Setting team OKRs can feel a bit overwhelming. But fear not, we have you covered with some customer support goals and objectives examples that are sure to help your Customer Success team get a head start!
Regardless of the specific product or service your organization is centered on, ensuring your customers love it, find it valuable, and grow with you are fundamental to the business’ success long term. The OKR examples for growth that we dive into below will help you quantify and measure these aspects so that you can be sure your team is aligned.
So, without further ado, here are some real OKR examples to get your team set up for success.
Customer Success Objective One - Our Customers Are Raving Fans!
It might seem obvious but the number one focus of any Customer Success team should be on customers! So, it’s only fitting that there be a customer satisfaction OKR to ensure your customers are raving fans of your product or service.
While this seems easy enough, the next question then becomes, “How do we measure this?”. Measuring your customer’s satisfaction can be done in a number of different ways depending on your industry and size. Most frequently, we see companies use NPS, CSAT, or some other type of review methodology.
If you haven’t already implemented a method to get quantitative feedback from your customers, we highly recommend doing so. Allowing your customers a place to provide their feedback helps them feel heard and valued. Meanwhile, getting specific feedback on how customers feel about your product or service allows you to invest more heavily on areas that seem to be working and potentially make changes in areas that aren’t going as well.
Regardless of which methodology you use, it is important to set a goal for what you define as success and start measuring! It might be scary to put a firm number down for your goal, but giving your team something to aim for will make you more likely to reach it.
Customer Success Objective Two - Our Customers Are Finding Value + Renewing
Most CS teams look at renewals as the number one KPI for their team. And, there’s a reason why. At the end of the day, whether or not your customers continue to leverage your product or service is a clear way to understand if they found it valuable.
There’s a good chance you’re already tracking your renewal percentage, in which case, good job! But, tracking a number on a monthly or quarterly basis is different from setting an objective around it. When you connect a KPI to a larger team objective, you help provide the context on why you track that number and ensure that your team is aligned around what success looks like in regards to renewals.
Another important thing to keep in mind with this objective is that there are multiple ways to track and measure renewal rate. Whether you decide to measure it as net vs. gross renewal rate, or if you choose to calculate it off of customer count or dollar amount, each of these can have a big impact on the overall number.
If you are truly trying to measure whether or not customers are finding value, I recommend looking at customer count retention. This will help you understand what percentage of customers renew in the given time period, regardless of their revenue or any upsells. That being said, we also recommend segmenting the retention rate out to better understand how things are trending.
For example, you might want to segment based on ACV, industry, or customer size. This can help you discover opportunities where a certain type of customer is finding more success than another and evaluate how to improve.
Customer Success Objective Three - Our Customers Are Growing With Us
Ensuring that your customers are raving fans and continue using your product are certainly important OKR examples. However, measuring long term success with customers is best done by determining if they are growing with you. Ultimately, revenue growth with a customer shows that they find your product or service valuable, have seen success, and want more of it!
Similar to the first two OKR examples, this one is all about making sure you’re finding the right way to measure success. Setting an objective around growth or upsells helps ensure your team is aligned. For some companies, this goal is centered around a percentage of growth, while other companies might have a specific dollar amount based on a revenue forecast. In either event, ensuring you are clear on what the goal is and what needs to be done to reach it is vital for success.
Similar to renewals, it’s important to segment out your customers to understand the different levers for growth. Having this data segmented out will also help you identify if there are any triggers to be aware of that show an account is ready to take their use of the platform to a new level.
For example, do you find that customers who leverage a specific area of your product tend to upsell for a feature more than others? If so, these product metrics and indicators can be easy ways to sift through the noise and streamline upsell opportunities. Product metrics are a closely tied secondary key result that can often be the indicator for growth, and having leading indicators will help drive the outcomes for this objective.
Wrapping Up
While getting started with setting OKRs can feel daunting, these customer success OKR examples should help you get a jump start! Ultimately, getting started is the most important part. From there, ensure your goals are connected and support your company OKRs. If you are focused on customers being successful, renewing, and growing, you are likely going to be aligned with the larger company goals.
Lastly, know that measuring and adjusting is part of the nature of rolling out OKRs. It’s possible you’ll find after a quarter or two that you might want to redefine how you measure a specific key result or maybe increase your target for a specific metric. This is all part of the OKR journey and is a sign you’re doing things right. Don’t be afraid to challenge yourself and adjust as needed.
Whether you are focused on finding department-wide or personal OKR examples, the SaaS OKRs outlined above will help make sure your team is rowing in the same direction and ultimately focused on the right things. They allow your team to prioritize activities that are most closely aligned to overall company success and help every layer of the business understand the importance of customer success.
