The super fan is the dream customer for every sports team.
They’re the season-ticket holder who’s sat in the same seat for every home game for the past 10 years. They know everything about their team: the stats, the star players, the rookies, the history of the franchise. They spread their fandom to others, and buy the latest and greatest merch, flaunting new jerseys and limited-edition hats. Sometimes the super fan may even paint their face for the next game.
Who’s the super fan equivalent for customer success organizations? Super users.
Super users are the customers who live for your solution. They know your product intimately, log on constantly, have completed advanced training and can even train others to do the same. Super users are so psyched about your product that they’re the best people to ask for feedback on improvements or potential launches.
So how do you create one? It starts with onboarding. Before a user can become a super user, they first need a smooth introduction to the platform itself.
“Our onboarding team is so important,” Cameron Ruiz, client service team lead at Medtelligent said. “In order to successfully onboard a client with a high adoption rate, each team member needs a deep understanding of the application and the industry.”
To achieve that understanding, communication must be maintained after a client has been passed from sales to customer success, Suzanne Singer, director of customer success at Tegus, said.
“This swift handoff from our account executives to our customer success managers ensures customers know they are supported on day one of the relationship,” Singer said.
From there, it’s important to ensure that every interaction with a customer has a specific purpose and everyone leaves with key takeaways, Jess Atlas, senior customer success manager at Built In, said.
Want more secrets and best practices on how to turn a user into a super user? Built In Chicago sat down with three CS experts to find out.
What they do: Medtelligent creates software for assisted living companies with its flagship product, Assisted Living Intelligent Solutions (ALIS).
What is the single most impactful change you’ve made to your customer onboarding process?
We’ve ensured that clients use and love our ALIS software before the onboarding process is complete. We are not a team that just performs three training sessions and then leaves the clients to figure everything else out for themselves. Our team stays with the client for as long as they need. This approach has drastically increased the adoption rate of our software, kept our churn rate below one percent, and increased overall client happiness and satisfaction.
We are not a team that just performs three training sessions and then leaves the clients to figure everything else out for themselves.”
What was your biggest challenge implementing this change?
Staying with our clients for longer periods ties up a lot of resources — especially with new clients signing on all the time — so pressure can build on the onboarding specialists to wrap up the process. To address this challenge, we invested in building up a strong and specialized support team so the client’s first-class experience extends past their initial implementation period, even with extremely complicated topics like occupancy, integrations and billing.
What do your users say that they love most about your product?
The product’s user-friendliness and their high-touch client service experience. For onboarding specifically, our high-quality, high-touch interactions build trust with our clients. This initial trust establishes a foundation for a strong partnership because our clients feel heard and valued. With our team’s focus on both general knowledge across the application paired with specialization, our clients know that they’re always talking to someone that cares and can solve their problem. This strong relationship has resulted in high levels of client retention and organic growth.
To date, Medtelligent has grown exclusively through referrals. I believe that is because, as an entire company and as a client services team, we strive to be a trusted partner to our clients, not just another vendor, and that starts with an exceptional onboarding experience.
What they do: Built In is a home for ambitious professionals who work in tech. People rely on Built In’s content and events to read up on the industry, make real connections and discover opportunities at companies they believe in.
What is the single most impactful change you’ve made to your customer onboarding process?
Not having calls for the sake of having calls. Having a purpose behind each touch point and engaging in these strategic conversations is important to a successful partnership. Additionally, we want to make sure we are being respectful of everyone’s time when joining a call or meeting with our team.
Our goal on the CS team at Built In is to consult and provide suggestions that pertain to our customers’ goals and initiatives. For example, if a customer’s objective with Built In is to focus on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, we would tailor our conversations and suggestions for branding opportunities around DEI. Alternatively, if they want our user base to know their engineering team is working on innovative projects and are heavily hiring, we’ll aim to convey that through our content as well.
An added bonus to these thoughtful calls and meetings is that we unearth the value of setting expectations and deadlines. It is crucial to leave each call or interaction with attainable deadlines or action items.
Having a purpose behind each touch point and engaging in these strategic conversations is important to a successful partnership.”
What was your biggest challenge implementing this change?
Resistance to change. Our team is challenged with evolving our business while bringing our customers along for the ride. We want to ensure that our customers are successful and can seamlessly adapt to changes that will positively affect them, even if it’s hard to recognize at the moment. When faced with a process that you’ve been using for years, it’s tough to change to a new way of thinking. Fortunately, we have developed enough trust with our customers that making changes throughout a process has led to a better outcome.
What do your users say that they love most about your product?
Our users say that our product is easy to use and is intuitive. We often hear that Built In’s website interface is user-friendly and innovative. Our mission is to unite technology professionals with their purpose through the power of content. We help make that connection easy by guiding our users through the flow of our website.
The CSM team spends a lot of time helping our customers with their brand through their company profile and content. We’ve made those products invaluable brand assets for our customers for years to come.
What they do: Tegus’ market intelligence platform powers some of the world’s most well-respected institutional investors, corporations and consultancies through its database of primary and market information.
What is the single most impactful change you’ve made to your customer onboarding process?
We recently required that the intro from sales to customer success (and the subsequent training call) be scheduled no more than seven days after an agreement is signed. This swift handoff from our account executives to our CSMs ensures customers know they are supported on day one of the relationship.
On the call, CSMs prioritize understanding who our customers are, how their teams operate, their specific use cases for our product and services, and what they need from the new partnership to consider it a success. This allows us to customize our engagement with them throughout the course of the contract term, ensuring we are value-add at every touchpoint. Since implementing this change, we have seen an increase in customer feedback.
We make sure our customers know that we are flexible and happy to accommodate their availability to ensure a great customer experience.”
What was your biggest challenge implementing this change?
Our customers are often busy, and carving out even 30 minutes of their time can be difficult. Our team is aware of this and we make sure our customers know that we are flexible and happy to accommodate their availability to ensure a great customer experience.
What do your users say that they love most about your product?
The Tegus platform and service offering delivers market intelligence that saves our customers both time and money. We pride ourselves on being a product-driven company. The regular feedback we receive from customers and potential customers allows us to continue to drive product-market fit.
