3 Web Companies using Customer Success to Drive Longterm Value

Providing great customer experiences (both online and offline) is finally getting its due from Software-as-a-Service and Ecommerce companies with the rise of the “Customer Success” team.  While many more blog posts can (and have been) written about whether this is really different from customer support teams (here’s a good one outlining why it is different by Mikael Blaisdell), it does highlight a recognition that how businesses treat customers has important impacts on growth – especially in an age where customers can leverage social media to become powerful brand advocates (or detractors).

While customer success is getting more press lately, there are a set of companies out there who have been leaders in pursuing a customer-centric strategy online.  I’d like to highlight three that make great role models for anyone running a business on the web – whether you’re building software or selling products.

Here goes:

Fog Creek Software: Ensuring Customer Happiness

Fog Creek Software, a maker of software tools for software developers, has a return policy that goes something like this: “We don’t want your money if you aren’t amazingly happy” (more here). While they formally offer a 90 day return policy, in practice they return customers money at any point if they aren’t happy.  For anyone in business, this view should serve as an important reminder: we exist because we make our customers happy and their lives better.  Customers aren’t muppets, so why not focus on their happiness rather than on short-term financial gains?

Zappos: Treating Customers as People

Seeing Zappos on this list probably isn’t a surprise, but we’re constantly coming across another great example of their customer focus.  In particular, they excel at the personalization of customer support – they don’t use scripts on customer calls and they take unique actions that remind me more of things I’d do for a friend than things you expect a company to do for a customer. This story about Zappo’s delivering flowers to a woman who’d had painful foot operations is a great example. Why not treat your customers like you would a next door neighbor?

Atlassian: Designing Corporate Strategy around Customer Happiness

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