Every product or service in the marketplace needs reliable clients, and customer success managers do everything they can to cement their relationships with them. Depending on the product or service being sold, there are varying degrees of nurturing and education that must take place to establish and maintain this relationship.
If I want to sell a new type of corn, for example, I will spend some time telling the marketplace what makes it different and better than the corn they’ve been buying for years. What I won't do, however, is spend any time telling people how to eat it.
If you’re at all responsible for ensuring customer success in your role, maybe your product or service is a bit more complicated than corn, and you’re looking for a way to explain it, or various included functions, to your valued clients. Customer success managers would be well-served to turn to quick, engaging, and informative videos to help their clients enjoy the best experience possible with their product or service.
If you weren’t already aware, Guidde provide a free browser extension you can install today to create just these types of videos. Simply point and click your way through any workflows you want to teach others to perform, and let Guidde handle the rest.
A great customer success manager will be interested in several things. We’ve mentioned relationship management already. To that, let’s add expansion of the knowledge base, teaching and mentoring, strategic planning, and creative thinking. All of these elements can utilize quick, engaging content to drive sales and deepen their organization’s ties with clients who are willing to spend with them for years to come.
So what does that content look like, and how are customer success managers leveraging that content to deepen ties with their clients? How are they using content to avoid becoming glorified support agents, and instead provide viable, easy-to-use self-service options? With a strategic knowledge sharing plan, success managers can automate many key functions of the knowledge sharing component of their work, freeing them up to use their time in a more efficient manner.
If a customer success manager is well aware of their clients’ needs, then one way to leverage video content will involve creating step by step instructions for a process they use very frequently, or could use to enhance their business. Asking critical questions, such as “What does success look like for my client?”, can be monumental in guiding success managers to meaningful communication with their valued clients. Communication, after all, is the lifeblood of any relationship, and success managers would do well to think critically about what their clients desire most, and deliver that content with consistency.
Customer success managers can also use video content to create excellent customer onboarding programs that are engaging and contain the promise of quick education on the product’s benefits and features. Customer onboarding is the process of delivering the fullest possible value to a customer as quickly as possible. This may include product tutorials and direct access to a customer success manager for quick updates and initial support.
One of the keys to good customer onboarding is to employ a dual strategy that involves guidance without being too overbearing. For example, if your video content contains a tutorial, it would be unwise to lock portions of the product until the tutorial is completed. Some people are not going to need the tutorial as they prefer to learn on the fly, or maybe they are familiar with the product already and are just looking to refresh their knowledge.
Another way customer success managers can leverage video content is to provide pertinent knowledge regarding industry news and trends, including information they have learned about the business in their dealings with other clients, provided the information is not confidential, of course. Items like this need to be brief but packed with relevant information to keep your clients engaged.
At the end of the day, efforts like this seek to show use cases the client may not have thought of and stimulate demand. The customer success manager can then use their product to fill that demand. But your client’s time is very valuable. Remember, no matter how much of your product or service your client can utilize, keep the videos as short as possible. Short-form social media content is showing us day in and out that people prefer to watch videos more than read, and they want quick information rather than long, drawn-out explanations.
Doing this shows that you value their time, and it also ensures you give yourself the best opportunity to communicate your message clearly. Communication is more about what the target receives than what the speaker or creator gives. Make sure they hear you loud and clear by employing brevity and focus in your videos.
One way to keep things brief is to employ graphics in tandem with spoken or written words so you can arrive at the crux of the matter quickly. Graphics are also a great way to elevate engagement. They also help clients synthesize information much more clearly than with words alone. These graphics are especially powerful with how-to videos, with the customer is looking to complete a specific task, and the visual aid is used to check for correct usage as the customer learns and completes the task.
How-to videos are very important for customer success managers to utilize in their practice, and they look to spread those videos as far and wide as possible. A 90-second video is much more likely to be shared with other prospects than a 1,000 word document that covers the same material. All they have to do is copy the link and forward it on. Take care not to be too overbearing with your request to share, however. You always want your clients to know they are top of mind and that you wouldn’t attempt to abuse your relationship with them in any way.
Ultimately, customer success managers should create a vast content library that guides their clients to every piece of information they may require. A great content library creates a path of stewardship that can increase authenticity and authority. Clients want to be guided, up to a point, by knowledgeable staff when dealing with new or unknown products and services.
If you can carefully build a library full of short, engaging videos, then you effectively create a path of knowledge that will take a customer from rudimentary functions to a broad, fuller use of your product. This deepens customer loyalty as they are continually impressed with your product and continue to learn new things about how it functions, and how it can help them thrive. Your organization is sure to notice the increased customer retention if you can pull this off.
Customer success really boils down to one thing: keeping a client-first mindset. With Guidde, you have the opportunity to do just that with the easiest video creation tool you’ve ever used. Let us “Guidde” you to greater sales conversion and customer loyalty as you utilize the free browser extension to create informative, interesting content. Do this, and ensure your message will not get lost in the deluge of digital media your clients consume everyday.