Customer success managers (CSMs) are an integral part of company life. Why is it so? Quite simply, they are responsible for nurturing client relationships to ensure that clients actually achieve their goals and stay happy. This role is quite complex, and it includes new client onboarding, progress monitoring, and identifying any issues that may crop up. As the demands on CSMs grow, the tools to help simplify, automate, and elevate their workflows have become a necessity. It helps CSMs to perform at the highest level, with specialized software becoming essential to support that.
Using a range of software, customer success managers can do their tasks more efficiently and accurately, allowing them to spend more time building and sustaining the relationship. If you want to learn more about how the right software can help customer success managers, you've come to the right place. We've prepared a wealth of information, benefits, and specific examples that are definitely worth your attention.
Key Benefits of Using of Software in Customer Success
To improve your relationship with the clients and have them associate your company with something positive, your managers must choose the best tech stack, often with custom software development at its core. According to statistics, every second person in the United States talks about customer experience as the number one factor when choosing a store, private clinic, digital service, or any other organization.
Different outcomes are possible, depending on the type of software used when customer success managers use them. There are different roles each software type is capable of playing, which combined creates the comprehensive toolkit needed to suit the different needs of customer success. Below, let us explore the primary advantages of SaaS for customer success managers.
1. Automating and Optimizing Daily Tasks
Obviously, before the start of the working week, managers create a customer success plan to set the most important tasks. Sometimes, these objectives and processes can be so numerous that it is difficult for a manager to keep track of how well the department is doing. This is the first reason why customer success managers should use special tools.
The automation and optimization of our usual tasks are, arguably, one of the main pros of software in customer success. However, CSMs can use dedicated tools to ease tasks such as:
- Keeping customer information up to date.
- Setting reminders.
- Tracking follow-up actions.
- And much more.
Some automation software frees time previously spent on repetitive manual input while preventing critical tasks from being neglected. Offloading repetitive work frees up customer success managers to spend time on strategic work where they can really make a difference in customer relationships.
2. Improving Personalization of Customer Interactions
Personalized communication is a must-have point for trust and relationship development with the customer. Customer success managers from any industry can use software to tailor the interactions based on mutual customer data and customer preferences. Staff get tools with customer insights to monitor what a client likes, dislikes, what he’s been interacting with previously, and what kind of unique needs are.
This way, these can deliver more targeted recommendations and solutions. However, CRM software (customer relationship management) brings all customer data under one umbrella, and CSM can immediately view a comprehensive profile. Access like this empowers managers to quickly see the customer’s journey and, thus, the potential for proactive support.
3. Reducing Customer Churn Through Analytics
Experts have determined that about a 4-6 percent customer churn rate per month is considered to be normal. However, you should always strive to minimize the number of people who have abandoned your services or products. What can help you cope with such challenges? Of course, an experienced customer success manager and quality software can help a company.
Actually, predictive analytics tools can predict customer needs and highlight those that are prone to straying. It gives CSMs the opportunity to bring that to an end before it starts. By imparting these insights, CSMs are better positioned to take action ahead of customer dread and objection by directly addressing specific burning customer issues.
Examples of Tools for Working in the Customer Success Field
Customer success managers have various effective tools at their disposal, each of which tries to tackle a different problem. A powerful way to productivity lies in the correct software that helps with everything from task management to communication, analytics, etc. Below, we detail five powerful tools to help simplify and elevate the day-to-day work for your customer success teams.
Trello
It's no secret that planning and allocating processes is part of any management team's job. Using a notepad and pen for these tasks is not the best solution, is it? Trello is great for creating transparency in customer success teams' workflow. It ensures they can know exactly where every client is at any time and can address any issues that come up. Trello's drag-and-drop interface makes it easy for managers to get their priorities straight and set deadlines while working with teammates in real-time.
Google Analytics
Representatives of any business organization need to track how many users visit a website, how long they spend there, the conversion rate, and much more. Many experts believe that Google Analytics is one of the tools that should be on the " shortcuts” list. This cloud-based software lets teams track specific customer rates. For example, you can analyze signups and feature adoption. CSMs have the knowledge they need to make smarter decisions.
Zoom
Imagine you're the head of a department with more than five customer success managers. Holding a meeting with each of them separately can take too much time, so you need smart solutions. Using Zoom software, you can easily hold daily meetings with your employees.
Another situation to consider about this software is customer interaction. You can use Zoom as a means to communicate with your coworkers and clients. It is easy to organize video meetings here to provide advice or help solve clients' problems.
Hotjar
Let us introduce you to an advanced analytics tool that supplies visual insights into customers' behavior through heatmaps. Hotjar allows customer success managers to observe which areas customers are clicking, scrolling over, pausing, and where we have lost them.
Managers can also leverage Hotjar to collect direct feedback from users, allowing them to have a clear picture of what pains drivers and nippers customers are experiencing. It’s certainly important information to refine processes and address problems before customers get offended.
Slack
Many managers are already actively using this software in their work. This is a powerful communication platform that helps in team collaboration within the customer success team and across the departments. This helps CSMs to quickly connect and reach sales, product, and support teams, such that customer care has a holistic approach.
With Slack’s channels and direct messaging, CSMs can easily see ongoing customer issues and share updates, request advice from colleagues, and even collaborate on findings. Beyond integration with many other things, it all lands on one platform that acts as a centered hub for your workflows and notifications.
Using Ready-made Solutions VS Creating Custom Programs
As you may have already realized, SaaS solutions are very popular nowadays in customer success management. Companies usually have two options, including developing their product and using existing tools. Each approach has merits, and the choice is based on budget, customization requirements, and scalability. We have gathered the main characteristics you should know about both custom software development and ready-made solutions.
Ready-made solutions
| Custom software
|
|---|---|
Cost-effective. Ready-to-use solutions are cheap because you simply join to use the product. You pay a small amount each month, year, or other period.
| Highly customizable. With custom SaaS, companies can customize them to include certain functionalities that fit customer success goals. For example, unique reporting tools or specialized customer data integrations.
|
Ease of implementation. To deliver them quickly, customer success teams will be up and running in just hours with minimal setup time.
| Scalability. With scalability in mind, the custom solutions can be built so that the program stretches to meet the business without hitting the limits.
|
Regular updates and support. Ready-made solutions makers take care of updates, new features, and support so the software keeps working and updated.
| Increased control over data. Where data protection requirements are strict, custom programs afford fine control over data storage, access, and security.
|
To make a final choice between the two options noted, you should analyze the requirements of your management team.
Final Thoughts
At the end of this article, we want to once again focus your attention on the fact that customer success managers should have access to a range of software. Sure, choosing a specific stack cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach, so each company uses different tools. Others now prefer to commission the development of their own program that can cover all employee requirements.
No matter what choice you make, reusing ready-made software or spending money on custom tools, it’s evident that software in customer success management is a must. The right blend of management can help managers establish a very strong relationship with customers and cut down churn.