The Dreamforce-related announcements are already starting to come in. Today ServiceSource announced a Customer Success solution powered by Salesforce1. Mike Rosenbaum, EVP, Salesforce Platform said, “The Salesforce1 Customer Platform is a game changer for developers and partners because it helps them build engaging, next generation apps to connect with customers in a whole new way. By opening the platform, we have made it possible for customers and partners to get their apps and data in one place, where everything is connected and in the context of their business.”
Are you a B2B business and want to make sure that your customer not only buys, but renews with you? The latest in this area is called Customer Success Management. These type of vendors not only manage the beginning of a relationship with a company but also have very smart analytics to help you see if the company is happy with your product or service way before renewal time. This is key in SaaS businesses because instead of selling the old way – on premise with maintenance upgrades, if a company is not happy with the SaaS solution, they can decide to not continue the contract. It’s much easier to switch than it used to be. And that’s what companies need to know if their clients are happy- not just at the time of sales, but throughout the life of the product / service, so when renewal time comes along, it’s a yes!…
What this means to you, if you are B2B business, is that you are enable to provide customer success teams with a platform-oriented way to implement proven success plans and engage users with planned, high-value activities that drive customer lifetime value, reduce churn and ensure customer satisfaction.
ServiceSource is a global leader in cloud-based recurring revenue management solutions. So if your company wants to provide better service for customers to drive growth and build long-standing relationships across the customer lifecycle, this may be a vendor to look at. ServiceSource has a comprehensive data management, analytics, automation and services capabilities. They deliver higher subscription, maintenance, and support revenue, improved customer retention, and increased business predictability through their Renew OnDemand®, Scout® and proven services offers.
The new features include:
- Inline Customer Health Monitoring: Embedded account status indicators and metrics within the Salesforce1 Platform visibly show how customers are using a product to consistently measure customer success at scale.
- Tailored Customer Plays: By combining subscription- and user-level predictive analytics with pre-planned plays, sales and customer success teams will engage each customer in exactly the right way, at the right time.
- High Volume Effectiveness: “Focus Categories” help customer success reps efficiently and effectively manage more accounts by pinpointing high-value customers that require immediate attention.
- Structured Success Plans: Customer success plans provide clear visibility into the unique journey each customer takes with a company’s products and organization. Every plan incorporates a timeline view that shows where the customer is located in the lifecycle, prior activities as well as future actions required for a successful renewal.
- Streamlined User Experience: Designed specifically for the customer success rep, the app delivers the right information from inside the Salesforce1 Platform to simplify day-to-day work and maximize effectiveness – all while maintaining seamless connectivity to the rest of the organization. Configurable “Action Tiles” quickly guide work activities and provide a closed-loop view of customer success.
ServiceSource will be at Dreamforce if you want to see more. They are a Gold sponsor at Dreamforce® ’14, October 13-16. If you want to know more about what they are doing there at Dreamforce, here’s a link: http://www.servicesource.com/dreamforce.
The Salesforce1 Platform, ServiceSource Customer Success for Salesforce1 will be available in late fall 2014. To learn more about the ServiceSource Customer Service App, here’s a link: http://www.servicesource.com/customer-success
@DrNatalie
VP and Principal Analyst, Covering Customer Service, Sales and Marketing to Deliver Better Customer Experiences
Constellation Research