Customer Success
You deliver and hope they're happy. Sometimes they leave; you're not sure why. Customer success is proactively ensuring clients achieve their goals with your service. It builds loyalty and reduces churn better than reactive support. When you're in front of outcomes—check-ins, progress reviews, course-correction—clients stay longer and refer others. It's the engine behind client retention strategy.
Same delivery, different follow-through. Reactive: client has a problem, they email, you fix it. Proactive: you schedule a mid-point check-in. "How's it going? What would make this a 10?" You surface issues before they become exit reasons. You document results so they see progress. Customer success turns delivery into a relationship. Focus on whether they're getting what they came for and what's next—not only on fixing broken things when they email.
Proactively ensure they achieve their goals. Check in, document results, define what's next.
How to do it
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Check in at milestones. Not just at the end. Mid-project or mid-program: "How are we tracking? What's working? What's not?" Catch drift early.
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Document and share results. When they hit a goal, name it. "You went from X to Y." Progress visible to them builds belief and loyalty. It also gives you proof for referral marketing and authority building.
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Define what's next. Before the engagement ends, offer the path forward: renewal, next phase, or upsell. Client retention strategy works when the next step is obvious.