There have been a number of articles already written about the rise in popularity of Customer Success (CS). So we won’t rehash that topic. Rather, let’s take a look at what’s happened since…
As noted by TSIA, Totango, Gainsight, and others, the CS workload has increased dramatically the last few years.
One specific result of this has been an increase in the average number of customer accounts managed by each Customer Success Manager (CSM). This has:
- Prevented scale. CSMs are often forced to focus their efforts on a subset of customers who represent the most revenue.
- Caused reactive behavior. Instead of being proactive, they often spend their limited time on customers with the most pressing needs.
The increase in digital CS tools
CS Leaders quickly understood this was not sustainable. So, to set up CSMs for success and help CS teams scale, CS Leadership began investing more heavily in digital tools.
TSIA’s 2022 benchmark data emphasized this, showing a pattern of increased investment in digital tools:
But what is meant by ‘digital tools’? It can mean so many things…
Certainly, CS Platforms is a big part of this investment. But other tools are included as well. Usually, the following 8 categories is where we see Digital CS investment:
- Customer Success Platforms (e.g. Gainsight, Catalyst, Churnzero, Totango, etc.)
- Customer Engagement Platforms (e.g. Outreach, Hubspot, Gong, etc.)
- Customer Insights & Revenue Growth Orchestration (e.g. Tingono)
- Product Analytics Tools (e.g. Heap, Kissmetrics, Mixpanel, etc.)
- Video Support (e.g. CloudApp, Snagit, Loom, etc.)
- Live Chat/Engagement Tools (e.g. Drift, Intercom, Ramen, Slack, etc.)
- Webinar Platform (e.g. Hopin, eWebinar, etc.)
- Voice of Customer (e.g. Qualtrics, Promoter, Wootric, UserVoice, etc.)
This is a lot, for sure. It’s likely most teams invest in only a handful of these categories. However, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish, you might still be investigating a few of these options.
The impact of digital CS tools
The good news is the investment in digital tools has produced three critical results for CS teams.
Result #1: The right customer activity, at the right time
As stated in TSIA’s 2022 State of Customer Success Report,
Organizations that have aligned digital technology to visualize and validate customer consumption and customer adoption have greater situational awareness and are better aligned to know when to engage by putting the right resource at the right point in the customer journey in the most cost-effective way possible.
Basically, many of these tools make it easier for CSMs to execute. They either make it easier to get a specific task done. Or, they remove some tasks altogether (e.g. data analysis). This empowers CSMs to focus solely on executing customer engagement activities.
Result #2: The right customer activity, for the right customer segment
TSIA also shared that investment in digital tools has led to the ability to create more granular customer segments and deliver more targeted activities to each segment.
Whereas, the common segmentation was once High Touch and Low Touch, it progressed to also include Digital Touch. Now even this has shifted to include a new Medium Touch segment.
Digital tools make this possible because they provide more customer insights. But more granular segments are also possible when tools prompt the right customer activity at the right time. So the first two results are closely linked.
In fact, all three results are connected...
Result #3: The right customer activity, producing notable business outcomes
As mentioned already, CS is seeing tangible results following investment in digital tools, including:
- Increased Scale. Automated and orchestrated workflows enable CSMs to successfully manage more customer accounts.
- Increased Customer Retention. When customers are getting the right message or interaction just when they need it, they tend to have a better customer experience. This translates to happy, loyal customers.
- Increased Account Expansion. Digital tools like Tingono can crunch a lot of data and find early indicators of expansion opportunities. When these opportunities are explored at just the right time, it leads to cross-sells and upsells.
- Increased Revenue. As noted, increasing retention and expansion leads to more revenue. Specifically, this will boost NRR and increase your chance of long-term success.
Quickly benefit from a digital CS tool investment
If you’re looking for a digital tool to help your CS team scale their ability to deliver the right customer activity at the right time, we’d like to help.
If you’re also looking for a way to help your CS team improve customer retention, increase customer expansion, and boost NRR, we need to talk. 😎
There are few tools that can help you to both scale your team activities and boost NRR. But Tingono is one of them. And we’d love to help make this a reality for you.
