Customer Success is probably the most misunderstood job in a business.
When you hear the words, “customer success”, do you conjure up an image of rows of robots sitting on telephones handling unhappy customers? If you do, I wouldn’t blame you, because up until a few days ago, I did too.
In reality, however, customer success is an entirely different animal. As I spent this week learning all I could about customer success and building customer success projects, my mind went back to the time when a company used its brilliant CS strategy to not only retain me as a customer but also turn me into an unofficial part-time salesman. Funny thing is, I didn’t even realize it was a part of CS back then, but now with added insight, that seems like a perfect place to begin this story.
A few months ago, I had a discussion with a friend about the importance of having your thoughts and ideas organized somewhere. We discussed a lot of software that could help us achieve this, and I walked away from that discussion with a strong recommendation to try out Notion. If you don’t know what Notion is, here’s how it describes itself-
Notion offers tremendous functionality for multiple applications, but for the same reasons, can be a little difficult to get the hang of. For someone beginning with Notion, it is not easy to navigate the learning curve and harness its true potential.
How likely are such struggling customers to send inquiries to Notion’s support email asking them for guidance? Not much? Thought so.
So did Notion. That’s why Notion is such a good example of how CS should be done.
True Customer Success actively seeks out your problems and solves them before they arise. I, like a lot of other people, was unable to see the advantages of using Notion initially. Notion could’ve easily lost me as a customer during that time. Here’s what happened instead-
People at Notion actively sought me out to train me in the basics of Notion. They sent me a series of emails explaining exactly how I could use all the different features of Notion, and the best ways to get the most out of it. Their research on their customer’s pain points had been thorough and their emails were very well detailed, but they also paid attention to other minor things.
For instance, instead of overwhelming me with all of their training content at once, they sent me one email every 2-3 days, giving me ample opportunity to test and try out their features and reach out to them if I have a problem.
Their emails were addressed by Ivan Zhao, the founder himself. Makes you feel a little special, doesn’t it?
And when Notion’s servers failed (as can happen to any major tech business), Notion sent a personal letter of apology to each and every one of its customers apologizing for the inconvenience.
At its heart, that’s what Customer Success is all about. It’s about creating an experience for customers that makes them feel important and looked after. Great Customer Success is what makes Notion such a good brand, and it can work wonders for your brand too.
So the next time you think about Customer Success, remember this. Customer Success isn’t that one friend you have who started working early at a call center to earn some extra cash. Customer Success is that one friend who always solves all your problems empathetically, and who, therefore, has your lifelong loyalty.