What are the main phases of customer success and the points of success?

Table of Contents

1. What are the main tasks in customer success?
2. What is Time to Value (TTV) for Successful Customer Success?
3. Key Points for Successful Adoption
4. Summary

1. What are the main tasks in customer success?

Customer success involves encouraging the purchase and implementation of products and services, promoting continued use, and acquiring upsells and cross-sells. This work is mainly divided into three phases: onboarding, adoption, and expansion.

Onboarding

Onboarding is the phase that supports customers from the time they start using a product or service until they understand how to use it and can fully utilize its features.
We provide assistance to resolve initial frustrations and questions such as "the operation is difficult to understand," "only some features can be used," and "I don't feel the results." However, since the usage situations and challenges vary for each customer, the same approach cannot be applied to all customers. An approach tailored to the customer's situation is necessary, so we share goals for problem-solving with the customer and set implementation steps and schedules towards those goals. Furthermore, holding meetings, seminars, and study sessions, as well as creating and distributing manuals, FAQs, and educational content for retention is also necessary.

Adoption

"Adoption" refers to the phase where customers start using a product or service and fully integrate it into their operations, becoming established in their business. It can also be seen as support for utilization aimed at establishing usage after onboarding. We will approach customers in the implementation stage to ensure they gain further satisfaction and understanding of the product or service. During this phase, we will continuously collect data and conduct interviews regarding the customer's usage status, and we can introduce various utilization methods and case studies that lead to customer success.

Expansion

"Expansion" refers to the phase of "extending" the use of a customer's products or services through upselling, cross-selling, and package selling. To achieve expansion, it is necessary to set goals with an eye toward expansion that realizes the customer's goals during the "onboarding" phase. Furthermore, during the "adoption" phase, it is also essential to accurately understand the customer's information and needs. Proposals should be made from the customer's perspective, not based on the seller's convenience, prioritizing customer success.

2. What is Time to Value (TTV) for Successful Customer Success?

"Time to Value (TTV)" refers to the time it takes for new customers to realize the value of a product. As part of customer success operations, it is essential to shorten TTV so that new customers can discover the "value" of the product or service as quickly as possible.
In the case of SaaS, the customer's "value" is the benefits they expect to gain from the product or service, which is viewed from the customer's perspective. If they cannot find value, they may decide not to continue, making it crucial to help them understand the product's value as soon as possible. If expectations are exceeded, the likelihood of continued use increases, and it can encourage upselling from the free version to the paid version.

How to maximize value?

It is important to successfully complete the "adoption" phase. While considering ways to minimize TTV during the "adoption" phase, it is also necessary to implement measures that significantly increase the value that can be provided in that time. No matter how much TTV can be shortened, it is meaningless if the value is small.

Content Creation Support Services and Case Studies to Consider CX

3. Key Points for Successful Adoption

Understand the challenges faced by companies implementing the service

To establish products and services, it is necessary to understand customer challenges and propose measures to solve those challenges.
Common reasons why SaaS services do not take hold include not understanding how to operate them, not feeling the results, being unable to resolve issues through customer support, and not being able to effectively implement internal training.

It is common for the UI to be complex and difficult to understand, making it hard to utilize the features. Indeed, if users cannot make full use of the product, it will not hold any value. Additionally, the primary reason customers adopt SaaS products and services is to improve operational efficiency. While a reduction in work time can lead to clear results, not all systems can quantify efficiency analysis in this way. Even if efficiency is achieved, if users do not feel it, the value diminishes. Furthermore, it is typical for any SaaS service to have a support system in place to help users fully utilize the features and feel the value, but if that system is not functioning adequately, users will be unable to resolve their issues.

In addition, some companies create manuals and conduct training in-house to establish the implemented services within the organization. While this approach can promote adoption, users may feel that it is not cost-effective since it utilizes internal resources.

In any case, it is necessary to understand what challenges the customer faces in successfully achieving adoption and what needs to be overcome, and to propose solutions for those challenges.

Things to do to implement adoption

The challenge of not achieving retention is an issue that must be addressed, especially for SaaS products and services. This is because the retention rate significantly impacts revenue. To understand customer challenges and resolve them, it is necessary to continuously improve the service.
There are solutions like the following.

• Creation or enhancement of manuals
• Creation or enhancement of FAQs
• Improvement of UI and addition of guide features
• Creation or enhancement of training content, along with conducting workshops
• Strengthening of support desk

Of course, preparing many such solutions will also increase the costs for the providing companies. Therefore, it has become common recently to create systems where users can solve problems on their own. This is called a "corporate community." A corporate community is a space for communication between users, as well as between users and the company.
If we can provide a space where users can freely ask and answer questions, problem-solving among users will progress. Furthermore, if such information is accumulated, it may become manuals or FAQs. To achieve "settlement" at minimal cost, the operation of a corporate community can also be a solution.

4. Summary

The main tasks in customer success include three phases: onboarding, adoption, and expansion. We have realized that it is necessary to ensure the success of the adoption phase. To achieve this, we need to be mindful of time to value (TTV) and prepare solutions for customer challenges. This will help promote the establishment of products and services.
In the above explanation, necessary actions for successful adoption include improving and creating manuals, enhancing FAQs, and producing training content. Attempting to carry these out in-house incurs costs, and the quality must also be clear and understandable. At Human Science, we have extensive experience in creating clear manuals and e-learning content. We offer the following services.

•Quality Improvement of Manuals and Training Texts
We propose the most suitable user manuals, technical documents, help, and FAQs for your environment. We start with an evaluation of the current manuals and provide consulting for building multilingual support systems and CMS operations. We can also undertake the production of video manuals.

•Production of educational content and support for the introduction of LMS (Learning Management System)
We propose educational content that is best suited for your environment, just like manuals. Starting with an evaluation of the current content, we can also optimize the LMS and support multilingual capabilities.

•Chatbot Implementation and Development Support
Many companies are advancing the implementation of chatbots to improve customer support efficiency. We propose the most suitable chatbot for your environment. We can provide one-stop support from the implementation of the chatbot system to content creation.

The following are achievements for the Customer Success Department.

WingArc1st Inc.: Content evaluation, improvement consulting, and content production services for the Customer Success Department
https://hs-learning.jp/case/wingarc1st/

We provide a one-stop service for creating easy-to-understand manuals, video manuals, and e-learning content necessary for customer success, so please make use of it.