How to Build a Customer Success Organization?

Table of Contents

1. Representative Organizational Models of Customer Success
2. What should be done before creating a customer success organization?
3. How to Build and Structure a Customer Success Organization
4. Summary

1. Representative Organizational Models of Customer Success

If the customer success organization is optimal, customer support can also be optimal. To create the right organization, it is important to first consider which organizational model matches your company's products and services. Below are examples of organizational models.

Example of Organizational Model

Here are three examples of organizational models.

By Area
We build our organization according to the regions of our customers who receive our products and services. If our customers are spread nationwide from Tokyo to Osaka, Nagoya, and Kyushu, we may establish customer success organizations in each branch or office. This model is commonly seen when the scale of the business expands and we have customers across the country.

Target Customer Size
Products and services aimed at small and medium-sized enterprises may also be expanded to large companies, or conversely, the target may expand from large companies to small and medium-sized enterprises. In such cases, it may be necessary to structure the organization by customer size. For example, for large companies, an organization may be created with personnel who have experience as seniors, from large companies, or from consulting firms.
(Reference: Four Touch Models of Customer Success)

By Customer Representative
There are cases where the Customer Success representative also serves as the customer support representative. Similar to sales representatives, there may be cases where one person is responsible for dozens of companies. However, when the number of customers increases to hundreds or thousands, a separate back-office team for Customer Success is also necessary, in addition to the front-line representatives.

In addition, there are organizational models such as the all-rounder type (customer success handles everything from sales to onboarding, support, retention, and upselling/cross-selling), the specialist type (building specialized teams such as onboarding teams, tech touch teams, and sales teams within the customer success department), the sales-oriented type (customer success collaborates with sales), and the partnership type (customer success supports customers in a co-pilot format).

2. What should be done before creating a customer success organization?

Communicate as a company-wide initiative

To create an optimal customer success organization, it is essential to first align the entire company towards the common goal of customer success. This requires clearly defining its position within the management strategy from the top down, as well as communicating the efforts to establish a customer success organization. Under this communication, each department will understand its respective role and aim for the same goal.

Organizing the Customer Journey

It is important to understand the customer's environment, needs, and challenges, create a customer journey map, and visualize the path to solving customer issues. This is because multiple departments are expected to be involved in customer success. We will share the process to reach the goals through the customer journey map, ensuring that customer success operations are carried out properly.
(Reference: What is a Customer Journey? Steps for Creation and Key Points for Operation)

Set KPIs for customer success activities

We will set KPIs to ensure that the customer success organization functions effectively.

Example:
LTV	Total amount (revenue) used by the customer from the start of use to cancellation
Onboarding Completion Rate	Percentage of customers taking actions expected to continue using the service
Churn Rate	Percentage of Customers Who Canceled
Upsell and Cross-sell Rate	Upsell and Cross-sell Ratio

When setting KPIs, ease of operation is also important. Additionally, since situations are constantly changing, it is essential to regularly verify whether the established KPIs are appropriate.

3. How to Build and Structure a Customer Success Organization

Project Planning and Budgeting

We will plan initiatives to establish a customer success organization as a company-wide project. Furthermore, it is important to recognize the significance of customer success in the project and allocate a budget for it. As acquiring new customers becomes more challenging, customer success is crucial for maintaining relationships with existing customers. If we can successfully launch a project to establish a customer success organization, we can also achieve success in customer success itself. The success of customer success increases customer LTV and contributes to the stable operation of our company. Therefore, it is necessary to allocate an appropriate budget for customer success and assign personnel accordingly.

Pre-adjustment with departments that have contact with customers

In advancing company-wide initiatives, interdepartmental collaboration is naturally important. To properly manage the customer success organization, it is essential to delineate the scope of work and to decide in advance on the methods of collaboration. Prior adjustments should be made with departments that have contact with customers, such as sales, customer support, after-sales, and product departments, to clarify the division of roles. If the division of roles is ambiguous, it can easily lead to confusion between organizations and make it difficult to reflect on results. There may also be instances of blame-shifting between departments, which can undermine the significance of customer success, making prior adjustments crucial.

Define business processes along the customer journey

By visualizing customer behavior, thoughts, and emotions through a customer journey map, you will be able to think from the customer's perspective. You will also be able to understand the information and content that customers are seeking. Based on this, we will define the necessary business processes.
Below is an example of a customer journey map.

First, support with a single team

We will build a "single team" for customer success at an early stage. By creating a single independent customer success department, we can foster a culture of customer success within the company. We will start small and scale the customer success efforts as our customer base expands.

Advancing systematization through the standardization of support, the introduction of tech touch, and efficiency improvements via tool implementation

As the team grows, it becomes necessary to standardize the support that was previously provided individually and to also work on tech touch. We will articulate onboarding tasks, templates for using products and services, manuals for service usage know-how, and success stories to ensure that the customer success team does not become dependent on specific individuals. By utilizing tools, we will organize the customer journey, horizontally deploy support know-how, and distribute content on the site.
Useful tools for customer success include SFA (Sales Management System), measurement environments (health scores, BI, etc.), digital channels for smooth communication with customers (site, email, etc.), and content creation tools for e-learning and manuals (LMS and CMS).

Specializing each function as a team

By incorporating support models and tech touch, as the customer success organization expands, each function can be specialized and developed as a team. First, we will focus on onboarding related to support and operations/consulting, followed by tech touch, prioritizing based on customer experience. Functions such as account management, customer communication, customer training and support, data analysis, and operations can be specialized.

Optimizing the organizational structure

It is also important to optimize the team structure in line with the expansion of customer attributes and regions. As in the organizational model mentioned above, teams can be divided by region or support teams can be organized by customer size. Additionally, there are methods such as separating by high-touch/low-touch/tech-touch models or by industry. We will create the optimal organizational structure according to the characteristics of the products and services offered.

4. Summary

Many B2B companies, especially SaaS companies, are prioritizing customer success. However, the operations of the customer success department are very diverse. To build that organization and ensure the success of customer success, collaboration and cooperation with related departments, as well as operational efficiency, are necessary. Therefore, it is also essential to systematize support (efficiency) and introduce various tools. With Human Science's services, we can implement measures that lead to operational efficiency in the customer success department and improve customer experience (CX).

• Introduction of Services
To efficiently share know-how for customer success or to enhance customer satisfaction, it is also important to organize documentation. It is necessary to secure resources for this purpose. However, creating manuals and developing training content to improve customer satisfaction requires a significant amount of personnel and time, making it a high-priority but increasingly burdensome task.

At Human Science, we offer a variety of services for the customer success department. In particular, we believe that the quality of the content provided by the customer success department is key to achieving customer success. Necessary actions include improving and creating manuals, enhancing FAQs, and producing training content. Attempting to handle these in-house can be costly, and the quality must also be clear and understandable. Human Science has 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. Starting with the evaluation of the current manuals, we 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)
Similar to manuals, we propose educational content that is optimal for your environment. Starting with an evaluation of the current content, we can also optimize the LMS and support multilingual capabilities.

•Chatbot Implementation and Development Support
To improve the efficiency of customer support, many companies are advancing the implementation of chatbots. 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.