At TSIA, we provide hundreds of technology and services organizations with the latest best practices, research, and frameworks they need to grow and succeed in a changing market, and a lot of this research ties directly into the rapidly growing area of customer success. To give you an inside look at how we apply the same business recommendations we give our members to our own operation, I've asked TSIA's VP of Member Success, Andrew Cromey, to explain how TSIA handles customer success, or as we refer to it in our membership organization, “Member Success."
Q: How is TSIA's Member Success team structured?
Andrew: Originally, TSIA's Member Success team used a relatively flat organizational structure, comprised of a growing team of Member Success Managers (MSMs) and a management layer. As we continued to scale, this model has evolved and matured to support a larger member base and achieve continual performance improvement. For instance, we are currently refining segment-focused Success models for our enterprise and SMB (small/medium business) members, adding specialized roles to the team to increase focus in areas like value realization and renewals processing, as well as developing career tracks for MSMs currently on the team.
Q: What motions of the LAER model (Land, Adopt, Expand, and Renew) is your Member Success team responsible for?
Andrew: Historically, a Member Success Manager's primary responsibility fell under the “Adopt" and “Renew” motions within the LAER model. However, with growing rates of business model transformation across the industry, we are seeing more demand for TSIA support and guidance, often extending beyond membership to TSIA Strategic Services, such as management workshops and speaking engagements. This emerging requirement to help our members deploy the full arsenal of TSIA services to accelerate transformation initiatives results in increased “expand" responsibility, as we assist members in leveraging services within and beyond the membership to achieve their business goals.
TSIA's LAER model from the member success manager perspective.
Q: How do you leverage analytics in your Member Success operations?
Andrew: We are lucky to have top-notch IT and Analytics teams at TSIA, and both have been critical business partners in developing a comprehensive, well-organized view of membership information, consumption data, and the TSIA catalog of membership resources. This has led to powerful reporting and tools such as membership adoption and health scoring, prescriptive guidance on what research and services should be utilized on a member-to-member basis, and historical and predictive renewals dashboards. This is a fast-evolving area, with significant opportunity still ahead of us to further deploy analytics to enhance the member experience.
Q: What do you do to help ensure TSIA delivers outcomes to its members?
Andrew: Member Success exists to connect members' most pressing business challenges to the wealth of TSIA strategic frameworks and industry analysis, research executive expertise, benchmarking data, best practices research, and peer insight. This involves driving awareness of available resources through onboarding new executives and their teams, developing insight into members' individual business needs, and collaborating with member executives to create and execute on a service plan explicitly oriented around member outcomes and ROI. This outcomes-oriented thinking is also extending to improvements to existing services as well as exciting new tools like TSIA outcome chains, which will make it easier than ever to deliver value to members.
Q: How does your Member Success team interface with your sales team around account expansion?
Andrew: Member Success and Sales traditionally operated as distinct silos, but increasingly we find that working in close collaboration is key to serving the growing needs of our member companies. Member executives look to our Member Success Managers for guidance on navigating to the best resources to support their desired business outcomes, within and beyond the membership, and partnership between MSMs and Salespeople is a key part of delivering on this expectation. Partnership occurs through regular reviews of current member relationships, two-way reporting on key sales and services information via TSIA's CRM and analytics platforms, and real-time sharing of new insight on member needs and service opportunities. Executed successfully, this collaboration ensures a more seamless member experience and puts TSIA in a better position to help our members achieve success in their initiatives!
Do You Have A Business Challenge Standing in the Way of Your Success?
Thanks for your time, Andrew! When it comes to connecting the right TSIA research, resources, and expertise to specific member needs to ensure they receive the most out of their membership, I'm proud to say that our team of Member Success Managers are at the top of their game. If you're interested in learning more about how we can help your business achieve above-and-beyond levels of success in our ever-changing industry, drop us a line and together we can strategize on how to solve the key business challenges currently affecting your organization.