Let's keep on talking about CS Operations

Part 2 of a 2 Parter...

Last week I covered part 1 of CS Operations. This week we focus on Part 2.

Renewals and Timeline

Time plays a big part in how we typically set out KPIs for Measuring Renewals Sales. Because time is so important it is best to track several time-based metrics:

1. “On-time” Renewals i.e. the customer places their order for the Renewal on or shortly before the expiry date.

2. “Early” Renewals i.e. the customer places their order for the Renewal well in advance. For example, several months/weeks ahead of the expiry date.

3. “Late“ Renewals (often referred to as “Trailing” Renewals), meaning the customer eventually places their order, say several weeks or months late. However it is still within a fixed tolerance, depending on the industry/segment norms expected.

Part of developing a robust system of assessing renewability is to develop a risk assessment, a risk score if you will.

Risk Score

Risk manifests in different ways in different businesses but it affects everyone the same. In order to protect your growth and reduce churn, analyzing your business for risk should be at the forefront of your renewal forecast process.

Common factors that can cause at-risk renewals to be recognized too late include:

• Difficulties in updating opportunities at scale

• A limited view of key renewal metrics

• Difficulties in building accurate forecasts

A good renewal system will help analyze these retention metrics as well as other customer attributes to help you visualize forecasts by booking type as well as contributors to churn. This will in turn give you a clear and thorough display of all renewals as well as a deeper understanding of what causes them.

In addition, having a renewal system can help visualize the impact of how the shifting likelihood of individual renewals impacts overall retention. From there you can preemptively address these factors to mitigate at-risk situations entirely.

Centralize Renewals for Accurate Forecasting

In order to accurately forecast renewals, you need to have an up-to-date view of your business, whether that’s from an executive-level or a microscopic look at the granular details of individual renewals. This bird’s eye view can then be used to reduce churn risk scenarios, making it possible for your renewal team to immediately engage with customers in real-time.  

Centralizing your renewal system also increases efficiency. Instead of wasting time generating reports, your team can simply log on and get an immediate view of where a renewal stands.

Your managers and reps can then utilize in-line editing to make changes to renewals in real-time. Using a centralized renewal system, you can create and maintain data cleanliness standards, making it easier for your team to highlight and correct for missed opportunities.

Customer Support

Customer support agents work by assisting customers with installation, training, maintenance, troubleshooting, and upgrading service or ending service of their products. They make the customer feel heard, and they proactively follow up with the customer later if necessary.

Customer support agents are most keenly aware of common problems, both with the products themselves and product documentation. As such, they should also be highly involved in the product’s continued improvements. They can collect data on user experience and identify critical bugs for engineering teams. They can also identify key areas for better onboarding education for sales reps and find critical aspects of documentation that should be highlighted or rewritten.

Most importantly, customer support should work to achieve company-wide goals. Old customer service methods prioritized moving through customers as quickly as