In December 2021, Maxime Fossé joined Foxintelligence as the company's first Customer Success Manager (CSM). Nine months later, the team had nine CSMs. He explains to us why the company set up a Customer Success Platform, how the setup went, and the benefits for CSMs who work in High-Touch with their customers
Could you introduce Foxintelligence ?
Foxintelligence is an e-commerce consumer intelligence solution. On our B2B SaaS platform, we gather and provide access to data on billions of transactions from a panel of online shoppers. In December 2021, NielsenIQ, a US company specialising in consumer intelligence, acquired Foxintelligence.
We have around a hundred customers, ranging from major international groups to SMEs. The solution caters to all types of industries, and our users work in various departments, including marketing, product, and management.
As a Customer Success Manager, I had the opportunity to participate in the implementation of Skalin.
What were the issues you encountered before implementing Skalin ?
The rapid growth of the CS team in 2022 presented a challenge: we were using disparate sources of information without centralising the data. Our tools included:
- Notion: housing customer lists, industry information, and a meeting board for scheduling follow-ups after customer calls. The goal was to access information promptly.
- Pipedrive: providing access to sales history on the CRM, which the sales team still uses.
- Hotjar and Intercom: enabling us to track feature usage, albeit on an ad hoc and non-automatic basis.
- Gmail: where tracking and the history of exchanges with customers were not very accessible.
We needed to consolidate all this information onto a user-friendly platform. Moreover, it had to be accessible to at least nine CSMs, management, and other departments.
What were your objectives when you decided to implement a Customer Success Platform ?
There were 3 main needs :
1. Improved internal information sharing
Our primary objective was to enhance and facilitate internal information sharing :
- For the Customer Success team : to effectively monitor discussions with customers and facilitate information exchange among CSMs, especially during account handovers or when team members are on leave.
- For management : to provide comprehensive business review materials for senior management, consolidating all key information onto a single page.
- For finance : enabling them to use the tool to identify the appropriate contacts for reminders and other financial matters.
2. Improve customer follow-up and save time
Our next objective is to enhance customer care and save time. By monitoring the platform's activity in real-time and using the Health Score, we can prioritise effectively. Objective feedback is essential for determining which customers require more attention. Additionally, the history of previous exchanges saves time and provides insights into past conversations
3. A broader perspective on our customers
Finally, we aimed to obtain a macroscopic perspective of our customer portfolio, enabling us to assess and prioritise effectively. This involved monitoring the entire portfolio of the CS team or each CSM on a single page. The objective was to identify critical decisions and take timely action
What is the difference between your CRM and an CSP ?
I would say that prior to Skalin, we didn't have a CRM per se. Pipedrive functioned more as a sales lead management tool, essentially a directory where we stored information. The CSMs didn't have access to it. We relied more on Notion than Pipedrive for uploading information into Skalin.
Main differences between a Customer Success Platform and a CRM
How did the integration proceed ?
The initial step involved linking the back office to upload customer accounts and contacts, and organising everything within Skalin. Subsequently, we integrated the email system and the CSM diaries. This initial phase required a week of actual work.
The installation of the Skalin tag on the Foxintelligence platform to monitor customer activities took slightly longer than anticipated due to limited availability of our development team. Once they commenced work, it took 4 days to become operational. Finally, the platform was deployed to the CSMs and the Health Score was configured.
Overall, the setup process took between 3 weeks and 1 month.
How do you use the Health Score ?
It's a score ranging from 1 to 10, indicating the health status of an account to the CSM. At Foxintelligence, the health score has become deeply ingrained and is one of the primary KPIs used by the CS team. It serves to identify priority accounts requiring attention and to prompt action based on the account's condition.
Various criteria contribute to its determination:
- The primary criterion is the CSM's assessment, weighted at 40%
- Usage volume, accounting for 30%.
- Customer interaction, contributing 20%
- Lastly, contract value evolution, with a weight of 10%
We determined that the CSM's assessment would carry the most weight because some customers may utilize the platform minimally yet remain highly satisfied with Foxintelligence.
What benefits has Skalin provided for you ?
From a managerial perspective, Skalin offers the advantage of consolidating all crucial customer information into a single platform. This includes contractual, billing, product, and Health Score data. It also facilitates accessing individual customer accounts to assess feature usage and provide feedback to the product team.
On a day-to-day operational level, the CSMs value the monitoring capabilities and the direct visibility into customer accounts. We also use alerting mechanisms for renewals and instances of underutilized features. This enables us to respond promptly, without having to wait for a scheduled account review or for customers to report issues.
Do you intend to expand your use of Skalin in the future ?
Yes! We intend to implement more automation. For instance, we will be sending emails to the champions at our customers' sites when activity is low. Furthermore, we aim to enhance alerting for CSMs in case of inactivity on specific sections of the Foxintelligence platform. This will extend beyond the alerting mechanisms we have already established.