Introduction
This is 2021. For years, organizations have been concerned about losing people in their journey from prospects to customers. As a result, most have understood the importance of customer success management and having a customer success manager, a specialized role that is responsible for holding people tight in the sales pipeline throughout their journey to prevent losing them. Over the years, many companies have adopted customer success programs in their organizations, seeing a direct correlation between having them and winning customers and increasing income. Research by the Customer Success Association says so. This role was originally very popular in SaaS industries, as their software is provided as a metered service that may be stopped at any moment if the customer is not happy with the service. But now it is popular across all industries. In this blog, I will take you through six important skills that are necessary for customer success.
Empathy:
You have to be empathetic in customer-facing roles; it’s mandatory. If you want to succeed in the customer success role, you need to realize the customers’ problems and feel their pain as if it were your own. This helps you learn about the customers’ pain points and what they expect from you during the time they are with you. Always having an immediate solution for your customers is impractical; how will you handle such a situation? Customers have paid for the service; they expect immediate assistance. Well, the best thing you can do in such cases is be empathetic to their concerns. Even if you don’t have an immediate solution to their problem, they will appreciate it if you can empathize with them. Most customers understand that you may not have an immediate solution to their problem, but they will be happy if you are courteous, helpful, and empathetic.
Communication
In a customer success role, communication skills are very important. The absence of meaningful communication between the customer and the customer success manager will result in frustration and anger for the customer. Let’s say you don’t have an immediate solution to a customer problem, but even in this situation, you should at least explain the whole issue to the customer and make him understand your opinion. If you fail to do so, the customer will be angry, and rightfully so, as you are not taking him into confidence. Apart from this, communication also plays a big role in internal issue handling. The customer success manager got to explain the problem to the customer success team, which then took the necessary action. And when the problem is resolved, the same should be articulated well to the customer in a lucid manner. Therefore, it goes without saying that communication is a game changer in the customer success platform.
Patience
This is another key skill that you must have in this role. You can understand that customers may not be trained professionals like you; they may come from diverse backgrounds, so they may show an unprofessional attitude while explaining their problem or requirement to you. You, as a client success executive, will have to understand this and be patient throughout so that you understand their problem and also not offend them while taking this down. After patiently hearing their problem, assure them that everything will be alright, things will be back to normal, and everything will be on track before long. If you are not patient while dealing with customers, you may give that away while interacting with them. That way, they may get offended and complain against you, affecting your career and resulting in even more problematic outcomes. So, the key to dealing with customers is to hold your nerve and be entertaining and amiable.
Sensitivity
Sensitivity plays a key role in all human interactions, and more so in customer success strategies. While interacting with so many people in your life, you must have noticed that some are very receptive; they respond to your words emotionally; your words touch them to the core; and they can feel you as you speak. They are sensitive people. Some, on the other hand, will not show any emotion at all. Some others will simply ignore you or, even worse, show the opposite emotion when you speak from the heart. These are insensitive people. So, quite naturally, you will like to interact with sensitive people because you like to be heard, you like to be felt, and you like to be understood. In the customer success role, being sensitive is very important, as insensitivity may turn customers away—from you, from your department, and from your brand. This is the last thing any company wants. So, the takeaway is to be sensitive to your customers’ needs. They will surely like it.
Responsibility
Suppose you are a customer, and you disclosed your requirement to me. What if I ignore it? What if I don’t put in my best effort to answer your concern? What if I unnecessarily assign this task to someone else who, in turn, is also not so serious about it? This will lead to a delay in your work; you may get poor-quality work or, at worst, your requirement may not be met at all. So, the most important thing here is to be responsible—take responsibility for the customer feedback. Assume that you are the owner of the task, and you will have to get it resolved at all costs and in the best possible way. That’s why responsibility counts; show it while dealing with customers. If the person at the front takes responsibility for the task, you can be assured that your case is in safe hands, that your case will be heard, that people care about you, and that they always think of your best interests. A responsible customer success representative will surely resolve the query in time and in the best possible way, resulting in the success of the customer loyalty program.
Be a good listener.
Caring is all about listening. In customer success, you have to be caring, and as I previously said, for that, you need to be an active listener. How useful are you to a customer if you can’t solve his problem? To be able to solve a customer’s problem, you need to be a good listener. When I say being a good listener, I don’t merely refer to the biological process of absorbing sound. What I mean is to be an active listener. What are the qualities of a good listener—an active listener? – They value the words they hear; for them, every word they hear is precious. They immediately try to inculcate those words in themselves, and they respond to those words positively through their actions. As a good listener, you will have to understand even what is not spoken; learn to read between the words. A customer will immediately understand that they are interacting with a good listener, and they will feel satisfied. So, to succeed in this customer success field, you will have to develop the ability to read people; that’s a key skill.
Conclusion
These six skills, which I have mentioned here, can guide you through your customer success initiative. But one thing that you need to keep in mind is that these should be followed by every executive of your customer success team; otherwise, success will be partial and may be illusive. Earlier, I remember that customer success in SaaS was a very popular role. Today, almost every industry has a customer success manager to smooth the way for customers. Let me tell you one more thing: if you really want to enhance your customer success abilities, take help from a customer success software application for that. WovVXM is a cloud-based and powerful customer experience management tool that can help you with that. Try this today and share the experience with us.
