Your biggest fans DON’T want your product!

Whilst this post was intended to focus on the motivation of your strongest advocates, your champions, I hope you might first indulge me whilst I have a small rant! For those of us working on innovative solutions to old problems, one of the worst traps to fall into is misunderstanding the purpose of our product…

A different way to start your data strategy

Given the value of data to any organisation, you’d think we’d no longer need to prove how important it is, especially in the world of SaaS businesses.  But getting data, linking it together then using it effectively is still a really, really hard thing to do.  When a head of engineering asks me what data…

Part 2 of 2: Three key factors to scale your customer success operation

In the last post, We went over the four core pillars required to build your customer success operation.  If you are struggling to see the value from your customer success function, it’s worth going back over each one to see what might be missing. Once you are confident that you have an effective customer success…

Part 1 of 2: The four pillars of customer success in SaaS

In a conversation that started out amongst a couple of colleagues, but spilled over into web chats with peers on LinkedIn, I was attempting to bring simplicity and clarity to an often-asked question – what do you need to get a customer success function up and running?  Of course, I could spend a whole article…

4 tips on managing the “reality gap”

Anyone who has ever worked in a customer or client facing role will have faced many, many challenges.  Dealing with customers is a calling, not a career choice made by most.  For the most part, people who chose to be in a customer facing role want to help, and are adept at using their soft…

Why “let sleeping dogs lie” is not an option when dealing with customers.

In one of my earliest customer facing sales roles, and the first b2b role I held, I had a boss who thought himself shrewd, wily and customer -savvy.  He always achieved his numbers, often had the highest sales and the most “net new names” accounts.  His strategy was simple and effective – to put customers…

What are you doing about the customer success gap?

This post is neither a sales pitch for my services, nor a rant about the gaps in customer success – but it is a wake up call to many business who are currently facing a customer success gap. I’ve had many conversations with businesses big and small, across a number of countries in Europe and…

CX Portugal 3: Which businesses are driving CX success in Portugal?

As it’s been 4+ months since I started my new life in Portugal, I thought it would be fun to write a short series of posts to share how, as a foreigner, it feels to experience Portuguese service and culture. In the first of this series,“Process before customer”, I focused on some of the actual barriers…

Why is Customer Centricity such a relevant issue today?

Preaching to the choir, perhaps, but customer centricity matters today more than ever. Gone are the days when when some customers merely accepted that customer service would be subpar, especially when dealing with entrenched services. Fortunately, customers woke up to their rights, and even the most powerful changed course. It was nothing short of a…

CX5/5: From reactive to proactive customer relationships

During this month, I’ve adopted a theme to my blogs focusing on various ideas, concepts and posts that I have shared in the past to help those of you considering customer experience transformation to take that leap of faith. In the fifth of five posts, I’ll focus on moving from reactive to proactive customer relationships. In…