Skip to main content
allison_pickens
allison_pickens
Contributor ⭐️
March 16, 2017
Question

Aligning with Partners on Customer Success

  • March 16, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 94 views
Customer Success at scale is much more than one-to-many email automation to engage the long tail of your customer base. Collaborating with your partner ecosystem on Customer Success can be another key to scaling.

When there's alignment between vendors and their partners, every constituency wins. Customers derive quicker time-to-value that is consistent with standardized journey maps, vendors benefit with better margins due to reduced adoption costs, and partners not only increase their margins and retention rates, but also identify upsell/cross-sell opportunities and enhance their competitive position.

Here’s our recommended playbook for working with partners to drive Customer Success:

  1. Profile Your Partners
  2. Define the ROI to the Partner
  3. Share Customer Insights
  4. Provide Enablement
  5. Define the Division of Labor
  6. Measure Partner Effectiveness
To learn more, check out my new blog post on Aligning with Partners on Customer Success.

I'd love to hear from you - how have you aligned with your partners to drive success for your customers?

      1 reply

      guilherme_lopes
      guilherme_lopes
      Contributor ⭐️
      March 21, 2017
      Hi Allison,

      Aligning with Partners is what have been keeping me awake at night. Thanks for the article.

      Though we're still scratching the surface, we've rolled out a series of initiatives:

      - Besides a sales support, our partners can count on a Partner Success Manager (PSM). They are like CSMs focused on partners. Their goal is to make partners deliver success to their customers (and reduce their churn rate).
      - The PSM do QBRs with partners, where they show them a Gainsight customized dashboard with all their customers, their health scores, and other importante metrics.
      - We turned our customer journey into a methodology, so we can explain/educate the customer the step-by-step path towards success. We train partners on that methodology too; moreover, we provide colateral material so they can do the same with their customers.
      - We've developed a Customer Success certification that partners have to take in order to achieve the top tiers of the partner program. We're, also, constantly education them about the benefits of a lifetime customer, up-sell and cross-sell. 
      - The criteria to evolve on our partner program tiers include, not only managed revenue, but also max churn rate and min adoption metrics.

      Does anyone else work with a VASP (Value Added Service Provider) program? I'd love to hear form you.
        Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement