Customer success (abbreviated as CS) is a strategy through which a company, along with its customers, achieves high results. According to statistics, the more attention a business pays to customer success, the better its revenues grow.
In this material, we will explain what customer success is, for which niches it is suitable and what CS techniques can be used in affiliate marketing.
What is Customer Success
Imagine that your company sells subscriptions to specific services. You not only need to attract new customers but also retain existing ones.
To work on retention, you need to understand what drives them away from your service and what needs improvement – how to gather such data? With the help of a Customer Success manager or customer care department! Don’t rush to laugh at the “grandiose name for tech support”, we will now delve into the nuances of this role.
Customer success is user satisfaction with your product (sometimes CS refers to employees, not a business strategy). The main tasks of the Customer Success department are real benefits from using the product. In other words, CS managers do not increase sales but inform customers about the service’s features, solve problems, and anticipate issues that may arise.
In a way, a Customer Success manager is a representative of customers within the company. They have a better understanding of customer needs through constant communication and can anticipate what could enhance or diminish the product.
Why do you need a Customer Success department
Customer success managers strengthen relationships with existing customers, convey the value of the product to the audience, and inform consumers about all its capabilities.
In other words, the department is needed to:
- Better understand customer needs – managers gather feedback from customers, and their wishes should be implemented to maximize user satisfaction with your product;
- Retain customers – if one service satisfies a person’s maximum needs, there is no reason for them to switch to competitors;
- Make customers more loyal – when people see that the company listens to their wishes and genuinely cares about their convenience, they begin to trust you more (it will be easier to sell new services);
- Increase company revenue – when a business provides solutions that align with customer demands, people are willing to pay regularly;
- Reduce marketing costs – satisfied and loyal customers become advocates and recommend the service to friends and acquaintances. A person who comes to you “by recommendation” initially trusts you more than a potential customer who learned about the product from advertising.
The Customer success department is always on the side of buyers. They only think about the convenience of using the product, possible inconveniences, and problems that users may encounter. Managers aim for high-quality work in the long term, which leads to increased sales through improved conversion rates and loyalty.
For which niches is Customer Success relevant
The customer care department is necessary for companies that sell complex products or subscriptions. It is most commonly found in the IT sector and SaaS (cloud services that can be used online without prior installation).
However, you can add a CS department to any niche if your company faces the following questions:
- Why do we only find out what the customer was unhappy with after they leave?
- How to obtain feedback from consumers to improve the product?
- How to retain customers who only use part of the available services?
- Why do consumers use only basic features when their subscription offers more possibilities?
What strategies are used in Customer Success
The main principle of the Customer Success strategy is to view the customer not as potential profit but as a valuable partner. Therefore, managers don’t wait for users to encounter problems, instead, they try to anticipate them and offer solutions in advance.
- Customer Journey Mapping (CJM) is a visualization of the customer’s path. This helps you see how potential customers search for products, what services they are interested in, and the steps they take before making a purchase. This information can help you focus on the specific features of your product to increase conversion rates.
- Customer analysis. It is essential to conduct a detailed analysis and create a profile of potential customers – gender, age, demographics, pain points. This information will not only improve customer service but also aid in attracting new ones.
- Establish a Customer Success department. Managers should maintain close contact with consumers, gather feedback, and provide guidance on using your product more effectively.
- Product improvement. After collecting feedback, it’s crucial to make necessary adjustments to your service based on customer requests. This shows that your company genuinely listens and cares about its users.
- Offer additional services. Only after ensuring customer satisfaction with your service can you propose additional services for separate payment or contract extensions.
To build an effective Customer Success department, utilize tools for customer interaction. These can include website online chat, pop-ups or email newsletters. Feedback can be collected not only through phone calls but also through automated surveys and requests for reviews, among other methods.
For example, Netflix personalizes content recommendations for users based on what they like watching. As a result, it increases satisfaction and retention, so people are engaged with the streaming service. Amazon excels at predicting customer needs before they arise. It provides multiple payment options to cater to different customer preferences and ensures that customers have access to comprehensive product information.
Customer Success strategies for affiliate marketing
In both Customer Success and affiliate marketing strategies, the main goal is to interact with people. However, the focus differs: in Customer Success, the aim is customer retention, while in affiliate marketing, it’s customer acquisition.
Nevertheless, some tactics from Customer Success can be adapted for affiliate marketing:
- Behavior analysis. Before launching ads, analyze your target audience (TA). After clicking on an ad and landing on a page, you can employ a service that analyzes user behavior on your site, similar to Customer Success practices. This will help you understand where users click most frequently, what captures their attention, and more.
- Creative optimization. In affiliate marketing, gathering feedback isn’t feasible, but you can rely on statistics. Monitor which creatives and combinations perform best and why. This information will aid future campaigns.
- Clear calls to action (CTAs). Customer Success departments gather feedback through automated pop-ups and email campaigns, often including CTAs like “Contact Us” or “Call us, we’ll respond in 30 seconds”. Similarly, in affiliate marketing, it’s essential to use clear CTAs that instruct your audience on what action to take.
- Deep audience understanding: you can use audience research tools and demographic data to find out more about the target audience’s needs (interests).
- Building trust and relationships: affiliates can gain trust by telling about potential downsides of the product. They can answer their questions, and address any concerns they may have.
Potential drawbacks of Customer Success strategies
Despite having some advantages Customer Success strategies can obviously have a number of potential drawbacks which are worth being taken into account:
- Cost of implementation: hiring and training qualified personnel can be rather expensive when it comes to talking about small companies. Customer success also depends on tools for data analysis, and feedback collection which involves maintenance costs. The solution would be to outsource some Customer Success tasks to a third-party organization and to use some free data collection tools instead of expensive software.
- Challenges in execution: if a customer success strategy works for a small customer base, might not scale effectively when the business grows. It is difficult to measure the impact on revenue retention. To overcome this issue you can use key performance indicators (KPIs) to track relevant customer success metrics.
- Focusing on the wrong customers: it can be a waste of resources investing in customers who do not fit for the product or service. This is why you should develop suitable criteria to target the right audience.
- Manipulation tactics: Customer Success strategies may put too much emphasis on the benefits of a product during onboarding. If reality does not live up to customers’ expectation, it leads up to dissastisfaction. It is also possible that Customer Success strategies may persuade customers to adopt unnecessary features. Thus ethical customer interactions and building trust are extremely important.
- Data collection practices: when implementing Customer Success strategies, it involves collecting customer data, so it is difficult to avoid putting customer data at risk. It can be misused for marketing purposes. Transparency and responsible data use should be the top priority in this case.
Conclusion
Customer Success is a department dedicated to ensuring customer satisfaction with a service or product. Their primary mission is to listen to consumer feedback and ensure that the product aligns with their needs. When customers feel cared for, they become more loyal, leading to increased sales and conversions.
In affiliate marketing, collecting feedback isn’t an option, but leveraging statistics and understanding your TA’s pain points and preferences, as well as analyzing their behavior, can make your campaigns more successful.
