Introduction
Managing customer risks effectively requires not just cross-functional collaboration, but also alignment with your company’s strategic business goals. By ensuring that risk management efforts are tied to broader objectives such as customer retention, revenue growth, and product success, you can ensure that every team is working towards the same priorities. This article will guide you through aligning cross-functional risk collaboration with your organization’s key business goals using Gainsight’s tools.
Step 1: Align Risk Management with Customer Retention Goals
Ensure that risk management efforts directly support your customer retention goals:
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Track Health Scores for At-Risk Customers: Use Health Scores to identify customers who are at risk of churn and prioritize engagement efforts around these accounts. Ensuring that risks are flagged early helps focus efforts on retaining key customers.
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Tie Playbooks to Retention Objectives: Customize Playbooks to ensure they are focused on customer retention strategies. For example, include steps that address common churn reasons like low product adoption or lack of engagement.
Aligning risk management with customer retention goals ensures that your team’s actions are focused on protecting revenue and keeping customers satisfied.
Step 2: Involve Leadership for High-Impact Risks
For risks that could significantly impact your organization’s revenue or strategic accounts, involve executive leadership to ensure quick intervention:
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Escalate Critical Risks to Leadership: Set up Rules Engine to automatically trigger CTAs for leadership when a customer’s risk severity crosses a critical threshold. This ensures that high-impact accounts receive attention from senior stakeholders.
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Leadership Engagement in Weekly Business Reviews (WBRs): Use WBRs to discuss high-priority risks with leadership. Regularly review high-risk accounts using Dashboards to ensure alignment on the next steps.
Involving leadership in managing high-impact risks ensures that important accounts are prioritized, helping to protect strategic revenue streams.
Step 3: Align Risk Collaboration with Product Improvement Goals
Use risk collaboration efforts to drive product improvement, ensuring that feedback from customer risks is incorporated into your product roadmap:
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Track Product-Related Risks: Use Dashboards to track recurring product issues or feature requests reported by customers. For example, if multiple customers are struggling with the same feature, escalate this to the Product Team to resolve.
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Incorporate Product Feedback into Risk Playbooks: Customize Playbooks to include steps for collecting product feedback from customers facing product-related risks. This feedback should then be shared with the Product Team to guide future improvements.
Aligning risk management with product goals ensures that customer feedback is acted upon, leading to a better product experience and reduced risk of churn.
Step 4: Monitor Alignment and Adjust Strategies
Regularly monitor how well your risk management efforts are aligned with strategic business goals and adjust strategies as needed:
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Track Risk Metrics via Dashboards: Use Dashboards to track metrics like customer retention rates, revenue protection, and product feedback resolution. These metrics help ensure that your risk management efforts are contributing to broader business objectives.
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Adjust Strategies Based on Performance: If certain risk management efforts aren’t driving the expected results, refine your playbooks or engagement strategies. For example, if product-related risks are increasing, consider focusing more resources on product improvement.
By continuously monitoring performance and alignment, you ensure that your risk management strategy stays aligned with the company’s broader business goals.
Next Steps for Success
With strategic alignment in place:
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Monitor alignment with business goals: Use dashboards to ensure that risk management efforts are contributing to retention, revenue, and product improvement goals.
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Engage leadership for high-impact risks: Involve senior stakeholders in managing critical risks that could significantly impact the business.
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