We talk a lot about customer success at Yarno. It’s important. Integral, even. Yarno’s success is inextricably entwined with our relationships with our customers. Their happiness is our happiness. Their disappointment, their frustration, is our disappointment, our frustration. It’s why we dedicate a large part of our resources to customer success. And yet, if I’m honest, I’m yet to truly understand what the job description“Customer Success” actually entails. So, to rectify this, I recently had our Customer Success manager Liam Dunshea sit down with me and explain exactly what Customer Success is, and why it’s so important to us.
What is Customer Success? Liam: “Customer success is delighting the customer at every opportunity. It’s brings together all the different aspects of the company; product, sales, content, to be the face of Yarno to the client.”
Why is it important? Liam: “Our vision is to develop long term relationships with our clients. So we have a really strong focus on retention. Instead of having a large sales team with a lot of outbound sales, we have a larger team focused on customer retention. We don’t want a lot of sales with a high turnover rate. We’re focused on how we can best continue and foster the relationships we already have.”
What does your average day entail? Liam: “It’s a lot of getting on the phone. Chatting to clients. Emailing. Talking to all the different teams - I have a lot of chats with our content team, and some chats with our product team. But it’s really variable. Sometimes its workshops, sometimes I’m focused on getting campaigns up and running.”
Do you have any tips or tricks? Liam: “Always manage expectations from the outset, and continue to manage expectations as the project is progressing. Be proactive and use all the project management tools and software we have at our disposal. Setting clear agendas, and having regular work in progress meetings keeps everything running smoothly.”
What’s your favourite part of Customer Success? Liam: “The fact that I don’t know what I’m going to do a week from now. Everyday is different. I never know what I’m going to have thrown at me. It’s also a lot of fun getting to know people. You have 5-10 clients who you talk to all the time and who you really get to know. I don’t just know about what their company is doing; I know about their kids, what they’re doing on the weekend, and their relationships with people at work. That’s pretty cool.”
To sum up: Customer Success is about people. It’s about how our product, our services can best meet the needs of our clients. It’s about perceiving our interactions as a relationship, rather than a transaction. It’s about keeping things personal.
