The Importance of Developing a Business-Centric Customer Success Plan: A Nine-Step Approach

Successful brands hinge upon the prosperity of their customers. This reliance underscores the importance of customer satisfaction, meeting their needs, and exceeding their expectations. Astute companies prioritize customers, aiming to cultivate enduring loyalty.

Customer success is achieved through robust relationships, prioritizing customer needs, consistently delivering value, and acting as the customer’s advocate. To meet these benchmarks systematically, companies must formulate comprehensive customer success plans.

So, what is a customer success plan and how can we construct an effective customer success plan? Additionally, how does Lucidia strategically cater to its customers in this context?

What is a Customer Success Plan?

A customer success plan serves as the operational blueprint for brands, primarily utilized by the customer success team. Essentially, it functions as a guide that ensures customers derive the utmost value from the product or service.

This plan delineates the vision of customer success and elucidates how the customer success team facilitates customers in attaining that success. While a customer success plan is pivotal for customers, its significance extends to the company as well. For instance:

Customers may anticipate that the product will assist them in connecting with their audience, fostering meaningful and enduring relationships. Simultaneously, the company may aspire to delight customers, transforming them into advocates and employees, thereby garnering additional value and outcomes.

Essential Elements of a Customer Success Plan

While some companies may prioritize a customer success plan, others might not see its significance. However, a comprehensive plan should encompass the following crucial elements:

Defining and Understanding Customers

The customer forms the nucleus of any business. It is imperative to grasp their identity, culture, strategic goals, and resources—essentials for an effective customer success plan. Failure to clearly identify the customer can result in gaps in the plan’s objectives and approach. 

Moreover, a misunderstanding of the customer’s needs may lead to customer frustration and eventual attrition.

Determining Value

The key to the plan lies in understanding how to define a customer. Attempting to determine value without comprehending the customer invites failure. Value determination should align with a profound understanding of the customer, encompassing their needs and pain points. The customer success team or manager, armed with this understanding, can propose tailored solutions and plans to address these needs.

Plan Tracking

A customer success plan necessitates meticulous tracking of its processes, involving both the customer success manager and the customer. This step-by-step tracking ensures the continuous progress and efficiency of the program, aligning with its mission. In instances where the customer may be perplexed about a specific action, the manager can easily guide them by referring to the steps outlined in the plan.

Tasks

Both the customer and the customer success team need to be well-informed about the specific steps in the process. This involves incorporating details such as deliverables, due dates, and clear instructions to ensure everyone understands their tasks. This approach fosters heightened participation in the plan.

Constant Communication

Communication forms the cornerstone of the plan. Addressing the customer’s concerns and questions involves tracking those conversations and responding promptly. This ensures that the customer can consistently progress during the process.

9 Steps to Building a Customer Success Plan

To successfully formulate a customer success plan, it’s essential to follow a series of steps, which may vary among organizations. Here are the key steps:

Define the Role of the Customer Success Team

Before implementing a customer success plan, it’s crucial to assemble a team of qualified individuals with a “customer-first” mentality. These team members collaborate to enhance the customer experience and facilitate the achievement of customer goals.

Create a Customer Journey Map

Customer journey maps assist customer success teams in identifying pivotal touchpoints throughout the customer journey. By gaining insights from the map, companies can pinpoint sales areas, devise strategies for growth and customer retention, identify crucial tasks at each stage, and plan schedules.

Understand Success from a Customer’s Perspective

Although customer success teams traditionally engage post-sale, achieving customer success requires a multifunctional effort. Teams must comprehend the customer journey and align with the varied definitions of success at different stages.

Here are some examples of what success can look like at different stages of the customer journey: 

• Conversion: Customers smoothly transition from sales to customer success after a sale to initiate the onboarding process.
• Retention: The customer successfully renews their contract.
• Promotion: Customer volatility and attribution metrics signal enhancements in the customer experience since the initial criteria were established.

Once success benchmarks are defined at each stage, leveraging data becomes pivotal for identifying and implementing impactful opportunities.

Utilizing Data for Opportunity Creation

Effective customer success plans hinge on accurate data collected from various departments. When executed correctly, companies can pinpoint high-impact customer strategies and processes, boost public engagement, and conduct A/B tests to discern the most effective strategy updates.

For example: 

• Analyzing interaction and customer effort results helps determine the level of personal contact needed for customer support.
• Customer service and agent performance data can reveal repetitive tasks or processes suitable for automation.
• Evaluating customer feedback and previous support requests assists in understanding the most beneficial training and offers for customers.

Identifying these opportunities prompts consideration of crucial interactions for customer success and strategies to simplify, automate, or enhance these processes.

Identify Key Processes in the Sales Journey

To optimize the customer experience and set the stage for success at every step of the customer purchasing journey, your marketing, sales, and support teams can implement the following:

Awareness: The marketing team shapes a positive first impression, educates customers on product solutions and benefits, laying the groundwork for future interactions.

Interest: Sales teams customize offers, provide product recommendations, and establish touchpoints based on customer interest.

Conversion: The Customer Success team focuses on bringing in new customers while elucidating product usage.

Adoption and Certification: The customer success team offers additional training, prepares or configures the product, provides tools and guidance for a smooth start, and delivers support as necessary.

Support: The Customer Success team solicits customer feedback and reviews regarding the sales process, implements improvements based on results, and proactively engages with customers.

Tracking Customer Success Metrics

The process involves determining how to measure the performance of customer success efforts by establishing metrics and setting standards for regular data analysis. High-performing customer success teams should be monitored using the following metrics:

• Customer Retention: Track the number of customers making repeat purchases. 
•  Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Calculate the total revenue generated by a business from a single customer throughout their lifecycle.
•  Net Promoter  Score (NPS):  Calculate the percentage of customers recommending the brand to others.

• Customer Churn: Calculate the number of customers discontinuing their association with the brand for any reason.
• Customer Stress Score (CES): Understand the effort customers must exert to receive answers or solutions from the company’s support team.
• Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR): Anticipate the revenue the business will generate from all subscriptions over a month.

The effectiveness of the customer success plan should be periodically reassessed to confirm that:

• Strategies contribute positively to the organization’s goals.
• Teams and individuals comprehend their roles and collaborate efficiently.
• The frameworks for deliveries and data sharing remain transparent and operate as intended.

Promoting Team Collaboration

Facilitating collaboration between teams is achieved by formulating a robust customer success strategy in tandem with various departments to assist customers in attaining their desired outcomes. Consider the following examples:

• Sales and marketing teams collaborate to comprehend customer needs and develop content that resonates with the target market.

• The customer success team utilizes information from the sales team to proactively personalize customer experiences and address their needs.

• Customer service leverages feedback from the customer success team’s interaction log to ascertain the resources customers have access to and determine optimal issue resolution strategies.

Selecting Appropriate Tools

Before establishing a customer success team, it is advisable to invest in customer service and feedback software. Team access to these tools provides a comprehensive view of customer experiences with the company, influencing the company’s plan over time.

The adoption of tools and software enables the tracking of customer feedback, issues, requests, forecasts, and data. The features of this customer service program facilitate:

• Unified Multi-Channel Workspace.
• Tracking Customer Lifecycle Engagement.
• Workflow Automation.
• Customer Lifecycle Management.
• Customer Data Capture.
• Customer Growth Forecasts.

Collecting and Evaluating Customer Feedback

Regularly collecting and evaluating customer feedback is crucial, integrating key findings into a customer success plan. Feedback provides contextual details that data alone may not capture, reducing guesswork in determining impactful updates.

Companies can leverage customer feedback to enhance their customer success plan in the following ways:

• Identifying Pain Points.
• Determining Support Needs.
• Updating Online Resources.
•  Providing Better Training.
• Improving Onboarding Experience.
• Personalizing Messages.

Ultimately, customer feedback serves as a valuable tool for effectively measuring the performance of a customer success plan, assessing the impact of new programs, and gauging overall sentiment.

Why Do Brands Need a Customer Success Plan?

Brands require a customer success plan for several compelling reasons, with key considerations being:

Consistency

A customer success plan ensures that every effort of the company aligns with the right direction. By keeping the ultimate goal of customer satisfaction at the forefront, the plan prevents conflicts with the company’s style and implementation strategy.

Reducing Customer Disruption

High customer turmoil can lead to customer churn, as individuals seek organizations that better cater to their journey and growth needs. A well-crafted customer success plan addresses customer challenges swiftly, promoting satisfaction and reducing disruptions.

Increasing Sales and Cross-Sales Opportunities

A customer success plan contributes to optimizing brand sales and cross-selling opportunities. Cross-selling involves selling additional products to customers who have previously made purchases, fostering ongoing business success.

Boosting Recurring Revenue

Customer satisfaction and success contribute to increased recurring revenue. Satisfied and engaged customers not only promotes brand reputation but also facilitate acquiring new customers, thereby simplifying the process of asking questions and making sales.

Lowering Operational Costs

Implementing a customer success plan can lead to reduced operational costs for the brand. By ensuring that goals are efficiently achieved without unnecessary expenditures, the plan streamlines processes and minimizes the need for additional time and resources in planning subsequent steps.

How does Lucidya contribute to the development of a customer success plan?

Lucidya offers a range of tools aimed at enhancing customer experience across diverse industries and disciplines. The Customer Data Platform, a key component, stands out as an optimal platform for comprehending customer behavior and discerning their requirements. 

Additionally, Lucidya provides a robust survey platform, ensuring an exceptional customer survey service and facilitating a comprehensive understanding and tracking of the customer journey. In essence, Lucidya delivers essential services and tools crucial for both customer success and customer service teams.

Order Lucidya’s services to access the essential tools for constructing a highly effective customer success plan.

Conclusion

The lifecycle of a customer success plan is perpetual. Even after its initial implementation, the plan must adapt to the evolving nature of products or services, ensuring continuous enhancement as long as the brand persists. Essentially, rebuilding the customer success plan becomes a recurring necessity.

However, with a well-crafted customer success plan, the time previously consumed by challenges and stress can be redirected towards nurturing customer relationships. Alleviating frustrations and dismantling barriers in this process contributes to customer satisfaction. A satisfied customer, in turn, bolsters customer retention, ultimately leading to increased profits. Designing an effective customer success plan thus proves to be a mutually beneficial strategy for the company in both the short and long term.

The success of a business plan hinges on assisting customers in extracting maximum value from a product or service. When customers attain their desired outcomes, the business reaps rewards in the form of enduring relationships, heightened customer loyalty, sustained retention, and overall growth.