For any business, tracking its progress and setting goals is mandatory. How do you move forward without objectives? You can’t. Here’s where OKRs come in. An OKR software or Objectives and Key Results is a tool used by customer success teams and other departments for goal setting with measurable results. You can track progress, encourage engagement and facilitate alignment around quantifiable goals. It is a great tool for fostering a purposeful work environment.
Firms like LinkedIn, AirBnB, and Intel have had great results with OKRs, and it is a fact that implementing a goal framework the correct way can create a superior work environment. OKR software is simple and effective and when used rightly can help your customer success team create high output management, increased communication, and team alignment in your business goals.
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Writing and Implementing OKRs For Your Customer Success Team
In order to write effective and credible OKRs, use the formula given below –
We will__(Objective)__as measured by__(these Key Results)__.
OKRs work identically for goal-setting through company levels and are designed to fit the requirements of any organization size, department, or industry. They can also be implemented by individuals or small teams for results.
The objectives in question have to be clear, inspiring as well as actionable and time-bound. Whether they succeed or fail, is determined by key results. It’s easy for the team to gauge progress because these objectives are quantified, measurable, and time-bound. Those contributing to KRs should track progress regularly, ideally weekly, and carry out grading of the KR at the end of the OKR period which is typically a quarter.
It’s always a good idea to make the OKR exercise collaborative. Brainstorming sessions engage the customer success team, giving them some level of ownership and driving accountability for results. The end goal should be to create a process where teams feel empowered to create their own OKRs, challenging teams across the firm to make sure they focus on the proper priorities at the appropriate time. Your customer success team is pushed forward, thanks to creative thinking and informed risk-taking.
Why OKRs are important for Customer Success?
Customers are the lifeline of any successful business. Even the most innovative product won’t make your business thrive unless it attracts and retains paying consumers while providing the best customer service. To help your customers succeed, setting up the right OKRs for customer success is very important.
Nurturing customers is important, hand-holding them while they familiarise themselves with your product and become brand advocates, is the norm. Entrepreneurs, business owners, and marketers are now focusing on achieving customer success.
Even though it’s become a buzzword, not everyone is getting it right. A good customer success strategy goes over and above traditional customer relationship management and customer care. The former is proactive, the latter reactive.
Customer Success OKRs: Best Practices & Examples
When getting started with Customer Success OKRs, we get common questions like “how do I write a good CS OKR?” or “can you give me a good example of a customer success OKR?” To answer these questions, we created a list of OKR examples for Customer Success so you can have some inspiration as you begin to write your own company, department, and team OKRs.
OBJECTIVE: Increase Product Adoption
Key Results:
100% of assigned accounts have at least 3 live touches
Write re-engagement messages for 12 customer lifecycle points
Improve NPS score to 65+
OBJECTIVE: Be Proactive with Customer Success
Key Results:
Implement a Customer Success platform to increase the average health score to above 45
100% of red accounts have reviews scheduled
Net retention rate >112%
OBJECTIVE: Deliver a World-Class Customer Support Experience
Key Results:
Achieve a CSAT of 90%+ for all Tier-1 tickets
Decrease first response from 1hr to <45mins
Resolve 95% of Tier-2 support tickets in under 24 hours
100% of support reps maintain a personal CSAT of 95% or more
OBJECTIVE: Ensure Customer Support is a High-Performance Team
Key Results:
Maintain a weekly Support group ESI/Pulse score of 8 or greater
Promote 2 customer support reps to managers to customer success managers
Recruit and hire 3 amazing new customer support reps
What is Customer Success?
Customer success refers to the process of resolving customer queries proactively and solving problems even before they arise. You anticipate questions and challenges, providing solutions before they ask. This is not to be confused with customer experience, which takes into account the experience the customer has while interacting with your brand. This business method helps customers achieve their objectives using your product/service. You have to hand-hold your customer through the following stages –
Onboarding – The first stage is where a customer buys your product or uses your service. You must focus on anticipating and providing the information and tools required at this time.
Adoption – This phase starts when the customer starts using your product/service, becoming familiar with your brand. You need to constantly communicate with them, to gauge how they feel about their purchase decision. It is very important to provide great customer support at this stage.
Renewal – During the renewal stage, customers decide whether or not they wish to carry on with the product/service. It is your responsibility to retain them via discounts, upgrades, add-ons, etc.
Expansion – In this stage, a satisfied customer is converted into a loyal brand advocate. They start recommending your service to others, boosting your brand awareness and reputation. Your sole focus should be on making your customers feel loved and special.
Implementing a good customer success strategy warrants a lot of coordination and working among different departments like sales, marketing, product development, and customer support. There should also be a dedicated customer success team with a duly appointed customer success manager.
Why is Customer Success important?
In today’s highly competitive and consumer-driven market, most businesses are forced to focus on customer success. The data says that growing firms are 21% more likely to prioritize customer success than their counterparts, thus helping them boost customer retention, and loyalty and consequently increase revenue. Customer success is all the more important considering that acquiring a new customer costs much more than retaining an existing one. It is easier to upsell new products and add-ons to existing customers. Hence focus should be on forming long-term relationships with these customers by nurturing, surprising, and hand-holding them.
Customer Success Challenges
Development and execution of a good customer success strategy are not easy. There might be barriers in the form of a lack of coordination among different teams. For example, the marketing team and customer service team may not be on the same page. Secondly, there might be daily business needs that take your focus away from the bigger picture – achieving customer success. It is important to set realistic, measurable, and achievable goals that take you closer to customer success. That is why you need OKRs.
Benefits of Using OKRs
The best benefit of using OKRs for customer success is that it helps different departments and workers prioritize actions, and helps assign particular roles and responsibilities to team members, ensuring that all their efforts are focused on the goal of gaining customer success. OKRs align the high-level goals of your firm with those of individual teams and members and are important when you are running a firm with hundreds of employees. TIme-bound milestones also facilitate a sense of urgency, helping you track progress at different levels.
How to Set Up OKRs for Customer Success
Here are some points you need to keep in mind when defining OKRs for your business.
Ambitious Goals – Make sure you set stretched goals and deadlines if you want to implement successful OKRs. Your team members need to step out of their comfort zone.
Optimum Key Results – Assign at least 3 to 5 key results for each objective. Loading an objective with too many irrelevant key results dilutes the team’s sense of purpose and priorities. It isn’t compulsory to assign numerical key results, you can use some that can be measured with ‘yes’ and ‘no’.
Flexible – It is important to write flexible OKRs for unprecedented circumstances. You may need to remove or modify some results mid-way or set fresh objectives.
Collaborative – FInally, the process of defining OKRs for customer success must be collaborative, with teams and individual members allowed to define certain OKRs post consultations with their managers. High-level OKRs must take into account suggestions from employees who are to implement them.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, customer success can take your business to great heights. It can boost your revenue by improving customer retention and loyalty. It is vital to develop a powerful customer success strategy. Define a long-term objective and assign measurable and trackable actions that can help you accomplish it.
