topic Re: How to Use HS for Customer Success - CSM in Tips, Tricks & Best Practices

How to Use HS for Customer Success - CSM

GabrielSkelly — Fri, 29 Dec 2017 18:35:59 GMT

I am new to Hubspot and am looking on how to use the software for Customer Success. I manage the sales process post sale. This is training and onboarding, suport, contacts, 100% of renewals. I need to set up a pipeline and task progression with notifications and templates.

How do you do this?

Thank you!

-Gabe

Re: How to Use HS for Customer Success - CSM

edjusten — Thu, 04 Jan 2018 15:34:28 GMT

Hi @GabrielSkelly While the CRM is set up mainly to support the sales process, it can be adapted for use to track customer success. You can use email tracking to handle customer service issues, create custom properties to mark training milestones, and adapt the lifecycle stages or create custom pipleines to track onboarding.

The good news however is that HubSpot will introduce a Customer Hub to help track customer success, later this year. You can sign up to get notified when the beta is released here.

Thank you,

Ed Justen

Re: How to Use HS for Customer Success - CSM

GabrielSkelly — Thu, 04 Jan 2018 15:56:35 GMT

Thank you for your reply. Will the lifecycle stages or pipeline generate tasks or have them as part of the stage? Can you add customers in bulk to the lifecycle or pipeline?

Looking to track onboarding per customer org, with a series of tasks and email templates for different stages. I also need to have a bucket of customers in a renewal stage and tracking on them.

Re: How to Use HS for Customer Success - CSM

edjusten — Thu, 04 Jan 2018 20:01:05 GMT

Hi @GabrielSkelly

Will the lifecycle stages or pipeline generate tasks or have them as part of the stage? Can you add customers in bulk to the lifecycle or pipeline?

At this time, no. All tasks need to be added manually. Piplines are related to deals, so a pipeline is added when a deal is created.

I also need to have a bucket of customers in a renewal stage and tracking on them.

You can most likely set up a deal pipeline to manage renewals; you can create a saved filter to view them seperate from your other deals.

Thank you,

Ed Justen

Re: How to Use HS for Customer Success - CSM

hannahvangas — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 22:25:46 GMT

Hey Gabe - I'm with a small business, in the midst of setting up HubSpot for our Customer Success managers as well, so I'll be following this thread! I actually just came to the community board for the first time looking for info on this specific topic.

Ed - Thanks for the information you provided! I shared with our Customer Success team and found it to be super helpful. I can't wait for the new Customer Hub to make its debut.

Re: How to Use HS for Customer Success - CSM

GabrielSkelly — Wed, 10 Jan 2018 22:30:18 GMT

What we are doing now is changing owner of the company or person. Then assigning a workflow that has tasks. Then the CS person will get notified. However you can't easily template emails or special tasks in this way. We are tracking renewals and process in a google doc as well. You can put a custom tag on an acct and run a custom report but each of these items costs extra. Let me know what you find and do for process.

Re: How to Use HS for Customer Success - CSM

edjusten — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 15:13:04 GMT

Hi @GabrielSkelly I'm going to ammend my answer here based on some new knowledge I've aquired recently.

As it turns out, you can enroll a contact into a workflow based on pipeline and/or deal stage of a deal associated with the contact. Once enrolled, the workflow tool can assign tasks and send internal emails/sms messages.

Your best bet is to set an enrollment criteria of a specific pipeline and a specific deal stage, then set your actions accordingly. Keep in mind you are enrolling a contact in the workflow based on these conditions; you are not enrolling a deal into the workflow.

I hope this helps.

Ed Justen

Re: How to Use HS for Customer Success - CSM

GabrielSkelly — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 15:25:32 GMT

Is there a way to set an external email with a template? These are not deals they are customers that are sold on the product and we are doing both initial onboarding and follow up through annual renewals.

Re: How to Use HS for Customer Success - CSM

edjusten — Fri, 12 Jan 2018 16:19:42 GMT

Hi @GabrielSkelly Granted, your renewals and onboarding tasks are not "deals" per se, but you will have to bend the tool a bit here and create a deal pipeline that mimics your renewal or onboarding procedures. Once these are in place, you can then build your workflows as needed.

Perhaps @Phil_Vallender could chime in with a bit more insight?

Thank you,

Ed Justen

Re: How to Use HS for Customer Success - CSM

GabrielSkelly — Fri, 12 Jan 2018 16:39:29 GMT

Would a new workflow be best for renewals at the 3 months out mark if I want to have trackable tasks?

Re: How to Use HS for Customer Success - CSM

edjusten — Fri, 19 Jan 2018 22:38:05 GMT

@GabrielSkelly Three months is always a good benchmark to start the renewal process. If you are on a 12 month cycle though, the email thread may get a bit tedious. Especially if you've been communicating with the customer throughout the previous nine months. Sounds like a good opportunity for A/B testing on some customers.

Thank you,

Ed Justen

Re: How to Use HS for Customer Success - CSM

GabrielSkelly — Fri, 19 Jan 2018 23:08:32 GMT

Having some difficulty with the workflows to manage onboarding. If a sales rep assigns the owner of the company to the wrong CS member and adds the workflow the only option seems to be to reassign the owner of the company and assign a cloned workflow. It would be nice to have more options around that. Trying to figure out how to set a trigger around a specific date for the renew process. Maybe I can use a workflow to move a close date from the company into something that triggers 9 months out?

Re: How to Use HS for Customer Success - CSM

edjusten — Mon, 22 Jan 2018 23:14:18 GMT

Hi @GabrielSkelly You can always enroll any contact associated with deal where Close date is Known, then set the next action after a 273 day delay (roughly nine months).

Ed Justen

Re: How to Use HS for Customer Success - CSM

GabrielSkelly — Fri, 05 Oct 2018 15:40:33 GMT

I have been building out a workflow with auto emails from the marketing side to follow up with a survey and then a video to get people back into the system. This Workflow also assigns my team tasks to the person who owns the customer. It needs to be assigned to a specific key contact at the customer acct.

The survey is external and captures nps as well as a bunch of other data points I want.

Re: How to Use HS for Customer Success - CSM

JulioG — Wed, 09 Jan 2019 22:49:07 GMT

Hi @edjusten is the customer hub ready?

Best

Re: How to Use HS for Customer Success - CSM

terrichen — Wed, 06 Feb 2019 00:51:47 GMT

+1 , Is HubSpot Customer Success ready and ISO27001 ready for us to use for everything post-sale?

Re: How to Use HS for Customer Success - CSM

lindsaylane — Thu, 26 Sep 2019 20:52:43 GMT

Hi there,

I'm trying to understand if I can use Hubspot for my Customer Success program post sale. Is there functionality to do so today?

Re: How to Use HS for Customer Success - CSM

Ageorgiou19 — Sun, 19 Apr 2020 19:45:03 GMT

I have this exact same need to the Tee...

I have completed the Sales cyclye and now I need to start the Client Success program and track it.

I am hoping i dont have to go out of HubSpot to do this?

Re: How to Use HS for Customer Success - CSM

stuartbalcombe — Mon, 24 Oct 2022 13:42:11 GMT

Hey @GabrielSkelly the good news is it's totally possible to run customers success in HubSpot with a little configuration. Below I've outlined the roadmap I'd suggest and included a video walkthrough.

While HubSpot might be best known as marketing and sales tool. It can connect all your customer facing teams.

That means they’ll always know:

1. Where customers are
2. Who is responsible for what
3. What’s next to make them successful

Here’s the roadmap for getting started:

1. Use pipelines to define each stage of the customer journey

→ Create your pipelines using tickets, deals, or custom objects

→ Define required fields to move between stages

→ Define requirements to move between pipelines. eg. Sales to onboarding.

2. Bring your customer data together in one place

→ Sync product usage date to HubSpot using 3rd party tools like Hightouch or Syncari

→ Use workflows to make it available on all records as needed

→ Group properties on objects for easy access and cross team visibility

3. Use automated workflows to define journeys and enable your team

→ Automate sales to onboarding handoffs

→ Move customers through pipeline stages

→ Kickoff playbooks and sequences for renewals, QBRs, or any critical lifecycle event

→ Escalate “at-risk” accounts to avoid churn and increase retention

→ Keep data in sync between teams and surface what is needed at the right time to be effective

4. Align on customer outcomes with a shared success plan

→ Create a shared plan attached to HubSpot objects using Arrows to collaborate with customers

→ Ensure everyone knows what to do next to make customers successful

→ Use real-time data about progress and blockers in a plan for reporting and automated workflows

5. Report on team performance and customer outcomes

→ Customer health scores

→ # of accounts and performance by team members

→ Onboarding progress report

→ Internal activities vs customer engagement

→ Missing data + process adherence report

For deeper walkthrough of "how-to" implement this I think you'll find this guide interesting and I also run monthly live workshops on how to run customer success in HubSpot.

Any questions at all, please reach out!

Re: How to Use HS for Customer Success - CSM

kvlschaefer — Tue, 25 Oct 2022 11:25:47 GMT

Thank you for sharing this tutorial with us, @stuartbalcombe!