Ben Lee is Catalyst's very first CX Program Manager. He is responsible for building out various Digital Customer Success programs to help supplement our amazing CS team while providing efficient and meaningful self-serve resources to our customers at scale.
Digital Customer Success (a.k.a. “Tech-Touch” or “Scaled CS”) is a data-driven methodology for driving value and adoption at scale through various channels such as email, in-app guides, online community, etc. Some organizations run Digital Customer Success programs exclusively for a particular customer segment (for example, customers without a named CSM), while others might launch it to their entire customer base, adding even more support for customers who already have a dedicated Customer Success Manager, for example.
Customers don’t purchase software to use features — they purchase software to achieve outcomes. That’s why it’s critical you have a clear pulse on what those key outcomes are prior to building out your Digital CS content and programs.
Many times, I’ve seen various teams quickly launch a Digital Customer Success motion by simply targeting users who aren’t adopting certain features and pointing them to the related support article for said features. The problem with this strategy is that the content they’re pushing on these users lacks the context behind the outcomes they are hoping to achieve, subsequently making their Digital CS programs ineffective.
The first step in building an effective and impactful Digital CS motion is doing active discovery and gaining insights around the outcomes your customers care most about. Once you have a solid understanding of their desired outcomes, you are in a much better position to craft content that will have a much higher likelihood of resonating with your target audience and driving the behavior you’re hoping for.
Here are some examples of how I ran discovery prior to creating content:
If you’re curious, here’s an outline of my current Digital CS tech stack:
Digital CS is a never-ending initiative and there are so many ways you can engage and deliver value to your customers. So before you focus on boiling the ocean, start simple and small — and remember — always start with discovery.
Stay tuned for the next article in this series where I’ll elaborate on how I was able to leverage all the insights gained from my discovery and translate that into a framework for content creation.
3 Rev Ops & CS leaders share insights into boosting NRR
In Part 2 of the Digital CS Series, Ben Lee demonstrates how to move Digital CS programs beyond simple support articles.
Customer Success Managers can sometimes end up providing more than just product or technical support.
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