1. Neglecting the customer’s needs
“Some teams do not define and understand the customer need, so they start building a plan for a client that is not relevant to them,” shared Emilia D’Anzica, Founder of Growth Molecules. Customer-centricity is key. Without it, the relationship will become strained as the customer feels his or her problem is not being solved.
2. Pushing the full menu of products too soon
Sometimes CSMs spread their customers too thin – encouraging them to be trained and certified on everything, even things beyond what originally drove them to the product.
Teams should move away from broad-stroke onboarding at the onset.
Once the relationship is more established and the CSM understands the business better, they can provide more strategic guidance on what products could benefit them.
3. Giving a monologue, instead of facilitating a conversation
In many cases, CSMs are doing most of the talking during client calls. In reality, for a successful relationship teams should be working to a closer 50:50 split. CSMs should be asking questions and listening. This will ensure that they have the right information before “prescribing.”
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4. Forgetting to measure and explain the impact
CSAT (customer satisfaction), NPS (net promoter score), RepTrak, and ACSI (American Customer Satisfaction Index) are among the many metrics that CSMs should be tracking. It’s one thing to look at churn but it’s another to explain the impact of churn.
The Baton Score, a customer feedback tool, can be particularly useful for teams looking to understand how, when, and at what velocity projects and tasks are moving forward (or not).
More importantly, customers can receive proactive prompts around milestone completion using real-time visibility, so they know exactly where and what is breaking down in a project.
To measure that, teams should dive into the net retention revenue.
There’s the financial impact, but also there’s an impact on morale that should be considered. “If you see all these numbers declining, something’s wrong,” Emilia says. “Is it your people? Is it your process? Is it your systems and lack of cohesion? You have to look at all elements, not just the numbers.”
5. Working with broken tools
Finding the right tools that work across internal and client teams can be tricky. Then, once you’ve found the tool, you have to onboard the team and build out new processes.
But Emilia’s teams have found luck with Baton – devoid of a long ramp-up period. “I put two people in our system last week and I didn’t take them through training. They just figured it out.”
Today, Emilia and her teams use Baton for collaboration, document organization, and status reporting. And to be blunt, our CSMs at Baton will be referencing this playbook, often. As a loyal customer and customer success leader, we can’t wait to keep working with Growth Molecules.
