The top brands and companies, particularly those we admire, create products, services, and experiences aimed at helping their customers succeed. When you explore what drives these companies’ success, you’ll notice they share a key trait: they establish effective internal communication channels, processes, and strategies focused on their customers. This emphasis allows these companies to unite around the customer and support their success.
Here are five ways to improve internal communication around customer success:
1. Start With “Why”
Simon Sinek is well-known for making the idea of “Why” popular and for his talk on the topic, which became the third most viewed talk ever on TED.com. However, Simon’s straightforward question of “Why” is also very important for Customer Success. Every successful company is centered around their “Why,” and that’s where they begin. The “Why” aims to clarify your company’s values, what is most important, and what success means. The purpose of being in business isn’t just about making money – at least not for the great companies and their leaders. Great companies aim to make a positive impact on life through the product or solution they offer. This idea is crucial for companies that excel in internal communications and customer success.
This “Why”, if articulated across your company, will clearly impact you they way your teams think and act toward the customer. Start with the “Why” and showcase stories internally that show it in action.
2. Make Customer Quotes Real Time
Many organizations have adopted Slack as a way to communicate internally to their teams. They use it to communicate via Slack’s channels, or direct message other members of the team. While many people have a love/hate relationship with Slack, at ClientSuccess, we decided to keep it simple with our Slack implementation. We use simple and clear communication channels to communicate as a team. To create a constant focus around customer success, we created a Slack Channel called #csquotes. In this channel, all members of our team are encouraged to post quotes from our customers. These quotes are for the internal audience of our business, but are constant. It’s key that the contributors are across every department, too, so we see quotes from CSMs, Marketers, Product Leaders, Development, Finance, and so on. This internal communication strategy really brings energy and focus around our customers and their success.
3. Communicate Product Road Map Clearly
Your customers ask for the product road map constantly. They want to know what products your company is working on so they know how to prepare and can anticipate how processes will need to change in the future. But is your team all on the same page of where the product road map is heading, but most importantly, what it will be? What’s coming and when is the real launch date? How will it impact your customer?
This internal communication will be vital to building a business that your customers trust. A best practice we use at ClientSuccess is to have our product and product marketing teams work together to build an internal communication plan, training, and collateral around a release and the roadmap. The road map should be clear, simple, prioritized, and real before it is communicated to your internal teams. This is important as internal teams ultimately communicate it out to customers, so it’s important that it’s clear and simple to understand.
4. Share Success Stories
There’s no better way to align a company on customer success than to share how customers are really impacted by your product or service. Teams get busy doing their respective jobs and the great stories live in inboxes, text messages and phone calls that never make it out to all the other employees who aren’t customer facing who had a hand in making that customer successful.
Share success stories to the internal audience in your company—everyone! Often times those in marketing, sales, and customer success know these stories and are used to hearing about customer wins and great successes, but the rest of the departments don’t. Build a communication culture that celebrates the success of your customers. Communicate them in meetings and place them on the walls of the office.
5. Share Uses Cases Around Challenges
Customers current product challenges can really push your company to become better and help you think through problems from a customer’s point of view. Make sure these challenges are communicated via use cases. For instance, state out: The customers are trying to do “X”. Many times the entire conversation about the challenge is all about product features, which can be the spiral of death. But if you shift the focus to use cases, it helps you and your team clearly define the challenge. Use cases drive towards solutions, and these use cases – if properly communicated – will help your whole company rally around solutions.
How Does Your Company Keep Internal Communications Focused on Customer Success?
Does your company ensure that customer success is the focus across all departments? If so, what are some of the tactics your company uses to ensure internal communications across all departments are focused on the customer? Internal communication about customers will help you infuse your company with a strong focus of Customer Success.
Check out our resources below for more Customer Success best practices and insights for how your organization can approach customer success with the customer at the center: