How do you communicate customer success updates and activities to the rest of the company?

Question

Jessica Broderick · Accepted Answer

The most important aspect of communicating customer success activities to the company is identifying what each department cares about. The update provided to a Sales team looks very different than what would be delivered to a Product team. This ensures the updates have value to the people consuming them.

Once you've determined what each department cares about, you then decide on the method of delivery. I prefer to provide updates in a meeting forum to allow for discussion and better understanding. Many other teams may opt for an email or newsletter that goes out on a specific cadence. A lot of this depends on the size of the company and the importance of the updates.

Lastly, don't forget to ask for feedback! If something isn't working or could be better, make sure to iterate.

Conor Holmes · Answer

I would suggest that this is done in two ways.

1. Organically by the CSM team - ensure your team understands what success looks like outside standard metrics. Examples could include a meeting where the team engaged with a new senior stakeholder, successful joint marketing activity with a customer, identification of new use cases or value drivers, a successful customer on-site etc. Then, encourage your team to share these smaller wins internally to demonstrate progress.

2. Align with the formal company readouts, or if they don't exist, create a forum bringing in cross-functional representatives to provide a readout of what's worked and what hasn't in the previous period (I would recommend this to be monthly or quarterly).

Ben Terrill · Answer

One of the most important responsibilities of CS is to ensure that we are sharing the stories and insights we hear from our customers with the rest of the business. To do this, I like to hold monthly presentations where CS presents our feedback from customers. These events are attended by product and marketing leaders, and CSMs present insights from their specific customers, with a theme for each session.

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