![\"Hierarchy](\"https:\/\/intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/HierarchyCustomerSuccess.png\")
\nCustomer success pyramid<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n
1. Precise and accurate<\/h2>\n
At the base of the pyramid is the most fundamental aspect of the support you provide your customers \u2013 it must be precise and accurate. You must prioritise this above all else as you build a relationship based on trust with your customers \u2013 after all, they can’t be successful if you’re misinforming them.<\/p>\n
While you will naturally put a lot of effort into getting this right at the start, it\u2019s critical you keep attending to it as you grow. It\u2019s too easy to think you have it sorted out and then neglect it. Your product will move on, the range of your customers\u2019 needs will grow with your user base, and the challenge in keeping standards high will increase as your support team grows. Well-trained support representatives using the right software, which can drastically reduce or remove the need to go hunting for answers, will be the foundation on which your customer success strategy is built.<\/p>\n
2. Prompt<\/h2>\n
Just above precision on the scale of customer success requirements is promptness \u2013 how fast can you offer support to your customers when they have questions or run into problems. However, the definition of prompt is different in different scenarios, and is different for different customers.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s up to you and your team to forge a personal relationship with your customers.<\/p>\n
For us, we know that the first couple of days<\/a> really are your most important time using Intercom. You’re going to have a ton of questions, you’re going to want to know how to integrate with all your systems<\/a>, you’re going to want to know what data you should track and shouldn’t track<\/a> and what best practices are<\/a>. We apply real-time chat to that early period, so that people can get all the answers they need at exactly the time they most need it.<\/p>\n So promptness doesn\u2019t just mean “faster is better”, it means “faster when it matters is better”. To achieve this, properly resourced teams are very important \u2013 you can’t be quick if you can’t keep up.<\/p>\n Roughly equating to a sense of belonging on Maslow\u2019s hierarchy is the concept of being personal in your interactions with customers.<\/p>\n Ultimately, it\u2019s up to you and your team to forge a personal relationship with your customers \u2013 while great software is designed to enable this, it\u2019s the people using it who have to make the personal connection. Allowing customer support agents to be themselves helps them relate on a personal level to customers, building rapport and relationships along the way and further deepening the level of trust that our customers have in us.<\/p>\n While being personal is part of our mission, all businesses should strive to build real relationships with their customers. They make it easier for customers to ask you for things they want or for the help that they need. Good relationships also mean customers cut you a lot more slack when you inevitably screw something up.<\/p>\n There is an important distinction between personal and personalized. The former is defined by the approach of you and your team when interacting with customers. The latter is about how you utilise the information you have gleaned about your customers and how you apply that information to improve the relationship. They are discrete parts of the business-customer relationship.<\/p>\n Crucially, having detailed data about the customer and their experiences with your brand enables you to actively deepen the relationship. Just like remembering your mom\u2019s birthday or sending flowers to a friend who has lost a loved one.<\/p>\n This is the idea that Intercom was built on \u2013 that internet businesses should have easy, centralized access to information about their customers and that it shouldn\u2019t be so hard for them to use that information to improve the relationship and increase engagement. When a customer interacts with you, they don\u2019t want to feel like they have to introduce themselves and explain their situation from scratch every time, or hope they get the same support rep they were dealing with last time. There should be a similar sense of personal engagement with every interaction, and data is what enables this personalization.<\/p>\n But the accumulation of data about customers can also appear creepy. While it\u2019s useful to be able to refer back to previous interactions and have important background on a customer\u2019s situation, you have to be judicious in how you use it. Just as it\u2019s creepy to Facebook stalk a person you\u2019ve just met, businesses aren’t automatically granted an all-access pass just because someone bought something from you one time. There has to be a natural level of give and take, just as in real world relationships.<\/p>\n Towards the pinnacle of the customer success pyramid comes a more ambitious, and elusive, level \u2013 preemption. Advanced early-warning systems allow you to intervene before the customer knows they have a problem, meaning you\u2019re being less reactive and more proactive. Successful preemption involves identifying patterns of behavior that trigger an alert when a user needs help. Most companies do this to varying degrees when they\u2019re just getting started but few continue to be systematic about it as they grow and scale.<\/p>\n The difference between prescient and preemptive is that the latter requires a person to intervene<\/p>\n In any product, there are going to be multiple places that you could be reaching out to customers when they have errors and asking them to get in touch. The tricky part is identifying which ones to prioritize. You should begin by drafting a list of problematic patterns, stack ranking it and determining which ones you are going to preempt, and assessing what would offer the most value to your customers.<\/p>\n At the very summit of the hierarchy, not quite yet in sight, is prescience \u2013 when cutting edge tech such as AI, machine learning or bots can take over the preemptive work and automatically guide customers to resolution or to better ways of doing things.<\/p>\n The difference between prescient and preemptive is that the latter requires a person to intervene at some point. Remove that person, but maintain the level of precision, promptness personality and personalization, and you start to see the power and scalability that AI and machine learning will one day enable.<\/p>\n The ability to automatically match customers with certain fundamental attributes to experiences tailored to their specific use case will be transformative. For example: \u201cThis customer looks like all these other customers we’ve had in the past who used auto messages to increase customer engagement<\/a>. Because of that, we know they’re probably going to have this sort of trouble, they’re going to be using us in this certain way, they’re going to want to send these types of messages, they’re going to need these different features enabled, and so on.\u201d<\/p>\n With extremely advanced pattern recognition you could automatically offer a totally customized experience for a customer based on the usage patterns of other customers (and even other customer\u2019s customers). While this vision is still more sci-fi than reality, the power that targeted AI and machine learning algorithms represent is truly mind-boggling. It\u2019s going to introduce a whole new way of thinking about how to enable customers to be successful with your product.<\/p>\n Not every company\u2019s success pyramid will look exactly the same. And not every customer will need exactly the same engagement to achieve success with your product. But the higher up the pyramid you manage to operate, the more likely you are to achieve a successful outcome for everyone.<\/p>\n3. Personal<\/h2>\n
4. Personalized<\/h2>\n
5. Preemptive<\/h2>\n
6. Prescient<\/h2>\n
What does your pyramid look like?<\/h2>\n
![](\"https:\/\/intercom.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Blog-CTA_1248x591.png\")
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