What do you do if your job responsibilities include managing every revenue-generating function in your organization and driving predictable growth – and then the world is suddenly thrust into an unpredictable and unstable economic downturn? If you’re a Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) today, your initial answer may be to panic. But don’t! While the uncertainty that comes along with rising interest rates and a falling stock market can be scary, there is a silver lining: your current customer base.
During periods of economic instability, your customer base may be the only growth channel on which you can depend. Bleeding cash into the quest for new customers simply doesn’t make sense when all organizations are looking for ways to cut costs, so it’s imperative that you prove your worth and show your customers why they should not only stick with you, but continue to invest more in your product.
Let’s look at three important things that a CRO should consider when faced with an economic downturn.
1. Reorient Your Operating Model
Traditional acquisition-focused models, where Sales and Marketing are at the forefront and Customer Success is simply an afterthought, do not work in an unstable economy. In order to drive growth, you need to reorient your company towards a value-driven operating model where every department and team is focused on providing valuable, consistent and personalized experiences for customers. While the idea of turning your current operating model upside down – especially in the midst of a chaotic economic period – may seem daunting, it can actually be accomplished very easily with the right tools.
Be aware, however, that you cannot do this by trying to force-fit your CRM, using a monolithic CS platform or trying to slap on a digital work tool band-aid. You need a solution that unites your teams around digital touchpoints, customer health data and analytics, and powerful automation technologies. And Totango’s composable customer success platform provides all of this and much more. Our Customer Experience Canvas unites all of your teams on an agile, shared visual workspace so they can design, build, run and measure the entire customer journey in one place. In addition, our customizable apps, called SuccessBLOCs, allow teams to simply select the customer outcome that they want to achieve (i.e. Maximize Upsells or Improve NPS and Loyalty), then build out that journey using pre-designed templates and workflows. From there, your team can continuously iterate and learn faster from new versions of the same journey to improve your results each time.
2. Treat the Customer Journey as a Product
A critical part of a CRO’s job is to help set the buyer’s journey and design the company’s vision for growth. Companies that have figured out how to “recession-proof” their business and continue to thrive despite a floundering economy, have learned the importance of treating the customer journey as a product. This means that, rather than focusing just on their customer’s initial interactions and end experiences with their product, they consistently optimize and evolve the customer’s experience throughout their entire journey with the brand. CROs, especially during an economic downturn, should aim to proactively own customer journey management beyond pre- and post-sale interactions. By investing in a product like Totango that delivers a self-service, digital-first model, you can enable company-wide customer success innovation to deliver exceptional customer experiences every time.
3. Deliver Value at Every Stage of the Journey
By treating the customer journey like a product and constantly evolving to improve each step, you are also able to generate value at every stage of the journey. When you’re consistently providing value, then you’re able to keep your customers engaged and happy with your product. To ensure your customers are continuing to find value, however, you need to be able to monitor customer outcomes through everyday digital touchpoints and precise customer health data and analytics. Totango makes it easy to stay in tune with your customer’s sentiments and be alerted to important signals and events through SuccessBLOC modules, like Detect Risk, Analyze Customer Health, and Engage Customers. Each of these SuccessBLOCs features different tools, goals and KPIs, segmentation functionalities, campaign templates and more to help you deliver the value and support that your customers need at every stage of the journey.
Invest in Customer Success
We may not be able to tell you what tomorrow will bring, but we can keep you up-to-date on all you need to know about your customer base. With Totango, you can start identifying new ways to bring your customers more value from the first day you sign up, and as you continue to learn and evolve with the product, your knowledge and automations will become even more powerful. We provide you with the key data you need to continuously iterate on existing processes, brainstorm new procedures, and easily spot exposure to risk or opportunities to expand. Sign up for Totango for free and start building your customer journey and recession-proofing your business today!
