Most companies do something in or around this season to celebrate their teammates, say thanks for a year of hard work and spread holiday cheer around the office. Maybe it’s a gift of some kind (ugly sweaters, anyone?), maybe a holiday party, or hopefully a big bonus and some well-deserved time off (at my company, it probably involves karaoke in one way, shape or form!). But according to PayScale, today’s professionals are “over” generic presents like gift cards or company swag or other well-meaning but ultimately meaningless gifts.
But if your team is like ours, they want to help your clients, help your business and feel productive and relevant while doing it. Investing in a Customer Success platform may be the gift your employees are looking for. It may seem weird that the best thing you could get your team members is also the best gift you could give your customers as well as your shareholders, but that’s what’s so special about Customer Success—it’s really success for all! Here are four reasons why Customer Success is the perfect gift:
1. It’s the latest trend in business
It’s a mistake to think that innovators aren’t also standing on the shoulders of giants. This is as true in science as in business! Customer Success is an emerging strategy and organizational function that more and more companies are adopting every day. SiriusDecisions reported that 89 percent of organizations say they plan to invest in technology to enable their Customer Success team. Many of today’s successful public companies talk about Customer Success in their earnings reports and nearly every highly-valued public SaaS company has a net retention of 110 percent or more. According to McKinsey, top-performing enterprise-focused companies invest in Customer Success at nearly double the rate. The best gifts are on-trend, so if you want your teammates to stay ahead of the game, give them the gift all the most successful companies are getting too!
2. It shows you care about their career
Technology should empower your employees, not replace them. The way I think about it, good software is “human-first,” or in other words, it provides a great experience for people and helps them achieve their goals. Ranstad has data that shows “workers aren’t happy unless they’re reaching their fullest career potential,” with nearly 60 percent saying their companies don’t currently have enough growth opportunities for them to stay long-term, and almost 70 percent saying they would be more satisfied if their employers made better use of their skills and abilities. The gift of Customer Success can clear away friction from an employee’s day-to-day work so they can focus on what’s most important: delivering customers’ desired outcomes.
On top of that, you’re also nurturing opportunities in one of the top-growing professions. Not only does it add new technical skills to your employee’s resumes, but it also helps Customer Success professionals correlate their activity with growth and retention metrics. Nothing piques the interest of your CFO, CRO, and other C-suite executives like positive impact on financial goals.
3. It’s a gift for you, too!
I love the strategy of giving vacations as gifts for your family—why? Because you get to go too! You can use the same tactic in business to provide for your teammates and reap the benefits yourself. In the case of Customer Success tools, growing companies often have to scale by doing more with less—or in other words, a lack of resources. Customer Success technology solves this by centralizing a holistic 360-degree view of your clients. This allows multiple teams and even senior leaders to have access to relevant context so they can do their jobs more efficiently and effectively. It can be a big stress relief for anyone managing a lot of customer relationships—they can spend less effort on each one but preserve the same feeling of one-to-one engagement.
4. Everyone can use it
The customer’s experience should not be the job of one department. Everyone in your company from product to marketing has a role in creating valuable customer outcomes and experiences. But when departments work in silos, it diminishes the customer’s overall experience—this can include poor handoffs, lack of coordination, and conflicting points of contact throughout their journey. This disconnected experience rarely leads to positive outcomes, let alone positive experiences. Customer Success technology powered by a cross-functional strategy allows teammates to document interactions with customers and can ensure consistency of information from one team to another, eliminating redundancy and preventing critical information from falling through the cracks.
Customer Success isn’t going anywhere, so investing in resources for your teammates will be the gift that keeps on giving. In all seriousness, as a leader, it’s your job to give your people the tools they need to do their jobs. So this year, you can do your job—or you can get gift cards. Your call!
Wonderful article Nick. Yes, if you can help them to improve their workstyle, efficiency or productivity, that will be very different. I know these words are not new and boring. Imagine if your Product Managers can all share a similar tool kit (Product Management Tool Kit), follow similar methodologies and templates collaboration is much easier. This will also cross pollinate knowledge and bring best amongst every individual. By doing this workstyle, efficiency and productivity can be achieved. Worth spending them getting all PM’s trained on a global program which is available at your door step.