Creating a Touchpoint Checklist for Customer Experience

Friday honesty: Customer-centricity is a lot harder to maintain than it seems. Even for those of us in Customer Success. The tendency is always to drift toward making our processes and focus company-centric rather than customer-centric. Don't believe me? Just look at one example of this: Customer Journeys. Many teams say that they have a defined Customer Journey. But rather than actually being oriented around the customer, for many the journey map is a list of activities from the company's perspective that are built around milestones the company cares about (contract signature, go-live, renewal, etc). I know about this, because I've been guilty of it in the past myself. I confuse my activity list with a customer journey and wonder why customers aren't as successful as they'd like. While important, that isn't a customer journey. It's an activity list. It's a rut none of us mean to fall into, but it's the natural drift because we live and breathe our own organization. So what do you do about it? How can you adopt a more customer-centric mindset in this area? TRY THIS APPROACH INSTEAD: 1. List out the stages your customers' business goes through at each phase of their experience with your product. Use these to categorize journey stage, rather than your contract lifecycle. 2. For each stage, list out what their experiences, expectations, and activities should be to get the results they want. Don't focus on listing what YOU do, but rather focus on listing what a customer does at each phase of their business with your product. List out the challenges they'd face, the business benefits they'd experience, the change management they'd have to go through, the usage they'd expect. Think bigger than your product here. 3. Then map what support a customer would need to actually accomplish these desired outcomes at each stage of the journey. Think education, change management enablement, training, etc. 4. Based on all of the above, you're finally ready to start identifying what your teams do to support the customer. ____________________________________________ Following a process like this helps build customer-centricity in 3 ways: 1. It causes customers to be the center of how you decide which activities are most important to focus on. 2. It empowers your team to become prescriptive about what customers should be doing for THEIR success. 3. It exposes what you don't know about your customers' business. And if you don't know something, just ask them. Don't make assumptions when you can instead talk to your customers directly. Avoid the company-centric drift, fight to maintain true customer-centricity however you can. This isn't just a nice to have in 2024. It's a business imperative that's important for any business to survive in this climate. But I want to hear from you! How do you guard your org from drifting to company-centricity? #SaaS #CustomerSuccess #Leadership #CustomerCentric

People overcomplicate growth strategy. Listen, if you're below $1,000,000 a year: Avoid: - Testing 10 new ads per week - Tweaking sales script every call - Changing your landing page monthly Instead: - Clearly map your customer journey - Start collecting data on every step - Research industry 𝗯𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝘀 - Spot your biggest bottleneck - Fix it, then do a new one Focus on this until you get big enough so you have specific teams and departments. Here's how you can do it: 𝟭/ 𝗠𝗮𝗽 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗷𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘆 ↳ List all major steps people take from their first interaction with your business. 💡 Pro tip: Add steps after the sale, like activation, retention, referrals, etc. 𝟮/ 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗼𝗻 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗽 ↳ Gather all metrics in a simple Google Sheet this will help you understand what's up. 💡 Pro tip: alongside conversion rates, track the time it takes to pass each stage. 𝟯/ 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗰𝗵 𝗶𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆 𝗯𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝘀 ↳ Ask chat GPT, talk to people, spy on competitors, read industry reports, listen to podcasts... Find the data! You need to know what's considered a good CTR, good contact rate, good close rate in your space, for businesses of similar size and services. 𝟰/ 𝗦𝗽𝗼𝘁 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗯𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗯𝗼𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗰𝗸 ↳ Compare the success of your user journey with industry 𝗯𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗺𝗮𝗿𝗸𝘀. Find the most lagging. 💁♂️ Example: Your contact rate is 40%, the industry average is 60% while your close rate is 10%, the industry average is 30%. Your contact rate is 1.5 times smaller than 'average.' Your close rate is 3 times smaller than the 'average.' Rank all your bottlenecks like that and work on what sucks the most. 💡 Pro tip: sometimes your close rate is bad because you don't qualify prospects enough. Keep in mind that each stage affects the next one. 𝟱/ 𝗙𝗶𝘅 𝗶𝘁, 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗮𝘁 𝗮 𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗲 ↳ Now, when you lined up your bottlenecks, analyzed probable causes, and picked one to fix. Dive into tactics if you don't know how to do it. 💁♂️ Example: You figured that your close rate sucks, so this is your target to solve. Why tho? • Google how to increase close rate • Read a chapter from a book • Watch a YouTube video 1. Close the knowledge gap. 2. Come up with the hypothesis. 3. Implement the change and watch. Worked? — Great. ↳ Move to the next problem to solve. Didn't? — Great. ↳ Lesson learned. Try another way. This is about as complex as it should be before $1M. Good luck! P.S. Do you use benchmarks in your strategy? ♻️ Repost if this was helpful. ➕ Follow Lian for more like this.

10 Ways to Show Up for Your Customers Most businesses lose people after the first step. Why? Because they don’t make people feel seen. And when people don’t feel seen, they don’t come back. Here’s what usually happens: → Messages get missed → Questions go unanswered → Trust fades fast And just like that, the customer disappears. But when someone gives you their attention, every message is your chance to show them they matter. Here’s how to get it right at every touchpoint: 1. Reply within 24 hours ↳ Set up friendly auto-responses that include their name. ↳ Then let your team take over when it’s time to go deeper. 2. Confirm what they can expect next ↳ Expectations remove anxiety. ↳ Tell them what happens next and when they'll hear from you again. 3. Send a check-in mid-project ↳ You don't need to wait for a problem to reach out. ↳ Quick updates keep the relationship strong, even if it's just a "we're on track" message. 4. Reduce steps in your delivery ↳ Make the process smooth and simple. ↳ The less they have to click, chase, or explain, the better. 5. Personalize your automation ↳ Automation should reflect empathy, not erase it. ↳ Use their name, goals, and small details to make them feel seen. 6. Call out specific progress ↳ Saying "everything's great" isn't enough. ↳ Be detailed. It shows you're invested in their journey. 7. Answer every open question ↳ Unanswered questions make people feel ignored. ↳ "I don't know yet, but I'll find out" earns trust. 8. Provide a clear wrap-up ↳ Leave people with clarity. ↳ Recap wins, next steps, and what they can come back to you for. 9. Follow up 7-14 days later ↳ Showing up after transactions turns clients into loyal fans. ↳ A small "How are things going?" is more powerful than you think. 10. Leave behind something useful ↳ A resource, recommendation, or personalized offer. ↳ It doesn't have to be flashy, it just needs to be thoughtful. Every message, interaction, and detail adds up. When you get the formula right, you'll make every customer feel like a million dollars. What's one small thing you do that makes customers feel seen? ________________ ♻️ Repost to pass this along to folks who'd appreciate it! ➕ If you like what I share, go ahead and follow Lise Kuecker!