AMA: Gainsight Senior Director - Client Outcomes, Kiran Panigrahi on Customer Success KPI's

In stepping into the Customer Success domain, it's crucial to prioritize KPIs that align with the role's core responsibilities. A strategic approach involves mapping KPIs to the customer lifecycle stages, fostering a sense of purpose and confidence in your efforts. For instance: * NPS Over CSAT: While CSAT often leans towards support, NPS serves as a robust starting point, eventually evolving into a Customer Effort Score (CES) to gauge the efficacy of minimizing customer effort. * Onboarding Success Rate: Measure the effectiveness of onboarding in delivering value, thereby nurturing customer confidence and satisfaction. * Health Score and Adoption: Evaluate the overall health of customer relationships, considering both depth and breadth of engagement to ensure sustained success. * Engagement Cadence: Tailor engagement frequency across various customer personas, fostering meaningful interactions at every touchpoint. * Retention Monitoring: Continuously assess customer loyalty and satisfaction, providing insights into the overall customer experience. Each KPI serves a distinct purpose: to analyze customer feedback, mitigate risks, and strategize ways to enhance the customer journey. While specific metrics like Expansions, Qualified Leads, and Net Revenue Retention (NRR) may not be initially owned, mastering foundational KPIs lays the groundwork for influencing these metrics. Go Rock!

Committing to certain KPIs in customer success without considering their broader impact or relevance to overall business objectives can lead to misguided efforts and low outcomes. The metrics needs to be aligned in every phase of customer lifecycle, reviewed and alter accordingly to the goals of the organisation. Example: 1. Attain 0 Churns - GRR is important but it doesn't mean that you can over emphasize on 100% GRR, instead take it slow and have a projection considering all aspects, be it macro or any as such. 2. The same with exemplary NPS scores, expansions too. Have it fair in the business. Do not be in a rush to achieve the impossible. Always have a structured process and a significant increase quarter by quarter instead. It's essential to prioritize metrics that truly reflect customer value, satisfaction, and loyalty, while also driving sustainable business growth and profitability.

Shared KPIs between sales and customer success teams foster collaboration and alignment toward common goals, and it depends on how the organization is structured regarding these shareable metrics with departments. Key shared KPIs include Customer Lifetime Value (CLV), Customer Retention Rate, Net Promoter Score (NPS), Expansion Revenue, Customer Onboarding Time, and Customer Satisfaction Metrics. Additionally, the ones we miss often or should track are Product Adoption and Usage, Health Scores, Customer Journey Milestones, and Customer Education and Training to drive long-term success and to the lagging indicators.

A strategic approach involves mapping KPIs to the customer lifecycle stages, fostering a sense of purpose and confidence in your efforts. For instance: * NPS Over CSAT: While CSAT often leans towards support, NPS serves as a robust starting point, eventually evolving into a Customer Effort Score (CES) to gauge the efficacy of minimizing customer effort. * Onboarding Success Rate: Measure the effectiveness of onboarding in delivering value, thereby nurturing customer confidence and satisfaction. * Health Score and Adoption: Evaluate the overall health of customer relationships, considering both depth and breadth of engagement to ensure sustained success. * Engagement Cadence: Tailor engagement frequency across various customer personas, fostering meaningful interactions at every touchpoint. * Retention Monitoring: Continuously assess customer loyalty and satisfaction, providing insights into the overall customer experience. Each KPI serves a distinct purpose: to analyze customer feedback, mitigate risks, and strategize ways to enhance the customer journey. While specific metrics like Expansions, Qualified Leads, and Net Revenue Retention (NRR) may not be initially owned, mastering foundational KPIs lays the groundwork for influencing these metrics.

Customer success KPIs for a self-serve product may differ from those for a more traditional, high-touch product. This is more of a 1:Many methodology driven based on these strategies. Here's how they typically change: 1. Customer Onboarding and Activation: With a self-serve product, the focus shifts to ensuring customers can quickly and easily onboard themselves and activate key features without human intervention. KPIs may include time to first value, activation rate, and completion of onboarding tasks. 2. User Engagement and Adoption: Tracking user engagement and adoption becomes critical in a self-serve model. KPIs may include metrics such as active users and feature adoption rates. 3. Customer Satisfaction and Support | NPS: While self-serve products aim to reduce the need for human support, it's still important to measure customer satisfaction and provide resources for self-help. KPIs may include customer satisfaction scores (CSAT), self-service resolution rates, and the effectiveness of knowledge base articles or tutorials. 4. Churn Prevention: Preventing churn becomes even more crucial with self-serve products, as customers can easily switch to competitors if they don't see value or encounter roadblocks. KPIs may include churn rate, customer retention rate, and reasons for cancellation. 5. Expansion Revenue: Driving expansion revenue from self-serve customers requires a focus on upselling and cross-selling opportunities within the product experience. KPIs may include upgrade rates. 6. Product Feedback and Iteration: With direct user interactions, self-serve products provide valuable feedback for product iteration and improvement. KPIs may include the quantity and quality of feedback collected, as well as the speed of implementing product enhancements. In a nutshell, KPIs for self-serve products will revolve mainly around the onboarding effectiveness, use of KB or bot, use of digital motions to capture feedback at the feature level, milestone level, and ease of use.

I'd structure my thoughts tailored to the company's goals, customer needs, and product/service offerings, distinguish between leading and lagging indicators, establish the median metric numbers, and improvise as we go from time to time. 1. Understand Company Goals: I will start by understanding the company's goals. These could include revenue growth, customer retention, market share expansion, specific product adoption targets, and multi-product strategies. 2. Align with Business Objectives: Identify how we can contribute to achieving these goals. For example, if the company aims to increase revenue through upsells and expansions, we may focus on improving product adoption and identifying upsell opportunities. 3. Identify Customer Needs: It's important to monitor your customers' needs and expectations. Conduct customer surveys, interviews, and feedback analysis to identify key areas. 4. Milestones: Map the journey from onboarding to renewal/advocacy. If needed, develop the enhanced engagement model and ensure the impact is delivered from all perspectives. 5. Identify Metrics: Based on the above factors, select meaningful and actionable metrics. These may include retention rate, churn rate, NPS, product adoption metrics, expansion revenue, customer health scores, and Verified Outcomes. 6. Distinguish Leading and Lagging Indicators: Balance between leading indicators (predictive of future success) and lagging indicators (reflecting past performance). For example, while the retention rate is a lagging indicator, the product adoption rate may be a leading indicator of future retention. 7. Iterate and Improve: Continuously review and refine your customer success metrics based on feedback, changes in business strategy, and evolving customer needs. Be open to experimenting with new metrics and approaches that better align with company goals. 8. Communicate and Align: Communicate the selected metrics clearly to the customer success team and ensure alignment with their roles and responsibilities. Provide training and resources to empower them to drive success based on these metrics. By following this process, one can align with the company's goals and objectives, enabling your team to effectively drive value for both customers and the business.

Absolutely, piloting the customer success function in an organization is a unique and exciting opportunity for growth and learning. Understanding the company's goals and objectives, defining clear objectives and KPIs, evaluating segmentation and existing processes, and fostering cross-functional collaboration are indeed crucial initial steps. From there, you can dive into developing customer-centric strategies, effective engagement methodologies, and continuously iterating and improving based on feedback and learnings. It's a journey filled with challenges and opportunities, but with dedication and perseverance, you'll be well-equipped to drive success for both your customers and your organization. Best of luck on your journey, and may it be filled with valuable insights and accomplishments!

Setting KPIs can indeed feel arbitrary, especially in new or uncertain markets. However, there are strategies to overcome this uncertainty and set realistic goals: 1. Market Research and Analysis: this shall help set goals for the organization's fiscal year. 2. Benchmarking: Compare yourself to industry standards and competitors to gain perspective on what success looks like in the new market. Analyze the performance of similar companies or products to set realistic benchmarks for your own goals. 3. Start with Baseline Data: Establish baseline data for key metrics such as market penetration, customer acquisition costs, and revenue targets. Use this data as a reference point for setting incremental goals and tracking progress over time. 4. Break Goals Down into Milestones: Break down overarching goals into smaller, achievable milestones. This makes goals more manageable and allows for more frequent monitoring and adjustment based on market feedback and performance. 5. Utilize Pilot Programs: Consider launching pilot programs or initiatives to test the waters in the new market before committing to larger-scale goals. Pilot programs can provide valuable insights and feedback that inform goal-setting decisions. 6. Set SMART Goals: Ensure that goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART). This framework helps ensure that goals are well-defined, realistic, and actionable. 7. Iterate Based on Feedback: Be prepared to iterate and adjust goals based on feedback and performance data. Stay agile and responsive to changes in the market environment, customer needs, and competitive landscape. 8. Involve Cross-Functional Teams: Involve cross-functional teams, including sales, marketing, product development, and customer success, in the goal-setting process. Collaboration ensures alignment across departments and increases buy-in for the goals. By following these strategies, you can navigate the uncertainty of entering new markets and set realistic goals that align with your company's objectives and growth aspirations.

The importance of KPIs might vary from organization to organization and between the respective goals or objectives. It makes more sense to have continued or enhanced metrics than just focusing on the initial level of evaluating a particular KPI. Usage / Number of Logins - It helps us delve into product adoption. However, it does not entirely reveal the depth and breadth of adoption. It definitely doesn't correlate with the business outcome. My suggestion is to depend on multiple measures, but the whole and sole represent adoption. CSAT - Some organizations consider CSAT a critical metric, but in my opinion, CSAT helps us explore a particular resolution or service and doesn't add to the long-term value quadrant. How about measuring the impact and working through mitigation risks for the longer-term value and loyalty? CES - Customer Effort Score helps us evaluate the effort minimized and is dedicated to that ONLY. How about you include a blend of experience/advocacy related to it? Combine NPS and CES for a broader context. Ultimately, always define meaningful metrics or KPIs that align with the organization's goals, keeping in mind the long-term value, and sustain them.

Developing quarterly or annual customer success OKRs and tying them to individual projects involves a structured approach: 1. Understand Company Goals: Align OKRs with overall company goals. 2. Define Objectives: Set specific objectives for the team. 3. Identify Key Results: Establish measurable Key Results for each objective. 4. Align Projects: Assign individual projects that contribute to Key Results. 5. Assign Ownership: Specify ownership of projects to team members. 6. Set Milestones: Break down projects into milestones with timelines. 7. Monitor Progress: Regularly track progress and adjust as needed. 8. Iterate and Improve: Continuously refine the OKR process. 9. Communicate Effectively: Keep teams informed and engaged. This structured approach ensures alignment with company goals, accountability for outcomes, and effective project execution to drive success in customer success initiatives.

When directly correlating with pipeline generation proves difficult, consider alternative metrics such as engagement (website visits, email open rates), lead quality (conversion rates, lead scoring), brand awareness (social media sentiment, brand mentions), CAC, CLV, retention rates, customer experience, and customer feedback. These metrics provide insights into marketing effectiveness and overall business impact.