Why Customer Success Should Be Your Main Focus
Doing business in today’s connected society isn’t the same as competing in a given industry years ago. Whereas some B2B companies used to lock in clients with contracts to ensure they’d have their business for a year or more, that’s no longer the norm. Today, companies across industries have more choices available than ever before because the world is now a global marketplace.
With more competition for clients, the cost of acquiring new customers has risen steadily over the past 10 years or so. What does this mean for your organization? You should prioritize and act on this piece of manufacturing advice — customer success should be your primary focus to remain competitive in your field.
What Is Customer Success?
While other manufacturing trends will come and go, focusing on customer success is a trend that has staying power in every industry you can think of, including manufacturing. It’s helpful to have a clear idea of what customer success is so you can understand why it’s important to your industry.
Customer success is a process in which you anticipate the difficulties your clients will face and the needs they’ll have before your customers are even aware of them. Of course, anticipating challenges and needs isn’t enough. Customer success also involves creating solutions for those issues.
Customer Support vs. Customer Success: Are They the Same Thing?
Although customer support and customer success share common goals — to enhance a client’s experience and increase their level of satisfaction — they are not the same thing. Customer support involves reacting and responding to your clients’ questions and problems after they arise. By contrast, customer success is proactive because it requires you to create solutions before your customers contact you about the issues they are experiencing and the ones they will encounter down the line.
In general, customer support offers short-term or immediate answers to clients. Customer success is a long-term endeavor that enables you to help your clients achieve their goals with the assistance of your company’s representatives. While clients will typically reach out to a business for support, customer success positions your organization to contact clients to facilitate their ability to achieve their respective benchmarks.
Reasons to Prioritize Customer Success
No matter what industry you’re in, customer success is intimately tied to your own organization’s success, whether you realize it or not. When you prioritize customer success, it will make your clients happier and increase their loyalty to your organization. It may even convert your customers into brand advocates and promoters of your goods or services.
Because customer success increases your clients’ satisfaction, it enables your organization to retain more customers. This is an important consideration since it now costs more to gain new clients than it used to. When it costs less to earn sales, it can increase your organization’s bottom line.
Let Us Know What You Think
Do you agree with Global Electronic Services’ assessment that customer success is vital to your company’s own success? Whether you agree with our position or you have a contrary opinion, we’d love to hear what you have to say. Please share your thoughts in the comments section below!
