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Preparing for Your Engagements and Asking Questions Like a Problem-Solving Consultant
In most companies, data is spread across multiple places. There are ticketing or support case systems. Some companies rely on product usage and telemetry tools. They also have offline documents, and don't be surprised if you find sticky notes at people's desks! There is also the almighty Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system which is excellent for storing data but notoriously difficult for finding it. Every team or function, from Customer Success, Sales, and Marketing has access to at least a few of these data stores that are tied to their critical day-to-day operations. The disparity in data storage, access, and usage means everyone in the company has a different understanding of the customer depending on what data they have access to. Worse still, no one has a comprehensive understanding of the customer. This disparity is detrimental to the health of the customer and your relationship with them.
In an article from the Harvard Business Review entitled “Unlock the mysteries of your customer relationships,” the authors Jill Avery, Susan Fournier, and John Wittenbraker reported on data sharing.1 Their research showed many companies could increase their understanding of their customers by boosting the relational intelligence simply by utilizing data across the organization. Many companies “receive vast amounts of data – via e-mails, online chat sessions between customers and reps, and phone calls – that contain relational signals, but they're poor at collecting and analyzing all this information.” They concluded that just by participating in data gathering techniques, such as surveys, the customers were giving signals that conveyed “what kinds of relationships customers want.” The key was to start “listening for and capturing them.” Despite this knowledge, companies were not only underutilizing the information gathered, but they also weren't storing it or sharing it advantageously.
The authors were not alone in affirming the correlation between leveraging data from multiple sources across an organization to improve customer insights. The importance of data usage and sharing was the topic of a 2018 MIT Sloan Management Review report entitled “Using Analytics to Improve Customer Engagement.” The authors, Sam Ransbotham and David Kiron, found a disparity between data collection and proper use or application. Their research “finds that innovative, analytically mature organizations make use of data from multiple sources: customers, vendors, regulators, and even competitors.”2
The Need for a 360o View of the Customer
What are the typical symptoms of not having a comprehensive understanding of the customer? It will be hard for your teams to collaborate on a customer. It will take more time to prepare for customer interactions. Your employees will have inconsistent or even conflicting information about a customer. Different systems often contradict each other on the facts of a customer. Worst of all, information kept in notes in a non-centralized place becomes unshared and often inaccessible. Data is not institutionalized. Instead, it exists in various isolated compartments, including people's brains. Data is often out of sight of teams that could desperately use the additional details. Further, lack of data consistency makes things disorganized, and the information tends to disappear when an employee transfers off a customer.
When information gathering and storage is done right, a company can aggregate critical customer data into a single source to provide a holistic view that enables the entire organization to do better work. To get there, you need to be able to capture vital information across the organizational teams easily (e.g. Sales, Success, Support, Services) and the types of data (e.g. product usage, interactions). Every team needs up-to-date insights into relevant business relationships, products, and service engagements. The “Best in Class” companies practice this process. It enables them to share their ideas directly with customers, which promotes transparency and collaboration in mutually delivering customer success.
Where the Data Comes From
If you are using a Customer Success platform, the value of that platform quickly multiplies if you can aggregate these sources of data into the platform. In our experience, the most impactful five sources of data include product usage/telemetry data, support ticket information (includes reported bugs), training and certification completed by your users, surveys (such as Net Promoter Score, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Effort Score), and the status of any ongoing professional services engagements. In large enterprises, these would need to be collected, sorted, and presented in your Customer Success platform, by-products, and business units to be useful.
If you don't have access to any of these sources of information, don't despair. There is much you can do to help your customers while you wait for this data. There's a treasure trove of information residing in all the calls and meetings different people in your company are having with your customers. Make it possible and easy for everyone to capture their notes after their customer interactions (Figure 6.1). Make it easy to share and collaborate. For example, have the ability to at-mention people and comment on notes. It will go a long way in fostering collaboration. It is also essential to capture a few other metadata from your calls and meetings:
- Who from the customer attended?
- Who from your company attended?
- When did the interaction happen?
- How long did it last?
Figure 6.1 Example template to take notes from your calls or meetings.
- What was the sentiment on the call? How is it trending vs. the previous interaction?
- What type of interaction format was it? For example, call, meeting, email, internal update, etc.
- Bonus: What was the desired outcome from the interaction? For example, executive sponsorship, advocacy, expansion/sales, etc.
- Bonus: What are the follow-up actions from the interaction?
- Bonus: What documents/attachments were used in the interaction?
Now that you have all of these data and insights in one place, make sure you reference those before a call or meeting. Some CSMs even pull up the product usage or call notes “live” in a meeting to show how they are actively partnering with the customer in their success. It is an activity that is very convincing. No matter how you proceed, remember that it is preparation and due diligence that will make a difference in your customer-facing interactions.
Do Your Homework: Prepare for Every Customer Engagement
Putting all the skills and competencies required to be a great Customer Success Manager into practice is not easy. It's incredibly challenging to perform all of the necessary functions of a CSM while keeping everything within your purview. However, there is one skill that rises to the top in this ambitious profession: preparation. When contemplating a contributor for this topic, one of the very first people we considered was our colleague, Elaine Cleary. She is a true virtuoso of the craft and has dedicated her career to delighting customers while delivering business outcomes. At Gainsight, we once preserved the title of Principal Customer Success Manager for those very select, rare individuals that achieve and perform at the highest attainable levels of effectiveness and mastery of the CS profession. To date, no one has been granted this unique designation, besides Elaine. She is a CS superstar and a true role model of an ideal customer success practitioner. We are truly honored to have her share some thoughts and advice on the importance of preparation.
The Art of Discovery: Asking the Right Questions to Get to the Heart of the Customer's Problem
Preparation and due diligence are the foundation of your journey as a Customer Success Manager. Every bit of information you learn about your potential or current customer is an investment that will eventually pay off. It is with that in mind that we compiled a long list of discovery questions we used at Gainsight for our own customer engagements. It was started years ago by our good friend Easton Taylor, whom we introduced you to in Chapter 3, and has grown to well over a hundred different questions. Below is a shortened sample of general discovery questions. You can find the expanded list at www.gainsight.com by searching under Resources for “Art of Discovery.” We encourage you to create your own situational go-to questions to help ensure you are learning as much as you can about your customers.
General discovery:
- Who is the customer?
- Where are they in their journey as a company? Looking for an IPO?
- What is the industry chatter?
- What services or products do they provide or sell?
- What is the purpose of the meeting? Who called it?
- Where are they in their journey as your customer?
- How long have they been your customer?
- What is the customer's current satisfaction level?
- What is the health of the relationship between you, your company, and your customer?
- Have they attended any of your company-sponsored events?
- Do they engage in your webinars or marketing materials?
- Are they the right fit as a customer?
Finding the Right Questions and Asking the Questions Correctly
The skill of effectively questioning your customer is referred to as the “The Art of Discovery.” Questions serve various purposes when connecting with potential clients and established customers. It is not just about attaining vital information that will help your customers get back on the road to wellness. The right questions asked at the right time, build a rapport that eventually enriches the relationship.
The individual who is asking the question is in control of the conversation and the environment. Whether they admit it or not, the customer wants your help. You would not be there if they were not seeking a remedy to their situation. A customer is looking for someone to believe in their vision. You must provide affirmation to their situation. That is a human-first skill. If they believe you, they are more than likely to feel safe and show their vulnerability. This trust opens the door to reveal the “pain points” of their business.
The content of your questions is vital in the art of discovery. How the questions are delivered is equally important. There is an old adage that says, “The prophecy is subject to the prophet.” In other words, the message you bring to your customers could make them more successful and perhaps even save them. The wrong delivery and actions, however, can turn your green or yellow light customer into an at-risk, red customer. Customer Success is about customer experience. It is not just the tone and phrasing of your questions that help. One must also be careful not to communicate a personal message or agenda. Questions like “Are you sure you want to do this?” or “Do you think this is going to work?” are both examples of messages that indicate you do not believe in their ideas. It is better to be honest and more direct.
Lastly, your physical presence gives greater significance to your questions. While some prescribe to the soft skills of reading a room, human-first skills emphasize your manners, behavior, and demeanor despite what information you may gain from a customer's reaction. Now, let us begin the meeting.
The Meeting: Creating an Effective First Customer Experience
It is not uncommon for the first meeting with your customer to be virtual or over the phone. Sometimes this occurs near the end of the sales cycle. Most often, it happens after the customer signs a contract with your company, and maybe not until after initial implementation is completed. At some point along the early journey, you are assigned as the customer's CSM. It's an exciting milestone that can bring some uncertainty. Your company has entrusted you with a precious new account to ensure success for all. You are also the person your customer assumes will be competent, trustworthy, and capable of guiding them to their desired outcomes. As such, the very first impression you make is a critical one. While the next section describes an in-person meeting, there is much value to following nearly every suggestion even for a virtual conference. You may find that the tone and video presence will be similar, if not the same.
The Introduction aka “Being the Expert in the Room”
When you enter a room, you divulge a great deal about your character. Posture, smiles, soft eyes, and an open stance gives the impression of a willingness to help. Ask yourself, what is your body language telling everyone in the room? Be careful what you glean from the other people present. No matter what that body language may say about them, it is not to be used to your advantage. The emphasis is on making them a success, not making a sale.
Give a brief history of who you are, and who your team members are. Explain your role in your company and include your past professional experience that may seem relatable (i.e. I have been part of a Marketing team). Be sure to ask if there is anything more that the customer wants you to know about them and their company that may prove useful to the process.
Often, as a CSM, you are brought in during a business crisis. It is essential to find out if there is something that the customer believes or values as the most critical issue that they want to convey to you and your team. Allow the customer to share concerns and explain what their position is. This action gives the customer the ability to be heard and feel like they matter from the beginning of the meeting. It is a risk to ask, but it could yield unexpected benefits. The key lies in your ability to redirect the meeting and conversations to refocus on what the original goal was.
A key to any initial meeting is asking what makes the customer's product unique or different from similar products on the market? Also, what makes you different from your competition? Another valuable insight is to find out which competitor they may respect. These are open-ended questions. Give the customer time to answer with enough detail. It proves to the customer that you are not willing to make assumptions or poor choices. Ultimately, it shows that you are listening.
Every business has unique elements to it besides the products or services it offers. Find out what their top three unique elements are. Next, have them focus on their customers. Of all their customers, which ones do they value the most or are the most valuable? Ask what the top three reasons are that they believe their most valued or best customers conduct business with them. Are these the same reasons they stay with you as customers?
Lastly, discuss your customer's limitations. Every company has complaints. What are the three most common customer complaints about them? Do they know the most common reasons customers cite for leaving? Another subject to discuss is their future. What do they believe are the biggest challenges facing their customers? Ask them, “Do you believe your customers' expectations have changed recently or over the past five years?”
Moving Toward Identifying and Developing a Need
Hopefully, the client is now aware that you have their best interest at heart. In the next section, be mindful that the questions require direct answers. Sometimes the answers become rigid and lead to anxious situations. Tension can bring about a decline in the quality of the answers. It may be fruitful to give the customer time for composure and contemplation, ultimately leading to redirection and focus.
Be sure to discuss what are the actual or opportunity costs of their current problem. Stress to them your respect for their business insight. What do they think the savings would be if this issue were remedied? It is necessary for you to understand how their current problems affect other aspects of their business, including sales, costs, productivity, and overall morale. Moreover, you should know if there are any other areas of their business that are affected.
Part of any solution is finding out what has been done so that there is no redundancy. What solutions have they already tried and how successful were they? Do they believe there will be organizational resistance to changes that are made? The last thing to ascertain is whether there are any relevant issues that may assist the CS team in coming to a greater understanding of this issue. Trust and vulnerability can open your customers to share more vital information and make your job easier.
Understanding Aspirations and Goals
In this last section, you will want to acquaint yourself with your customer's immediate and future goals. Begin with what they have accomplished thus far. What do they credit for their current level of success? Do they believe those explanations will change in the future? If so, where do they go from here in terms of future improvements in performance? Another item to discover is how their priorities may have changed over time?
Have them tell you what their three most significant current priorities are. Do the priorities they described include opportunities for growth? Do they believe growth will come from existing customers versus new customers? Do they have a current strategy to achieve those opportunities? Changes can profoundly influence current strategies. Are there foreseeable changes or trends that could affect current strategies?
Often there are organizational or operational capabilities that they will need to strengthen to support their future strategies significantly. Can they identify them? If they had additional resources, which initiatives would they choose to advance? In this same train of thought, ask them “blue sky” questions such as “What more could you ask for if there was no chance of it being denied?”
As you finish your session with the customer, find out what risk management looks like for their company? What would organizational effectiveness look like? Which do they believe is better suited for their company? Lastly, how do they think their personal performance should be evaluated at the end of the year?
Challenging and Persuading the Customer
Customer Success Managers often find themselves in precarious situations concerning assessing what is best for the customer as they journey along their prescribed road to success. The need to be both persuasive and sometimes provocative go hand in hand, especially if the customer is headed down a road of imminent failure. If you don't already know it, consider yourself an authorized “movie-spoiler.” In other words, you have an obligation to sound the warning trumpet to your customers, especially if you have seen the same doomed situation play out before with other customers. It is not an option to recuse yourself from this potentially difficult circumstance or believe you can approach it with an air of passivity. Instead, you must accept your trusted-advisor role with a confident duty, whether they want to hear it or not, and provide your customer with appropriate guidance as the situation warrants. Remember, your primary objective as a Customer Success Manager is to ensure your customer is attaining their desired outcome, which does not include failure. This might mean you having to outright tell your customer “no.” Your customers will appreciate you, even if they disagree, because the motivation for your warning is in their best interests.
There are easy ways to challenge your customer and not appear rude while doing it. Try the “not advisable because . . .” instead of “no.” This provides clarification for why you disagree with a particular point of view. Even better, say no without saying no. “Let me suggest a different approach here so we can talk through multiple solutions.” Wherever possible, be fact based. You can argue against opinions but not so easily against facts. If you want to persuade your customer to use a different approach than what they are currently considering, use examples of other customers, ideally as similar to them as possible. Convey a “proven” approach that brings with it lower risk.
There is a myth that challenging your customer is simply a matter of being contrary or “pushing them.” Truthfully, challenging your customer is more about persuasion than objection. What you message to your customers right after their purchase will be different than what you say to them at the time of renewal, and different when you are trying to convince them to buy more or adopt new product features. Tailor your messages to the current state of the customer. Doing so will yield the outcomes you and your customer are expecting.
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In this chapter, we discussed why consolidating your data sources related to your customers is foundational to collaborating across different teams in your quest to create a customer-centric company. We also discussed tactical steps to prepare for customer interactions, asking the right questions, and understanding customer needs. Finally, we established how challenging and persuading the customer is critical to keeping the customer on the best path to success. In the next section, we delve into core tasks that help you manage, retain and grow your customers.
Endnotes
- 1. Avery, J., Fournier, S., and Wittenbraker, J. (2014). Unlock the mysteries of your customer relationships. Harvard Business Review (July–August 2014). Retrieved from: https://hbr.org/2014/07/unlock-the-mysteries-of-your-customer-relationships.
- 2. Ransbotham, S. and Kiron, D. (2018). Using analytics to improve customer engagement. MIT Sloan Management Review (January 2018). Retrieved from: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/projects/using-analytics-to-improve-customer-engagement/.