.png)
When you first hear about Customer Success, it’s easy to think it’s just another buzzword. But as you dive deeper, you quickly realize it’s much more than that – it’s essential.
Whether you’re a new Customer Success Manager (CSM) or a SaaS business that’s just starting to prioritize this function, building a structured customer success process can feel like a massive undertaking.
It’s not just about checking boxes; it’s about creating a repeatable system that guides customers through their journey, ensuring they achieve their goals with your product. And yet, the steps to make that happen aren’t always clear.
How do you define what success looks like for your customers? What processes should be in place to make sure every customer has a consistent, positive experience?
Without a clear path, you might find yourself struggling to get customers onboarded properly or missing opportunities for engagement that lead to churn.
That’s why having a well-defined customer success process matters. It’s not just about making things easier for your team – it’s about ensuring your customers are set up for long-term success.
A solid process helps you streamline onboarding, manage customer relationships, and catch potential issues before they escalate. Without one, you risk losing customers to poor communication, disorganization, or a lack of follow-up.
In this blog, we’ll break down what a customer success process looks like, why it’s crucial to your business, and how you can build one that works for both your team and your customers.
What is a Customer Success process?
At its core, the customer success process is a structured set of steps designed to guide your team from onboarding new customers to maintaining strong, ongoing relationships.
This process ensures that customers not only adopt your product but also use it in a way that helps them achieve their goals. It’s not a one-size-fits-all method but rather a flexible framework that can adapt as customer needs evolve.
Think of it as the roadmap that takes a customer from initial onboarding through continued engagement, proactive support, and relationship building. It covers everything from making sure they’re trained to use the product effectively to offering ongoing support that helps them overcome challenges.
The goal is to make sure customers get the most value out of your product, which ultimately drives their satisfaction and loyalty.
Customer Success vs. customer support
It's easy to confuse customer success with customer support or customer service, but they serve different purposes. Customer support is typically reactive – helping customers when they run into issues or need troubleshooting. It’s focused on solving immediate problems.
On the other hand, the customer success process is proactive. Rather than waiting for customers to encounter an issue, it anticipates their needs and helps them before they even realize they need support.
It’s about guiding them through their journey with your product, ensuring they’re consistently achieving their goals, and preventing problems from arising in the first place. This difference is crucial because it shifts the focus from simply putting out fires to helping customers thrive.
Now that we’ve covered what the customer success process is, it’s important to understand why this process matters. How does having a structured approach to customer success benefit your business in the long run? Let’s dive into the next section to explore the importance of building a strong customer success process.
Why is a customer success process important?
A solid customer success process helps your team actively drive customer satisfaction and retention by taking a proactive approach to engagement. Instead of waiting for issues to arise, your team can anticipate customer needs, identify potential roadblocks, and guide customers to success from the start.
This leads to happier, more loyal customers who are more likely to stick around for the long term.
Moreover, a structured process gives your Customer Success team a measurable framework to follow, improving efficiency. It provides consistency in how you handle customer interactions and ensures no one slips through the cracks.
With clearly defined steps in place, your team can track progress, set measurable goals, and know exactly what to do at each stage of the customer journey.
As your company grows, managing relationships with more and more customers becomes increasingly complex. A customer success process makes that growth manageable, enabling you to scale your efforts without sacrificing the quality of the customer experience.
It allows your team to standardize key tasks, making it easier to handle a growing customer base while still delivering personalized support.
Pain points solved by a customer success process
A well-designed customer success process also addresses many of the common challenges Customer Success Managers face, such as:
1. Inconsistent customer onboarding
Without a standardized process, customers may not receive the same level of onboarding support, leading to confusion and frustration. A clear process ensures every customer has a smooth onboarding experience, no matter who manages it.
2. Difficulty in tracking customer progress and goals
It can be hard to keep track of where each customer is on their journey and whether they’re meeting their goals. A structured process provides clear milestones and metrics to track progress and make adjustments where necessary.
3. Fragmented communication across teams
When sales, product, and support teams don’t have a shared understanding of customer goals or challenges, communication can become disjointed. A customer success process brings alignment across departments, making sure everyone has the information they need to support the customer.
4. Lack of clear customer health tracking and analysis
It’s difficult to know when a customer might be at risk of churning without proper health tracking. A good customer success process incorporates health monitoring tools that help you keep an eye on customer engagement and identify any issues before they become problems.
With these pain points in mind, it’s easy to see why a customer success process is critical for both your team and your customers. It’s not just about keeping things organized – it’s about setting your customers up for success and ensuring your team has the tools and structure to support them effectively.
Next, we’ll explore the key stages of the customer success process, breaking down the essential steps every team should follow to build lasting customer relationships.
Key stages of the Customer Success process
These stages provide structure and consistency, ensuring that every customer has a smooth journey from onboarding to continued success. Each stage is designed to proactively support your customers, helping them achieve their goals while strengthening their relationship with your company.
1. Onboarding
Onboarding is the foundation of the customer relationship. It’s the first chance to set expectations, familiarize customers with your product, and help them understand how it can solve their specific problems. The first impression here is critical because it sets the tone for how the relationship will develop.
Key steps in onboarding include goal setting, product training, and creating clear onboarding timelines. This structured approach ensures that customers start off on the right foot and feel supported from day one.
However, inconsistent onboarding can lead to customer confusion and delays in product adoption.
2. Customer engagement and education
Once customers are onboarded, it’s crucial to keep them engaged and continuously learning about your product. Customers who understand and use your product regularly are far more likely to see value in it and stick around. This ongoing engagement is key to making sure they continue to find success.
Regular check-ins, educational content, and product updates all help keep customers engaged. Providing resources that help them better understand how to use your product can drive long-term adoption and satisfaction.
3. Monitoring customer health
Monitoring customer health is a proactive way to measure how well your customers are doing and whether they are at risk of churning. This involves sending out surveys and tracking key metrics such as how frequently they use your product or the number of support tickets they submit. These metrics provide a clear picture of customer engagement and satisfaction.
4. Proactive problem solving
Even with the best onboarding and engagement strategies, issues will still arise. The key is identifying and addressing them before they escalate into bigger problems. Proactively solving customer problems ensures they continue to feel supported and stay satisfied with your product.
5. Ongoing support and collaboration
The customer success process doesn’t end once onboarding is complete. Providing ongoing support and maintaining open lines of communication are essential to building long-term relationships. Customers should always feel like they can turn to your team for help and guidance as their needs evolve.
While the customer success process is taken on by a specific team, effective collaboration across sales, support, and onboarding, is critical to ensuring that every department has the information they need to support the customer holistically.
By following these key stages, you can build a structured and proactive customer success process that not only drives engagement but also helps you retain customers for the long term.
But how do you go about building such a process from scratch? In the next section, we’ll walk through the steps to create a customer success process that aligns with your business goals and scales as your company grows.
How to build a customer success process from scratch
Whether you’re just starting to implement Customer Success or looking to formalize your current efforts, the process doesn’t need to be complicated. The goal is to create a clear, repeatable framework that helps your team consistently deliver value to customers. Below, we’ll walk through the essential steps to help you build a solid foundation for customer success.
1. Define success for your customers
Before you can build an effective process, you need to understand what success means for your customers. Customer success will look different depending on your product, industry, and customer base.
Start by identifying what outcomes your customers are looking to achieve with your product. This could be anything from increased efficiency to higher revenue, depending on their specific goals.
Once you’ve defined what success looks like, the next step is to create clear success milestones. These are the key achievements that indicate a customer is on the right path.
Each milestone should be mapped to measurable KPIs so your team can track progress and make sure customers are hitting their goals.
2. Standardize and automate tasks
A big part of building an efficient customer success process is identifying repetitive tasks that can be standardized and automated. Every time your team has to manually complete a task – whether it’s sending an onboarding email or logging a customer update – it takes time and energy that could be better spent elsewhere.
By automating these repetitive tasks, you free up your team to focus on more valuable activities, like customer engagement and problem-solving.
Once you’ve identified which tasks can be automated, use playbooks to standardize workflows. This ensures that every customer receives the same level of service, no matter who on the team is managing their account.
3. Monitor and adjust your process
Building a customer success process isn’t a one-and-done effort. You need to continuously monitor how well the process is working and be willing to adjust it based on customer feedback and data. This might mean tweaking onboarding steps, adjusting engagement tactics, or even refining how you track customer health.
The key is to use data to inform your adjustments. By consistently monitoring your customer success metrics – like customer health scores and engagement rates – you can identify areas where your process might need improvement. A well-designed process should evolve as your customers’ needs change, ensuring that your strategy stays effective over time.
By following these steps, you can build a structured and scalable customer success process that supports both your team and your customers. However, it’s also important to know when your business truly requires a formal customer success process.
In the next section, we’ll explore when it’s time to implement one and how to determine if you’re ready.
When does your SaaS business require a customer success process?
Establishing a Customer Success process is crucial for the long-term success and sustainability of a SaaS business. Here are key times when it is especially advantageous to develop and implement a Customer Success process:
During the early stage/product launch
This is when your product is newly launched and you need to ensure customers understand and see value in it quickly. Here’s why:
- Customer onboarding: Early-stage companies benefit from strong onboarding processes to ensure new customers understand how to use the product effectively.
- Customer feedback: Establishing a Customer Success process early allows for the collection of valuable feedback, which can be used to improve the product and user experience.
- Customer retention: Early adoption and positive experiences can lead to higher retention rates, building a loyal customer base from the start.
During the scaling phase
This is when your business is growing rapidly, and managing an increasing number of customers requires a structured approach. There are several reasons why a customer success process would be beneficial during this stage:
- Increased customer base: As your business grows and you acquire more customers, it becomes challenging to manage relationships without a structured process.
- Standardization: A Customer Success process helps standardize the way you manage and support customers, ensuring consistent experiences.
- Proactive engagement: It enables proactive engagement, helping to identify and address potential issues before they lead to churn.
When there are high churn rates
This is when you notice a significant number of customers are leaving, indicating a need to improve customer satisfaction and retention. A customer success process could help with:
- Identifying issues: High churn rates indicate underlying problems with customer satisfaction or product fit. A Customer Success process can help identify and address these issues.
- Customer retention: Implementing a Customer Success process focused on retention strategies can help reduce churn and improve overall customer satisfaction.
When launching new product features or major updates
This is when you release new features or significant updates and need to ensure customers know how to use them effectively. With a customer success process in place, you’d get:
- Training and education: When launching new features or updates, a Customer Success process ensures that customers are well-informed and know how to utilize new capabilities.
- Feedback loop: Gathering feedback on new features helps in refining and improving them based on real user experiences.
When entering new markets
This is when you are expanding into new geographic or demographic markets, requiring tailored Customer Success strategies to meet diverse needs. Here’s why”
- Localized support: Expanding into new markets often requires localized Customer Success strategies to address regional differences and preferences.
- Market-specific needs: Understanding and addressing the specific needs of new customer segments is crucial for successful market entry.
During pre-IPO or funding rounds
This is when you are preparing for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) and offering shares of stock to the public for the first time or when you are seeking investment. A customer success process can help with:
- Investor confidence: Demonstrating a structured Customer Success process can instill confidence in investors, showing that the business is committed to long-term customer satisfaction and retention.
- Sustainable growth: A robust Customer Success process is essential for showcasing sustainable growth and predictable revenue streams, which are attractive to investors.
When increasing competition
This is when you are facing stiff competition, a robust Customer Success process can help with:
- Differentiation: In a competitive market, a superior Customer Success process can be a key differentiator, helping to retain customers and attract new ones through positive word-of-mouth.
- Customer loyalty: Focusing on Customer Success can build strong relationships and foster loyalty, making it harder for competitors to lure away your customers.
During a strategic pivot
This is when you are changing your business strategy or product focus, requiring careful management to ensure existing customers transition smoothly. A customer success process can help with:
- Transition management: When pivoting your business strategy or product focus, a Customer Success process helps manage the transition smoothly for existing customers.
- New value proposition: Clearly communicating and supporting the new value proposition ensures that customers understand and appreciate the changes, minimizing disruption and dissatisfaction.
This shows us that the best time to establish a Customer Success process in your SaaS business is as early as possible, ideally during the product launch phase. However, it’s never too late to start. By prioritizing Customer Success, you can ensure that your customers are happy, loyal, and engaged, driving sustainable business success.
How Velaris enhances the Customer Success process
Velaris is a Customer Success tool that has a suite of features designed to streamline and enhance every stage of the Customer Success process. Here’s how:
Advanced onboarding solutions
Velaris provides intuitive onboarding tools that include customizable email templates, automated training sequences, and personalized success milestones. Features like automated workflows, personalized content and progress tracking ensure that new customers are effectively onboarded and quickly experience the value of the product.
Engaging communication platforms
With Velaris, businesses can maintain regular and meaningful interactions with customers through integrated communication platforms. Velaris supports segmentation, provides engagement analytics and assists with multi-channel engagement, including email, chat, and in-app messaging, making it easier to keep customers informed and engaged.
Robust customer support features
Velaris offers a comprehensive customer support suite that includes support tickets, playbooks, and proactive support mechanisms. These features enable businesses to resolve customer issues promptly and efficiently, ensuring high levels of customer satisfaction.
Comprehensive feedback and analysis tools
Velaris simplifies the process of collecting and analyzing customer feedback. Its integrated feedback widgets, survey tools, and analytics capabilities provide businesses with valuable insights into customer experiences, helping them make informed decisions to improve their products and services.
Effective retention strategies
Velaris aids in implementing effective customer retention strategies through features like automated renewal reminders, loyalty program integration, and more. These tools help businesses maintain high customer retention rates and build long-term customer loyalty.
Real-time metrics and reporting
Velaris offers real-time metrics and reporting tools that track essential KPIs. Features like a centralized dashboard, custom reporting, and trend analysis enable businesses to measure the success of their Customer Success process and make data-driven improvements.
With the right framework in place, a well-defined customer success process becomes much more manageable.
However, to truly maximize efficiency and effectiveness, having the right tools is essential. Velaris enhances every stage of the customer success process – from onboarding to ongoing support – by providing automation, real-time insights, and seamless team collaboration.
These capabilities ensure that your Customer Success team is not just reacting to issues but proactively driving customer satisfaction and retention.
Conclusion
The Customer Success process is integral to building lasting relationships with customers and driving business growth.
By prioritizing Customer Success, businesses can enhance customer satisfaction, reduce churn, and foster long-term loyalty. Implementing a structured Customer Success process, combined with best practices, will ensure that customers achieve their desired outcomes and recognize the full value of your product or service.
Incorporating Velaris into your Customer Success strategy can further streamline these processes and provide deeper insights into customer behavior, helping you make more informed decisions and ultimately achieve greater success.
Velaris' comprehensive suite of tools and analytics capabilities empowers businesses to deliver exceptional customer experiences and drive sustainable growth.
Book a demo with Velaris today to learn more about how and what to use to expand your customer base.
