The best indicator of a job well done is the success of your partner.
A common principle in the best companies is to treat customers as partners in success. A number of years ago I was discussing a customer with my CTO in what became a watershed moment for me professionally. The CTO was ready to let the customer leave because they were “challenging” (my word, not his). I was advocating for establishing what would soon become known as the Customer Success Approach, focusing on customer experience and product adoption in a deeper relationship. The company wasn’t structured to fully support this, and the CTO certainly didn’t have that mindset. I left the company shortly thereafter, and I’m quite certain the client did also. Client churn. It can be a business killer.
In what has by now become a fairly famous business case, David Dempsey of Salesforce compelled his company to adopt customer churn as a key performance indicator. If you don’t know the story, here is a good synopsis from Inc. Essentially, 
in 2005 Salesforce was doing great. They had a good product and were adding customers, with an estimated 88% increase in bookings. Fantastic! However, Dempsey shone a bright light on what was happening after all of the new business bookings. Clients were leaving at the rate of 8% per month. Ouch! Over 90% of clients were leaving every year. Leadership understood the future if things didn’t change quickly. So, Salesforce did what it had to do: improve the software, decrease defects, improve user experience, establish customer success groups – essentially shift the culture from customer-as-transaction to customer-as-success-partner.
There is no better indicator of a job well done than the success of your partner. At MCANTA we treat our customers as partners in success, and we help companies from all industries and sizes improve their business through automating software and performance testing, business process automation and automating data migration. Contact us for a free consultation.
