Lifecycle Mapping

So you’ve decided that customer success is right for your organization, and you’re ready to start seeing you referral and retention numbers go through the roof. But maybe you’re not so sure where to get started. Not to worry! We’re here to help you on your journey to delighted customers! In this post we’ll discuss one of the key foundations for understanding your customer, and directing your team’s objectives and activities: Lifecycle Mapping. 

Lifecycle mapping is the activity of recording and understanding the journey of your customer from presale to advocacy. This is an important first step, because not only will you be able to identify and standardize processes around things that you are already doing well, but you’ll also be able to identify weak (or missing) areas where you can have some big wins in a short amount of time. 

If you’ve segmented your customers into separate tiers, it’s important to understand that the lifecycle will likely vary between service levels. Vice versa, if you haven’t segmented your customers into different tiers, mapping the current lifecycle will give you a better idea of how much time your CSM’s are spending with customers, set realistic outreach expectations, and it can actually help drive segmentation. So, where do you start?

As the name implies, you’ll want to literally ‘map’ each step of the customer journey. I find that having a visual representation of this journey is very useful, and recommend building this out in a flowchart software (example below). 

‍Presale:

Though presale lifecycle activities are rarely carried out by the customer success team, they are crucial to ensuring great time to value for the customer. These activities all center around understanding your clients business objectives, and making sure that your product is actually a good fit for the job. Yes, that means passing up on a sale if there is not a good value match, and this can be difficult to do, especially in the early stages of a company. But what you’ll lose on the sale, you’ll save in wasted resources (support costs, early churn, etc.), and more than recover in your ability to understand the ideal customer for your business.

‍Onboarding:

Once you understand exactly what your customer needs to see value in your product and to justify their purchase, it’s time to start delivering. Onboarding is the phase in which you help the customer implement your product, and drive them towards big wins right out of the gate. This is the time where your product becomes truly ‘sticky’. In smaller companies, these responsibilities can be handled by either CSM’s, support reps, or sometimes even the original salesperson. As companies grow (or the product becomes more complex), you will see teams that are strictly dedicated to onboarding and implementation. 

1st Check-in

Oftentimes this will come right at the tail end of the onboarding period. This is a great time for a customer success manager to ensure that the customer is fully ramped up, and start moving on to other business objectives that will further increase ‘stickiness’. At this point (and depending on the customer’s tier) the CSM should set up a recurring call at regular intervals, come to a consensus with the customer about how these calls will look, and, if they haven’t already, take over as the main point of contact. 

‍QBR

This is a more formal, long-form check-in that occurs, as the name implies, on a quarterly basis. CSM’s should come to these meetings with a set agenda, prepared to discuss any progress on goals that have been set, and prepared with questions to understand any shifting client objectives. 

‍Newsletter

This is often times driven by marketing, but at a smaller company (or tier) can fall on the shoulders of the CSM’s. Newsletters should be delivered at regular intervals with the goal of providing relevant updates about the product, company, or space. This is a great touch point to reinforce your thought leadership. 

‍Customer Health Checks

As we discuss here, customer health checks should be a dynamic, real time activity. If outside of any of your set meetings you notice drastic changes in either usage or sentiment, you’ll have a great opportunity for an intervention. 

‍NPS

Sentiment tracking is really important for identifying at-risk customers or product issues. On the other hand, you can also identify your advocates and start to drive referrals to your new business team. There are a variety of ways to deliver and track NPS surveys, and we dive a bit more deeply into them here. 

‍Renewal

Ah, the most important point of the lifecycle. This is the time where you know beyond the shadow of a doubt if you have helped this customer achieve their business objectives. Luckily, if you’ve carried out all of the other steps, this renewal should hardly be a second though for your customer, or, on the other hand, a churning customer will at least not be a surprise. 

In summary, these are some of the key steps in the customer lifecycle, especially for a SaaS company. If you have any other important steps in your customer journey that you don’t see listed here, we’d love to hear about them! Comment below!