Customer Journey

Prove value, by building systems that guide progress that drive growth with quantifiable improvement.

Business First Principles

How you onboard people is the most important system to get right to building an enduringly successful organisation. As this shapes culture of future generations that will shape the fabric of existence.

Dig Deeper

• Customer Activities — Onboarding, success management, and the playbooks that compound trust
• Customer Performance — Health scores, retention metrics, and the value delta framework
• Customer Team — The CSM role: health scoring, renewals, voice of customer
• Customer Tech Platform — Stack decisions for supporting the journey

Prediction

We are moving into a state of world where, who and what you trust is everything.

1. Genuinely giving a fork is going to best way to survive
2. Engineer a team so you can spend more time, more effectively genuinely giving a fuck
3. Work hard to build trust, never take it for granted

Build Trust

Health Score

• Develop a system to quantify customer engagement and product utilization
• Categorize customers into red (at-risk), yellow (neutral), green (engaged), and purple (referenceable) status
• Implement a "member-at-risk monitor" (MAR) to track customer health

Outcome Focused

• Understand each client's specific desired outcomes
• Manage implementation and activation like a project
• Use tools like the Executive Business Review (EBR) Flow Planner to guide customer interactions

Retention

• Engage renewal and upsell
• Aim to have referrals match or exceed customer churn for sustainable growth
• Develop a structured renewal process, especially within 90 days of contract renewal
• Focus on expansion revenue throughout the customer lifecycle
• Aim for a 5:1 return on investment for Customer Success expenditure

Escalate Value

• Move customers from red to purple (referenceable) status
• Obtain testimonials, referrals, and case studies
• Engage top customers in marketing activities (podcasts, conferences)

Customer Voice

• Represent customer perspectives in product development meetings
• Provide critical feedback to improve the product
• Create a process for escalating and addressing customer concerns

SaaS Toolkit

Use the EBR Flow Planner, a nine-box model, to guide customer interactions and identify upsell opportunities

SaaS Checklist

• toolkit
• Hubspot

Context

• Product
• Fulfilment
• Psychology
• Decision Making
• Process Engineering

Questions

What would change if you measured customer progress by state (like a things table) instead of satisfaction scores?

• Which phase of your onboarding process loses the most customers — and is it a process failure or a product failure?
• If your healthiest customers became your sales force, what would you need to prove to them first?
• Where does your customer journey promise trust but deliver process?