The Role of the Chief Customer Officer with Michael Hubbard

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“Customer obsessed”

“Customer-centric”

“Customer focussed”

These are the buzzwords companies use to show off how much they focus on their customers.

But only a few are doing this consistently with measurable success.

The true measure of customer centricity can only be found by asking this question:

What percentage of your new business comes from existing customers?

To share more about how a Chief Customer Officer should be driving this in your business, we’re joined by Michael Hubbard, Senior Vice President of Customer Success, Services, and Support at Smartsheet, an NYSE-listed SaaS company that has built a workflow management platform that empowers business of all sizes to scale and deliver value. Michael covers the role of the Chief Customer Officer in maximizing customer lifetime value.

Why is the lifetime value of a customer so important?

LTV is becoming more and more important in the “subscription economy” as customers don’t buy things to own, but to rent through monthly or yearly recurring plans. Therefore as a business, you don’t make all your profit from a sale on day one, but every time they choose to renew their subscription.

You cannot sell anything to someone who can’t buy

If you’re in customer success, you’re there to delight users and unlock an understanding of the features, context and use cases that drive the expansion and retention of that customer.

Time should be divided between users, decision-makers and buyers within the customer’s business. Not only to solve the problem they’re currently focused on but also to plan where they can use other products and services when future problems or opportunities arise.

“In the past, you knew that the cost you incurred to acquire customers would net you 3 to 6 years of benefits. Now you still may have those 3 to 6 years of benefits, but only based on how you treat them..“

Michael Hubbard, Senior Vice President of Customer Success, Services, and Support at Smartsheet

The role of the Chief Customer Officer

CCO’s exist to expand the value created for all existing customers. All truly innovative companies listen, compile data, and then bring valuable insights back to the commercial functions to enable them to acquire new customers more easily.

Customer service is not just presenting features to customers but explaining the added value your business can create.

“If you know enough about your customer, you’re tying it to their initiatives. But if you don’t, you should create a journey that says: this journey is propelled by these major industry drivers.“

Michael Hubbard, Senior Vice President of Customer Success, Services, and Support at Smartsheet

The power of feedback

The goal of every customer success function is to increase retention and reduce churn.  

It is therefore important to receive feedback from customers through surveys, customer advisory boards and face-to-face at conferences to give them a platform to tell their story and for you to learn how to serve them better.

Now that you know the importance of customer success and being customer-focused, it’s time to learn how to discover some sales methodology secrets and prepare a winning GTM strategy. Check out the full list of episodes: The B2B Revenue Executive Experience.

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