How would you define the difference between customer service and customer success? The two terms may seem synonymous, but the difference is a major priority for business leaders and customers in any industry. According to Forrester’s 2018 customer service trends, customers expect not only faster service available anywhere and anytime with automation and AI tech, but also a higher quality of service—service that has more of a human touch. In short, they want companies that care about their success. And these trends are already starting to affect businesses: 92% of surveyed companies have experienced a decline in customer satisfaction due to customer complaints with service.

So how is Simplus taking care of customer service and success in the constantly changing tech landscape? We work hard to make sure we’re hitting each of the following goals as outlined by Bob Evans in Forbes:

the service works, and works well;

the service did exactly what it was promised to do;

the service delivered the business value the customer wanted and needed; and

the customer’s business was more successful as a result of using the cloud service.

Let’s delve into each of these points, taking note that they are relevant to any company that needs to drive recurring revenue from their customers.

 

Service that works well

This might seem like the simplest point, but even the head of Salesforce, CEO Marc Benioff, stresses the need for quality service: “You have to realize that it’s hard work and not everything’s going to be perfect all the time and there are going to be problems … And that’s why I believe being so committed to the customer is more important than it’s ever been.” Even a company with enormous resources has to constantly make sure their service is functioning properly. But how does a company do that? By focusing on the customer. Whether your product is just barely an MVP or you’ve hit a level of maturity, by understanding the customer’s needs and quickly dealing with their issues, you can ensure that your service is “working well” even if there are implementation problems or bugs that arise during use. If your customer’s success is your goal, they’ll feel and understand that. And, most importantly, they’ll still feel like your product is doing its job if the service is top-notch.

 

Doing what was promised

Delivering on the promise that was sold to the customer is vital to success. First impressions can make or break a relationship, and the same goes for your product implementation. “A ‘customer for life’ is much more a focus on the sales department side,” says SAP CEO Bill McDermott. If you’re not living up to your promises, your customer won’t renew once, let alone for a lifetime. He continues, “We didn’t take anything away from them, but we made it very clear that we’re really interested in dynamite go-lives for our customers who then give raving references.” Creating a “dynamite go-live” sounds awesome and is in reach when the lofty pledges you make when selling are actually delivered.

 

Delivering business value

When your product is working great and doing exactly what was promised, the next step is driving home the value to your customers. In a B2B space, that’s most often either driving revenue or cost savings. In order to do that, ServiceNow CEO John Donahue says that you must “captur[e] and [document] and [codify] the business value that gets created, which helps a CIO or an IT department within their organization demonstrate the value they are driving inside their company and frankly helps … on upsells, on price realization and on landing new accounts.” The direct result of measuring actual numbers and value of what your product is doing for the customer is critical, and the result of measuring that success leads to more success.

 

More success for your customer’s business

And this all ties together with your customer’s business being more successful. Workday CEO Aneel Bhusri said, “If you stay very focused on customers and customer success, people pay attention to that—and in turn, they also want that same type of success.” Success for your customers means your hard work will be noticed by others, and you’ll be able to build a stronger organization with a foundation built to foment accomplishments for your customers.

 

Simplus’ focus on customer success

Simplus has taken each of these lessons to heart, with the goal of driving success for your company’s quote-to-cash goals.

Service that works well: our entire purpose is to make success simple by focusing on the end-to-end customer experience. Much like surgeons who perform only one type of surgery, our expertise enables us to bring the best solutions to your problems.

Doing what was promised: we’ve worked with over 2,000 customers to help them implement best-in-class cloud solutions to make their businesses run better and make more money. That doesn’t happen if we’re not delivering exactly what we’ve said we would.

Delivering business value: we strongly believe in quantifiable benefits to our work, like the great success we saw with Citrix: a 10% increase in CSAT scores, a 20% increase in total customer lifetime value, a 30-second decrease in average call time, and 5,000 minutes of customer service time saved per week.

More success for your customer’s business: that’s why we do what we do every day. We care about our customers’ success, and that’s why we have many case studies showing the great success we’ve seen.

We truly believe that your success is our success, and that’s why we focus on customer success over any other metric.

 

For more information on how we can make your business more successful, contact us today.