The Power of Exceptional Customer Service: Key to Marketing Success

Attracting new customers is becoming increasingly expensive, while retaining existing customers is much more cost-effective. This reality highlights the challenges businesses face in marketing and sales, making it necessary to find new strategies to address these issues. One powerful solution lies in investing in exceptional customer service.

• Consumers don't trust businesses anymore
• The acquisition is getting harder
• Your customers are your best growth opportunity
• Putting it all together: the inbound service framework

Consumers don't trust businesses any

The relationship between consumers and businesses has undergone yet another transformation. The internet revolutionized the business landscape, but now we are witnessing another significant shift. The widespread dissemination of false information, concerns about the use of personal data by online businesses, and an overwhelming amount of branded content have all contributed to a loss of trust in businesses.

Consumers are becoming increasingly skeptical and no longer rely on businesses for advice. Instead, they turn to their friends, family, and colleagues for recommendations. Third-party review sites like Yelp, G2Crowd, and Glassdoor have also become valuable sources of information when choosing which businesses to support, software to purchase, and even where to work.

Featured snippets on Google exemplify this necessity. Amazon has also introduced "Amazon's Choice" products,

• 81% trust their friends and family’s advice over advice from a business
• 55% no longer trust the companies they buy from as much as they used to
• 65% do not trust company press releases
• 69% do not trust advertisements, and 71% do not trust sponsored ads on social networks

We used to trust salespeople, seek out company case studies, and ask companies to send us their customer references. But not anymore. Today, we trust friends, family, colleagues, and look to third-party review sites like Yelp, G2Crowd, and Glassdoor to help us choose the businesses we patronize, the software we buy, and even the places we work.

Consumers are also becoming more impatient, more demanding, and more independent.

In addition to this erosion of trust, consumers have become more demanding, impatient, and independent.

HubSpot conducted a survey of 1,000 consumers from the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Singapore, and found that 82% of respondents rated an immediate response as "important" or "very important" when considering a purchase, speaking with a salesperson, or seeking information about a product or service. This number increased to 90% when it came to customer service support.

But what does "immediate" mean? Over half of the respondents (59%) expected a response within 30 minutes when inquiring about a business's offerings. This expectation rose to 72% for customer support and 75% for speaking with a salesperson.

Furthermore, modern consumers are not afraid to share their experiences with the world. Almost half of the respondents (49%) reported sharing their experiences with a company on social media, whether positive or negative. While there is a relatively even split between sharing positive (49%) and negative (51%) experiences, every interaction with a customer is an opportunity to generate positive buzz or risk public criticism.

The harsh reality is that customers now rely on businesses much less than before. They trust the opinions of their peers rather than salespeople and marketers. They prefer to find solutions themselves rather than contacting customer support.

Acquisition is getting harder

The erosion of consumer trust is a difficult issue for companies to grapple with on its own. But as if that wasn’t enough, the internet, which has always fundamentally transformed the traditional go-to-market strategy, is moving the goalposts again.

Let’s break this down into two functions: Marketing and sales.

Marketing is getting more expensive

HubSpot taught inbound marketing to countless companies and developed software to assist them in implementing it. Inbound marketing has historically accelerated business growth through a tried-and-true formula: create a website, produce search-optimized content that leads to gated content, and then use the contact information of prospects to nurture them until they make a purchase.

While this strategy still works, there are four current trends that have made it more difficult for growing businesses to compete with established companies that have more resources.

Trend 1: Google is taking back its own real estate

Let's talk about modern marketing, shall we? In this digital age, it's all about being found online. But here's the thing - not all of us have the big bucks like those consumer goods giants. So, what's a growing business to do? Well, the key is to create killer content that speaks directly to your target audience and optimize it for search.

But hold on a second, Google has been playing hardball lately. They've made some major changes that make it harder for us marketers to run this game without a financial investment. Sneaky, right?

Take featured snippets and "People Also Ask" boxes, for example. Google's reclaiming its own traffic by serving up these little snippets of information on the search engine results page (SERP). You know the ones - when you're looking for a definition or a step-by-step guide, they pop up right there, no need to click into a website.

But wait, there's more! These "People Also Ask" boxes are like a never-ending rabbit hole. Every time you click to expand, Google throws more questions your way. It's like they're trying to keep us on their turf.

So, what does this mean for us? Well, if you're lucky enough to snag that featured snippet spot, your traffic will soar. But if you miss out, even if you're ranked number one, your overall traffic might take a hit. It's a tough game, my friends

But wait, there's more! Google's also shaking things up on the search engine results page (SERP). They've moved those pesky search ads to the top four slots, pushing organic results further down the page. And on mobile? Forget about it, they're practically invisible.

Now, I'm not saying it's all doom and gloom. Search won't ever be purely pay-to-play. But in this world of sponsored content taking over our screens, we need to start thinking about paid tactics alongside our organic strategies. It's a necessary evil, my friends.

Oh, and let's not forget about voice search. It's a whole new ballgame, my friends. With the rise of voice assistants, being the answer is more important than ever. Just look at those featured snippets on Google or the "Amazon's Choice" products. It's a winner-take-all market, and we need to play our cards right.

But that's not all, folks. Social media sites are no longer just a pathway to our websites. Nope, they've become walled gardens. Algorithms have changed, and now these sites favor content created specifically for their platforms. Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter - they all want a piece of the action. It's not enough to just "be on Facebook" anymore. We need to adapt, my friends.

And let's talk about the cost of it all. It's getting more expensive to do marketing, my friends. Customer acquisition costs are on the rise, and content marketers are commanding higher salaries. It's a tough world out there, but we've got to keep up. We need to stay ahead of the game, my friends.

And just when you thought things couldn't get any more complicated, along comes GDPR. This new regulation from the European Union is shaking things up for marketers. Businesses must now explicitly state how they'll use prospect data, and they can only collect what's necessary for that purpose. Plus, EU citizens have the right to request the deletion of their personal data at any time. It's a whole new set of rules, my friends.

So buckle up, my friends. The marketing world is evolving, and we've got to keep up. It's a tough game, but with a little wit and a lot of creativity, we can rise above the challenges. Let's show the world what we're made of!

Trend 2: Social media sites are walled gardens

A decade ago, social media sites were promotion channels that served as a path between users and the poster’s site. The borders between different sites were fluid -- people would discover content on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, then click through to content (usually hosted on another site).

Today, social media sites are walled gardens. Algorithms have been rewritten to favor onsite content created specifically for that platform. Facebook Messenger and evolving paid tools like Lead Ads are becoming a table-stakes marketing channel, meaning businesses can’t just “be on Facebook” -- they must recreate their marketing motion in a second place.

Facebook and LinkedIn have also deprioritized showing content that links offsite in favor of family and friends’ content (on Facebook) and onsite video and text (on LinkedIn). Not only does your branded content have a harder time competing with other brands, but it will also have to compete for attention with your prospects’ personal network. Twitter’s investment in streaming video partnerships with entertainment and news networks are a nod to bringing consumers content they’d watch anyway in a platform-owned experience.

Sites like Amazon and Facebook are also becoming starting points for search. Over half of product searches (52%) begin on Amazon, while 48% of searches for content originate on Facebook -- almost equivalent to Google’s reach (52%). And both Amazon and Facebook sell targeted advertising space.

Why is any of this important?

These algorithm changes reflect the desire companies have to keep the audiences they own, on their own sites. As long as they can monetize their traffic, they have no incentive to move back to the old passthrough model.

Increasingly, Facebook is a destination. Twitter is a destination. LinkedIn is a destination. It’s no longer enough to create a piece of content for your own site, then schedule out promotion across channels that point back to that content.

Savvy marketers know their ideas must be channel-agnostic and channel-specific at the same time. To get the most mileage out of a piece of content, its core concept must perform well across multiple channels, but marketers have to do more upfront work to create separate versions of this content to best suit the channel on which it’s appearing.

Trend 3: It’s getting more expensive to do marketing

Search and social media titans have moved their goalposts to create a more competitive content discovery landscape. At the same time, barriers to entry on these platforms are getting higher in two ways:

1. Organic acquisition costs are rising.

According to ProfitWell, overall customer acquisition costs (CAC) have been steadily rising for B2B and B2C companies.

Over the last five years, overall CAC has risen almost 50% -- and while paid CAC is still higher than content marketing (organic) CAC, organic costs are rising at a faster rate.

(source: ProfitWell)

2. Content marketers are commanding higher salaries.

It’s not only harder to get value from content, but it’s also getting more expensive to create it. ProfitWell’s study examined the rise of content marketers’ salaries by location -- median salary has risen 24.9% in metropolitan areas and 18.9% for remote workers in the last five years.

(source: ProfitWell)

This rise is partly explained by changes in the content marketing profession. Google’s changing algorithm requires more specialized knowledge than ever. Not only are there specific optimization best practices to win featured snippets, but Google’s current algorithmic model also favors sites that are architected using the topic cluster model. Depending on the size of your site, this can be a massive undertaking -- at HubSpot, it took us over six months to fully organize our blog content by this model.

Trend 4: GDPR

The information provided here is not intended as legal advice for your company's compliance with EU data privacy laws like the GDPR. Instead, it offers background information to help you gain a better understanding of the GDPR. This legal information is not the same as legal advice, which involves an attorney applying the law to your specific circumstances. Therefore, we strongly recommend consulting an attorney if you require advice on interpreting this information or ensuring its accuracy. In summary, you should not rely on this as legal advice or as a recommendation for any specific legal understanding.

The European Union (EU) recently implemented the General Data Protection Regulation, which imposes new regulations on how businesses can collect, store, manage, and process personal data of EU citizens.

At a high level, here's what the GDPR means for marketing teams:

- Businesses collecting prospect data must clearly state how the data will be used and can only collect what is necessary for that purpose.

- Businesses can only use the collected data for the specified purposes and must store it in accordance with GDPR provisions.

- Personal data can only be retained for as long as necessary to fulfill the intended purpose of collection.

- EU citizens have the right to request that businesses delete their personal data at any time, and businesses must comply with these requests.

The GDPR will not take effect until May 25, 2018, making it difficult to predict its exact impact on lead generation and data collection. However, we are confident that the GDPR represents the first step towards increased regulation of how businesses interact with consumers globally, further limiting the power of marketing teams.

These four trends, when combined, create challenges for businesses:

- It is becoming increasingly difficult to stand out in a crowded online landscape.

- The cost of finding talent and producing content is rising.

- Algorithmic changes are pushing for investment in a multichannel marketing strategy.

As a result, it is becoming more challenging to attract prospects to your website. However, once you have them there, closing deals is not as straightforward as it may seem.

Sales is getting harder, too

Each year, HubSpot conducts extensive surveys of marketers and salespeople to gain insights into the current trends and challenges they encounter. The results consistently reveal that salespeople are facing increasing difficulties in their roles.

One significant finding from the surveys is illustrated in a compelling chart (a sneak peek of the forthcoming State of Inbound 2018 report). It reveals that a staggering 40% of respondents have experienced greater challenges in obtaining responses from prospects. Additionally, 29% and 28% respectively identified phone connections and prospecting as pain points.

Furthermore, the surveys indicate that nearly a third (31%) of salespeople need to engage with multiple decision-makers to progress a single deal. Equally concerning, just as many salespeople struggle with closing deals successfully.

These statistics are alarming, and they are compounded by the fact that salespeople are not trusted. Year after year, consumers consistently report that salespeople are their least trusted source of information when making purchasing decisions. Even outside of purchase decisions, salespeople do not have a favorable reputation. In a 2016 HubSpot study, sales and marketing ranked among the least trusted professions, only surpassing stockbrokers, car salesmen, politicians, and lobbyists.

For software companies, sales are becoming increasingly technical. Buyers now tend to initiate contact with sales teams later in the process, often preferring a "try before you buy" approach through free trials or "freemium" versions of paid products. In these companies, the onboarding flow and user experience of the product often hold greater importance than the sales team, as most customers become free users before ever engaging with a human.

Similar to how marketers took over a significant portion of sales work a decade ago, developers and growth marketers are now consuming a large chunk of sales work. This shift has clear implications. Buyers no longer rely heavily on salespeople to guide them through the purchasing process; instead, they prefer to conduct independent research or seek opinions from their networks. The inherent distrust of the sales profession diminishes salespeople's influence in the purchasing process, making traditional acquisition strategies less reliable.

While this may be unsettling, there is a silver lining. Amidst the challenges brought about by change lies an opportunity that many businesses have overlooked: their existing customers

Your customers are your best growth opportunity

Your customers hold the key to your business's growth.

When growing a business, two numbers hold paramount importance: the cost of acquiring a new customer (CAC) and the lifetime value of that customer (LTV) - how much they will spend with your company over their lifetime. For many years, businesses, including ours, have focused on reducing CAC, which was made relatively easier through inbound marketing. However, with the evolving rules of the internet and the tightening grip of Facebook, Amazon, and Google on content, lowering CAC has become increasingly challenging. Therefore, the real opportunity for today's companies lies in increasing LTV.

If your customers are unhappy, your business may be at risk. However, if you have invested in creating a positive customer experience, you are well-positioned to grow based on their success.

When you have a base of satisfied customers who are willing and able to spread positive word-of-mouth about your business, you create a virtuous cycle. These happy customers supplement your in-house acquisition efforts by promoting your brand, transforming your business from a funnel-based go-to-market strategy into a flywheel. This flywheel effect means that post-sale investments, such as customer service, contribute to "top of the funnel" activities.

Buyers trust individuals more than they trust brands, and traditional spaces for brands to engage with buyers are becoming increasingly crowded. So, instead of allocating more funds to the same go-to-market strategy, why not activate a group of people who already know and trust your business?

Your customers represent a growth source that you already possess, and they are a more trusted and effective way for prospects to learn about your business. The happier your customers, the more willing they are to promote your brand. This, in turn, accelerates the flywheel effect, leading to faster business growth. Not only is this approach beneficial for your customers, but it is also financially savvy for your business. It’s a win-win-win situation.

At some point, your acquisition math will reach its limit.

More and more businesses are transitioning to a recurring-revenue or subscription-based model. In such a model, customers pay a monthly fee for membership or access to products, making it easier to project expected revenue over a specified period. Understanding the flow of money in and out of the business simplifies headcount planning, expansion planning, and R&D efforts.

Fortunately, whether your company operates on a subscription-based model or not, there are valuable lessons to be learned from a recurring revenue model that apply to all businesses. Before we proceed, let's establish three fundamental assumptions underlying this model.

First and foremost, it is crucial to recognize that every business operates within a specific total addressable market or TAM. This market represents the maximum potential of your business and can be defined by various factors such as geography, profession, age, and more. However, it is important to note that every product caters to a finite market.

Secondly, the goal of every company is to cultivate repeat customers, regardless of whether they are subscription-based or not. Take, for example, a beauty products store where customers typically purchase refills every three months, a hotel chain that becomes the preferred choice for frequent travelers, or a neighborhood restaurant that has established itself as the go-to option for Saturday date nights. These businesses all benefit from recurring revenue, even if it is not formalized through contracts or subscription fees.

Lastly, the key to sustainable growth lies in retaining existing customers while also expanding into untapped portions of your TAM. This dual approach ensures that you not only maintain a loyal customer base but also capitalize on new opportunities for growth.

To illustrate the value of thinking about your business as a subscription-based company, let's delve into a hypothetical example. We'll refer to this example as Minilytics Inc.

Minilytics begins with a customer base of 10 individuals and a churn rate of 30%, meaning that three customers will not make repeat purchases. Each salesperson at Minilytics can acquire five new customers per month. Given the small customer base, only one salesperson is required for growth.

As time progresses, Minilytics expands its customer base to 50 individuals, with 15 customers churning. To sustain growth, the CEO of Minilytics needs to hire three more salespeople, resulting in additional overhead costs in terms of salaries.

It becomes evident that as Minilytics reaches 100 or 1,000 customers, hiring enough salespeople to support growth becomes financially unviable. The sheer cost of sustaining a business that loses 30% of its customers each month will inevitably lead to its downfall.

While Minilytics grapples with customer churn, another significant challenge looms ahead - the depletion of its TAM. It is important to recognize that churned customers typically do not return. Gaining a consumer's trust is already a challenging task, and trying to rebuild that trust after a poor experience is nearly impossible.

Even if Minilytics manages to afford a rapidly expanding sales team, it will continue depleting its TAM at an alarming rate. Eventually, Minilytics will exhaust its entire total addressable market, leaving no room for further growth.

Fortunately, Minilytics isn't destined for this unfortunate fate. Let's rewind to that first month and explore the alternative actions they could have taken to avoid these challenges.

Building a good customer experience is the foundation of growth

Growing a sustainable company is all about leverage.

In plain English, if you can identify the parts of your business model that require a great effort but provide a little reward, then re-engineer them to cost you less effort or provide more reward, you’ve identified a point of leverage.

Most companies hunt for leverage in their go-to-market strategy, which usually involves pouring money into marketing or sales efforts. Customer service, customer success, customer support -- or whatever you call it (we have a separate team dedicated to each function, but we’re the exception) -- has traditionally been viewed as a cost center, not a profit center.

It’s not hard to understand why. The ROI of sales and marketing investment is immediately tangible, while investment in customer service is a long game.

But most companies mistakenly try to optimize for fewer customer interactions, which just means issues don’t get addressed. Because they’re thinking short-term, it ends up costing them dearly in the long term. Too many businesses think once a sale is made and the check’s cleared, it’s on to acquire the next new customer.

That doesn’t work anymore. The hardest part of the customer lifecycle isn’t attracting their attention or closing the deal -- it’s the journey that begins post-sale.

Once your customers are out in the wild with your product, they’re free to do, say, and share whatever they want about it. Coincidentally, that’s when many companies drop the ball, providing little guidance and bare-bones or difficult-to-navigate customer support. This approach, quite frankly, makes no sense.

Think about it this way: You control every part of your marketing and sales experience. Your marketing team carefully crafts campaigns to reach the right audiences. Your sales team follows a playbook when prospecting, qualifying, and closing customers. Those processes were put in place for a reason -- because they’re a set of repeatable, teachable activities you know lead to consistent acquisition outcomes.

Once a customer has your product in their hands, one of two things will happen: Either they will see success, or they will not. If they’re a new customer or first-time user, they might need help understanding how to use it, or want to learn from other people who have used your product, or want recommendations on how best to use it. Regardless of what roadblocks they run into, one thing is for sure: There’s no guarantee they’ll achieve what they want to achieve.

This is a gaping hole in your business. No one is better positioned to teach your customers about your product than you. No one has more data on what makes your customers successful than you. And no one stands to lose more from getting the customer experience wrong than you.

Let me say that one more time, because it’s important: Nobody has more skin in this game than you. In our survey, 80% of respondents said they’d stopped doing business with a company because of a poor customer experience. If your customers are dissatisfied, they can -- and will -- switch to another provider.

There are very few businesses in today’s market with no competitors. Once you lose a customer, you are most likely not getting them back. If you fail to make your customers successful, you will fail too.

Not convinced? Here’s another way to think about how to best allocate money between marketing, sales, and customer service.

Consider Minilytics and Biglytics, both with a CAC of $10 and a budget of $100.

Minilytics hasn’t invested in a well-staffed or well-trained customer service team, so their churn rate is 30%. Three customers churn, so they spend $30 replacing them. All of the remaining $70 is spent on acquisition, ending with 17 customers.

At Biglytics, things are different. Customer service isn’t the biggest part of the budget, but the team is paid well, trained well, and knowledgeable enough to coach customers who need help.

Because Biglytics has proactively spent $10 of your budget on customer service, their churn rate is much lower, at 10% (for the record, a churn rate of 10% is terrible -- we just chose it to keep numbers simple). Biglytics replaces their single churned customer for $10 and spends the remaining $80 on eight new customers, netting out at 18 customers.

A one-customer difference doesn’t seem significant. But that $10 Biglytics invested in their customer service team has been working in the background. Customers they brought on last year have seen success with the product because of great customer service, and have been talking Biglytics up to their friends, family, and colleagues. Through referrals and recommendations, Biglytics brings on five more customers without much extra work from the sales team.

This means Biglytics has not only brought on six more customers than Minilytics in the same time span, but it also brings down their average CAC to $7.14.

Which company would you rather bet on? I’m guessing it’s Biglytics.

This is why investment in customer service is so powerful. Taking the long view enables you to grow more. It costs anywhere from 5 to 25 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one.

Prioritizing short-term growth at the expense of customer happiness is a surefire way to ensure you’ll be pouring money into the business just to stay in maintenance mode.

The 4 points of leverage in the customer experience

Good customer experience goes beyond hiring support staff -- it starts pre-sale. The four points of leverage you can start working on today are where we’d recommend starting.

1) Pre-sale: Understand customer goals

People buy products to fix a problem or improve their lives -- to get closer to an ideal state, from their current state.

Your job is to help them get there. Depending on what you sell, much of the work required to make your customers successful might not be done until post-sale through coaching and customer support. But if you understand the most common goals your customers have, you can reverse-engineer your acquisition strategy.

Emily Haahr, VP of global support and services at HubSpot, explains how this works:

“Your best customers stay with you because they get value from your products. Dissect your most successful customers and trace back to how they found you in the first place.

What marketing brought them to your site? What free tool or piece of content converted them to a lead? What type of onboarding did they receive and with who? What steps did they take in onboarding? And so on…

Once you have this information, you can identify and target the best fits for your product earlier, then proactively guide your customers down a path of success, instead of trying to save them once they’ve reached the point of no return.”

2) Pre-sale: Making it easier for your customers to buy

Consider whether your sales process could be easier to navigate. Today’s buyers don’t want to talk to a salesperson or want to pay money before they know how well a product works. You should empower them to do so.

If possible, take a page out of the “freemium” companies’ playbook. Can you give away part of your product or service at scale so prospects can try before they buy? This way, they’ll qualify themselves and learn how to use your product before you ever have to raise a finger. Anecdotally, HubSpot has seen the most rapid growth in our acquisition through self-service purchases.

Also evaluate what parts of your marketing and sales process can be automated. The more you can take off your marketers’ and salespeople’s plates, the better -- and you’ll be giving your buyers more control over their purchase at the same time.

This change is already happening. Think about Netflix, Spotify, and Uber. All three companies disrupted industries with difficulty built into their go-to-market.

People wanted to watch movies, but they didn’t want to pay late fees. Hello, Netflix.

People wanted to listen to music, but they didn’t want to pay for individual songs or albums. Hello, Spotify.

People wanted to be driven between Point A and Point B, but they didn’t want to wait for cabs in the rain. Hello, Uber.

Today’s biggest disruptors got to where they are by disrupting inconvenience. Hurdles are the enemy -- remove as many as you can.

3) Post-sale: Invest in your customers’ success

HubSpot scaled its customer service team to over 250 employees, and there are a few things you can do to make your customers happier (and your employees’ lives better):

Gather feedback -- NPS® or otherwise

As early as possible, start surveying your customer base to understand how likely they are to recommend your product to a friend. You can also send out post-case surveys to customers whose issues your team has helped resolve.

At HubSpot, we track Net Promoter Score (or NPS) maniacally -- it’s a company-level metric that we all work toward improving. This helps us:

• Identify holes in our customer service early
• Track customer sentiment over time -- the trend of NPS is far more useful than one raw number
• Quantify the value of customer happiness -- when we changed a customer from a detractor to a promoter, that change increased LTV by 10-15%

Start small, with a post-support case NPS so you know whether immediate issues were resolved. You can build up to a quarterly or monthly NPS survey of your full customer base that focuses on their general experience with the product.

Building up a lightweight knowledge base

Self-service is the name of the game. Identify your most commonly asked customer questions or encountered issues, then write up the answers into a simple FAQ page or the beginnings of a searchable knowledge base. This will enable your customers to search for their own solutions, instead of waiting on hold to get human support. As an added bonus, it will take work off your team’s plate.

4) Post-success: Activate happy customers into advocates

Once you have happy and successful customers, it’s time to put them to work for you.

Take a look at this chart again. Notice anything interesting?

Buyers report that their two most trusted sources of information when making a purchase decision are word-of-mouth referrals and customer references. They’re listening to your customers, not you. Use your customers as a source of referrals, social proof for your business through testimonials, case studies, and references, and brand amplification.

The key to successful customer advocacy is to not ask for anything too early. Don’t try to extract value from your customers until you’ve provided value -- asking for five referrals a week after they’ve signed a contract is inappropriate. Your primary goal should always be to make your customers successful. After you’ve done that, you can ask for something in return.

Putting it all together: The inbound service framework

This methodology is a direct result of my years of using HubSpot. We’ve made a lot of mistakes but learned even more about how built a repeatable playbook for leading your customers to success and eventually turning them into promoters.

We call it the inbound service framework.

Step 1: Engage

Effective customer service is the cornerstone of any successful business. That's why the first step in the inbound service framework is to "Engage" with your customers. At this stage, your main focus should be on understanding the breadth and depth of customer inquiries and finding solutions.

When you're starting out with your customer service function, it's important to cast a wide net and engage with customers wherever they may be. Be available on all channels and be proactive in solving any problems that come your way. Your goal is to make it easy for customers to interact with you.

HubSpot, discovered that customers who submit at least one support ticket per month have a higher retention rate and are more likely to renew their subscriptions. It's crucial to remember that not receiving support tickets doesn't mean your product is perfect; it means that customers may be silently struggling.

As your team becomes more advanced, you can refine your approach. But during this initial stage, focus on gathering as much data as possible. Some key areas to explore include:

- Frequently asked questions that require personalized guidance

- FAQs that can be addressed with pre-written responses

- Parts of your product or service that customers find confusing

- Identifying when support issues arise and whether they require immediate assistance or occur after a certain period of time post-purchase

- Identifying common characteristics of customers who need the most help

- Determining your customers' preferred support channels

This information will empower you to leverage your customer service efforts effectively. For instance, if you find that 30% of customer queries have simple, one-and-done answers (such as password changes or order tracking), create a FAQ page to direct customers to, freeing up your team's time to focus on more complex issues.

Empower your customer team to speak up about the problems they encounter, and turn their insights into actionable solutions. If your sales and marketing teams are making promises they can't keep, your customer team will be the first to hear about it. Address any points of confusion and align your sales and marketing collateral with the reality of your product or service.

Listen to your customer team's feedback on what aspects of your product or service are causing confusion. Use this feedback to improve your offerings and eliminate any pain points.

Identify if certain types of customers frequently encounter issues. Determine whether they tend to churn or simply need a little extra assistance to overcome challenges. If it's the former, create an "anti-persona" to avoid marketing and selling to those customers. If it's the latter, delve into that customer segment to understand if the extra help they require is justified by their lifetime value.

As you gain more insights about your customers, you'll also learn how to optimize your own customer service process. Identify the most effective support channels for your team and create a seamless experience for customers. Establish a single queue to manage all inquiries, ensuring no customer slips through the cracks.

During this stage, measure your success by how quickly you can solve problems and achieve post-case customer satisfaction. Conduct a post-case NPS survey to receive instant feedback on the effectiveness of your customer team. This will help you continually improve and provide exceptional service to your customers.

Step 2: Guide

In the "Guide" stage, your primary aim is to transform your customer relationship from a reactive, transactional model into a proactive partnership. It's time to elevate your customer team from a mere support function to a customer success-driven organization. (The reactive aspect of your customer service organization will always exist, but as your business expands, it should become part of a multifunctional group.)