Customer Success Vs Customer Support

Today’s B2B business era is thinning the line between customer success and customer support. Are they interallied or are they completely different? Let us find out the key differentiators that separate them

Customer Support and Customer Success 

A customer is always considered vital for any organization. There is no sustainability in a market, where there is no happy customer. 

That is why a Customer is a king in the market for any product or service. 

Growing number of demands from the customers, companies formed a customer support teams to ensure the customer is heard every time. An unheard customer is equivalent to the virus in a software, as it can cause much damage than expected.  

A customer support Is a division of a company, that ensure the buoyancy of the customer when they approach the company regarding any service or product they avail from the company. It is more of fixing problems and assisting through various processes. 

A customer Success is more like assuring the customers are happy by keeping in touch with them invariably, to retain their relationship with the company by reducing churn.

In a way, both Customer Support and Customer Success are linked as they both work towards backing the customer, but with SAAS companies springing up a lot, Customer success is playing an indispensable role in many companies.  There is a thin line of difference between the two, making it completely different from each other. 

What are the major differences between Customer support and Customer Success?

1.   Customer support is more like a reactive one, targeting in fixing the problems and assisting any customer in need. Customer Success is a proactive one, wherein they strategize to understand and support the customer for engaging them to bring in desired business profits. 
2.   Customer Support is more an issue resolution as it aims to resolve the issues, at a quicker pace whereas Customer success is more goal-oriented, which aims to bring in a systematic process to avoid bottleneck situations that imperil the overall customer satisfaction. 
3.   Customer Support aims to satisfy the customer by performing well as the number of satisfied customers is related to the success of their support team. Customer Success adds value to the customer via SAAS.
4.   Customer Success is a long-term assurance, as a bonding with the customer for lifelong ensuring that no bottlenecks prevent the customer from obtaining their goals. Whereas in the case of Customer support, it is more oriented in solving the issues and closing the deal – there are not many follow-ups. 
5.   Customer Support and Customer Success equally work to prevent churn but both in a different way. Support aims to resolve issues and drive in customer satisfaction and Success aims not only to retain the customer but also bring in new customers through references, cross-selling or up-selling. 
6.   Customer success is more a wide initiative to empower the complete organization than a fragment of it. Whereas Customer support is more oriented to the functional department. 
7.   Customer Support follows strictly some disciplined rules and regulations, but in Customer success, there are no definitive rules to follow.
8.   Customer support, the metrics echoes the benefit of the support team as to how they work quickly to resolve the issues. In Success, the metrics are more associated to focus on the downstream business impact on retaining the customers.
9.   Customer support basically involves a set of predefined skills that are integral, whereas many pre-defined skills are focused on customer success.

How do they work together?

Both Customer Success and Customer support are crucial for the company, hence need to work together understanding the differences well enough. Even though they both work together, one need to relatively understand what each does to work effectively. When the customer success team is proactively supporting the company, the customer support team can work well. Customer success is a pretty new terminology and getting a grip of it might take some time, yet worth knowing.