Static vs. Science: How Customer Success Tools Differ
Great news: it seems that more companies than ever are putting a greater focus on customer success. Perhaps these companies have noticed the great success of customer-centric companies such as Amazon, Zappos, and Salesforce. Perhaps they have read the statistic that it costs 6-7x more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing customer. Whatever the reason, one thing is certain: this trend is positive for the companies experiencing more loyalty and the customers receiving a better experience. However, not all customer success tools are created equal!
Since it is the holiday season, I feel it’s only appropriate to illustrate this point with a holiday example. Imagine you are going to buy presents for your 8-year-old son, your significant other and your mother. Would you buy all of them the same exact thing?
If you answered yes, I would be very intrigued to meet your family. For the 99.99% of you who answered no, why? The simple answer is that they are different people with their own interests and personalities. The football you buy your 8-year-old son probably isn’t the best option for your mother. The romantic trip you give you significant other would be pretty odd to give your mother. The “World’s Best Grandma” shirt you get your mother would be poorly received by your wife.
The one-size fits all approach doesn’t work for holiday gifts. It also doesn’t work for customer success tools. Why? Because all of your customers use your product differently. Some of your customers use your tool everyday while others use it once a month. Your enterprise customers use your service differently than a 5 person small business. Most customer success tools are approaching the problem with this Static Approach. They ask you to define churn and engagement across your entire customer base, and then they simply tell you who is and is not meeting those criteria.
At Preact, we think a better way to approach customer success is to treat every customer as a unique individual who uses your product in his or her own way. Enter the Science Approach to customer success. Using data science and machine learning, Preact learns how each individual uses your application and automatically creates a unique profile based on how often they login and what they do during a typical session. This means you will no longer be trying to save an account after 2 weeks of inactivity when in reality they only log in once a month. Similarly, you will be alerted of customers who are at danger of churning even if they have not reached the arbitrary number of days of inactivity that the static approach requires.
Your customers are unique individuals. Preact thinks they should be treated as such. If you agree, we would love to talk with some other customer-centric folks.
