Customer Success Team Profile: SafetySkills

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Web: www.safetyskills.com                 Industry: E-Learning                   Location: Oklahoma City, OK

This month we are featuring the Customer Success team at SafetySkills, an e-learning company that provides competency-based and engaging online safety training for HR compliance and EHS competencies.

Walter Swenke, Training Success Manager, shared how SafetySkills’ Training Success Team is proactively engaging their customers by utilizing ChurnZero. Read on to learn how Walter and his team used Segmentation, Announcements and SuccessPanels to quickly communicate a new training offering at the onset of COVID-19 to ensure their customers were informed and engaged.

Q. How long has your company had a CS function? How did it begin?
A. SafetySkills created the team of Training Success Managers, or TSMs, in Q1 of 2018, so just over two years! We initially started with two TSMs, and after laying out the foundations of how the team would operate, it was time to plan our full launch of this new TSM program. We started with an internal campaign, collaborating with our Sales team by picking up the phone to make soft handoffs, answering questions and kicking off an email campaign. Through hundreds of discussions and emails, we were communicating to our clients that the Training Success Team would not only serve as their primary point of contact, but also provide added value to their existing subscription plan. We have continued to build these relationships by proactively reaching out to customers to help review and analyze their accounts, provide indicators of their performance, and communicate new updates and releases from SafetySkills.

Another initiative is collecting data and key insights into customer usage and having transparent conversations about how they are leveraging the SafetySkills platform. We then use that knowledge to make sure our new customers are implementing these best practices from the initial set up. This shift internally has allowed our Account Executives to continue doing what they do best, which is providing a solution to potential clients, while creating an environment for the TSM team to continue cultivating and building our clients’ trust. 

Q. What is the primary focus of the Customer Success team at your company?
A. Our TSM team focuses on solidifying customer relationships and being the primary source of contact to answer questions, communicate issues and provide feedback on our products. In turn, we do our best to meet the needs of each of our clients and leverage various internal departments to ensure customers are getting the most value out of our product. It is a broad statement, but we have been able to provide data, information and communication on a regular basis, which was not being done before the TSM team was created. These include company updates, new releases and other resourceful information for our clients through account reviews. We serve as the hub for our customers on their side of things, and we are also responsible for engaging in expansion opportunities and handling the renewals for our individual books of business with a lot of relative flexibility on the best strategies to communicate to our customers.

Q. How is your Customer Success team structured?
A. Since launching the program with two TSMs we have now grown to seven! We handle roughly 170 accounts per person, of which 80% of those have regular ARR/MRR. The small portion of customers without ARR are accounts with custom client projects and other non-subscription products we provide. Each TSM’s account portfolio includes a wide mix of industries, segmentations and sizes, both large and small, but carry a similar total ARR booking by Success Manager.

Q. What ChurnZero features have you found most beneficial for your team?
A. There are so many options here, where to begin? Honestly, we have not fully maximized all the capabilities within the CZ platform, but if I had to choose just one beneficial feature, it would be Plays! Ultimately, this has been the most fantastic way to automate some of our customer communication. We use them to launch customer lifecycle processes, specifically account reviews and renewals. I admit, it’s a bit of a self-serving way to remind our team to begin a process of check-ins with customers and renewals, however with the flexibility and customer messaging that Plays offers, we’ve been able to communicate more value to our customers. Whether it is data usage, updates or just general communication, it’s been a way for us to leverage ChurnZero into our current processes and I’m excited to have more to come. Plays also have a great reporting that provides more transparent insights on their successes and where we can improve. We have added another layer using custom Alerts for any bounced emails from our automated emails, Plays that no longer qualify due to customer changes, and churn potential monitoring. This quickly notifies our success team of a possible changes on the contact level that we can immediately address, update and respond to.

Q. Was there an “aha moment” when you saw how impactful ChurnZero could be?
A. There have been a few “aha moments” along the way as we been diving ever deeper into the possibilities and capabilities of ChurnZero! To pick one specifically, in March, we developed course content regarding COVID-19 and we needed a way to communicate that across our entire customer base, quickly to specific users. Using ChurnZero’s Segmentation, we were able to identify and target specific user types within our platform. Then, we were able to launch our announcement of this course release through the SuccessPanels directly to thousands of users across our platform within just a couple of hours. We had an overwhelming response and were met with a great amount of positive feedback about our proactive approach in notifying everyone about this momentous and important release. That was a huge win for the day made possible by the tools ChurnZero’s platform provides.

Would your company like to be profiled in an upcoming Customer Success Team profile? Email Holly Keener at hkeener@churnzero.net for more information.