Often, we see infighting and bickering as to who ‘owns’ the customer. The key to success however is realizing that the customer journey is about longevity, with different people/roles in the driver’s seat along the way. A good handoff from one person to another is most crucial to the success of the customer.
In answer to the question from my previous post – Customer Onboarding begins prior to the sale. This is the single most defining factor that will ensure a seamless transition of the customer into their post sales journey with your organization.
The primary role of a sales person/Account Manager is, you guessed it, to sell! When a customer signs the contract/agreement to come on board, it’s the end of the sales process, and the beginning of their post sales journey. At that point, it is understandably difficult for an account team who has worked extremely hard for several months, or even years, to convert them from a prospect to a customer, to let go. The account team’s natural instinct is to put their arms around the customer because “no one else can understand them better”, and having someone else take point feels a bit like watching your child from the sidelines at the school game.
Imagine then, the uncertainty that the customer goes through, at being simply handed off to an unknown person, after having paid a lot of money first. Hence, the importance of introducing the customer to their post sales team prior to the sale. Simply reducing the uncertainty in the customer’s mind, will get them to focus on the key steps that lay the foundation for product/service adoption.
Often, the lack of a well defined post sales process, leads to friction within the organization – everyone asserts that it is they who ‘own’ the customer, and the customer has ringside seats to the chaos within. Well, the truth is that the customer is ‘owned’ by no one! They are a customer simply because they perceive a VALUE in the product/service that your company has to offer. Admittedly, at the time of sale, that perceptible VALUE is very high. Every action thereafter, whether small or big, either corroborates that perception or reduces it. Needless to say, for the customer to remain a customer, the corroboration of VALUE needs to be greater than the reduction, and should lead to ‘success’ for the customer.
The Customer Success team, by definition, has to ensure that the customer is successful with their intentions for the product/service that they have acquired and the Customer Success Manager (CSM) is in the driver’s seat. It is the collective responsibility of all stakeholders to align on the requirements, ownership, and the timeline of the project at hand. A good handoff from the pre-Sales team to the post-Sales team, is an ABSOLUTE MUST! The recommendation here is that this handoff be an internal meeting between the pre and post teams supporting the customer, so everyone internally is aligned on the use case(s), stakeholders, owners, timelines, milestones, and most importantly, the risks. This should be followed by a Kick-Off meeting with the customer, to ensure alignment there as well.
The Handoff: Define the workflow for the handoff, Identify the participants, Define the entry and exit criteria pertaining to each step in the workflow, Track the timelines, and most importantly, Ensure that a tracking mechanism is in place for all of the above. Bear in mind that it is very easy to over-engineer the process, the requirements, everything. Keep it simple in the interest of efficiency, accuracy, and ‘time-to-value’ for the customer. The idea is not to have an all encompassing six sigma process here, but to ensure that we have on record, all the necessary information to get the customer started. It is about understanding the customer’s Intentions, the customer’s Priorities, the customer’s Timelines, and defining the success criteria that will deliver the customer’s desired Outcomes. A good handoff is a very important cog in this process.
Have a great weekend!