AVAIL’s new Director of Customer Success, Clay Watson, outlines his proactive approach to Customer Success, centered around onboarding, adoption, and advocacy. Upcoming projects include an updated AVAIL Learning Channel, AVAIL Achievements success stories, and AVAIL Community Forums. Explore his roadmap for Customer Success below.
Jump to
- Onboarding: AVAIL Learning Channel Relaunch
- Adoption: AVAIL Achievements
- Advocacy: AVAIL Community Forums
What Does Customer Success Mean at AVAIL?
And what’s to come on the Customer Success Roadmap
A common misconception is that Customer Support and Customer Success are one in the same. Traditional Customer Support is often focused on resolving issues as they arise, as they should be. Providing timely and knowledgeable support is an important piece of the Customer Success mission but it is not the entire mission.
While Customer Support is reactive, Customer Success is focused on proactive initiatives. It’s about anticipating needs, providing guidance, and helping customers achieve their desired business outcomes all while maximizing product value. My vision for Customer Success at AVAIL is to extend success beyond the reactive nature of support and into a proactive approach focused on three objectives: onboarding, adoption, and advocacy.
Here is a breakdown of each objective and a look at what’s to come on our Customer Success Roadmap:
Onboarding
A great onboarding experience involves setting clear expectations, communicating with you, the customer, throughout the journey and supporting your needs. It also means having up-to-date resources and materials to satisfy different learning styles. My vision will be to introduce more self-paced, personalized onboarding options. The goal of this initiative will be to provide accessible and digestible (short-form) learning content for publishers and consumers alike. The first stage of this plan will be to update and refresh the in-app Learning Channel by converting help center content (like What are Palettes) into quick video tutorials.
Roadmap Item: Learning Channel Relaunch
In the coming months and leading into 2025, the Customer Success team will be relaunching the Learning Channel in AVAIL to provide more valuable resources for onboarding and skill building. Expect a new look and feel to the Learning Channel including new Channel cards and more quick video tutorials.
Adoption
Product adoption does not always equal product use. True adoption means you are meeting your goals as a team/company and have started to see the ROI of AVAIL. Product usage is still an important indicator of the adoption trajectory, but is not the only indicator. Adoption will only really occur once you start achieving your own business outcomes and KPIs while using AVAIL. Your feedback in this process is paramount to achieve success stories like these.
Roadmap Item: AVAIL Achievements
We want to hear your stories and receive your feedback on what you like and what you may dislike about AVAIL software. In the very near future, the Customer Success team will be launching AVAIL Achievements, a project focused on acknowledging key adoption indicators and sharing insights and best practices from the AVAIL community.
Advocacy
Customer advocacy means you have achieved success using AVAIL and are satisfied with both the product and service. More importantly, it means you have become an enthusiastic promoter of the AVAIL software and are eager to share your stories within your community. Some of you have already submitted exceptional success stories, and we will continue capturing those stories for the foreseeable future. An additional measure to capture and share success stories will be an initiative to begin hosting AVAIL Community Forums.
Roadmap Item: AVAIL Community Forums
AVAIL Community Forums will be an opportunity to meet other AVAIL customers in order to share ideas, provide feedback and help us drive meaningful change in the product. These forums will help us complete product feedback loops, so that you can have more opportunities to see ideas come to fruition on the product roadmap. Be on the lookout for communication about these forums to gauge your interest and begin scheduling the virtual sessions.
About The Author
Clay Watson brings over seven years of SaaS Customer Success experience to his role as Director of Customer Success at AVAIL. Clay is passionate about helping customers maximize product value to achieve their business goals. Prior to joining AVAIL, Clay served as the Director of Customer Success at Hippo Manager Software, Inc. His educational background includes a Bachelor's Degree in Communications and Information Studies and a Master's Degree in Information Communication Technology, both from the University of Kentucky. Clay's expertise in Customer Success and his academic foundation in communication and technology inform his leadership of the Customer Success team at AVAIL.
