Customer-centric Growth by Lincoln Murphy

Disclaimer: The following assumes your customers are humans. Don’t get me wrong, customers dislike A LOT of things. But there are three things that elicit such a deep, visceral response that the only applicable word is hate. Strong word, but strong … [Continue reading]

  The phase of the customer lifecycle that gets the most attention is Customer Onboarding, yet ironically (or tragically), most people fail to understand what onboarding really is, and few do it well.   And even though Onboarding is … [Continue reading]

It’s critical to understand why your customers churn, but if you’re relying solely on the reason the customer gives you for that churn, you’re definitely missing the actual reason. 'Churn Reason' analysis, like most things in Customer Success, is … [Continue reading]

The best place to set our relationship with the customer up for huge success - on both sides - is right at the beginning, and it doesn’t get much earlier than the Sales-to-CSM Handoff. Of course, the Sales-to-CSM Handoff is also where companies can … [Continue reading]

How many Customer Success Managers (CSMs) do we need to give our customers their Appropriate Experience (AX)? What happens if we ramp sales? What happens if a bunch of customers upgrade? Downgrade? How much excess capacity do our current CSMs … [Continue reading]

You think the AHA! Moment during Customer Onboarding is a positive thing. But it's not. AHA! moments are only a positive thing if you’re searching for something… perhaps aliens or a missing sock. At the end of this journey you discover what you’re … [Continue reading]

Customers ghosting you during onboarding comes up from time to time... you've probably experienced it yourself. Someone said that when this happens they kick it back to Sales since they have the relationship with the customer. This is unfortunately a … [Continue reading]

When there is a legitimate reason for a customer to interact with you - based on helping them to get value from their relationship with you - but they are not… we say, in the parlance of our times, that they’re ghosting you. You could say they are … [Continue reading]

Customer Success starts with acquiring customers that have Success Potential. Customers that have Success Potential are said to be good fit customers. This is the opposite of bad-fit customers that cannot get value from a relationship with us now or … [Continue reading]

Customers buying more from you is awesome. I mean, you're in business here and getting customers you've already acquired to expand their relationship with you just seems like a super-efficient way to grow. And it is. So when you have customers that … [Continue reading]

When it comes to Customer Growth or Account Expansion (upselling & cross-selling), I assumed people knew that... ...you don't have to hurt the relationship with your customer to hit your numbers. ...it doesn't have to be a difficult slog that you … [Continue reading]

Let's talk about Customer Engagement, specifically one part of the Communication Model, which is my BEAST Message Framework for creating messages that actually engage customers. It's really interesting that we communicate all day long - with our … [Continue reading]

Customer Success is when your customers achieve their Desired Outcome through their interactions with your company. If you focus on Customer Success, churn will not be an issue. At least in theory. To take that from a simple theory to your Operating … [Continue reading]

Customer Success is when your customers achieve their Desired Outcome through their interactions with your company. As I've said before, Customer Success as a concept is very simple. Don't overthink it. But I always have to unpack one piece of that … [Continue reading]

When it comes to Customer Success, I've seen a lot of things. I've seen what works (and what works REALLY works... it's amazing). Unfortunately, I've also seen what doesn't work. A lot. In 2017 I heard "Customer Success doesn't work" way more than I … [Continue reading]

I've been battling more and more misconceptions when it comes to Customer Success than the fewer that I expected. I assumed as Customer Success became more well-received, moved more into the mainstream, and simply became more common that we'd all … [Continue reading]