Chapter 16
Customer Success Technology
When a new discipline becomes commonplace and the practitioners come together to create departments, teams, and organizations, technology is sure to follow. This is most definitely the case with customer success. As more and more people take on CSM titles or similar responsibilities, the processes and best practices around how to execute the daily tactical duties begin to coalesce. Once that starts to happen, there's room for technology to come in with the promise of improving the processes and the productivity of the people.
Customer success, whether done in a high-touch way or a tech-touch way, is all about data. Actually, it's really about turning data into information and then turning that information into action. But it starts with data. Lots of data.
A Plethora of Customer Information
Think about what almost every B2B company, and more B2C companies every day, know about their customers:
- Demographics—industry, geography, company size, and so forth
- How long they have been a customer
- What they have purchased and when
- What they paid for every product they have purchased
- Every invoice ever sent—when, what, amount, terms
- Every payment ever received—when, amount
- Every services/support call—when, reason, severity, response time, resolution time
- Every e-mail ever sent and result (open, bounced, unsubscribed, clicked-through)
- Every event/webinar attended or registered for
- Any direct-mail marketing sent
- Website visits and source of traffic ...
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