Can talking to customers be frustrating? A big YES…

A guide to who talks what with the customer.

Recently I came across this post on LinkedIn and I realized this is a problem I have solved so many times in my life. All it takes is- clear communication.

The post

How to solve this problem?

Here's my take on who talks what with the customer.

It is important to clearly demarcate who talks to the customers in a company.

I prefer laying down the process as follows-

1.⁠ ⁠CSM- for all things related to product adoption, customer retention, training, MBRs/QBRs. If the org has an Account manager as well, the responsibility is split between CSMs and AMs. The split can be on case to case basis. For support requests, L1 support should be the first line of responders with a defined first (meaningful) response time.

2.⁠ ⁠⁠Sales rep/AE- for all things related to money and contract (including billing, upsell, cross sell, renewals, clawbacks). CSMs may be in cc or may not be, depends from org to org. CSMs should be informed later in case they are not looped in such conversations.

3.⁠ ⁠⁠CXOs- only in case of fire which might lead to a potential churn. These conversations usually have CXOs on the others side as well.

An organization's billing or finance team shouldn't talk to customers directly. They're usually not skilled customer facing communicators. For billing related concerns the sales rep should drive the conversation and act as an interface between customer and billing.

PS-

1.⁠ ⁠Upsell, cross sell, renewals are a joint effort between CSMs and Sales reps. Needs to be driven in collaboration.

2.⁠ ⁠⁠Churn isn't owned by CS. It is a collective result of everything including CS, Sales, Account management, Product, Billing/ Finances etc. Companies who hold only CS accountable for customer churn, usually end up with employee churn.