A recently published white paper urged the industry to build “high performance customer contact centers,” and offered three questions to enable managers to assess whether or not their centers would qualify as such. “Does your operation work in tandem with the rest of the enterprise on key operational and performance metrics such as cost controls and service quality?” “Are individual workers aware of clear performance goals aligned with business objectives, and do workers have timely and accurate access to their progress towards those goals?” “Is the flow of information into and out of the center controlled and channeled so that appropriate managers and analysts can interpret the raw data and use it to create specific prescriptions for change that improve performance?” A contact center that was recently shut down and its entire staff laid off could have answered all three questions affirmatively. They’re still just as unemployed as if the answers had been No.
Customers will always have questions about the products that they buy, both before and after the sale. Every complex tool inherently has a support burden; the user must make an investment in learning how to use it in order to gain the promised productivity benefits from the purchase. Most traditional software (and far too many SaaS ones, too) company senior managers, knowing this basic reality, ask themselves “how can we provide the answers to customer questions as cheaply as possible?” The question alone is very revealing, and those who consider themselves support professionals need to understand the meaning in it. A company that only talks about the importance of cutting costs in the contact center sees no real value in the support function; it’s an unfortunately necessary evil. When it can be gotten rid of; it will be. Nor does such a company truly consider its support employees to be professionals making a valued contribution. When they can be gotten rid of, or replaced by volunteer “community support;” they will be.
The questions asked by the white paper are not themselves inherently bad. The problem is that absent an appropriate vision, they inevitably lead in the wrong direction. Failing to look past the immediate performance and cost questions being asked by Senior Management to see what prompted them can be expensive. The price can include derailed careers and economic hardship for a lot of people — one of whom may be you. If cutting costs is the only acceptable answer, it’s likely that the wrong question is being asked. Shuttered centers and laid-off support staff members lie at the end of that road. If you don’t want your center and staff to be another example, it’s time to turn back and to rewrite the questions.
To discuss this article, please join us on LinkedIn.com in The SaaS Support Forum by clicking 
In the high-stakes market of SaaS/Cloud business technology, it’s no longer enough to just get a signature on the initial contract. It can take a year or even more before the deal becomes profitable. The dynamics and intimacies of the on-demand sales process are changing. There is no guarantee of retention in expressions of customer satisfaction. You can’t assume your customer base will continue to be loyal; there is too much at risk. In the face of ever-increasing competition, companies must go beyond the traditional sales approach to proactively manage, ensure and prove the success their products bring to customers. A new profession is emerging: Customer Success Management.
How should your new Customer Success Management role and team be chartered and measured? At what intervals and in what ways should the vital interactions with the customers take place for best results? What metrics need to be in place to recognize an at-risk relationship in time to intervene? How should the team be recruited, trained and deployed for maximum effectiveness? Which technologies need to be available to them? And what are other companies, including your competition, doing about CSM? To answer these and other core questions, we have built an Assessment procedure that provides actionable data and recommendations.
A Customer Success Management Assessment is an independent view of your company’s CSM strategy, process, organization and technology. Conducted by a veteran industry analyst and management consultant, and drawing upon the results of the only industry-wide research into the emerging profession and practices of Customer Success Management, the CSM Assessment is an in-depth analysis of the current-state strengths and challenges of your overall program. Issues are assessed and prioritized. Options are identified and evaluated. The result is a written Report and an executive Briefing of findings and specific recommendations, and a foundation for effective action.
To explore what a Customer Retention QuickStat could mean for your company, please join us for a complimentary Office Hours conversation.
Revised: March 9, 2012