At mobile giving and engagement solution provider Pushpay, customer success involves more than onboarding new clients. Rather, it’s a multifaceted process guided by the aim to help companies reach their specific goals.
According to Director of Customer Success Jeremy Mason, that’s why Pushpay’s customer success managers spend significant time understanding the unique needs of each client during the customer journey.
“The primary way we do this is by asking them questions about how they engage with their end users, what their financial goals are, what previous tools and systems they’ve used, and their team’s skills and backgrounds,” Mason said.
When it comes to sharpening CSMs’ skills, Mason said the team focuses on continuous education, whether it be through one-on-ones or group training sessions. CSMs also have access to an internal tool that offers resources that enable them to brush up on their knowledge of the company’s products and the industry as a whole.
While resources and training are essential for Pushpay’s customer success strategy, Mason said soft skills also play a pivotal role. In his mind, empathy and communication are key components of the process.
“We want to understand where our customers are coming from and what they deal with each day, which ultimately helps us provide better service,” Mason said.
Built In Seattle caught up with Mason to learn more about how his team takes a consultative approach to customer success.
What steps do you take to better understand the needs, goals and expectations of your customers?
We have several different customer types at Pushpay, ranging from some of the largest churches in the world to small nonprofits. In all cases, our primary goal is to help them maximize giving and engagement through our platform as they seek to better connect with people in their communities. We put together a customer plan, which ensures they are fully trained on how to use our platform. We also help them focus on different features within our platform based on what their goals are, and we touch base with them frequently to see how we can optimize usage and success. During our recurring customer business reviews, we focus on what has been working and find ways to help our customers more effectively connect with people in their communities.
What training is in place to help CSMs in your organization become experts on your products and industry, and what impact has that had on the relationships CSMs have with their clients?
For training, we currently use a combination of one-on-ones, team training and shadowing other team members. We have a well-defined process of manager and peer one-on-one training with new CSMs on general customer success topics and specific areas of focus for Pushpay. We also have new team members join calls with existing customers and their CSMs so they can see how we interact with our customers and serve their needs. We do this for the first several months and focus on making sure they are as prepared as possible.
One of the proprietary tools we use internally and with our customers is called Pushpay University, which contains a large library of help topics, videos and product demos. We’ve created a strong learning plan within this tool to help new CSMs become experts on our product and the industry at large. Our customer success ops team also built out a series of internal lesson plans, which help us train our team members on all aspects of our products, services and industry.
Empathy and communication are critical traits that we encourage among team members.”
What soft skills have you found to be particularly important when it comes to consulting with clients, and how have you strengthened those skills over time?
Empathy and communication are critical traits that we encourage among team members. Especially given the fact that many meetings are held remotely, it’s critical to connect effectively with our customers. Everyone wants to be heard, and having successful two-way communication is central to a long-term partnership.
We also prioritize celebrating our CSMs when we see empathy and communication in action. On the other hand, when we identify areas where skills can be improved, we do it in a constructive way that allows us to learn from it. We strive to make skills a core focus of our day-to-day work, whether we discuss them in team huddles, one-on-ones or formal training.
