How CCOs can maximize the value of frontline insights

I’m lucky to interact with some of the most interesting people in tech and SaaS. This week, I’ll share some insights from someone who has likely forgotten more than most will ever know about the subscription business model.

In fact, she wrote two books on the subject that you should check out: The Subscription Economy and The Forever Transaction.

I’m talking, of course, about Robbie Kellman Baxter.

Let’s dive in…

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I spent time with my friend, Robbie Kellman Baxter, last week. Robbie helps companies implement and optimize their subscription pricing programs, and she’s been doing it for over 20 years.

Robbie started in this field before subscription pricing became the coolest kid in school. One of her first clients?

Netflix.

And no, not the juggernaut streamer we all know and love today. The DVD-by-mail version that destroyed Blockbuster Video.

As you can imagine, Robbie’s seen it all, and she’s an authority on the subscription business model and its related customer loyalty strategies.

In our discussion Robbie offered a framework scaling customer value and customer success that I think CCOs and their acolytes would be wise to consider.

The core idea? Using what you learn from less efficient, high-touch customer interactions to inform and scale lower-touch, starting with customer marketing and culminating in product roadmap influence.

The phrase I’ll offer to describe Robbie’s framework is “levering up.” It’s all about scaling solutions to the common problems that cause churn and prevent purchases in a subscription business.

Levering up starts with frontline teams who solve problems in a manual, bespoke kind of way. They do things that don’t necessarily scale, and over time, develop more efficient repeatable processes.

This is expensive, yes, but effective in the short run. Appropriate for large customers. Also for acute situations like a startup or a turnaround where the problem and solution set is wide and agile-minded generalists can triage and stabilize almost any situation. Sort of like emergency room doctors.

Over time, frontline teams raise these solutions up to the awareness of the organization and create lower-touch versions of the same solutions. Email campaigns, templates, how-to guides, training, workshops, etc.

“Communication and customer marketing is cheap relative to direct one-on-one engagement,” Robbie says.

Where it really gets interesting is when marketing uses these learnings and insights to drive go-to-market.

They use insights to improve product positioning which drives higher lead quality. It also minimizes misaligned expectations about who the product is for and educates prospects on how to prepare and what it will take to be successful.

Then there’s the apex of “levered up” solutions: the product itself. While among the most expensive investments we make in a software business, they are the most scalable and profitable over the long run.

All customer-facing execs in SaaS should be thinking about levering up. But for you and I, as chief customer officers, it’s nonnegotiable.

Running teams and designing processes makes you a operations leader.

But there’s a bigger career opportunity out there for those who leverage insights from day-to-day customer interactions to make an impact on product and go to market strategy. These are go-to-market leaders.

How are you levering up?

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