10 Customer Success Principles to Kill the Silo Mentality

A silo mentality can prevent your company from realizing a unified vision, deter you from your goals, and—worst of all—damage the customer experience. A surefire remedy you might not have considered? Customer success.

Customer success principles—if they pervade your entire company—can help overcome the silo mentality while leading to low-cost initiatives with larger-than-expected impacts on both revenue and profits.

Organizations can realize significant benefits in terms of revenue and profit from other divisions not currently fully benefitting from cross-functional alignment and initiatives.

1 | Align Customer Success Goals Across Departments

Implementing customer success principles helps unite various departments around a shared goal—customer satisfaction. This integrated approach can improve efficiency and productivity without significant investments, leading to increased customer retention and higher revenue.

2 | Foster Cross-Functional Collaboration & Break Silo Mentality

Encouraging collaboration between teams allows for better use of existing resources, essential as customer success leaders are being asked to do more with less. Shared insights and cooperative efforts can lead to improved product quality and customer experience, boosting sales and customer loyalty, at little to no additional cost.

We can help you build or refine your customer success practice to secure wins for you AND your customers.

3 | Lean on Customer Success Managers as Liaisons

Customer success managers act as a bridge between customers and competing company divisions, promoting efficiency and reducing misunderstandings that could lead to lost sales. By better understanding customer needs, customer success can optimize product development and marketing strategies without incurring high costs.

4 | Implement Shared Custom Success KPIs

Introducing shared KPIs such as customer satisfaction and churn rate promotes a holistic approach to customer success. It fosters an environment of shared responsibility, which can drive revenue growth and profitability – without the need for additional investment.

5 | Conduct Joint Problem-Solving for the Best Customer Experience

Encouraging teams to solve customer problems jointly, rather than passing issues to another department, improves service speed and quality. Faster resolutions increase customer satisfaction, and hence revenue, without a significant increase in operational costs.

6 | Integrate Customer Success Tools and Platforms

Using a unified platform for customer data ensures consistency, reduces redundancy, and increases efficiency. Better data use can lead to more informed decision-making, resulting in greater customer satisfaction and increased sales.

7 | Establish Unified Communication and Say Goodbye to Silos

Regular cross-department meetings can promote knowledge sharing and understanding, leading to innovative, low-cost solutions that enhance the customer experience, driving revenue. Unified communications break down the silo mentality.

8 | Teach and Train on Customer Success Principles

Building an understanding of customer success principles throughout the company promotes a proactive approach to customer satisfaction. This mindset, rather than requiring significant financial investment, actually boosts customer loyalty and ultimately impacts the bottom line.

9 | Create a Customer-Centric Culture

Building a culture that prioritizes the customer aligns all departments around a shared goal. This cultural shift costs little but can significantly enhance customer retention and increase lifetime value.

10 | Incentivize Collaboration for a Heightened Customer Experience

Recognizing and rewarding cross-department collaboration motivates teams to work closely together, promoting efficiency and innovation without a significant financial investment. This improved collaboration can result in enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty, driving revenue and profit growth.

Ready to talk?

We can help you build or refine your customer success practice to secure wins for you AND your customers.

Author: Jeff Heckler

Author: Jeff Heckler

Jeff is Director of Customer Success Solutions at MarketSource. He is a leader with over 20 years of running customer-facing revenue teams for such organizations as SAP, Accenture, and Stanford. Jeff is an author, advisor, and speaker, and recipient of numerous industry awards. Most recently, Jeff was recognized as a Top 25 Global Customer Success Influencer, 2021, and named One to Watch in SaaS, 2022. Jeff serves on the Board of Advisors for The Customer Success Performance Index™, the Product Advisory Board for Cast.app, and is the Principal Thought Leader–Digital CS for Practical CSM.

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