Outcomes-based customer success is a strategy focused on ensuring that customers achieve their desired outcomes with your product. It sounds straightforward but it’s easier said than done.
It takes a focused team with strong listening and coaching skills, a deep understanding of your product, a curiosity to understand customer goals, and a proactive, strategic approach to engagement. Done right, it aligns your customers’ success with your own, creating a faster track to customer value and loyalty.
Last month, customer success leaders Keishla Ceaser-Jones and Stephanie Workman-Bolden joined ChurnZero to share their principles of outcomes-based customer success, and how to apply them in your own organization. You can watch the webinar in full and read our top takeaways below.
But first, an appetizer.
A lesson in outcomes-based customer success from The Cheesecake Factory.
Did you know that The Cheesecake Factory sells 35 million slices of cheesecake annually? Opened in Beverley Hills in 1978, this restaurant chain is renowned for its eclectic menu, featuring more than 250 items (all made from scratch to order) including 37 signature cheesecakes. While it can be hard to choose what to eat, their customer-facing staff will help, explains Stephanie in this video clip.
Hungry to discover more? Here are five best practices we learned from Keishla’s and Stephanie’s presentation.
1: Know and prioritize your product’s most valuable capabilities.
One of the key themes in outcomes-based customer success is understanding and communicating your product’s core value to customers. While many products offer a wide range of features, not all of them are equally valuable to every customer.
Rather than leave your customers browsing your version of a 20-page menu, identify the top three to five outcomes that they value most, and build playbooks around these outcomes. Don’t try to cover every feature or possible use case. Stay focused on what drives the most value and tailor your communication around these areas.
2: Use directional questions to guide customers towards ideal outcomes.
When engaging with customers, it’s crucial to guide them toward the outcomes that best align with their needs. Broad, open-ended questions like “What are your goals?” don’t necessarily help; they can lead to confusion or irrelevant answers.
Instead, CSMs should ask targeted, directional questions to uncover the specific areas where your product can deliver the most value. Instead of asking, “What do you need?” consider asking, “How can we help you achieve X outcome using our Y feature?” for example.
3: Develop your active listening, transparent communication, and realignment skills.
Customers may come to the table with unrealistic expectations or goals that don’t align with what your product can achieve. Active listening is essential to understand their needs and concerns, and find opportunities to realign their goals with the value that your product offers.
If a customer’s expectations don’t align with your product, practice transparency. Have an open conversation about what can realistically be achieved, and pivot the discussion to the outcomes that your product supports. You’ll build trust, and hopefully uncover new areas of value for the customer.
4: Measure and monitor your customers’ progress closely.
Outcomes-based customer success isn’t just about setting goals—it’s about continuously measuring progress toward those goals. Check in regularly with customers to assess whether they are on track and whether their goals have changed.
Depending on the customer’s business cycle, this could be quarterly, mid-cycle, or annually. Use data to track key milestones and ensure that the customer is moving toward their desired outcomes. If any challenges arise, adjust the strategy proactively.
5: To achieve great customer outcomes, align your internal teams around them.
Outcomes-based CS is not a siloed effort. It requires collaboration across sales, marketing, and product teams to ensure alignment on value propositions and customer goals. Sales teams, for example, need to pass on pre-sales information effectively, while marketing should support CS by creating materials that highlight key product values.
You’ll need to develop cross-functional initiatives to align teams around the customer’s success journey: joint training sessions, collaborative goal-setting workshops, or shared performance metrics that emphasize outcomes rather than individual team goals. It takes work, but it’s a big opportunity to lead.
Watch the webinar in full here.
Want to learn more from Keishla and Stephanie?
Join us at ZERO-IN 2024, the essential conference for customer success leaders, this October. Keishla and Stephanie’s ZERO-IN workshop session, titled Being nice isn’t enough: How to realign your CS strategy around value realization, will teach you to build a team culture focused on outcomes and customer value.
