Customer Success Teams:

There’s nothing worse than not understanding an implementation. Raise your hand if you’ve felt left out of what’s happening. We’ve all been through it. Visibility and transparency are key to getting everyone on the same page and ensuring they are informed about what’s happening.

Your first step is looping in and inviting all the key points of contact to the project. Projects with more people (and the right people) involved have a better chance of completing on time and easily. Besides your customer success team, consider adding your sales team to the project. They are vested in ensuring what they sell is delivered successfully. They can also provide valuable insight into your new customers and what they seek. Including a technical expert will help you respond faster to issues that might come up during the implementation.

You should include the onboarding team and end users on the customer side. But also include those responsible for purchasing the product and third-party vendors. You want to make sure that everyone has an understanding of the new product or service.

Now that you have all the right people at the table, the next step is transparent communication so no one gets left out. Everyone on your project should be able to see the status and get updates whenever and however they want. This can be through a portal, email, or mobile app. If customers can access the project however they prefer, engagement and retention will increase.

This kind of transparency means no one is accidentally left off a meeting invite, deleted from an email chain, or kept out of an important conversation. When the right people know what’s happening, work gets done faster and better. Confusion and miscommunications will be eliminated, and overall customer satisfaction with your product and process will increase.