When Is The Right Time To Introduce Customer Success?

Customer Success is a differentiator for many organisations. Introducing CS to the customer at the right time is a powerful continuation of the work done in the Sales cycle.

If you take a look on LinkedIn at your competitors, not every company that operates in your market or industry will have a fully built out Customer Success team, or even have Customer Success Managers at all.

For that reason you shouldn’t take the CSM role for granted and, instead, actively use it as an opportunity to identify key relationships with your customers. The earlier the CSM is able to capture from the customer, or internal account manager, why the customer is buying your solution, the faster they will be able to establish a strategic success plan for the short and medium term.

There are 3 key moments along the customer journey where it makes sense to make the introduction; Pre-Sale, Point of Sale, Implementation or Go-Live.

None are wrong, but the best moment to make an introduction will depend on the commercial value of the customer (i.e. where they fit into your segmentation model) and what responsibilities the Customer Success Manager has in scope for their role.

The diagram below plots the ideal time for introduction based on the value of the customer on the Y-axis (typically measured in $ ARR) and time, or phase of the customer journey, measured on the X-axis. The shaded overlay represents the segmentation model, indicating the high touch segment covering the higher value customers and a low touch or tech touch segment for low value customers.

💰Introduce the CSM Pre-Sale

In high value Sales opportunities you generally have good visibility in advance to know how and when the deal is going to close. This gives you a great opportunity to introduce the concept of Customer Success to the customer, and start to lay the foundations of understanding which will later develop later into recognising the value you offer them with the CSM role.

At a company I worked at previously, myself, or a Senior Customer Success Manager, would be brought into the Sales cycle towards the end, where there was an 80% chance or higher of closing, to position what their post-sale experience would look like. Professional Services would have their opportunity to discuss implementation, scoping and sizing the appropriate services, and Customer Success would be given an opportunity to talk about how we would help the customer achieve their desired outcomes, over the long term.

Our discussion would be accompanied by a ‘pitch deck’ where we would talk about Customer Success as a differentiated and crucial accompaniment as part of the account team. Below are some excerpts of the slides I created, using Lincoln Murphy’s popular analogy of how Customer Success Managers are like Personal Trainers 💪

Examples of content from a Customer Success pitch deck

The benefit of introducing the CSM, to high value customers in pre-sales, is you start to build the relationship early. If that introduction is also accompanied by the work of identifying and developing success criteria, metrics, outcomes and measures, then you’re off to a very strong start. This would essentially become what is known as the Success Plan, mutually formed and agreed between the customer and yourself. It also facilitates a more seamless ‘warm hand-off’ once the deal closes, so that it’s not a stark ‘big bang’ relationship cutover from the Sales person to the Customer Success Manager.

From a customer experience perspective, the last thing you want is to be nurtured and courted only to be dropped the moment the commercial transaction is closed. Think of the scenario like open heart surgery on the wallet. The days after surgery, Customer Success is the intensive care and post-op recovery. If you met your post-op recovery specialist before the surgery, wouldn’t you feel much more confident about your recovery and future health?

🤝 Introduce the CSM Post-Sale

As part of your medium touch tier you should endeavour to introduce the CSM at a natural point, ideally as close to the point of sale as possible. Depending on the volume of medium touch customers you acquire, it might be possible to introduce CS in the pre-sale, however the most common time to introduce the team is post-sale.

It’s a good idea to establish an internal ‘SLA’, or agreement, between Sales and Customer Success where you can ensure an internal debrief and handover takes place within 48 hours of the deal closing, and an introduction call with the customer within 5 days of the deal closing. If it is measured and tracked, it can be improved over time. Establishing this discipline at such a crucial point of the relationship, where so often the ball is dropped, will create an impactful experience at a key point on the customer journey.

The point of sale often experiences an interesting gear shift. Up until that point, the conversation has been very strategic. Following the agreement, it quickly moves into tactics and execution. The introduction of the CSM should include a mix of both strategy and tactics, but too far skewed towards tactics and execution and it will be difficult to move back to strategy.

You need to be conscious of the potential for relationship fatigue. After the sale is agreed, the number of touch points a customer might have will likely increase beyond those which have already existed; sales person, account manager, sales engineer, probably the odd manager or two, Professional Services, Support, Training… Customer Success. In my experience, this was always the number 1 point of frustration for any new customer… “who are all these people I’m talking too? Who should I speak to when…?”. This is a great opportunity to acknowledge the frustration and set the right expectation of “here’s who will be around your account and why”. The second most common customer frustration was… “I’ve already told the Salesperson all of this [why they’re buying, metrics, pains], can’t you go and ask them?”

Consider also establishing some internal stage gating into your handover process, such that Sales needs to document key information, about the customer, in the CRM before a deal is closed or as part of the next steps. This ensures there is a higher chance of knowledge retention.

Whoever the Sales person introduces next, after the sale, will naturally become the customers next go-to person, so think very hard about who you introduce and when. If your Customer Success Managers not only manage the relationship, but also take care of the implementation and user training, then the frustrations mentioned previously will likely not be felt as much.

✅ Introduce the CSM Post-Go Live

In a high or medium touch model, waiting until after the implementation is complete is quite possibly the worst time to wait to introduce the CSM. For a customer of such high value or worth to you, why would you ever want to wait that long.

In a low touch model, it’s not uncommon, however, to introduce the CSM later in the journey. That’s because the customer is unlikely to get much time with the CSM as it is, due to the economics of your segmentation model. Your low touch model will still warrant a relationship and CS point of contact, but it is likely to be on a reactive or infrequent (perhaps quarterly) basis. Utilising other forms of technology, like end user surveys or in-product capture of information, can be a good way to transfer the knowledge at scale from Sales to CS.

A Customer Success Manager introduced to a customer is when the relationship is complemented or assisted by a tech touch engagement, where the interactions are primarily lead or facilitated by technology. Think about the screen real estate of where the customer already is. Most software solutions have an Account, Admin or Settings page that the customer utilises for setup. If you can integrate that page with your CRM, and dynamically serve up the name and contact details of their CSM and/or Account Manager, that reduces the need to maintain a relationship, and puts the information in their hands.

Call to Action

👉 Map out, even if it’s a rough note, of who all of the people are that interact with your customer and at what points they are introduced for the first time. Use this to identify when the most impactful and valuable time would be for a CSM introduction.

👉 Speak to your Sales counterpart and, either formally or informally, agree how, when, and what information will be handed over from Sales to CS, in relation to the acquisition of a new customer. This handover is the single biggest knowledge leakage in the customer journey.

👉 If you had 15 minutes to pitch to a potential customer in 6 slides or less what Customer Success was and what value they would bring to the customer, what would you say? What would you like them to take away? Plan it out and try putting a minimalist pitch deck together.