When does customer success go from simple user satisfaction to something more?
For Trevah Di Salvio, a senior customer success team lead at sales enablement software Showpad, unlocking that starts with digging deeper into the case study at hand.
“Early on, we can look at high-level things, like adoption. Are they using the tool? Are they happy with it?” she said. “But I think real success comes when we can actually tie usage to business metrics.”
Once that ROI is defined, then a clearer picture of success begins to truly crystalize.
“When we can tell that story — where customers see the actual effects of users using Showpad — that’s when we really have a successful engagement,” she said.
Keeping that journey on the rails requires a proactive approach from a swath of teams that play a role in the client’s experience. Professional services facilitate a frictionless deployment, while support teams effectively help alleviate customer pain points.
Real success comes when we can actually tie things to business metrics.”
Integral to that? Anticipating a client’s needs without assumptions, said Technical Support Engineer Keith Jennings.
“It's all about communication on all levels — between us internally, and between us and the customer — so that we can provide a united front that addresses customer questions and concerns,” he said.
To ensure customers thrive, Di Salvio, Jennings and Professional Services Consultant Manesh Daryanani say thoughtful discovery, sharing information openly and leveraging the power of cross-collaboration has helped create the feedback loop that works for them today.
What guides your approach to customer success?
Di Salvio: Our guiding philosophy or mantra on the customer experience team is that the best customer experience wins. Throughout implementation, we make sure that we’re constantly coming back to why customers bought the product and what the success of this product will mean to them.
Daryanani: I want to make sure our customers know the ins and outs of the product. Business objectives can change from start to finish during implementation. Collaborating with customer success throughout the process makes them understand what the customer is looking to get out of the product by the end of the journey.
Jennings: When you run into something unexpected, that's when the customer experience is most important. One of our biggest philosophies is the “best experience” concept. Through that, various levels of communication go into keeping someone informed and happy while they’re experiencing a challenge.
In practice, when has Showpad’s customer feedback loop been effective?
Di Salvio: We recently acquired a company called LearnCore, and we’ve been migrating those customers to the Showpad product. Those migrations have been a group effort across the board. It really showed how our teams can collaborate to make something that seemed really daunting at first come out smoothly in the end.
Support, professional services and customer success agreed on what a project plan for the migration looked like and who owned which part of it. We determined clear timelines for that and worked hand in hand internally and with the customer. Having a clear project plan, with clear owners on both sides, made that a success.
Not all customer feedback is equal. What’s the benefit of constructive customer feedback?
Di Salvio: We have a process for entering what we call a “product improvement request,” which goes to our product team to determine if it’s something that can fit on the roadmap. We always want to figure out why a feature would be important and what its potential use cases are. With that, we can bring our customers’ voices to our product team to help them build the case why that feature or functionality is something we should look at
Daryanani: I want to see people enjoying the tool and benefiting from it and seeing how they can save time. Internally, we have a Slack channel, which is called “Go Lives.” We want to make sure all of Showpad knows which customers are going live with our product and understand some of the highlights and challenges that might have come out of that deployment.
Jennings: We have a robust help center. If you don’t like an article or don’t find it helpful, you can leave that feedback for our teams. We’ll engage with our help center team and say, ‘How can this article be more helpful? How can we incorporate what customers are seeing and engaging with in our articles, and improve them in that way?’
What helps create successful cross-collaboration on a day-to-day basis?
Jennings: Communicating in an anticipatory way. When I’m sent a recording prior to a customer call, I can listen to the previous calls with the customer to see what’s going on before actually engaging with them so that they’re not wasting their time. They’re always delighted when you’re able to address their situation without bombarding them constantly. It all orbits around presenting a unified front before engaging with the customer.
Daryanani: We just introduced a new product to our suite of products called MeetingIQ, which transcribes our meetings. Recently, an issue arose with a customer. I shared my recording with support, and we went through the issue the customer was experiencing. When I shared that with technical support, they were one step ahead prior to actually getting involved with that customer.
Di Salvio: Recording conversations ties into our idea of the best customer experience. If Manesh got an issue on a recording, he can then send it to Keith, and that saves the customer the step of walking Keith through that issue again. Utilizing that not only makes the customer’s life a little bit easier but also ours.
We always want to figure out why a feature would be important and what its potential use cases are.”
With your need for cross-collaboration, what defines a successful Showpad colleague?
Di Salvio: Being proactive and self-motivated, especially when our focus and goal is to create an amazing customer experience. When we’re able to anticipate customers’ needs based on what we know about them, and what we’ve seen work well with other customers, we’re not waiting for them to come to us with a problem.
Jennings: Empathy. That’s a key aspect of being able to succeed here because it contributes to collaboration. Can you put yourself in someone else’s shoes, whether it’s as a customer using the product or as an internal person with whom you’re working on a project?
Daryanani: Being a team player helps us cross-collaborate. I dont think there’s a level of shyness between anybody. We can reach out to somebody and shoot a quick message — no-harm, no-foul. It’s not like going up the chain of command.
