Tracking Customer Success

Companies measure business success many ways including financial metrics, employee development, and customer satisfaction. These measures assess the alignment and progress towards organizational goals. K-Form takes pride in the success of our customers. This pride is not uncommon. However, placing customer success as a top level business goal is uncommon. We think that should change.

Why

Peter Drucker (management guru) said, “A business can only be judged by results” and “results can only be observed from the outside perspective.” A dominant outside perspective is the customer. From a systems perspective, K-Form interacts with customers on a broader value chain to deliver products to the open market. The success of a project or general service directly contributes, in varied degrees, to customer success. Conversely, customer growth validates our business.

How

K-Form analyzes the customer base using a internally developed customer maturity model. We look at involvement over a 5 year period for trends. Analytics sort customers by volume with growing, stable, and declining indicators. The top 20 customers, both for the current year and preceding year, receive more analysis and discussion. The focus of the analysis is to determine the validity of our conceptual customer and what types/levels of engagement work. Simply put, we want to know – What do our customers look like?

What

K-Form decided to analyze the growth of top customers and made an interesting discovery. Of our top 10 private sector customers, Large organizations had purchased more than 50% of our best customers. In general, we work with small groups* of creative professionals, such as engineers and designers, to realize product. These small groups often grow into innovative powerhouses attracting large, powerful companies. We feel lucky when the small business environment and culture remain to leverage big business needs and capital. Unfortunately, that scenario is infrequent. After a time, we see the small business hunger fade and often our stake fade as well. This is a common customer business life-cycle trend supported by our historical trends. High levels of engagement and integration are difficult with large corporations (with notable exceptions) and perhaps internal resources are more appealing.

Customer success proves the value in the service a business offers. We are honored by their growth. With the increasing business community discussion of customer engagement and customer focus, customer success is an essential measure.

*The term “small groups” might be slightly misleading. K-Form works for some of the largest organizations in the world. These organizations maintain small groups in a project-centric environment. This allows K-Form to maintain a personal relationship with the engineers and purchasers.