Feature: “Moving from Customer Service to Customer Success: Enhancing mobility with Tech Solutions”

Content
Historically, the business world has been divided relatively strictly into two separate areas; pre-sale and post-sale. Recently, however, more professionals are becoming wise to the fact that this is not only a poor way of thinking about business but is also harmful to companies. This conventional but damaging thought process has created two distinct groups of workers when it comes to business-customer relationships; sales for the pre-sale, and customer service for post-sale. 
The focus on getting money through the door and then delivering the service to the customer, followed by (often inadequate) customer service support is the crux of the issue. What it ultimately ignores is the power of happy and loyal customers, which can, for many types of company, spell success or ruin. This vital issue explains the movement from customer service to customer success, which started in the tech industry but is now moving across many business types around the world.

The Origins of Success
The whole idea of customer success started when the founders of Gainsight, now the world’s leading customer success management platform, began to understand that very few businesses were prepared from the changing models of software delivery. You used to buy software licences outright, but programs are now increasingly available by rolling monthly subscription, where customers can choose to leave at any time, à la Dropbox, Salesforce and Office 365.   
These changes have been driven by the business and personal consumer demand for increased flexible online accessibility, reduced price-points, and ongoing regular updates. The evolution of the delivery model for these types of products is another reason why customer success has become so important. When your customers can move to another provider at a moment’s notice, you need to be ensuring that you are providing the best service possible, at all stages of the relationship.
But now it’s not just software providers who understand that the customer has ultimate flexibility over whether they are going to continue to use your service or move on. Gainsight realised that the key to ongoing business was to ensure that customers are successful long-term when using your product or service. This, in turn, means that you, as a vendor, have to deliver success for them.
Customer Relationships are a Success
Once businesses understand the power the consumer now holds, it becomes clear why customer success is critical. Ensuring not only that the customer has the best experience possible with the service, but that you are working to help their business become the best it can be; this is the key to success. You want the questions fielded by customers to your support team to move from “can you fix this problem I am having with your product?” to “could help me accomplish this particular goal?”. It is not that companies should not provide simple product support, it is that the customer should trust their service provider’s intentions and judgement in their areas of expertise.
Success in Sales
It is important not to look at your sales and customer success staff as entirely different entities. Think about your customer recruitment and onboarding processes for a moment and you will see that these two worlds are already linked. Customer success professionals are already key players in the initial sales process as they provide the know-how for technical discussions and demos with the customers, while the sales staff lend their expertise to customer retention and renewals later down the line.
However your product fits into the relocations industry, consider the benefits of increasing your points of contact between you and your human resources (HR) clients by becoming more collaborative within the full mobility process, even it is not one of the most profitable moves for you at the time. Becoming more interlinked in this regard will allow everyone to move towards the ideal of customer success, which will ultimately benefit everyone, not least the assignees. Interestingly, software solutions are beginning to bridge the gaps between HRs and destination service providers, allowing them to share the responsibility for success, but this is a topic for another article. 

Building Successful Relocations
It is essential to understand that success is not a fad purely for those in the software environment, but will be a necessary part of all business going forward. Global mobility professionals have always understood that the whole process of relocation is a mostly personal endeavour for their clients, with ensuring a smooth and successful move often seen as the top priority. However, when considering customer success for the relocation industry, we should take a step back to see how successful we are for our clients’ businesses, not just their staff. 

Over the next five years, more and more relocation companies will begin to implement business models which offer more immersive experiences for their human resources clients and assignees. This shift is going to force global mobility professionals into the realms of customer success; working with their clients to help them understand why the necessary processes are essential, while also working more closely together to troubleshoot any issues. Software and technology will be a significant part of this shift.

For more information contact CEO and Co-Founder of ReloTalent, Sebastien Deschamps - ReloTalent seb@relotalent.com