Building a Customer Success Strategy from Scratch

[00:00:00]Hey CS friends, it's Anika Zubar here.

[00:00:02]And if you've just been hired as the first customer success manager or you're building a CS function from the ground up, this episode is for you. Now, I'm not talking about an organization that is already building CS. I'm talking about being the very first customer success pro. So there is no playbooks, no journey maps, just a product, a few customers, and a lot of pressure to make sure that they don't churn. Does this all sound familiar? Because I've been there, too. And today, I am walking you through how to implement customer success strategies from scratch. So, what to avoid, what to prioritize, and the exact steps to start creating impact even if you're just a team of one. Cuz again, I have been there. Because let's be super super super honest. This is the part that no one teaches you. They don't go over it in your onboarding. And if you're new here, I'm Ana Zubar, the founder of the customer success pro and coach to CSMS and CS leaders around the world. And I help CS pros become revenue generating experts. And I'd love for you to subscribe or follow this podcast if you want more tactical advice like this one every single week. So, let's dive in.

[00:01:25]Hello everyone. I'm your host Anika Zuba and welcome to the Customer Success Pro podcast. Your go-to space for real talk, expert advice, and actionable insights in the world of customer success. I'm a CS executive leader, award-winning strategist, CS coach, and customer success fanatic. I help CSMs and CS leaders build the skills and the confidence to become revenue driving pros and scale worldclass CS teams. So whether you're brand new to CS or a seasoned leader, this podcast is here to support your growth. Because customer success isn't a destination, it's a journey. and I'm here to be your guide and navigate every step of your journey.

[00:02:08]So, join me every Wednesday where you'll get fresh CS tips, tricks, and strategies you can actually use. Some weeks, I'll share my own insights and best practices from working in CS over the last 13 years. And once a month, I'll bring on expert guests to dive into the most relevant and pressing topics in customer success today. So, if you are ready to level up, hit subscribe on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you tune in, and let's make your CS journey a little bit easier together.

[00:02:44][Music] All right, here is the thing. Most companies bring in customer success too late. I've said this and I've said it time and time again. And if you're probably listening to this, maybe you should go tell your founder or CEO that they brought in customer success too late. The thing is, the product is already live. Customers are already churning and then someone in the executive team or the board says, "Hey, maybe we need customer success." So when you show up, you're already playing defense. no journey, no metrics, no shared understanding internally of what the heck customer success even means.

[00:03:26]And you're responding to tickets, you're running check-in calls, you're being asked to save accounts that haven't even been nurtured or touched or talked to in 6 months. And you're expected to just figure this all out in the university of yourself. And the real problem is that there's no strategy. You can't scale good vibes or customer happiness. So, let's start by talking about what not to do because I have made these painful mistakes myself and I'm hoping that me sharing these mistakes with you in today's podcast will hopefully prevent some pain and some suffering for you down the line as you build customer success from scratch. So, the first mistake I have made in my career is trying to build everything at once. Now I know this is super common and I myself am an overachiever and I know that a lot of people in customer success because you are bringing being brought into a company as the very first hire or maybe the very first senior exec hire you almost have something to prove and in doing so you try to build everything at once. Now, the only thing that that's going to lead to is you either burning out or quitting because you're going to end up hating customer success because there's no way to build it all at once.

[00:04:46]You definitely need to create a priority list and you need to understand what to focus on first. Now, you do not need to create success plans, QBR frameworks, onboarding flows, health score modeling, playbooks, blah blah blah blah blah, and a playbook for every life cycle stage.

[00:05:04]All of this can be done over time. Now, does this all have to be done in the first 90 days of you being on board? No.

[00:05:12]I don't know why we all feel this pressure. It's probably because customer success had been brought in too late at your organization. But please, please, please know that everything that I've just said takes months and years to build. So, if you are trying to do it all in the first 90 days, you're just setting yourself up for failure. So, I have personally done that. I have personally tried to build everything all at once and all it resulted in was me being exhausted and actually my executive team being disappointed because I promised them the world and nothing actually happened or very little happened. So my biggest tip is avoid that mistake. Avoid trying to do it all at once cuz you can't. You honestly cannot. And I need you to start small.

[00:05:59]So I need you to build one thing really, really well. And again this comes down to prioritization and deciding what works in your organization. Now I can't tell you what works. You have joined that company. You know the product. You know the customers. You know what's really important to focus on right now.

[00:06:16]But you need to start small and then you need to move on to the next thing. And I can't tell you what the next thing is or where to start. But what you do need to do is just start on one small thing.

[00:06:27]Now, another mistake that I've personally made and it's kind of embarrassing and it kind of works but more times than not it doesn't work exactly and the mistake I've met it made is I've copied an exact playbook from a larger company and took it into a smaller company and I thought that because it worked at a bigger organization like what worked at the biggest company I was at like maybe something that works at like Salesforce or HubSpot that's not necessarily going to work at a 30 person startup like you have to design for your reality and the product maturity that you're in right now. You really have to design for the maturity of your customer base, the maturity of your product and honestly the maturity of your entire organization. Like your people, your customers, your product are all very different than Salesforce or HubSpot is right now. So I have personally taken playbooks from very big organizations and I immediately thought okay great copy paste I can do it at a smaller organization and we'll end up being that big amazing organization.

[00:07:32]And like I said some things definitely did work. I'm not going to say copy and paste doesn't work all the time. But the problem is is when you don't apply the current situation that you're in to that playbook that playbook is just going to be outdated or too complex or too simple depending on where you're at. And then you're end up just going to be trying to use playbooks that is like, you know, not working because of the type of organization you're in. And again, don't try to force in a playbook somewhere because you've seen it work at another organization. Take parts of that playbook, take parts of what work and then again apply the maturity of your organization, the maturity of your customer base and and honestly the maturity of your product and apply it critically. Think what makes sense in this playbook to bring into into this organization. All right. Another mistake that I made early in my career, I think it was my very first head of customer success role was I only focused on renewals. Now I get it. That is probably the most visible part of a customer success organization and it's probably the most visible metric in most customer success organizations. But renewals are lagging indicators. Okay? Um if you think about it, we can only really track them once they're done. So I can only really tell you what our renewal rate was last year and then it's a rolling number based on what happened last month or last quarter. It's not very predictive or future oriented. And if you do want to become a customer success executive leader or just a business executive leader, when you sit in board meetings, an executive meetings with other execs, you will see that the most of the meeting is talking about the future of the business and forecasting the future and forecasting either sales number, product roadmap. It's always future oriented. And I think that a lot of times the big mistake that I've personally done, but I know a lot of you listening probably feel this as well is in CS we tend to focus on what has happened with customers and it's natural because they're going through the uh phase of using your product and service and they're using everything but just focusing on renewals is a lagging indicator like I said and when you focus on just lagging indicators it's really hard to show the strategic value of the work customer success is doing today.

[00:09:53]You want to think about forward thinking. So personally I would say focusing on like onboarding, adoption, value creation. These are the levers that actually influence retention, right? These are like the future or forecast levers that I would say are much more important to actually focus on because retention is a byproduct of focusing on those levers first. All right. And the other mistake that I see way too often, and I don't know why we do this in customer success, but I think we definitely have a hero complex in customer success, and I know that in my first few leadership roles, and even when I was a CSM, I really tried to do it all alone. And this is something that maybe because CS wears a lot of hats or maybe because again we get hired into customer success teams way too late that we think we have to solve all the problems ourself. And I just want to be your CS bestie and remind you that customer success is not a siloed team.

[00:10:56]If you're building without sales, if you're building without marketing, if you're forgetting to include product and support at the table, you are going to just crash and burn and hit a wall really, really, really fast. And I really hope you realize that in order to truly be successful in building a customer success organization from the ground up, every team needs to be involved. it customer success isn't just one team one part of the organization okay because we all know churn is not just a me or CS problem neither is a renewal and neither is acquisition and onboarding all of these are multiple teams that are affecting the customer journey so if you really want to be successful at building a super high impact strategic customer success function the biggest tip I have is to make sure that all your teams across your entire organization are bought into customer success and feel like they're contributing to the customer journey.

[00:11:59]Okay, just a quick break here. If you're listening and thinking, Anika, I love this, but I do not have the time to write onboarding emails, prep QBRs, and create success plans from scratch. Don't worry, I've got something that's going to help. It's called Train AI to be your revenue generating customer success co-pilot. This is my 30page guide that teaches you how to use ChatBT or any other AI tool to scale, simplify, and supercharge your CS workflows. In this guide, you will learn how to build AI foundations tailored to your CS role and goals and create repeatable prompts for onboarding, renewals, and success plans.

[00:12:43]It'll refine Chat GBT's tone to match your voice and your customer communication, and it'll use AI to increase efficiency, deepen customer relationships, and drive revenue. So whether you're managing enterprise accounts or a high volume book of business, this guide will help you reclaim your time and focus on what matters most, delivering value. And the best part, it includes 20 plugandplay AI prompts ready for you to use today. You can download it now at the customer successpro.com/resources and I'll make sure to link it in the show notes of this episode. All right, let's go back to talking about CS strategy.

[00:13:30]All right, the last mistake that I see, and this is probably more common than not, and if you actually do this mistake, can you just leave a comment on this podcast or down in the video if you're watching on YouTube and let me know if you fall into the last mistake I'm about to talk about, which is tracking the wrong metrics. Okay. So, please do not get stuck in vanity metrics like NPS or customer sentiment or the number of check-in calls your CSMs are doing because again, I have been there. I have tracked actions and action items for my team. And as much as those feel really good, like I said, they're vanity metrics. As much as it feels really, really good, they're not resulting in anything for you, okay?

[00:14:20]because they're not able to forecast the future. They're not able to show you upsell opportunities. All of the number of check-ins, by the way, how often does more check-ins lead to actual upsells or renewals. If you have a direct correlation, great. But more times than not, more check-ins don't necessarily correlate to more revenue. So instead, I need you to focus on things like onboarding completion or onboarding completion time, product usage, goal achievement, outcome achievement, outcome mapping, outcome value orientation. Like all of these things are things your customers care about and they're actually what you should be tracking instead of the vanity metrics that you keep reporting on. Because I'm going to be honest, in CS, and this is going to hurt a little bit, we're getting lazy. We are just tracking what is easy to track. And I know that hurts.

[00:15:14]And I don't mean to be a bully or hurt you in this conversation that we're having, but I just want to be the honest reminder that tracking the number of check-in calls your team is doing is not going to result in 130% NRR or a less than 5% churn rate. I'm sorry, it's just not. Those are activities, but activities don't show value and that is what the name of the game is in customer success. Okay, now that we've covered all the mistakes that I've done in my career and I've bared my soul and told you all the problems I've done and hopefully again all these mistakes are going to be prevented now that you've listened to this podcast and you're going to be like, "Okay, I'm going to now step forward and be strategic and build a strategic customer success function from scratch." Let's talk about what you need to actually do to build a high-erforming CS team and CS function.

[00:16:07]So, first thing I want you to do is I need you to map out your customer journey. Now, I know you're probably listening and thinking, "Oh my gosh, not another customer journey."

[00:16:18]And I just want to be really, really clear. A customer journey is not for your customer. It is for you. It is for your internal team. It is for your executive team, your board. It is for your entire company to really understand what the entire organization is doing to see the success of a customer. Now, this doesn't have to be pretty, okay? I have done this where I've gotten my entire exec team in a room and we grabbed postits and we literally posted them all across a whiteboard. Okay, you can grab a Google doc, a notion page, heck, a whiteboard. And I just need you to start to outline the major phrase phases that happen with your customer. So let's say the first phase is onboarding, then there's adoption, and maybe there's expansion and renewal. Again, very basic, but let's keep this simple. We're building a customer success journey for your entire company and organization to fully understand. Okay? And then the next thing I need you to do is I need you to ask yourself, what does success look like at each of these stages, okay?

[00:17:28]Don't think about the product, okay?

[00:17:30]Don't think about features. Think about it in your customer's shoes. If you were the CEO or the CFO or the COO or whomever at your customer's company, what does success look like when they onboard with your product? What does success look like when they've actually adopted maybe 50 or 80% usage of your product? Map it all out. Okay? And then I want you to define it internally.

[00:17:58]Okay? Like seriously, ask your other execs or other team members or other counterpart leaders, what does CS mean here? What does it mean to you? Okay.

[00:18:10]And again, I've done this where I brought my entire exact team into a room and I made them write it all down. Like from my chief product officer to my chief people officer, we all wrote down what does customer success mean at this point of the customer journey. Is it retention? Is it expansion? Is it driving usage? Is it maybe strategic partnerships? Is it, I don't know, churn mitigation? If you don't define success, I'm sorry, you're never going to be able to measure it. and your internal teams are never going to know what to do. All right. Once you've done all of that, I need you to build your minimum viable CS motion or strategy or whatever you call it. This means one success plan template, one onboarding outline, and one business review format. Okay, that's it. One of each of those things. Keep it simple. Again, you don't want to do too much and you don't want to overwhelm yourself because it's just going to lead to burnout. Do not over complicate this, okay? Just one of each thing. And it can be as simple as writing this out on a whiteboard, by the way. And I don't care how messy this is. You can refine this and you can scale it later. But you need to start with baby steps. Again, we get in our heads in customer success and we end up really traumatizing ourselves because we're like, "No, it's got to be perfect or let's just keep adding more and more and more and more and more."

[00:19:41]And again, more does not necessarily equal more value to your customers. So, keep it simple, keep it to the point, and build out one success plan, one onboarding module or checklist or outline, and one business review. That's all. Okay?

[00:19:59]And then once you've built all of that, I need you to loop in all the other departments. Remember how I was telling you that I had all my execs in one room.

[00:20:07]I need you to bring in the sales team so that you can start aligning on handoffs.

[00:20:11]And then I need you to work with product to understand how feature adoption is going to work. And then also how to understand how feature feedback is going to work. And then I need you to partner with marketing to make sure you're reinforcing customer outcomes, customer case studies, but also how product is perceived by your customer. All of that is marketing's job and your job, not just your job on your own. And then finally, the last step, which is so so so so important. You've done all this work. You've built a minimal viable customer success plan and motion. Okay?

[00:20:45]You've started to build it. But what I need you to do, which is again something that we end up forgetting to do, is I need you to make sure you set up a way to measure all of this success because what doesn't get measured doesn't actually provide any impact to the business. And remember, in CS, we are trying to show our impact every single day. So even if it's a manual spreadsheet, listen, I love a good spreadsheet. Anyone who hates on a spreadsheet probably shouldn't be listening to this podcast because truly most businesses are built out of a spreadsheet and a pivot table. But listen, even if it's a manual spreadsheet, start tracking onboarding success rates, usage trends, churn reasons, expansion triggers, I don't care. Start tracking the simplest of things in your spreadsheet because what gets measured gets improved. If you don't actually measure what onboarding looks like when you first start or maybe what a business review actually should start be measuring on, what's going to happen is you are going to start to spin your wheels and you're going to be like a hamster on a wheel and you're going to be reactive. Because when we don't measure our starting point and where our ending should be, we never know what to improve on. So start to measure where you're at. Measure how long onboarding takes. Measure how many customer calls you're doing to make sure adoption happens. Just start measuring because what happens is once you measure it, you know what needs to be improved. All right. Now, let me tell you a quick story. A few years ago, I joined a growing SAS company as their first CS hire. Okay? No tools, very little CRM. Like honestly, we didn't even know all our customers renewal dates. Okay? No customer data.

[00:22:34]There was very little customer data, just me and a Google sheet and a goal to reduce churn. We had, believe it or not, over 35% year-on-year churn at this company. It was crazy. Okay, so I started by just interviewing five customers and asking one simple question. What does success look like to you? And from their answers, I started to create a rough journey map that led to a simple onboarding plan, a kickoff deck, and then a monthly health review to track based on what the success looked like from them. And there from that point, I built trust internally and then we got buyin to hire even more CSMs. Okay, we scaled the function and we created real impact. But it started with me and a Google sheet. Okay, I know that there's tons of tools out there.

[00:23:32]And even with AI these days, there are so many tools. There are CS tools, there are CRM tools, there's sales tools, there's AI tools, there's everything these days. Honestly, it's kind of overwhelming and I'm just it's hard for CS leaders to really figure out which tools you need. But if I'm honest, if you're building from scratch, your biggest tool is a spreadsheet. And the entire customer success strategy that I started to build, it just started with me listening. By the way, it started me to listen from our customers and started to document it. Okay? I needed to document. Remember, we need to start to measure everything cuz once you start measuring, you then really know what needs to be fixed. So yes, you can do this, too. By the way, even with nothing but a spreadsheet and your brain, you can do this too. And that is what I hope you are starting to realize as you listen to this podcast episode. So, let's talk about your next step and your weekly challenge. Okay. So, this week I want you to do this. I want you to map out your minimal viable customer journey. Again, do not over complicate it. Keep it simple, simple, simple.

[00:24:45]Okay? Just write it down. Again, write down the stages, onboarding, adoption, expansion, renewal, or whatever the stages are within your company. And then ask yourself, what is the desired outcome for the customer at each of these stages? And what's one tactic or play that you could introduce at the point? Okay, you don't need a full playbook. You just need a little bit of clarity. That's where your momentum starts and that's what you can start to build on when you are building out a true high-erforming customer success strategy and team. But it has to start somewhere and it has to start simply because if it's over complicated, which I have done, what happens is it paralyzes you and it leaves you feeling like you're not enough. And that is when imposttor syndrome kicks in and that is when we're all questioning our value and worth. So, let me remind you on this episode, you are extremely valuable. You are a revenue leader and you are going to crush it as you build out this minimal viable customer success motion that you are working on. But you've got to start with the baby steps and you've got to make it simple. And if you want help building out your CS strategy, I've got the resources for you. From free guides to live coaching to team workshops, I've worked with CS teams at companies at Worka, Atlassian, Microsoft, GSMA, Arbor Education, and many more to build out strategies from scratch. And I can help you do the same.

[00:26:21]You can find everything at the customerpro.com.

[00:26:26]And don't forget to subscribe to this channel for weekly tactical CS content that can help you become the most impactful customer success pro you can be. So, thanks again for listening this week and watching if you are watching on YouTube and I'll see you next week for our next episode.

[00:26:47]Thanks for tuning in to the Customer Success Pro podcast. I hope you picked up something valuable to take back to your team. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world to me if you took just 10 seconds to leave a review on Apple or Spotify. It helps more CS pros like yourself discover the show.

[00:27:05]And creating new episodes takes a lot of work, so leaving a nice review keeps me motivated to keep creating. And don't forget to hit subscribe on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen to podcast episodes. I drop a new episode every Wednesday packed with practical tips. And if you've got a topic you'd love for me to cover or want to be a guest on my show, send me a message. All the details are in the show notes. I'd love to hear from you. And hey, if this episode helped you, share it with a fellow CSM or CS leader.

[00:27:39]Remember, sharing is caring. Cheers to your CS journey, and I'll catch you next week for our next episode.