Tips For Strategy For Implementing a Digital Led + Pool CS Strategy

Hi @karenndlovu 

We have something similar to what you describe - however, it’s a work in progress so I don’t know if it’s optimal since everything can be optimized.

I started by defining:

• The pillars of Digital CS (and areas within each) - where can we and do we want to automate?
• The engagement models and how Digital CS can apply to different engagement models
• The topics for each pillar (that’s in constant evolution)
  • That includes, as programs are developed, selecting the right channels/tactics 

We then recently changed our model where we now have several stakeholders involved in the “pooling”. 

We’ve not had to talk track it since our digital customer success program springs from objectives from the top. In one region, it’s had to be talked tracked (it’s a smaller region).

For illustration purposes only, if the objective is improving retention (cost of acquisition being higher than cost of retention), then some of the answers could be:

• Strategy 1: Boosting coverage across the long tail that might have been historically orphaned (from a CS standpoint)
  • Tactics:
    • Digital Customer Success / Automation (for example, putting together programs that will help you take customer temperature at strategic points in time or before the renewal, at scale)
    • Pooled CS (to follow-up on temperature taking, addressing any risks or opportunities)
• Strategy 2: Optimizing high touch resources to focus on value-added activities for retention 
  • Tactics
    • Digital Customer Success (for example: automating all the engagements that can be: Calendly for not having to go back and forth figuring out times for EBRs, self-service portal to track consumption, making sure customers attend roadmap sessions or other types of one-to-many items such as inspiration/use case sessions or Community posting)
    • Customer Success Automation (creating some rules to orchestrate some additional activities - for example notifying sales or support that they need to look closely at a customer who is looking a bit red after you took the temperature with them)

Obviously the above is just a rough example.

From my perspective, I’d say Digital is easy to sell when tied to one or more of the big objectives. It’s the scaling engine, the do more with less engine. The hardships might come when you touch upon data quality (as it’s essential to running digital - otherwise, we quickly run into the GIGO problem. On this front, you need buy-in from the Sales organization to make sure you have the right contacts/the right information and that it’s structured enough for the needs of your program. If not mistaken you have @bradley as your Gainsight and data expert? For my part, I initially believed we should clean everything up before starting but I’m not sure it’s realistic. Digital turned out to be an accelerator for sense-checking and highlighting issues and turned out to be an awakening for some stakeholders. It’s had its hiccups but ultimately… it’s yielded bigger benefits (on the data front).

On the pooled front, it depends on your approach and whether it requires new resources or you decide to go for adding a little “pool responsibility” to your existing resources (might be good to get started). In that case, the change management happens at the CSM level. 

I hope this provides a degree of insights - happy to discuss this further.