower your support teams to solve tickets quickly, listen with empathy, and create sales opportunities right in the application. See the features that matter to you with a free demo of Insightly today.

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Experienced support professionals are at the center of your company’s ability to delivery exceptional experiences, generate loyalty, and ultimately, drive retention. Successfully guiding customers through stressful circumstances is the mark of a talented customer service representative. But what skills do you need to deliver amazing experiences that lead to long-term customer relationships?

According to Zeke Silva, Sr. Director Client Services at Insightly, it comes down to five important skills:

1. Showing empathy
2. Being honest and transparent
3. Steering the conversation
4. Slowing things down
5. Identifying creative solutions

Let’s explore how these skills enhance customer service and lead to strong customer relationships.

1. Showing empathy

Skilled support employees are fast, efficient, and inquisitive. Another imperative for great customer service is empathy. “Customers are coming to you at a very vulnerable moment when they open support tickets,” says Zeke Silva, Sr. Director Client Services at Insightly. “They don’t want to be treated as support tickets. They want to be treated like human beings.”

Tip: Lead with the understanding that the customer is currently grappling with a problem that’s making it difficult for them to perform their role, that you’re here to help them be successful, and that they can rely on you to help get them back to productivity.

2. Being honest and transparent

Empathy is a great starting point, but it can’t solve the customer’s specific problem. To build long-lasting relationships with customers, agents must go beyond empathy and take swift action to find a suitable resolution. That can be challenging, especially when there’s no obvious solution at hand. But, according to Silva, there’s still an opportunity to solidify the relationship when nothing can immediately be done. “It’s about being honest and transparent that you may not have the answer at that moment, but you’ll work to get it,” says Zeke.

Tip: Every ticket that comes into Insightly’s new Service application is matched to a Service Level Agreement, so customer service agents know exactly how long they have to respond to a customer, and how long to resolve customer issues. You can define SLAs for for specific segments of your customer base to dictate how long you have to first respond to tickets, and how long you have to follow up or resolve issues to ensure you meet and exceed customer expectations.

3. Steering the conversation

Each customer has a unique way of communicating his or her frustration and support agents must be prepared to steer the conversation productively. Setting the tone for a calm, outcome-based dialogue is key. “Keep in mind that the customer isn’t mad at you, they’re mad at the situation,” says Zeke. “Taking things personally can derail your ability to keep the conversation on track and deliver a positive outcome for the customer.”

Tip: Staying positive, asking questions, and focusing on delivering a successful outcome are all ways to steer the conversation in a productive direction and focus on what matters: finding positive resolution for the customer.

4. Slowing things down

Proactively controlling the pace of the conversation is another subtle way to reduce friction and recalibrate an unhappy customer’s demeanor. “Slow down and add a pause to your response,” says Zeke. “By taking this approach, you may notice that the customer slows down, too.”

Slowing down the conversation gives both parties more time to think about a creative solution to the problem. And, quickly solving a problem is one of the best ways to turn an unhappy customer into an advocate for your brand.

Tip: Pausing is one tactic for slowing down the conversation. But, you might also try using clarifying phrases like “What I’m hearing is…” and “If I understand what you’re saying…” These help you stay in control while simultaneously confirming the situation and allowing the customer to surface additional information. Listen and ask open-ended questions.

5. Identifying creative solutions

“Being creative in the support world is crucial,” says Zeke. “You may not have the answer right then and there, but can you give them a workaround that at least gets them up and running?”

Providing a creative solution to the problem may ultimately help the customer do his or her job more efficiently and effectively. What was previously seen as a limitation may ultimately serve as an educational opportunity for the customer, which could lead to a deeper affinity for your brand.

Tip: Ask the right questions to understand the customer’s true objective. Is there another way to provide the same (or similar) data, information, service, or outcome? Staying up-to-date on your company’s full capabilities and sharing known issues within your team will help you align the customer’s goal with a viable workaround solution.

Build better relationships by providing excellent customer service

Empathize with customers. Provide honest and transparent feedback. Stay in control, slow things down when possible, and be creative. Developing these skills will help your team provide better service, and, in the long-run, build even better customer relationships.

Stay tuned for the next post in our customer service series. Next time, we’ll explore common issues in customer service and how to overcome them.

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When it comes to technology solutions, or how to invest in technology, businesses often choose providers based on trust in the brand. But they are also looking for a fast time to value (TTV), i.e. how fast will a product or service solve their issue and help them gain a positive return on the investment. The faster a business solves an issue, the stronger the customer relationship becomes.

What is time to value?

Time to value is a measurement of the time it takes from when your customer purchases a product/service, to when they start deriving value. The faster a solution solves a problem, the better the customer experience and the more money a brand makes. It’s as simple as that.

Over time, you want to work toward decreasing TTV for your customers. A healthy TTV metric is an indicator of business growth and efficient operational performance.

What does time to value mean for the customer experience?

When it comes to technology, customers are looking for a quick return on investment. Every company has its own goals to drive the growth and success of the enterprise.

Quick ROI is critical for successfully planning and evaluating infrastructure. Expedient TTV also helps your customers retain more of their own customers, which makes everyone happy.

A brand’s ability to help a business achieve its outcomes depends on the suitability of your product/service to meet those goals. It also depends on maximizing the speed and degree of success during the customer experience.

Therefore, TTV is both a goal and a key performance indicator. It requires an enterprise-wide contribution to delivering value quickly. It also entails consistently measuring how long it takes to deliver that value.

A faster TTV is indicative you have a team that has made a commitment to continuously improve products and services; and gather, share, and act on customer data as soon as possible.

Why is time to value important for customer success?

The value created by a product or service is proof that it works. Fast TTV fulfills the promises made in your sales pitch. When you deliver value time and again, you build trust with your customers, making them more likely to become your brand advocates.

Driving value forms the basis of a customer relationship, where consistent delivery increases satisfaction and cements retention. This continued nurturing of the customer experience leads to more long-term relationships and a lower rate of churn.

Different examples of time to value

TTV can change depending on the customer, industry, and services offered. It’s not about when a client becomes valuable to you but, rather, the other way around.

It’s important to keep track of customer priorities throughout the entire sales process. Since TTV varies so much, it’s possible you may need to track several TTV metrics at once, including:

Time to basic value

This is the shortest TTV metric to measure. It’s the time it takes for the customer to realize they made the right choice. They are starting to see the most basic value from the product/service, but have yet to fully utilize it.

In some cases, time to basic value can happen even before the customer purchases something. For example, a free trial or sample product may lead to a prospect already experiencing basic value.

Time to exceed value

Just like it sounds, this metric represents the time it takes for a product/service to exceed a customer’s expectations and convince them to keep doing business. This may come when a basic plan no longer meets their needs and they upgrade to more features.

The more a brand focuses on time to exceed value, the more it increases customer lifetime value. When you keep exceeding people’s expectations, they won’t be checking out your competition.

Long time to value

Some products and services may take time for people to realize the value. In cases for software-as-service solutions (SaaS), it can sometimes take weeks or months to fully integrate systems and data across different parts of a business.

If what you offer has a longer TTV, it’s important to continue to demonstrate value to the customer every step of the way.

Short time to value

Short time to value is easier to measure. Businesses have a need, they reach out, and that immediate need is met.

However, the downside of having a product or service with a short time to value is that customers have less patience and loyalty. If a brand can do the same job faster, people often switch.

Immediate time to value

Some services provide what is known as immediate time to value. In this case, the reward is instant for a customer’s action.

Any type of online platform where you paste a link and receive something in return is considered immediate TTV. Examples include picture resizing, SEO, filters, or link shortening.

Best practices for meeting time to value goals

The first opportunity to bring value to a customer is during the onboarding process. From product awareness to mastery, it’s all about progressing them through as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Remember, a customer will always remain in the onboarding phase until they can independently integrate your product/service in their daily workflows. Until then, they will require guided assistance for a fast TTV. The sooner they can use what you sell by themselves, the faster they achieve value.

It’s important to show the link between the problem your solution solves, and how that aligns with a customer’s business goals. Milestones should be set based on these outcomes and customer progress measured along the way.

A brand must continuously engage to ensure buyers are on the right track and are completing the onboarding process in an intended time frame. Otherwise, there might be a problem you need to address.

Want to know a few strategies to employ along the customer journey?

Effective engagements

Make sure you have set up engagements that are proactive and relevant. Use customer data to better understand their business and tech setup.

Set milestones

Base these on your customer’s goals. Understand how the consumer defines value and set internal goals to reflect these outcomes.

Early warning

Data will quickly reveal when a customer is struggling. Setup early triggers to alert your team when people need extra attention or help. Follow up immediately, whether it’s reaching out or scheduling a meeting.

Anticipate needs

Use previous customer experiences to keep improving and anticipate future needs. Be aware of potential bottlenecks during onboarding and have solutions on hand.

Additional best practices for time to value

• An agile software solution
• Detailed onboarding guides
• Customer success managers
• Product usability tests

When someone is looking to buy a product or service, they have specific goals in mind. They will consider your brand only because they believe it helps them solve these challenges. Providing value as quickly as possible is your way of saying “thank you” for the trust.

Fast TTV also helps to retain customers, improve their experience, and expand your business through word-of-mouth (and other authentic marketing strategies). It simply gives people more reason to work with you.

Taking results-oriented, goal-based action is your way of assuring people they have permanently found the rug.

The post What is ‘time-to-value’ and why is it important for customer success? appeared first on Insightly.

And, although specific teams may deal with complaints, technical issues, and general troubleshooting, customer service (CS) is the responsibility of everyone within an organization—from sales to support to marketing and even accounts receivable.

Companies small and large are looking for innovative ways to elevate and streamline customer service. One way to eliminate time-consuming tasks and free up staff to focus on engagement is to use workflow automation. Here are a few workflow automation tips for improving the customer experience.

1. Identify your customer service automation goals

Before building your first automated workflow for CS, it’s wise to agree on a shared set of goals. Here’s how to identify your workflow automation objectives:

Set goals that are aligned with your customer service metrics

Start by discussing how workflow automation will help you deliver better customer service. What problems are you trying to solve? How do you plan to measure the achievement of your goals? Be specific and connect desired business outcomes to metrics that you already track, such as your churn rate, customer satisfaction (CSAT), or average customer wait time.

Be realistic

It’s tempting to overcompensate and try to do too many things at once with automation, especially if you learn that customers are waiting for hours or days to get an initial response. Slashing customer wait time from hours to seconds sounds great on paper, but how realistic is it? Setting incremental goals is a better approach. Think in terms of percentages—improving by just 10% per month will lead to an exponential improvement within one year. Play the long game and don’t overwhelm the system.

Use data to establish benchmarks for accurate goal tracking

Let’s assume that customers routinely complain about how long it takes your company to get back to them. Using workflow automation to reduce first response time seems like a logical use case. Just be sure to use reliable data as a benchmark for measuring progress. If you use a third-party ticketing system to track customer inquiries, check to see what types of reports are available. With a few clicks, you may be able to establish a baseline for your team’s existing responsiveness. This will serve as a key data point as you implement automated workflows that close the gap.

2. Go for quick, high-impact workflow automation victories

Goals in hand, it’s time to get to work. What’s the one thing that you can easily automate to make the biggest impact on the customer experience? If your primary goal involves increasing engagement through enhanced communication, then enabling an automated confirmation email might be a good place to start. Simply telling customers that you’ve received their request could make a noticeable impact. Keep it simple and gain momentum toward achieving your ultimate goal. Resist the temptation to tackle the most complicated workflow on day one.

3. Avoid automating broken processes

Automated workflows are not a fix-all for every service-related problem. Trying to automate convoluted systems is a recipe for failure, and doing so will likely cause stakeholders to lose confidence in your automation strategy. Fix the underlying process first, then automate part or all of it. Workflow automation, when properly implemented, should make efficient CS-related systems run even more efficiently. Don’t waste time automating broken processes.

4. Plan, test, launch, test, repeat

You need a scalable system to ensure your automated workflows are actually working and are not in conflict with other automations. To do that, follow these action steps: plan, test, launch, test, and repeat.

Start by planning what you want to automate in the context of your existing automations. Does this project actually require a new workflow, or could it be added to an existing workflow? Will the automation require additional training for staff? Think through questions like these and develop a game plan. Once you’ve got your plan, build and test the workflow in a limited environment (if possible). Do you have the flexibility to apply the workflow to a segment of records rather than your entire database? Taking a measured approach could reduce the risk of business interruption. When the automated workflow is performing as expected in a limited capacity, you can consider expanding its reach to a larger use case. After fully enabling it, be sure to test for and resolve any unexpected issues. Repeat this process as needed.

5. Use data to measure progress

Check to see if your customer service platforms offer any built-in reports and dashboards to support the ongoing monitoring of your automated workflows. For example, if you’re automating CS-related tasks with Insightly, check out Insightly’s Guide to Dashboards to learn how you can visualize real-time data, measure progress, and share reports with your team.

Examples of customer service and support automation

Automated customer service workflows can vary greatly depending on your goals, business model, industry, ICP, and personas. Not sure what to automate? Here are a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing:

Prospective customers

• Send an automated email after a prospect submits a form
• Assign a task for the sales rep to follow up within a predefined number of days
• Remind your sales manager to personally check in on any deals greater than $5,000

New customers

• Auto-convert closed deals into projects for your operations team to work on
• Add new customers into a welcome email series that provides helpful training links
• Set a task for accounting staff to ensure that new customer payment details are obtained

Existing customers

• Send customers an automated satisfaction survey within five minutes of a logged call
• Prompt customers to schedule account reviews within 3 months of contract renewal
• Remind sales reps to send out swag two weeks after a contract is renewed

Use automation to provide better service to customers

Excellent customer service can be a competitive advantage in an increasingly crowded marketplace. Strategically leveraging automated workflows for CS can help your organization deliver better service, engage customers more effectively, and, ultimately, develop healthier, lasting customer relationships.

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But for us marketers, that’s easier said than done. Marketers rarely ever speak directly to a lead, prospect, or customer. Instead, we rely on customer data collected throughout the company.

How can you better access, understand, and use customer data? Start by working closely with your customer success team.

Why you should align customer success with marketing

We talk quite a bit about marketing and sales team alignment. Marketing efforts should be in-step with the sales cycle. Yet, we rarely talk about what happens after the sale is closed. At this point, the account moves to a dedicated account or customer success manager.

It is in marketers’ best interest to build relationships with customer success managers. Their close customer communication provides unique insights that lead to better marketing.

Some of the valuable insights that customer success can provide include:

Increased visibility into customers

Customer data can show you trends and patterns, but sometimes you need to know more. Customer success managers can answer qualitative questions about customers to enhance your data. Customer success managers have conversations that provide insight into the user’s behavior and changes over time. These details about the customer relationship can help marketers tell a more complete customer story.

Share customer reactions

Robust customer data is great, but it’s only historical. We don’t know what the customer experience is at a particular moment. Customer success managers can tell you how your customers are feeling about a product feature, a pricing change, or even a world event in near real-time.

Create a stronger customer profile

You can enhance your customer profiles with this qualitative and real-time information. Customer success managers can also provide feedback on these profiles to make them more accurate.

Measuring marketing programs using customer success data

Typically, we measure marketing against revenue. If marketing programs are successful, they lead to increased monthly or annual recurring revenue, or MRR and ARR, respectively.

Customer success is measured similarly. If customer success is thriving, MRR and ARR increases because of the lack of customer churn.

Consider measuring your marketing programs against which you can drive growth for customer success key performance indicators (KPIs). For example, perhaps customers who come in through a webinar are less likely to churn. By investing in more webinars, you’ll improve customer long-term value.

Using customer success documentation for content marketing

Customer success managers are content marketers. They develop resources for customers to better use your product. Usually these are ‘help’ or ‘support’ articles, but sometimes they are videos, walkthroughs, or webinars. They also have access to great customer profiles and stories.

The problem? Rarely do these pieces live on a company’s main marketing site. At best, they are on a help or support subdomain. At worst, they are PDFs that are shared privately with customers.

Why should these valuable pieces of content be hidden under a bushel basket? They provide a resource to customers and they often have high SEO value.

Consider repurposing this content on the blog or marketing site. If the content doesn’t meet your marketing guidelines, rework and rewrite.

How customer success can improve customer marketing

Most marketing efforts drive toward acquiring customers. Yet, once you achieve team alignment with your customer success and marketing teams, you may shift some focus to customer marketing.

What is customer marketing?

Customer marketing is marketing that’s focused on retention, not acquisition. This means that you create marketing programs for current customers, not future customers. It includes decreasing churn, but also upgrading and upselling.

For successful customer marketing, the marketing, sales, account management, and customer success teams must be in lockstep.

If there’s a dedicated role, i.e. a customer marketing manager, that person will report into both marketing and customer success.

3 ways customer success can amplify customer marketing

They can uncover new ideas

If a customer needs a resource, they’re likely to ask their dedicated success manager. Customers might request a new tutorial, video, or support document. If marketers have a close relationship with customer success, they will have a direct pipeline to useful content ideas.

They can collect qualitative feedback about customer experience

Was your new email campaign helpful or annoying? A customer success manager can get a customer on the phone and ask about the customer experience right away. Marketers don’t have to work in a black box or wait for survey results to understand the impact of their efforts.

They can identify customer advocates

An advocate who goes to bat for you is a strong way to both acquire and retain customers. Customer success can identify and cultivate advocates so marketing can best position them to engage new and old customers.

Should you have a customer marketing team?

How do you know when it’s time to refocus your efforts on customer marketing? Consider this checklist when deciding if you should hire a customer marketing team.

• You have a complete acquisition marketing and customer success team
• You’ve reached your goals for new MRR or ARR
• Customer churn is a major problem
• There’s a lot of potential to upgrade and upsell

How to communicate & collaborate with customer success

When aligning teams, the biggest challenge is aligning communication and collaboration channels.

Marketing teams typically use project management tools focused on task completion. Often, customer success works on a ‘ticket’ system designed to address urgent issues.

To smoothly integrate your teams, consider the following collaboration tools and techniques:

Customer relationship management (CRM) tool

Your CRM should serve both customer success and marketing functions. A unified CRM should have project management functionality, organize and centralize customer data, and provide visibility into how marketing impacts customer metrics.

Slack or internal chat

Especially in remote or hybrid environments, chatting is crucial to developing team rapport. Start a dedicated marketing/CS channel to openly share thoughts and ideas. This will help your team members feel comfortable working with one another.

Integrated meetings

No one wants to add another Zoom to their calendar. Yet, weekly stand-ups or report-outs are how we understand what is happening at the company. Consider assigning an ‘ambassador’ from each team to sit in on the other’s weekly meeting. This will give the teams insight into one another without adding to meeting fatigue.

Conclusion

There is no downside to better collaboration and alignment between teams. As a marketer across industries, my relationships with customer success teams have both enhanced my personal knowledge, and led to better business outcomes. When customer success and marketing work closely together, customer retention and revenue is certain to grow.

Sources:

Want A Better Customer Experience – Align Customer Success And Marketing. Philipp Wolf. Custify.

Why Customer Success Should Own Customer Marketing. Will Robins. Gainsight.

The post Why you should align marketing and customer success teams appeared first on Insightly.

This shift in consumer behavior has spurred disruptive changes in the way we do business. Brands are now looking to invite voice-based conversations with users via web and mobile apps. Studies and reports point to an exponential rate of adoption, with stats like:

• A total of 31% of global smartphone owners reported using voice tech at least once a week.
• It is predicted voice-shopping spend will grow to over $40 billion in 2022 alone.
• 40% of all internet users in the US, and a third of its total population, are users of voice search.

Voice user interfaces, search, and technology are changing the user experience and transforming the world around us.

Voice interaction & technology

Voice interaction is a major focal point for process development and it’s all about convenience. A user can bypass the need to type, read, or think—all requirements of the screen-and-keyboard style interfaces. Instead, an individual has their objectives met through conversation.

Voice technology combines powerful platforms into a simplified programmatic interface. Some common voice-based programs include:

• Natural Language Processing (NLP)
• Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR)
• Natural Language Understanding (NLU)
• Text to Speech (TTS)

UX designers are working to develop solutions that transform the way people interact with machines, systems, and services.

Although the concept of “conversation” seems rather straightforward, the building blocks of technology underneath it are quite complex. Moving beyond the screen-and-keyboard style UI opens a business up to greater levels of accessibility and inclusivity.

How does a voice user interface work?

The general definition of a user interface is the point of human-computer interaction and communication on a webpage, device, or app. A typical user interface can include a display screen, keyboard, mouse, and desktop. It enables a person to effectively control the device they are interacting with.

A successful user interface is clear, concise, and familiar. The system must be responsive and consistent with attractive features that are easy to navigate. Ultimately, a user interface must be efficient and forgiving. This entire process is refined when you add voice technology.

A voice user interface (VUI) makes spoken human interaction with computers possible. It uses speech recognition to understand spoken commands and text to speech to play a reply. These are the primary ways of interacting with virtual assistants on smartphones and speakers.

Voice command device

VUIs are designed to control a voice command device (VCD) which includes everything from a washing machine to automated attendants and automobiles.

Older voice response systems respond to the pressing of keypad buttons via DTMF tones. Newer VCDs, with a full voice user interface, enable callers to speak requests and responses without the need to press buttons.

Newer voice command devices do not require speakers, so they can respond to a variety of voices, regardless of tone, accent, or dialect. These systems are also capable of addressing several voice commands at once, separating vocal messages, and providing the appropriate feedback. By doing this, VCDs more accurately mimic a natural conversation.

How can voice search be used?

As most people are well aware, voice technology has a multitude of applications. Voice search users find different uses for the science depending on their age and information-related needs.

A recent study showed that 62% of people use voice search to look up fact-based information like term definitions, 46% the weather, and 32% the news. It also found that nearly 30% of voice search users aged 18-34 use it to issue commands to their device (i.e. set timer, add to list). This is compared to 19% for those ages 35-54 and 16% for over 55.

Some common uses for voice search technology include:

Form & data input

This is a task that is particularly challenging on mobile devices. Adding a conversation focused on data capture for a simple form can simplify the user experience. It also minimizes input time and errors.

Context-aware voice assistance

All types of businesses can add conversation to their mobile apps from retailers to grocers, malls, and campuses. Users can ask questions like “What aisle has soup?” or “do you sell paint?”

Combining a conversation with geo-location and the purveyor’s own data allows for easier access to context-aware information.

Voice-enabled workflows

Brands can improve efficiency and productivity through voice commands. These interactions help to streamline processes and speed up outcomes.

Developments in voice technology

As voice technology continues to evolve, there are a lot of interesting developments. Now that software teams can add a unified, cross-platform speech-based exchange for customers and users, expect new tools like:

AI-empowered voice-bots

Moving a step beyond a simple chatbot, voice-bots that are powered by artificial intelligence will be able to carry on conversations like never before. A mature AI foundation ensures the interaction is quick and as relaxed as natural conversation. This, in turn, leads to a faster outcome and since it’s intuitive, there’s no significant learning curve for users.

Voice analytics

New voice technology will leverage analytics to monitor emotions. This means the program is working to determine if a user is happy, sad, confused, disappointed, etc. Voice analytics can also track keywords to better inform and direct the interaction.

Voice analytics will also assess the quality and style of user responses and tweak a voice bot’s delivery to an exact situation. In a sense, chatbots will seem more empathetic. These are tasks that are simply impossible for screen-and-keyboard interfaces.

Voice biometric technology

Voice biometric technology enables a safer online experience. Internet privacy, security, and identity protection are major concerns for a user. Your voice is unique. Acoustic characteristics and behavioral features can be monitored and leveraged for authentication and access services.

Summing it up

Voice technology is exciting. It’s made leaps and bounds in the past few decades that have turned science fiction into modern life. Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and smart devices are all part of the foundational IoT. They work in conjunction with voice-based software to create a higher level of convenience, save on corporate costs, drive sales, and solidify business and customer relationships.

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Customers want—and expect—a great product or service, amazing support, and a price that beats the competition. And, in an age of “cancel any time” and “no long-term commitments,” customers know that they have the upper hand. When companies fail to deliver, customers cancel and take their business elsewhere.

So, what should companies do to reduce cancellations and encourage long-term relationships? Let’s take a closer look at customer churn, how to calculate it, and what to do about it.

What is customer churn?

In business, the term “churn” typically refers to the act of customers cancelling, unsubscribing, or otherwise leaving. Adding up the number of customers that were lost during a specific period provides a company with its total churn metric. Churn is often tracked on an annual, quarterly, and/or monthly basis. Companies that have unusually high amounts of churn may choose to report on a weekly or daily basis, especially as they implement systems and programs aimed at reducing it.

How do you calculate customer churn rate?

Reducing customer churn is a top priority for businesses of all types—particularly those that offer monthly or annual subscription models, such as software as a service companies, no-contract wireless providers, consulting businesses on monthly retainers, and streaming media platforms. Unfortunately, improving churn is not as simple as it may seem. Customer journeys are complex and diverse. Seasonal buying patterns create artificial peaks and valleys for signups and cancellations. Just knowing what to focus on first can be a point of contention for many companies.

That’s why you need to normalize your churn data into a metric that accounts for the fluctuations in your business. That’s where customer churn rate comes in handy. Customer churn rate is usually calculated like this:

For a simple example, let’s assume that your company calculates churn rate on a monthly basis. On March 1, you had 1,000 total customers. By the end of March, your company lost 200 customers. This means that your monthly churn rate was 20%. Given a 20% churn rate, you could theoretically expect all of your customers to churn within a five month window. Or, stated slightly differently, your average retention period for a typical customer is five months.

5 tips for lowering churn

Maintaining a high churn rate is a recipe for disaster. There’s only so much demand generation that your sales and marketing teams can deliver. Here are five tips to consider as you develop a strategy for reducing churn.

1. Know your customers (better)

Keeping pace with customer orders and support requests can seem like an insurmountable job that leaves no time for strategic planning. However, it’s only by zooming out and seeing the big picture that your organization can identify issues that lead to cancellations. Invest more time in understanding your customers’ goals, objectives, and needs. Customer journey mapping is an excellent place to start.

2. Surround yourself with great people, systems, & processes

Does your company have the expertise and capacity to build a first-class customer success program? Perhaps you already have a qualified CS leader onboard, but he or she is in the wrong seat. Or, perhaps you need to go and recruit someone who has the right mix of experience and know-how. Start by surrounding yourself with people who are invested in the customer experience. Then, empower them to recommend and implement systems, processes, and technology that align with both your company’s and customers’ goals.

3. Focus on delivering great service & being customer-centric

An essential component of customer success is, of course, providing stellar customer service. Achieving and maintaining a one-hour response time on support tickets does not go far enough. Customers expect an amazing experience at every step of the journey—from interacting with chatbots to accessing thorough information on your support site to receiving helpful responses from your live agents.

Revisit your customer journey map and identify unnecessary points of friction. What adjustments can (and should) be made to provide a customer-centric experience? Strive to be more empathetic as a company and develop training programs that show staff how to walk in the customer’s shoes. Implement processes and metrics that hold front-line staff—particularly support agents—accountable for providing great service.

4. Collect actionable data to understand why customers leave

Customer data is more readily available now than ever before. Each customer interaction with your website, emails, and support team is another datapoint that can help you improve customer satisfaction and, hopefully, reduce churn.

If customer data management is not a strength for your company, here are a few data sources that are worth cultivating:

• Customer interviews: When a customer cancels, ask if he or she would be willing to have a 15-minute conversation. Expect a low participation rate, but also expect tremendously useful information from those who do.
• Built-in prompts: If you have a customer-facing user interface (UI), build in prompts to ask each customer why he or she is cancelling or downgrading. Sync this data directly to the contact or organization record in your CRM.
• Automated surveys: Use marketing automation technology to measure customer satisfaction throughout the entire customer journey.

These are just a few ideas to get your creative juices flowing. Collaborate with team members from support, marketing, sales, and operations and continuously look for ways to securely collect more data and improve churn.

5. Use your data to identify trends & correct course

Simply collecting large amounts of customer data is a fruitless endeavor unless you have a reliable way to track and manage it. Using an easy-to-integrate and customizable CRM, such as Insightly, makes life easier on staff when trying to make sense of customer churn data. Custom objects and fields provide flexibility for organizing data in a way that aligns with your unique business model and customer journey.

In addition, look for ways to harness data that already exists in your CRM. For example, your sales team probably tracks their lost deals and cancellations. Use your CRM’s built-in dashboards and reports to visualize this data, identify churn-related trends, anticipate problems that lead to churn, and develop new strategies for lowering it.

Build business relationships that last

At the end of the day, reducing churn is all about building business relationships that last. Companies that truly understand their customers, implement customer-centric systems and processes, and strategically use data are better positioned to build long-term, churn-resistant relationships.

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