11 Essential Roles of Customer Success Teams

Those who say I’ll be there for you no matter what will not be with you when you face a problem after purchasing a new product. You will need help; you will be scared and confused. Then, on the fifth day, when you look east at dawn, you will see people coming to you. They are there to solve your problems and help you. Who are they? The customer success team!

But, what do they do? What are customer success roles and customer success functions? Let's learn together if you don’t know these, shall we?

What is Customer Success?

Customer success is a customer engagement strategy in which companies, or customer success teams, collaborate with customers to comprehend their needs. Then, this information is proactively used for several reasons we will discuss later in detail. The first time customer success started to be practiced was in 1996 when Vantive’s CEO hired Marie Alexander, who used the CRM software in an unpeered way to treat customers better. She later came to the company and built a team exclusively focused on providing value to their customers.

Now, customer success is one of the most important parts of any business. The roles of it are unmatched from the point of view of the customers. So, what are the customer success roles and responsibilities?

A Customer Success Team’s Roles

A customer success team is responsible for a number of tasks in the business. This list will address some of them; however, the roles and responsibilities can differ according to your customers’ needs.

1-Receiving the Handoff from Sales

After the sales team finishes the conversation and sales processes with customers, customers are handed off to customer success teams. This is a critical part of the customer journey. The customer success team must manage this process perfectly to help customers not be disoriented and confused.

At this stage, the customer success team has to provide adequate information to the customer and be in line with your sales team. Given that they do this correctly, your customer will be happy and understand your company’s bottom line is a good one.

2- Onboarding

Your customers have to make a good start with your products, this way the chances of success will be higher. Customer success teams ensure that customers start to use your product confidently. This can be achieved in a number of ways, such as webinars and demos.

The webinars will help your customers understand the product they are dealing with exhaustively, and demos will be the first experience they have with your product. The simple thing your customer success teams do is to put themselves in the customers’ shoes and ask the necessary questions.

Speaking of onboarding, have you ever heard of UserGuiding? It is a code-free product walkthrough software that 2000+ companies trust in their user onboarding.

3- Educating

Education is one of the essential tasks your customer success teams have to accomplish, simply because it is directly related to product adoption – they generally undertake all the training process until you form an organized education or training team.

After forming a training team, your customer success teams are not done with the education. They still are responsible for that. Since they are made up of people who are quite skilled in the use of your product, your customer success teams will focus on individual cases.

4- Ensuring Customer Success

That’s why it is named the customer success team. When your customers first purchase your product or service, they face several challenges. Your customer success team will guide your customer to be successful against these challenges. This way, your customer will successfully use your product and become a regular. 

5- Customer Support

Don’t question the presence of the customer support team; they are also important. Generally, they will only wait for your customers to get in touch with them. Their metrics are calls and tickets, and they are only responsible for answering these two.

On the other hand, customer success teams directly answer the questions starting with “how to.” They do not deal with the “my product is broken” type of tickets. The how-to questions essentially are in the scope of product adoption, which is one of the main focuses of customer success teams. Owning the Communication Channels with the Customers

6- Owning the Communication Channels with the Customers

You can reach out to your customers in different ways. Although we will not name the ways to communicate with your customers, all of them fall under the radar of customer success teams.

Let’s give an example of this. Assume that your website has a blog post on how to use a certain feature of your product. Customer success teams check out the knowledge provided by that blog post and update it. If there is lots of customer feedback on how confusing the blog post is, customer success teams update it – and let your customers know the information is updated and, in general, they exist.

7- Representing the Customer

Your customer success team is the team that is the most customer involved. That is why it is their task to represent them, for example, in the meetings. They have to ensure that your company's customers are heard, which is a huge part of their job.

However, there is a catch. Your customers’ requests and needs will be different from your company’s vision. The chances are these requests will be more than what you can really actualize. The conflict between vision and requests will certainly happen. Then, it is the customer success team’s expertise to find the best way to make your customers heard by your company in a reasonable tone.

8- Retention and Churn Management

If you want to become more profitable and successful, churn is one of the crucial KPIs you have to pay attention to. The term churn refers to decreasing your monthly, yearly, or weekly customer number. If they are not satisfied with your product after purchasing it, your customers will stop using it.

That’s where the customer success team plays an active role. They have to make your customers know and believe that your product adds value to their company or business. This can be achieved by providing them with the necessary information they have to obtain to use your product and solutions to individual problems.

The opposite of churn is retention. Your customers need reasons to come back purchasing your product; these reasons retain them to your product. There are some items in this blog post that your customer success team will do in order to retain your customer base – such as being the representative of them.

9- Pushing Upsells or Expansions

Some products, such as software, are sold in plans. In these plans, you have a set of features that is exclusive to that plan. And sometimes, your customers will not be happy about the product due to the plan they get. A customer success team then persuades them there are features in another plan that will suit their needs perfectly.

These also can be extensions. Assume that your product only lets its users 10 monthly reports. Your customer success team then finds out that there are some customers who fill this quota too early. They immediately contact and tell them there is an extension available and how much this extension will be for them.

10- Documenting Customer Success

Some customers will need more than what you say in order to purchase your product. They will need social proof that shows them there are certain people like them. The social proof must come from people who had hesitations at first, then, as they learn your brand and product become a regular.

Who can compile these social proofs better than your customer success team? The answer is nobody! They know every stage of ordinary and extraordinary customers. They can create customer success stories that can inspire your new customers. Also, case studies can be created by customer success teams to promote your business.

This is why your customer success team has to document your customer success. You can show what your business provides to your customers with statistics and real-life stories. This way, your customers will have tangible evidence of your product actually working.

11- Helping Sales Department Close Deals with Better Insights

At first glance, you can understand that sales teams provide information with no personal message. Their scope of information only encapsulates the product and some regular expressions. The customer wants to feel special, just like everyone.

Customer success teams, on the contrary, get very personal with customers and exhaustively comprehend what their pain points are. This is what sales teams are lacking. Customer success teams can provide information that will lead to better insights for customers. This way, customers will understand how important they are to your company.

12- Helping Marketing Teams Get More Leads with Better Insights

Marketing teams, just like sales teams, create content that carries no personal flavor in it. They provide conventional wisdom in their contents. However, customer teams can help them address some pain points in their content. Customer insights are crucial in this regard.

Again, this is due to the fact that customer success teams are closely working with your customers and witness their journey to utilize your product masterfully. They have to understand and sympathize with your customers' problems.

Let’s say that a potential customer is having a problem with a feature of your product. Having a blog post that addresses that specific problem will be invaluable for your customers. With the help of your customer success teams, your marketing team will efficiently promote your product.

So, these are the roles of a customer success team. If you don’t have a customer success team in your company, after seeing this post, you should be convinced that there needs to be one. Well, no need to say thanks. Just have a great day!

BONUS: You can check our ebook to find out how customer success aligns with other teams to unlock maximum revenue for your company.
               Also, check this webinar with Maranda Dziekonski.