As a service delivery professional in IT for over 25 years, working with customers is second nature to me. However, my entry into the field of Customer Success (for which I developed a passion thereafter) was just pure chance. I worked for a Business Intelligence (BI) analytics product company, and for some odd reason, customers just seemed upset when someone from the organization reached out to them. Responsible for the delivery of Profesional Services at the time, a colleague in Sales asked if I would be his TAM (Technical Account Manager) for the customers that he reached out to, who were having issues with the product. As the saying goes, the rest is history!
As we worked closely with our customers, my thought process often resulted in – ‘that’s what I would say/do too’, or ‘that’s what I would want too’. I soon realized that the customers’ expectations were, for the most part, purely common sense. For example, we learned that after customers signed the dotted line, we went radio silent on them, and they pretty much fell off the proverbial cliff. Little wonder then that anyone reaching out to them got an earful.
Fast forward a few months, I joined my colleague to set up the Customer Success practice at that company. Following that, I went on to envision, lead, and build Customer Success teams at other organizations.
As the curve balls came at me, I relied on my instincts a whole lot – to set up processes and workflows, to deal with the challenges, to address the nay-sayers. The common sense approach was often the simplest and easiest path forward. One might even say Common Sense led to Customer Success (CS = CS).
And, I’ve relied on the same instinctive approach to building Success teams. As I vetted and interviewed candidates, my instincts always led me to the right person for the job I was hiring for. But more to come later on the topic of building teams.
Recently, I was chatting with my friend Vivek, on the subject of Customer Success, and he suggested I look into developing a community on Thinkly. Once again, the old instincts played a role, and here I am blogging about my learning experiences and determined to pay it forward. Tremendous thanks @Viveksa for being that sounding board and to @Karishma for your patience with my innumerable queries.
To all my readers, thanks for affording me the slightly longer initial kick-off blog here. I promise to be more succinct as we discuss specific CS related topics going forward.
Welcome to being ‘Obsessed with Success’. Onwards!