What defines customer success in the era of digitalization?
What defines success in this area of digitalization marked by rapid change, shifting strategies, and emerging opportunities? Is the notion of a successful campaign changing as the tools, techniques and technologies transform?
We posed those questions to Shaun Mammen, global head of customer success and support with Siemens Digital Industries Software, during their recent Realize LIVE event. Take a look..
Smart Industry: What defines customer success in the era of digitalization?
Shaun: It has definitely evolved. It's an outcome; our teams are talking about how our solutions can drive the outcome for a customer. How do we drive that successful outcome for a customer through a technology or by delivering a service? You design a solution to make it easier for the customer to get that outcome.
Smart Industry: How appealing is the as-a-service model to customers? Is this lower barrier to entry creating more success stories?
Shaun: Everyone is adopting the as-a-service approach more. It's cheaper. It can lower the bar to entry for somebody’s campaign. That is changing the nature of customer success in that it broadens the pool—smaller enterprises with fewer resources can now get involved. The ability for us to bring solutions into the small/medium business market is greatly expanded when you're at that initial entry point, going from a high CapEx purchase to a monthly subscription as OpEx.
The most critical factor is when you think about on-prem technology versus cloud technology and customers opting in to allow us to understand how they’re using our solutions and how we can normalize their data and compare it with our giant sample set of other customers using these products. We can circle back to that customer and say, “This is the optimal way that we’ve seen other customers in your industry execute this to get more value. We can show you how to do this work a little differently.” That bi-directional communication provides more personalization to the customer and it is, ultimately, more valuable for them.
Smart Industry: What common threads do you find among successful customer projects?
Shaun: Larger strategic or cultural decisions lend themselves to successful campaigns. Fully embracing partnerships, too, along with a full commitment to new approaches. Successful campaigns today hinge on this idea of collaboration and leaning into change as we move from on-prem to the cloud.
