Moving beyond customer service
Why we create customer success teams
At Sparksuite, we’re passionate about building software that is both intuitive and flexible. We’re also committed to providing exceptional service to our users to help guide them through their journey of using our software!
To do this, we’ve developed customer success teams rather than customer service teams and filled them with individuals who are passionate about providing an amazing experience to our customers. With customer success teams, we’re able to focus on three key pillars that allow us to best care for our customers. Those include taking a holistic approach to customer service, understanding and assisting the customer with reaching their goals, and building long-term relationships with them as a result.
To help others on their journey to go beyond mere customer service teams, we’re sharing why we’ve taken this approach to supporting our customers by diving into each of these three pillars below.
Holistic approach
While providing traditional customer service in the form of answering incoming questions and resolving issues is a leading part of what a customer success team does, it’s important to us that we don’t stop there. Instead, we’re always working to discover different ways we can proactively provide our users with other avenues of support.
Since our teams aren’t available 24/7 to assist users with questions that may arise, a customer success team can fill in the gap by implementing various resources that are always available to the user. This way, the user can get the answers they need even when we’re out of the office. A few ways a customer success team can do this is by publishing help articles with step-by-step instructions, blog posts that cover best practices, and actionable tips on social media.
In addition to these written resources, a customer success team is responsible for identifying other ways to meet the user’s needs at the beginning of their journey with using the software. For instance, with our subsidiary HOA Express, their customer success team offers a free personalized walkthrough to all new users that set up a website, and will also transfer over content from an existing website. This helps start the user off on the right foot and lets them we’re invested in their success from the start.
Exceeding goals
As a software company, you’re going to have users with varying levels of technical abilities. For a user to have a positive and successful experience with the product, it’s important that no matter where they fall on the tech-savvy spectrum, they feel confident and proficient with using your service.
This is where a customer success team is uniquely positioned to meet them where they are. They can do this by first helping the user identify their goals for using the software by asking thoughtful questions, then tailoring the service provided to best fit their needs.
By clearly identifying their needs at the start of the customer journey, the customer success team can create a one-on-one approach that helps the user meet and exceed their goals!
Building relationships
To build and grow a company, it’s important the users aren’t just satisfied in the short-term, but also in the long-term. Therefore, the third pillar a customer success team focuses on is building an ongoing relationship with the users. The previous two pillars play a role in this, but there are a few other things they do to help further establish this relationship.
The first is gathering insightful feedback from the user about new features they’d like implemented and other ways the service can be improved. Once the customer success team has that information, they’re able to advocate on the users’ behalf when working with the product team. Since a customer success team has direct contact with the users, they can provide the product team with valuable insight into how certain features/improvements would benefit the user.
In addition to collecting insight on how to improve the service, a customer success team can also help the users ensure they’re getting the most out of the available features. By performing proactive reviews of how the user is interacting with the software, the customer success team can locate areas the user can take better advantage of or use differently, then reach out with these personalized recommendations. This creates better results for the user and communicates to them that your company is invested in them experiencing the best possible outcome from using your service.
Another way a customer success team can help build a strong relationship with the users is by expressing your company’s gratitude. Beyond simply mentioning this to them at the end of a conversation, the team can go a step further and send long-time customers handwritten thank you cards. In the card, share a short, sincere message about how you appreciate your relationship with them and their continued support of your company.
Wrapping up
The proactive nature of a customer success team allows you to move beyond the reactive archetype of customer service, and focus on providing a more holistic and personalized experience to the user.
Through developing customer success teams, we’ve seen an increase in overall customer satisfaction and customer retention. This has also had the long-term benefit of steady growth through customer referrals and helped to establish a solid company reputation.
As you contemplate whether to create a traditional customer service team or implement a customer success team, we hope you’ll consider the latter. The unique nature of the customer success team has enabled us to implement a service approach that focuses on the principles of the three pillars mentioned above. Our company and the millions of users utilizing our subsidiaries’ services have felt the positive outcomes of this decision, and we wish the same success for you!
