A Better Way To Do Customer Success

We’ve built our business on delivering better workflows for creatives and marketers. For these teams, digital assets, fonts, and GIS tools are the building blocks to better work. When you have all you need to create your best work and generate results for your clients and internal stakeholders, you’re on the path to success.

This reveals an important point that a lot of companies don’t like to admit: software alone is not enough to make you successful. The software is just one small part of a much larger picture. If you want to achieve your goals, you need to work with companies that can combine the right technology solutions with a deeper understanding of your business.

This is the essence of customer success. But how do we get there?

A typical sales call is structured to uncover your problems. Because once a company clarifies your problems, then they can suggest their technology as a solution to those problems.

This is a good start, but it’s not enough to ensure your success. That’s because this model doesn’t explore the root causes of those problems. For example:

• Which factors are contributing to these problems?
• Does your team have the skills and resources to address these underlying factors?
• What actions have you taken to reduce the severity of these problems in the future?

When a company sells you software first, and then tries to help you figure out how this new technology will affect all these unseen factors over the next few years, that’s doing it backwards.

We take a different approach.

At Extensis, we focus on understanding which outcomes you want to achieve. These are your success outcomes. Determining your success outcomes includes addressing your challenges today and preparing you to achieve even greater results in the future.

In this model, our sales process is not driven by selling software. We’re here to provide you with something far more valuable: a study of your business that will reveal your potential for growth. We look at five key areas of your company: people, skills, processes, systems, and partnerships (PSPSP). These are the keys to your success.

For an example of this, let’s apply this framework to digital asset management:

• People: What types of challenges do your team members encounter related to sharing creative assets?
• Skills: How many months does it take a new employee to ramp up to 100% productivity at your company?
• Processes: About how often do you see partners or internal teams use unapproved or incorrect files?
• Systems: On a scale of 1 - 5, how important is it for you to track the usage of your digital assets?
• Partnerships: How many 3^rd party partners are involved in your creative process?

This is just the beginning. The full study looks at your performance across every aspect of PSPSP based on your long-term goals.

Why do we do it this way? Because if 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that business is evolving and companies that learn to adapt will be successful. We’ve built our business on improving your workflow, and that starts with making every part of our solution more focused on you.