Dan Martell - The 8 Must-Have Tools for Flawless Customer Success

00:00:00.080 Hey there, Dan Martell here,

00:00:01.120 serial entrepreneur, investor, and creator of SaaS Academy.

00:00:03.160 In this episode, I'm gonna share with you the eight,

00:00:06.280 I was figuring how many fingers I put on my,

00:00:08.480 how many fingers do I throw up on my hands,

00:00:10.680 the eight tools that you need

00:00:12.120 for your customer success process

00:00:14.520 to make sure that you not only activate

00:00:16.920 and onboard new customers, but retain them,

00:00:19.520 because that's where the real money is made.

00:00:21.240 And be sure to stay at the end

00:00:22.120 where I'm gonna tell you how to get access

00:00:23.280 to my EBR Flow Planner Worksheet,

00:00:25.960 that's Executive Business Review.

00:00:28.240 It's the agenda structure you need to make sure

00:00:30.840 that you're upselling and cross-selling

00:00:32.400 in your customer success process.

00:00:34.680 Let's get into it.

00:00:48.320 So what's crazy still to this day

00:00:50.320 in the world of SaaS, software as a service,

00:00:53.440 the concepts of customer success is still being developed

00:00:57.120 and innovated in companies like Gainsights

00:00:59.200 and many others have really set the framework

00:01:03.400 for a lot of companies that are trying to understand

00:01:05.800 based on your sales motion, right?

00:01:08.960 A trial process or SMB purchase process

00:01:12.460 or a demo to enrollment or POC,

00:01:17.540 a proof of concept for more enterprise.

00:01:19.280 Depending on your target customer

00:01:22.580 and the sales motion or your onboarding process,

00:01:25.460 how you do customer success will be different.

00:01:28.360 So I've covered that in other episodes,

00:01:31.060 but in this one specifically,

00:01:32.220 I wanna share with you the three tools per category

00:01:36.340 of customer success activity that your team

00:01:40.320 or yourself should be doing to make sure

00:01:42.440 that you not only get people that stick around,

00:01:45.760 but my favorite part is renewals, upsells, and cross-sells

00:01:49.440 so that you can do what's called land and expand.

00:01:52.000 So here are those eight tools.

00:01:53.780 Number one, adoption management.

00:01:56.240 I know I said eight tools, but it's eight categories

00:01:58.960 of tools, because for each one,

00:02:00.380 I wanna give you the three tools that I recommend.

00:02:03.080 Now, I normally never share these

00:02:04.880 because I like for my content to be evergreen,

00:02:07.700 but in this episode, I wanna make sure

00:02:09.300 I give you context for how to use it, what it's for,

00:02:12.880 what's the current state of the art.

00:02:14.620 It's gonna change.

00:02:15.460 Go check out the G2 Crowds or the Capteras of the world 1.00

00:02:18.080 to figure out what's the latest hotness

00:02:20.380 for each category, but these are my preferences.

00:02:23.380 So the way I think of adoption management

00:02:26.020 is really about managing not only, you know,

00:02:28.820 who are the new clients that you have,

00:02:30.260 but also where are they at in that life cycle of adoption.

00:02:34.600 And there's tools out there that can give you dashboards

00:02:36.560 so a customer success manager, a CSM,

00:02:39.700 can understand, you know, where are people at in that process,

00:02:42.580 what stage they're at,

00:02:43.540 as well as kind of what's their level of activity.

00:02:46.460 Are they red, green, or yellow?

00:02:48.620 So the three tools that I recommend is number one is Pendo.

00:02:51.300 A lot of my clients that I coach use that.

00:02:53.580 It's a great tool.

00:02:55.100 Gainsight is really arguably, well, Tatango, 0.98

00:02:58.820 and that's the third one.

00:02:59.960 I met the founder of Tatango back in 2009.

00:03:03.240 And what's interesting is customer success

00:03:04.640 used to be called revenue retention.

00:03:06.420 And a lot of these products have morphed

00:03:08.680 into kind of what they do today.

00:03:10.680 And adoption management, those three,

00:03:13.280 in regards to getting insights

00:03:14.600 to how the product's being used, are the clients active,

00:03:17.980 what accounts or what team members

00:03:20.360 in those accounts are being active.

00:03:21.600 Those are the top three tools,

00:03:22.760 Pendo, Gainsight, and Tatango.

00:03:25.140 Number two, co-browsing.

00:03:27.400 If you're doing any type of customer success,

00:03:30.800 sometimes you're gonna need to see their screen.

00:03:32.640 You're gonna wanna have them share their computer

00:03:35.300 and kind of take over it and remote onto their computer

00:03:39.920 so you can kind of like click around and show them.

00:03:41.640 It's just a lot easier experience.

00:03:43.280 And there's a few tools that I like.

00:03:45.660 Upscope is the one that I use most frequently.

00:03:48.760 I would highly recommend it.

00:03:49.860 Surfly is number two, and then three,

00:03:52.360 and I kind of like present these

00:03:53.640 in order of like maybe cost or complexity.

00:03:56.260 And then finally, Acquire, check them out.

00:03:58.160 I think they're worth a mention.

00:04:00.460 But if you're trying to, and even in customer support,

00:04:04.040 if you're trying to like get access to another computer

00:04:07.180 or a customer's computer, those are the tools to use.

00:04:09.700 Number three, Calendar.

00:04:11.640 This is a big one.

00:04:12.480 I mean, everybody's probably got a calendar tool today.

00:04:14.540 If you don't, you're spending way too much time

00:04:16.040 trying to coordinate meetings.

00:04:17.760 but the one that we use predominantly

00:04:20.100 with our customer success team is Calendly.

00:04:22.500 I use it personally, we use it there.

00:04:24.700 The other ones that I've seen used by a lot of other teams

00:04:27.940 is Acuity and ScheduleOnce.

00:04:29.880 We actually use ScheduleOnce as well for our sales team,

00:04:33.060 so it's interesting how different products

00:04:35.940 evolve at different levels,

00:04:37.180 and I'm sure some of the reasons

00:04:38.720 why we didn't use ScheduleOnce or Calendly

00:04:41.420 for the sales stuff has probably been fixed,

00:04:43.360 but anyways, teams have the tools

00:04:45.260 and preference they wanna use,

00:04:46.300 and I let them make those decisions, but check those out.

00:04:48.980 If you're not using a calendar tool

00:04:50.420 to allow yourself to provide availability

00:04:52.540 and make it really easy for clients to book in

00:04:55.200 with your team, either your, you know,

00:04:57.280 could be an engineering resource

00:04:58.680 to review some integrations or your customer success team,

00:05:01.960 then you're just working way too hard.

00:05:03.240 And honestly, you're not creating

00:05:04.380 a great customer experience.

00:05:06.460 Number four, surveys.

00:05:08.420 So getting feedback, asking customers things like

00:05:12.200 an NPS score, net promoter score, or your CSAT,

00:05:16.220 which is your customer satisfaction rating

00:05:18.160 or your CXM, your customer experience rating,

00:05:23.200 no wait, CET, your customer experience score, CES.

00:05:27.340 There we go, I'm gonna get it eventually.

00:05:28.980 But using survey tools, not only on product,

00:05:32.700 but on customer success,

00:05:33.980 just to try to understand where the friction is,

00:05:36.100 understand the heartbeat of the customer,

00:05:38.400 is really important.

00:05:39.240 So I like these tools, I've used all three of them.

00:05:41.580 Typeform is what we use for the most part.

00:05:43.380 It's quick, easy, the user experience

00:05:45.160 and the UX is really well designed.

00:05:47.280 I don't like the fact that they don't save state

00:05:49.040 if somebody goes through a survey and they don't finish it,

00:05:51.660 so that's kind of weird.

00:05:53.100 Two is Ask Nicely, an incredible tool,

00:05:56.600 well-versed, a lot of different features.

00:05:58.580 And then Delighted came out five years ago,

00:06:01.440 and we also use Delighted for our NPS tracking.

00:06:04.180 We hook it in to Front, which is our email tool,

00:06:08.040 and it works really well.

00:06:09.860 But if you're not getting any feedback from your customers,

00:06:12.120 if you don't have some kind of touch point,

00:06:14.060 Trust me, you're gonna wanna do that

00:06:15.500 because when you get negative feedback,

00:06:18.380 you're gonna wanna have what's called a red playbook

00:06:20.440 so you can react.

00:06:21.880 A lot of my clients that I coach,

00:06:23.280 we build a red playbook to take a client that's at risk

00:06:26.720 and turn them in to retained.

00:06:28.980 Number five, metrics.

00:06:30.800 So the big metric you wanna be measuring is a health score.

00:06:33.760 Okay, I call it, sometimes I've heard HubSpot calls it

00:06:36.880 the customer happiness index.

00:06:38.520 I call it the member at risk monitor framework.

00:06:40.700 So that's the framework I teach my clients.

00:06:42.400 And there are tools out there that'll do this.

00:06:44.560 Many of the ones I mentioned earlier,

00:06:46.420 you know, Gainsight, Pendo, et cetera.

00:06:47.900 But the ones that I think are just easy

00:06:49.380 and you probably already have them is one, ProfitWell,

00:06:51.880 which is really around SaaS metrics.

00:06:54.280 So be sure to check out ProfitWell.

00:06:55.820 Shout out to Patrick, one of my friends in the SaaS world.

00:06:59.240 He's an incredible guy.

00:07:00.180 He's built a great product.

00:07:01.880 UserIQ is another one that'll give you

00:07:03.440 that same kind of dashboard metrics, health score, big one.

00:07:08.080 And then finally, Customer Success Box.

00:07:10.180 It's actually designed,

00:07:12.140 And again, there's so many overlaps on features.

00:07:14.680 I just wanna throw that out there.

00:07:15.620 I know that, you know, customer success box

00:07:17.720 could have been an adoption management platform

00:07:19.400 and vice versa.

00:07:20.520 It's just, I wanted to look at them independently

00:07:23.660 based on the kind of function that was being used for.

00:07:27.720 So those are the three that I recommend.

00:07:29.320 You need, need, need a health score.

00:07:31.260 You need to design this.

00:07:32.780 To me, customer success starts with the health score.

00:07:35.780 From there, you can then ask yourselves

00:07:37.400 all these other questions and deploy the tools

00:07:39.340 that help you solve the problems that you discover.

00:07:41.560 Number six, help desk.

00:07:44.760 Now, much like email marketing tools,

00:07:47.620 this list could be like 50 to 100.

00:07:51.460 There's so many different help desk software out there.

00:07:54.860 I'm gonna mention the ones that I just personally like

00:07:57.560 and honestly, one that I have a complete bias towards

00:08:01.260 because I'm an investor.

00:08:02.880 So help scout, amazing company, check them out.

00:08:05.840 A lot of my coaching clients use help scout.

00:08:07.460 But Zendesk, arguably the category owner in that space.

00:08:12.340 They're a publicly traded company.

00:08:13.800 It's a great startup story, great product.

00:08:16.580 But they're big.

00:08:17.380 They're kind of like the sales force of help desk software.

00:08:19.880 I apologize if the founder watches this.

00:08:21.720 But it's true, kind of.

00:08:23.540 You've built a way better product, I think.

00:08:25.480 But then finally, Intercom is, you know,

00:08:28.780 because it just offers so many other features

00:08:31.040 along with help desk and support. 0.59

00:08:33.320 And I'm an investor in Intercom,

00:08:34.600 so they're gonna make the list.

00:08:36.040 they have built a world-class product.

00:08:38.460 They're an incredible company.

00:08:39.540 They're playing the long game.

00:08:41.160 So if you've already got it, use it.

00:08:42.840 Some people actually have it

00:08:44.100 and don't use it for the support side.

00:08:45.600 I'm a big fan of less tools

00:08:46.880 because it removes, you know,

00:08:49.680 like it gives you the 360 view on the customer.

00:08:53.440 It keeps everything integrated.

00:08:55.020 You don't have to use apps to send data all around.

00:08:57.720 So check those out.

00:08:58.640 But the key with help desk software

00:09:00.580 is creating your FAQ pages.

00:09:02.520 You need the ability to create an FAQ

00:09:05.100 for customers to self-serve.

00:09:06.620 60 to 70% of your customers don't wanna call,

00:09:09.420 don't wanna wait for an email.

00:09:10.700 They don't mind searching your FAQs.

00:09:14.600 So be sure that you have that feature

00:09:16.640 in whatever tool you choose to use for ticketing.

00:09:19.680 Number seven, screen recording.

00:09:22.540 So a picture is worth a thousand words, okay?

00:09:27.060 A video is worth like 10,000 words.

00:09:29.820 So I'm a big fan because I've always run,

00:09:33.100 distributed teams all over the world, right?

00:09:36.180 Hundreds of people I've hired over the years

00:09:37.780 that work in remote distributed teams.

00:09:40.240 And I'm a big fan of screenshots,

00:09:42.240 I'm a big fan of recordings, audio, et cetera.

00:09:45.120 And your clients are gonna want the same thing.

00:09:47.140 So tools that I love to use for this purpose,

00:09:49.780 I use Loom a lot, it's kind of a new entrance.

00:09:52.860 A little buggy at times, I'm not gonna lie.

00:09:54.780 I also use CloudApp, that's number two.

00:09:56.660 CloudApp does screen, why do you use CloudApp versus Loom?

00:09:59.100 I just find the flow of Loom is a little cleaner.

00:10:01.920 CloudApp's great, I use it for screenshots.

00:10:03.860 And then Camtasia, again, is a bit more evolved.

00:10:08.360 You know, if you wanna do kind of like

00:10:09.540 higher production stuff, I think of a Camtasia.

00:10:11.460 I've used it in the past, it just feels a little bulky

00:10:14.440 for some of the use cases I'm using it for.

00:10:16.180 But not having screenshot or screen recording ability

00:10:20.180 as part of customer success is a big no-no.

00:10:22.040 It's just, you shouldn't try to explain to a client,

00:10:24.400 go to this page and click on this button.

00:10:26.100 You literally should just record your screen,

00:10:28.220 do it for them, ideally, and then show them,

00:10:30.720 or screen record how they could do it themselves

00:10:33.320 to get them unblocked.

00:10:34.580 Big, big, big benefit there.

00:10:36.600 And number eight, probably a little left field

00:10:38.820 for some of you guys is status page.

00:10:41.000 You know, as part of the software world we all live in,

00:10:44.320 having the ability for clients to see the status

00:10:46.860 of our infrastructure and our servers and our system

00:10:49.100 so that they know if there's an existing issue

00:10:51.300 and you can kind of put it in your email signatures

00:10:53.260 as a customer success manager.

00:10:55.300 There's really, there's a bunch of ways you can do this.

00:10:58.300 I've built it myself that just monitors

00:11:00.580 the kind of different infrastructure

00:11:01.980 but statuspage.io is a great tool

00:11:05.420 and what's funny is there's their competitor

00:11:07.800 which is status.io which I've also used

00:11:10.440 are essentially the exact same product.

00:11:12.180 I've got to imagine they probably fight

00:11:14.880 over some level of market confusion around copywriting

00:11:17.760 but for whatever it is, two different products

00:11:20.400 serving the same need, almost the exact same name

00:11:24.040 and they both work or you can use open source examples.

00:11:26.740 There's a bunch of different solutions to that

00:11:28.160 but having a status page, I think,

00:11:29.580 is just a really great way to just button up

00:11:32.340 the ability for a customer to self-serve,

00:11:34.720 to understand, oh, the servers are down.

00:11:36.940 I don't need to email anybody

00:11:38.140 in my account manager or whatever.

00:11:39.460 I'll just see if it gets fixed in the next hour.

00:11:42.020 I mean, Twitter was notorious for doing this

00:11:44.960 when they had the fail whale back in the day.

00:11:47.080 Bunch of companies now have status pages,

00:11:48.840 so make sure you add it to your stack.

00:11:52.060 So quick recap of the eight core kind of areas

00:11:55.840 and tools that you need.

00:11:56.840 Adoption management is number one.

00:11:58.500 Number two, co-browsing.

00:11:59.780 Number three, calendar.

00:12:01.540 Four, surveys.

00:12:03.140 Five, metrics.

00:12:04.440 Six, help center.

00:12:06.080 Seven, screen recording.

00:12:08.840 And eight, app uptime.

00:12:11.680 As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode,

00:12:13.560 I wanna give you a gift.

00:12:15.260 It literally will make you money.

00:12:16.780 It's called the EBR Flow Planner Executive Business Review,

00:12:20.560 or you may have heard of QBR's quarterly business reviews,

00:12:22.960 but some people don't do them every quarter.

00:12:25.120 So I call it the EBR Flow Planner.

00:12:26.840 You can click the link to download your copy.

00:12:29.220 It's not only the five hot principles

00:12:31.200 to how to do an EBR, an executive business review,

00:12:34.760 but I'll give you the exact meeting structure,

00:12:37.300 the nine box framework that I use

00:12:39.940 to not only get your accounts connected with your product,

00:12:43.860 committed to delivering it, retained in a big way,

00:12:47.420 but most importantly, upsell, cross-sell,

00:12:50.580 new opportunities to expand the revenue.

00:12:54.420 At the end of the day, the game,

00:12:56.460 The name of the game in SaaS is land and expand,

00:12:59.380 get an account, grow the account,

00:13:01.480 and use the EBR Flow Planner to do that.

00:13:03.640 Click the link, download that.

00:13:05.480 That is my gift to you.

00:13:06.660 And as I mentioned, you know, if you like this video,

00:13:11.000 I didn't mention this, but I'm mentioning it now.

00:13:12.380 If you like this video, smash the like button,

00:13:14.260 subscribe to my channel, and most importantly,

00:13:16.740 click the notification button, or the bell,

00:13:18.580 that little thing, click the bell, 1.00

00:13:20.160 because that'll tell you next time I publish a video,

00:13:22.140 which I do at least every week, sometimes twice a week,

00:13:24.700 I want to make sure that you see them

00:13:27.420 and so you can do that.

00:13:29.460 And as per usual, I want to challenge you

00:13:31.400 to live a bigger life and a bigger business

00:13:33.420 and I'll see you next Monday.

00:13:35.960 Ooh.

Dan Martell - October 05, 2020

The 8 Must-Have Tools for Flawless Customer Success

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