Digital customer success is a long game. There is no “set it and forget it” and it takes time to see results. After all, building a brand new digital customer success program is a huge undertaking – it requires effective strategy, planning, execution, and measurement, plus access to the right set of tools, people, skill sets, and data. As an emerging practice, it’s also untested and unproven within many companies. So, it comes as no surprise that many CS leaders struggle to get the necessary approvals and support to develop a digital CS program.
But you and I both know that digital is the way of the future, so how can you prove that it will work with your customers, in your business, so stakeholders feel comfortable moving forward with the project? One solution to run a digital customer success proof of concept (POC).
A POC, sometimes called a pilot, is evidence that illustrates that a design concept, business proposal, etc., is feasible. It tests things out on a small scale and demonstrates them as a viable option for a team or business. Often used in environments like testing software releases, soft-launching new products, and trialing new working hours, a POC is the perfect way to show (not just tell) what a huge impact digital can make on your customers’ success.
So, how exactly do you execute a digital customer success proof of concept?
Let me walk you through it.
Step 1: Define the scope.
You want to pilot digital customer success, obviously, but you need to get a lot more specific. This starts with by narrowing the audience to either a single customer segment or a single phase of the customer journey.
Probably, the most popular approach is to test these new strategies on the customer segment that contains your smallest customers – whether you call it SMB, emerging, scale, etc. If that’s your preference, go for it!
But, rather than focusing on one type of customer, I prefer to run a POC for a journey phase; more specifically, the onboarding phase.
I like it for a few reasons. Primarily, it’s easier to run in a shorter period of time (rather than waiting for a whole bunch of customers to make it all the way to renewal). It also presents more opportunity for insights when gathering feedback later in the process. If narrowing the POC group to the onboarding phase still feels like too large a group, you can further narrow it down by both journey phase and customer segment (such as SMB customers in onboarding), or by randomly selecting a control and a test group (no surprise, I like this method better).
In addition to defining your audience, you’ll also want to determine the timeline for the project.
How long will it take you to build? Hint: the answer is longer than you may think, typically at least one quarter, often two quarters, especially if you have some foundational elements to tackle before you can get started. When will you launch? And how long will the pilot run for before you measure and evaluate? I recommend running for at least a full quarter (if not two). This means that the POC in its entirety can take up to a full year.
The final key to defining the scope of your digital customer success proof of concept is to document the resources required to complete it. You should include an estimate of how much of your time and your team’s time will be spent on it, plus the tools (existing or new) you’ll use.
Step 2: Set your success criteria.
Now that you’ve narrowed in on the scope of your POC, it’s time to pinpoint how you’ll monitor and measure success.
We all want to set big goals for ourselves; we know we’re going to crush it! (Right?!) But a word of caution when determining which metrics or KPIs you’ll measure yourself against. Remember that whatever messaging and automation you build during this project, they’ll be running for a quarter or two, which is generally not long enough to move the needle on big-picture lagging indicators like churn, retention, or growth rates.
So, if you can’t count on the big guns like net revenue retention (NRR), expansion revenue, or churn rate to measure your success, what’s the alternative? For now, focus instead on the leading indicators that demonstrate engagement and behavioral change. Then you can draw the line between these early measures and the longer-term goals of your organization. Here are some examples:
Email bounce, open, click, and unsubscribe rates. These metrics are the clearest indicator of your customers’ engagement with your digital outreach. While they may seem like a basic measurement, they’re critical (bonus points if you talk to your friends in marketing about how they use these metrics to understand customer behavior).
If you’re using channels outside of email in your POC, be sure to gather similar metrics for those as well. For example: views and clicks for in-app notifications, or view time for video content.
Product usage metrics. These could include the number of customers using a “sticky” product feature before and after messaging around its functionality, or the number of “lost” users who log back into the platform after an outreach. This kind of usage-based data can be indicative of higher retention rates down the line.
Time to onboard (TTO), and where possible, time to value (TTV). Quicker TTO is a metric that your finance team will love, as longer onboarding leads to higher costs in almost every business, particularly those who can’t bill new customers until they’re “live” on the platform. And faster TTV can help mitigate churn risk in the long term.
Step 3: Build and run your test.
This is the fun part! You get to actually start doing the thing you’ve been planning. As I mentioned earlier, building typically takes at least a few months. After all, your to-do list just suddenly got a lot longer!
I know it’s tempting to just start firing emails at your POC audience, but try to practice restraint. Get your messaging mapped out, content written, templates crafted, and workflows built before you turn anything live. And be sure to keep your current customer journey maps, past customer challenges, and “moments that matter” in mind as you do so. Not only will this create a better customer experience, it will also help you measure the effectiveness of your POC in the next step.
Once you’ve turned your automation live, do your best to let it run as-is for the length of your pilot. Of course, if something’s broken or obviously ineffective, fix it ASAP! Just avoid making a large number of changes, if possible, as this can make measurement more challenging later on.
Step 4: Measure and review.
This may be the most critical step in your entire digital customer success proof of concept process.
Once your pre-determined timeline for running the pilot has elapsed, it’s time to measure and gather feedback to identify what worked and what needs tweaking for the future. Using the metrics and success criteria you set in step two, gather and review the data. Look at each measure in aggregate, then slice and dice the data as many ways as possible to try to gain additional insights.
What does all this data tell you? Were customers engaging with your content? For those who did engage, were they more likely to exhibit “desirable” behaviors, like more frequent logins, usage of that sticky feature, or quicker TTO or TTV? In most cases, the answer is yes: customers who engage with your digital content are more likely to also engage with your product and company.
What is there within the data that doesn’t look so good? Take a deeper look at those areas of the customer journey or the content itself. Is there a tricky technical implementation step that could use a deeper explanation through more or different content? Or, maybe the opposite: you realize that you may have gotten overzealous with your messaging and perhaps overwhelmed or irritated some customers. All of this information, both positive and negative, will help inform what you do next.
Along with the data, you’ll also want to gather feedback about your POC. Ideally, this should come from both internal and external audiences.
Identify a small number of customers who were included in the pilot to survey or interview about their experience. Of course, if those customers have a dedicated CSM, make sure they’re in the loop before you make the ask. You may even want to identify and connect with these customers before any automation launches, and then do a follow up afterwards. Gather feedback from internal sources as well. Talk to your team about challenges they faced or comments they received. Connect with other departments to gather their input as well.
Step 5: Refine and present
With all the data and feedback gathered, it’s time to put together a plan for what comes next.
Outline your findings on what worked, what didn’t, and what you’ll do differently moving forward. That last point is critical here – be sure to get specific with not just what needs changing, but how you’ll change it and what impact you expect those changes to have.
Determine what your recommendations are for expanding upon your first digital customer success proof of concept. Do you need to run another proof of concept, perhaps with a different audience? Or, ideally, did you get enough right and gather enough data, that you feel confident about expanding your digital footprint to a broader group of customers?
Last, it’s time to present your data, findings, and recommendations. The specific audience for this presentation will vary by company, but be sure to keep it focused on an executive viewer. What is the data, what does it tell us, and what are we going to do about it?
Marley Wagner is a freelance Digital Customer Success Consultant and Fractional Chief Marketing Officer. Her work centers on helping B2B tech companies increase revenue and accelerate growth with both prospective and existing clients through organic channels that emphasize brand reputation and trust.
