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When a customer transitions from sales to Customer Success, what happens behind the scenes can make or break the customer experience.
Often, a lack of collaboration between the two teams results in miscommunication, lost information, and, ultimately, a frustrated customer. Without a clear process in place, key insights gathered by the sales team – like customer expectations or specific promises – don’t always make it to the Customer Success team.
This can lead to missed opportunities for upselling or cross-selling, and worse, a disconnect in how the customer is supported.
For many Customer Success Managers (CSMs), this lack of collaboration creates significant roadblocks. Without a full understanding of the customer’s journey, it’s harder to build trust and deliver value from the outset.
A customer might come in expecting certain results or features that were promised during the sales process, but when this information doesn’t reach the Customer Success team, it sets everyone up for a rocky start.
The solution? Establishing a formal process that encourages clear, ongoing communication between sales and Customer Success. By ensuring that both teams are aligned from the start, you can improve the customer’s experience and set the stage for a successful partnership.
Why collaboration between Customer Success and sales is critical
When Customer Success and sales teams aren’t collaborating, it’s easy for things to fall through the cracks. For businesses to grow and retain customers, it’s crucial for these two teams to work together seamlessly. Here are two reasons why:
Aligning goals for customer retention and growth
Sales is focused on closing deals, while Customer Success is dedicated to keeping customers happy and ensuring long-term retention. Both teams ultimately play a role in driving revenue, but their priorities often differ.
When these teams are aligned, they can create a unified approach that supports both new customer acquisition and long-term customer growth.
Regular communication between sales and Customer Success teams helps ensure they’re working toward shared goals. When both teams understand each other’s objectives and align on the big picture, it makes it easier to support customers in a way that benefits both them and the business.
Closing the information gap
During the sales process, the sales team gathers critical information about the customer’s pain points, goals, and expectations.
This knowledge is essential for delivering value during onboarding and beyond, but if it doesn’t make its way to the Customer Success team, they are left to figure things out on their own – leading to delays, miscommunication, and a poor start to the customer relationship.
Implementing a structured process for sharing customer insights can help close this gap. A formal handoff ensures that the Customer Success team receives all the necessary details to build on the relationship, rather than asking the same questions over again.
This allows the Customer Success team to provide a personalized experience right from the start, setting the customer up for long-term success.
By aligning goals and closing information gaps, Customer Success and sales teams can work together to create a more cohesive customer journey.
In the next section, we’ll explore practical steps you can take to foster collaboration between these teams and make sure everyone is on the same page.
Key steps to fostering collaboration between Customer Success and sales
For Customer Success Managers and sales teams to collaborate effectively, it’s crucial to have a structured approach. Without clear communication and shared goals, the handoff between these teams can become a source of frustration and missed opportunities.
Here are some key steps you can take to ensure smooth collaboration between Customer Success and sales, ensuring that both teams work together seamlessly:
1. Establish regular communication touchpoints
Regular communication between Customer Success and sales is key to ensuring alignment on customer needs and goals.
Without these touchpoints, it’s easy for both teams to lose track of important updates, upcoming renewals, or potential upsell opportunities. By scheduling regular check-ins, both teams can share insights on customer progress, risks, and areas for growth.
2. Share customer information through standardized processes
Inconsistent information sharing between sales and Customer Success teams can lead to poor onboarding experiences and missed opportunities.
A standardized process for sharing customer data, such as a playbook, ensures that both teams are working with the same information and understanding of the customer’s needs.
3. Collaborate on success plans
Success plans are essential to keeping both Customer Success and sales teams aligned on the customer’s long-term goals and the key performance indicators (KPIs) that need to be tracked.
Collaborating on success plans from the start ensures both teams are on the same page and working toward the same objectives.
4. Monitor customer health together
Tracking customer health scores is an essential part of identifying early warning signs of churn or recognizing opportunities for upselling. By monitoring customer health together, sales and Customer Success teams can address risks early and take advantage of growth opportunities.
If you use a Customer Success tool like Velaris, you’ll be able to create a customer health dashboard that both sales and Customer Success teams can monitor, enabling early intervention for at-risk accounts and identifying potential upsell opportunities.
5. Leverage automation to simplify workflows
Manual processes often slow down collaboration and create gaps in visibility. Automating key workflows, such as task assignments, customer data sharing, and follow-ups, can streamline the process and ensure that important tasks are completed without delay.
Velaris allows for automated workflows and task tracking, ensuring that the right tasks are assigned to the right teams at the right time, reducing the risk of missing steps or deadlines.
By following these steps, you can create a more collaborative environment between your sales and Customer Success teams, making it easier to deliver value to your customers.
In the next section, we’ll look at best practices for improving cross-team collaboration, focusing on aligning goals and centralizing communication.
Best practices for improving cross-team collaboration
Improving collaboration between sales and Customer Success teams requires intentional strategies and tools that help align their efforts.
When these teams are working with the same customer data, using shared goals, and communicating regularly, it becomes much easier to deliver a consistent and value-driven experience for your customers.
Here are some best practices to improve cross-team collaboration and ensure both teams are working together effectively:
Align sales and Customer Success goals around customer outcomes
One of the main challenges between sales and Customer Success teams is that they often work toward different goals. Sales teams are typically focused on closing deals, while Customer Success is focused on retaining customers and driving long-term value.
By aligning around shared customer outcomes – such as customer retention, satisfaction, or upsell opportunities – both teams can work toward common objectives.
Use a single platform for communication and data sharing
Siloed communication and tools can make it difficult for Customer Success and sales teams to stay on the same page. When different teams are working with separate systems or platforms, it increases the chances of miscommunication and missed details.
Centralizing data and communication helps both teams access the same customer insights, ensuring better alignment and collaboration.
Velaris helps bring together siloed data by connecting the tools used by sales, marketing, onboarding, and product teams. This reduces the risk of lost data or miscommunication and helps everyone stay updated.
With all key data in one place, it becomes much easier for both Customer Success and sales to access the information they need and collaborate effectively.
By aligning goals around customer outcomes and using a centralized platform for communication, both sales and Customer Success teams can work together more efficiently, improving the overall customer experience.
Conclusion
Collaboration between Customer Success and sales teams is essential for delivering a smooth, consistent customer journey. When both teams align their goals, share customer data efficiently, and leverage automation to streamline processes, they can work together to drive customer retention and long-term growth.
A seamless collaboration helps close information gaps and ensures that customers receive the best possible experience at every stage of their journey.
Tools like Velaris make it easier to achieve this collaboration by automating workflows, standardizing processes, and providing both teams with access to real-time data. If improving the collaboration between your sales and Customer Success teams is a priority, Velaris can help you make the transition smoother and more efficient.
Book a demo today to see how Velaris can support your team in driving better customer outcomes.
