"Data is king." You could add that the ability to make the most of your data matters just as much. Customer Success is no exception! How you access your data, and the tools you use to put it to work, sit at the heart of your challenges.
In this article, we look at 3 challenges every Customer Success Manager faces at some point, and the solutions for tackling them.
The context: the tools used in Customer Success
Try listing every tool you use in your day-to-day work as a CSM.
At Skalin, we surveyed 150 SaaS companies to find out. The result: 64% of CS teams use between 3 and 5 software tools every day. That's a lot!
Typically, that means:
- A CRM: almost every SaaS company has one.
- The back end: you often have login data on your platform's users, the features they use and the main KPIs.
- A ticketing tool: some respondents have set up ticketing solutions such as Zendesk or Intercom to handle support requests.
- A project management tool: a CRM isn't great at managing projects, so it's common to have Trello, Monday or Asana to manage roll-outs.
- Billing: invoicing tools such as Stripe or Chargebee are common.
These tools work in silos, with no connections between them. What does that mean in practice? CSMs constantly have to juggle between systems, because no single tool gives them a complete view of their customers.
Another finding from the study: almost every CS team that uses a CRM has another tool alongside it. In detail, 68% of respondents rely on their existing CRM to manage customer relationships... but 94% of them use other tools as well!
As a result, CS teams are not very satisfied with their tool stack. The exception is companies with more than 100 employees, which presumably get more out of their tools, although their satisfaction scores aren't especially high either.
3 CS problems to solve
This puts CSMs in a tricky position, and one that carries real business risk. The situation can be summed up like this: no 360° view > lack of proactivity > missed opportunities and churn.
#1. Not having a 360° view
Every SaaS company runs into a lack of overall visibility on customer information at some point. It makes sense: after adding one system and then another, you end up managing a host of tools that don't talk to each other properly.
You often have to enter the same information twice, or check contract dates in several places. You may even find conflicting information, because the risk of error multiplies.
#2. Lacking proactivity
The result: you only look at some of the information, or you look at it less often. Your tools stay passive (they don't alert you when something goes wrong). And there are only so many hours in the day, so you don't have time to chase information.
From there, you risk sliding into reactive mode. Little by little, you spend more and more time answering customers who contact you, rather than proactively reaching out to those who are losing momentum. Imagine, for example, that some customers start using your software less and less. You may not notice, so you let it slide... and we all know how that can end.
#3. Missing opportunities and losing customers
The problem? You're no longer in charge of your schedule. Your customers control your time and dictate your priorities. They may be low-MRR customers with little potential. In reality, they may pose no churn risk at all.
Meanwhile, you risk overlooking the customers who deserve your attention but whom you don't spot. That has a concrete business impact: upsell or cross-sell opportunities left untouched, early signs of churn going undetected, and so on.
How do you tackle these 3 Customer Success challenges?
Here are 3 solutions, with their pros and cons.
#1. Supercharge your CRM
The first option is to invest in your existing CRM so it becomes genuinely useful to CSMs:
- Give the whole company access: Sales, CSMs, Support, Finance and so on.
- Bring in as much information as possible: most companies lack data. For example, they don't know whether customers log in to the platform, or how often. Try to bring in a few aggregates on usage KPIs.
- Repurpose the sales pipeline features: use a Kanban board to show customer lifecycle stages, such as onboarding, adoption and run.
- Bring ticketing into the CRM: the idea is to centralise everything in one tool. For example, use HubSpot's ticketing instead of a dedicated tool.
- Build CS-specific dashboards: create a report on at-risk customers, or a view of upcoming renewals.
Pros
- Already in place and approved: the CEO knows what the CRM costs and it's already in the budget. From a CS point of view, it's easier to get an upgrade on an existing product than to ask for a new tool.
- Shared with other departments: the whole company works from the same tool, with the same information.
- Fewer data sync problems: since everything is in one place, customers have the same IDs, which makes set-up easier.
- Automation options: some actions can be automated. HubSpot, for example, lets you create workflows and sequences.
- Little reliance on the tech team: there's only one tool, so no integration is needed.
Cons
- No usage data: with a CRM, at best you can bring in aggregates such as the last login date. You'll never get the detail by feature and by user.
- Activation limited to the data available: you can set up alerts, but only on the data held in the CRM.
- Requires Ops or integrators: CRMs aren't always easy to configure for CS use, and building reports can be complicated.
- All-or-nothing automation: either you automate or you don't. There's no middle ground.
- Hard to calculate a health score: a Customer Success Platform will do it far better and more simply.
- Can be very expensive: you'll need to upgrade and/or add licences.
#2. Build your own tools
Another option is to build on your back office or admin interface. That means:
- Enriching the data available in your product's admin: getting as much information on customers as possible.
- Building a global dashboard to avoid "log-as": the CSM asks for a dashboard showing all their customers and their KPIs.
- Making the KPIs the business needs available in the admin or through BI: you get indicators specific to your business, either in the back office or in a BI tool such as Tableau or Qlik.
- Setting up simple alerts in Slack or similar: you stay informed through Slack or email, without fuss.
Pros
- Direct access to usage data: it's your own data, so it's easy to surface on an internal dashboard.
- Fully custom solutions and dashboards: you know they match your needs in terms of business KPIs.
- No direct costs: your developers build everything, so there's no cash outlay.
- Independence and know-how: you don't depend on anyone, and you build up expertise in-house.
Cons
- Limited to the data in your back office: you can't centralise your conversations and emails, store your meeting notes, track project progress and so on.
- Poor visualisation: let's be honest, admin interfaces rarely have a great UI!
- No activation capabilities: no workflows and no email sending.
- Reliance on the tech team for any future changes.
#3. Adopt a Customer Success Platform
Don't want to build your own tools or bend your existing CRM out of shape? Roll out a Customer Success Platform such as Skalin.
These off-the-shelf solutions pull together data from a mixed tool stack into one single tool. Bear in mind that the aim isn't to get rid of the surrounding tools, but to make sure information flows properly between them.
In practice, you can:
- Bring the data from your internal tools together in a 360° view
- Retire duplicate tools, such as project management tools
- Set up a health score easily
- Trigger relevant alerts and actions through playbooks
Pros
- All customer data in one place: interactions, usage data, support information and NPS on a single dashboard for each customer.
- Access to detailed usage data: you get a granular view, by feature and by individual.
- Extensive automation capabilities: you can trigger very fine-grained scenarios.
- Adjustable level of automation: you can add manual steps to your automations so the CSM stays in control.
- No Ops team needed (for Skalin): CSMs manage the tool themselves.
- Little reliance on the tech team: set-up is quick and needs few technical resources.
- A "best-in-class" approach: you get the best ticketing tool, CRM and CS platform, rather than one tool that does everything averagely.
Cons
- A new budget line: 75% of companies don't have a CS platform. For them, it means opening a new budget line.
- You need to convince leadership: to get the budget approved, you have to prove the ROI, for example by highlighting the impact on reducing churn or productivity gains.
- Data structuring: you'll need to tidy up customer IDs so the platform can recognise them across different systems.
- Less custom than a home-grown solution: most of the time, it will meet 98% of your needs but, by definition, it will be less flexible than a tool built to measure.
- The tool doesn't create the processes: adopting a tool won't solve all your problems. You'll first need to lay the foundations before looking to industrialise.
Proof that a Customer Success Platform makes a difference: our study shows higher satisfaction among companies that have one (a score of +25, against -54 for the others).
📌 If you'd like to see Skalin in action and what it can do for your CS team, book a personalised demo!
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