HubSpot’s customer success team plays a vital role in helping platform users to grow. I caught up with Principal Customer Success Manager Rachel Kliger to find out how.
“Success” as a business function might sound strange, but for users of advanced technology solutions such as HubSpot, customer success managers are key to helping businesses maximise their investment and unlock the full potential of their preferred platform.
“Across industries, companies, and technologies, success will look very different,” Rachel explains. What exactly does success on HubSpot look like? How does that definition keep pace with the platform? And how is its customers’ understanding of success changing?
I sat down with Rachel to explore each of these questions and get a true understanding of the importance of customer success as HubSpot sees it.
Thomas Brown: What does success on HubSpot look like?
Rachel Kliger: Success with HubSpot for me is ensuring that our customers are able to meet the objectives that they set out when they brought on HubSpot. Are they improving their processes? Are they moving to a more agile, modern, digital go-to-market strategy?
In my role, that means working with all my customers to make clear objectives and tactics that are moving us towards achieving those so that in the end we can clearly demonstrate the results. We always want to be able to tell success stories. This is what I would consider success when I'm helping to manage my customers and their use of HubSpot.
How important is ROI when it comes to demonstrating success?
Yes, from the customer’s perspective success is also about being able to confirm the ROI that they're seeing from having bought into HubSpot in the first place. Every business has its unique strategy, process, and goals, but ultimately everyone needs to ensure their investment is sound. At the same time, success isn't just about revenue growth.
It's growing their team, their brand, their awareness, and their digital channels. It's their ability to initiate sales and marketing campaigns, new operations, and identify growth areas. In this way, success looks like an open door. HubSpot gives every customer the opportunity to explore other avenues when they see success in the ones they initially set out with.
How has that definition of success evolved with the platform?
As the landscape changes, so do the goalposts by which you measure success. For example, right now all businesses should unlock AI as an opportunity to grow better, so HubSpot doubled-down on AI to ensure the platform met these emerging needs. Consumer behaviour is always changing. This last year has seen a huge emphasis on data integrity and security — that’s where Operations Hub comes in. Then there’s the evolution of your channels of choice, for example X [Twitter], and leaning into SMS and WhatsApp. You have to be agile and a big part of that means having the tools at your disposal to move with the ever-evolving go-to-market landscape.
Change is positive, and success in a changing landscape is about embracing that outlook.
How have your customers evolved in the way that they use HubSpot?
I'm seeing high demand for customisation. As their business models change, our customers need to be able to make the platform work for their specific processes. In the past year alone HubSpot has definitely leaned into this. Today customers have the ability to use conditional logic, they can manipulate their data with no or low code, and they have access to a wide range of new CRM customisation tools that can alter the UI (user interface) of object records, which is a huge new update to the product from a technical capability.
Another area is governance and the demand for more granular permissions. As a result, super admins now have more visibility and a greater ability to manage access than they’ve ever had before. We hear the majority of our customers' needs and we prioritise accordingly.
Need help with customising your platform? Take a look at our Technical Projects.
Any final words on using HubSpot well?
I encourage all my customers to take advantage of automation and optimisation. Whether that involves expanding their use of workflows, setting up Operations Hub to clean data in the background, or automating nurturing emails to trigger when an action happens outside of HubSpot, there’s so much the platform can offer in the way of reducing manual work.
As a first step to success, think about what processes you can automate so your marketing team can focus on creating the best content, so your sales team can concentrate on closing more deals, and so your operations team can pull the most up-to-date and relevant data.
Second, use HubSpot to get visibility across every action your prospects and customers take. With advanced tools like Customer Behavioural Events and Webhooks, we can bring in so many actions and insights happening outside of HubSpot.
And finally, work with your customer success manager to review your tech stack often and take advantage of an integrated system like HubSpot that allows you to visualise all that data. Whatever your version of success looks like, it’s about having that absolute, deep insight into your prospects and customers.
