Customer success and engagement continued
Part 2
See here to refresh your memory of part one
Engagement resources
I want to highlight a real piece of work I did back at Perkbox that was incredibly simple but really just was ridiculously loved by customers. Perkbox is an employee engagement software, it’s supposed to be like a fun workplace thing, but as we all know forcing fun on anyone (whether it’s actually fun or not), sucks the joy out of it.
Our engagement metrics were largely based around end users (employees) logging in and redeeming perks or sending recognition to their peers. While the perks are good and sending recognition actually does make you feel good whether you’re sending or receiving it, reminding employees that it existed and giving them inspiration to log in was a pretty big job in and of itself.
If an end user wasn’t opening emails from us, we heavily relied on the account admin (often someone in HR, but not always) being our advocate. These people usually had a lot on their plate, and giving a big rah-rah about Perkbox to employees was far from their first priority.
The solution I came up with was a simple calendar. It had novelty dates like “International donut day” and then referenced any relevant perks that could be either redeemed by the admin (e.g. buy donuts and put them in the office kitchen as a fun thing to do) or sent out as a reminder to employees that they have access to that perk. I also mentioned seasonally relevant perks, holidays, long weekend reminders, and cultural and inclusivity days.
When a perk wasn’t relevant, I’d put in a recognition prompt, and every Friday had an “end of week” celebration idea.
At first I was making them a month in advance, but they proved so popular the customer success team would constantly be asked “when is the next calendar coming out”. It was the most popular link in every newsletter.
Here’s what the calendar looks like in case you’re interested.
Ok, great story but how can you make your own engagement resources when you’re not Perkbox? I really think a monthly theme is applicable to any business.
For example, I’m now with Willow, which is a much more complex product and it’s not “fun” like Perkbox. Willow makes digital twins of real life assets. It’s data heavy, relatively complex, and our end users are people like real estate facilities managers and engineers overseeing rail networks.
When I first joined, I kept asking myself how on earth would I make a data platform engaging to them?
I just kept reminding myself that my solution at Perkbox was simple, and I marinaded on it for about two months before I figured out what would work as a monthly theme. And surprise, it’s different data points.
Example: This month we’re going to focus on energy use. Try out these 3 tips to better understand and optimise your energy use and improve your asset sustainability.
The simple solution is just to make every customer focus on one thing the platform can do and the associated value proposition at the same time. That way, all your customer success managers have their talking points, are trained in advance if needed, and all relevant resources and assets are available for a well-rounded and supported campaign.
Your monthly themes can also include some of the points above, such as price increases, upsell campaigns (“if you upgrade this month, you also get xyz as a limited offer”), and so on.
*slight disclaimer, I am not working on this at Willow as it’s not my area of focus, but this is what I would test if I was tasked with it.
Prepping for contract renewals ahead of time
If your contract length is 12 months, lots of people will leave the signing of the new contract until the 13th month. Depending on how complex and expensive your product is, you want to start prepping a customer for renewal anywhere between six and nine months into the contract.
Where does marketing come in for quarterly business reviews (QBRs)?
Depending on how you run things, it could be assisting with the design of the deck or report you send, or more intensely involved in deciding which metrics are meaningful, what the narrative will be, and compiling assets like reviews of how the product has improved over the last six to 12 months to remind them of the journey they’ve been on with you, and how they’re getting more now than what they were when they signed up (and when the price was set).
Marketing should definitely play a role in this process, as we have a lot that can be brought to the table for building a process for this. Lots of customer success managers have a lot of ideas and things they want to try, but they’re overrun with the day to day of dealing with customers and they might also lack the knowledge of what’s possible.
Redirecting your marketing career into customer engagement
Something that many small-team marketers will ask themselves at some point is “do I want to be a generalist forever or do I want to specialise”. If reading this has you interested in customer engagement marketing, the good news is that you likely already have done some work that overlaps with what a specialist would be doing.
If not, picking out any of the projects mentioned here and implementing a V1 of them in your organisation can help you build a portfolio of work you can use to jump to a specialist role.
When I was looking for a new role, I was tossing up between product marketing and customer engagement marketing - I knew I would have been happy with either of them. What appealed to me (and granted, these points may or may not appeal to you) was building a deep relationship with customers rather than the shallow relationship typical of lead generation. You’re at the very bottom of the funnel, working on challenges that directly impact the experience your customers have with your product, and have the potential to build incredibly loyal customers or even brand evangelists.
In uni I worked in retail and did really like the people and customer service aspect of it, so if you’ve also done work like that and enjoyed it, customer engagement could be for you.
The most important skills you’ll need are (but not a definitive list);
Collaboration - you’ll be working with both marketing and customer success, which may have very different team structures, processes, etc. You need to meet both half way
Stakeholder management - but in the fun way? You again need to satisfy both customer success managers and your marketing manager, but you also need to come up with customer focused solutions (which sometimes means telling both the customer success teams and marketing teams that they’re wrong)
Critical and creative thinking - your job is to be presented with a problem, and find a solution. You need to constantly ask yourself “is this in the best interest of the customer”, take the ego of your organisation out of it, and make the whole thing accessible to customers who may even be tech illiterate…
A salary package resource
I’ve got one link for you today - it’s the 2021 Australian Startup Salary Guide. We are all probably getting recruiter InMails on LinkedIn offering jobs, and I’m seeing some absurd pay ranges being thrown out that people in marketing previously never would have dreamed of…
Anyway, this report is Australian pay scales broken down by role and the startup’s funding status.
If you are looking to cash in on the opportunity, make sure you’re asking for above the rates in this report - shockingly they’re already out of date! But, pre-covid normal talent levels, this report is accurate in my experience.