Customer Success is not just a discipline at VMware, it’s our philosophical way of doing business – always taking a customer-first approach. As we innovate and move faster to the future, our Customer Success delivery and offerings must keep pace with evolving customer needs and market dynamics. In this blog, I will share with you our approach and “blueprint” for customer success.
The VMware Customer Success Blueprint is designed for scalability, flexibility, and adaptability. Based on our EPIC2 cultural values, which are rooted in customer centricity, and an innovation DNA, the blueprint is designed to help customers maximize value continuously. Let’s review the components in more detail.
Philosophy
The foundation of the blueprint is our Customer Success philosophy. It is embedded within all parts of our organization:
- Lead with a customer-first culture
- Deliver exceptional customer experiences through aligned cross-functional teams
- Accelerate customer outcomes and time to value
Talent engine
We all know that technology alone does not deliver outcomes. So, the next layer in our blueprint is a talented team of Customer Success Practitioners. Together with our customers, we drive success at all stages of the customer journey from onboarding, adopting, and consuming solutions through to realizing value. Building and retaining a talented Customer Success team means that we:
- Define clear differentiated capabilities for our high performing customer success practitioners
- Develop a comprehensive learning path to build strong customer success skills and behaviors
- Create a guided career path for constant advancement
Unified go-to-market strategy
Success isn’t the sole responsibility of the Customer Success team. As I mentioned in our philosophy, exceptional customer experiences are delivered through aligned cross-functional teams. To deliver on our promise of customer success, a key tenet of our blueprint is uniting all teams across the business including Customer Success, Sales, Professional Services, Product Business Units, Solution Engineering, and Support. We have clearly defined our approach which covers:
- Cross-functional roles and responsibilities throughout the customer lifecycle
- Accountability for health, retention, and consumption through the sharing of data from a single view of customer progress
- Aligning customer success roles, responsibilities, and incentives cross-functionally
Scalable lifecycle-focused success offerings
The value customers derive from their VMware investments is not static; it’s dynamic. Over time, new opportunities arise as both the customer and VMware’s businesses evolve. We’ve developed offerings that:
- Range from “essentials” to premium fee-based
- Are designed to support both perpetual and subscription customers
- Utilize persona-based experiences, with harmonized digital and in-person engagements throughout the customer lifecycle
Advanced analytics and operations excellence
A best-in-class Customer Success organization knows when a customer is having issues before they tell you. To build this level of awareness, an investment in advanced analytics and operational playbooks is essential. Analytics and operational excellence:
- Predicts customer risks and opportunities
- Drives consistency and repeatability through playbooks and runbooks proven to accelerate customer outcomes and time to value
- Enables active collaboration and a singular 360-degree view of customer data, shared cross-functionally
In my next blog, I will discuss how we are creating a differentiated customer success portfolio that supports both perpetual and subscription-based customers. Learn more about our offerings on our website or reach out to me about our blueprint for customer success at LinkedIn.
