failure sucks! (more for your customers than for you.)

Failure Sucks!(More for Your Customers, Than for You.)

A B2B Guide to Customer Success

By: Steven Bernstein with Sabrina Bozek

Illustrations by: Timothy Smith

©2014 Waypoint Research Group, LLC

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any man-ner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Failure Sucks. It’s All About Success ................................ vii

Section 1: Building the Foundation

Chapter 1: Winning with Customer Success .........................................3

Chapter 2: Telling a Financial Story .................................................... Telling a Financial Story .................................................... Telling a Financial Story 21

Chapter 3: The Success Equation ........................................................31

Section 2: Assembling the Framework

Chapter 4: HARNESS a Coalition .......................................................51

Chapter 5: ENGAGE Your Customers .................................................69

Chapter 6: ACT on Feedback .............................................................. ACT on Feedback .............................................................. ACT on Feedback 81

Chapter 7: REVEAL the Results ...........................................................93

Section 3: Adding Necessities: Scale with a(n)

Chapter 8: EXECUTABLE Program ..................................................107

Chapter 9: SCALABLE Program .......................................................125

Chapter 10: PROFITABLE Program ...................................................145

Section 4: Finishing Touches

Chapter 11: Questionnaire Design ......................................................163

Chapter 12: Questionnaires that Drive Sales & Account Management ....................................................................Management ....................................................................Management 173

Chapter 13: Questionnaires for Product Teams .................................185

Conclusion: And the Journey Continues .............................................197

Copyright © 2014 Steven BernsteinAll rights reserved.

ISBN: 1500201227ISBN 13: 9781500201227

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014910941CreateSpace Independent Publishing PlatformNorth Charleston, South Carolina

Hey, I’m Jake and that’s Elwood over there. We’re building a house and you’re building a customer success program. Turns out, they’re very similar processes.

Elwood is currently shredding my fi les for me—He keeps me on track and we’ll keep you on track, too. Let’s build a solid structure together.

69

Chapter 5

ENGAGE Your Customers

In this chapter you will learn to …

• Ensure customer contact data is accurate and holistic• Develop communication structure and best practices for engag-

ing accounts• Properly set and manage expectations with your customers

In Chapter 4, we talked about Harnessing a cross-functional coalitionto help you start building a small-scale program that can take action. This coalition includes colleagues from varying departments in your company as well as Account Managers (AMs) who have a relationship with the customers selected to participate.

This chapter moves into the next phase of the process, where you will Engage customers and begin collecting insights. Now that you’ve planned and strategized who should be on your team to build this Customer Success (CS) program, it’s time to start moving. Using the re-sources and internal team that you formed with the guidelines of Chapter 4, you will begin collecting feedback through short but perceptive inter-views via phone, video, or in-person meetings when available. Enlisting customers to be a part of this new, select group of product partners is not as daunting as it may sound because you will only be contacting a few

70 | ENGAGE Your Customers Failure Sucks! | 71

with your customers and truly forming a partnership. What will they consider as added value? At the end of the day, everyone wants to feel needed and be recognized for their efforts, so positioning this as a mo-ment for them to help guide your company or product design should have a worthwhile effect. Perhaps you will need their feedback first to figure out what that reward should be—indeed, that could be part of the pitch. For example, “To demonstrate our promise to address your feedback, we have assembled a team to act on the information you pro-vide. We plan to tailor the solutions to your needs in return for your taking a few minutes to discuss how we can help you be more successful with our product or service.”

Also, it won’t take much of their time; allow about a half-hour for the conversation. You may find that you need closer to 45 minutes for scheduling—always manage expectations!—but the overall inter-view shouldn’t entail too many questions. Keep in mind that there will be follow-up after this discussion—you may need to ask more probing questions or clarify a comment—so you don’t want to burn any feed-back request bridges here. If it’s easier, you can propose “group” inter-views with multiple contacts at the same time. The one pitfall to avoid here, though, is groupthink, where one contact’s views are skewed by another person. If you do go ahead and conduct group discussions, you will need to make sure each voice is heard, not just one individual who is steering the conversation. The benefit of one-on-one conversa-tions is the ability to focus on one person’s views and get a full, unbi-ased, read on his or her opinion.

Who You Gonna Call?

Making sure you have a complete list of contacts within each customer account is the next critical step. The AMs who have the existing relationship with your chosen accounts will likely tell you they have all the information handy, but don’t move too quickly here. You won’t just

customers—or accounts, in this case. Since one customer is made up of many contacts, you don’t need to select very many to be able to get good insight and make a difference. The end goal of this process will be to understand what is contributing to a small segment of your customers’ success and which portions of your business need improvement to make them more successful. Chapters 6 and 7 will discuss how to Act on the feedback and Reveal the insights both internally and to your customers.

A Few Good Customers

The secret to enlisting the right customers is to sweeten the deal and sell the concept like an added benefit rather than a chore. Especially in this first phase of VoC, you’re not asking them to “fill out a survey.” That sounds tedious, time consuming, and boring no matter the occasion. This time around, you really will be having a conversation with them to conversation with them to conversationunderstand what it’s like to be a customer of your company. Embrace the logic, “Help me, help you.”

Ultimately, custom-ers who are selected to be a part of this ex-clusive group will have access to free, unique resources by participat-ing in this limited scope rollout (LSRrollout (LSRrollout ). They will receive tailored solu-tions to their account’s specific issues and will have the opportunity for

accelerated success. You can also ask these customers to be a part of beta-testing opportunities if they really want to have a hand in prod-uct development. This process is all about strengthening relationships


customer has a direct chute through a door on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant—but you can only use it during lunch prep before 10 AM. Otherwise, the outdoor seating will already be set up, blocking the chute.

Enabling the customer’s success here would be reciprocal: a smooth delivery supplies the kitchen with the items they need for prep that morning and also gets the driver back on the road to the next customer. If each of your customers has an early morning deadline, you may need to invest in more drivers to service more locations at the same time. However, you may not have this kind of information if you haven’t bothered to ask your customers the right questions. But how will you know if you have all the right data and have asked all the right people for this information? Collecting the contact info and feedback from all corners of the business—from restaurant managers and servers to bartenders and kitchen staff—to ask them about the quality and timeliness of the food delivery could lead you to learn that the limes, for example, you deliver are still not arriving early enough to prep for the day. Sometimes the dishwasher is tediously juicing limes during service because he is the only one “available” to play catch-up. This extra work for the dishwasher can become annoying, causing high turnover for something that could easily be fixed. Had you only asked the owner, whom you deal with regularly, you wouldn’t be soliciting the right answers. She knows there is high turnover with the dishwasher position, but she has no idea it could potentially be solved with an ear-lier delivery time.

In these situations, personal conversations again are the best way to collect information. Site visits with customers show real com-mitment and dedication to CS. Plus, online surveys for jobs where computers are rarely used will likely never get answered or drag on forever. Going to the establishment and asking around the kitchen will be the only way to learn firsthand if FastFreshFoods‘ systems are working.

need the “everyday” person to give input. That individual may not have the best perspective, may not use the product daily, or could be an outlier and have a different opinion than the rest of the account. Also, contacts change, people get promoted, others leave the company. You will need to ask that “everyday” person to provide a list of names and contact info so that every person involved in the process can partner with you and experience success.

Who should be included on the list? You should include key contacts who interact with your company or use your service to do a component of his job. No matter what department they work in, if they touch your product or service, they should be considered for inclusion on the list. You also want to make sure that within these job descriptions, you cover a wide range of junior- and senior-level people. Don’t assume that the most senior people will have the best insights—junior-level customers may interact with your product more and have a better handle on how customer-centric your product is. Now, this may seem contrary to the beginning of this chapter, where I mentioned you would only be call-ing a handful of customers. That’s true in this pilot phase. It makes it even more important to pull insights from many different parts of the business in this stage, so you still get the clearest 360-degree view of the account as possible.

To illustrate the need to cast a wide net with contacts, let’s take a food delivery service as an example. FastFreshFoods is a company that delivers food products to restaurants, bakeries, and other retail food establishments. If they don’t have instructions for each customer as to where the items need to go, then the drop-off can take far too long. Large vendors will have a specific delivery section, likely located in the back, but smaller locations may only accept deliveries through the front or side entrance. I know some restaurants where deliveries need to go to the basement, forcing a deliverer who’s not in the know to go the long route—through the dining room and down the steep basement stairs carrying heavy boxes. Or, you can be smart and know that the


it’s about them—and how you can help them get their job done—them—and how you can help them get their job done—them and the less it’s about you checking them off the ol’ To-Do list, the better.less it’s about you checking them off the ol’ To-Do list, the better.less it’s about you

If you can wrangle an Executive Sponsor (ES) from your custom-er’s company to drive participation by distributing primer communica-tions, even better. Instructions or direction straight from an executive within your customer’s organization are a great way to increase partici-pation. For phone interviews, like the one in the first phase of your LSR, this may be less necessary, but the alliance will be a powerful tool once you scale up later on. Figure 5.1 is an example of a primer email that you could supply to the ES to send to all internal account contacts so they are prepared to expect your scheduling request or online sur-vey link.

Figure 5.1

Figure 5.2 (below) is an example of the email to send to schedule the interview. Keep it brief but state a clear “what’s in it for me” (WIIFM) so that recipients understand the purpose of their involvement and how they will benefit from participating. As a result, they will be more

If You Build It, They Will Come

Now that we’ve discussed who we need to Engage, let’s talk about who we need to Engage, let’s talk about who how. First, you and your coalition will need to answer some basic questions:

1. What is the best way to reach your customers? (Email? Phone? Blog? Social Media? Mail? One-on-one conversation?)

2. What communication methods, if any, should be avoided? (What would they really hate?)

Violating these communication barriers can set a negative tone at the start of your conversation, which could skew your results. If you know from experience that your customers absolutely hate to answer

unsolicited phone calls, then you will need to figure out a way around that. Be sure to schedule the meeting ahead of time or wait to include these accounts in an online survey wave later down the road. Or perhaps in this instance, an in-person or group meeting will be required.

Considering your answers to the questions above, you will need to create two communication guides. One will act as a script for the AMs who will begin to recruit customers, and one will be for the members of your coalition who will conduct the interviews. Obviously, the mode of communication will determine the style and length for each, but the scripts should flow as a conversation would and not like a robot made them. Just as the goals for CS are meant to make the customer’s life eas-ier, this feedback interview should be as painless as possible. The more

Survey “Waves”

You may have noticed we refer to “waves” of surveys. We use that term to signify the various rounds or deployments of feedback re-quests.

Trending analysis, when compar-ing one wave of results to another, is often called “wave-over-wave.”


your own to form your interview “script,” making sure that the group really understands why you’re choosing to ask these specific questions. why you’re choosing to ask these specific questions. whyAlso include a hypothesized answer to each question so you can contrast any differences from the real results.

Figure 5.3

likely to pay attention to the next email or phone call and provide thoughtful answers. This email can also easily be tweaked for your needs in a phone conversation that matches your company’s style and branding. Add some humor or match the look and feel of the message to mirror your corporate identity. But always make it feel personal by including their name in the salutation and sent from a recognizable name.

Figure 5.2

Discussion Guide for Interviews

Once you’ve enlisted all the right contacts from your recruitment, you’re ready to start outlining what kinds of information you’ll be collecting. Figure 5.3 lists some questions that we typically recommend using when beginning a CS conversation. Brainstorm a thought-provoking list of


You’ll be coming back to them—both to follow-up on solutions and also to help you evangelize the success—so use this opportunity to make them feel important and build the relationship.

Now it’s your turn…

1. Which customers (or accounts) will you be recruiting? How many contacts are in each account?

2. Which Account Managers are responsible for the accounts you selected? Be sure they are on your coalition!

3. Which form of communication do those customers prefer?4. Plan your discussion guide and brainstorm which questions

you think would collect the most information and will apply to many different departments. Fill out Figure 5.3 to fully under-stand why you are asking each question.(Access all the tem-plates on our book website: www.failuresucksbook.com)

5. Prioritize which questions are “must-haves” and which are “nice-to-haves.” You may get a chatty customer and fi nd that interview lengths of 30 minutes are not enough. Make sure the team knows which questions are of the highest priority.

6. Discuss how you will manage customer expectations for next steps. Include time frames and deadlines for post-interview follow-up and status updates.

Manage Expectations

During your conversations with customers, you’re going to find requests that fill a range of extremes: tasks that are too difficult to do at this time, items that come far out of left field, or things that are already possible. We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: Managing expectations is a big priority during a customer interview. If the next steps are left to the customer’s imagination, you could be creating a larger problem with the illusion that you have the whole company burning the midnight oil to provide a custom-tailored dashboard overnight. There is a big distinction between addressing customer issues and stopping what you’re doing to fix them all immediately. Your customers will understand if you lay it out clearly, so don’t feel like you can’t be honest about having a limited team and resources for this first go-round. Explain your process for regrouping with the coalition to analyze everyone’s collective and individual feedback, which may require extra follow-up. Confirm with them that you will be able to contact them again, just to make sure they are still on board—you don’t want to be a nuisance after all! Then let them know you and your team will be creating an action plan, which they should hear about in about a month (or whatever time frame is realistically doable—though don’t stretch it longer than a month if you can help it). If you find that after you regroup with the coalition you are unable to do what they need, then you need to reset the customer expectations. Depending on the circumstance, send out individual account emails or a whole email campaign to all of the participants to update them on the progress you’ve made thus far. You can tailor it by customer and lay out explicit items they requested that will take more time to develop. Be sure to let them know what solutions, if any, have been applied, and showcase the work you’ve done to that point. Be as transparent as possible to fully communicate the depth and hard work you’ve put in thus far.

Also, remember: Part of “addressing” their feedback includes thank-ing the customer. Don’t overlook the power of politeness and humility.

failure sucks! (more for your customers than for you.)

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