Escape Reactive Doom: Map Customer Journeys
By Michael Su
Every Customer Success leader knows the importance of having a proper Customer Journey map. There are many reasons including calculating your customer-to-CSM ratio for staffing purposes and measuring the output of a particular touchpoint. CS leaders also want and expect their CSMs to proactively serve their customers rather than be in reactive mode. What’s not always obvious is that customers will become doomed to a reactive experience without a proper Customer Journey map.
I’ll first explain what I mean by “proper” Customer Journey map. This is a detailed map covering all customer facing touchpoints that are delivered by anyone from your company. This will include folks from sales, sales engineering, onboarding, support, and of course customer success. The touchpoints are granular items such as handoff meetings, welcome emails, executive business reviews, any renewal conversations, etc. Ideally each touchpoint will have a playbook associated with it describing exactly how to deliver the touchpoint. With all your customers following a detailed Customer Journey, your CSMs will know exactly what to do and when. Life becomes easier for your CSMs!
Without a map to follow, you leave your CSMs to use their best judgment to serve their entire book of business. Of course you trust your CSMs’ ability to make the right decisions. This might be ok assuming you’re fully staffed and none of your CSMs are overworked. But let’s face it, that’s none of us. How will your CSMs prioritize and decide what touchpoints to deliver and which ones to skip or automate? It becomes very easy for a CSM to fall into reactive mode and handle urgent matters as they come. Sound familiar? After all, everyone in customer success is wired to want to help people and will struggle to say no to any request. By designing a proper Customer Journey map, your CSMs will be empowered to push back reactive requests that may not fall under their responsibilities to begin with. They will also be accountable for delivering everything on the map according to a set timeline. I talk more about that topic in a past article titled “Customer Success is a selfish game: Here's How to play.” Check it out!
The first step to designing a Customer Journey map is to make sure you have correct Customer Segmentation. The reason for this is that each segment will have its own unique journey. This will ensure your enterprise customers will have enough touchpoints to deliver the experience they need to fully adopt your solution and receive their return on investment. On the opposite end of the spectrum, this will ensure your low touch or digital touch segment customers will still adopt and see value from your solution with fewer and only enough touchpoints. By having a unique customer journey per segment, you allow your CSMs to essentially go on autopilot and let the journey take the wheel.
Customer Journey maps eliminate any guesswork for your CSMs. In a past role as a CSM, I remember times when I was assigned my book of business and list of customers to take care of. Oftentimes I would wonder if I should reach out to customer ABC or follow up on an upcoming renewal for XYZ. I was winging it and somehow made it through, but I probably wasted a lot of time along the way and possibly left out some key factors. Thinking back, I wish I had a defined map I could trust to simply tell me what to do for each of my customers. Equally important, it would have helped me determine what NOT to do. As I built strong relationships with my customers, some of them reached out to me directly for just about everything. This would include things outside of my realm of responsibilities like support tickets or questions about their sales contracts. I felt obligated to help them, however I did not need to personally handle every request or question that came my way. I know I could have redirected them through the proper channels and let support or their account executive handle their questions. But I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty about handing it off to someone else. With a Customer Journey map that forced me to stay the course, I would have felt more empowered to push back on some of the requests that came my way without feeling guilty because I trusted I was doing the right thing.
Without a Customer Journey map, you also enable your customers to push your CSMs to become reactive. And it’s not the customers’ fault. As a customer, if I found someone at a vendor who consistently and quickly answered all my questions and did everything I asked for, I would lean into it too. Why wouldn’t I? I wouldn’t even feel bad about it. I would think that I was following the correct process since no one ever stopped me or pointed me in another direction. Now if the CSM likely reminded me of the support portal or my other key contacts, I would be happy to follow procedures without being upset with the vendor. At the end of the day, I would end up having a better customer experience because my CSM will be able to carry out the proactive touchpoints that matter.
The Success League is a customer success consulting firm that offers a CS Leadership certification program which includes a class on Mapping Customer Journeys. Please visit TheSuccessLeague.io for more information on these and our other offerings.
Michael Su - Michael is a Customer Success innovator with over 15 years of working experience. While leading the team, he has designed, built, and successfully implemented Customer Success departments at various companies spanning from early stage tech start ups to publicly traded enterprises. He is passionate about improving processes and streamlining workflows. As a leader he loves working with people to help nurture and grow their professional careers. When Michael is not helping companies fight churn, he enjoys spending time with his wife, 3 kids, 2 turtles, and 1 dog.
