How Macronet Services helped Eversound achieve their desired outcomes to support customers.
Customer Success Consulting in an ever-changing process as tech companies especially SaaS grapple with maniacal focus on customer journeys. Each organization often requires a slightly customized team structure, reporting, workflow and culture to support their end-customers. Providing a deep & thorough review of a company’s acquisition, implementation and expansion during the customer journey looks vastly different from one organization to another. CX is so important to the scale and growth of your company products and retaining happy customers to nurture through the life cycle there isn’t always one set playbook approach. Here’s an example of how Macronet Services worked with our customer Eversound to support their game-changing technology in senior living.
Customer Success Background:
Eversound initiated a review of their Customer Success process across the base of clients, with a goal toward expansion and increasing product satisfaction in their base of customers. Macronet Services was brought in for Customer Success Consulting to support a short-term engagement as an independent advisor.
Why use an independent Customer Success Advisor Approach:
Many CS leaders find themselves pushing a boulder uphill as they look to build a customer aware culture, from the CEO downward. However, many founders, C-level management still believe customer success is a team, not a core competency or culture required throughout the organization.
- Using an independent advisor approach, especially Macronet Services who has built and run large CSM teams before, can often help flatten the landscape so the “boulder” is easier to push.
- Leveraging similar uses cases and businesses, a CSM advisor can show outcomes from similar barriers in organizations with fantastic results preventing a devasting failure.
Customer Success Consulting Steps:
- The first step was a virtual workshop across the business leadership, not just Customer Success (virtual workshops because, well, Covid just hit the United States causing a slight wrinkle). Proposing a Workshop engagement, Analysis and Readout deliverable for Eversound to address their opportunities with customers.
- Analysis was conducted which included the metrics measured, however this is where many organizations fall short. Simply pulling out the industry norm statistics on Retention, Upsell, Cross-Sell, LTV:CAC from a CRM falls short of the entire lifecycle a CSM performs daily. Macronet Services looked at every aspect of the workstream including product, marketing, sales and more to understand the logical view of Eversound’s business.
Eversounds Listening system smashes the traditional tech mold by taking hardware to improve resident lives; their offering puts a smile on the human face!
Their tech is cool however from a CSM perspective, they are more hardware vs. software focused. As a result, the traditional norms of supporting tech customers with CSM principles is slightly different. This was an area we dug into jointly with the team all the way down to the product.
Macronet Services Scope
This initial one-time project includes the Customer Success Workshop & Customized Outline for Eversound focused on architecting a framework jointly. In Customer Success Consulting engagements, we believe a workshop pulls out the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to double down on this critical team’s go to market execution. The steps taken here with Eversound, and many customers covers the following below. It should be noted both Eversound and Macronet Services clients enjoy a customized approach vs. a linear assessment to “check a box.” Let’s dig into how Eversound and Macronet’s clients reap the benefits of a temporary CS support model.
Phase 1: Customer Success Workshop
The Workshop phase has a simple goal – bring all stakeholders together, eliminate barriers of communication if they exist, provide thought leadership/execution ideas, and agree on priorities in order. In this phase, uncovering the existing and future blueprint of the Customer Success organization is part of the desired outcome. Implementing new standards is not the goal during any session(s) however an initial SWOT analysis is generated as a benchmark if required.
Workshop Participants:
- Community Success Leadership, Representation from Executive Management, Sales at a minimum and any other contributors identified.
- Optional: CSM(s), Representation from Product, Support, Marketing, Talent/HR, SOPS, Finance.
Workshop Format:
- Proctored (remote video if required) session & Agenda set prior, affording stakeholders prep-time to review.
- Macronet Services provided a standard 40+ question pre-assessment sent in advance of the session.
- Tremendous amount of inquiry into the current organization & required plan forward.
- Identified time commitment by Eversound (in hours) which allows an expectation set as they still have a business to run!
Phase 2: Customer Success Analysis
The Analysis phase provides a brief timeline to review all material from any sessions and format it in order to construct the initial readout. It’s not uncommon to follow-up with key stakeholders briefly if validation is required, including parking lot items from the initial Workshop.
Phase 3: Workflow & Other Key Performance Indicators
The Workflow & Other Key Performance Indicators phase constructs the framework, mapping out options, potentially new & existing metrics.
Format:
- Google Doc/Teams/CRM (in use) format that allows the organization the ability to continue the methodology with modifications in the future at their discretion. The goal was not to keep Macronet Services tied to a long-term engagement as Eversound or any customer knows full-well how to run their business. The idea of a quick boost to help everyone in an organization come together and leave on common ground is the expectation.
- Documentation is a snapshot in time which allows the organization to move/add/delete areas as the business adapts over the coming months/years. Ideally, the goal is this becomes the first step as a Methods of Procedure (MOP) at that time for Customer Success. This proves to be an excellent battle-cry for CSMs and their customers as they charge forward.
Customer Success Phase 4: 360 Review & Project completion
The 360 Review & Project completion phase solidifies the work carried forward by the prior week’s initiatives and is typically broken out into (2) sessions:
Session (1): Leadership Readout
This is a closed session with the key leaders in the organization to thoroughly discuss findings, recommendations, and any last discussion points. This provides a leadership a safe environment where the team can rally around key drivers for the CS organization in advance of all employees within a company. Here, traditional Customer Success Metrics are reviewed as well, aiding leadership on what is the right KPI per measurement vs. what the industry might believe. Again, each company is slightly different and Eversound is a perfect example delivering tech across more hardware than SaaS which provides some gray area if you are an outsider.
Session (2): Organization Readout
This open session includes key contributors to the CS organization who could be the owners of various roles and processes contributing to the support of end customers. Leadership representation is present, cascading the forward momentum of this framework which is critical to gain adoption. It’s not uncommon for some to offer additional “advice” on areas to focus which is added to the future phase by the company itself for ongoing refinement. Keeping in mind, supporting customers will continue to change as product and market modifications evolve. However, going through this process serves as a foundation for companies to make the necessary changes independently and own their outcomes to support buyers.
Post-work
For Eversound and some customers, following the consulting engagement, Macronet Services stayed on for a handful of weeks joining team calls and management meetings to support the integration & approach. Once this plan and assessment fully baked into the DNA and culture, that’s a perfect time for Macronet to step back. With Eversound and other customers, we still are asked a couple questions and check-ins from time to time which we love. This is especially true if we can make introductions to individuals or leaders possibly looking to expand or work for a new customer success organization.