Does this sound familiar?
A customer calls or sends an email and asks the Customer Success Manager for help with something simple, like resetting a password. You’ve received that email before, right? And to be nice, we go ahead and help them with it. But should we?
Customers– and companies– confuse Customer Support and Customer Success all the time. Why is that?
The question is simple. The answer is complex.
A Brief History of Customer Success
The Customer Success profession is still relatively new in the business landscape. It was first introduced ~25 years ago and has more recently become the norm for SaaS companies using subscription models.
When established companies create Customer Success teams, they often transition an existing team into the new role. This requires retraining and education of the team, the company, and the customer and it’s easy to miss a step or a person, or not fully identify the difference between the teams.
A Brief History of Customer Support
Early-stage startups often set up their Customer Support team just after the first sale is made. Often the team starts as a catch-all, helping the customer with everything from onboarding to technical help long after launch.
Where the Confusion Lies
As the startup and customer base grows, and the company introduces specialized team member roles for Onboarding, Customer Success, and Customer Support teams, this requires retraining and education of the team, the company, and the customer. These teams often evolve over time, so the definitions and changes aren’t always communicated.
Basically, if a company and the individuals within it do not define and reinforce the difference between Customer Support and Customer Success, it’s natural that the customer will also be confused!
What’s the harm in that?
Let’s imagine if the customer called the CEO every time they wanted to reset a password. That sounds ridiculous, right? The CEO would never get any work done.
Similarly, every time a CSM stops to do a Customer Support activity it takes away time from strategically helping the customer meet their success objectives. Furthermore, when the CSM takes the work away from the Customer Support team, it prevents the Support team from correctly tracking the issues and questions that customers have so that they can build more effective Support tools and provide the usability insights to Product that they need.
Oh. Maybe it’s not so harmless after all.
The Real Differences Between Customer Support & Customer Success
Now that we’ve established that there’s confusion between Customer Support and Customer Success, and it’s not constructive to let the confusion continue, let’s do something about it. We’ll start with some simple definitions.
- Customer Support provides help to customers who have trouble with a company’s products or services.
- Customer Success ensures customers achieve their desired outcomes while using your product or service. The by-product of the customer achieving their success outcomes is that the company typically also reduces customer churn and increases up-sell opportunities and renewals.
Another simple definition:
- Customer Support = Reactive
- Customer Success = Proactive
I don’t love that definition so much.
Most people would agree that Customer Success needs to be proactive and strategic to ensure that the customer reaches their success outcomes. I argue that a Customer Support team that follows best practices is also proactive and strategic.
Responsibilities of Customer Support
A Customer Support team following best practices regularly analyzes not just their response and resolution times, but the types of issues, when they occur, and where. The team proactively creates guides, videos, and articles to share in-app, via chat, and email to meet the needs of their customers as the issue or question occurs. The customer should feel like their needs were anticipated.
This also frees up the Customer Support team to handle more complex customer issues and troubleshoot with Product & Engineering to resolve and prevent these complex issues from reoccurring. A chart analyzing Customer Support team metrics would ideally show average response times going down, and resolution times going up and down.
You may ask “Why wouldn’t both charts show a downward trend?”
If the Support team has proactively created tools to answer simple questions, and it’s primarily complex customer issues that are handled by the Support team, ideally those are new and different complex issues that come up over time. For each complex issue, the Support team works with the Product and Engineering teams to address not just the single issue/ event, but the Support team also investigates underlying issues proactively so that future customers do not bring up the same complex issue again and again.
Alternatively, if the complex issue is not going to be resolved, the Customer Support team identifies when the issue arises and for which part of the customer base, and then can proactively build education tools and guides in-app or to have ready for customers when they reach out. Either way, the resolution time is decreased for the complex customer issue while new complex issues pop up as product development and new releases create new issues.
While the Customer Support team ensures that customer needs are proactively addressed, the Customer Success team that is following best practices is working with entirely different customer objectives.
Responsibilities of Customer Success
The Customer Success team is responsible for the Customer achieving their desired outcomes while using your product or services. To do that, the Success team needs to understand their customer base and identify the Segments that have similar goals.
The key is that–because these Customer Segments have different goals–they have distinct Customer Journeys. These distinct Customer Journeys will have different metrics for successful behaviors, and the Segment’s Customer Health score reflects these different behaviors and metrics.
The Customer Success team that follows best practices utilizes data to analyze customer behavior along with automated scalable products to manage the customer relationship and ensure their success.
For high touch teams, these tools inform the CSM when to reach out as well as opportunities for upselling. For lower touch teams, these tools help the CS team to plan webinars, office hour topics, and upselling campaigns that meet the needs of their customer segments.
Conclusion
Now, reading these descriptions, side-by-side, do you think you’ll confuse Customer Support and Customer Success in the future? Can you see what you’re missing out on when you don’t allow each team to develop their programs to meet your customers needs?
Customer Support and Customer Success are each unique teams serving the customer. Together, they help your customer in different, yet absolutely necessary and complimentary ways.
Don’t be shy.
Connect with Jan on LinkedIn here.
Jan Young is a Senior Consultant for The Success League, a Board Member for Gain Grow Retain, a Top 50 CS Influencer, a Top 50 Women Leaders in CS and Top 100 Customer Success Strategist.
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Bonus Tips for Differentiating Customer Support and Customer Success
Understanding the differences between Customer Support and Customer Success is crucial for any organization aiming to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. Here are some additional tips and strategies to help further delineate these roles and optimize their functions within your company.
1. Develop Clear Role Definitions
- Customer Support: Define their role explicitly around troubleshooting, problem-solving, and providing immediate assistance for product or service issues. Their focus should be on quick response times, efficient resolution, and creating resources to address common issues.
- Customer Success: Outline their role to include proactive engagement, strategic guidance, and ensuring customers achieve their desired outcomes with your product. This includes identifying opportunities for growth, upselling, and driving product adoption.
2. Create Separate Onboarding Programs
- Customer Support Onboarding: Train support teams on the technical aspects of your product, effective communication skills, and how to use support tools and software. Emphasize the importance of empathy and patience in handling customer issues.
- Customer Success Onboarding: Equip success teams with knowledge about customer journey mapping, data analysis, and relationship management. Focus on teaching them how to identify customer goals and tailor their approach to different customer segments.
3. Implement Specialized Training
- Regularly update training programs to reflect new product features, emerging customer needs, and industry best practices. Encourage both teams to understand each other’s roles to foster collaboration and mutual respect.
4. Use Technology to Enhance Efficiency
- Customer Support: Invest in robust help desk software that includes ticketing systems, live chat, and knowledge bases. Automation tools can handle repetitive tasks and free up support agents to focus on more complex issues.
- Customer Success: Utilize customer success platforms that provide insights into customer behavior, health scores, and usage patterns. These tools help success managers identify at-risk customers and opportunities for upselling.
5. Set Distinct KPIs and Metrics
- Customer Support KPIs: Track metrics such as first response time, average resolution time, customer satisfaction scores, and the volume of support tickets. Regularly review these metrics to identify areas for improvement.
- Customer Success KPIs: Focus on metrics like customer health scores, net promoter scores (NPS), customer retention rates, and expansion revenue. These metrics should guide your success team’s strategies and interventions.
6. Foster Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Encourage regular meetings between support and success teams to share insights, discuss common challenges, and align on customer strategies. This collaboration helps ensure a unified approach to customer satisfaction and retention.
7. Develop Comprehensive Knowledge Bases
- Customer Support Knowledge Base: Create a repository of FAQs, troubleshooting guides, and instructional videos. Ensure it is easily accessible and continuously updated with new information.
- Customer Success Knowledge Base: Develop resources that focus on best practices, case studies, and success stories. These materials can help customers maximize the value they get from your product.
8. Prioritize Feedback Loops
- Customer Support Feedback: Implement a system for collecting feedback after each support interaction. Use this feedback to improve support processes, identify training needs, and enhance the overall customer experience.
- Customer Success Feedback: Regularly survey customers to gather insights on their goals, challenges, and satisfaction levels. Use this data to refine your success strategies and demonstrate your commitment to their success.
9. Leverage Customer Segmentation
- Segment your customer base to tailor support and success strategies to different needs and behaviors. For example, high-value customers may require more personalized success plans, while smaller accounts benefit from automated support solutions.
10. Promote a Culture of Continuous Improvement
- Encourage both teams to continuously seek ways to improve their processes and outcomes. This could include regular training sessions, industry conferences, and certifications to stay current with best practices and innovations.
11. Encourage Proactive Engagement
- Customer Support: While their role is primarily reactive, encourage support agents to identify and address potential issues before they escalate. This could include proactive system checks and reaching out to customers who have encountered similar problems in the past.
- Customer Success: Implement regular check-ins with customers to discuss their progress and any upcoming needs. Use data-driven insights to predict and prevent potential churn risks.
12. Tailor Communication Strategies
- Customer Support Communication: Focus on clarity, empathy, and efficiency. Ensure that support agents provide clear instructions and follow up to ensure issues are fully resolved.
- Customer Success Communication: Build deeper relationships through personalized interactions. Success managers should understand the customer’s business goals and communicate how your product can help achieve them.
13. Utilize Customer Data Effectively
- Both teams should have access to comprehensive customer data to inform their strategies. Ensure that data is shared seamlessly across teams to provide a cohesive customer experience.
14. Celebrate Successes and Learn from Failures
- Recognize and reward both support and success teams for their achievements. Celebrate when a customer reaches a milestone or when support resolves a particularly challenging issue. Equally, analyze and learn from any failures to prevent recurrence.
15. Invest in Professional Development
- Provide opportunities for both teams to grow their skills and advance their careers. This could include attending industry events, pursuing relevant certifications, and participating in mentorship programs.
Conclusion
By clearly defining and differentiating the roles of Customer Support and Customer Success, your organization can ensure that each team operates at its highest potential. This distinction not only helps in meeting customer needs more effectively but also contributes to the overall growth and success of your company. Implementing these tips will create a more efficient, proactive, and customer-centric organization.
