Lately, LiquidPlanner has put a lot of thought into the meaning of customer support vs. customer success.

Support doesn’t end with troubleshooting technical issues, that’s only the tip of the iceberg.  Read on to see how we can make you an LP superstar.  Allow me to begin with a couple definitions:

• Customer support: Helping our customers solve problems they encounter when using our product.
• Customer success: Helping our customers improve specific areas of their business (organization, planning, communication, teamwork, growth, income, overall project success) by using our product.

To elaborate a bit further, customer support deals with small, focused issues that are often technical in nature.

Customer success deals with the application of our product to achieve larger goals. So on that front, our goal is to create true LiquidPlanner evangelists. For that to happen, we must not only have great people to guide (and provide hand-holding at times), but we also have to provide mixed-media supporting materials in place (help documents, how-to and training videos) to support our customers’ success with our product.

Now that we’ve established those definitions, I’m proud to say that I’m part of a Customer Success Team here at LiquidPlanner. So now you might ask, What is the Customer Success team? Well, it’s a combo of the LP Sales Team and the LP Support Team. Here’s how it works:

• Our Sales Team is comprised of a group of technically knowledgeable, enthusiastic and totally non-sales-y people who work with our trial customers. They answer questions before, during and after hours, showing these customers everything they could ever wish to know before purchasing LiquidPlanner.
• Our Support Team is comprised of a group of unique ladies who have one important thing in common: a passion for customer service and education. This team serves the needs of our many paying customers, large and small.

A day in the life of our Customer Success Team

Every day of the week, and sometimes on weekends, the Customer Success Team takes emails and calls from potential and existing LiquidPlanner customers. We listen to and answer questions, brainstorm ideas and any needed workarounds, and sometimes there are follow-up calls if, say, we come up with a new idea that we hadn’t thought about initially. All of us are driven to help make LiquidPlanner customers successful at using our product to the best of their ability.

We provide knowledge in a myriad of ways, taking into consideration some of the following: people have different learning styles, our customers live in different time zones around the world, and our customers and their teams have their own way of using LiquidPlanner to suit their specific project needs. Here’s a list of the resources and support we offer:

1. Online help articles – for those who want how-to info and step-by-step instructions.
2. Videos – for those who prefer to learn by watching something rather than reading.
3. Phone calls – for those who prefer a verbal walk-through to watching a video or reading.
4. Email – for any question you might have. Perhaps you couldn’t find what you were looking for in the support center.
5. Blog posts – for real-world examples and stories about project management and LP features, including insight from team members, outside partners and customers alike.
6. Weekly training webinars – for those who need a basic LP overview.
7. Customized training sessions – for anyone , covering any topic; or a personalized basic training for your team.
8. Workspace reviews and consulting – for those who want to run their processes by an LP expert and bounce around ideas about best practices.

I truly love working for a company where I’m strategically nurturing our customers so that they can have productive, profitable and sustaining experiences using our product.

So, which of our support resources do you use the most?

Share your experience –and success stories – with us in the Comments field, below.