Steve Bernstein October 15, 2021 I don’t mean to be negative but I suspect you (and your colleagues) are guilty of driving churn. How many of these things are your company doing?
- Are you single-threading (i.e. generally working with one primary point of contact) in an account?
And then, when that person (inevitably) changes jobs you’re scrambling… yes? - Are you ignoring feedback by not closing the loop with what your customers are telling you in your NPS surveys?
Do you know root-cause of why one stakeholder is a promoter and yet the person sitting right next to them is a detractor? - Are you failing to help your customers with the “change management” process that is so often required for success/value/ROI?
Do your CSMs know what governance, oversight, and value means for their book of business? - Are you transitioning an account from one team/person to another without clearly documenting what’s been going on and helping the customer through the transition?
Does the customer have to repeat themselves in key moments of truth? - Are you taking on customers that are a bad fit for your company’s capabilities?
Do you even *know* (from data) what a “bad fit” customer looks like? - Are you failing to maintain the relationships that the “buying team” (stakeholders) developed with your firm during the sales cycle?
Do your customer stakeholders fail to reply to your messages and yet you keep doing the same things or just ignore that disengagement? - Are you setting expectations in your sales and marketing cycles that the company is unlikely to be able to keep?
Do your CSMs even know what those expectations are? - Are you wasting customers’ time with NPS surveys that serve only to create an aggregate score for the board to “look how great we are?”
Does a single number really tell you anything actionable, and are you treating your customer like a measurement device without adding value in return? - Are you failing to understand and meet (or at least “manage”) customers’ expectations?
Does your CS team know what those expectations are from all of the key stakeholders in any given account? - To what extent does your company understand what success looks like from your customers’ perspective and help the keep the eye on the prize?
What metrics do you *own* and use to show progress against the desired outcomes (the reason for purchase in the first place)?
From my vantage point I’ve seen how voice-of-customer programs that engage customer STAKEHOLDERS address all of these concerns. If you’re dealing with these issues on an ongoing basis I’d like to suggest that you stop the bleeding by bringing good VoC data (evidence) to leadership that shows the financial returns for root-cause improvement of these areas. But that’s my bias… what have you done to *accelerate* profitable NRR growth?
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