Optimizing Customer Success Segmentation Strategies: What You Need to Know

Introduction

This blog discusses the crucial aspects of customer success segmentation strategies and the insights shared by Ursula Deborah on her journey across various leading companies. From defining success milestones to implementing effective customer segmentation and account management, this blog covers key points and strategies for elevating customer success programs.

Customer Success Journey and Segmentation Strategies

• Ursula Deborah’s, a passionate customer success practitioner, shared her journey from Salesforce to Microsoft Office 365, Box, InsideSales, and now Facebook at Work, highlighting the growth of the customer success practice.

• She emphasized the importance of learning from colleagues and team members, and how events like these are valuable opportunities for learning and growth.

• Ursula shared a personal adventurous experience of off-roading in Utah, drawing parallels between the journey and the customer success journey, highlighting the importance of trust and unexpected challenges.

• She discussed the significance of customer segmentation strategies, focusing on the needs of the customer journey and their expectations from the moment they sign a contract throughout their journey.

Key Points of the Presentation

• The presentation discusses the importance of identifying milestones and defining what success looks like at each phase of the customer journey.

• It highlights the need to segment and prioritize accounts based on the journey each customer is taken through.

• The concept of a playbook is introduced, which outlines the actions to be taken with customers at different stages of their journey, considering objectives such as account expansion or risk mitigation.

• The significance of a well-defined strategy and effective execution in scaling customer success programs is emphasized, along with the role of content and technology such as client success tools, sales CRM tools, and community tools.

• The speaker shares personal experience from Box, where they led the long tail customer success strategy and managed a large number of accounts with a focus on creating vision, excitement, and clear objectives, as well as simplifying and prioritizing tasks for the customer success teams.

Strategic Negotiation for Positive Outcomes

• A strategic negotiation took place where the speaker proposed a 10% increase in their team’s bonus, which was positively received by the other party.

• The team saw this as an opportunity to ask for additional resources and commitments, and they formulated a plan to maximize their benefits.

• The next focus was on developing an account prioritization model in collaboration with the sales operations team, aiming to assess risk and potential value of customer accounts using specific criteria.

• The team utilized a ‘customer sophistication index’ and ‘total addressable market’ to score customers based on their risk and potential value, effectively prioritizing their approach.

• The model was validated using tableau to analyze the results, and the collaboration with CSMs further confirmed its effectiveness.

Customer Segmentation and Account Management

• The speaker discusses the creation of three customer cohorts: expand accounts, retain accounts, and maintain accounts. Expand accounts are those targeted for growth, while retain accounts are at risk and need to be retained. Maintain accounts are stable and require ongoing engagement.

• A key aspect of customer segmentation involved using CSM’s (Customer Success Managers) to validate the effort. This was achieved by creating a field in the application called ‘account predation’ with three categories: expand account, retain account, and maintain account.

• The focus was on utilizing technology and communication to engage with maintain accounts, while expand and retain accounts required customized approaches to drive growth and retention. Salesforce was used as the customer success application, and the information was updated quarterly to inform sales and customer success strategies.

• Rather than implementing quotas for the customer success team, a team goal approach was adopted to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing. This approach allowed high-performing individuals to share their techniques with peers and reduced the pressure associated with individual performance metrics.

• The strategy also involved identifying high-risk, high-value customers as significant expansion opportunities. By applying the ‘risk playbook’ to address customer concerns and reset expectations, these high-risk customers were more likely to expand their engagement, thereby turning a challenging situation into a growth opportunity.

Key Points for Customer Success Management

• The speaker emphasized the importance of focusing on existing accounts for expansion and growth rather than solely on acquiring new customers.

• They highlighted the need for reliable data such as attrition risk level, product adoption rating, current ACV, and opportunity growth to create effective evaluation criteria for customer success management.

• The team underwent a change management process to shift their focus from reactive responses to proactive engagement with the right customer cohort, which involved collaboration between sales, sales engineers, customer success managers, and the renewal team.

• The implementation of ‘hackathons’ and joint playbook creation sessions helped align the teams and improve their workflow.

• Technology, content, and community engagement were emphasized as crucial elements in customer success management, with intentional efforts to foster customer involvement through a community platform.

• The team established a consistent cadence of postings within the community platform, including personalized welcome messages, product tips, fun content, noteworthy company updates, and customer appreciation, to drive ongoing engagement.

• The approach not only enhanced customer engagement but also contributed to a 10% revenue increase, leading to a well-deserved beach vacation reward for the team as part of their success celebration.

Conclusion

Implementing strategic customer success segmentation strategies and leveraging insights shared by Ursula Deborah can elevate your customer success programs. By focusing on key points and effective account segmentation, you can optimize growth and drive success in your customer success journey.

undefined