Turning customer success into product success - Mind the Product

This spotlight session was sponsored by Pendo at #mtpcon London 2022. Here, Hannah Chaplin and Niamh Jones discuss how we can turn customer success into product success – both crucial factors for a brand’s growth and product performance.

Watch this video or read on for key highlights from the talk.

Why product teams should care about customer success

Products should work closely with customer success because the customer success teams are a direct line to your users and their pains. Moreover, they are the best advocate for customers’ voices. Sharing the data and information through conversation can reduce pressure and workload from product teams. Products and customer success teams should work together and create a customer-centric product with the help of following

• First, you should think about why you care about customer success
• Make data your common language
• Create a customer feedback process.
• Create and share a roadmap for customer success

Tips for making better product decisions for happier customers

Customer behavior and reaction are excellent indicators of product success since they guide you towards better product decisions.

Use the following tips to make efficient product decisions and ultimately make customers happy:

Tip#1 Make data your common language

You need to understand how customers use your product and what your customers are expecting from the product. One way is to look at the data. It shows you how best to support your customers and make it a personal experience. Significant benefits include better retention, quicker time to value, smoother onboarding, and more.

• You can utilize the data by dividing it into categories.
• Product usage (What customers are doing)
• Customer feedback (What customers are saying)
• In-ape onboarding (How customers value)
• Net promoter score (How customers are feeling)

Tip#2 Create a product feedback process

Feedback is crucial. It’s how you get to know the customer response, product performance, and other elements. However, you have to follow a process to benefit from the product feedback process. Here’s wha you need to do:

• Gather all product feedback from customers in one place. It helps you to create a roadmap for product development and benefits for product discovery
• Agree on a process together means take all the stakeholders and team members in confidence. It will allow you to use different skills and experiences to create a perfectly balanced product
• Gathering feedback is crucial, but you cannot review every piece of feedback.
• Create a product feedback policy to set expectations for customer success.

 Tip#3 Empower your customer success teams around roadmap

• Share the vision
• Explain what you are building and why
• Talk to customers about your roadmap and vision

Transparency is essential for product performance. When considering the right transparency level for your business, choose what works best for you.

Wrapping up

Recognize that customer success depends on good product development and data used as the common language. Product is a team game and all these elements come together to put customer success on the roadmap. Always, keep the communication constant so that customer success is heard and you get the data you need.

There’s more where that came from!

Explore more #mtpcon London 2022 content, or use our Content A-Z to find even more product management insights.