Choose Your Strategy Wisely

The story of how I royaly screwed up as a customer success manager

📕 The Strategic Customer Success Manager is officially launching on July 15. Sign up to keep informed and get launch week deals.

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As I review all of the content from my book that ended up on the cutting room floor, there is one story I wanted to share. It’s a lesson that I learned the hard way, which usually revolves around losing a client.

A number of years ago, we were working with a very large and complex client. They had purchased our solution to send targeted emails to their customers, but they had very specific requirements that our sales team believed we could account for. Surprise, surprise, we had a challenging time meeting their needs. But we compounded the issue by how we reacted to the situation.

We were working with a well-established company that had legacy in-house systems and established processes that they were unwilling to modify. This was contrasted by our implementation team’s can-do attitude, which believed they could integrate any existing application, regardless of its nature. Something was bound to give — and it did.

Everything is not fine

When we encountered issues that prevented us from meeting a must-have requirement of not sending emails during a specific timeframe, we did what we do best — we worked harder. We experimented and tried different approaches. We thought our hard work would reassure the client, but every time we claimed to have fixed the issue without truly resolving it, their trust in us faded. It was like a solid piece of ice that was slowly melting away.

We then made matters worse by trying to show them that while there were issues, they were still achieving a positive ROI. As the renewal approached, we pulled out our ROI calculator and demonstrated how much revenue they had attained with our product and how much more money they could gain by following our advice. Our CS team believed that this sales approach could help us buy more time while we continued to work valiantly on solving their product issues. All we were doing was putting a blowtorch to that block of ice.

What is most important to your customer?

The renewal discussion never happened. They told us they were churning, and they gave us very specific reasons. They said that we never really understood what was important to them. It wasn’t about the ROI — it was about creating the experience that their customers wanted. We could never achieve the vision that was presented during the sales process. As I discuss in my book, we need to perceive our clients as if they are a hero on a quest. Know what quest they are on and what success means to them.

We needed to take a step back and ask more challenging questions. We had a lot of busy work in front of us as the issues piled up but at some point, we needed to call a timeout. We needed to move beyond the product, beyond the broken processes, and focus on the people. Had we asked ourselves what the true blockers and markers of success were, we may have determined the severity of the issue. While this was a challenging client from the outset, who may have had unrealistic expectations (which is a topic for another post), there were a few moments of truth along the way where we fell short.

Get others involved — don’t try and go at it alone

With a client this large and important, we should have escalated the product issues we were experiencing and stopped trying to solve them on our own. We kept going down rabbit holes, thinking that we were almost at the finish line. We were operating in our own bubble when we should have brought in more people to broaden our horizons. That bubble soon burst, causing a wide blast radius. The crux of the story is that when you start hitting the rough terrain, seek out help. You don’t have to be the hero.

Get out of your home office

Another fault line that we couldn’t patch up was the overall relationship. This was a strategic client for our organization, yet we didn’t have strong connections with their team. In this case, it would have been best to get on a plane and visit them. There was no excuse here. We would most likely have developed a stronger bond if we had taken the time to understand what was clearly important to them, rather than assuming what was most important.

We often tend to dismiss assistance as a sign of weakness. That couldn’t be further from the truth. When you’re in trouble, that’s when you need friends the most. Call an audible and bring together a few people from different teams to brainstorm possible approaches. Even if you just raise a flag and say that you need help, that could be enough.

That was a valuable lesson I learned that day. Don’t wait for things to get worse. In a subscription business, you have so little time to maintain your customers’ trust — don’t squander it.

📕 Join the official book launch party at 12:00 pm EST on July 15 in conjunction with CxXchange. The session is called Strategic CS in the Age of AI: How Not to be Automated. Limited Spaces!