How Customer Success and Marketing Can Work Together To Improve Customer Experience

Optimal customer experience contributes to the sustainability and growth of any business. The replacement of marketing funnels with dynamic flywheel models has led to a closer evaluation of customer lifecycles and the experiences at each stage. Companies should consider accounting for every aspect of customer experience to build relationships beyond sales.

Customer engagement strategies ideally include ongoing customer communications and marketing engagements that establish trust and collaboration.

Uniting customer success and marketing teams could result in more positive responses, ultimately securing customers’ long-term interest, support, and loyalty. Traditional customer management methods take a scattered approach where marketing and customer success teams work separately, potentially resulting in disagreements and delays.

With customer experience growing as a definitive measure of a company’s success, more companies may need to combine the efficiencies of customer touchpoints for seamless improvements in ROI and business performance.

How Customer Success and Marketing Work Together

Customer success strategies differ from a standard marketing campaign by focusing on customer retention rather than acquisition. The dedicated customer approach accounts for the trend that repeating customers typically have higher order values. Market research shows that repeat customers spend 67% more than first-time patrons, with brands spending less on campaigns.

Conventional marketing goals depend on the lead quantity that interprets the demand into more sales. However, relying on a leads-based formula ultimately limits a business’s growth potential, especially during times of decreased lead traffic.

Customer success fills the gap through an outcome-based approach, factoring in the behavioral trends of buyers (e.g., product usage and customer growth) to produce the most effective outreach strategies.

Compare Customer Trends

Clear and consistent customer feedback empowers marketing and customer success teams in aligning customer metrics toward advancing business goals. Companies can promote effective feedback practices between teams by focusing on specific metrics.

Piecing together these insightful factors and metrics results in a complete picture of customer engagement and satisfaction.

For instance, teams may actively identify and compare the detractors and promoters among their customer base to determine the patterns of ideal buyer personas. Similarly, marketing and customer success teams may compare churn and renewal rates, recognizing the needs and concerns of various demographics and determining the best approach to improve retention.

Organize Collaborative Events

Collaborative events such as online webinars, conventions, and trade shows offer valuable opportunities for marketing teams to work with customer success through a seamless process. For example, customer success managers may prepare and present video-recorded customer testimonies that marketing teams may showcase to participating prospects.

From this, marketers can gather relevant information from the resources and feedback provided by existing customers to fine-tune their outreach strategies. Real-time online events, such as webinars, improve collaboration by providing a convenient platform for prospects and existing customers to interact with customer success and marketing representatives.

Contribute via Customer Enablement

Customer enablement empowers customers with self-service capabilities for taking charge of their buyer journeys. Marketing teams can initiate effective customer enablement initiatives through systematic onboarding that provides customers with the information required (e.g., providing online forums and accessible FAQs) to troubleshoot common product issues or familiarize themselves with basic features.

Similarly, customer success managers can help optimize customer enablement content by providing the marketing team with insightful buyer feedback. Marketing teams may extract the relevant information and present prospects with comprehensive support that streamlines the customer experience.

The Advantages of Marketing and Customer Success

Bridging the gap between marketing and customer success teams ultimately reduces the time and effort required to provide winning customer experiences through the power of linear storytelling.

Optimal customer experiences enable companies to tap progressively into a cycle of support and promotion from loyal buyers, increasing leads and referrals without incurring additional marketing costs.

Enhanced Brand Positioning

Customer success managers offer practical knowledge in informing marketing teams about the specific features and benefits that appeal to customers. As a result, marketing decision-makers may confidently refine campaigns for each buyer journey stage, tailoring strategies for improved engagement based on proven trends and customer responses.

An evidence-based marketing approach ultimately results in better brand positioning, providing companies with a competitive advantage. Combining customer success with marketing initiatives empowers brand messages from a deeper level rather than depending on quantitative marketing qualified leads (MQLs), or sales qualified leads (SQLs).

Avoid Fragmented Experiences

Combining customer success and marketing eliminates the risk of fragmented customer experiences that may result in disrupted communication, customer dissatisfaction, and churn. By working together, departments can prepare comprehensive and contextual customer reports that provide an accurate view of customer journeys for optimized decision-making.

Closing Thoughts – Marketing Customer Success for Branding Excellence

Customer-centric marketing has become a rule rather than an exception among brands, especially across dynamic flywheel models. Industry experts have identified customer success 2.0, which focuses on growth and reducing churn. How customer success and marketing work together ultimately shapes the trajectory of customer success 2.0.

Aligning customer success and marketing strategies provides a complete view of the customer experience, eliminating costly assumptions and inaccurate information across the customer journey.

Combining the expertise of teams familiar with current and future buyer characteristics and preferences will prove instrumental in providing precise knowledge that meets every customer demand without exception. Ultimately, leveraging marketing and customer success enables brands to consistently find the best buyer fit, minimizing churn, boosting retention, and raising overall customer lifetime values.