Customer Success—and the recurring revenue it generates—results from a series of intentional, interrelated activities performed throughout the customer relationship lifecycle. As shown in this graphic, effective customer success activities comprise a continuum:
Essential Customer Success Activities
Customer Success Activities Defined
Onboarding
Onboarding activities aim to remove barriers that may inhibit successful product use. Onboarding can encompass activities to welcome and introduce customers to the resources necessary to use new products, as well as verification that customers can access and use products.
Onboarding activities can include:
- Initial welcome
- Kick-off-meeting
- Goals and objectives inventory
Success Planning
Success planning helps customers realize the full potential of products. These activities can increase understanding customer business objectives, introducing customers to product capabilities, and aligning services to help yield tangible business results.
Success Planning activities can include:
- Goal setting
- Account planning
- Journey mapping
- Business reviews
Drive Adoption
Adoption activities occur throughout the product ownership lifecycle. They are designed to advance Customer Success by encouraging the full and successful use of product features and capabilities by all targeted users.
Adoption activities can include:
- Coaching
- Training
- Best practices
- Templates
Health Monitoring
By monitoring the customer ownership experience, your team gains insights about the extent to which customers are using products successfully. Early-warning signs of low adoption or low success rates trigger corrective actions.
Health monitoring activities can include:
- Usage tracking
- Sentiment analysis
- Risk assessment
- Intervention
Customer Retention
Customer retention activities facilitate the contract-renewal actions that are necessary to assure sustained customer relationships and continuation of recurring revenues.
Customer retention activities can include:
- Renewal notification
- Budget planning
- Follow-up
- Win-loss analysis
Up-Sell and Cross-Sell
These expansion activities focus on the growth of customer relationship value by offering additional capabilities or capacity. This is where Customer Success activities pay off in additional, and ideally recurring revenue.
Up-sell and cross-sell activities can include:
- Account reviews
- ROI analysis
- Goal setting
- Opportunity alignment
