Digital Customer Success: A Getting Started Guide – Part 1

Every customer success leader I know is being asked to do more with less. I could go on and on about the macroeconomic factors, the cycle of overhiring and layoffs, and the “new normal” for spending justification that’s causing this, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll just focus on that reality.

Being asked to do more with less has turned the concept of digital customer success from a nice-to-have to a must-have. Full stop. It’s no longer a fancy thing, years out on the roadmap, that only highly mature CS organizations are good at. Utilizing technology to automate is now a necessity of an effective customer success strategy. And yet, very few customer success professionals have successfully built this type of program before.

So, how do you do it? Where do you start? And what direction do you march? Read on to find out. 

Before you start: the fundamentals of a digital CS strategy

Starting digital customer success is often a really exciting concept for people. It’s exciting for me too – I love to hear that excitement when discussing the topic! But that excitement can sometimes lead to jumping the gun, just a little bit.

CS leaders can get so excited that they’ll just start throwing out automation and emails and campaigns, and all of a sudden, they’ve got a big mess on their hands. So, there are a few fundamentals required before you actually press “go” on your digital strategy. 

1: Automation platform

What system are you planning to use to make your digital dreams a reality? Is it a customer success platform like ChurnZero? A marketing automation software like HubSpot? A custom-built or in-house technology? Something else entirely? And how does that system talk to others in your tech stack, like your CRM or support ticketing software, which it will need to do to access important customer data? 

If you haven’t asked yourself these questions, stop and do so. You’ll need to be able to confidently lay out these technical details before you start mapping data, sending emails, or anything else. If you don’t, you risk creating a strategic plan that you don’t have the technical capabilities to support in reality.

2: Segmentation and personas

How is your customer base segmented? Simply by Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), or by more complex factors like industry, use case, or growth potential? How many segments do you have? How will each segment’s digital experience be the same or different? 

This is the part where I get on a soapbox about how digital is not just for SMB or your long tail of customers. Digital is for everyone! Each segment should have its own unique blend of human and digital engagement, but if any segment has 100% digital or 100% human, you’ve probably over-rotated in one direction or the other. 

Who are the people – the actual humans – that your company is interacting with at your customer companies? What are they trying to accomplish? What motivates them? What do they need and want from you and your product(s)? 

The phrase “B2B is still human-to-human” is really helpful here. Not every single contact within a customer account is going to need or want the same experience or information from you, so think about who those individuals are before you start creating content for them. Hint: if you haven’t created personas yet, your marketing team likely has! This is a great place to start to better understand who you’re communicating with.

Related: What to consider when transitioning to a digital customer success strategy. 

3: Permission to contact

Are you allowed to send automated messages to your customers? 

Seriously, that’s the only question here. Sadly, I’m not kidding when I tell you I know of a (very large, publicly traded) tech company who spent months building out an entire digital customer success strategy and program, only to be shut down by legal days before their planned launch because their privacy policy and customer agreements didn’t include language about being opted-in to automated messaging. Don’t be like this company. Talk to your legal team early in the process to make sure your ducks are in a row here. 

4: Customer journey map

Have you documented your customers’ experience with your company from their point of view? Are you sure? Is it really from the customer’s perspective? Is what you documented in an “as-is” or “to-be” state? Which segment(s) does it represent? 

The process of documenting your customers’ journey and creating a shared vision alongside cross-functional teams is perhaps even more valuable than the end product. But that end product certainly comes in handy when you want to start identifying points in the customer journey that can and should be automated. 

5: Understanding current state

Okay, the foundation is laid. Now we get to the good part of building, right?! Well, sort of. There’s one more key to kicking off a successful digital CS program, and it’s all about understanding the current state of what’s happening today. This includes both an internal perspective on how your customer success managers (CSMs) are currently spending their time, as well as an external perspective of every message your customers receive from your company. 

6: Analyzing CSM activities

Most CS leaders think they know what their CSMs are spending their time doing. And most CS leaders are wrong. It turns out that even the best, most senior, most tenured CS leaders tend to have a skewed view of how their CSMs are actually spending their time.

The inclination is to assume CSMs are spending a majority of their time talking to customers (cue something about how CSMs need to be “more strategic” or should be “strategic advisors”). Although I would consider customer interaction a key purpose of their role, assuming that this translates to their time spent is naive.

In reality, tasks like requesting time, coordinating calendars, and prepping materials for those customer meetings are taking up a lot of most CSMs’ time. Those things can be easily automated, freeing up time for them to “be more strategic.” (See what I did there?) 

So, I recommend conducting a CSM time spend analysis to gain an accurate picture of, just that, how CSMs are spending their time. This can be done either through interviews or surveys. Both are effective, just make sure you’re gathering input from a large enough percentage and wide enough swath of your team. I recommend asking at least half, if not 100% of your CSMs to participate. And be sure to explain your purpose here, as this ask can be really scary if folks don’t understand the reasoning behind your questions. 

7: Company-wide communication inventory

You may be thinking, “I haven’t started sending to my customers yet, so why would I need a communication inventory?” Because even though customer success loves to think of ourselves as “owning the customer,” that doesn’t mean that no one else is reaching out to that customer.

Odds are good that marketing, sales, product, and support are all currently sending messages to your customers through one channel or another. Sales may be trying to drum up opportunities for a recently launched product, marketing is sending invitations to an event, support is sending outage or bug fix notifications, and product is sending feature updates and releases. 

Even if none of that is part of your “digital customer success strategy,” it is still part of your customer’s experience with your company. They don’t care that it’s coming from another department – it’s all part of their interaction with you. So, it needs to be documented.

Talk to your counterparts in every department who could possibly be communicating with customers, and add details of every single message they’re sending to a spreadsheet. It should document each message’s purpose, audience, channel/delivery method, internal owner, internal system, and trigger. Then, when you are ready to start building your own automation, you can plan accordingly.

Think of these items as your foundation. Kind of like my toddler, who really wants to walk, but falls right down on her butt every time she lets go of my hand. I know the crawl-walk-run analogy is overdone, but that’s the case because it’s just so darn accurate. My little one is still building that foundation of standing, which she needs before she can start walking. And you, too, need a strong foundation in place before you can truly start creating an impactful digital experience for your customers.

Stay tuned for part two of this getting started guide, where I’ll cover the key components of building out your digital customer success strategy and plan. 

Marley Wagner is a freelance Digital Customer Success Consultant and Fractional Chief Marketing Officer. She’s a marketer that gets customer success and a post-sale digital expert with a focus on revenue. 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.