7 Biggest Mistakes People Make in Customer Success
1. Not Putting the Customer First
Customer's needs and goals must be your top priority.
And yet, this is one of the biggest mistakes rookie organizations make.
They want to apply their one-size Customer Success (CS) strategy without listening to the specifics of their customers.
But as I always say:
The best strategy is when the customer does not feel it like a strategy.
So, always make sure their success is at the heart of your CS playbook.
2. Failing to Manage Expectations
Set expectations upfront.
Make them realistic and transparent without any hidden agendas.
Communicate clearly to avoid confusion and misunderstandings.
This will help you build trust right from the beginning and make your life easier along the way.
3. Confusing Happiness and Success
A happy customer is not necessarily a successful one.
It’s not about making your customers happy but having happy customers as a result.
The difference is subtle but fundamental.
“Making customers happy” suggests the need to transform current ones into happy customers.
In reality, they should already be so from day one!
Your primary goal should be to “produce” happy customers as an outcome of contributions from everyone within the company, not just Customer Success Managers or any other specific function.
So, even if your customer is happy with a specific feature of your products or services, don’t assume they are necessarily successful.
Here are some common assumptions that many still make, unfortunately:
4. Not Knowing Your Customers
Invest time and get to know your customers, understand their pain points, and identify their goals.
Ask them these critical questions:
This will help you to adapt your approach and solutions to their specific needs.
5. Ignoring the Sales Handoff
Your priority is to align with the customer's goals.
However, what often happens is that Customer Success is not involved early enough in the sales cycle.
Without a proper handover process in place, you find yourself constantly chasing missing information and details, which becomes exhausting over time.
Take the necessary time to sync with Sales primarily and also with all other teams involved, such as implementation, support, professional services, and so on.
The following resource will help you drive meaningful conversations and position yourself as a trusted resource right straight from the beginning:
6. Overpromising and Underdelivering
This is one of the primary reasons for customer dissatisfaction and loss of trust.
It’s tempting to tell your customers everything they want to hear.
While you may want to reassure them about their requests, there's a risk of providing more information than necessary —such as discussing an upcoming feature that is still under development.
Don’t do that.
You never know how this can evolve until it goes live.
Otherwise, you’ll find yourself trying to justify your actions and recover from your mistake, which is extremely tough.
So, the golden rule is simple:
Under-promise, but always over-deliver.
And if you want your customers to adore you, you can go a step further and do the following:
7. Ignoring Customer Feedback
This is where the riches are.
Feedback is a goldmine of insights that will help you improve the course of your actions, drive product improvements, and boost customer satisfaction.
So make sure you listen to your customers’ feedback.
But most importantly, set your goals and take specific action.
Because in the end, that’s all that separates the best from the average.
Isn’t it?
I’ll speak to you in the next edition.
-Hakan.
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