How do you deliver value throughout the customer journey?

'What's your role as a CSM? To bring value to my customers!' That answer has become such a reflex that we sometimes lose sight of what it actually means! In this article, Alix Fenoll-Wattinne (CS consultant) explains what a value proposition is and how to align your teams around it.

Why does customer value matter so much?

If you take a step back, value is the vision a leader once had when deciding to launch a product. They have an idea in mind, and it becomes the mission for an entire company.

Then, broadly speaking, Tech and Product teams think about the value they'll deliver to customers. A Sales team makes a promise to a customer and talks about value. After that, the CS team's role is to demonstrate the value that was promised. So what ultimately connects all these teams is the idea of a value proposition.

In 2024, budgets were a hot topic for many companies. In that tense climate, CS teams had conversations with customers saying: 'We're not sure about your solution, we can't really see the value.' As a result, the notion of value became paramount.

And I notice that it sometimes becomes the CSMs' problem alone, when in reality it's the whole company's job, because it's the reason the product is sold and built in the first place. So the first question is whether everyone in the company is aligned on the value proposition.

What is a value proposition?

A value proposition is a clear, precise statement of the benefits of a solution that addresses a problem or need.

Take the example of Qonto, the French business banking platform: 'A 100% online financial management solution for businesses, accessible in a few clicks to save you time, and integrated with all your tools to simplify your accounting.'

To build one, it needs to answer three questions:

What problem do we solve?
What transformation do we bring?
Why are we unique compared with the competition?

Going back to Qonto's definition, they're unique because they're 100% online. The big problem they solve is saving time, because businesses don't want to waste time on admin. And the transformation is that it clearly makes life simpler, because everything is online, seamless, integrated and user-friendly.

Why is it crucial to align every team around this value?

Try asking Marketing, Product and your CEO how they see the value proposition. You'll probably get 3 different definitions!

You may realise you're not necessarily all solving the same problems. If you're not aligned on the problem you solve for a customer, it's very hard to agree on how to track and measure it.

In my view, it isn't solely the CS team's responsibility: the whole company needs to agree on which success indicators to use and how to measure them. It's a company-wide issue that should make everyone accountable and engaged.

It's very important for a Sales team to see which indicators it can use to sell its product. The same goes for a Marketing team launching a campaign.

I'd also point out that value starts with the SDR's first call. When they talk about the solution, they'll inevitably show benefits and therefore talk about value, try to uncover a problem and respond to it. In short, value is expressed and demonstrated throughout the customer journey, and it's important to keep the same promise.

How do you achieve this alignment internally?

I recommend a 3-step process:

Run a workshop: co-create the value proposition together and work on a definition. Then develop success indicators and the right ways to measure them.
Provide very clear documentation that's accessible internally and externally: be very clear about the value proposition presented to the customer.
Keep the feedback flowing: the value proposition evolves. For example, I worked at Doctolib. It started out as online appointment booking, but the product has evolved enormously since then and has become a complete healthcare software suite for doctors. The takeaway: challenge it regularly to check it still matches the product and that everyone is still aligned.

How do you bring value to the customer if your solution is a nice-to-have?

Product and CS teams are sometimes misaligned because Product considers its app a genuine must-have in the customer's ecosystem. They struggle to understand how a customer could tell a CSM they no longer need it, that they don't see enough value in it and that the solution is a nice-to-have.

In other words, the product improves the team's productivity, but it isn't essential to the company's survival. Example: a social media management tool. A must-have, on the other hand, is something like a CRM: everyone uses it internally and key processes depend on it.

Ask yourselves internally whether you're a nice-to-have or a must-have. If you're a nice-to-have, that's fine, but you need to be aware of it.

What next? You need to understand your customer and focus on their problem. Identify why they decided to use your solution now, the problem it solves for them, and their situation before and after.

You should also try to integrate as much as possible into their ecosystem. If I'm integrated with their whole tool stack, I start to become a bit stickier, even as a nice-to-have.

How do you create measurable value for every type of solution?

To start with, I recommend running the workshop as a team. It doesn't have to be just the managers of each team. I encourage individual contributors from each team to take part as well. Everyone needs very clear objectives. You want to come out with a definition, success indicators and a way of measuring them.

Bear in mind that you shouldn't settle for a definition and then leave the CS team to come up with indicators and build a reporting dashboard on its own. Involve the Product, Tech and Operations teams, among others.

The reason: these indicators are essential not only for the CS team, but also for Product to gather customer feedback, for a Sales team to sell its product and for a Marketing team to run a campaign.

When it comes to measurement, involve different teams:

Sales: collecting data upfront in the CRM is very important if you want to show the before and after. It's useful when a customer tells you that you're not exactly essential to the company's survival. The CS team should also play its part in collecting this information.
Product: I worked on an assignment with a Product team that took the indicators a step further. They defined 'strategic actions'. These are tasks the customer carries out in a solution that show they're engaged and that the app is part of their daily routine. The idea is to target specific actions that signal engagement.

Can you give an example?

Let's take Notion. Here's what it could look like:

Standard indicators

Number of logins per day or month
Average time spent per user
Number of pages created per period
Average number of comments per page
Average number of mentions per page
Tool integrations (Slack, Google Workspace)

Strategic actions

Creating a central page for projects
Number of shared workspaces created
Number of pages shared across teams or externally
Number of templates used
How often shared pages are edited or updated
Task completion rate
Average time to close a task

In practice, the Product team sat down with the CS team. They identified a number of very good customers, those who are broadly willing to give testimonials. In other words, advocate customers. Then they looked at what those customers had done compared with what the others hadn't. That way, they were able to identify the patterns that determine whether or not a customer becomes engaged with the solution they're using.

And they have a tool that flags when a customer hasn't taken one of these actions in the first few months. That's the red zone. Because as we know, the first 3 months are critical.

How does the value proposition work with a varied customer base and different use cases?

I suggest something very simple:

Segment your customers by type and use case
Define success indicators for each customer category
Track both quantitative and qualitative indicators: be intentional and use the same methodology for all customers, even low-touch or freemium ones.

Take HubSpot, for example, which has different categories of customer:

SMB customers (free): they use contact management, can enter all their contacts and run a few email campaigns.
Mid-market customers: they use the CRM and the email automation features.
Large enterprise accounts: Sales Hub, Marketing Hub and CRM.

The use cases differ, but the value proposition stays the same: 'An integrated platform aligning Marketing, Sales and Customer Service to attract, engage and retain customers.'

However, the success indicators and how they're measured will differ:

SMB customers: track the number of leads and campaigns, and the time spent managing campaigns with HubSpot versus without it.
Mid-market: go a bit further. You can track conversion rate, sales cycle length, marketing campaign ROI and so on.
Large enterprise accounts: look at all the mid-market indicators, plus time spent on customer management, customer satisfaction and tool integration.

Which tools can you use to track these indicators?

Plenty of companies start building dashboards in Excel or Notion to track actions. That doesn't scale well, and setting up an automated dashboard often isn't as time-consuming as people think. On these topics, I think it pays to move as early as possible. You'll have to do it at some point.

When it comes to choosing a tool, you have 2 options:

Software that tracks customer actions, such as product analytics tools like Mixpanel and Pendo. They work very well, but don't combine product data with customer data.
A Customer Success Platform: this lets you do just that. You can then build a workflow that answers the question: 'I've got a signal, how do I act proactively with my customers?'

The most important thing at the start is to begin with a blank page. Ask yourself: 'If I had the ideal tool, what criteria would it need to meet?' List your criteria, and then you can look at which solution fits.

Also watch out for how complex solutions are. Some are very easy to use and let you make changes without help from a Tech team. I think that's important, because otherwise it will delay rolling out your tool.

What are the key moments for delivering customer value?

You can bring value to the customer at any moment, in every interaction. Even an email is a chance to talk about value.

But onboarding is key. Here are some tips that work just as well with smaller customers you manage more digitally as with larger accounts that need one-hour training sessions by video call.

Have a clear roadmap: say 'We're going to spend 30 minutes to an hour together: the goal is that by the end of the training, you can do this and that.'
Highlight quick wins: from the very first training session, balance the strategic, important and complex elements with easier things that will have an immediate 'wow' effect. They'll want to use the platform straight after the call or the video. For low-touch customers, you can create videos and sequence them, working with Product.
Assess progress: you can often leave the customer with the video, but for them it's all new. It's hard to know whether they've understood how to use certain features. Send a short quiz to see whether they can use the platform independently.
Give them ownership: the customer will need to learn the platform and decide who internally will train everyone else. To get this across, highlight the role of the person driving the project: 'This was a great idea, and it's been really well received internally. I'll do everything I can to make sure you're fully trained on the platform and can get the most out of it.'

Finally, for both low-touch and high-touch customers, make sure you:

Confirm the customer's objectives: Sales will already have passed these on, but you need to reconfirm why they want to use the platform. This can be through questions sent by email or asked live during the training.
Get participants involved: sometimes you need the customer to do things themselves during the training, because it's important they remember where the strategic features are. You can show them once, then say: 'Would you mind going into that section to look at this report?' Gamification is also a good idea: for low-touch customers, you can send games before or after the video, or award badges as they progress.
Check usage: run a game or a short end-of-session quiz. Later on, make another video or organise another session to assess progress.