Digital Customer Success

Digital Customer Success: Accelerating Satisfaction

Digital Customer Success is the exciting superhighway that companies adopt when their current Customer Success teams need to grow beyond the 1:1 human-touch model.

Digital CS adds AI, automation, and a myriad of tools that significantly grow a Customer Success team's abilities. It also bridges many gaps between Customer Success (CS), Customer Experience (CX), User Experience (UX), Community, and Support. It actually lifts all boats, making those areas work more in sync with each other.

The positive impressions customers come away with are perhaps the most important result of a well-constructed Digital Customer Success strategy.

Customers and users feel more empowered to handle their own needs
There is less reliance on 1:1 meetings with CSMs to get anything done

Digital CS is usually employed:

In tech-touch or low-touch customer segments
When the customer base grows too large for 1:1 support
In company restructuring when addressing the appropriate number of CSMs and DCSMs needed to support the products and their customers
In product-led growth (PLG) companies where customer interaction happens mostly within the product

Vocabulary

Digital CS: The use of technology, automation, and data to scale and personalize the customer experience—especially for large volumes of customers—without relying solely on one-to-one human interaction.

Agentic AI: goal-oriented, autonomous, multi-step planning and execution to complete tasks with minimal human input.

Digital CSMs (or DCSMs): Humans using digital technology to engage customers with medium-touch or high-touch motions, and/or running workflows based on the results of Agentic AI or digital-first automations. It's very important to understand that Digital CSMs are not lower-level assistants to "regular CSMs", but rather trained in workflows that grow the overall effectiveness of Customer Success at a company.

Digital CS and LAER, working in unison

"L" = Land

DCSMs and CSMs work together to ensure that every new customer lands well, no matter the size or scope of the contract. This is especially true if the Customer Success team reports to the sales org rather than within a customer team.

"A" = Adopt

Adoption is where Digital CS really shines. Here, DCSMs are companions to AI and automation, ensuring product adoption happens at scale, fast, and with minimal friction.

"E" = Expand

DCSMs make expansion a proactive action. Working in a way that's very similar to a channel enablement team, DCSMs take the burden of connecting all the expansion dots off of marketing and product teams. They educate customers to make the most purposeful decisions possible.

"R" = Retain (or Renew)

Digital CS teams monitor licensing, renewal dates, and overall risk indicators, making engagements happen long before expiration is set to happen. This maintains CSAT because customers feel like they are taken care of.

How Digital CS helps existing teams

Digital CS + Community

Digital CS + Enterprise CSMs

Are forums still a thing? Absolutely. The best way to engage (and track) customer engagements and satisfaction is through a well-structured online community. If a company is performance-driven, then a huge amount of the tracking of KPIs or OKRs is done by connecting triggers from their online community (and its users) directly to modules in their CRM.

Digital CS + Enterprise CSMs

Our team of experienced customs brokers has a deep understanding of the customs clearance process, including tariff classification, valuation, and documentation requirements. We work closely with our clients to develop custom solutions that meet their unique needs and ensure a seamless import or export experience.

Digital CS + Product

Digital CS + Enterprise CSMs

Digital CS + Product

Digital CS teams play a powerful, often underutilized role in helping Product teams build better products, faster. DCSMs are on the front lines, working in scaled customer engagement, gathering early signals on issues, behavior insights, and working feedback loops. Through Digital CS, product teams can better capture data like Diffusion of Innovations, which measures product and version adoption.

Digital CS + Support

Digital CS + Enterprise CSMs

Digital CS + Product

Most customers are self reliant. The old rule of thumb was 80/20, where 80% of customers preferred to handle things themselves but 20% needed help from Support. Today that's more like 90/10, and thanks to deflection tactics offered by Digital CS, many customers within that 10% are able to "feel supported" without ever needing to speak with a human on a Support Team.

Starting a DCSM Team from scratch? Here's how.

I recently led strategy for Customer Success (CS) & User Success (US) professionals at a subscription & SaaS company. There was a need to expand the scope to include proactive reach-out to D2C customers. This is because a large portion of the product users at B2B customer facilities were also individual D2C customers. Meaning, if D2C usage was a primary entry point into B2B usage, then D2C success would surely inform B2B success.

Strategy began by examining potential growth models. We quickly saw we were in an area of over-choice. So many products... So many tiers... So little time.

We needed to accomplish two tasks very quickly:

Clean up our data to create better segmentation of customer into cohorts.
Create a new team in the company to handle Digital CSM workflows in proactive reach-out, tier-based campaigns, low/med/high-touch responsiveness, and granular tracking of our progress.

The result was the company's first ever Digital CSM Team.

How it started:

As with all new ideas, perfection is the enemy of good. In the first year, the team began servicing existing D2C campaigns and promotions. As they found their footing, they quickly realized they were generating the highest open rates and reply rates in the company.

How it went:

Everything started to click. The team borrowed ideas from their enterprise-level CSM workflows, as well as from general best practices from TSIA and Gainsight. To manage it all:

Customer segmentation around D2C subscription tiers.
Process manuals on strategy and approach.
Gainsight CTAs from email campaign triggers that would notify D-CSMs to initiate actions.
Routine cadence on progress, and constant updating of trackers to reflect all this new data being captured.

Outcomes:

Through KPIs, success was clear. The team became a Million Dollar Team in less than a year ($1.2m).

For the future:

The next mountain to climb is to begin integrating the team into B2B workflows, beginning with AI steering, but growing into automation and human-assisted flows. Takeaways for the future:

Start with SMB
Grow into sub-enterprise
Grow into Enterprise

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Digital Customer Success