Strategies for Improving Customer Interaction Points

Here's a lil secret about “check in" or cadence calls with your customers. Many of us were taught that these touchpoints are to understand how the customer is using our product, address any issues, and identify expansion opportunities. Here's the fatal flaw in that theory. Your customer hasn't woken up thinking about your product today. They're not sitting around wondering how to use more of your features. And they certainly haven't assembled a list of needs for you to solve. They have a job, with a job description and priorities they need to execute. So, at best they think of your product maybe 40% of their. At worst its 0%. So, how could we approach customer discovery in a constant fashion? 1 - Build a hypothesis on what business objectives this account is trying to achieve this quarter/year, and seek to understand what you're missing as an outsider. Find this in their latest earnings call, leadership announcements, press releases about new initiatives. Bring it to the call, and frame it as, "This is what I can observe from my research - what did I miss?" 2 - Be curious about HOW your champion currently believes they will accomplish those goals, and seek to understand HOW they formed that opinion. Example: Company's goal is to reduce customer acquisition costs by 30%. Your champion believes they need better lead scoring. They believe this because Marketing keeps sending "bad leads" to Sales. 3 - Introduce evidence that contradicts those beliefs/assumptions. Our goal isn't to tell them they're wrong. It's to introduce an insight that reveals a crack in their thinking. "We analyzed 200 companies in your industry and found the ones with the lowest CAC actually focus first on conversion rate optimization, not lead scoring." 4 - Give them a formula to calculate the implications of continuing with their current approach. This is NOT about your ROI. This is about the cost of continuing down their current path. Always tie this back to a P&L impact: increased costs, decreased revenue, or missed growth opportunities that affect the bottom line. Make it concrete, not conceptual. 5 - If you've piqued their curiosity, suggest that they collect the inputs needed to calculate the size of the problem, and bring those to the next call. Don't jump to how your solution helps yet. Just agree that you'll explore the size of the opportunity together. Customer success calls shouldn't feel like a product usage review or a veiled sales pitch. They should feel like two colleagues looking at the business landscape together, with you bringing outside perspective they can't see from within. The most valuable CS teams don't just ensure adoption—they impact their customer's P&L. When your discovery connects directly to revenue growth, cost reduction, or margin improvement, you transform from a vendor contact to a strategic advisor. What would happen if your CS team approached discovery this way?

Are you generating enough value for users net of the value to your company? Business value can only be created when you create so much value for users, that you can “tax” that value and take some for yourself as a business. If you don’t create any value for your users, then you can’t create value for your business. Ed Biden explains how to solve this in this week's guest post: Whilst there are many ways to understand what your users will value, two techniques in particular are incredibly valuable, especially if you’re working on a tight timeframe: 1. Jobs To Be Done 2. Customer Journey Mapping 𝟭. 𝗝𝗼𝗯𝘀 𝗧𝗼 𝗕𝗲 𝗗𝗼𝗻𝗲 (𝗝𝗧𝗕𝗗) “People don’t simply buy products or services, they ‘hire’ them to make progress in specific circumstances.”  – Clayton Christensen The core JTBD concept is that rather than buying a product for its features, customers “hire” a product to get a job done for them … and will ”fire” it for a better solution just as quickly. In practice, JTBD provides a series of lenses for understanding what your customers want, what progress looks like, and what they’ll pay for. This is a powerful way of understanding your users, because their needs are stable and it forces you to think from a user-centric point of view. This allows you to think about more radical solutions, and really focus on where you’re creating value. To use Jobs To Be Done to understand your customers, think through five key steps: 1. Use case – what is the outcome that people want? 2. Alternatives – what solutions are people using now? 3. Progress – where are people blocked? What does a better solution look like? 4. Value Proposition – why would they use your product over the alternatives? 5. Price – what would a customer pay for progress against this problem? 𝟮. 𝗖𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝗝𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝘆 𝗠𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴 Customer journey mapping is an effective way to visualize your customer’s experience as they try to reach one of their goals. In basic terms, a customer journey map breaks the user journey down into steps, and then for each step describes what touchpoints the customer has with your product, and how this makes them feel. The touch points are any interaction that the customer has with your company as they go through this flow: • Website and app screens • Notifications and emails • Customer service calls • Account management / sales touch points • Physically interacting with goods (e.g. Amazon), services (e.g. Airbnb) or hardware (e.g. Lime) Users’ feelings can be visualized by noting down: • What they like or feel good about at this step • What they dislike, find frustrating or confusing at this step • How they feel overall By mapping the customer’s subjective experience to the nuts and bolts of what’s going on, and then laying this out in a visual way, you can easily see where you can have the most impact, and align stakeholders on the critical problems to solve.

𝗢𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘇𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗰𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗼𝘂𝗰𝗵𝗽𝗼𝗶𝗻𝘁𝘀 𝗶𝘀𝗻’𝘁 𝗼𝗽𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹. 𝗜𝘁’𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗴𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲. 👇 Most brands obsess over traffic, but ignore 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 happens at each interaction. ↳ That’s why your “customer journey” stalls (and conversion rates flatline). 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲’𝘀 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗲𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗰𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝘁 𝗮𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱: → Mapped every touchpoint: From first ad view to post-purchase follow-up. → Zeroed in on the friction: Missed emails, weak cart recovery, unclear product info. → Revamped with CRO tactics: Personalized emails, frictionless checkout, clarity at every step. 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁: Revenue +34%. NPS up. Returns down. Customers 𝗿𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲. A few slides from HappyFresh’s playbook say it all—small changes, compounding impact. Want customers who stick (and spend)? Start with the details no one else sweats. How are you optimizing YOUR touchpoints this quarter? https://lnkd.in/gyEU9-vc #eCommerce #CustomerExperience #CRO #Retention