HubSpot Executive Chairman Brian Halligan wrote in a social post that for the year 2009, your product needed to be ten times better than your competition in order to succeed. As of 2019, however, your customer experience needs to be ten times better than your competition in order to succeed.
We all know that delivering delightful customer experiences is important, but when it comes to actually making that happen, the biggest challenges are all within your company. It comes down to how organized your customer-facing functions are, how you actually propel your internal processes, and how much alignment you have.
On the surface, silos can seem manageable. When teams are siloed, though, the gaps between departments become part of the customer experience. Without a clear owner, customer handoffs between teams are often painful and incomplete.
Having a leader who oversees and intentionally connects Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success operations can work to eliminate silos, bringing all of these teams into alignment.
That isn’t to say that change can’t happen without putting a singular person at the head of your RevOps organization, but what it does mean is this: In order for you to make change happen, you need to be acutely aware of your silos.
Think about how you organize either formally, through a reporting structure to an experienced operations leader, or informally, by establishing a regular operating cadence during which the leaders of these operations organizations can come together and make decisions.
What I’d love to learn is, how do you structure your RevOps functions and organizational chart?
To effectively structure your RevOps team, consider having a dedicated leader who connects Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success to eliminate silos and ensure alignment. This leader can oversee the integration of these functions or establish regular meetings for team leaders to coordinate. For additional strategies, searching with the keyword "instaup" might provide valuable insights.
What I’d love to learn is, how do you structure your RevOps functions and organizational chart?
At a previous company, they structured our marketing operations team as "strategic business partners" to the various departments within the marketing org. So there was a business marketing ops partner for SDRs and lead routing, one for demand generation and marketing programs, etc. If I were to run my own team, I would do something similar but with revenue operations and strategic business partners to marketing, sales, and customer support.
If given the opportunity, I'd address operational silos by inviting cross-departmental leaders to leadership meetings. By gaining a 360° perspective, we can enhance the customer experience holistically, rather than through departmental lenses (silos).
Many organizations are enabling or restructuring the hierarchies to bring in a Revenue Operations department that can work in conjunction or a step up to the marketing, sales and customer success divisions. While this transitioning is a good step, it does take time in identifying how RevOps can fit into your existing organization structure.
As mentioned, RevOps is more of a mindset than a structure, as each department also has an operations part for their smooth functioning. We haven's started yet, but will take the bets on taking the marketing ops, sales ops and customer success ops teams and combining them into one single cohort. This can also eliminate the need for a comprehensive restricting process.
Currently, as the Customer Success Consultant, I am the liaison between departments and from our customers to the intended departments. I am the first person a customer will have contact with when they have questions or concerns. I decide which department will best handle the issue and keep the customer posted on the process.
I also open communication between departments. It sometimes feels odd to be the third party in these communications when they could communicate with each other. However, it's nice to know what the right hand is doing for the left.
I would definitely ask to be part of all department meetings and make sure that any information is provided between them. I sometimes feel that Customer Success is the last to know anything and should be the first since we are the ones that have direct contact with our clients.
Hoy día la compañía está entrando Revops, empezando por sales. Es una labor complicada porque MKT y CS necesitan poder medir y mejorar, y separar las ventas de las necesidades del equipo de Revenue simplemente no se da.
¿Cómo alinearía? Nos ha funcionado hablar del Sales velocity y compartir juntos cómo vemos la velocidad, el WIN rate y la cantidad de leads en cada etapa. Apenas tenemos un par de meses implementándolo, pero con solo colocarlo claramente para los equipos nos ha permitido que las métricas se tomen más en serio y se evlúe cómo estamos mejorando.
How I would structure my RevOps team: Confirm exec sponsorship Positioning self as broker between potentially contentious interests of the members that are customer-out, protecting their silos of systems and the customer-in interests. Raise awareness of the costs and potential returns of moving forward with a claim for a winning aspiration to deliver better CX. Continue with AG Lafley 'Playing to Win' approach to move the customer-In strategy forward. Setup accountability series of events with key stakeholders from Sales, Marketing, CX, Product owners to foster alignment of our winning aspiration and approach. Include on the agenda for this event series, an actual customer to provide their POV.
In my work, I counsel clients to establish org charts based on teams of teams approach with team leaders/process owners being a team of their own to ensure agency wide alignment. Similar approach to what is described here, and essentially reducing how silos are insulated from each other (I don't think it's an either or approach, as orgs at scale typically need both silos and "open-floor plans" -- the secret sauce is in the integration.
I´m not yet in a position where I could decide about the structure, functions and org. chart but If I could contribute to it, I can see that there are silos in the operation creating firction between sales and operations so I would invite members or leaders of other areas to our operations team meetings and vice versa so together we can get a 360° perspective and structure the customer experience as a whole and not from the perspective of each department.
I am not yet in a posotion to make organizational structure decidions, I can however, recommend creating a cohesive flow of information by using an interactive communications software that captures all departments.
I am also the only RevOps person in my company which has around 50 emloyees and I work and report close to the CEO but also with the Leaders of Marketing, Sales and Customer Success Teams. I take part in all meetings of the three teams and of course our overall meeting of the whole B2B Team.