Start here: How to set up a CS function

Where to begin? Right??? Scaling your company can be overwhelming, and you or your sales leader might have considered building a Customer Success function but don't know where to start? There are so many topics that can trigger focusing on your post-sales activities:

• Archived Product-Market Fit
• Growing Customer Base
• High Churn Rates
• Need for Onboarding
• Feedback loop to Sales, Marketing and Product

But where to start? You came to the right place, as I will walk you through a step-by-step process for setting up your CS function.

Step 1: Big muscle first

Let's start with the big-picture thinking and get your head around these three fundamental questions.

What do you deliver to customers that make a meaningful difference to them?

Who do you serve?

How do you deliver this difference?

Addressing the challenges and pain points is the first thought you have in this process. Be very clear about what your company delivers to match those challenges. A match is a meaningful difference to your client, not to your company.

Secondly, think a bit deeper about the customers you serve at the moment and create segments. Consider size, challenges, regions, or what makes sense for your business.

Thirdly, how do you deliver, and why does it work?

Step 2: Define Customer Success for you

Now, it's time to evaluate what your CS function could look like—still high-level thinking, but go a bit deeper. Clearly articulate what Customer Success means for your organisation. This includes understanding your customers' goals, how they measure success, how your product or service facilitates that success, and, finally, when. Knowing the context of usage is crucial to deeply understanding why product-market fits may derail in the future

Step 3: Your CS building matrix

Combine steps 1 and 2 and create a matrix that you can develop and share with your leadership team. This matrix showcases whom you serve, what you do, and why and when. It gives you a good understanding of your current client base and time to make further decisions.

Step 4: Prioritise your ICP

You now have a solid understanding of the basics—it's time to focus on your ideal customer profile (ICP) and personas. You might serve a variety of clients at the moment, so focusing on the ideal client is crucial to setting you up for straight-line success. Consider focusing on a segment of your current client base that aligns best with your services and products, or on clients where you have previously made the biggest impact.

It's easy to get lost in serving all clients in the same way, but the key to setting up a customer success function is to focus on maximising value building in the future. This cannot be achieved with everybody.

Step 5: Build a Customer Success Team

I wrote an article specifically about building your CS team; please see it here.

Step 6: Everything else

Having a team in place and knowing your strategy are your first steps to setting up a CS function. Once established, you want to think of anything else: processes, tools and technologies.

By following these steps, you can establish a strong foundation for your Customer Success department, ultimately driving growth and satisfaction for both your customers and your business.

If you need help with this exciting new chapter, please reach out. I have built and scaled CS teams from £3m to £10m in the past, and I can help you facilitate each step outlined above together with your current revenue leaders and senior management team.