We’ve all seen the situation. An organisation invests in expensive infrastructure, applications or cloud services. These remain underutilized and gather dust. This creates a lose-lose. The customer fails to realise the expected business value. The supplier fails to obtain any additional business. At renewal time the customer assumes that a different solution will make the difference and buys from a competitor. In doing so, another white elephant is created and the lose-lose cycle repeats itself. Customer Success Management is the key to achieving a different outcome.
What is Customer Success? It is a fast emerging field responsible for managing the activities between a supplier and its customers to maximize the value customers derive from acquired solutions. In turn, the supplier obtains additional value from the customer. Achieving customer success requires the integration of multiple traditional disciplines, including marketing, on-boarding, learning, adoption and change management. It introduces new disciplines such as outcomes engineering.
The crucial point is that the solution in of itself is insufficient to achieve success. Business outcomes are only achieved when the solution is widely adopted and used appropriately. Value is only realized when people use the solution to change the way they work. This does not happen automatically. Research shows that organisations can only expect a 15% adoption rate for collaboration when technical signoff is the key project goal.
How is success achieved? Start with the outcomes the customer expects! This is the essence of outcomes engineering. How does the customer define success? How will it be measured? Then define what capability and practices are required to achieve it. Determine where the customer is today and define who has to do what to close the gaps? Assess what timeframes are feasible for each business outcome? Capture all relevant information in a success plan.
When creating the success plan, consider each of the key disciplines and building blocks to achieve adoption and the desired business outcomes. Remember that value is only realized when people use the solution to change the way they work. Of paramount importance is to engage the users from their perspective. What is their role? What impact will the solution have on them? Gone are the days when organisations impose or “push” collaboration technologies onto employees and expect them to use them. In many cases, it is about enabling an environment of “pull” where employees opt in because they are shown how the technologies benefit them, make their lives simpler and enable them be more efficient.
Measurement is, of course, crucial to achieving the successful business outcome. The customer’s definition of success is captured in the success plan, together with how it will be measured. There are likely to be several metrics using data from multiple sources. This data should be captured, processed and analyzed frequently when executing the success plan. Interventions are initiated and corrective action taken when results fall short of expectation.
Customer Success delivers significant incremental value for both supplier and customer. Outcomes engineering provides a disciplined and focused approach to achieving customer success. Why wouldn’t anyone embrace it?
