A Year of TrackMaven Customer Success
A retrospective on 12 months as the Director, Customer Success Maven
A year ago this month, I joined TrackMaven as the first Customer Success Maven. At the time, the role included a mix of everything concerning customers, from assisting with the sales process to configuring accounts for prospects – and, of course, optimizing for the success of our portfolio of customers.
Since last April, my initial responsibilities narrowed as our customer base and the TrackMaven Customer Success Team grew. These are four of the most important of the many, many things I learned in my first year as a Maven.
1. Customer Success is a big job
When I first joined TrackMaven, I knew that my role would be to help our customers fall in love and stay in love with our tool. But, looking back, I can see that I was sort of naive about all that would involve!
At TrackMaven, Customer Success (CX) is responsible for the entire customer lifecycle after a new account is signed. This means that, in addition to the traditional components of customer training and working for our customers success and happiness with TrackMaven, I was also the help desk, product and retention marketer, and the main point of contact for all things customer-related. And that’s just on the outward-facing side. My role also involves a huge amount of analytics related to customer behavior in the app, which I measure daily and weekly and feed into the product roadmap. From April to September, the whole CX team was me and two very hard working interns (one of whom was my first hire at TrackMaven).
Now, we’re four Mavens on the CX team, which means there is more specialization of labor. A year ago, I could not have conceived how fast we would grow, and how much better we could become with the addition of two more Customer Success Mavens and a SVP.
2. SaaS math
CX is important for customer happiness, and getting it right is vital to the business at all stages of development. For a new business, product/market fit is demonstrated, in large part, by customer retention.
If a company is seeking funding, customer retention has major implications for the product’s promise and business valuation. This is because slight percentage fluctuations in retention rates have outsized fluctuations on revenue for the business. Specifically, when retention is increased by 2%, earnings improve by 20%.
Keeping a customer is five times less expensive than acquiring a new one. Besides that, reducing and avoiding churn has a tremendous impact on the business.
3. Everything matters
Everything feeds in to the customer experience. The marketing that provides our prospect with their first introduction to TrackMaven, the messaging delivered in the sales process, and, of course, the design and functionality of the product all fit together with the customer success relationship and processes like the insides of a Swiss clock. It’s all important as all of the components play a part in how customers perceive our tool, and how quickly they can first realize and keep realizing the value for their own uses of their account.
If any pieces in the watch are askew, CX is most often where the issue comes to light. Our first objective is to make things right with the customer, and, after that, to make sure that everyone involved in this multi-faceted process is aware of the disconnect so it can be revised. Communication internally is as important as it is with customers. Not only because of inbound feedback, but because the CX team is in the app approximately 85% of our waking hours during the work week, which means lots of time for QA.
4. Keeping one’s powder dry is essential
Startup life can be intense. Beyond that, CX is – by its very nature – a mix of proactive and reactive components, so it’s very important to gain margins of time whenever possible so there’s always a bit of powder dry to handle unanticipated happenings.
No amount of planning can anticipate every eventuality with software, customers, and all the external components contributing to or around our app. This means that some days, our to-do lists are sidelined totally. During times when things seem a bit manic, anyone standing within earshot of the CX office will hear Trevor and me* reminding one another of this critical piece of advice: “Keep your wits about you.” It’s a shorthand for remaining calm, however difficult that may seem at the moment, and applying a bit of thoughtfulness to the situation.
What’s next?
The past 12 months and 21 days have been exciting, challenging, and full of good things. The good things most notably — our Series A, the arrival of the real Maven, and a fully complemented staff of 5X the number of Mavens since the time I started. I’m looking forward to many returns of this anniversary with the whole team, and to making our customers successful and, hopefully, delighted in the year ahead.
*Lydia, our fourth CX Maven starts today and Jamey, our SVP of Operations, CX, and Finance always has his wits about him.
Blaire Kotsikopoulos See more of Blaire's posts
