Customer Success - A Cultural Change in After Sales Team
| This post is aimed to provide you a preview about the cultural change behavior we have to execute to provide our After Sales team a customer success mindset, I started to worry about this theme about 3 years ago, and what motivated me were some factors like:
On top of that I would like to liminate comments very common in our team such as:
Our deliveries were never bad, after all they were in use: best project management practices, ITIL® and an excellent technical team. But something was missing... For a period of eight months I started to visit about three clients a week and asking these directors of companies from the aftermarket point of view:
It was a profound and fundamental experience that changed my view of: provision of after-sales services, customer expectations management alignment of after sales team with sales staff after-sales service assuming a leading role in the sales process I ended up "discovering" this topic in conversations with three colleagues who already practiced it. I wanted to share this experience with you, but before moving on I did a quick internet search on the definition for Customer Success: It is a professional or department actively focused on thinking of solutions that improve the life of the client next to the services offered by the company - Tomás Duarte - Blog Tracksale - 2016
and strong comments as :
I also came across a market indicator that I could not confirm the source of the information where it is 7 times more expensive, between conquering a new customer and retaining an old, acording to Gallup customer retention raising rates by only 5% can increase profits by 25-95%, and Gallup says B2B customers with high customer engagement scores achieve 50% more sales revenue and 34% more profitability than other companies. Customers are in control and if this does not happen in your industry, it will soon be a reality, so get ready!
How can after sales professionals help this journey to customer success? Change of mentality After-Sales should look for the definition of customer success for this customer and they will need to walk in the same direction. I am not talking about project business objective , the relationship goes beyond om that, you need know the market and the segment in which the customer operates. You need to understand what strategy teams have been thinking about customer success, and work to ensure that it is the best possible experience for your business. There's no point in a highly qualified Customer Success team if the after-sales team does not respond well when a customer calls! Leaders should ask the team questions like:
This change of attitude is fundamental because we need to deliver customer experience and quality during all customer life cycle in the company and it is expected that this will be a longer one.
Projects Pay close attention here the first signs of customer loss occur during activation. Projects As for example in the exaggerated promises of marketing, or during the sales cycle, but also after sales can contribute to the loss of the client due to a poorly executed transition of the project team or, the support team that during an occurrence rotate the client for a generic email, such as "support" or "contact." It may even be that the seller simply disappears after receiving your money. The client's experience at this stage is fundamental. It can be done through a well-designed and structured service kick-off of elements such as:
Support Many companies still understand that this phase is break and fix, which is, reactive, I affirm that the company should move to be proactive as quick as possible in this segment, some tips :
In my research I found some very interesting tools that will help you in this work (https://www.gainsight.com/ and https://www.neoassist.com/) that operationalize the customer's life cycle Happy customers, buy more, pay more, recommend the company to friends, volunteer for case studies, and help you promote new fetures. Satisfied customer is the best advertisement.
This is a series of 3 posts that I've been writing, in the next two post I will address customer success from the perspective of project management and subsequently recurring services | ||||||
The role of Leader in Project Management
| Managed projects and delivery it with success demands what is obvious, meaning, ability, technical skills and knows project management process, but it is more than that,, you have to understand the basic principles of leadership and you have to exercise them daily and when you do this you will understand this sentence: "Not every project manager is project leader." And during project execution will remember this phrase also: "Your team is equally important to the success of the project and it should be a high performance team." A team of this level does not fall from the sky or appears miraculously, it takes time to build a high performance team, but don´t be naive, teams needs strict discipline and rigid definition and control roles and responsibilities which has to be e followed! If you want your team to be high performance you need to create this structure otherwise you will have chaos in your project, when it is achieved you will be able to trigger innovation and creativity with the team and results will be materialized. This is your role as a leader, create this structure ! You want to be one more or want to make a difference? Remember for each project delivered with success project you get a free invitation to run another project and, increasingly complex. You decide which path you want to follow, up or down the ladder of success...If you want to climb the hill I invite you to continue reading this article because from this point I write for those who want to win.
As leader there are principles you have to consider and follow as stated above, which I will describe below:
"The reason most people do not achieve their goals is because they were not defined, or have never been seriously considered by them as attainable or reliable. Winners can tell you where they're going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will participate in this adventure with them "- Denis E. Waitley
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Using Storytelling in Project Management
| We as project managers are facing an additional major challenge with our project team... The clash of generations (baby boomers, generation X, Y and millennium ), four generations (as far as I remember until now...) working together ... that have different behavior characteristics in relation to others. The consequence of this is the increasing complexity for us project managers is to understand and communicate effectively with the them, for example a project manager in age of 60 years old, and a team with the following ages: 20 , 35 and 45 so this becomes very complex. Imagine another situation where you request to a staff member to invest his time to delivery a set of tasks from a task list which you have previously communicated to him but he could not do the job properly. Why ? What happened is that the storytelling was not applied , that is, the lack of a "proper narrative" did not cause engagement of your colleague. In that case he had less chance to remember and probably could not get involved or repeat the appropriate behavior for the completion of that work, this happened for two factors combined: Communication noise and clash of generations When we explain what is expected to a colleague we should explain it in a narrative way (with the procedure included) and providing an example on when and what the situation that happened. Read for example the text below: "Once upon a time, a group of people who were outraged at how the failed software projects. Then they had begin to study more about the nature of the software and found that developing software is an extremely intellectual work and not manual or repetitive. Thus, the Taylor models concerning job specialization and motivation of workers which were inherited in software management would not be the most recommended best practices. In fact, it would be virtually opposite. " This is storytelling! If you succeed to create an emotional connection with your team member your colleague will be able to feel and be excited about this narrative as a consequence engagement and commitment will come together. Remember the stories you heard from your mother and grandma when you were young ? Same approach !
This concept of "storytelling" is actually already well known in the business world with the name of Storytelling, a strong tool for corporate communication both internally and externally as we begin to use in projects. Projects are communicated and messages are transmitted through stories, creating an emotional bond, facilitating the understanding and memorization. This technique is high precisely because of the new challenges in the workplace, generated by the transformation that technology has brought us (is the new trend for the coming years, for which we must prepare ourselves). The more we use social media, more will need to incorporate storytelling techniques to motivate, lead and work with the new generations. Concluding: A good project leader who can engage and explain to your project member what should be done in a certain project procedure or how to act in the face of certain situations before meet a customer or in how the conduct of project activities;instead of using a list actions that must be done, it uses an example ( a story ) in which those procedures were applied achieving greater efficiency . I hope you had enjoyed it ! Nelson Rosamilha,PMP®,BB®,Prince 2 Practitioner®
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Do you really need to Register the Project Risks ?
| Risk Management is one of the most overlooked project management areas, and for some managers the most tedious task to do... Why do so many project managers fail in risk management, or rather not manage the risks of their projects? This is a question that I really would like to answer, may be I will include this research in my master study in Business Administration...but surely manage project risk and their critical path are essential activities. Keeping track of risks, you always help you to discuss them with your team, so ensure that risks be included in its agenda periodicals meeting you will have with your team and discuss it with them. Still the decision is yours, but I will list down a few benefits that you can deliver to your business by registering and controlling the risks of the project. Planning - It helps you to schedule activities in the most appropriate order, because the risks which may happen as a result of the planned actions needs to be handled, for example mitigation. Do not expect that your team do their regular project tasks (you have to monitor !!) and much less risk mitigation activities. Have with you your risk register to identify the mitigating actions and a schedule control tool which will support you to have a complete picture of the work required to be performed by the team. Prioritization - One of the major functions of a risk register is to capture all risks to the project centralized in one place (the famous data repository..). That's great, but it is necessary to prioritize these risks, ask yourself "What risks would cause you more problems in the project?" and list your risks in order of priority so that you know what to focus on before.
The longer the project risks, the greater the chance of them discontinue the project in some way! Remember, risks come and go and Murphy always comes along, so when a risk has passed, take it off the record, or at least mark as closed. This allows you to focus on the risks that still pose a threat - do not spend your time prioritizing actions that direct things have passed away. Help (or hinder) your project budget - your project mitigating actions are subject to cause spending or bring new opportunities (even if only the cost of labor in the project team). Look at your risk register and work thinking about what it will cost to manage each risk effectively. Then you can add these costs to your project budget.
See if you can identify a positive risk as well, and here comes the opportunity! These are risks that cause no problems but bring benefits such as additional revenue that can recover or increase the scope of your project or; anticipate a delivery. This is why when we manage risks on projects we have to constantly remember that we must seek for winning opportunities! Who does what and when - Another feature of the risk register is to assign an owner for risk. Someone must be responsible for managing the risks, even if do not do all the work by yourself. Besides being a great opportunity for a younger member of your team to be noticed and feel recognized. Enjoy the famous LEADERSHIP skill and delegate it . Do not assume responsibility for any risks you might have several other things to do. Best Project Management - When you manage the risk properly and proactively they work for the benefit of the project and the company. With advance view of the problem you will have the chance to work in advance with the team, increasing the chances of success of the project and avoiding project excuses like: "I did not know", "No one warned me" , etc... Concluding:
Reflect on what I have written, you shall be considered a pro-active manager highly valued feature in today's companies. Every project manager must take risks, but do it methodically and safely I hope it helps you ! Nelson Rosamilha,PMP,Prince 2 Practitioner, Lean Six Sigma Black Belt |
How to become a better Project Manager in 8 steps
| There are moments in our professional experience, mainly in between projects that we start to think in how we can be a better professional in project management... I would like to share with you what I have learned from my historical experience and share with you my own lessons learned in 8 steps in the followin priority:
Now that your plan is ready, remember to run it to perfection!Nelson Rosamilha, PMP, Prince2 Practitioner |
