What is customer success?

You may have come across the term Customer Success, and perhaps you thought it was a new concept, or a rehashing of an old concept, or just the latest business fad? In the following the post, I will debunk two of the most common misconceptions about what Customer Success is and then give you my opinion of what Customer Success should, and could be.

Myth: “Customer Success is just a 21^st Century rebranding of Customer Service”

Customer Success is so frequently, and so broadly misunderstood as it is used in various different ways by different businesses. I would always advise when seeking out job opportunities within Customer Success to get a clear picture of what a Customer Success means to that company specifically to ensure that you are both on the same page. It may be true for some companies that they have just renamed their Customer Service department to fit in with the trend of Customer Success. However, in my opinion, this is doing a disservice to the potential of what Customer Success can be and any company doing that is missing an opportunity to deliver something truly special to their customers and develop true brand loyalty.

Myth: “Customer Success is a nice way of disguising selling to existing customers”

Let’s get one thing straight first: selling to existing customers is not a dirty concept, it does need to be done and often for the customer’s benefit and in line with their growing and developing requirements. However, a team that is solely focussed on selling things to existing customers also, in my opinion, ought not be labeled as ‘Customer Success’ as that is a biased opinion of what “success” means. Here it would mean success is for the vendor in selling more things and increasing revenue from the existing client base, whereas it ought to be a customer centric form of success – whereby the customer achieves what they set out to when they purchased the solution. The utopia is a mutually beneficial relationship whereby the business offers a product or service to the customer and uses their Customer Success processes to ensure that item A is deemed to be a success, that business can then confidently and appropriately suggest and position item B with the customer without being pushy or unwarranted.

So, what is Customer Success?

At Avecto our Customer Success mission is about collaborating with our customers, getting to know them before they are even officially a customer, understanding their goals, and proactively engaging with them throughout their journey with us to ensure they are progressing well with the solution. We consistently provide a source of education on the solution and anything that’s new in order to equip our customers to get the maximum value from their original investment in us. We aim to build true partnerships with our customers; and that is something that just rebranding your existing customer service team or customer sales team will never be able to achieve.