Serent Capital’s Operations & Customer Service Summit is an annual event that brings operations and customer service leaders within the Serent portfolio of companies together to share industry best practices, case studies, and lessons learned – fueling efficacy and productivity. Our Austin, Texas-based summit brought together a cross-industry assembly of both first-time and multi-year attendees, with more than 80% of those attending in VP or C-Level positions. This collaborative space allowed the group to address high-level concerns and discuss opportunities for alignment and implementable changes within their high-growth organizations.
“Content development not only cuts inefficiency and increases net retention, but also contributes to infrastructural modernization, and future-proofs for further internal innovation.”
The presentations, developed and led by CS & Ops leaders, revolved around a few major topics:
- Accessing actionable customer data
- Becoming a strategic partner to your customer
- Using Account Based Marketing (ABM) for existing customer
- Improving customer product adoption
- Building a cross-sell program
Accessing actionable customer data: The summit began with guest speakers on the importance of data within the customer experience to master the customer journey. As a cloud-based product experience platform, their software extension offers the ability to onboard, track product usage, measure NPS, and engage with customers conveniently and effectively—a valuable integration for the companies present. Continuing the course of mastery, our next speaker presented on the cruciality of good content strategy through 3 layers:
- Customer Facing
- Using tools like learning management systems (LMS), surveys, and gamification
- Productivity
- Leveraging technologies like content management systems (CMS) and collaboration software
- Infrastructure
- Building out key systems like customer relationship management (CRM), data warehouses, and customer service platforms
The benefits of which were most pertinent to attendees as content development not only cuts inefficiency and increases net retention, but also contributes to infrastructural modernization, and future-proofs for further internal innovation.
Becoming a strategic partner to your customer: Leading the conversation, Pondera’s Chief Customer Officer spoke on the importance and implementation of an effective Quarterly Business Review (QBR) process. QBRs are an effective way to take on the advisor perspective and provide clients with added value, both fostering the client relationship and maximizing their ROI. A further discussion focused on the strategic benefit, touching on everything from the importance of keeping the executive looped in and up to date and how QBR can lead to greater wallet share.
Using Account Based Marketing (ABM) for sales and marketing alignment: Next, Serent’s own Rebecca Granne, VP of Growth, shared cross-portfolio examples of launching Account-Based Marketing (ABM) for Existing Customers. This strategic approach unlocks the full potential of the clients already in your roster by focusing sales and marketing efforts on accounts rather than leads, helping you to scale strategy and personalize your services. Using CallRevu and KORE strategies as examples, Granne walked through key steps from stakeholder buy-in and content collection to campaign design and execution for achieving better sales-marketing alignment and greater wallet share.
Improving customer product adoption: CoConstruct VP of Customer Success’ presentation on the company’s approach to Combating Failure to Launch in customer product adoption to reduce churn walked through how CoConstruct identified and tackled six key initiatives to improve adoption. Including:
- Improving product UX through design and in-app management
- Defining onboarding and adoption processes
- Aligning compensation structure with the objectives of the company
All of which were used to drive tangible results across the business such as improving customer retention and team productivity.
Building a cross-sell program: Avionte’s VP of Client Experience then followed with a presentation on plans to drive cross-sell within her company. Said plans involved a retooling of the account management team to promote retention and satisfaction as well as incorporating both cross- and up-selling. Plan results included a determined optimal ratio of base pay and commission, physically moving the team within the office to work side-by-side with Sales, and separating reporting for customer success.
As the 2019 summit ended, attendees walked away with growth strategies to take back to their companies and an excitement for taking on the next challenge in 2020 and beyond.
“QBRs are an effective way to take on the advisor perspective and provide clients with added value, both fostering the client relationship and maximizing their ROI.”
Our Operations and Customer Service Summit is just one of six executive summits we offer to our portfolio of companies. Learn more about how we partner with our companies to create a network of peers that provide insights and tactics to fuel growth.