A healthy CSM and customer relationship can turn sour when we allow ourselves to unintentionally drift from our clients.
This post will describe how a CSM’s good intentions can turn cruel in failing to nurture our client relationships and ways we can avoid moving apart from our customers.
How Drifting Begins
A CSM and customer may put in effort to form a good relationship. For example, the customer receives value from our solutions, they are trained on the product features and they have trust in the CSM to help with future needs.
At this point, the customer and CSM may agree to leave the next check-in meeting open as both parties are satisfied with the engagement. The customer and CSM agree the customer will reach out about future needs.
The CSM and customer move ahead focusing on their day-to-day work.
The Effect of Time on the Relationship
Over time, changes may develop that impact the customer and CSM relationship.
Customer changes may include:
- Staff updates in their organization
- New business needs emerging from company strategy or market needs
- Feedback to share about our product (but not enough to warrant the customer reaching out)
CSM changes could include:
- New product features our client may benefit from
- Interesting content that may help inform the customer’s strategy
- Less awareness of our customer’s situation
Our relationship may become vulnerable by accident as time passes.
The Harmful Effects of Distance
We can think of distance in customer relationships as “absence makes the heart grow resentful.”
The customer may feel we don’t care or feel unsupported when we aren’t actively in communication with our customer.
This may lead to:
- Competitive threats: The opportunity for competitors to call on our customer’s account and provide new ideas
- Opportunities lost: Inability to help our customer adapt to their latest business strategy or changes in the market
- Relationship risk: Unknown leaders and teammates that may influence the direction of our engagement or could benefit from being familiar with our solutions
As drifting enters this stage we may see impacts to our relationship such as poor health or potential churn.
How CSMs Can Prevent Drift
Drift can happen unintentionally between the CSM and the customer. Therefore, drift is something we can prevent.
Here are some ways we can manage drift with our clients.
- Secure a recurring meeting: we can explain the value in staying connected through a planned meeting in the future. For example, we can highlight items like learning about the latest product features, keeping up to date with our content and the benefit of the CSM staying in sync with the customer’s business.
- Set an automated check-in: our customer may be satisfied with the state of the relationship – that said, we can still check-in at a regular cadence to see if the customer has any needs. The check-in helps the customer know we care and gives the customer the option to connect or not based on priorities.
- Try friendly outreach formats: we could also try other forms of communication with our client like a phone call or text message or message via LinkedIn. Changing the medium may help our check-in seem friendly and another way to show we are thinking of our customer.
CSMs can avoid cruel intentions with our customers by showing our commitment.
We can communicate with our customer to show we are ready to help and avoid our relationship drifting away.