Customers leave for different reasons. Churn is not the problem but a symptom of some problem.
Finding the real issue(s) and fixing it is more difficult than you might think. Why?
Customer “health” (CSAT, NPS, etc.) scores, as indicators, are soft. “Survey bias” can send you in the wrong direction. If CS is conducting solid churn analysis (using support ticket data, CSP insights, etc.) it can point to the problem, but then what?
Typically, the CS leader’s remit includes renewals so fixing churn will be their responsibility. Issues residing in CS (onboarding, technical support, professional services, CSM interactions…) can be readily addressed with the right insights and experience. If, however, it’s found that the problem lies in another function, product (UI, feature set…) or Sales (expectation management) or elsewhere (Accounts payable, pricing…) how does your CS team work with those other functions?
Integrated Customer Success was founded to help ambitious technology leaders achieve their business objectives. We design and/or uplevel customer success functions to align with the particular requirements of their company's stage-of-growth, solution complexity, competitive ecosystem, readiness, etc. We work with clients to remediate and/or prevent churn by focusing on the CS function and sub-functions and their interaction with the company’s other functions. It starts with a shared goal, say, “maximize the lifetime customer value of our installed base.” We help develop strategies to achieve goals, then workflows, organizational design, tools and metrics to implement the strategies.
We hail from Big Four consulting, SaaS, systems integrators, start-ups, MarTech/SalesTech platforms and more. We’ve led customer success, sales, marketing, professional services and product development teams. We understand the limitations of current CS ‘best practices’ and seek to move beyond them. Our breadth of experience across different business functions in many industries informs our solution design and service delivery. Whether you are a SaaS start-up, a rapidly growing or scaling business, or a mature Tier One enterprise, a modern fully integrated customer success function is essential, not just to address churn, but to enable sustainable, profitable growth.
Our consultants work with your teams to assess your organization's existing goals and the capabilities, playbooks, motions and the CS requirements needed to achieve them. Together, we develop a CS strategy, design projects, and operationalize them with your people, workflows, tools...your entire organization. We optimize your ability to cost-effectively deliver the expected value to your customer resulting in lower churn, improved NRR and higher company valuation.
The CS function becomes the long-term customer touch point, providing critical insights into the individual customer and the entire installed base. CS tracks your ability to deliver your solution’s value to your customers. We look at the CS sub-functions through the lenses of goals, strategies, processes, people, technology and metrics. As your organization grows and matures, its CS needs and capabilities will need to evolve to align with the company’s stage-of-growth, size, readiness, complexity and maturity of offering, industry, target customer (ICP), and other factors. Our approach to solution and services delivery is simple: Assess, Design, Implement and Evaluate. Our collaborative project management means that you decide how much or how little your resources are involved in transformation workstreams. Throughout, we help you keep your customer at the center of what you do.
Honesty, transparency, synergy – We build customer advocates through a focus on lasting relationships and by providing ongoing, tangible value. We help our clients do the same with their customers.
"Mark was introduced to us a few years ago. I brought him in initially to quickly assess and help guide us on our GTM + post-sales capabilities as we experienced huge growth. The initial D&A process really helped us know where to fucus resources and why. From there, my leaders and teams have benefited from weekly problem solving and best practice calls, onsite skills workshops, operational guidance and templates, etc.
Working directly with Mark, I found he brings a wealth of experience to every interaction. The operational insights provided consider our stage and the business as a whole, not only through a CS lens. This has helped me and my team avoid and/or work through common, as well as unique to our business, startup challenges.
We've received tremendous value from ICS' services and consider Mark a trusted advisor. I highly recommend Mark and ICS."
- Dan DeCloss, CEO of PlexTrac
"We engaged ICS to help us understand and reimagine our CS function. Their Discovery & Assessment process was thorough and quickly highlighted areas of opportunity, as well as confirmed some of our thinking. From there they worked directly with myself and members of my team helping us evolve our CS organizational structure, roles and responsibilities, streamlined CRM configuration and account + revenue reporting, comp plans, and creation of playbooks for our CSMs and AMs. All of these efforts were executed with high-caliber forward thinking works products and thoughtful integration with adjacent functions like sales, marketing, and finance.
We found ICS to be very knowledgeable and relevant as we transform our organization. It was a pleasure working with them and I would highly recommend their services."
- Tyler Muse, CEO of Lingo Live
"I partnered with Mark and Doug at ICS at a pivotal point for Lingo Live. We needed to bring key deals across the finish line while improving our reporting and creating more efficient processes setting the team and our clients up for more sustainable and long term success.
Having the support from ICS made it possible for me to accomplish key strategic initiatives while not taking our eyes off our aggressive revenue goal. I saw Mark and Doug as true partners and trusted advisors helping me and my team. I highly recommend their CS expertise to anyone!"
- Lea Therianos Mitchell, Director of CS at Lingo Live
"The ICS framework is easy for CS leaders to understand; it goes beyond the typical training of CSMs to run more churn plays; and it takes a comprehensive systemic approach. This all results in a framework to operating plan that is highly effective. I highly recommend the team at ICS!"
- David Pyrzenski, Head of Customer Onboarding at Lattice
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