15 Strategies For Monitoring And Addressing Customer Health
- Measure Customer Engagement
Customer engagement tells you if your customers are really finding value and what activities they’re performing with your products.
Then, running surveys for users with low engagement could help improve overall customer health. – AJ (Anupam) Jindal, Sentry
- Develop A 360-Degree Customer View
Develop a 360-degree customer view with insights and take action.
To track and address customer health, you need to have multiple data points that are accessible and actionable by customer-facing teams.
This data should translate into insights that inform intervention action.
Bringing together discrete and dispersed customer data across silos is difficult but enables the development of brand advocates – Chor Meng Tan, Wiley
- Set Up A Customer Success Function
Set up a customer success function that’s not just a team but a key culture for every team.
We measure our customer’s “Time to Value.” Especially in new markets or when creating new revenues,
customer success is best shown when your customers get to value fast—be it a revenue target,
a commercial launch or a break-even. Get them to the value they’re after.
This shows a healthy business and they become your promoters. – Guneet Bedi, relayr
- Read All Customer Reviews
Use customer reviews to actively monitor and address customer sentiment.
While no one wants a negative review, there’s often much to be learned that can be fed back into the business
to make continuous improvements. Negative situations are an opportunity to show how your company shines. – Lauren Mieli, Prudent Pet Insurance
- Keep In Touch With Customers
Stay in contact with your customer at all times.
Share insights regarding their industry, ask about their challenges and offer solutions
even if that is not going to generate new business opportunities. Ask them to become a reference and to
share their experience working with you to your prospects.
If they’re happy, they’ll take the reference calls.
Become a trusted advisor. – Vinicius Bagnarolli, rfxcel Corporation
- Track Customer Adoption Rates
The adoption metric helps in understanding how customers are using the company’s products
or services to determine whether they are getting the business value and the most out of their investment.
The greater the adoption, the higher the likelihood of a specific customer becoming a brand advocate. – Yash Prakash, Saviynt
- Maintain An Open Dialogue With Power Users
Stay in touch with your users and offer a helping hand once in a while.
I’ve always found it useful to keep an open dialogue with my power users.
They’re the ones that are most likely to rave to cohorts about you.
Reaching out to them every once in a while is a mainstay for retention and good customer health. – Brandon Batchelor, ReadyCloud Suite
- Go Further Than The Net Promote Score
With increased financial pressure on your customers, we recommend going beyond a subjective NPS score to include a tangible outcomes assessment. It can include a semi-annual or quarterly tally of realized savings,
business value and ROI delivered to date and a capability-maturity assessment showing how much you
have helped progress key maturity and capabilities, especially compared to peers. – Tom Pisello, Mediafly
- Ask Customers How You Can Improve
Ask your customers how you are doing and go deeper than an automatic answer.
Leading questions to ask include, “What could we improve?” or “If you rate us a 10 out of 10,
how could we become a 15 out of 10?” – Julie Thomas, ValueSelling Associates
- Know Your Customers’ Business KPIs
Talk to your customers on regular basis, know their vital business KPIs and have a
customer success manager that is genuinely interested in customer success.
Let the CS manager spend a good amount of time with key customers and have customer success
representative KPIs bound to real customer success. KPIs can be their bottom line as well as satisfaction,
like readiness to recommend your company and similar metrics. – Gregory Lipich, InfoSec Global
- Pick Up The Phone
Ask them. I think that many people are looking for digital ways to monitor how healthy the
relationship is with their customers and there are a ton of great tools out there.
During this “digital transformation” period we are in, often the simplest way to check in on customers is overlooked.
Pick up the phone, give them a call, share a laugh and ask them if they see value in the relationship – David Strausser, Vision33
- Emphasize Partnerships And Relationships
Leaders can actively monitor and address customer health checks by forming partnerships
that emphasize relationships. Understanding “how and when” the customer wants to be communicated with is important, especially in a post-pandemic environment where much of how we communicate is now virtual.
Regular customer reviews and surveys are important to also keep the pulse of customer health. – Brian Hudson, Avant Healthcare Professionals
- Encourage Them To Share Their Needs, Desires And Goals
Developing relationships with customers that are greater than the one-time sales process
is key to understanding what makes a satisfied customer. When customers are comfortable
with the relationship they will share their needs and desires so that you can help them achieve their goals.
When one-time customers become repeat customers, you know that they are going to become your best advocate – Jan Dubauskas, Healthinsurance.com
- Schedule Periodic Check-In Meetings
Ask for periodic calls or meetings. If a customer is ready and willing to take a call or meeting with you—without
an underlying reason or issue they seek to resolve or gain resolution from you—that’s a good indication
that you have a good relationship. The call itself will only cement that further. – Vijay Sundaram, Zoho Corporation
- Find Out How To Exceed Their Expectations
Crafting questions like “What are your expectations for the next event/month/quarter?”
and then going a step further to ask, “What would exceed your expectations?”
is a great way to do a temperature check. Maintaining alignment with your client and the project’s goals are top priorities – Sara Pugh, Talent Mavericks
Hakan Ozturk
Founder, theCScafe.com, #1 Weekly Customer Success Newsletter
Hakan Ozturk is a Paris-based Customer Success leader with over 15 years of experience in the computer software industry. Passionate about driving growth and delivering value to strategic customers, Hakan has established himself as a trusted industry expert. As the Founder of The Customer Success Café Newsletter and TopCSjobs.com, Hakan provides valuable industry insights and daily-updated job opportunities worldwide in the field of Customer Success. Connect with Hakan to boost your career in CS and your company’s potential for massive growth.
Leave a Reply