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What does it really mean? Customer success?
To us, it means expressing the voice of the customer. It means bringing cross-functional teams together to remove any roadblocks that could prevent the customer’s goals from being met.
But without a clear vision and grounding principles, customer success is just a term. It needs to be more than that. So we take opportunities like Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs) seriously, examining how we’re fulfilling the role and ensuring it’s more than a term—specifically, ensuring it’s a team, a company-wide initiative, and a joint effort.
Here are the components we believe are key to customer success:
Being an extension of their team
Our motto: We’re here to be your advocate, trusted advisor, and innovative support.
We intentionally serve as a strategic extension of the customer’s benefits team, but that extension needs to be seamless in order to truly serve its purpose. QBRs help us clarify what the best practices are to make that partnership supportive and impactful, so we can represent each customer’s voice effectively.
Sometimes, this requires assessing more than just standard KPIs. So we ask the question: What metrics are we missing that maybe aren’t as tangible? What are the relationship-management tactics that support customer success in the day-to-day?
One example is the 4-Step Feedback Model, inspired by a visit we had from innovation and entrepreneurship expert Craig Wortmann. I’ve had some incredible growth experiences using this model, as it allows you to get a 360-degree view of both your strong points and your areas for improvement. We highly encourage this for all team members. It’s a simple way to gain immediate feedback after a meeting or presentation, and it allows us to reflect on those less tangible metrics that inform how we’re performing in our role. After all, if one of our colleagues notices a particular area for improvement, it’s highly likely a customer would notice it, too.
Unpacking a variety of KPIs
In addition to serving as that extension and keeping a close eye on feedback, there are three classic metrics we monitor. If we’re helping our customers achieve these goals, we feel we’re doing our job.
Adoption
This is about making sure customers are leveraging all aspects of the product, including new features as they’re released. Moreover, it’s about tracking member engagement. Are the customer’s employees registering for and using the product?
Retention
Of course, it greatly matters whether or not customers are renewing with us. If they’re renewing, are they expanding their services, decreasing them, or remaining stagnant? In the unfortunate event that a customer doesn’t renew, what missteps and gaps can we identify and learn from? Member engagement surfaces here as well. Are employees returning to the product? What do the monthly active users look like?
Value
Finally, we want to ensure customers are reaching their objectives, which in turn, implies the value they find in our services. These objectives might be focused on any of the following areas, or others:
- ROI: Mitigating healthcare costs and improving overall business performance
- Talent: Supporting recruitment and employee loyalty/productivity
- Experience: Improving the employer’s reputation and brand
A unique evaluation for a unique journey
When we’ve completed our reviews, we make sure to understand what all of these metrics and factors mean to each specific customer. Just like MyEvive has a different user journey for every person, every customer experience has its own set of checkpoints. It’s based on what matters most to each company and their benefits team.
Keeping that journey unique and successful on a personal level is why we dedicate a team to customer success. When our learnings from QBRs translate into action-oriented game plans, that’s what makes customer success more than a term—that’s what customer success means to us.
