Customer: The Essence of Customer Success

Although I would not like to sound cliche, I must however say this;

“Change is constant”

I guess clichés are clichés for a reason 

Once upon a time, all what customer service was about was making and answering phone calls or relating with customers at the front desk. But today, we have a whole lot of other channels in use. 

Customer Service/ Customer Success is all targeted at ensuring maximum customer satisfaction and has “changed” over the years and across various industries. While the tools and techniques might change from one industry to another, the goal remains the same — Customer satisfaction and retention.

To be a successful customer success executive, you need to have come to the realisation of your role because only then will you be able to do great work.

How well you do your job, is a reflection of how much importance and relevance you associate with your work. 

A very common misconception is that you only need to attend to customers, although you do have to attend to customers, the job does not end there. I dare say it is just beginning.

Service to the Customer

When you attend to a customer what next?

How you answer this question determines the fate of both the customer and your company/business. 

When attending to a customer, here are a few things to note;

1. Active listening: You do not want to be saying one thing when the customer needs another. 

2. Product knowledge: How well do you understand your product and customer’s complaint? Are you aware if this is a general issue, if there is a simple fix or if it is a peculiar problem. 

Something happened at work the other day; a customer had been complaining about an issue for a few days and then the issue was escalated to the technical team only to find out it was supposed to be a complaint to another brand. 

Talk about using Panadol for someone else’s headache.

3. Proactive: This here is something that gets me more in love with a brand. I complained about a feature of a brand and after it had been repaired, they reached out at another date asking if I needed any help and if the feature was meeting my needs. Let’s just say, I fell in love a third time. The first two times might be a story for another day 😉.

4. Teamwork: I struggled with this because I tend to be a Lone Ranger most times🌚, but it does take a village to satisfy a customer. I had to learn to work with my team and even other departments and it has been a jolly-bumpy-productive ride. 

5. Technology savvy: It is no news that the use of technology cuts across all sectors (well except some that have coconut head and don’t want to change😏 IYKYK). There are a lot of tools and software you would come across in customer success and these tools have proven to be very helpful. 

I bet you didn’t know we also have tech bros and women-in-tech in customer success. With the amount of tools we use, I guess we qualify 😩😂.

Customer success requires continuous learning as things will change or evolve. I would sound like a broken record if I try to reiterate the importance of customer success in an organisation. But oh well🤷🏾‍♀️… there you have it.

Cheers,

Seun