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How to cut the cord in 2016

By Mike Raab, December, 2016

I wanted to update my blog post that I wrote a few years back, with some more current information for potential cord cutters. In this article let’s explore a few initial steps to see if you might be able to cut the cord here in late 2016.

Some things have not changed over the last few years, the biggest in my opinion is the cost of cable TV is still outrageous. What struck me recently even, was that I was watching a show at my sister’s house, on her Xfinity cable, and it was not even available in HD. To me, the fact that TV content is still broadcast over cable systems in SD is unbelievable.

Ok, lets get the the basic first steps of cord cutting. Recently a friend called me about a bundle at Best Buy for a Roku streaming box and an indoor amplified antenna. She was a bit confused with the bundle, as the 2 items really have nothing to do with each other directly. But, the concept of the bundle is actually a pretty good way to start.

So here is what I would recommend to see if you can cut the cord.

First, get one of the higher-end Roku streaming boxes. Personally, I like the Ultra, because its fast and future-proofs your purchase a bit, by supporting 4K UHD video, Roku has been around for years and have the most apps of any of the steaming boxes. BTW, I would not get a Roku stick, boxes typically will have more speed, that is very apparent when you load apps and watch your shows. You want that to be fast

The Roku Ultra will allow you to hook it up over an HDMI cable to your TV. It will support both HD (1080P) and 4k (HDR 10). Be sure to use a HDMI v2.0 cable, even if you only have a basic HD TV. That way, when you do upgrade to 4K, you won’t have to worry if your HDMI cable will support the ultra high definition.

On the Roku box, subscribe to two steaming services. Netflix and Hulu. Sign up for their free trials, if you do not already have a subscription. Netflix will give you a lot of original content, like the first 6 seasons of the Walking Dead or the entire Breaking Bad series. Plus, it has a vast amount of content available on-demand, any time you want to watch a show. Hulu will give you popular TV shows, typically delayed by a day. But, you can typically watch any episode in a series Also, if you are an Amazon Prime subscriber, you can get a plethora of free shows and movies, via the Amazon app on the Roku. Bonus!

Now, the antenna for step 2. Hook this up to your TV and do the auto-scan function. Typically, you will be able to receive all the broadcast major network shows in HD. Yes, TV is still broadcast and its available in HD for free. This includes CBS, NBC, ABC and PBS. Many of the main channels may have sub-channels, also available. For example, in Austin, digital channel 18.1 is PBS, and 18.2 is Create TV. You can find what might be available for your area by going to https://www.antennaweb.org/Address for a list of available stations. You might be surprised at how many there are.

At this point, you might have 90 percent of what you care about for the combined amount of the Netflix and Hulu subscriptions, which will be probably be less than 20 dollars per month on-going. Of course, you will need to use a high speed Internet connection to get the new content, which is probably already included in your cable TV bundle.

Now, try to only watch shows and movies from the Roku box, or that is available over the air on your TV.

Try it for a week.

If there are gaps with what you want to watch, its probably related to sports that are only on ESPN or Fox Sports, that are not broadcast over the air.

If things work out, you can proceed to cancel your full cable TV bundle and throttle back the monthly fee to only include Internet services.

Then you can explore enhancing the above trial run with a Tablo TV box for recording over the air TV, so you can watch that content at any time, from any device (like your smart phone, computer or tablet) in your house. You might want to also explore SlingTV for filling in the gaps on cable content and sports.

I hope this helps take some of the mystery out of the world of cord cutting for mere mortals.

#cutTheCord

642 Days Waiting for a Simple OTA DVR with Built-in Streaming

by Mike Raab

Ever since Aereo online TV service was suspended in June 2014, I have been striving to replicate the simplicity and reliability of that service. This past week,

I found the answer. TabloTV

So in a nutshell what Aereo provided was the ability to record HD TV that is broadcast in your city, and for you to play that recording anywhere. Whether that be on a TV, with a streaming player like Roku, or on your laptop, tablet or phone. Just select the show you want to record, and watch at your convenience.

Back in June, 2014, to replace the Aereo service, I constructed an assortment of gear to try to replicate the service. Let me list the items and what they were used for:

Channel Master DVR with external hard drive – used to capture Over the Air (OTA) HD TV signals and record them to disk

Slingbox 500 – used to be able to stream the recorded TV content to supported devices such as Roku and iPad

An assortment of other hardware to deal with wiring and convenience, such as

HDMI splitter box

HDMI transmitter and receiver (for the 2nd TV in the bedroom)

Second router, to segment some of the Roku boxes on another network that I didn’t want to stream the Slingbox to

The reason that I had all that other stuff in number 3 above, was that the way Slingbox transmits to a Roku to view recordings on your TV, is through an iPad or iPhone. This is a crazy setup, where you have to connect to the Slingbox via your iPhone, then push the video to the Roku, in a similar way to AirPlay. Everything had to sync perfectly, including the little IR emitters from the Slingbox to the Channel Master DVR for remote control.

The bottom line is that the above was a wieldy process, that worked, maybe most of the time.

Now here we are in 2016, and I have been doing the above for a year and a half. What happens? My Slingbox stops being able to control the DVR for some reason. I spent hours trying to figure out why. I tried using other IR blasters.I updated the Slingbox firmware. I did a complete reinstall. I looked at the IR blaster with my camera to see if it was working (it was btw). Nothing I tried worked, which meant, that I couldn’t use the remote feature on the Slingbox to pick my recording to play or change the channel.

And of course, my Slingbox was out of warranty and it seemed from their online support site, they wanted $30 just to talk to you. Fail.

So, I googled “Slingbox alternative”. Read some reviews and decided that I should try a TabloTV. All the specs looked good. Plus they didn’t make you buy a subscription to their online guide. They have a free version, so I thought the risk was low to try it.

I ordered the Tablo box from Amazon and it arrived in 2 days. For the record, I choose the 2 tuner version, because it was a little less money than the 4 tuner, and I really never exceeded 2 shows at a time recording with my Channel Master, as I also have Hulu, for most of the other TV content.

Ok, so I rip everything out from the old setup. You can see it here in this picture, it’s quite an assortment of stuff.

I proceed to plug in the Tablo. Power, Cable connection to my existing antenna, 500GB USB hard drive that I had and an existing Ethernet cable that was used with the old Slingbox.

I had the Tablo app up on my iPhone, and proceeded to set up the TabloTV box. Because, my iPhone is on the same network, it saw it immediately. It prompted me to format the drive. Then, scanned my local TV stations and downloaded the guide.

This was a super easy process that took at most 15 minutes. I am impressed. You can see the TabloTV box in my entertainment center here.

Now, I start looking around the Tablo UI on my iPhone, and I find it very easy to setup new recordings, and navigate to see what I can record. I actually was so impressed with the Tablo UI/Guide, that I opted in for the lifetime subscription, on the second day of ownership (they do give you a 30 day trial to check out all the features). It is well worth the money.

In summary, I now have the ability to easily view all of my recorded content on any device. The Roku viewing is native Roku, just like with Hulu. The browser view on my laptop is very fast and beautiful picture on my 27 inch extended laptop monitor. Plus, (and you have to enable this feature in the settings) I can watch everything remotely on my iPad or iPhone, over the Internet.

It only took 642 days of waiting!

#cutTheCord #tablotv

My Mom’s Famous Potato Salad

Potato Salad - ala Iola Raab

I have been asked many times for this recipe, which is derived from my Mom’s. It is a great side dish for barbecue, baked ham or fried chicken. I thought I would share.

The recipe is just a matter of proportions and the preparation of the potatoes.

With the picture above, I used:

6 medium sized Yukon gold potatoes

2 cups of chopped celery

2 tablespoons of chopped white onion

2 teaspoons of celery seed

2 teaspoons of paprika

Mayonnaise

Now this is the secret to this recipe: Boil the potatoes whole, with skin, until tender (about 35 mins). Use a sharp pairing knife to judge if the potatoes are done.

Remove from water when done and let dry with skins on. Place on dishtowel or paper towel to cool. Do not rush this part.

When they are cool enough to handle, peel potatoes by hand, removing the thin skin. Do NOT get them wet by rinsing, etc.

The dryness of the potato is what makes this special.

Chop potatoes into small pieces and put one layer into mixing bowl. With each layer, add some salt, celery seed, celery and onion, in proportion to the size of the layer. In this case, 3 layers, with 1/3 of each ingredient per layer.

Add your favorite mayonnaise. I like Hellmann’s with canola oil. This reduces the fat. But use what you like. Be sure to just use enough to coat the potatoes. Do not add too much. Add a little at a time, you can always add more. Mix up the layer.

Then add additional layers as needed. Sprinkle paprika on top.

Additional items you can add:

Sliced radishes (reduce some of the celery)

Yellow mustard (reduce some of the mayonnaise)

Sliced hard boiled egg (add as garnish)

Slap Ya Mama (this tops it off, but is my acquired taste)

This is my interpretation. My sister Juanita may have another variant.

Enjoy.

#recipe potato salad

SlingTV - an Observation from the Outside

I have been observing SlingTV over the last month, and am struggling with trying to find the value in their $20 a month subscription price.

In my current cut the cord configuration, I have 4 Rokus, a number of iPads and laptops, a Slingbox 500 and a Channel Master DVR+ with 3TBdrive. For subscriptions, I use Netflix(I am currently in season 5 of Breaking Bad and the first season of Spartacus)and HuluPlus (used mostly for TV shows, like Scandal, that both my wife and Iwatch, and then a plethora of other shows that is way more than I could ever consume). I have a 24Mb Uverse connection to the Internet, and a simple antenna in the attic, which is connected to all the TVs and the Channel Master for over the air HDTV.

So my current setup, is a fairly robust one, that allows me to watch just about anything, anytime, anywhere.

My current cost per month for subscriptions is $17 for Netflix HD and HuluPlus. Together with the Channel Master, which is great for PBS, CreateTV, CBS shows and Local/Network TV news and sports, I have just about all the content that I need or can consume.

So my interest in SlingTV lies in those areas that I cannot get, which boils down to sports.

It seems that SlingTV has access to ESPN. Now, I am not a giant sports fan mind you, but I do like to watch football, especially my local team, the University of Texas during the fall of the year. Trouble is there, that many of those games are broadcast solely on the Longhorn Network, which unfortunately does not seem to be part of the basic ESPN or Sports Extra package of SlingTV. I see the SEC network is included as a $5 extra, but seriously, I can get a lot of those games, over the air, due to their popularity.

The other thing about SlingTV is that they retain their shows for only 3 days, so if you miss it, you can catch it within that 3 day window. But again, I am pretty used to having access to anything I want, when I want. HuluPlus will typically show only half of a given season, so you do need to be vigilant about watching the new season, at least within a few weeks of availability, before it goes away.

On a positive note, SlingTV did pick all the right channels to fill the gap between HuluPlus and cable TV, except of course for CBS, who is the outlyer.

I think it will be interesting to continue to observe SlingTV in the coming months, as they seek an identity, and try to separate themselves from their parent company, Dish Network. I am sure there are worries internally about cannibalization with DishTV, but the reality is that the cut the cord movement will continue to grow, and the decline of traditional cable/satellite is inevitable.

So my prediction is that SlingTV will be adding channels and creating multiple offerings / bundles. I might suggest that they consider a pure on-demand usage model, like AWS. One where I pay a one time, $50 setup fee, and then pay something like 20 cents an hour. So then, if I do want to watch ESPN or CNN, I pay as I go. Who knows, I may end up spending more than $20 a month with that type of usage model.

#cutTheCord

The field of Customer Success is evolving. Discussion on why and how I transitioned from a role in Sales to a role in Customer Success. Bluenose guest blog by Mike Raab

Customer Success – It’s Not Just About Sales

By Mike Raab - Posted August 20, 2014

It’s funny to me to continue to see so many companies, not get the unified concept of Customer Success. Instead, they relegate it to Sales.

Sure, there is the front end process of acquiring new customers. This is indeed the sales function, but it has now changed substantially for SaaS companies, since the classic enterprise software sales approach predominant over the last three decades. Now SaaS companies need to think about MRR and really understand that the middle letter in the acronym stands for recurring. If revenue doesn’t recur, and churn gets out of hand, then the SaaS model breaks - That is not a good outcome.

SaaS companies need to retain their customers and continue to provide value, in every part of the customer lifecycle. No longer can your take a pessimistic and non-deterministic approach, as stated by the fictitious character Don Draper, in the TV series Mad Men. He is quoted saying in Season 1, Episode 10 - “The day you sign a client is the day you start losing them.”

In my own career, I have had the opportunity to work in many roles, including Sales, Product Marketing, Product Management and Support. So to me, it seems completely natural to engage customers wearing a hat from any of those roles. I practiced this, even before I knew there was a specialized term called Customer Success.

Early stage SaaS companies need to think about Customer Success from the beginning, and have a strategy to develop this function out, as part of their business plan. They need to bring on an executive that can help lead the strategy and develop the tactical implementation, including engaging light house account early adopters, sales to initial customers, post sales on-boarding, continuing product education and upsell, support and customer service.

For those companies that just want to stick their toe in the water and take the first steps, there are a lot of great resources now available out there to help you get going. One of the best, with links to many resources is the The Customer Success Community Map. You might want to check this out and explore the great content that is available.

Remember, Customer Success is a journey, not a destination.

Customer Service – What About Response Times?

By Mike Raab - Posted August 19, 2014

Now that you have people using your product, what’s the right level of response time to questions that they have?

In my experience, very few people actually ask for help. They may use the resources that they can find on your website or support site, they may look for forums and web based discussion groups on your product, or they may even abandon your product if they get frustrated. It is just human nature, not to want to engage one-on-one. So, what you need to look at is how many people actually ask a question. As you are building your business, give them the opportunity to ask a question or provide feedback.

At my last company, we did not have a support organization at first. It was basically the executive team that looked after inbound questions. We use a simple email alias “feedback@”, posted in the product and on the website, that would send an email to all of the exec team. In this way, we would invite feedback, as well as be able to field support questions though one simple mechanism. The other thing is that maybe “feedback@” is more open and inviting to your user, then a more restrictive alias such as “support@”, which did come later after we had grown a bit.

The most important thing about inbound emails coming to the feedback alias is that we jumped on them, as soon as we saw them. In this way, we made sure to acknowledge every piece of feedback that we got. We also had the opportunity to field support issues, which is especially important in the beginning, as they could have been bigger issues which affected many people. Remember, not everyone will report issues, even though they may be having them. It’s that human nature thing.

What really worked here was treating everyone equally and providing exceptionally fast responses, even if it were to only acknowledge the issue and thank them for reporting.

The customer reception to this type of behavior, with quick, genuine and helpful responses was exceptional. Many of our users became strong lifelong customers, because of their positive experiences with the team.

I believe in this model, and continued the level of response, as we built out the company. Of course, you do want to set response expectations. You can post these your website or support site. But, always delight the customer. Under promise and over deliver, it’s a formula for success that I would recommend to any company, regardless of size. One company, I think has done a great job of this is Rackspace. They use their “Fanatical Support”, as one of the three major reasons to do business with them. Pretty cool actually.

Bottom line is that you will never go wrong with showing passion for your customers. It will only lead to customer success.

Customer Success for SaaS Products

By Mike Raab - Posted August 15, 2014

You have gone through all the pain and effort to get your prospective customer to look at your SaaS product. Now what? They have started their free trial. Do you pepper them with marketing bedazzlement? Probably not. They are interested in what can this service can do for them. They obviously had an interest, or else, they would not have given away their email address when they signed up to check it out.

The most important thing that you can do is help them understand, as quickly as possible, what the SaaS product can do for them, and the benefits that it brings. There are a number of techniques that you can use, especially since people learn in different ways. Plus doing multiple techniques, allows you to tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them and then tell them that you told them.

In my experience, when talking with a prospective customer for the first time, say at a tradeshow booth or on an initial demo. They remember about one thing about the product. That’s it. They latch on to something that is important to them. Now when you are talking one-on-one with a prospect, you can ask questions that are relative to the problems that your SaaS product solves, like what are you trying to accomplish in your business? What are some of the biggest obstacles and pain points in the way you are doing things now? That gives you an idea to focus on, show them and get them to agree that your product might be of benefit to them.

From an automated standpoint, you want to allow them to peel the onion, so to speak. As the prospect becomes more familiar with the software through a free trial, more and more features are discovered. The trick is to help lead the prospective customer through this maze, towards helping them see and get more value from your product.

There are two main ways to help guide your prospective customers.

1. The product itself helps guide the prospect. A good product manager will not only create the feature set of your product, to make it very robust or easy or differentiated, they will also think about how the product can help guide the new user. Over lays and wizards are two common ways to do this. Of course, these do take engineering resources to create, and potentially UX (User Experience) talent to help design; but if done correctly, they can be a great asset to your product. In my experience, an easy to use product with some great “aha moments” for your prospects, will beat a more feature rich, harder to use product, almost every time.

2. Through integration. You can use an automated marketing tool, like Marketo, which responds with helpful tips based on triggers. This will still take some engineering resources to create the feedback mechanism through an API to change fields in Marketo, but it is well worth the effort. Basically, you create the fields that you want to track. Then your product updates those fields via API, and based on the value of the fields, you trigger automatic campaigns. This happened just recently with my experience with Tumblr. The moment I posted my fifth post, Tumblr automatically sent me a nice email, congratulating me on the accomplishment and offering some suggested next steps that take me right back into the product, in context.

These techniques are pretty simple in concept, but can be very effective. You will also want to mix up the type of content that you present. Perhaps in the email you present the basic idea, very succinctly. Then you have a link to webpage to view a video for more detail, and another link for them to try the concept in your SaaS product.

The uber point in all of this is - take customer success into your own control, and help your prospects and customers, along every step of their experience with your product.

How to take the first steps to cut the cord

By Mike Raab - Posted August 7, 2014

I guess we never actually take a look at how our monthly expenditures for cable or satellite TV have grown over the years. Yes, many providers have fairly low monthly rates at the entry level, but some of these packages rarely incorporate any premium services or even HD.

For example, with Dish Network, the $19.99 “Smart Pack” is not eligible for their Hopper DVR or for HD. You would need to double that price to even get HD. With Time Warner Cable, their entry level service is $29.99 per month for “Starter TV”, but then you need to add a HD box at a minimum, for an additional $11.25 per month.

For most of us, our monthly TV bills top $100 or more per month. Sure there are a lot of channels, but how much do you really consume?

You may be thinking about taking the first steps to cut the cord. First, you need to understand what is important to you. Ask yourself these questions

What shows do I really like and watch?

Are full episodes readily available on the network’s or cable channel’s website?

Are these shows available on broadcast, over-the-air TV, and are you in a location that you can receive them?

Are they available on a paid service, like Hulu Plus, Netflix or Amazon Prime?

Once you have built your inventory of shows, then it’s just a matter on understanding how you will watch them and how you can access them.

One simple way to see if you can live without cable TV is to make a minimal investment in some hardware, and see if you can live without your expensive service for a week. I started this way, here’s how.

Step 1. Buy a fairly inexpensive Roku streaming device. I like Roku versus the other devices because they have a variety of models, plus the largest selection of apps. And they have been around for while. The Wirecutter has a nice article on Roku.

Step 2. Get a free trial, that you will run on your Roku from HuluPlus and maybe Netflix. If you are already an Amazon Prime member, then bonus, guess what, you get all of their free shows! When you start playing with your Roku, see what other channels might be of interest. Roku Guide is a great resource to explore what might be available for free and paid services.

Step 3. Get a basic TV antenna and plug it into your TV, and do the auto programing. Yes, I said basic. Something less than $10. And perhaps, you might already have one stowed away, from an old TV that you gave away a long time ago. The basic technology to receive radio waves has not changed over the last century. So, most likely, if you live in a major city, you don’t need a fancy HD antenna. Antennaweb.org is a great resource and they have a little wizard to tell you exactly where your broadcast towers are, relative to your house, and how fancy of an antenna you might need.

The goal here is to make a minimal investment in hardware to just dip your toe in the proverbial cut-the-cord waters.

At the end of the week, see for yourself. Were you satisfied with the set of shows that were available and their quality? In my opinion, I think the quality of Internet streaming is superior to that of Dish Network, my former provider. I would guess that Dish needs to highly compress their signals to get all of that data up and down off of their satellites. Whereas, if you have a decent Internet connection, let’s say, 5 mb/s or better download, streaming will probably be better.

Anyway, take the difference in the amount you would pay for cable or satellite and subtract out how much your new subscriptions would cost. For me, this was about $100, which obviously paid for the investment in hardware.

How much money could you save yourself per month?

At the end of the day, even if you don't make the switch, you still have a nice streaming box for online content, plus an antenna to receive TV during rain fade or a cable outage.

Shoretel Sky Interview and Article

Posted by Mike Raab, August 7, 2014

I had a blast working with Shoretel Sky on this piece for their Modern Company blog last year. I came across it recently I thought I would share.

Shoretelsky.com/modern-company

What is Customer Success? (from a software perspective)

By Mike Raab - Posted August 1, 2014

In traditional business software days, where Enterprise deals were signed, the game was all about getting as much on the initial order as possible. Work the account, combine the buying needs from multiple departments into one perpetual license. Work top down, from the CIO to aggregate all the business into the biggest number possible. Roll in services, support, and maintenance. Make sure that you hunted and closed a decent percentage of the IT budget for any particular enterprise prospect. Bottom line – close the account for all it was worth.

Many times, the software purchased was actually never deployed. We joke now and call this “shelfware”. No worries, the rep that closed the deal and the software company have made their money. Now onto the next prey.

Enter a new era of software - the SaaS (Software as a Service) world.

This world is different. Not only is the software, now delivered as a service, meaning the company (customer) that wants to use the software does not have to run anything on the back end. All of that is taken care of by the SaaS company.

The customer just needs to use the software as they need. What is most different about this model, is that the sales model moves from a one-time purchase to a subscription, most likely, a monthly subscription. There are many examples of SaaS products that we use both as consumers and businesses. Consumers might use many free SaaS products. Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, etc. They may even use paid consumer products, like LinkedIN, Hulu Plus or JibJab.

So like consumers, businesses now can use SaaS products for most any function. Salesforce for CRM, Zendesk for the support desk, Google Docs and Mail for office functions. Plus, more and more specialty products are appearing on the market everyday, for every function of the business. Things like HipChat for interoffice IM or Moz (formerly SEOmoz) for inbound marketing to name just a couple.

All of these SaaS products, and many many more, allow the business to choose what they want, and many times bypass IT. (On the subject of bypassing IT, I won’t delve into this topic now, but will save for a later blog.)

The point is, the new software/SaaS companies, that are offering these services need to earn the business every month. It can be fairly simple for their customers, to move from one SaaS product to another competitive product. So they need to continue the relationship with the customer, each and every month, to help minimize churn and maximize the revenue over the lifetime of the customer.

Enter the new world of Customer Success.

Yes, Customer Success starts with the initial free trial offer, and continues throughout the entire customer lifecycle.

As the customer moves from free trial to paid plan.

As the customer uses the product day to day.

As the customer asks questions to support.

As the customer gets billed each month.

As the customer continues to be educated about the product.

As the customer experiences the evolution of features and the rollout of new product by the SaaS company.

The whole thing, end-to-end.

So Customer Success is the proactive approach to get and keep paying, happy customers, for the long term.

I suspect that the term Customer Success will continue to evolve. In my mind, it is the combination of the traditional functions of sales, customer service and support.

Any new era SaaS company should be thinking about end-to-end Customer Success from the very beginning. And if you have not thought about it, now is the time.

The Secret to Successful Automated Customer Relationship Building

By Mike Raab - Posted July 31, 2014

Not too long ago, customer relationships were built with face to face meetings. Mad Men style.

Now, enter the new era of Customer Success. With the advent of high speed connectivity anywhere, plus apps for just about everything, Modern Companies (a term I love and learned about from Shortel Sky) building their businesses, still want to culture and build relationships. But the focus tends to be on building the relationship with the Brand of the company, instead of a person.

This is a fine approach, and companies are doing it today, with their Social Media and email campaigns. They get customers to follow them on Twitter or be fans on Facebook. They send out drip emails with Marketo, Eloqua or HubSpot. I would argue that these efforts can be enhanced with just a small tweak.

I propose a twist to the faceless corporate brand approach. Introduce a human element.

Two days ago, I got an email from Xirrus. It was a follow up email, because I downloaded one of their free wi-fi tools. One key difference that I noticed immediately is that it was signed by Jordan, one of their BYOD Specialists. This made this email different, than the hundreds of other emails in my inbox from a plethora of companies, trying to get my attention. It was still automated, but there was a real human in the signature.

Now, take the next step to really doing this right. Actually have the return email, be the real person’s email, so that if the reader replies, it goes directly into their inbox, not some no-reply alias or other anonymous black hole destination.

Many companies are fearful in doing this. They argue that it might overload an employee with tons of email. In my experience, having actually done this for a company, is that very few people will actually reply to the email. But if they do, then the human can reply as needed. Maybe just help answer a question. Or route the question to someone internally or maybe just acknowledge and thank the person for being a customer or user of the product. In doing so, don’t you think that this will advance the customer relationship?

Sure it will. So not only is this little secret simple, it’s very effective.

So put a face on the brand. It is a very little practiced, but a very important step, in the customer success life cycle.

Customer Success – Where do you start?

By Mike Raab - Posted July 28, 2014

The question about where to start with Customer Success is a good one. The answer is surprisingly basic. You start at the beginning.

The process of getting new customers does not vary much across industries. It starts with a “lead”. A lead could be the result of an inbound inquiry from your website or even a personal introduction by another customer. In any event, you have someone new that is interested in your product or service.

Once you have the new lead, it is up to you to take the initial steps of converting that lead into a customer. The secret to a long relationship and a successful relationship is built on 2 things. Trust and Knowledge.

One of the methods that I use is to help my potential customers is to guide them with education. I use links to articles to help demonstrate ideas on how to best use the product that I am selling. These articles are provided in a serial fashion and build out given how the lead engages with my product. The bottom line is that I want to provide value and build additional value into the product and what it does for my prospect. Funny enough, this process also builds trust, which is the second tenant to Customer Success.

Trust is something that is not easily earned. Most prospects for your product are very wary of engaging. Afraid of being sold. I remember, in my early years, selling retail, when someone walks into the store, what is the standard reply to “Can I help you find something”? The standard reply is “just looking”. Even if that prospect knows exactly what they want.

So the trick is to offer a suggestion to the prospect that will provide a benefit to them. Something that perhaps the prospect has not thought of, but something that they will find useful and valuable. Then follow that up with education, about why the suggestion is valuable and other things that it helps with as well. Educated consumers then have an even easier time saying yes to your product, especially if they trust you that you are out for their best interests.

My recent experience is in the SaaS (Software as a service) world. SaaS, unlike traditional software, gives you the ability to see how your prospect is using your product. You can then easily offer suggestions on how they can use it better. This is an exciting area and one where the long term relationship may be built with the brand, instead of a person.

In subsequent articles, I hope to dive deeper into the mechanics of the customer life-cycle and Customer Success.

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