Modern, well-defined post-sales service portfolios that combine elements of Customer Support and Customer Success can significantly increase your ability to help customers use and apply products; reduce churn; and expand revenue growth.
Moving beyond support-only to modernized service portfolios
Traditionally, Support and maintenance programs have been the foundation of many post-sales service portfolios. However, Support offers alone are not adequate to reduce churn and grow customer relationship value. The addition of Success-focused services broadens your offerings to help customers use and apply your products more effectively. Modernized service portfolios — with combined Support and Success-focused entitlements — is the future.
Adding Success entitlements
Establishing a clear focus and intent for post-sales services will help you define the type of service portfolio you need, and also suggest the entitlements to include in your modernized service portfolio. If you are creating or modernizing your service portfolio to offer more than reactive problem resolution assistance, consider adding Success-focused assistance such as:
- Account management
- Expert Coaching
- Onboarding
- Planning
- Health Checks and Assessments
- Skills Development
Support vs. Success Entitlements
Understand the difference as you modernize your service portfolio.
Success entitlements differ from Support entitlements because they extend services that help customers derive maximum value from your products (as opposed to reactive customer issue resolution):
Support |
Success |
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Conclusion and Recommendations
Note that Success programs may include support services, but Support programs typically do not include success-focused services. When you modernize and sharply define your service portfolios, you can offer customers a hybrid approach that provides them with both high-value Support and Success capabilities. As a result, you can significantly increase your ability to:
- help customers use and apply products
- reduce churn
- expand revenue growth.
Your aim should be to leverage market-leading service principles to define and modernize service portfolios that your Sales team can sell and customers will value. World-class, post-sales service portfolios should offer:
- services that respond to product issues and offer expert guidance—helping customers adopt and use products effectively.
- access to skills, resources, and expertise from across all service departments including Support, Professional Services, Education, and Customer Success.
- flexible program structure and purchase options, enabling customers to easily access the right services at the right time as their needs evolve.
