By: Gijsbert Pols
In the discussion on the concept of customer success, much has been said about the shortcomings of customer support. In an impressive interview published on the company blog of MindTouch, Mikael Blaisdell reminded us that the best support call is the one that didn’t happen. Indeed, there is not a lot to gain from a support call. The best result you can achieve is your customer being relieved because the problem was solved. You can reestablish your customer’s trust in your product during a support call, but you won’t make it grow. Your customer won’t be inclined to invest in your product after a support call either. And in most industries, you won’t make money with support calls.
But there is something else why support calls are something to avoid – something no customer support manager is happy to talk about, something that affects the quality of your service, the relationship with your customer and in the end, your business as a whole.
It’s this – in a support call, you lose respect for your customer.
I know: you and your support team are always happy to help; there are no stupid questions and in your company, no one ever makes a sneer about jolly Mr. Dweep who has asking you the same question for weeks and still does not get it right.
But even if that is true, consider this: in a support call, your relationship with your customers is asymmetrical. You are the expert, and they are – at best – curious beginners. They will make mistakes doing things you are doing before you get your first coffee. They do not grasp ideas that you consider a starting point. They are depending on you, on your skills and your knowledge. Even if you are perfectly fine with this, you will never look upon your customer with awe during a support call.
This is the main reason why I like customer success. For those who are not yet familiar with it, the concept of customer success is aimed at making the support call superfluous. Via trainings, knowledge sharing and authentic account management, just to name a few, you enable your customers to work with your product autonomously and generate as much value from it as possible. The advantage of customer success for you is clear: when your customers work with your product successfully, you will make more money.
But what is equally important is a successful customer who keeps you and your support team motivated. Currently, I have been assisting a customer who was perusing very rapid growth with very limited resources, making the cooperation a bumpy road. Applying customer success in this case means allowing the customer to push us forward: so we adjusted our product when it was needed, optimized our service and added content to our support center on topics we hadn’t dreamed of yet.
Every morning, before my first coffee, I would have a look at the figures. We made jokes alright, but we made them together with the customer – just as we were asking stupid questions together. Looking upon the customer in awe would be slightly overstating things, but it sure was fun working together. And fun makes everything grow, even revenue.
