Scaling Growth by Leveraging Customer Marketing
In this interview, Jeanne Hopkins, Chief Marketing Officer at Lola.com, talks about why it is necessary to build a brand experience based on the individual needs and why CSMs must enable the right outcomes to the different persona they're working [with].
The rationale of putting CS in the marketing team is to drive alignment and close that gap between setting expectations with customers and delivering the product value.
Background and Career
Hopkins spent most of her career in Sales and Marketing management, so much of the focus is on the customer side of things. She shares, my past roles were focused on customer marketing and making sure that we are communicating effectively.
In her prior role at Ipswitch (now Progress), she notes that the lack of concentration on customer success became apparent that you need to deal with disparate silos within the company, especially if you have different products to market and sell.
It causes a lot of confusion when you are talking to a customer. She warns; before announcing any price increase, changing business agreements, or developing new packaging, these must be planned and thought out well.
When she joined Lola.com, she points out that a year ago, they had a handful of customers; now, they have hundreds of customers and thousands of users. As that expansion happened, she asked Mike Volpe, CEO of Lola, to have the CS team be a part of her marketing team.
Hopkins says that for the CSMs to be of great value, they need to access the website, content management systems, and email support to drive meaningful customer engagement.
I felt that is the only way for CSMs to be effectively managing their role is to be part of the marketing team. If CS is part of another organization team, they wouldn't know what they didn't know.
So, being part of the marketing team, everybody pitches the same: from the content team, marketing operations, the website team, so everything we do is focused on making customers successful.
Since we are a startup and evolving, everything we're trying to do must have high value and tight alignment in everything we're trying to solve (for).
CS is always selling!
Hopkins points out we are lucky enough since our first CSM has over ten years of experience in the travel industry. Plus, he has a lot of sales experience, and he was an initial part of the Lola sales organization. Our second CSM also came from a sales organization. It is one way to show (or attest) that CS is always selling.
When it comes to renewal, upgrade, or whatever you're trying to do with the product, you're always selling and reminding customers that they made the right decision in buying Lola. It is a different sales process when you're selling them directly from going to X to Y. But when they're part of your organization, you remind them that they have made the best possible decision.
Our focus right now is more on onboarding and showing the time to value as quickly as possible. Since we have hundreds of customers (now), we're trying to automate this functionality without losing the personal touch or personal aspect of who we are.
I needed team members that are not just going to drill down or to solving every customer issue or concern. But to take that information (gathered), amplify it, and report it back to the engineering team. The gap between the product itself and the customers' expectations are closely aligned.
What is the stake of investing in the CS?
Depending on how old the company may be, many software companies have a different approach to serving their customer base.
Some of the many things to consider when understanding customer objectives and their possible outcomes:
- Where are your customers in their customer cycle?
- The maturity of your product and its complexity.
- What exactly are you trying to do to make the customer successful?
- How could you help your customers in terms of communicating with their end-users?
- What would you like your customers to see or achieve?
- What kind of product upgrades would they like?
- What's a feature that's missing?
- What are the things you learning (and hearing) from your customers?
If you look at Toast, as an example, a point of sale solution for restaurants and e-commerce business: They have over 600 people on their CS teams, and the reason they do, they are trying to make the restaurants successful by teaching them about sales, marketing techniques, not just the use of their software. They have a lot of methodologies to touch their customers.
The bottom line is providing customers with a well-rounded experience and helping them NOT only when they need us the most but in collaborating with them to make the product and service better overall.
Customer Marketing in today's business realm
When you start looking at the segmentation of your customers, think of your customers as your employees. Remember, your employees are your most important audience. They are the core of everything you do. If you do not communicate effectively with your employees, your customers will not get the same message.
Hopkins points out, work at the core of your organization, who you are as the company has to start with it. It predicated on where you are in the growth of your company. If done right, you will get referrals, testimonials, and reviews, and your customers will help you build your community.
Similarly, Hopkins observed that many customer success organizations are embedded (or involved) in customer support. She says that is not the right place for that. Tech support is an entirely different function of Customer Success.
Hopkins says CS is the combination of all things in your company - it is a little bit of sales, marketing, product support, and professional services. Why, because you are trying to show (or deliver) high-value outcomes and product value in every phase of the customer journey. Hence, these roles are interrelated (or interwoven) - not a separate identity.
CS as a competitive differentiator?
Certainly - but you have to make sure that you have the right team put together. This team must ensure that the time and product value are delivered early on and at every touchpoint.
I wrote two books on CS. These books can help you if you are looking for new ideas about CS. Here are the early reviews from industry experts and CS leaders: https://bit.ly/2Cl8LBH
