Advice From The Chief Customer Success Officer

In episode #25 of Customer Success Radio, we had the pleasure of speaking with Catherine Blackmore, Chief Customer Officer from Bluenose Analytics about the journey of customer success. She was joined by Zuora’s very own Tom Krackeler and Rachel English.

You can listen to the entire podcast directly below:

https://soundcloud.com/frontleaf/25-advice-from-the-chief-customer-officer

For those who prefer to read, I wanted to highlight a couple key areas that Catherine delved into during the podcast.

Customer Success Lifecycle Stages

A customer success leader may have to manage the programs and resources attached to every stage of your customer’s journey. In order to do so, he/she must be prepared to invest in and develop the relationship with the customer.

Catherine explains what a customer success leader has to consider when approaching  these different lifecycle stages:

  • Onboarding – Following the customer closely from closing the sale to going live and making sense of the entire customer base.
  • Reviews – Checking in on a customer’s adoption, business value, and expansion opportunities.
  • Escalations – Managing your customers and providing solutions for at-risk accounts.
  • Advocacy – Identifying customers who are going to be advocates for your product or service.
  • Renew and Grow – Renewing your products and getting your customers excited about your product to the point where they want to consistently work with you and use your products.

Integrating Your Customer Success and Marketing Teams

Another key area was the issue of having misaligned marketing and customer success teams. Generally, if there is a conflict, it’s because product marketers and customer success teams do not have a well-defined, unified message. Often times, there’s conflict between the two teams over things such as who sends emails to customers? Marketing may want to deliver mass emails with product information highlighting a new feature or product whereas Customer Success may want to send individual and tailored emails that provide customers what they want or need to know. But at the same time, the company doesn’t want the customer to be bombarded with emails.

Catherine believes that it’s crucial for a company to create a solid partnership between product marketing and customer success teams. When you bring the two sides together, an aligned customer strategy will strengthen your company.

Listen to the full podcast for even more information and insights from Catherine Blackmore, Chief Customer Officer from Bluenose Analytics. And for more on customer success, head over to our Academy.

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