Implementation and Beyond: Elements of an Effective Customer Success Program

While countless technology solutions are available to support the various business needs of Affordable Housing, purpose-built solutions paired with a robust Customer Success program is less common for our industry.

Simply put, a Customer Success program is a business method aimed to support customers in using products or services to help achieve their objectives. It’s relationship-focused client management that aligns customer and vendor goals—igniting beneficial outcomes for everyone involved. Customer success in a SaaS business such as ProLink refers to the discipline of setting customers up to reach their goals through intentional onboarding, training, relationship-building, and support.

At ProLink, the foundation of our Customer Success program subconsciously started with the relationship fostered between us and our very first client—one that has evolved and strengthened over the past 17+ years, and that has proven many of the Customer Success strategies we now offer to all our clients.

ProLink’s Customer Success program begins with an organization well before they are a client. We are deeply invested in providing thorough and transparent due diligence up-front to ensure our solutions are not only the best available option, but that we truly support the business needs of the agency. We begin each new client relationship with the intention to always keep them, so it is in our best interest to start off on solid and confident ground, ensuring we will be successful together.

This intention follows our clients as they journey through the initial implementation effort and remains with them as they enter our Customer Success program and become production-live users. Our clients continue to meet with the same experts who originally supported them during due diligence, lead them through all of the steps of their implementation, and intimately know what is left to be achieved in order to reach optimal utilization. While ProLink’s Customer Success program is not new, it is always an area of focus for our business, and we’re looking forward to several improvements to the program that will be made throughout this year. Here are a few key elements of our Customer Success program that we consider invaluable for both ProLink and our clients:

• Using the knowledge gained through client feedback methods and inclusion at all levels of the organization, ProLink aims to maintain an intimate understanding of both the operational and organizational concerns of our clients. We want the solutions to be right, voices to be heard and needs to be met.
• There is never enough time, budget, or resources to accomplish all possible opportunities for improvement/automation during an initial implementation effort. Our Customer Success Team works with our clients during and post-implementation to develop an adoption roadmap that supports continued progress, indefinitely. We review adoption roadmaps with our clients on a regular basis, multiple times a year.
• To optimize ROI for our clients, ProLink highly recommends appointing an internal “ProLink Lead” who partners closely with us to prioritize initiatives, engage business users, and increase system adoption.
• ProLink’s Customer Support representatives are major contributors to our clients’ Customer Success experience. Timely, responsive, and personal support to our clients is what we strive for.

With speed, accuracy, accountability, quality, and transparency, our Customer Success program aims to build a strong and long-lasting partnership by providing our customers with extraordinary service, support, and the assistance needed to help drive product adoption.

If you are interested in learning more about implementation methodology, we are hosting a webinar on the topic of what makes a good Customer Success program on Wednesday, April 5th at 3 p.m. EST. You can sign up by clicking here.