A matter of loyalty!
A friend just asked on LinkedIn what causes you as a customer to renew the service. It could be Netflix, or using the same CPA next year, or renewing your Amazon Prime service.
As I responded, I must flip the question to answer it.
Renewal isn't the question for me, leaving is.
You see, my top personal value is LOYALTY. This reflects in my consumption of products and services in business too, since my pro life is - well - part of my life.
So when I choose a vendor I'll stay for a long time, and it up to them to lose my business, which they can do in one of three ways:
If you break my trust, you’ll lose me. Think about the Wells Fargo fiasco. ‘nough said.
If your product stop working, I have alternatives in the marketplace (welcome to the 21st century!).
If your product or services causes me a problem.
Here’s an example for #3: after years of using TimeTrade to send people my calendar links, I switched to AcuityScheduling. Why? Because TimeTrade missed a useful and very popular feature I needed.
As a Customer Success professional, you gotta ask, how did that happen?
Was I looking for a strange feature that no-one else wanted? Nope.
Was I so forward looking that I was ahead of the market? Not at all!
A strategic #CustomerSuccess discussion with their client-base would have allowed TimeTrade to include the needed feature in the product a long time before it became a problem for me.
I used to have these client chats constantly when I was a product manager. I consider it loyalty on the vendor’s part.
We MUST be loyal to our clients, not just expect the reverse.
I believe a major part of Customer Success is to be close enough with our clients so we can anticipate their future needs. It is our job to say “Hey, I’d love to hear where you are taking your company so we can produce new features that will be useful to you when you get there!”.
Don’t you?