Do Customer Success teams really need a mission? Your company also has a mission statement (or they should). Isn’t that enough? It’s also fairly obvious what a Customer Success team needs to do. You have to help your customers and provide value. Why do you need to add another layer here?
It’s something that earlier in my career as a CS leader I didn’t pay much attention to. I focused more on the problems and tried to lay out a strategy to address them. I didn’t realize the mistake I was making. Creating a mission statement is actually one of the most important things that you can do for your Customer Success team — especially during COVID. It helps ground your Customer Success team so they know what they should focus on.
What is a mission statement?
Very simply, a mission statement should be a clear and straightforward statement so that everyone in the company understands what your team does. It should answer the question “what do we do?” As I outlined in my blog post The Cycle of Customer Success: A Blueprint for Customer Success Teams,
“Your mission should guide and empower your team on what to do if there were no processes or managers. It should also be a guide for the rest of the company in terms of what the Customer Success team stands for.”
Your mission statement should help you with every key decision that you’re making including who you are hiring, new processes you are putting in place, and how you interact with your customers.
Here are some examples of mission statements that I’ve helped put in place:
- At Bluecore: “To have our customers shout about us from the rooftops due to the value that we are providing and the amazing customer experience”. We needed to create more specialization in our CS team to improve the overall customer experience.
- At Updater: To have “no moves left behind”. This was focused on the moving industry. It ensured that we providing the best experience for the consumer, for our real estate clients, and for the business. We hired and structured our team accordingly.
- At Kustomer: “We are the champions of our clients and their customers. We build trusted relationships by consulting with, educating, and supporting our clients and by becoming an extension of their team.” We are focused on being our client’s champions but also on being more proactive as this will create more trusted relationships. We’re working on implementing a strategy to support this.
Not everyone needs a mission statement to drive them but everyone should know WHAT they should be focused on. Is what you are doing today working towards the mission that you and your team have laid out? If you can’t answer that, you either need to revise your mission or review what you are focused on.
Don’t skip over this really important element of a Customer Success team. Create a mission statement so you understand WHAT you should be focused on.
Chad Horenfeldt
Enlightened Customers 