Startup CXO

Chapter 87Customer Segmentation and Journey

I can't say this enough, so I'll repeat it here: the purpose of the service organization is to help the client achieve their desired objectives through working with your company. The customer hired your company to do something and your job as leader of the customer success organization is to help your company achieve that. But how do you consistently do that? How do you make sure that every client has an appropriate customer experience that helps them achieve their objectives?

The key word here is appropriate customer experience. A client paying you $100,000 a year has a different experience than a client paying you $1,000 a year. Their expectations differ, the degree of customization, of interaction, and the value they expect differ. As a startup and as you grow, if you're unable to differentiate customers and manage expectations and experiences, you'll either underinvest in some customers or overinvest in others. Either way, you've got problems.

There are a handful of things you can do as a Chief Customer Officer to create appropriate customer experiences.

Segment Your Customers

Define a segmentation scheme for your client base. There are a lot of different ways to segment customers. Frequently customers are segmented by revenue, by the product they purchased, or by industry. The proper segmentation will vary by company and there is no hard and fast rule. Generally, the criteria I would use to segment customers is based on simple ...