What's the difference between Customer Success and Customer Support?

Summary

In this video, Diana Jesus, a Customer Success Manager, explains the key differences between customer support and customer success roles. While customer support focuses on addressing immediate issues through reactive solutions, customer success takes a proactive approach, working closely with customers to help them achieve long-term goals. Diana outlines the essential skills and performance metrics for both roles, including empathy, problem-solving, health scores, and revenue-focused outcomes in customer success. Both roles aim to improve the customer experience, but they do so with distinct strategies, often working together to ensure customer satisfaction and product success.

Takeaways

• 😀 Support is a frontline role where agents address customer problems through phone, email, chat, and support tickets.
• 😀 Empathy, problem-solving, and resourcefulness are essential skills for customer support professionals.
• 😀 Customer support performance is measured by response time, resolution time, and customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores.
• 😀 Customer success focuses on proactive, strategic partnerships with customers to achieve their goals and objectives.
• 😀 Success managers use touchpoints like calls and reviews to guide customers through their journey and achieve set objectives.
• 😀 A key metric in customer success is the health score, which categorizes customers as healthy, neutral, or at risk based on their engagement.
• 😀 Customer success managers are responsible for driving revenue through net dollar retention, revenue retention, and reducing churn.
• 😀 Both support and success aim to ensure customers have a positive experience, but they do so through different approaches: reactive vs. proactive.
• 😀 Both teams—support and success—help advocate for customers internally by gathering feature requests, use cases, and pain points.
• 😀 In some organizations, support and success are part of the same team, while in others, they operate as separate departments.
• 😀 Successful collaboration between customer support and success teams involves sharing insights to improve customer satisfaction and product development.

Q & A

What is the main difference between customer support and customer success?

Customer support is a reactive, frontline role where agents assist customers with issues as they arise. Customer success is a proactive role that focuses on building long-term relationships, understanding customer goals, and ensuring the customer achieves ongoing value from the product.

What are the key skills required for a customer support role?

Key skills for customer support include empathy, problem-solving, and resourcefulness. Support agents need to handle customer issues effectively, showing understanding while troubleshooting and finding solutions quickly.

How is performance measured in customer support?

Performance in customer support is typically measured by response time (how quickly agents reply to customer inquiries), resolution time (how long it takes to fully resolve an issue), and customer satisfaction (CSAT) scores, which gauge customer feedback after an interaction.

What role does customer success play in a company's growth?

Customer success focuses on helping customers achieve their long-term goals with the product. This proactive approach leads to improved product adoption, higher retention, and increased revenue, such as through renewals and upsells.

What is a health score, and why is it important in customer success?

A health score is a metric used to assess whether a customer is healthy, neutral, or at risk based on their product usage. It's crucial because it helps customer success managers identify when intervention is needed to ensure customers continue to derive value from the product.

How does customer success differ from customer support in terms of communication with customers?

Customer success is proactive, involving regular check-ins through calls or meetings to ensure customers are on track with their goals. Customer support, on the other hand, is reactive, typically responding to customer issues as they occur, often via email, phone, or chat.

What are the primary responsibilities of a customer success manager?

A customer success manager is responsible for understanding customer objectives, executing against those goals, conducting regular touchpoints, managing health scores, and ensuring the customer derives value from the product to drive renewals and prevent churn.

How does collaboration between customer support and customer success improve the customer experience?

Both teams gather valuable customer feedback, such as feature requests and pain points. By collaborating and sharing insights, they can advocate for the customer internally and inform product improvements, creating a more cohesive customer experience.

What is the significance of revenue metrics like Net Dollar Retention (NDR) in customer success?

Revenue metrics like NDR help measure the financial impact of customer success efforts. These metrics track how well a customer renews their contract, whether they increase spending, and whether the company can reduce churn, ultimately helping the company grow its customer base and revenue.

Can customer support and customer success be part of the same department?

Yes, in some companies, customer support and customer success can be part of a broader customer success team that also includes onboarding and professional services. Alternatively, they may operate as separate departments, with support focusing on issue resolution and success handling proactive customer relationships.