Why and How to enjoy Customer Success
An approach to practicing customer success as your best hobby
I remember the days when we were addicted to computer games. The First-time multiplayer/online games that were launched back then. It was a great joy to play together and discuss game critics afterward. At that time, I was thinking that very few things can be that enjoyable: using imagination for long-term strategy, feeling dynamism during execution, and getting quick results that are improvable with iterations. If that could be a job where I earn my living, I would definitely go for it (unfortunately it was quite early for esports ).
Probably there are very few people who are fortunate enough to get the joy from their daily work as they get from their hobbies and, sadly, I do not have a secret formula to help you on this -yet-.However I can promise a perspective on how I enjoy my field, customer success, in a way that you can easily experience and test yourself, enjoy the depth in the field and grow personally on an endless basis.
In order to demonstrate how customer success can be an astonishing field that you truly can enjoy, I will present a benchmark between some activities/professions and introduce a framework to make the comparison reasonable.
First, let’s go with the framework:
System Theory is an interdisciplinary and holistic approach that can be used to analyze different subjects. Basically, System Theory explains concepts/phenomena and the relationship between them under input and output relationships. Let’s understand this in the most basic form:
In any system, there are inputs, transformations, and outputs. Outputs are kicking feedback mechanisms and iterations continue through this cycle.
I would like to use system theory to examine and benchmark different activities and professions:
a-Playing football
b-Playing Age of Empires
c-Practice medicine
d-Practicing customer success.
My assumption is as follows:
More flexibility in inputs/outputs increases the variety of scenarios/opportunities, thus more joy, than the fixed ones.
I do not assert that the assumption is correct for everyone, everywhere. Though I have an interesting finding, which is that most of the popular phenomena are leaning towards fixed sets of inputs. Here is the logic:
a-Playing Football
The most popular sport in the world. Pretty much depends on very fixed inputs and one expected/desired outcome: win or lose. Even though the team plays well but they lose, it is an undesired consequence. Plus, transformation/process ( match itself ) is pretty static so we have very few noticeable events during the game.
b-Playing Age of Empires
One of the earliest and still popular strategy games. It is a lot more sophisticated in terms of input and transformation variables than football but has a much lower fan base relatively speaking. Still, you need to defeat your opponent, how you play is an insignificant factor when it comes to satisfaction and success.
c-Practicing Medicine
One of the highest-paid professions and very important since practitioners are saving human lives. Quite complex and rich in input and transformation, and still fixed in terms of results. There are very few people who can practice the profession due to the higher entry barriers, the study is not available to the masses, and the requirements to be a practitioner are quite high.
On the spectrum, as the activity/practice gets more complex and sophisticated, the playground for joy is extending but entry barriers are getting higher causing fewer people to practice the phenomena.
So far, the examples we see are more or less fixed in input parameters and almost binomial in output parameters or success factors. Here, I would like to depict how customer success can be fascinating in terms of how these three dimensions are quite flexible and liquid.
Inputs:
Customers: teams and organizations that can be regarded as unique systems. Definitions and relationships are not as well defined as the human body and still, relationships are complex.
The more you dig, the more you can discover. Moreover, you have great room for improvement to adjust the inputs from the customer side in a way that attention, investment, and resources can be increased or shaped.
Outputs:
Some could say retaining the customer, some could say it is customer happiness or success. First, all should be met together. Just retaining the customer is not an indication of success or having great customer satisfaction but losing the customer is not accepted as a success. Even if you enable the customer to achieve the goals they desired, the success should be sustained on a regular basis. Besides, the definition of success totally depends on the customer’s point of view. Another room that one can excel in is how to define success with your customer.
Transformation:
It is quite unique and liquid through iterations. You need sets of methods and frameworks that you can actively mix/match. A variety of features in your product is another element that makes customer success a game in which you can endlessly excel.
Of course, It is personal, what you like or what you don’t. I am just coining a point of view to be aware and make a more sophisticated analysis of how we can get more joy in different disciplines as we turn our job into hobbies.
In this picture, the reasons I am fascinated by Customer Success are:
- Entry barriers are low. It is multi-disciplinary. Moreover, since technology is required for every industry, customer success is welcoming professionals from every background. Thus it is diverse…
- You can play the game in 3 dimensions of the system approach. Unlike many other disciplines, you can work on input or output to achieve the best you can do in the transformation stage. It contains more variables, endless recipes, and opportunities for success. Thus it is sophisticated.
- While many can easily enter the discipline, still being excellent is quite tough because it requires abstract thinking to project, empathy to define the value and solid execution with concrete results. You can master all three dimensions mentioned above and mix and match different frameworks to succeed. Success is possible in every condition but depends on your performance and skill-set. Thus, it is challenging.
It is an introduction article and there will be follow-up articles for each dimension in which I will share my perspective with you in comprehending customer success complexity and how this can be a distinguished field that we can enjoy. Of course, I do not expect everyone to enjoy it, but hopefully, it can make you make a clear judgment of what it takes. In the end, it is my personal joy to help people find and relate their most joyful moments to their daily life in their profession.
