Why Do More With Less is Out for 2024 with Kelly Bray, VP, Product Led Success, MongoDB

The do-more-with-less model is out for 2024.

We know the customer success function is mission-critical for long-term customer satisfaction and loyalty. But to meet customers’ ever-increasing demands and outpace the competition, companies are turning to next-generation tools and processes. These tools empower CS teams to work smarter and drive efficiency and personalization while ensuring a seamless customer experience. 

At WorkRamp LEARN Virtual Summit, Kelly Bray, VP, Product Led Success, and Account Management, MongoDB, explores the key areas to digitize and automate and the priorities that will shape the future of customer success in 2024 and beyond.

Moving away from the do-more-with-less model

While doing more with less seemed to be the recurring mantra in 2023, in reality, this concept is a double-edged sword. 

While it reflects the need for efficiency, it can also lead to burnout and reduced customer satisfaction. Instead, the focus should be on scaling resources and working smarter. 

“The whole do-more-with-less phrase can have a negative connotation,” Kelly says. “It’s in the spirit of working smarter and meeting customers where they need support in various formats. Digital success used to mean the lightest effort for a customer; now it’s how we best design an experience that meets the customer in a specific moment with the right resources.”

For MongoDB, this means creating scalable interactions for one-on-one experiences, like onboarding and taking essential info, and turning this into other formats like roundtables, workshops, webinars, and more.

“That’s really our goal,” Kelly says. “To deliver that same level of guidance and value in any format, especially digital.”

Driving performance and efficiency

The performance and efficiency of customer success teams are pivotal to achieving success. 

In customer success, the spectrum of responsibilities can be vast. So, It’s essential to have a specialization within the team. One critical moment to focus on is customer onboarding, where a dedicated team can make a significant difference. 

“To be excellent in a role, some specialization can be really helpful,” Kelly says. “We specialize onboarding because we know it’s such a critical moment for our customers, having a dedicated team to focus there and develop the skills and methods for customers in a deeper way.”

Kelly also shares that her team is shifting from activity-based KPIs to measuring customer-impact metrics that align with team initiatives. 

“We’ve transitioned to customer-impact metrics,” she says. “We can measure a more meaningful moment in customer onboarding that represents their readiness to go live with the application, which is the goal of our onboarding experience.”

Read more: Customer Onboarding: From First Impression to Lifelong Loyalty

AI in customer success

Kelly and her team are excited about emerging technologies and AI capabilities. 

Here are some examples of how AI can transform CS and supercharge CSMs:

• AI bots as coaches. Customer Success Managers may not always have the answers when the product is technical and complex. AI-powered bots can step in as coaches, providing expert guidance to CSMs and helping them provide better support to customers.
• Tailored content automation. AI can automate the process of tailoring content, whether directly to customers or as a starting point for CSM calls. This ensures the information provided is highly relevant to the customer’s needs, improving the quality of interactions.

AI tools can help make the experience more efficient and focused for both CSMs and customers. 

Read more: Forget the Old Way: Revolutionize Customer Success with AI

CS priorities for 2024 and beyond

As we look to the future, Kelly shares the priorities she sees shaping the customer success landscape.

Personalization

Focusing on personalization and timeliness is essential. Engaging with customers in a way that’s tailored to their specific use case or persona adds high value to the customer experience.

“A high amount of value in a short amount of time is our goal,” Kelly says. “Some of that’s tooling, CSM enablement, and specialization. There’s a variety of things we have to focus on, but that’s the ultimate goal for personalization.”

Integration between CS and sales

Kelly also predicts that we will continue to see the evolution of CS as a peer to sales and a CS more coordinated, holistic strategy to land, grow, and retain customers over time.

This will be a more integrated approach between sales and CS versus a more siloed approach.

CS teams are constantly looking for ways to scale resources and work smarter, which is underscored by the need to deliver valuable experiences tailored to individual customer needs. Adopting next-gen CS tools and processes like AI, personalization, and customer-based KPIs will enable teams to provide a more personalized, holistic customer experience.

Watch the full session: Next-Gen CS: Performance-Driven, Digital, AI, and More, or check out more on-demand replays from WorkRamp LEARN Virtual Summit.