You want outcomes? Allison Pickens, Chief Customer & Corporate Development Officer at Gainsight, has outcomes. In fact, she is perhaps suggesting the ultimate customer outcome that a customer could have after using your product. That outcome? Getting promoted. Think about it. Someone...an actual person bought your product. They stuck their neck out. Convinced many other people in their organization that buying your product was a good idea. The your product is a promise to make some meaningful improvement. People agreed and green-lighted the project. Looking back...someone is going to ask, "Was that a success?" If it was, perhaps your customer now looks so good, he or she ought to be promoted. Right? So, how many of your customers have been promoted? I think that might be the ultimate customer outcome.
"So often," explains Pickens, "achieving an outcome can mean career success for one of your clients. Are your clients getting promoted because they've successfully deployed your product. That's the kind of outcome we don't often talk about. But that is what actually matters to clients." If you think about what really people care about, on the top of their list must be to do their job well, look good doing it, and achieve above average career advancement as a result. To the extent you, as a software vendor, can help your customer "get promoted" is a sign you and your product is performing as expected.
Another example Pickens shared with us is that Gainsight spends time with customers helping them design their board decks. Many VPs of customer success present their customer success plans (and results) to their boards of directors. While Gainsight, the product, is not a "board deck generator," it does have a vested interest in helping customers product persuasive board decks that help boards understand the value of customer success, and ultimately why a company should buy Gainsight.
When this is done well, Gainsight acquires and keeps a customer (Gainsight wins) and the customer gets promoted (customer wins).
We all should find out what our "help customers design their board decks," so we can help our customers get promoted too.
Learn more about Allison:
- Gainsight's website.
- Allison's Linkedin blog we talked about - The Modern Boardroom: The Case for the Chief Customer Officer.
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