Customer Success Reviews

Current-State / Future State Planning: The Customer Success Review

A company’s Customer Success group is the vital connection between the company and the customer base. Communications, knowledge, and opportunities are constantly moving through its channels every day. Properly chartered, designed, built and equipped for the role, the Customer Success team should be the decisive factor in the company’s strategy for long-term prosperity and market leadership. The continued health and development of the group is vital. To ensure your company’s Customer Success program and team is positioned and operated for maximum effectiveness, Mikael Blaisdell & Associates has created the Customer Success Review.

The analytical procedure for the Customer Success Review has been developed with the assistance of the members of The Customer Success Standards Committee of the Customer Success Association. A number of very senior customer success executives and leading consultants have also been a part of the review process.

The Reality of Change

Signboard with text - Danger! ExpectationsNo Customer Success team is static; change is necessarily a reality that must be confronted on an ongoing basis. What was effective, appropriate and cutting-edge today may well be obsolete in a year. Shifts occur outside from the market-fostered expectations of the customer base as well as from inside the company. Strategic choices made on senior levels can have powerful and sometimes unintended impacts on the effectiveness of the Customer Success team. Tactical decisions made within the group can subtly become policy with profound long-term consequences.

Engaged in the pressure of day to day operations, it can be very difficult for Customer Success executives or other company leaders to fully step outside the group to take a clear look both at the drivers and causal factors of the operation, and/or to consider strategic planning from a neutral basis.  Mikael Blaisdell & Associates brings an unbiased and focused perspective to the analytical and reporting process.

The purpose of a Customer Success Review is to produce a thoroughly impartial view for the Senior Management team of where their customer success group stands at present as part of an effective foundation for further development.  The standard is what other groups of your class are doing.  Our goal is not to sell you continuing consulting services for designing or building; such implementation services are available from others.  Our role is to assess, analyze and to objectively report; equipping you to determine where you want to go with your group in the future.

The Customer Success Review Process

The first step of a Customer Success Review is to clearly establish the current-state of the team and its operations. The research covers all facets of the group’s Strategy, Process, People, and Technology, identifying strengths and challenges and comparing the results to others of its class. Extensive use is made of the findings from the past 8+ years of the Customer Success Research program.

The second objective the the Customer Success Review is to determine an appropriate future-state for the team, and describe a roadmap to implementing it. The deliverable is a written Report of findings and a presentation to the Senior Management team.

The Next Step

For more information about what a Customer Success Review could do for your company and team, please contact us.