How Leading Companies Achieve Long-Term Loyalty and Advocacy

Turning customers into fans - This is the dream of every customer success team.

But more often, it remains a dream. Why? Most companies only stick to customer service.

However, brands with high customer lifetime value have robust customer success strategies that establish long-term, authentic relationships.

In this guide, I'll reveal top companies' strategies to retain and expand customer usage and turn them into advocates using customer experience.

Let’s start with the elephant in the room - What is the correlation between customer success and customer support?

With customer support, you’re trying to solve real-time challenges a customer faces when using your product/service.

For example, suppose you are selling video editing software, and a customer faces an issue with an editing feature. They will contact your chat support to resolve the problem.

As the name hints, customer success is about making the customer successful and helping them achieve the desired results when using your product.

Let’s continue with our video editing software example. Your aim in customer success is to guarantee a seamless experience for your customers throughout their tool usage.

Once a customer purchases the software, you offer personalized onboarding sessions to guide them through the setup process.

During these sessions, your team effectively demonstrates how to use various software features, tailoring the training to the customer's business needs.

Additionally, you provide ongoing support through a dedicated customer success manager who regularly checks in with the customer to address any questions or concerns. This proactive approach helps the customer make the most out of the software, increasing their efficiency in sales processes and maximizing their return on investment.

In other words, as Diana De Jesus, the founder of The Customer Success Project, customer success is like marriage.

The Role of Customer Success in Business Growth

According to Jason Lemkin, customer success is where 90% of the revenue is. Here’s an analogy.

Assume you have a customer who is going on a cross-country road trip. They can reach their destination if they have a car and a map.

Applying customer success to this analogy would be like adding a co-driver to the customer. The work of the co-driver is to read the map, tell the driver where the gas station is, where they need to stop to take a nap or a snack, and warn them of detours along the way.

That’s what customer success does to business growth. If the customer does it alone, there’s a risk of missing detours meaning they might reach their destination late. Customer success helps them get there quicker and more efficiently.

Key Metrics for Measuring Customer Success

Tracking customer success metrics gives you a better understanding of your customers. Here are 6 of the most critical customer success metrics.

• Customer Churn Rate: This metric indicates the percentage of customers who have stopped using your product or service within a specific time frame, typically monthly or annually. A high churn rate suggests customers are not finding value in your offering or are dissatisfied with the service.
• Customer Retention Rate: The opposite of the churn rate, the customer retention rate shows the percentage of customers who continue using your product or service over a specific period. A high retention rate indicates that customers are satisfied and find ongoing value in your offerings.
• Net Promoter Score (NPS): NPS measures customer loyalty and satisfaction by asking customers how likely they are to recommend your product or service to others on a scale from 0 to 10. It provides insights into customer sentiment and their perception of your brand.
• Customer Satisfaction (CSAT) Score: CSAT directly measures customer satisfaction after specific interactions or events. Customers are asked to rate their experience on a scale, usually from 1 to 5 or from 1 to 10. Tracking CSAT scores helps you gauge how well you're meeting customer expectations.
• Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): CLV represents the total revenue a customer generates over the entire duration of their relationship with your company. It factors in not only the initial acquisition cost but also the potential revenue from renewals and upsells. A higher CLV implies stronger customer loyalty and success.
• Time to Value (TTV): TTV measures the time customers take to realize the value of your product or service after their initial purchase or signup. A shorter TTV indicates that your onboarding and customer success processes are effective in helping customers achieve their desired outcomes.

The customer success framework is a series of steps that encourages your customers to become brand advocates.

The framework rides on customer success, meaning every contact point with a customer is an opportunity to strengthen relationships.

Below are five steps for building a robust customer success framework.

Building Customer-Centric Cultures

When a new Apple product is announced, Apple customers often feel a mix of excitement, anticipation, and curiosity. Why?

Apple has built a reputation for innovation, sleek design, and cutting-edge technology, which creates a sense of anticipation for what the new product will offer. Customers eagerly look forward to experiencing the latest features and advancements that Apple is known for.

That’s an excellent example of building a culture around a customer.

However, more companies don't give customer-centric culture the attention it deserves. Data from CMO records shows that only 14% of marketers agree that customer centricity is the stamp of authenticity for their companies.

Conversely, companies with a transparent customer-centric culture have the most loyal employees. Here’s what survey monkey said,”

Creating a solid customer-centric culture is challenging, but with dedication and a reasonable budget, you can build one that enhances customer relationships.

Identifying and Segmenting Customer Needs

Customer segmentation is identifying and grouping customers with shared needs.

For instance, consider a scenario where you provide telecommunication software. In this situation, customers in a particular region could raise concerns about experiencing downtime and reliability issues.

Taking the initiative to address and segment this problem promptly creates a sense of affiliation between them and your company.

Segmenting customers with a common need allows you to understand your customers and better address them.

Why? People prefer individualized addressing over being treated as a group. A deeper exploration of unique details enables the delivery of more relevant information to customers.

Onboarding and Adoption Strategies

According to Wyzowl, 55% of people say they abandoned a product because they didn’t get much information on how to use it during the onboarding phase.

In your customer success framework, you should have robust systems that ensure your onboarding process is frictionless. This is because a negative experience at this stage might set a bad tone for the entire customer’s life cycle.

A few things to do include a frictionless sign-up process, personalization, collecting feedback through the journey, and adjusting accordingly.

The perfect medium is incorporating videos in the onboarding process. Videos are the best channels to guide customers and familiarize themselves with your tool’s features.

Proactive Customer Support and Communication

Imagine that your car breaks down in the middle of a freeway, you call your mechanic, but instead of coming, he sends a PDF version of your manual and asks you to sort the issue.

Gone are the days when customer support meant sending a manual and expecting the customer to fix any problem.

Customer support is going the extra mile. Proactive customer support identifies customer needs before they become aware of them and need to contact you for assistance.

For example, if you’re in an eCommerce company and anticipate a customer may experience a late delivery, you notice them in advance. The goal of a proactive customer is to make the first move to avoid any future qualms.

The best proactive customer support includes sending surveys to ask current customers about challenges they face with your product, creating a knowledge base for your product, and social listening to monitor what customers say about your company on social media.

Continuous Value Delivery and Upselling

Your relationship with customers will largely depend on the value of your customer service. Therefore, you must improve service delivery which bolsters trust and builds customer loyalty.

It’s only at that stage that you have the green light to upsell your service. According to Hubspot research, 88% of salespeople try to upsell services at the slightest opportunity. 49% said their secret weapon is understanding customers' goals and needs.

Let’s merge the two in an example.

Assume you’re selling screencast software to SMBs with a tiered pricing plan spanning three packages. Customers get additional features as they upgrade to the next plan.

Subsequently, you acquire a potential customer who selects the most economical choice. Over time, you guarantee that your service delivery remains exceptional, allowing the customer to fully experience the product's value.

As the customer's business expands, it takes a little while before they express interest in a branded frame for webcam recording and a customized video player. However, these features are only offered in the top-tier plan.

While they can switch to another provider that provides similar features at a lower cost, your representatives proactively contact them. As a result, the customer smoothly upgrades to the top-tier plan without hesitation.

That’s customer delivery and upselling done right.

This section looks at companies implementing robust customer success strategies to drive clients' droves to their businesses.

Clickfunnels: Unleashing Customer Success in SaaS

Image source

Clickfunnels is a software company that helps businesses design and build end-to-end sales funnels.

The founder Russell Brunson is an energetic and enthusiastic marketer who’s propelled Clickfunnels into a $360 million company. His secret? Building a solid base of customers who’ve turned out to be fans and brand advocates.

Here’s a look into what Clickfunnel's customer success strategy looks like.

Lots of Educational Content

Joining Clickfunnels is like going to university a second time; only this time, you get profitable when you implement what you learn.

Unlike other software companies that only teach you how to use their tool, Clickfunnels teaches you everything about marketing, business, and funnel building.

Whether you're seeking courses, books, webinars, YouTube videos, or live seminars, you’ll always get a resource that will give you business marketing and funnel-building knowledge.

Russell Brunson goes the extra mile by offering some of his books for free. Many of these resources frequently result in conversions, turning prospects into customers.

Turning Customers into Affiliates

Since Clickfunnels has built over 100,000 paying customers, they turn them into a massive “sales team.”

The secret? Offering a whopping 40% per month lifetime commissions. Considering that the software is a premium tool costing between $127 to $208, you can make some good commissions if you’re good at affiliate marketing.

They even offer a dream car contest to help affiliates pay for their dream car every month. You can get a $500 per month lease on a vehicle of your choice if you refer 100 people into the free trial and a $1,000 per month lease when you refer 200.

Active Social Media Groups

Whether you are an affiliate or a customer, Clickfunnels has large groups on Facebook where they host all their users.

The Clickfunnels Avengers (for affiliates) has over 92k members, all sharing tips on promoting the tool better and making money on affiliate marketing.

The official Clickfunnels Facebook page has over 290k members who are primarily customers. Here members can inquire about how to use the product and get answers from the ever-active customer support.

Amazon: Leveraging Customer Success in eCommerce Image source

There’s no better example to use here than Amazon, the largest eCommerce brand in the world,

According to founder Jeff Bezos, “The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer. Our goal is to be earth’s most customer-centric company.”

That’s been Amazon’s key success driver. Everything they do is guided by its goal of becoming the most customer-centric company in the world.

And they’ve achieved that since Amazon accounted for 40% of all the retail sales in the USA in the last year.

Intuitive and Easy-to-use Platform

Anyone can use the Amazon website to purchase anything. You don’t need special training to buy something.

The website is user-friendly to ease your shopping experience. A quick search gives you variable products you need with reviews to make the best decision.

All these are designed to give the customer a personal connection with the platform and make them return.

Personalized Experience and Service Provision

Amazon tracks the browsing experience of all customers. They then leverage the data to provide personalized experiences.

For example, I was purchasing a dish drying rack for my mom’s birthday, and when I was about to check out, I saw the “Frequently bought together” button at the bottom of the page. The platform recommended a Microfiber spin mop which I also ended up buying.

Furthermore, Amazon keeps track of all your purchases and will present you with similar products in the future.

Likewise, when you add an item to the cart but don’t make an order, Amazon will send over a personalized reminder with exciting deals.

Well-laid-out Delivery Dates

Since 69% of customers are more likely to avoid shopping with a retailer that doesn’t deliver products within two days, Amazon tries to keep their delivery as first and open to prevent friction.

The platform offers different shopping models, which have varying delivery dates. They also provide a countdown timer to know when to expect your product.

Conclusion

Investing in customer success has a ton of benefits for your company. One of the most important is having strong customer relationships, which reduces churn rates.

This is possible because many people are concerned not only about a product meeting their needs but also if the customer support is equally helpful.

So you must design customer success strategies to boost customer confidence in your brand. Luckily, you’ve got valuable tips to get you started.