A tale of Customer Success: Chapter II – Whatsapp wouldn’t exist if phone companies had CSM teams

Remember the first time you used WhatsApp (or Viber at the time)? I do. It was around 2009–2010. I just had finished my studies and had a lot of friends living abroad. Back then, you only had 2 options to talk to someone abroad: sell your kidney and call her/him or sell your dignity and use Skype (remember how buggy it was back then). So being able to send texts messages for free was mind blowing, and not just across the globe.

10 years later, WhatsApp handles 65 billions messages per year, SMS usage is in free fall since its peak (2016 in France, 2018 worldwide) and moreover, the vast majority of us hasn’t paid for a SMS in years (at least within the same country).

What happened? It’s the product usage, stupid!*

Every CSM has one single goal/mission/leitmotiv: Increase product usage! On the paper it’s quite easy. An easy implementation, a rapid first aha moment, a seamless experience and some gamification to trigger an addiction. Does it sound familiar? Of course it does, and I’m not talking about (il)legal drugs ! That’s Facebook’s story and business model. And also most of our learning experiences (sport, languages except German, etc.).

So Telcos adapted quickly. They changed their pricing model, stopped charging their customers with hefty amount for non-included usage, thereby increasing customer loyalty and limiting the rise of OTT services.

Of course I’m kidding! They didn’t get the message and are still requesting you to leave a bodypart as a deposit when you go across your country’s border (or EU, thank you Brussels!!). Results? First thing you do when you step out of the plane, you remove your simcard and replace it with a local one, because… You’re using WhatsApp anyway so you just need data. Congratulations, you became a commodity!

What would a Telco with a CSM team could (would? should?) have done?

CSM are both FBI & CIA (or MI-5/MI-6 or DGSI/E), they observe and monitor both internal (customers) and external (competition) signals:

• Why is usage from this customer suddenly dropping? Have they migrated to another solution or are they just a seasonal business (A ski-shop in summer for example)?
• Why is usage skyrocketing? Are they really enjoying our solution or are they putting us under a thorough review?
• One customer mentioned this new feature from a competitor? Should we investigate? And most urgently, why is he talking about this competitor?

A CSM team from a Telco in 2010 would probably have noticed a relative decline in SMS sent or a lower increase for some users compared to another group, combined to a data consumption increase. They would have noticed a lot of connection to WhatsApp and thanks to no GDPR at the time, they would have crossed the data and have identified the threat.

Convinced by the evidence, they would have moved baldly, offering unlimited SMS, cancelling all roaming fees and agreed on an improved SMS protocol, allowing chat groups. In a couple of weeks, the results were there, SMS and abroad usage skyrocketed, increasing costs. Finance was furious, pressuring CSM teams. Not impressed (as always), CSMs, in a Barney Stinson move, just replied “Wait for it”. A couple of months later, churn had decreased greatly and NPS skyrocketed… It worked.

Wait? Is CSM killing innovation then?

Of course not! Because CSM wouldn’t have encouraged a price decrease. They know best that a customer asking for a cheaper price is the worst one. He/she doesn’t see the value of your product and will churn anyway as soon as a cheaper option arises.

CSM team would have said to the product team “Hey, most of our customers use WhatsApp and Skype so we should consider developing both text and video features”. Then video calling would have been embedded directly (WhatsApp released it in 2016).

Still need to convince your boss? OK: Investing in Product usage is also investing in sales and marketing

Growth is the north star metric for all SaaS companies, where the winner takes it all is THE rule! Most failures in SaaS business come not from a lack of new contracts but from a devastating portfolio attrition. Optimal product usage ensures an optimal retention of course, but also satisfied customers that will turn into thriving ambassadors, happy to sing your praises to potential customers. Best part of it, they will do it for free or for a very reasonable cost (discount on their membership or a couple of free months).

As we’ve seen, increasing product usage is the philosopher’s stone of any CSM. If you find a way, it will turn your business into gold.

Bonus: Don’t forget to identify external behaviors!

Our jobs have us focusing on figures. Revenues, traffic, conversion rates, YoY evolution, and so on are part of our daily routines. “If you can’t put it in an Excel sheet, it doesn’t exist” is a sentence we too often hear. It’s true at some extend but it’s not enough. You’ll never get the complete figures of your customers or your competitors. There’s one thing you will always find is marketing, press releases or even job description from them. People and companies love to brag!

• If a competitor is suddenly looking for positions that don’t fit with your business needs, does it mean they’re developing a break-through feature? (E.g: you’re an online shop and they hire a commercial estate specialist)
• Is your biggest customer signing with a service provider that could replace you over the long term? (E.g: you sell servers and they sign with a Cloud provider)
• Is your biggest competitor buying a company focusing on a niche activity that could put your business at risk? (E.g: you’re a bank and your competitor buys a blockchain company)

Those information, combined with your internal analysis, will allow you to identify the next trends and make sure you’re not reacting too late…

* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_the_economy,_stupid