The Secret to Uncovering Your Customer’s Business Outcomes

This post was originally posted on The Success League’s Blog

“What are your priorities?” asks a tentative customer success manager. All they get back in return from the client is a puzzled look over Zoom, and silence. The now frazzled CSM tries again: “What outcomes are you looking to achieve?” There is more silence followed by a very guarded response from the customer “why are you asking me these questions when we asked you to help resolve these product issues?”. This CSM is now on the defensive and may have lost any ability to have a more strategic conversation with their customer. Where did they go wrong?

Your customer: “Why are you asking me these questions?”

Outcomes & Customer Success

You can’t go very far in the world of Customer Success without hearing about “desired outcomes,” “customer outcomes” or “business outcomes” thanks to the groundbreaking work by Lincoln Murphy who popularized the term “desired outcome.” While the definition of business outcomes slightly differs across the CS industry it’s mostly centered around how your customers define value in a quantifiable way. The challenge for Customer Success Managers and CS leaders is the lack of a playbook on how to uncover what these are. Many CSMs make a similar mistake as the story above. They simply ask the client about their business outcomes without any context or before they…