Customer success vs customer support vs account management

In customer success, there are multiple roles involved to carry out all the processes to achieve the customer success. The teams and management of all the roles are onto a single goal i.e., to achieve the higher customer lifetime value that is important for the success of the business and revenue growth.

Customer success and customer support are often overlapped with each other but as we know that having a minute difference can make the differences bigger and here, we are going to identify the main aspects and their roles to make a comprehensive account for the roles of all of three. For customer success, customer support, and account management, the need of customer success software is essential.

Without further ado, let’s get into the customer success, customer support, and account management sequentially.

Customer Success and Customer Success Manager

Customer success is determined the health scores, metrics, and analytics. From the point of start of customer journey, the process of customer success and customer success managers start.

The primary purpose of the customer success manager is to achieve the product success through customer success by working rigorously to achieve the both. Customer success manager manages all the processes in the hierarchy to manage the customers.

The customer success team and customer success manager proactively engage with the customer to keep the user engagement high and lead the customers to new opportunities that can benefit them and their business.

The customer success manager acquaints the customers with the new suggestion and recommendations for other products which falls in customer retention, upgradation, and other success terms.

To the contrast of customer support team, customer success managers have to make the strategies and deal with them strategically so that they can increase the return of investment from the customers of SaaS product.

The customer success managers are wholly involved in the onboarding process of the customer as the customer signs up for the product. Not limited to that only, but the customer success managers and customer success team are also responsible for the product adoption. If the customer shows lesser product usage or product adoption then the chances of churn are higher. But the customer success managers are there to increase the product adoption by actively engaging with them.

For every customer, the customer manager has to devise the strategies that suits their interests best. To manage the strategies and devise them the customer success team go hand in hand with the customer support team to bring out the best results. But, to give them the final shape, the primary role is played by the customer a manger and its team.

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Customer success manages keenly observe the customer behavior and analytics to study the customer and customer intent. It helps business to study the customer and take strategic steps that leads to higher customer retention and customer satisfaction.

Moreover the customer success postwar establishes strong grounds for the customer success team to execute their plans.

Hence, by the points written above, customer success is inherently linked mainly to the CSM. For that very fact, all the factors and roles above written makes a fine line of distinction between the two i.e., customer managers and customer support teams.

Customer Support

When we hear the term ‘customer support’, a simple idea that clicks our brain is of the word support. As the name suggests, customer support team is there for the customers to resolve any issues.

As the tickets are created by the customers or an issue is reported by the customer, it is the responsibility of the customer support and customer support team to look into them and solve the issues ASAP.

The customer success teams primarily responsible to open the roadblocks for the customers and make he product usage easier and successful.

Another clear distinction that distinguishes customer support from the customer manger and team is that the former is reactive whereas the other one is proactive. As soon as the issue is generated by the customer, the customer support is on the frontline to look into the issues and untie the knots.

To talk about KPIs, the customer support team is not all and all responsible for this. However, they have to keep an eye out at the KPIs or metrics to report it to the customer managers and the respective team.

From solving tickets, troubleshooting, support chats, to support cases, everything is manger under the roof of customer support team.

Unlike customer managers, the customer support teams do not have to confine themselves in terms of strategies and troubleshooting to one issue only. To be precise, the customer support team works on the round robin approach and actively deals with every customer to make customers satisfied.

Account Management

Account management is inherently related to the customer success and customer support. The definition of account management given by the Gartner is as quoted:

“Account management is the practice of providing customers with service, support and improvement opportunities to increase their consumption of a product or service and maximize retention, cross-sell and upsell opportunities within the customer base.”

Account management are also related to the department of the sales team and works actively on the actions taken within the customer’s account such as upsells, account renewal, pausing subscriptions, and all other relevant processes.

The customer success manager and team and account management team have to share the data with each other since they are closet linked to each other.

Another responsibility that lies on the account management team is that they have to pursue the customers with upselling opportunities or cross-selling ones that can lead to the higher customer revenue and ROI.

Both the account management teams and customer success team have to keep each other in the loop for the updated information. For an instance, for the high-risk account management, all teams work in their part to take the customer out of the danger of churning and giving a satisfying customer experience to retain it.

Customer Success Software To Manage the Processes

To execute the processes seamlessly, it is extremely important to have a customer success software. The customer success software shows the analytics and reports of the customers such as health scores, customer success metrics, customer retention metrics, and many others.

The customer success software is essential for customer success, customer support, and account management as they all need a robust system to regulate their processes and achieve the ‘customer success’.

SubscriptionFlow as Your Customer Success Software

SubscriptionFlow is a customer success software that is equipped with the tech-savvy features and solutions that helps business reach their goals & milestones, take steps to satisfy customers, and retain them.

If you are looking for a customer success software to manage customer success, customer support, and account management, then we are her for you.

Schedule a demo with SubscriptionFlow now!