How to Use Data to Understand Client Issues

I’m not asking my CSMs to resolve support tickets. I’m asking them to leverage them. Support tickets aren’t just a backlog of problems; they’re customer truth bombs waiting to explode. If you’re not mining them for insights, you’re flying blind—and that’s exactly how churn sneaks up on you. Every Customer Success team I’ve ever led has been trained to use Support tickets strategically. Why? Because they’re packed with insights that make us better at our jobs. ✅ We learn more about the product. ✅ We spot trends before they become problems. ✅ We understand our customers’ use cases more deeply. If you’re not tapping into support data, here’s what you’re missing: 🔥 Emerging Pain Points Recurring issues expose friction in the customer journey. Ignore them, and those minor frustrations turn into churn-worthy headaches. 🔥 Product Gaps Customers vote with their tickets. If the same feature requests or usability complaints keep surfacing, your roadmap is practically writing itself. 🔥 Engagement Risks A spike in tickets isn’t just noise—it’s a flare. Users don’t submit tickets when they’re thriving; they do it when they’re stuck, frustrated, or in need of more enablement. Here are a few ways my team and I are using these insights: ✅ Spot & Engage Struggling Users A surge in ticket volume? Proactively reach out before frustration turns into a cancellation. ✅ Create Targeted Content If the same questions keep coming up, turn those insights into help docs, webinars, or office hours. ✅ Surface Expansion Opportunities Seeing frequent feature requests? Build them—or better yet, use them to tee up expansion conversations. ✅ Map Out User Behavior Support tickets tell you who’s onboarding, who’s adopting new features, and who’s stuck. Use that data to drive deeper engagement. ✅ Collaborate with Product Your product team needs this intel. Share support trends regularly to influence meaningful fixes and features. High ticket volume isn’t necessarily a bad thing—but you need to know how to use it to your advantage. Bottom line? CSMs don’t need to fix support tickets. But the best ones know how to use them to drive retention, expansion, and adoption. _____________________________ 📣 If you liked my post, you’ll love my newsletter. Every week I share learnings, advice and strategies from my experience going from CSM to CCO. Join 12k+ subscribers of The Journey and turn insights into action. Sign up on my profile.

If your CX Program simply consists of surveys, it's like trying to understand the whole movie by watching a single frame. You have to integrate data, insights, and actions if you want to understand how the movie ends, and ultimately be able to write the sequel. But integrating multiple customer signals isn't easy. In fact, it can be overwhelming. I know because I successfully did this in the past, and counsel clients on it today. So, here's a 5-step plan on how to ensure that the integration of diverse customer signals remains insightful and not overwhelming: 1. Set Clear Objectives: Define specific goals for what you want to achieve. Having clear objectives helps in filtering relevant data from the noise. While your goals may be as simple as understanding behavior, think about these objectives in an outcome-based way. For example, 'Reduce Call Volume' or some other business metric is important to consider here. 2. Segment Data Thoughtfully: Break down data into manageable categories based on customer demographics, behavior, or interaction type. This helps in analyzing specific aspects of the customer journey without getting lost in the vastness of data. 3. Prioritize Data Based on Relevance: Not all data is equally important. Based on Step 1, prioritize based on what’s most relevant to your business goals. For example, this might involve focusing more on behavioral data vs demographic data, depending on objectives. 4. Use Smart Data Aggregation Tools: Invest in advanced data aggregation platforms that can collect, sort, and analyze data from various sources. These tools use AI and machine learning to identify patterns and key insights, reducing the noise and complexity. 5. Regular Reviews and Adjustments: Continuously monitor and review the data integration process. Be ready to adjust strategies, tools, or objectives as needed to keep the data manageable and insightful. This isn't a "set-it-and-forget-it" strategy! How are you thinking about integrating data and insights in order to drive meaningful change in your business? Hit me up if you want to chat about it. #customerexperience #data #insights #surveys #ceo #coo #ai

💬 A couple of years ago, I was helping a SaaS startup to make sense of their low retention rates. The real problem? The C-suite hesitated to allow direct conversations with users. Their reasoning was rooted in their desire to maintain strictly "white-glove-level relationships" with their high-paying clients and avoid bothering them with "unnecessary" queries. Not going deeper into the validity of their rationale, but here are some things I did instead to avoid guesswork or giving assumptive recommendations: 1️⃣ Worked with internal teams: Obvious, right? But when each team works in their silo, lots of things fall through the cracks. So I got customer success, support and sales teams in the room together. We had several group discussions and identified critical common pain points they had heard from clients. 2️⃣  Analytics deep-dive: Being a SaaS platform, the startup had extensive analytics built into their product. So we spent days analyzing usage patterns, funnels, and behavior flow charts. The data spoke louder than words in revealing where users spent most of their time and where drop-offs were most common. 3️⃣ Social media as primary feedback channels: We have also started monitoring public forums, review sites, and tracked social media mentions. We collected a lot of useful insights through this unfiltered lens into users' many frustrations and occasional delights. 4️⃣ Support tickets: This part was very tedious, but the support tickets were a goldmine of information. By classifying and analyzing the nature of user concerns, we were able to identify features that users found challenging or non-intuitive. 5️⃣  Competitive analysis: And of course, we looked at the competitors. What were users saying about them? What features or offerings were making them switch or consider alternatives? 6️⃣ Internal usability tests: While I couldn't talk to users directly, I organized usability tests internally.  By simulating user scenarios and tasks, we identified main friction points in the critical user journeys. Ideal? No. But definitely eye-opening for the entire team building the platform. 7️⃣  Listening in on sales demos: Last but not least, by attending sales demos as silent observers, we got to understand the questions potential customers asked, their concerns, and their initial reactions to the software. Nothing can replace solid, well-organized user research. But through these alternative methods, we managed to paint a more holistic picture of the end-to-end product experience without ever directly reaching out to users. And these methods not only helped in pinpointing the issues leading to low retention, but also offered actionable recommendations for improvement. → And the result? A more refined, user-centric product that saw an uptick in retention, all without ruffling a single white glove 😉 #ux #uxr #startupchallenges #userretention