Blog

Customer success is a crucial pillar for SaaS companies. This is because the time customer success managers (CSM) spend on improving customer engagement and reducing churn rate directly impacts the success of that company.

And with SaaS companies, customers who have negative experiences grow frustrated and discouraged. A good customer success manager works hard on making customer experience pleasant and success-driven. Thereby, reducing frustrations and increasing retention.

So, what does a customer success manager do? And what are the key CSM responsibilities?

What Does a Customer Success Manager Do?

A customer success manager is responsible for implementing customer success strategies and providing proactive support and care. But what is customer success and why do businesses need to invest in it?

Customer success is the process of pre-emptively or proactively reaching out to customers and offering support and onboarding. In other words, it is the act of transforming customer engagement and experience from ‘reactive’ to ‘proactive.’ And, in SaaS companies, this is a crucial and rapidly expanding role.

Customer success managers and teams work closely with customers to help them achieve their goals and complete their tasks. And through this, your business can build strong and meaningful relationships with your customers, increasing customer loyalty and retention.

According to Herve Andrieu, Customer Success Manager, Americas at BICS,

“The CSM is first a technical expert for the full value chain of the services he’s responsible for. It is very important for him to understand what the customer is trying to achieve, what are their potential and/or existing pain points and then to make it clear how the services can be implemented, how they will alleviate or remove some of the customer’s pain points and what needs to be done to make sure the services work optimally for the customer.

Because of his technical background, a CSM is able to identify with the customer additional ways to help them grow their business with the services offered.”

CSM responsibilities, therefore, range from providing support to helping customers onboard to collecting customer feedback. They keep up with current customer success trends to ensure they are up-to-date with customer expectations. We will go into these responsibilities in more detail below.

What Does it Take to Become a Successful Customer Success Manager?

In order to accomplish CSM responsibilities effectively, customer success managers need to have a specific skill set, especially soft skills. And they need to be able to understand and work with the business’ customers. So, what skills do customer success managers need to successfully do their jobs?

Andrieu says that “the most important quality of a CSM is their ability to actually listen to customers. It is absolutely mandatory to really understand what are the goals of the customer in order to propose the best solution possible and reveal any potential obstacles on the customer’s path.”

Here are some other helpful skills and qualities to have:

• Leadership skills — to lead customer success teams.
• Proactive approach — a central skill needed for customer success.
• Strong organization and presentation skills — to organize projects and lead teams.
• Empathy and emotional intelligence — to work well with others.
• Industry knowledge — to make good decisions and execute effective strategies.
• Relationship-building skills — core skills needed to build meaningful and healthy customer relations.
• Project management abilities — to handle projects and achieve goals.
• Analytical and critical thinking — to evaluate and study customer needs and team progress.

11 Key Responsibilities of a Customer Success Manager

Merely having these skills does not make you a successful CSM. How you apply these skills in solving customer issues and improving satisfaction will determine your success. And in some cases, that means going above and beyond your basic job duties.

Here are 11 key responsibilities every CSM in a SaaS company should get involved in to improve customer engagement and experience.

1. Bridge Between Sales and Customer Support

So, where does a customer success manager come in? Customer success managers fall between sales and customer support teams. And yet they differ from account managers who work hard to win accounts or maintain existing accounts.

They usually come in after the sales team has made a sale and help new customers familiarize themselves with the product or service. Without the right team or user-friendly product in place, customers may have trouble using the product and achieving initial success. This can lead to churn, which no business wants.

The main goal of a customer success manager is to get customers started quickly and monitor their satisfaction. They expand customer accounts, improve retention, resolve issues, increase customer satisfaction, and reduce churn.

2. Customer Onboarding

New customer onboarding is the most important responsibility for any customer success manager. Customer onboarding involves educating new customers on how to use your product to complete tasks and achieve goals. When onboarding customers, you need to teach them key features that can help them do what they hired or bought your product to do.

CSMs need to develop a balance between teaching customers necessary features and overwhelming them with loads of information and instructions. The goal should be to get them up to speed as soon as possible. Long and complicated onboarding times will add friction and ruin customer experience and reduce engagement.

A common mistake most CSMs make is trying to teach customers all of the features in the beginning. And the reality is that you only need to teach them how to use features that can help them achieve initial value. Take time to understand what each customer needs and help customers take the shortest route possible. This way, they see ROI immediately and realize the value of your product.

3. Proactive Problem Solving and Handling Account Escalations

Another core responsibility is to manage account escalations with proactive problem-solving. This includes quickly responding to red flags, alerts, critical customer queries, overdue support tickets, and so on. The key is to jump on these issues when they are small and manageable to avoid them turning into bigger problems. And it presents your business and customer success teams as reliable and responsive.

4. Long-Term Customer Relationship Management

Customer success managers must build trust and transparency with clients. Relationship-building is key to retaining high-value customers and converting them into advocates for your products and services.

According to the IDC, 53% of software revenue will come through subscriptions. This means that your business needs to develop strong and healthy relationships with customers so they continue to subscribe to your service. And it means that you need to keep them continuously happy and satisfied. It’s no longer a ‘one and done’ deal. Focus on customer relationship goals and strategize ways your customer success teams can connect better with customers.

5. Customer Research: Understanding Needs and Value

In order to build and maintain long-term, meaningful relationships with your customers, you need to first understand them. This means conducting customer research to understand and evaluate their needs, goals, and customer value. Then, using this information to personalize customer experiences so that your customers find value in your product or service.

Focus on providing value to your customers instead of running down the list of everything your business can do. In your demos, show them how your product or service can cater to their requirements and needs. Customers aren’t interested in how great your company is unless it provides them value and solutions.

Related: Using Phone Surveys to Understand Customer Pain Points

6. Customer Advocacy and Customer Loyalty

Given that these managers are also known as relationship managers, one of the core CSM responsibilities is customer advocacy. They mediate between customer requests and the business by representing customer preferences. By acting as a customer advocate, CSMs ensure that customer complaints and feedback are recorded, heard, and acted upon. And when customers feel heard and validated, it builds loyalty towards the business.

Andrieu says that “inside his own company the CSM also acts as the voice of the customer, allowing improvement within the organization of the customer experience and sharing feedback on the necessary product evolution, market chances, and improvements to the roadmap.”

7. Periodic Health Checks

While CSMs work on improving the experience and engagement of unhappy customers, they also need to conduct routine health checks of their most happy and loyal customers. Take time to calculate periodic health of key accounts, if not all. You may even consider investing in a customer success platform to help you monitor account health in real-time. Studying the account health of your happy and satisfied customers can also help you create better experiences for dissatisfied customers.

8. Subscription and Service Renewals

In SaaS companies, specifically, customer renewals (monthly or quarterly) maintain recurring revenue. This is because most of the revenue a SaaS company gets is through its existing customers, making it even more important to take care of those customers. Remind customers of upcoming renewals, inform them of any changes beforehand, and follow up on these renewals so that there are no surprises. You want your customers to be happy when a renewal is around. The larger the value or duration of a contract renewal, the more effort you should put in.

9. Brand and Product Promotion

Since a CSM’s job starts once a sale is made, it is only natural that part of a customer success manager’s responsibilities includes brand and product promotion. This means generating buzz and excitement around new products or new features rolling out. You may create new demos and training to go along with these feature rollouts. This also gives room for upselling and cross-selling opportunities.

10. Upsell and Cross-Sell Campaigns

A good customer success manager also encourages customers to upgrade their products. This may mean switching to a bigger or next-tier product or considering complementary products and features. Customer success managers work closely with customers and therefore have a good idea of their needs and goals. This can inform the suggestions they offer existing customers. Remember, don’t upsell for the sake of upselling. Provide suggestions and advice that can actually help your customers do their jobs or solve their issues better. And when you offer helpful and considerate advice, you increase customer lifetime value.

11. Referrals and Feedback

Finally, when you do your job well, you create valuable, lasting relationships with customers who now advocate for you and your business. This leads to referrals, testimonials, feedback, and reviews. Encourage your happy customers to spread the word, write reviews, and refer your business to others who may find it useful. And don’t forget about customer feedback. Collecting and studying feedback is crucial to understanding how your customers view and use your product. It is also essential for finding areas of improvement.

Ready to Revolutionize Customer Success?

If you’re behind in the game, it’s not too late to get started. There are many resources available to help you do your job well. Common CSM resources include:

• Blogs: The ClientSuccess CSM From the Trenches, CSM Practice, Practical CSM
• The Human Duct Tape Show Podcast (hosted by CX-guru Jeanne Bliss)
• The Customer Success Community (an online forum)
• The Customer Success Association
• Slack teams such as Support Driven and CS in Focus.

Take your business’ customer success efforts to the next level and lead your customer success teams effectively. There’s no better time to start than today!

Related: What Is a Chief Customer Officer and What Do They Do?

Are phone surveys dead?

The short answer: no. However, with access to the internet and other channels of communication, phone surveys are often replaced with an email or post-chat survey. And yet, customer phone surveys remain a reliable method of collecting customer feedback and data.

Here’s a detailed guide on using phone surveys to gain insights into customer behavior, conduct market research, identify customer pain points, and improve CX.

Why Your Business Needs to Conduct Phone Surveys

A phone survey is a survey conducted via telephone calls and, in some cases, conducted over video calls. Phone surveys are conducted by various people for different purposes. But the primary goal of phone surveys is to collect data and information. Here, we will focus on phone surveys conducted by businesses to understand their customers and their pain points.

Phone surveys can help your business learn more about your target customer and market. You can use them to study market demographics, identify common issues, understand customer preferences and behaviors, and more. You can then use this information to provide customers with better experiences and products, and improve customer satisfaction.

Why is it Important to Understand Customer Pain Points?

So, what do we mean by customer pain points and why does your business need to pay attention to this? Customer pain points refer to specific problems or issues faced by your customers or prospects. These are issues that they may experience when trying to complete their jobs or live their daily lives. Or, these may be issues they face along their customer journey.

Some common customer pain points include:

1. Convenience and Productivity — Wasting too much time on a current provider, service, or product. Lack of convenience and comfort.
2. Financial — Spending too much money on their current provider, service, or product. Low life expectancy of the product or service. Subscription plans, membership fees, set-up fees, and so on.
3. Process — Awkward or broken internal processes. Complicated workflows.
4. Shopping journey — Online research. Website navigation. Checkout friction. Lack of support or information for queries. Tracking and delivery issues.
5. Support — Not receiving the support they need at important points within the customer journey.

It is important to take time to understand and learn about your customers’ and prospects’ pain points so you can tailor their experience and offer them better solutions.

Types of Research You Can Conduct on the Phone

There are different types of customer research, data, and information you can collect through customer phone surveys. These include:

• Market Research Surveys
• Customer/Employee/Patient Experience Surveys
• Assessment Surveys
• Satisfaction Surveys
• Risk Analysis
• Validation/Verification

What research you want to conduct depends on the goals of your research or survey project. Do you want to survey the market? Or, learn more about your existing customers? Or, do you want to learn how your customers found out about your business? And so on.

Types of Phone Survey Questions to Ask

There are two types of survey questions to ask customers when conducting phone surveys: short phone surveys and long-form surveys.

The type of phone survey you choose to conduct depends on your end goal. Do you need detailed answers or quick responses to simple questions? Check out our customer feedback sample questionnaire below for examples of questions you can ask customers when collecting feedback and market research.

Let’s look at the different types of phone survey questions you may consider:

Short Phone Surveys

Short customer phone surveys can be conducted during or after customer service and sales calls. These surveys are short and aim to get quick responses from customers without wasting too much of their time. Common types of short customer phone surveys include: yes/no questions and scale questions.

Yes/No questions are pretty straightforward. You ask a question and the customer responds with a Yes/No answer.

Scale questions, on the other hand, offer customers a scale asking them to measure their interaction. These types of questions can take a numerical (1 to 10) or qualitative (satisfied to dissatisfied) approach. These types of questions also give the customer a neutral option to choose from, as opposed to the Yes/No type of questions.

You can measure on a scale of 1 (extremely unsatisfied) to 10 (extremely satisfied) or 1 (unsatisfied) to 5 (satisfied). With qualitative questions, you give customers a short list of varied responses such as ‘Satisfied-Dissatisfied,’ ‘Excellent-Poor,’ and ‘Agree-Disagree.’ Before asking customers to rate, inform them of the rating scale options. For instance, 1 being extremely satisfied and 10 being extremely dissatisfied.

These surveys also help with measuring and calculating your Net Promoter Score (NPS) which determines customer satisfaction and loyalty. To calculate NPS, you ask customers to answer the questions on a scale of 1-10 and divide the responses into three categories: Promoters (rating of 9-10), Passives (7-8), and Detractors (0-6).

Long-Form Surveys

These surveys ask open-ended questions and may even ask follow-up questions to get the most out of their customers. As such, these surveys may last longer than short phone surveys. Here, you are not asking a simple Yes/No or scale question but you are leaving the question open-ended so the customer is not limited in their responses.

You can ask detailed questions about the customer’s journey, pain points, preferences, behavior, product usage, demographics, and psychographics.

An example of a long-form, open-ended question is “Which alternatives did you consider before purchasing the product?” This gives you more insight into this particular customer’s journey. Even though these surveys may seem time-consuming, they can help you get additional insights and perspectives that simple Yes/No questions may miss out on.

Advantages & Disadvantages of Conducting Surveys Over the Phone

So, are customer phone surveys useful when it comes to studying your customers, their needs, and pain points? Is the time worth the work that goes into conducting such surveys? Let’s look at the pros and cons of phone surveys so you can make an informed decision.

Advantages:

• Phone calls are more personal and can help the business and customers build relationships.
• Phone surveys are relatively easy to conduct and require minimum equipment and technology. Talk to interviewees and enter data directly into a computer in real-time, and obtain results quickly.
• Phone interviews are a great medium to get responses to open-ended questions and follow-up questions.
• Research and data can be collected quickly since phone surveys are quick and immediate.
• Most people have access to phones (landlines or cell phones).
• Phone surveys are more effective than web or email surveys.
• Phone surveys have a relatively higher response rate than web or email surveys.
• Trained and professional interviewers can easily secure responses and participation from customers.
• Data and research collected can be quickly used to develop better customer experiences (CX), products, and services.

Disadvantages:

• Some customer phone surveys (especially if the customer does not know or use your service) may come across as telemarketing. This can influence the response rate.
• Customers are less likely to answer calls if they do not recognize your business’ phone number (especially an international or out-of-state number). This can be easily rectified with an outbound call service (more on that below).
• Phone interviews may not be as personal as face-to-face interviews.
• Phone surveys are bound by time constraints; phone surveys should stay under 15 minutes.
• Research is needed to determine the best time to make business calls. Calling during odd or off-hours can lead to lower response rates.

How to Measure Customer Experience (CX)?

There are various ways to accurately measure CX and customer satisfaction. You will need to decide what metric and methodology you will use. Then, you conduct the surveys and note down customer responses. Some metrics and methodologies to consider include:

• Yes/no questions — Were you satisfied with the service you received? (Yes / No)
• Numerical — How satisfied were you on a scale of 1-5, 1-10, etc.
• Qualitative — Very satisfied, neutral, very unsatisfied, etc.
• Open-ended questions — Why did you decide to use our service?

Once you decide what types of questions to ask and how to collect customer data, you can start conducting phone surveys.

Grab our sample questionnaire for a list of questions to ask customers when conducting phone surveys to measure customer satisfaction.

Customer Phone Surveys: Best Practices to Keep in Mind

How effective your research will be is based on how well these phone surveys and interviews go. For this, your survey teams need to be prepared and trained well. Here are some tips to consider when conducting phone surveys and training your survey team:

1. Have a goal and purpose in mind.
2. Use a reasonable sample size.
3. Keep the interview short.
4. Start by explaining the process of the interview.
5. Establish time expectations.
6. Keep the questions and answers simple.
7. Make it measurable (limit open-ended questions, if appropriate).
8. Consider sending out other surveys as well such as email, web, and chat surveys.
9. Emphasize being personable and professional during the interviews.
10. Make survey results available, when appropriate.

Download Your Free Phone Survey Sample Here
Questions to ask customers when collecting feedback and research.

Survey Questionnaire download

• Name:
• Email
• CAPTCHA

How to Conduct a Phone Survey to Collect Customer Data

Now that you know the benefits of conducting customer phone surveys to understand customers and their pain points, let’s go through the different steps involved in conducting a phone survey.

1. Decide on Survey Goals

First, have a thorough discussion on the goals and purpose of the survey. Don’t just conduct a survey for the sake of it. Take time to discuss what you want to achieve through this survey and how you will go about gathering this information. Make sure your research team and those conducting the surveys are on the same page.

2. Choose Target Audience

Next, choose the audience or market you want to research. This depends on the goals you have for each survey. Go through your email and subscription contacts and customer lists to create a shortlist of the target audience for each survey. You may even use existing market research to identify good participants for the survey. Then, share this list with the survey team.

3. Prepare the Questionnaire(s)

Based on the results you want and the types of customers you will be researching, prepare and share a phone survey questionnaire that agents and employees can use when conducting phone surveys. Run through these questions with them beforehand and show them how to input responses into your content or project management system where the research team can access the collected data.

4. Get Local Phone Numbers

Depending on your business coverage and expansion plans, you may even consider getting toll free and local phone numbers to conduct research and collect data. These numbers are more recognizable than international or out-of-state phone numbers. And will increase the chances of customers and prospects actually answering your calls. An outbound calling service enables your team to make outbound calls with a custom caller ID to improve response rates. Want to learn more? Speak with our experts today!

5. Make Calls and Collect Data

Finally, start making calls, conducting interviews, and gathering data. Remember, the work does not end here. What are you going to do with the data you have collected? How can you use this information to improve CX and retain more customers? Don’t let this data go to waste. Create action plans to make your customers more comfortable in their customer journeys by reducing their pain points when interacting with your business.

Want to Learn More About Business Phone Solutions?

Global Call Forwarding has various business phone service options that can help your business conduct market research and collect customer feedback. Browse through our blog posts or speak with our team to learn more!

Customer feedback is crucial in understanding the value your business offers its customers and how customers are using your products and services. Customers who don’t find value or growth will find a new service. But taking time to listen to their concerns or struggles and taking action will increase customer loyalty and retention. As you prepare your voice of the customer VoC research program, here are 9 best practices and 9 common mistakes to keep in mind.

Building an Effective Voice of the Customer Program

To create a voice of the customer (VoC) research program, there are a few key things to take into consideration:

• What is the research for
• Who will you interview
• What customer segments and audiences to cover
• How will this feedback be collected and stored
• Who will be involved in this process
• How will the data be analyzed
• What next steps will your business take

By answering these questions, you can start building a focused research program with a clear idea of what you want to find and how you will handle data.

How to do VoC Research

There are a few different ways your research teams can go about collecting customer feedback. However, your goals and resources available will help you decide how to conduct customer research.

For instance, if your business interacts with customers primarily via phone conversations, then you would choose phone interviews for the research. On the other hand, if you want to collect feedback about a new service feature or product update, then you can insert a micro survey in the dashboard or send it in emails or push notifications.

Check out our detailed guide to voice of the customer methodologies to find the right methods for your VoC program.

VoC Research: 9 Best Practices

What practices should a research and feedback collection team implement when conducting voice of the customer research? Here we list 9 VoC best practices so you can get the most out of your research efforts.

1. Outline How the Program Will Run

First, design an effective voice of the customer research program. Determine what type of feedback and research you want to collect. How will you (or your research team) collect this research (methodologies)? What tools and resources will you use? Where will all the data be stored and analyzed? What do you hope to do with this information and feedback? What are the end goals?

Answering these questions will help prepare your teams. And when the time comes, your teams will be equipped to communicate with customers, understand their needs and pain points, collect and study data, and find ways to improve the customer experience.

2. Collect Feedback & Insights Across All Communication Channels

If your business communicates with customers on different channels, then you will want to collect feedback from all those channels. This means not only doing phone and email surveys but also chat and social media, if applicable.

Basically, any platform or channel you engage with customers and prospects on is a valuable platform for collecting voice of the customer research. You can decide the form and length of your survey or questionnaire based on the channel. Create short surveys and embed them in the email or chat window or attach links to longer surveys that may need more time.

You can increase the number of responses you receive by collecting feedback from all communication channels and also get varied responses and perspectives.

3. Collaborate with Other Teams & Share Reports

Depending on the purpose and goal of a research project, all relevant departments should have a say in how feedback should be collected and studied. Identify key leaders and players from each department. Get their support via perspectives and suggestions. Invest in the right communication tools to collaborate effectively with these teams. Once research is collected, share insights and reports with these leaders and departments.

4. Personalize VoC Requests

Think of every interaction with your customer as a way of delivering value. Therefore, when conducting VoC research and collecting feedback, treat your customer as a partner. Demonstrate that the purpose of this survey or phone interview is to understand how you can serve them better. Ask relevant questions; customers will not answer questions that have nothing to do with them or how they use your product.

5. Seek Feedback at the Right Touchpoints

This practice depends on how you stage your interviews and surveys and what data you want to gather. For example, do you want to know how your product is doing overall? Or, do you want to understand how specific processes are working? Hopefully, you want both.

But timing your requests for feedback is crucial. Doing so gives customers the opportunity to let you know about their frustrations or struggles and also let you know how a new feature or service is working out. Good moments for feedback can include:

• After the customer has onboarded
• As a follow-up to new product features or add-on services
• After the customer has completed a big task or achieved a goal
• As a response to customer behavior such as low levels of activity
• After the customer reaches out for customer or tech support.

6. Respond to Customer Feedback

Don’t ignore feedback once you’ve collected it. Respond to the feedback by offering solutions or changing processes. Let your customers know that your business is aware of their concerns and working on a solution. Don’t leave them hanging.

7. Study Data & Act on Feedback

Don’t stop at collecting data and sharing it with other departments. Study and analyze the data. Then, together, work on creating action plans based on the feedback provided to make processes simpler and improve customer experience. This is the whole purpose of conducting voice of the customer research.

8. Consider the Voice of the Employee

Don’t forget about your employees. They are a big part of customer interactions and can provide valuable insights and perspectives. They may notice trends in customer queries, struggles, achievements, or pain points. And they can help you identify areas of improvement within internal policy and processes. In other words, they can direct your attention to areas that impede their ability to deliver good customer experience and service.

9. Track & Measure ROI

Finally, look at the results. All this work will be for nothing if you don’t get results that match your business goals. If your main goal is improving customer experience, you will also improve business ROI. This is because both work hand-in-hand: the better the customer experience, the longer the customer stays with your business and continues to purchase your products and services. Track your efforts and measure ROI to ensure your efforts and goals are aligned.

VoC Research: 9 Common Mistakes

Poorly designed VoC programs can greatly harm your research efforts and may even negatively affect your relationship with these customers. Here are 9 common mistakes to avoid when conducting voice of the customer research.

1. Being Unprepared

Not knowing what you need to do or how to do it is the biggest hurdle your research team can face. Do the research and talk to your leaders. Come up with realistic goals (more on that below) and a game plan that everyone approves of. Prepare a list of questions for inclusion in the survey or phone interview. And research the customer and their business to ensure your questions are relevant to their experience. In other words, don’t talk to them without knowing what you are looking for or what the end goal is.

2. Not Researching Customers Before Connecting with Them

If you prepare generic questions which may or may not be relevant to each customer, you run the risk of not getting accurate or helpful responses. This is because customers who don’t find your questions relevant to their experience will not know how to answer them. And if there is nothing for them to gain, they will not want to waste time.

Create questions that are customer-focused and not business-focused. Conduct market research to uncover their problems and potential pain points. What can your business do to solve a particular issue?

3. Setting Vague or Unrealistic Goals

This mistake may have pricey results. If the goals set are not clear enough or achievable, your team may end up wasting time and resources in this voice of the customer program. Additionally, in certain situations, goals may need to be adjusted or re-evaluated. Take time to do this and make a case for it based on insights gathered.

4. Asking the Wrong Questions

Not asking the right or relevant questions will cause a lot of wasted time. For one, customers may not provide valuable insights. And two, you may miss out on getting to the main point. Keep your VoC research goal in mind and draft questions accordingly. When you conduct interviews, you may come across other angles and perspectives to include in future questions; make a note of these. Ask follow-up questions and focus on “how” and “why” questions. These will help you dig deeper into their goals and how they use your product to achieve those goals.

5. Failure to Secure Support

Research is not easy; it takes time and demands resources. This means stakeholders need to buy in to your program and goals. The whole point of VoC research is to identify ways to make your company and its products more customer-friendly. The more satisfied customers are, the more your business will grow.

As such, VoC research can highlight changes that may affect the company culture and values. Therefore, if your VoC program does not have adequate support, the results may not be taken seriously. And these insights may get buried in other more urgent projects. Ensure your team and leaders understand the value of the research you will undertake before you begin.

6. Not Collaborating with Other Teams

Work closely with other teams before, during, and after the research project. Their perspective can help you devise better questions and valuable results. This means taking the time to sit down and talk to your marketing, sales, and customer service teams. You may even meet with product managers and development teams to get their take on the product and its purpose, and what future developments are possible.

Without working and collaborating with other members, you may miss out on key perspectives that can drive your research. For instance, if you do not speak with your sales or customer service teams, you may not learn of common customer problems that your research can help solve.

7. Not Using Automation When Available

Research is not easy; it takes time and needs resources. However, without the right resources and support, it can prove to be more expensive and less effective. Think: customer automation tools, lead qualification tools, data analytics tools, and so on.

Streamline your processes. Create separate workflows for different types of audiences and segments. Use efficient tools and resources that make it easy for your team to identify customers and leads and to collect and study the data.

Related: 6 Ways to Automate Customer Service in 2021

8. Not Sharing Insights & Feedback

While there is a tendency to ignore similar and low-level feedback, make it a point to keep sharing insights and feedback with your teams and leaders. Even a low-level issue can become a larger issue if it occurs consistently. Something that may seem like a small issue might be the root cause of a larger issue. The point is, sharing your insights with others may help you see things differently. And will also help leaders and managers learn more about their customers.

9. Failure to Act on Feedback

Finally, not acting on feedback defeats the whole purpose of conducting voice of the customer research. Whatever the feedback, work on ways to make the customer experience better. Customers should know that your business cares and is working on making their lives and jobs easier.

Why Voice of the Customer is Important

VoC research helps your business pay attention to the customer’s voice and feedback. At the end of the day, if your product or service does not cater to customer needs, they have no loyalty to your brand. Considering how competitive the market is, customers will find new services. Don’t lose out on valuable customers. You may even be able to use these insights in creating and updating customer journey maps that will, in turn, show you ways to bring more customers on board.

Your business will see huge returns from working with customers and learning from their feedback. And gradually, your customers will become brand advocates and help your business grow.

2024 was hard. Let’s face it: many businesses lost valuable customers and many customers lost their favorite businesses. However, there is still hope for those who need it. Reconnect with past customers and ignite the flame with new customers through customer success trends for 2025.

2025 Customer Success Trends

What is customer success and why is it going to be important in 2025? Customer success is the process of proactively reaching out to customers and clients and working on improving their experience with your business. While customer service is reactive (after a customer reaches out to a business), customer success is proactive and takes the first step.

The 2020 global pandemic caused much uncertainty and dramatically changed business practices. As such, customers need more care in the new year than ever before. This is where customer success comes in. Make your customers happy, develop strong customer relations, and increase sales with these 6 customer success trends for 2025.

1. Virtual and Multichannel Communication, Especially Video

COVID-19 led to many businesses coming up with creative ways of staying in contact with their customers and making themselves reachable. This led to a rise in multichannel communication and customer support with businesses offering voice calls, text messages, live chat, emails, and video calling.

Video streaming and video conferencing are important customer success trends for 2025. In 2024, many businesses had to switch to video conferences for sales and customer support services. With video streaming and conferencing, these businesses were able to engage in detailed and personalized meetings with valuable customers. In a time of uncertainty, this helped bring many customers on board. As such, customers will expect some degree of video and virtual support in the following years.

Related: 5 Ways to Win Back Your Post-Pandemic Customers

2. More AI and Automation Technology

AI and automation in business continue to be a growing trend. Businesses across the board are finding ways to streamline and automate simple, repetitive processes so that their employees are free to focus on more complex and important tasks. Customer success teams can also benefit from automated processes. Some common customer success automation tools include:

• Welcome emails and follow-up messages
• AI chatbots
• Automated IVR systems and auto-attendants
• Personalization with regards to deals and offers
• Ability to segment and prioritize customers

One example of an efficient customer success automation tool is the automated IVR system. An IVR system answers incoming calls, identifies the caller and their needs, and proceeds to assist. The IVR system can be programmed to simply transfer callers to the right department or employee. However, more advanced IVR systems can even assist callers in completing tasks without the need of an agent. These tasks include, but are not limited to:

• Collecting feedback and surveys
• Providing troubleshooting help
• Providing information about the company (hours, location, services offered, etc.)

Phone system automation can help streamline services, increase efficiency, and help your teams work like a well-oiled machine. Plus, you are guaranteed more accuracy when you use AI to conduct basic tasks.

3. Proactive and Customer-First Strategies

Customer success focuses on being proactive, as opposed to customer service which is reactive. In other words, customer success occurs before the customer reaches out to you. More specifically, in customer success, your business reaches out to customers to make their experience better.

Here is a great opportunity to put those customer-first strategies to use. These strategies focus on:

• Understanding the customer’s needs and expectations.
• Working closely with the customer to provide useful and relevant solutions.
• Collecting feedback from current customers.
• Conducting market research to develop strong buyer personas for your target audience.
• Creating better experiences and interactions for your customers.

4. Personalized Experience and Service

Over the years, businesses have noticed that customers respond better to personalized service. Providing personalized service for your customers can include:

• Personalized or customized sales and customer service — researching or studying your customer and their needs before pitching them or providing assistance.
• Including personalization features in your phone system that identify callers and help them with their account or query, keeping their history in mind.
• Personalized email marketing with customized and relevant products and services.

By offering custom solutions and personalized service, your customer understands that their business is important to you. Additionally, you make it easier for them to see how your products and services can directly relieve their problems and make their lives or businesses function better.

Furthermore, by executing such an approach, you can increase your customer lifetime value. This is a great way to increase your value as a business when marketing to target customers.

5. Focus on Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping is one of the most important customer success trends for 2025. Customer success as a service involves working closely with customers and clients and helping them achieve their goals. As such, your customer success teams will need to measure and map their journey.

For most businesses, the customer’s journey starts at the moment they show interest in your product or service. It ends when they make a purchase. However, for companies focusing on customer success, the actual journey begins at the customer’s purchase. How can you continue to serve this customer and ensure they will come back for more?

So, what is customer journey mapping and why is it significant? Customer journey mapping involves creating a journey map for your customer. In other words, developing a map that details the visual story of your customer’s interactions with your company. By doing so, your customer success teams gain insight into each customer’s behavior, needs, and perspective. And by understanding these factors, your business can provide better services to valuable customers. With customer journey mapping, you can:

• Understand customer preferences via feedback
• Create better alignment between teams
• Measure and enhance customer experience
• Define milestones and work towards them
• Execute better customer success strategies that are more likely to be successful

6. Collecting and Reviewing Customer Success Metrics

Lastly, as with any significant business process or strategy: Collect, Measure, and Optimize. Collect data and feedback regarding customer experiences. Measure important customer success metrics such as customer health scores, CLV, customer satisfaction scores (CSAT), net promoter score (NPS), etc. And based on your findings, improve and optimize customer experiences and interactions.

Strengthen Customer Relations with Care

Customer success helps you work with customers to better understand and serve them. By doing so, you can strengthen their relationship with your business and convert them into recurring customers or those that recommend your business to others! Give the above customer success trends for 2025 a try and give your business the tools it needs to thrive in the new year. Call us to learn more at 1 (888) 908 6171.