Case Study: Using maturity models to support customer success managers engage customers in better accessing & utilising product potential
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The reality in so much of our lives, both at work and privately, it that we have standards we aspire to, but the reality is that we struggle to meet them. Voltaire captured this sentiment in his line ‘the best is the enemy of the good’.
The result can be a level of confusion and inaction. For some it may be a reason not to explore the ideal and the potential learning around it. For others, it can stop them appreciating the real progress that may be made.
Maturity models balance the ideal with the pragmatic
The power of maturity models lies in the way that they can maintain a picture of the ideal, but allow for people to determinedly pursue more practical goals within that.This structured contention between the ideal and the practical can be really powerful in building commitment for making progress. Our article on Maturity Models looks at how this can be used to make organisational culture more tangible, and equip people to actively manage culture shift.
But maturity models can also be used with a more specific focus, and their target audience does not have to be within your own organisation.
Understanding customer adoption and consumption
One of our clients, a large international software organisation, quickly recognised the potential of these options. Their concern was for helping their customers access and utilise more of the potential of their products.
The client had experienced the power of our Maturity Models in transforming the culture in different areas of their own organisation. In particular, how it inspired people to take practical ownership in making things happen.Furthermore, they recognised the parallels in their customer’s adoption of their software. On the one hand, their customers were not ready to commit to the steps needed to access the full potential of what was available. But on the other hand, their customers’ lack of ownership of any other targets, meant that progress was weak.
As a result, they began to talk to us about the potential of creating a Maturity Model for their products. One that defined the ideal practice and benefits on a number of dimensions. But which also provided interim levels on that journey. Levels which inspired commitment and action in their customers. And thus generated a faster rate for achieving the benefits.
Building a customer maturity model
To explore this, we pulled together a number of key implementation perspectives in the client staff. Then we began to define their view of the ideal – an unrealistically perfect customer who did everything perfectly. This helped us to both define the dimensions of our proposed Customer Maturity Model, and to determine the highest level for each.The dimensions that emerged initially were: Clarity of strategy and goals; Quality of change management; Technology roadmap; Programme governance; and Operational disciplines.
The next step was to understand the steps that might represent valid progress toward those ideals. The workshop we designed had a number of useful tools to help with this. And over the period of a day, the body of the maturity model took shape.
Maturity-centred customer success management
The client wanted to make the resulting Maturity Model the pivotal component in the Customer Success Management programme. And they asked us to help them design such a programme.
We began by understanding the perspectives people had on customer relationships currently, and how people wanted to see them improve. We then created a workshop within which people could think creatively about how the Maturity Model could support more productive and successful relationships. And to build around that the other elements of Customer Success Management that would be needed to enable it.
The result was the ‘Journey to Success’ programme, which was immediately (and successfully) piloted with a number of key customers.
Benefits of the approach
The impact of the maturity model based approach totally changed the dynamic in the relationship between vendor and customer in a number of ways:
- The customer staff developed a much better understanding and appreciation of the whole implementation journey
- As a result, the Customer Success Manager could more easily establish themselves in a coaching role
- The model enabled customer staff to make sensible trade-offs between benefits and commitments
- Consequently, the Customer Success Manager could facilitate customer staff in taking full ownership of the implementation
- The resulting plan enabled the Customer Success Manager to massively increase consumption, and thereby impact and revenue
Growing and sustaining customer relationship
Furthermore, the Maturity Model served to help the customer to understand they were on a journey. In other words, that there were still further benefits and steps for them to take after the current phase. And it also enabled the customer to feel in full control of their own choice in what those would be.
Consequently, it has helped simplify and clarify the role of the Customer Success Manager . It has helped the Customer Success Managers to establish their focus as a coach. Thereby defusing the tensions associated with being seen as a salesperson. In other words, it has enabled them to adopt a more effective stance as a trusted and critical friend.The customers too have come to understand the power of the Maturity Model in taking ownership of culture: In clarifying the choices available; In building ownership and in changing behaviours; and in supporting productive dialogue around that.
What next?
To explore this topic further, feel free to contact us. We find our own thinking is continually sharpened and enriched by the questions people ask, and by the discussions that emerge from it.
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Author: Mike Clargo | Culturistics