{"id":1145,"date":"2017-07-07T10:38:44","date_gmt":"2017-07-07T10:38:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/amydowns.wpengine.com\/?p=1145"},"modified":"2023-07-14T13:13:32","modified_gmt":"2023-07-14T13:13:32","slug":"customer-success-advocate-a-day-in-the-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.customerobsessing.com\/de\/customer-success-advocate-a-day-in-the-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Customer Success Advocate: A Day in the Life"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Customer Success Advocate: A Day in the Life<\/h1>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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Amy Downs
First Published: July 7, 2017<\/a><\/p>

Trusted Advisor.\u00a0 Customer Champion.\u00a0 Trainer. Churn fighter. Renewal saver. Escalation manager. Advocate creator. Customer Success Advocates (CSAs) are all of these \u2013 and more.<\/b><\/p>

At\u00a0Lifesize<\/a>, I have always pictured our CSAs as spiders \u2014 one leg in every department of the organization. Pardon the visual, but I hope the metaphor resonates. Customer Success<\/a> is not a siloed department on an island by itself; CSAs work hand-in-hand with sales, product management, engineering and marketing on a daily basis. This strategy stems from our mantra of Customer Obsession<\/a> \u2014 an organization-wide commitment to ensure that we provide the best experience for our customers.<\/p>

With so many hats to wear, however, what does a Customer Success Advocate actually do on a daily basis?<\/h2><\/div>

To best answer this question, let me walk you through a day in the life of Patricia, a CSA veteran of three years.<\/p>

8 a.m. \u2014 Meet with Customer ABC for Quarterly Business Review<\/strong><\/h3>

Patricia connects over video with Mary, IT administrator at Customer ABC, to discuss successes and challenges over the past six months. A recent Net Promoter Survey reveals that Mary is a strong \u201cPromoter\u201d for the brand and is very satisfied with their solution. Mary faced very few challenges, but she shares an idea for a feature that could be included in the next release of the solution. Patricia opens a feature request and makes a note to discuss with the product management and engineering teams.\u00a0 Patricia and Mary review key success and usage metrics, current and future use cases, product roadmap, support cases, operational items, upcoming events and opportunities to further engage users and deliver additional value. Happy to hear about the positive impact the solution is making at Customer ABC, she asks Mary if she would consider participating in a case study in the near future and also asks her if there are other people she knows who might benefit from the solution. Mary agrees.<\/p>

9 a.m. \u2014 Participate in sales meeting with prospective customer<\/strong><\/h3>

Paul, director of IT at Company XYZ, is looking for a cloud video conferencing solution. He requires many capabilities in the areas of implementation, security and administration. With the company\u2019s large employee base, he also worries about training and user adoption. Patricia\u2019s focus is not sales, but she is well-versed in the implementation process for a company of this size and can offer insight into the logistics for this prospective account. She walks Paul through the support efforts and resources she will offer him throughout this process and long after, assuring him that he will see a return on investment for his company.<\/p>

10 a.m. \u2014 Manage an escalation<\/strong><\/h3>

Patricia just received an alert that Customer WXY gave a \u201cDetractor\u201d rating on a recent Net Promoter Survey. Challenges with recent changes to the customer\u2019s network led to degraded product performance and have caused frustration amongst the user base. Patricia is moving quickly to offer solutions and calm nerves by spending two hours on a video call with Lucas, IT administrator, to understand his and Company WXY\u2019s frustrations and the impact this is having to their business, and to collect all technical details needed to come to a swift resolution. Patricia pulls in a top tier support engineer to ensure she has all the resources needed to get resolution as quickly as possible. She determines it will be best for her team to support Lucas on-site. She schedules an on-site visit \u2014 accompanied by support and product engineers \u2014 for tomorrow morning.<\/p>

12 p.m. \u2014 Break for lunch<\/strong><\/h3>

1 p.m. \u2014 Cross-department meeting on upcoming product launch<\/strong><\/h3>

The product management team gives a presentation on a new conference room camera that is due to be launched in just a few months. Development of the new product stems from many conversations with customers \u2014 just like the one Patricia and Mary had earlier this morning \u2014 about features and capabilities that users would like to see in a new camera. Patricia is excited to see this product come to fruition and is asked to help test the update during the internal beta process before its official public launch. Familiar with how customers are really using this technology on a daily basis, she will be able to give the team accurate and helpful feedback.<\/p>

2 p.m. \u2014 Onboarding with new SMB customer, Customer OPQ<\/strong><\/h3>

OPQ is a brand new customer. Patricia connects over video with IT Director Johnny. She understands why OPQ purchased the solution and the business problems they are looking to solve. She logs their use cases and any success criteria that will be critical to them. She customizes her onboarding to focus on those things that are important to OPQ by drawing on her knowledge of their business and best practices of companies like OPQ. She does a product walk-through, helps with remote setup of conference rooms, and introduces him to crucial management tools available to him through the solution\u2019s administration console. To ensure that he gets all the support he needs after their on-boarding session, she guides him through the online community where he can find additional resources or connect with fellow customers or product specialists, log feature requests, find answers to questions and more. She also shows Johnny all of the different ways he can get help should he or his users have questions or run into any issues. Before the on-boarding session commences, Johnny asks Patricia if she can conduct end-user training for a group of employees who will be the first to use the solution. Patricia schedules this at Johnny\u2019s earliest convenience.<\/p>

3 p.m. \u2014 Check-in with Customer LMN<\/strong><\/h3>

Customer LMN has recently rolled out five HD conference room camera and phone systems. Patricia receives a notification for LMN\u2019s 90-day check-in. Due to quick adoption and positive user feedback, LMN tells Patricia that they would like to purchase two more systems. Patricia is excited to hear that the implementation has gone well and that they are eager to expand their investment. She connects LMN to Peggy, the sales representative that handled the account three months ago. Peggy owns the sales conversation and Patricia focuses on supporting LMN with implementing the new systems.<\/p>

4 p.m. \u2014 Marketing internal meeting<\/strong><\/p>

The Marketing team meets every other week; this week, they have asked Patricia and Frank, another CSA, to join them. The Marketing team frequently refines their messaging to prospective customers and asks to hear feedback from Patricia and Frank about what types of customers they feel are succeeding the most with the company\u2019s solutions. \u201cWho is our ideal customer?\u201d \u201cHow can we adjust our marketing messages to help attract those customers?\u201d Patricia and Frank share their perspectives and experiences and help the Marketing team craft a new campaign that they are going to test run next month. This collaboration, even outside a weekly meeting, allows our joint teams to move with speed to capture opportunities to grow and keep the base.<\/p>

5 p.m. \u2014 Check-in with Product Management and Engineering<\/strong><\/h3>

Patricia sits down with the Product Management and Engineering teams to give feedback on conversations she has recently had with three customers. All three customers \u2014 one of whom was Mary at Company ABC \u2014 have requested the same new feature be included in the next solution update. Given that she has heard this request multiple times, she shares the idea with the product teams to discuss viability and a timeline for a potential update.<\/p>

Patricia\u2019s day finally wraps as evening sets in. Today, she met with multiple customers, a prospective customer, and members from her company\u2019s sales, marketing, product management and engineering teams. Tomorrow, she will spend half a day with a customer on-site.<\/p>

Like most CSAs, Patricia wears many hats and owns significant responsibility. At Lifesize, CSAs are fully empowered to make decisions in real time to drive the best experience possible for customers. While her job is a busy one, the entire company supports her.<\/p>

Patricia leverages a robust customer success system to help her track customer trends and flag problems; she receives support from sales representatives so she can focus on helping customers get value out of the product instead of up-selling. The Product Management and engineering teams connect with her regularly to improve the products and make sure that Patricia\u2019s customers are being heard. Patricia is not a one-woman show; she is the driver of customer wellbeing, backed by every team in the organization \u2014 that\u2019s how and why Customer Obsession works!<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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Amy Downs First Published: July 7, 2017 Trusted Advisor.\u00a0 Customer Champion.\u00a0 Trainer. Churn fighter. Renewal saver. Escalation manager. Advocate creator. Customer Success Advocates (CSAs) are all of these \u2013 and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1855,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,19,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-customer-experience","category-customer-obsession","category-customer_success"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerobsessing.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerobsessing.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerobsessing.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerobsessing.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerobsessing.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerobsessing.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerobsessing.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.customerobsessing.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerobsessing.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.customerobsessing.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}