"How do you prevent CS from becoming an overblown support team for enterprise?"
President of a prominent tech company asked me this question today.
And it's a great question. I believe this is a contributing factor to some of the CS reductions we're seeing in the #saas right now:
CS teams have become indistinguishable from support. And therefore putting unnecessary stress on Gross Margins.
Tell me, how are you combating this in your companies? 👇
Here are my thoughts:
- Make sure Support and Sustaining Engineering are performing well. Everyone gets sucked into a reactive vortex if not.
- Give CSMs a retention and growth goal. Not a quota with commission, but a business goal to maintain and grow revenue.
- Give CSMs a relationship development goal. How many contacts and at what levels do we need a relationship to succeed?
- Make CSMs responsible for harvesting references, reviews and success stories. Even referrals if possible.
- Define a value playbook for CSMs to execute - Documented Success Plans and Business Review templates for use with key customers.
It's time to look at #customersuccess for what it is: part of the go to market function, not an unnecessary cost to the business.
