Operational Excellence in Project Management

This post is aimed to provide you a preview about the cultural change behavior we have to execute to provide your Customer Success team a customer success mindset.

I started to worry about this theme about 3 years ago, and what motivated me were some factors like:

• quality of service delivery
• provision of the service in a reactive way
• lack of commercial synchronicity and account strategy with sales staff
• little contact with the customer base by the after sales team

On top of that I would like to eliminate comments very common in our team such as:

• "Ah but the customer did not use my product right"
• "The client did not complete the deployment"
• "He did not change the processes he needed within the company"
• "His analyst was doing soft body"

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 company directors from the aftermarket point of view:

• If the deliveries of the team services were done with quality
  and,
• What is value delivery of services from the perspective of the customer

It was a profound and fundamental experience that changed my view of provision of after-sales services and customer expectations management needing to align with the 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:

Customer Success is 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

Customer Success is the job of proactively orchestrating the consumer journey toward the solutions he pursues - and that are always evolving - Lincoln Murphy - Endeavor.org - 2017

Customer Success is strategizing thinking about the success of the consumer and working to ensure that they have the best possible experience in your company - Isadora Lopes - Outbond Marketing

Customer Success ensures the best possible experience for your customers through value creation. - Lilian Oliveira - Sambatech

  Customer Success is when your customers achieve the desired result through interactions with your company - Talita Batista - Rock Content

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, according 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 the customer and then walk in the same direction. I am not talking about  project business objectives, the relationship goes beyond that... You need to 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 having 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:

• "What can you do in your daily life that improves customers' vision of the company?"
• "How can you improve your interaction with customers?"
• "What in your work could facilitate a client's journey with the company?"

This change of attitude is fundamental because we need to deliver customer experience and quality during the whole customer life cycle in the company, and it is expected that this will be a longe one.

Customer Activation - This is the time when we are starting to deliver a project or support. This process is often called activation, and it is critical how you engage the customer at this stage. That is, deliver 100% of what was promised or you can lose the customer forever.

Projects

Pay close attention here the first signs of customer loss occur during activation. For example, projects that exaggerate promises of marketing. But also After-Sales can contribute to the loss of the client due to a poorly executed transition of the project team. Or problems can occur when the support team rotates the client to 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. Design a structured service kick-off with elements such as:

• sharing the business objective
• asking the goal of the client
• demonstrating to the customer where he is within the cycle

Remember to use the best service practices that meet the customer needs, not yours.

Support

Many companies still understand that this phase will continually break and need adjustment. The company should move to be proactive as quick as possible in this segment.
Tips :

• Be proactive
• Search for patterns that may indicate that a customer is having problems. Monitor applications, data, and infrastructure issues that can negatively impact the customer experience
• When there are several calls it can mean that the customer is engaged. But if it is taking too long for the service to be fixed there may be a risk of "churn"
• Sustaining the customer's success vector can help them find priorities in the queue of requests; perhaps a high-value customer who has a positive success vector can wait as long as we focus on the lowest-value customer, but an at-risk customer must be first.

In my research I found some very interesting tools that will help you in this work (https://www.gainsight.com/ https://www.armatic.com and https://www.neoassist.com/) that ooerationalize 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 features. A satisfied customer is the best advertisement.

Very easy to write but hard to implement.

The company that performs these functions may have improved processes, good data, ready answers, etc ... but hiring the wrong team will cause your customer experience to suffer - and the crash will be swift ... Before writing how to select a team with a focus on this concept, let us first explain what it is.

From the blog "We do Marketing" -

Customer Centricity is a management philosophy that places the consumer at the center of an organization's attention and analysis. It is not only a methodology or a way of conducting a business, but rather a professional stance that seeks , instead of creating products and services according to what the company believes, knowing and understanding its consumers and seeking to develop characteristics in their products and services with three main objectives:

1 - Meet the specific needs of their consumers (conscious or not)

2 - Solve chronic problems or prevent them from appearing

3 - Create additional benefits that add more value to what is being offered.

You must already be thinking ... but .. he is writing the obvious, any area is like this ... I will not waste my time reading this ...

If you got here, it's because I still have credibility with you my colleague! 

Thank you for your trust !!..

So let's talk about this, team selection! 

First of all, a good interview helps you determine if a candidate has motivation, compatibility, positivity, empathy, and shares the values ​​of your company. 

For you to select a professional focused on "customer-centric service" I recommend that your questions are aligned with the following behaviors and characteristics below:

• To have empathy, that is, she must understand feelings and emotions, trying to objectively and rationally experience what another individual feels, because this leads to a most important point for our clients, empathy leads people to help each other, as it says a colleague of mine, and I really like this term, she takes her professional to altruism - love and concern for others - and the ability to help. When an individual can feel the pain or suffering of the other by putting himself in his place, he arouses the desire to help and act according to moral principles, and this makes all the difference his client and awakens an incredible feeling of trust
• Have genuine interest in learning quickly and dealing with criticism quickly, after all this friendly fire comes from your customers, this is the most difficult part because usually people tend to get defensive and outsource the blame.
• Never, never be a negative person, the word of fashion is positivity, let me explain, it means looking at the good side of things ... For these professionals will always occur events that are not to their liking and that does not mean they are bad professionals. These are times that were surpassed by them and helped them to make them stronger emotionally. They have found a quick solution and then get on the bright side, they are strong, determined and able to put themselves before anything that comes before them. This goes for you too!

When looking for professionals focused on customer success, we want professionals who: 

• They achieved customer success through the team, not by individualistic responses, if there was no collaboration then there was something wrong, I'll be clearer if that person cares more about individual success or team success
• Serum of truth , ask the candidate to introduce you to a current or former chief as a reference,
• Find out how they understand customer-centric customer service at the company they want to work with, this will help you understand if your base is well grounded on this item,
• Classic question : We all fail, but the important part is what the candidate learns from it - or do they blame someone for it? It goes something like this: "I never lose, or I hit or I learn!",
• Seek to understand how it relates to angry clients. This includes references to effective conflict resolution skills, customer respect, and humility - because sometimes an apology is more effective than an explanation for an already irritated client,
• Here's how he talks about the most difficult customer he's had to act on, it's hoped he'll dig deeper into what can be done to come up with a solution that works for the customer and what strategy they used

And by the way, you must have understood the game of the correct interview, no use, certification, training, etc., customer-centered service can be for any type of company, private, private, NGO or even association, and this is a serious business! This customer-centric culture begins with the formation of your team whatever it may be.

I will leave here a video on youtube very interesting for you to watch and to understand in practice what is Customer Centricity !

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:

• quality of service delivery,
• provision of the service in a reactive way,
• lack of commercial synchronism and account strategy with sales staff,
• little contact with the customer base by the after sales team.

On top of that I would like to liminate comments very common in our team such as:

• "Ah but the customer did not use my product right",
• "The client did not complete the deployment",
• "He did not change the processes he needed within the company,"
• "His analyst was doing soft body."

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:

• If the deliveries of the team services were done with quality and,
• What is value delivery of services from the perspective of the customer

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

It is the job of proactively orchestrating the consumer journey toward the solutions he pursues - and that are always evolving - Lincoln Murphy - Endeavor.org - 2017

It is strategizing thinking about the success of the consumer and working to ensure that they have the best possible experience in your company - Isadora Lopes - Outbond Marketing

Ensure the best possible experience for your customers through value creation. - Lilian Oliveira - Sambatech

  When your customers achieve the desired result through interactions with your company - Talita Batista - Rock Content

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:

• "What can you do in your daily life that improves customers' vision of the company?",
• "How can you improve your interaction with customers?",
• "What in your work could facilitate a client's journey with the company?"

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.

Customer Activation -It is the time when we are starting to deliver a project or support, this process is often called activation, and it is critical whether you engage the customer at this stage, that is, deliver 100% of what was promised or you can the customer lose it forever.

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:

• business objective,
• goal of the client,
• demonstrate to the customer where he is within the cycle journey of offers (sales will love),
• pitch elevator of the project manager or services, among others.
• remember to use the best service practices that meet the customer needs not yours.

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 :

• Search for patterns that may indicate that a customer is having problems, monitoring applications, data, and infrastructure issues that can negatively impact the customer experience are all ways to become proactive.
• When there are several calls it can mean that the customer is engaged, now if it is taking too long for the service to be fixed there may be a risk of "churn" or not be an evangelizador client that recommends your company,
• Do not confuse with SLA, we want the success of client.
• Sustaining the customer's success vector can help them to find priorities in the queue of requests; perhaps a high-value customer who has a positive success vector can wait as long as we focus on the lowest-value customer, but an at-risk customer must be first.

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