Spend smart, prove impact and scale
Fractional Chief Customer Officer Talei Blomfield shares how to target investment in customer success so it drives outcomes you can measure and defend. She reframes CS as helping customers achieve their goals, not “making them happy,” and shows where to focus, which tools to use, what to stop, and how to design “self-serve” that actually works.
Key themes include:
Start with desired outcomes
Define customer success as helping customers achieve their goal, then tailor digital and human engagement.Pick one focus and align spend
Decide your north star for customer service right now: churn reduction, revenue expansion or lifetime value.Fix your tooling (and bad habits)
Tooling audit: eliminate duplicate tools, reconfigure properly and turn on automation you’re paying for.Be smart about self-serve
Don’t force self-serve by default. Lean into knowledge, search, and in-product help.Instrument for decisions
Identify leading indicators tied to retention. Reroute low-motivation self-serve accounts back to sales; rather than failing onboarding.
Key takeaways:
Choose one primary CS outcome and focus budget towards it
Audit and streamline tooling.
Design self-serve where motivation is high and cognitive load is low; otherwise, use guided onboarding and consider paid implementation.
Start with support: implement a proper ticketing system, harvest insights, and build a self-serve knowledge base to reduce assisted volume.
Watch the full replay to unpack the tactics and trade-offs.