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

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

Table of Contents

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

1. What are the main tasks in customer success?

At Customer Success, it is necessary to promote the purchase and introduction of products and services, encourage continued use, and acquire upsells and cross-sells. This work is mainly divided into three phases: onboarding, adoption, and expansion.

Onboarding

"Onboarding" is a phase that supports customers in understanding how to use and master a product or service after they have started using it.
We provide support to resolve dissatisfaction and questions such as "difficult to understand how to operate", "can only use some functions", and "do not feel results" in the initial stage. However, since the usage situation and issues vary for each customer, the same approach cannot be used for all customers. It is necessary to share goals such as solving issues with the customer, and set up introduction steps and schedules towards the goal. In addition, it is also necessary to hold meetings, seminars, and study sessions, and create and distribute manuals, FAQs, and educational content to ensure retention.

Adaptation

"Adoption" is the phase where a product or service has been started to be used, and is being fully operated and utilized, and is "established" in the customer's business. It can also be called support for utilization towards establishment, which is done after onboarding. We will approach customers in the introduction stage to further improve satisfaction and understanding of the product or service. In this phase, we will collect data and conduct interviews on the customer's usage situation, and introduce various utilization methods and case studies that will lead to the customer's success.

Expansion

"Expansion" is a phase in which customer's usage of products and services is "expanded" through upselling, cross-selling, package selling, etc. In order to achieve expansion, it is necessary to set goals with a focus on expansion in the "onboarding" phase, where the customer's goals are achieved. Furthermore, in the "adoption" phase, it is also necessary to accurately understand the customer's information and needs. Proposals should be made from the customer's perspective, not from the seller's convenience, and prioritize customer success.

2. What is Time to Value (TTV) for achieving 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, it is important to shorten TTV and help new customers find the "value" of the product or service as quickly as possible.
In the case of SaaS, the "value" for customers refers to the expected benefits they will receive from the product or service. If the value cannot be found, it is likely that the customer will not continue using the product. Therefore, it is important to help customers understand the value of the product as soon as possible. If expectations are exceeded, the percentage of customers who continue to use the product will increase, and it may also lead to upselling from a free version to a paid version.

How to Maximize Value?

It is important to successfully complete the "adoption" phase. In order to shorten the TTV during the "adoption" phase, it is also necessary to take measures to increase the value that can be provided during that time. Even if the TTV can be shortened, it is meaningless if the value is small.

Content Creation Support Service and Case Studies to Help You Consider CX

3. Key Points for Successful Adoption

Understand the challenges faced by companies implementing our services

To establish products and services, it is necessary to understand the customer's challenges and propose measures to solve them.
Some common reasons for SaaS services not taking hold are not knowing how to operate them, not feeling results, not being able to solve problems through customer support, and not being able to effectively implement internal training.

It is common for users to struggle with complex and difficult-to-understand UIs, making it difficult for them to fully utilize the product's features. Without users being able to fully utilize the product, it will not hold much value. Additionally, the main reason for customers to adopt SaaS products and services is for "business efficiency". While reducing work time can be a clear result, it is not possible to quantify this efficiency for every system. Even if efficiency is achieved, if the user does not feel it, the value will be lost. Furthermore, in order for users to fully utilize the features and feel the value, it is common for SaaS services to have a support system in place. However, if this support system is not functioning properly, users will not be able to solve any issues.

In addition, there are companies that create manuals and conduct training within their own company in order to establish the introduced service. While it is possible to promote adoption through such methods, users may feel that the cost-effectiveness is poor because internal resources are used.

In any case, it is necessary to understand what challenges the customer faces and needs to overcome in order to successfully adopt, and to propose solutions for them.

Things to Do to Implement Adaptation

The challenge of not being able to establish oneself is a particularly important issue for SaaS products and services. This is because the retention rate has a significant impact on sales. In order to understand and solve the customer's challenges, it is necessary to continuously improve the service.
The following are some possible solutions.

• Creation or enhancement of manuals
• Creation or enhancement of FAQs
• Improvement of UI and addition of guide functions
• Creation or enhancement of training content and implementation of related workshops
• Strengthening of support desk

Of course, in order to prepare many of these solutions, the cost for the providing company will also increase. Therefore, it has become common for users to create their own mechanisms for solving problems. This is known as an "enterprise community". An enterprise community is a place where users and companies can communicate with each other.
If a space is provided for users to freely ask and answer questions, problem solving can progress among users. Furthermore, if this information is accumulated, it may become a manual or FAQ. Operating an enterprise community can also be a solution for achieving "establishment" at minimal cost.

4. Summary

The main tasks in customer success include three phases: onboarding, adoption, and expansion. It has been determined that in order to succeed in adoption, it is necessary to be aware of Time to Value (TTV) and prepare improvement measures for customer issues. This will promote the establishment of products and services.
In the above explanation, in order to succeed in adoption, it is necessary to improve or create manuals, enhance FAQs, and create training content. All of these require costs and must be easy to understand. Human Science has a proven track record in creating easy-to-understand manuals and e-learning content. We offer the following services:

•Improving the quality of manuals and training texts
We propose the most suitable instruction manuals, technical documents, help, and FAQs for your environment. We provide consulting services from evaluating current manuals to creating a multilingual support system and building and operating a CMS. We can also produce video manuals.

•Support for creating educational content and introducing LMS (Learning Management System)
Just like manuals, we will propose the most suitable educational content for your environment. Starting with evaluating your current content, we can also optimize LMS and provide multilingual support.

•Chatbot Implementation and Construction Support
Many companies are adopting chatbots to streamline customer support. We will propose the most suitable chatbot for your environment. We offer one-stop support from chatbot system implementation to content creation.

The following are achievements for the Customer Success Department.

WingArc1st Inc.: Consulting and content creation services for the Customer Success department, including content evaluation and improvement consulting.
https://hs-learning.jp/case/wingarc1st/

We also offer services that can handle the creation of easy-to-understand "manuals" and "video manuals", as well as e-learning content, which are necessary for customer success, all in one stop. Please take advantage of them.