Value Beats Adoption

Hello, it's Simon posting my latest newsletter where this month, I take a look at why adoption metrics have never been a core focus for me over my CS career.

Customers Wanted Results

I've been working in Customer Success for nearly 15 years. In the early days, the role was very much focused on training and enablement. Showing the user which features and functions they needed to do their job. A measurement of this, of course, was adoption. How often does a user log in? Which features do they use? How many actions do they take? The other side of that coin was an element of technical support, helping to solve issues where the platform wasn't working as expected. 

However, my early career was working in digital marketing, and in fact, the first SaaS platforms I worked on were marketing technology. So not only would my customers ask me "how do I do this on your platform?", but they would also ask me, "why aren't my campaigns hitting my marketing target?" Those first SaaS companies I worked for were all built to help customers optimise their marketing budget. They signed up for our software because they believed they would get a better ROI on their campaigns, and by extension, held us somewhat accountable for delivering it, and our commercial model reflected that.

Value Is Slowly Becoming the North Star

As a consequence, I have always been alert to the idea that Customer Success is more than user training and Adoption numbers, and instead it's about providing results. It has surprised me that even today, I see job descriptions, LinkedIn posts, and newsletters still talking about the goal for CS, which is adoption. But the tide is turning. Slowly but surely, probably driven by the recent economic climate, CS leaders are highlighting the need to deliver value more and more. To ensure customers are getting what they signed up for. And I couldn't agree with this more. It's just a shock that the industry's taken this long to recognise this more broadly.

It wasn't too long ago that I had a conversation with a team leader who told me the company logic was aligned to the fact that the more times a user logs in, the more value they get from the platform. I couldn't square that idea away. Where was the proof that every time a user logged in, they improved their ROI? It's just as possible that a customer logs in a lot, because they can't work out how to use it. And that doesn't mean we ignore adoption numbers entirely, because it's safe to say that if a customer never logs in, they are definitely not getting value, it's more that adoption and usage metrics are a hygiene factor than a proof point.

CS is About Goals and Objectives

Everything we do in CS should be about understanding the customers' goals and objectives, mapping those to our product, and measuring their progress. Fundamentally, CS is very straightforward, but we all know many challenges get in the way. 

I'll pose a quick question as I wrap up this month's newsletter.

In one paragraph, can you write down one customer's goals and objectives, and how they'll achieve them with your platform?

Feel free to reply to me with your answer. I'm curious how many CSMs have a clear view on that.