Customer Success - Dan Steinman, Lincoln Murphy, Nick Mehta

Is customer evasion a problem in your company? Don't you know how to build customer loyalty and make them buy or sign your product again? Dan Steinman, Lincoln Murphy and Nick Mehta explains everything you need to know to revert this situation in the book "Customer Success".

The authors take all the doubts out of 10 practical and simple laws that can change your perception from the "area" to the "culture" of customer success.

The successful customer is a loyal customer. Discover with this work how to increase your recurrence, your revenue and your profits in a scalable way. To help on it, the authors give tips and unravel the customer mind.

Got interested to change your life by understand your client mind increasing your profits? So stay with us in this summary!

About the book "Customer Success"

"Customer Success" is a work that shows that recurring revenue is only possible when the customer is successful in his goal with his product.

Throughout its 265 pages, the book shows 10 laws of customer success that the new wave of customer focus is not a privilege of technology companies or startups.

About the authors Dan Steinman, Lincoln Murphy and Nick Mehta

Dan Steiman is one of those responsible for founding Customer Success University, which provides online certification in the field. He is CCO (Chief Customer Officer) of Gainsight, a cloud platform for customer experience services.

Lincoln Murphy is an expert consultant on customer success-driven growth. Founder of Sixteen Ventures, a growth marketing platform. He has performed more than 400 consultancies in companies all over the world.

Finally, Nick Mehta is CEO of Gainsight, focusing on solving problems with customer loyalty and increasing revenue.

To whom is this book indicated?

The book "Customer Success" is suitable for entrepreneurs who want to act on real problems in their business with regard to their customer.

In addition, it is also for those who want to develop this area in the company, increasing profits with simple techniques and tools presented in this book!

Main ideas of the book "Customer Success"

• How the metrics are relevant and indispensable for customer success;
• How to implement this culture in the company;
• How to select the right customers and act accordingly can save your revenue;
• Learn to identify the reason for leaving the customer and supplier;
• Customers with good experiences are more engaged.

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Overview: First law - Sell to the right customer

There is no point in following all the next laws, if the customer who is on your list of emails, phones or who comes through your door is the wrong customer. They insure your sale and, consequently, your revenue.

But how do you know who the right customer is? Dan Steinman, Lincoln Murphy and Nick Mehta say that the ideal profile for your company is one that is already in the midst of your regular customers that gives you favorable returns and one that is outside your base, but is looking for you.

The loss of customers is just the top of the iceberg. You go from a very high CCA (cost of customer acquisition) to double costs with the wrong customer. So the first thing you have to do is get rid of him (in your contact base, of course).

Overview: Second law - The natural tendency of customers and suppliers is to distance themselves from each other

Ideally, you shouldn't stray from your customer, but that is the trend.

A customer close to the supplier means the guarantee of the successful use of the product by the consumer.

The departure may be occurring for several reasons. You must identify why these actions are happening and act quickly:

• If the return on investment (ROI) is not well specified;
• If there is a stoppage or delay in the beginning of the use of the product by the customer;
• If the project has been changed for a different client;
• Whether customers are returning to old solutions or switching you to competitors;
• Whether customers are asking for new attributes;
• The number of complaints and requests for support is increasing.

Overview: Third law - Customers expect you to make them extremely successful

Customers don't buy a solution; they buy the consequences of that solution. If a customer wants to buy your product, it is because using it will make him successful.

So, you need to know how this customer measures success. Is it through a powerful networking? A promotion at work? Neighbors envious of your beautiful, well-decorated house? Measure your product's success with the customer's rule.

But what if it is not possible to achieve the expected consequence? Or if you are unable to deliver that consequence? It could be the wrong customer! Finally, learn about the experience these consumers have when shopping with you.

Overview: Fourth law - Monitor and relentlessly manage customer health

Successful customers, or as the authors say in "Customer Success", healthy, renew contracts with a greater proportion, as well as make more purchases with your company.

Customer health is necessary to make predictions and manage future consumer behavior. Some customer health indicators include: product adoption, customer support, research scores and participation in marketing.

Increasing the customer's health score reinforces the idea of customer loyalty, and increases the likelihood of obtaining good results. And with management comes monitoring of defined metrics.

Overview: Fifth law - It is no longer possible to build loyalty with personal relationships

Despite the title of this overview, it is necessary to create a connection between the company and the customer. Since it is exactly this created loyalty that will bring great returns.

This connection is easily captured by the customer experience. Not only in your sales cycles, or ways to answer post-sale questions, but from the first contact, either with a screen or with a person.

At the same time that the entire team of the organization must be aware of the optimal flow of customer experience, customer success must drive actions towards this optimization. Meanwhile, the sales team uses their time exclusively to create long-lasting personal relationships with higher-value customers.

Overview: Sixth law - The product is your only scalable differential

Stimulating customer engagement is essential. This is only option if the product itself has an excellent experience. Dan Steinman, Lincoln Murphy and Nick Mehta reinforces the idea of using Product Advisory Councils (CCPs), which provide insights for the development of recurring revenue products.

The book also highlights the importance of the metrics of CSAT (Customer Satisfaction), NPS (Net Promoter Score) and CES (Customer Effort Level Score):

• CSAT: Measured on a 5-point scale, usually with historical data.
• NPS: Here is a recurring error. The NPS does not measure customer satisfaction, but its loyalty.
• CES: Evaluates the ease of doing business with the company.

Remember that the product must be as intuitive as possible, generating the best customer experience, and consequently, good recurring revenue.

Overview: Seventh law - Obsessively improve time-to-value

People buy your products or services because they firmly believe that they are adding value to their lives.

A customer does not buy the product, but the solution that that product can provide in life, be it an increase in status or the guarantee of peace and tranquility.

Time-to-value is the time elapsed from contact with the site to customer success. The process extends throughout the customer's journey, whether the purchase or renewal of the contract, or signature.

Therefore, the pre-sales team, must pass the metrics to the implementation team, who in turn will evaluate them together with the client's successful team.

Overview: Eighth law - Understand customer metrics in depth

Evasion and retention are very important metrics for subscription products. Any percentage of evasion should mean a multiplier in the percentage of retention. Assessing all of this up close is an indispensable task.

Companies with recurring revenue break their brains to accelerate the acquisition of customers, however, when they notice this increase in speed, they also notice the decrease in customers and revenues.

The evasion is given by customers who kept recurring revenue, but have already left or demonstrated their intention to leave this model. And it is precisely these customers that are neglected as the acquisition of new ones grows.

The why and frequency of evasion should be thoroughly studied, as well as retention, as you can find out how you have become a loyal customer and others have not.

Overview: Ninth law - Drive customer success with rigorous metrics

There is a way to measure the maturity of companies, the CMM (Capability Maturity Model for Software). It consists of 5 levels:

1. First (initial): concerns the client's heroic acts of happiness
2. Second (replicable): occurs when the process is already disciplined enough to reiterate previous successes.
3. Third (defined): when the process is already documented, standardized;
4. Room (managed): fundamentals already implemented and metrics can be made;
5. Fifth (optimized): it concerns the optimization and repeatability of good results.

Level 5 companies have greater predictability of results, more accepted and attainable goals by the sales team, and a well-defined and applied organizational culture.

It is important to remember that this law applies to companies that already have a successful client team.

Overview: Tenth law - It's a top-down, company-wide commitment

We have seen CEOs for years saying "customer is always right", but being the first to take that reason away from them.

Customer success means changing the whole vision of the company to the enduring happiness of the customer. The friction and difficulty of business models have decreased, customers have more and more contact with their suppliers, and in the end, they have the power and the money to give you.

To get you started with this "fashion" that has caught on several companies follow the authors' tips:

• Define success;
• Align yourself around that goal;
• Listen to the customer success team;
• Prioritize customer success;
• Empower the customer success team;
• Measure customer success;
• Report on customer success;
• Create incentives for customer success;
• Challenge the company;
• Celebrate success.

What do other authors say about it?

Russell Brunson's "Dotcom Secrets" highlights the importance of having a target audience: trying to sell to anyone and everyone can become a tiring and frustrating task.

The author of "Digital Business", Alan Pakes, says that sales are the pillars that support any business. Therefore, you must also focus on winning over your customer and show that you have the right solution for them, guiding them towards selling your product.

The book "Smart Collaboration", by Heidi K. Gardner, emphasizes the importance of cultivating intelligent collaboration with your employees. Thus, there is a team formed by great professionals aligned in order to expand their horizons, innovate, work as a team and win customer loyalty.

Okay, but how can I apply this to my life?

There is a hierarchy of customer value, and in the pyramid, the highest levels (High-Touch) mean a lower volume of customers with high values, the lowest levels (Tech-Touch) are customers who have lower value. However, abundant and intermediate ones (Low Touch) are balanced in abundance and value.

• High-Touch: Customers who demand a closer and personalized contact. Usually they are made up of few people, however, the loss of one of them can cause catastrophic damage. Phone calls are your friends when it comes to them;
• Low-Touch: These are customers who are part of a community. They generally engage with their content and with each other. The losses here are relatively minor in quality and larger in number. The contact through messages and monitoring with metrics becomes essential;
• Tech-Touch: As the name implies, the type of customer that relates en masse to your website and to the non-human part of your service, such as social media posts and paid ads. Usually a large part of them is lost, but the final amount is what generates results.

After all those lessons ans tips given by the book "Customer Success", the next step to achieve success is read all this content again in order to fix everything in your brain!

Implement those techniques in your company slowly, considering all the metrics mentioned. By this way you will increase the chances of success.

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