B2B Customer Support | 5 min read | Published November 10, 2020

Part 1: How Customer Support Drives Recurring Revenue

$
The quicker all users in your B2B customers’ support organization adopt your product and use it to its full benefit, the more likely they will become your champions rather than just contacts.

“Customers buy products to enable and streamline their business operations. Services drive recurring revenue by helping customers to successfully adopt and apply products.”

That’s how the new whitepaper by ServiceXRG introduces the concept of how well-defined service programs and effective adoption of your product can be the keys to maximizing recurring revenue performance.

But what does this mean, exactly? Historically, B2B customer support departments have not been thought of as revenue generating. But for many technology companies, 70% or more of revenue comes from existing customers.2 Not only that the cost of acquiring new customers is much greater than what it costs to retain existing ones. A 5% decrease in monthly churn can result in 50% more revenue over a five-year period.

The best way to protect and expand your core business is to ensure your customers are succeeding with your product. If they do not fully use what they have already purchased, or if the perceived support users receive post-sale, beginning with onboarding, is less than positive, there is little likelihood they will purchase more or even renew current subscriptions.2

Customer Success Redefined

According to the Customer Success Association, the mission of a Customer Success team is “To increase sustainable proven profitability for both the customers and your company. Being able to prove your worth in both directions is the most crucial aspect. [To the previous point], while virtually all customer success management initiatives start out as “churnfighters,” reactive tactical teams charged with saving an at-risk customer relationship, you can’t stop there.  The challenge is to gather and use the data from every interaction to move your team out of reactive mode and into far more effective proactive stances.3

How do you do this? This blog series explores four ways.

 

One: Unify your customer data to identify risks and opportunities.

Aggregate multiple data sources into a Customer Health Profile that provides a 360o view of the product usage, customer status, and overall satisfaction. It’s obvious that the customer needs the features and benefits your product provides, yet features are irrelevant if customers do not or cannot use the product to achieve their desired business outcomes.

  • Start by offering a comprehensive, personalized onboarding process that includes all users.
  • Hold regular and ongoing product training programs, such as TeamSupport’s monthly TeamSupport University webinars.
  • Build a robust Knowledge Base of articles that enable self-help and can be used by your agents to supplement resolving tickets.

When you take a holistic approach to managing the relationship, instead of taking note of one negative interaction or low satisfaction score, you can look at all user interactions and determine trends. Then, you can be proactive in adjusting delivery practices to maximize the impact of success activities and strengthen relationships that may be in danger.

Remember, the quicker all users in your B2B customers’ support organization adopt your product and use it to its full benefit, the more likely they will become your champions rather than just contacts.

In Part 2 of this series, we explore three more ways to moving your B2B customer support team out of reactive mode and into far more effective proactive stances.

 

1-2Using Services to Retain & Grow Recurring Revenue, Service Excellence Research Group, LLC, ©Nov 2020, www.servicexrg.com.

3The Definition of Customer Success, Customer Success Association, retrieved Nov 16, 2020, https://www.customersuccessassociation.com/library/the-definition-of-customer-success/

Screen Shot 2020-11-16 at 11.42.06 AM

 

To assist you on your journey starting with what to consider when determining the need for a new B2B customer support software solution, to knowing how to choose the right provider, to ensuring success from onboarding and beyond, download this complete guide.

Learn how TeamSupport helps companies create champion relationships.

Get Started
content-image@2x
Get Started