The Customer Success Trifecta

Over the past two decades, software as a service (SaaS) has become a significant source of revenue for businesses around the globe. However, the ultimate customer experience of using SaaS solutions may often feel disjointed and frustrating for end users. 

For a variety of reasons, there’s been a fundamental shift in the way businesses purchase software. It’s no longer one-time delivery and deployment. Consumer technologies for instance, have succeeded in solving complexity in our personal lives through simple, well-orchestrated services and experience. With just a few clicks or taps on a screen, we can book a multi-city vacation, stream a recommended video on a device of our choosing, or buy a product online with next-day delivery. All are complex services to deliver; yet they are easy to request and receive. The seamless digital experiences to which we have become accustomed in our personal lives have created an expectation for near-flawless technological enablement in our work.

As a pioneer in the programmatic job advertising space, Joveo has been at the forefront of driving innovation in customer success (CS) excellence. We understand that effective CS is the shortest route to helping our customers realize revenue from our product, which makes it imperative for us to stay on top of our game and consistently help our customers crush their talent acquisition goals. 

Here’s how we do it.

What does customer success mean?

Customer success is more than just a business function – it’s a philosophy that continuously guides your customers to their goals. Organizations delivering an exceptional customer experience understand that they no longer just sell products and services – it’s about establishing long-term relationships that maximize their customers’ outcomes.

In other words, your success as a SaaS company depends on your customers’ success. When you help your customers succeed in their day-to-day activities, your business will become successful. 

While success looks different for every business, at the end of the day, CS is an advanced form of client management. The main goal is to align client and vendor objectives in order to maximize revenue for both sides.  

For us, at Joveo, this means taking a consultative approach to programmatic recruitment. Given the technology’s recent move into the talent acquisition ecosystem, our goal is to act as an extension of our customer’s recruitment and marketing teams. 

This means, in addition to helping customers make sense of their programmatic platform, we also share qualitative insights on the recruiting and advertising landscape for specific use cases. For example, advising a trucking company on the best practices for recruiting long-haul drivers or sharing data on what supply and demand looks like. 

Our strategic insights drive competitive differentiation.

The customer success trifecta

With a subscription-based product, CS is all about stickiness. The objective is to sell a relationship – not a product.

Beyond the financial factor, however, constant contact with customers also allows you to gather insights on how your customers use their products, so you can keep improving it. 

In the past, if someone bought accounting software, for example, you wouldn’t know if they’re actually using it, when they’re using it, how they’re using it, whether they’re happy or have replaced your software with a competitor’s.

Now, CS teams are crucial when it comes to gathering insights that help them proactively offer help to customers. This is how you provide continuous value.

Another thing to keep in mind: customer success is now introduced much earlier in the relationship. At Joveo, this typically happens at the implementation stage. This helps our customer success managers understand the customer’s goals and objectives early on, ensuring that the transition, post implementation, is seamless.

Education

We work with customers across various industries, from trucking, to e-commerce, to healthcare, and logistics. Each has unique market dynamics that impact job advertising and hiring. For instance, while e-commerce may have an ample ratio of candidates to open positions, trucking does not. It is crucial for customers to understand how these dynamics (supply and demand of talent, job location, pay range, etc.) can impact their programmatic strategy. 

In addition to helping customers make the most of our platform, we also provide input on qualitative factors. That could mean answering questions like:

• What should our cost per application (CPA) look like?
• What should we benchmark our cost per hire (CPH) against?
• How do we rank across verticals and industries?

Insights on topics like these inform our customers’ programmatic strategy and ultimately help them realize their hiring goals. 

Needs

While platforms like G2 offer great insight into customers’ experiences with Joveo, they are not as comprehensive as the feedback our customer success managers (CSMs) receive. It’s not uncommon for the CS team to share constructive customer feedback around new features and products with the development team. This is a reflection of our commitment to taking a consultative approach to customer service. 

A good example of this would be how Joveo became the first programmatic job platform with multi-currency support. A major banking customer wanted to buy media globally. This meant paying in USD when purchasing media in the US and in GBP when media buying in the UK. We worked with our customer and the product development teams to bring this idea to life. Today, we might be the only programmatic job platform that offers this feature. 

The value of continuous listening (and learning) cannot be understated. 

Centricity

Finally, this brings us to the overarching theme of customer centricity. We understand that customer success is not a one-off project. It’s an iterative process where we seek to satisfy – and anticipate – our customers’ evolving needs.

Using the same example as above, we were able to put our customer-centric thinking into action when we realized that our customer had a need which could be extrapolated into use-cases for other customers. This approach helps us stay ahead of the curve when it comes to programmatic features and user ROI. 

To sum it up, excelling at customer success is the result of conscious decision making and investment. It requires deliberate effort to ingrain the approach within the organizational fabric. 

Our advice on creating a CS strategy: 

• Keep it simple. 
• Understand the problem from the client’s perspective. 
• Identify how they are measuring success. 

In the end, everything is connected to larger company goals, and everyone needs to be accountable. The value your product provides defines your organization and your clients’.   

In the end, it’s about keeping the customer top of mind and their requirements at the forefront of every action. At Joveo, that’s something we truly believe in and strive for. 

Want to learn more about how Joveo is helping enterprises deliver on their talent acquisition goals? Book a demo today!