In a world where experience often is just as important as results, customer satisfaction is no longer enough to find success in an increasingly competitive market. Instead, the focus has turned toward customer success. According to Forrester Research, 72 percent of businesses now say that improving customer success is their top priority.
What is customer success? Let’s start with what it isn’t. Unlike customer satisfaction, customer success is not a measure of how well a product or service meets customer expectations.
Customer success occurs when client expectations are met through their interactions with a company. They might love a product but despise the customer experience, which definitely can impact repeat business.
In fact, a Zendesk report found that 96 percent of customers are likely to change their behavior after a bad customer experience, including 59 percent who said they would stop buying from the company. Perhaps even more concerning, 39 percent said their buying behavior would remain changed more than two years after the negative incident.
“The focus is on all of the interactions your customer has with your company; starting at the earliest touchpoints of marketing and sales, moving through closing and onboarding, and continuing through their entire lifecycle with you,” wrote customer success consultant Lincoln Murphy, author of, “Customer Success Book.”
As a result of its increased importance, customer success strategies have become a primary focus among businesses large and small. In what ways can the company increase its customer success rates to sell more and reduce churn? Then, what is the best way to communicate this all-important strategy to internal and external clients?
Want to design a stellar customer success presentation? Wondering how to best present a customer success strategy? Check out the following five ways to create decks that will wow your customers, drive upsell and boost retention:
1. Create a consistent experience
It’s no secret that any business wants its customers to be satisfied with their experience. Without satisfied customers, no company will meet success— and it’s not enough to provide a positive experience part of the time.
A customer often will form their opinion of a company based on their worst experiences, even if they are few and far between. Since 60 percent of customers told Salesforce that inconsistent experiences were enough for them to switch brands, consistent satisfaction and positive experiences are necessary for true customer success.
Likewise, the strategies featured in effective customer success presentation examples must consistently support a primary goal. Even inexperienced presentation designers can create a consistent slide deck by starting off with one of Beautiful.ai’s various presentation templates, already curated by our skilled artists to support all sorts of goals and objectives.
2. Make it personal
Customers want to feel valued, and therefore personalizing every interaction is key to customer success. What does that customer hope to get from the company? Satisfying someone else’s goals won’t improve the relationship with any customer. Likewise, be sure that your customer success story presentation speaks to a variety of customer expectations.
Of course, if you’re spending time catering your message to a variety of customers, you’ll want to ensure you aren’t wasting time communicating with people who are unlikely to be your customers regardless of their experiences. After all, a company that sells largely to a teen market would be wasting valuable time and resources customizing its strategies to satisfy Baby Boomer expectations.
3. Include social proof
Long before Facebook was a mere glint in Mark Zuckerberg’s eye, before Tom had us picking our top friends for Myspace, even before the phrase, “social media” meant anything, back when the Internet was still like something from science fiction, social proof was an enormous buying factor among most consumers.
If you don’t recall hearing much about it, just replace it with customer testimonials and word-of-mouth advertising. Potential customers might not believe what a salesperson or an advertiser has to say, but they are more likely to listen to fellow consumers tell of their own experiences.
Including positive customer experiences in your customer success story presentation will support your strategies and reinforce your message. The folks at Beautiful.ai know the value of social proof, and therefore have provided users with a customizable Quotation Template among our smart slides. The template is perfect for showcasing customer feedback and fostering trust among potential clients.
4. Identify milestones along the journey
Customer success is about the entire journey, not only the final scene. Therefore, identifying the milestones a customer meets along the way is another key element of customer success. Likewise, effective customer success presentation examples should also feature milestones clients have met along the way. If the customer’s journey is not yet complete, also identify the milestones yet to come.
Since people instinctively respond to storytelling, present the milestones in a story of the customer experience journey. For ideas on how best to present a variety of customer milestones within a storytelling format, reference Beautiful.ai’s library of presentation templates, designed with the perfect slides for practically any purpose.
5. Illustrate your data
Most people will agree that numbers typically don’t lie. It’s no wonder, then, that hard data is powerfully persuasive among consumers. It’s not enough to present the results of a subjective customer satisfaction survey. Qualitative data that supports customer success includes key performance indicators such as repeat sales, increased sales, customer acquisition costs and email engagement— metrics based on real numbers, not opinions.
At the same time, it’s commonly known that bombarding presentation audiences with a series of statistics is a great way to put people to sleep. Instead, make the numbers come to life and truly tell the story of the company’s customer success plan by placing them within engaging infographics.
Don’t become overwhelmed at the prospect of designing a series of colorful and informative charts and graphs, either. Beautiful.ai’s PowerPoint-alternative presentation software features a host of infographics among our library of smart slides. Just enter your data and watch our AI-powered software create the perfect infographics, including bar graphs, pie charts, flow charts, timelines, pictograms and so many more.
