Understanding and Optimizing the Customer Success Equation

The latest episode of Kantata’s Professional Services Pursuit Podcast, hosted by Banoo Behboodi, features Peter Wride,  Senior Vice President of Professional Services and Upgrades at Gainsight. This episode focuses on how services delivery can be positioned to drive customer success and what a truly customer-centric organization looks like. 

This blog highlights the key variables involved in the customer success equation as well as some of the best practices Peter outlines in the episode. According to Peter, “the equation that we use frequently is: Customer Success equals Customer Experience plus Customer Outcomes.”  Below you will learn how Gainsight defines this equation, and two of the several tangible ways to ensure the equation remains balanced and aligned, with the customer at the heart of the process. 

To hear more detailed insights from Peter, listen to the entire episode or read the transcript here.

The Customer Success Equation

Peter outlines two critical components that add up to customer success: customer outcomes and customer experience.

Part 1: Customer Outcomes

Peter defines customer outcomes as the measurable impact that your business has on its customers. In order to actually understand these outcomes, he suggests asking the following questions: “Are we actually changing what happens in their business? Can we attribute the good things happening in their business  to the fact that they’re using us a vendor?” As far as how this is measured, Peter adds, “Ideally, all of this is in dollars, right? Some of it might be more qualitative, but ideally they can say, because I use Gainsight, or because I use XYZ software. “

Part 2: Customer Experience

The other part of the equation is customer experience. Peter defines this as more of the actual interaction between your business and the customers. He proposes putting yourself in the customers’ shoes and asking yourself the following: “What is it like to work with your business? And it’s not, ‘Do they like you? Are you nice people?’ Which that’s part of it, but it’s more importantly like, ‘is it easy to work with you?’”  

According to Peter, getting just one part of the equation wrong can have significant implications for your business. For example, there may be businesses working with you that appreciate the customer experience and love the team delivering the work, but are not seeing the results or tangible outcomes necessary for true customer success. Without clear outcomes, these customers are unlikely to feel like working with your business is driving success.

But Peter cautions against the inverse as well: “The opposite is almost as bad, which is they get a lot of value, but they hate working with you, and so they just kind of stagnate. They’re not gonna go anywhere. They’re not gonna get on stage for you. So the ideal is when you’re having a wonderful experience and you’re also at the same time getting value from the system, that’s where net dollar retention comes from. That’s where the opportunity comes.” 

How to Support Both Sides of the Equation

Peter provides tangible practices for setting up your team — both within the customer success organization and outside of it — in a truly customer-centric fashion. He shares how Gainsight has approached customer success from a comprehensive perspective — one which requires participation from multiple parts of the organization. According to Peter, cohesion and alignment around a common goal is the recipe for success, but it’s not just the customer success managers (or the customer success organization) that is responsible for making customers successful. 

1. Foster a Cohesive Experience
   
   Even in an organization like Gainsight, where a customer can purchase multiple products, they need to have a consistent and familiar onboarding and implementation process. They need to know who they can turn to when they need something. Peter shares,  “Going back to that customer experience part of the equation, it shouldn’t be when you buy two of our products that you have two different onboardings.” And you shouldn’t have a customer needing to chase down the right CSM: “Regardless of what product you’re using, your technical account manager or your team is providing the same updates and the same format back to you.”
   
   
2. Establish Clear Outcomes & Responsibilities
   
   Having a cohesive experience from one product, or one team, to the next is one way to ensure the organization is aligned on the outcomes they are trying to achieve. Peter shares how this cohesion is key to the equation and “helps everyone be crystal clear on what part of the outcome they’re responsible for. This allows everyone to have their own part of the pie that they’re responsible for and they’re familiar with.“ With clear objectives surrounding customer success, individuals are able to deliver on what they are actually experts in. This elevates the entire customer experience and increases the chances of true customer success. 

Want to Learn More?

These are just two of the several best practices outlined by Peter in the podcast episode. To hear more insights from Peter and learn more tangible ways to drive customer success at your organization, listen to the entire podcast or read the transcript here — and look out for a second Professional Services Pursuit episode with Peter, set for release in the coming weeks. Subscribe to the The Professional Services Pursuit Podcast for expert advice, trends, and best practices surrounding professional services.