Lisa Nakano
VP, Principal Analyst
Author Insights
Blog
The B2B Chief Customer Officer: Unicorn Or Camel?
In Silicon Valley startup parlance, there are two types of ventures: unicorns and camels. Unicorns are the bright, shiny, money-burning, rapid-growth startups. Camels are built on a more solid financial philosophy, meant to make the money last, using venture capital as more of a bridge than a survival tactic. In times of crisis, it’s probably […]
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Welcome To The Year Of The Customer Marketer
One major trend we see is an amped-up focus on retention — keeping customers and ensuring they achieve value.
Blog
Customer Success IS a Crisis Mitigation Strategy
- Customer success teams provide continuity for your customers during times of crisis
- Organizations that leverage their customer success teams will weather the storm better
- Enabling your customer success teams to be effective now will pay off in better customer AND employee engagement
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Customer Success at Scale — Yes, It Can Be Done!
- Customer success organizations are doing a good job of managing a high-touch approach to the largest accounts — but what about smaller accounts that don’t justify having their own customer success manager?
- Using a resource-efficient digital approach to address the “long tail” of customers creates a post-sale experience that makes customers feel valued
- If organizations don’t consider a continuum of capabilities and default to a one-size-fits-all approach, they may provide a subpar customer experience and sacrifice retention and growth
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Are You Rolling a Boulder Uphill? Make Sure Ops Supports Engagement
- Many organizations have an incomplete picture of their customer journey due to a disconnect between operational functions and customer-facing organizations
- Antiquated operational systems fail to support modern needs for customer-centricity and data-informed customer actions
- Organizations must develop a closed-loop system to connect operational functions and customer engagement, despite the related challenges
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Drinking Our Own Champagne: Implementing Engagement and Customer Health at SiriusDecisions
- Every organization deals with retention, and at SiriusDecisions we used our own best practice advice and research to better understand our own business
- Even smaller companies can wrangle their own data to understand customer engagement and retention triggers
- After gathering insights, cross-functional alignment is critical for organizations to take the next steps toward improvement
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Don’t Wipe Your Slate Clean: A New Model for Customer Retention
- Every organization deals with retention, but not all apply the same rigor to retaining customers as they do to signing them
- Retention goes awry when there is no strategy, little awareness of the customer lifecycle and previous interactions, and unclear ownership of retention efforts
- A new model for meaningful retention measurement and management aligns and organizes efforts to retain customers
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Customer Lifecycle Management – Even the Uber Driver Gets It
- B2B organizations are starting to balance customer acquisition initiatives with post-sale customer engagement efforts
- Customer experience is THE key driver for buying decisions, which should make investment in the post-sale lifecycle a no-brainer
- There are three distinct steps B2B customer engagement leaders can take to get started on a strategy for solid post-sale customer engagement, loyalty and growth
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If You Give a Customer a Cookie
- SiriusDecisions has identified five actionable planning assumptions that will drive the agendas of customer engagement leaders in 2019
- Customer success, customer marketing and customer experience leaders are making significant progress toward adequate visibility and investment in existing customers
- Customer engagement practitioners must continue to improve the customer experience to support retention, loyalty, growth and advocacy
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Customer Experience Governance – Three Models
- There are three models that B2B organizations can adopt to maximize the reach and accountability of customer experience efforts
- Each governance model has unique pros and cons you should take into account when choosing the right approach
- All three models have a common set of imperatives to understand when adopting a governance approach
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Customer Engagement: The Range of Responsibilities Defined
- Customer engagement is a new function in most organizations, so executives are trying to determine which elements to include
- Customer experience, customer marketing and customer success should have distinct responsibilities – but these often become muddled
- It’s important to understand common missteps when implementing customer engagement to be able to avoid them
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Customer Journey Mapping Technologies
- Mapping the customer journey is a foundational capability to improving customer experience
- New tools and technologies are available to help customer engagement practitioners map the customer journey for better organizational alignment
- Consideration of customer roles continues to be key in the retain/actualize stage
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Customer Engagement Definitions: Can’t We All Just Get Along?
- The terms “customer engagement,” “customer experience,” “customer success” and “customer marketing” are often used interchangeably
- Customer engagement is a holistic approach that drives organizations to fulfill the brand promise through thoughtful strategy
- Customer marketing team focuses on nurturing and growing customer engagement, loyalty and growth
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Danger! Customer Retention Curves Ahead
- The SiriusDecisions 2016 Customer Experience Study shows how customers feel about how B2B organizations are delivering customer experience right now
- In the retain/actualize phase of the customer lifecycle, specific focus is required to ensure that customers continue along the path to advocacy
- Consideration of customer roles continues to be key in the retain/actualize phase
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So, the Customer Is Onboarded – I’m Done, Right?
- A recent SiriusDecisions customer experience study shows how customers feel about how B2B organizations are delivering customer experience right now
- For the develop/participate phase of the customer lifecycle, it’s important to understand how the roles of executives and users evolve once the newness of the offering wears off
- Consideration of customer roles continues to be important post-onboarding and into the develop/participate lifecycle stage
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Are Your Customers Getting the Support They Need in the First Phase of the Customer Lifecycle?
- The SiriusDecisions customer experience study shows where B2B organizations are missing the mark for executives and users
- For the first phase of the customer lifecycle it’s important to understand how the roles of executives and users change as prospects become customers
- Documenting and validating customer roles is key to bridging the gap in post-sale customer experience
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From Satisfied to Advocate: Enabling the Customer Journey
- Using a customer- centric approach enables organizations to grow and retain customers
- Build trust with your customers and reward them for their continued engagement
- Marketing content and interactions should be designed to move customers from satisfied to loyal to advocacy
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Was Better Alignment Your Customer Experience Resolution?
- The customer marketing team is responsible for customer relationship nurture, messaging and enablement
- The customer success team executes strategies for increasing the value customers receive from products and services
- When these two functions work together to maximize customer engagement, great things happen
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Customer Experience vs. Customer Marketing – Wait, Aren’t They the Same Thing?
- We often see the terms “customer marketing” and “customer experience” used interchangeably
- This post clarifies the two terms and draws a line in the sand about their usage
- Customer experience is about strategy, while customer marketing is about using the toolkit of marketing to support goals
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Which Customer Success Management Platform Is Right for You?
- Customer success management improves loyalty, retention and growth by helping customers derive maximum value from offerings
- Customer success management technology leverages automation and analytics to help accomplish these goals
- This technology market has accelerated due to the trend toward recurring revenue models and the emergence of SaaS solutions
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