Recently, I find many of my clients segment their existing client base in a new way in response to a slow in the economy. This new segmentation strategy is placed to ensure customer success teams are able to prioritize customer slew of stop-payment requests, discount asks as well as to effectively identify expansion opportunities.
How this works:
If you haven’t changed how you segment your existing customer base, continue reading this article to better understand how this works:
First, you’ll need to make sure each account is assigned with the correct industry on your CRM system. That’s a basic step without which, this whole exercise is doomed.
In parallel, assign each industry a specific economy downturn impact category:
➊ Severe
➋ Medium
➌ Low
Next, develop three customer reaction lanes based on the industry impact categories above.
Finish the segmentation process by applying two additional considerations:
- Level of customer engagement – For example: how often does each customer proactively reach out to you, attend scheduled meetings, attend events, or opens your emails.
- Level of solution consumption – For example Frequency of usage, # of features and modules implemented, # of users using the system (vs licenses bought).
- Value sentiment – For example: What is the decision maker’s sentiment regarding the value they receive or think they can receive from your solutions. This is a subjective assessment that can usually be determined by your customer success manager (or account manager).
Bottom line:
This exercise will help you not only with prioritizing your existing accounts. It would also help you provide a more accurate renewal forecast.
Comment below:
Do you agree with this approach? Did your team take a different methodology to determine your customer strategy since the pandemic started?
Contact us at CSM Practice if you have any questions about account segmentation strategies or other customer success topics.