key customers in business plan example

How to Write a Customer Analysis

Elon Glucklich

9 min. read

Updated October 27, 2023

You’ve been hard at work conducting market research into your potential customers— developing a deep understanding of industry dynamics and the potential size of your market .

Hopefully, you’ve also spent time interviewing potential customers—learning about their behaviors and needs, and digging into publicly available data to support your research. 

But you still need to document these findings in a way that gives you an actionable road map to grow your customer base.

This is where a well-written customer analysis can be extremely useful. 

Including a customer analysis in your business plan will boost your marketing efforts by identifying your target customers , their needs, and how your product or service addresses these needs.

• Customer analysis vs market analysis

A market analysis is a broader exploration of the market and potential customers.  A customer analysis zooms in on the specific behavioral or demographic characteristics of individual customer segments in your target market.

The market analysis includes details like the number of customers you hope to serve and the types of competitors you must contend with. 

By contrast, the customer analysis looks at the specific attributes of your potential customers – their personal habits, values, beliefs, and other characteristics that might affect their purchasing decisions.

• What should a customer analysis include?

Demographics

Some of the earliest information you’ve collected probably about your customers includes:

• Gender/ethnicity
• Income level
• Geographic area
• Education level

Example: Suppose you own a business that creates an environmentally friendly cleaning product . Your customer demographics might include: 

• Age range: 30-60 (old enough to have used a variety of cleaning products in their homes)
• Income: Above average (more likely to buy a higher-priced alternative to discount cleaning products)
• Education level: college degree or equivalent (high enough education level to understand the product’s societal benefits).
• Employment: full-time employee

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Values and beliefs

This section captures the psychological and emotional factors that influence customer behavior. 

• Cultural backgrounds
• Ethical values

Let’s return to the environmentally friendly cleaning product example. You are more likely to attract customers who prioritize sustainability and are willing to pay more for products that match their values.

Buying behaviors

Analyzing buying behaviors involves understanding how, when, and why customers purchase. These behaviors impact:

• The channels customers prefer for shopping
• Price sensitivity
• Factors that trigger a buying decision

Example: Suppose you’re running an environmentally friendly cleaning products business. In that case, you might discover that most of your customers buy their cleaning products from a magazine for homeowners or that they typically buy multiple cleaning products simultaneously. 

Technology use

Nearly three-quarters of small businesses have a website . Even if your business doesn’t have one, your customers are, without a doubt, browsing the internet. 

So it’s critical to understand how your target customers interact with technology and to set up an online presence for your business if you aren’t already active. 

Key questions about customers’ technology habits include:

• Are they active on social media? If so, which platforms? 
• Do they prefer online shopping or in-store visits? 
• Are they more likely to respond to email marketing, blog content, or social media campaigns?

Example: Let’s say you discover that significantly more of your target customers visit websites like yours on a smartphone than a desktop. In that case, it would be important to optimize your website for mobile viewing or develop a user-friendly app . 

• 5 steps to write a customer analysis for your business plan

Now that we understand the individual pieces of a customer analysis, we’ll examine how to write a customer analysis for your business plan .

1. Use existing data

Regardless of your country, there are likely numerous sources of data published by government agencies, private industry, or educational institutions that could be relevant to your business.

Finding existing data is the best starting point for your customer analysis. It’s easy to find, it’s regularly updated, and it’s immensely valuable for providing context for your research. 

For instance, if you determine that your target demographic is people between 30 and 60, Census data can help you determine the number of residents in your selling area within that age range.

We’ll look at some examples of publicly available data for businesses operating in the United States.

U.S. Census Bureau

The Census Bureau publishes official population counts for the country, states, and local communities. Demographic characteristics like age, gender, and race sort the data. Census data also includes useful data for businesses, such as the total number of businesses, employment counts, and average incomes in local communities across the country.

Bureau of Labor Statistics

Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks changes in the U.S. workforce and the overall state of the labor market. The BLS publishes the Consumer Price Index , tracks consumer spending, and gauges overall consumer confidence. 

Examining this data can give you insights into the willingness of consumers to pay for your product or service.

Bureau of Economic Analysis

The Bureau of Economic Analysis takes a broader look at the performance of the U.S. Economy. You can use BEA data to find personal income and corporate profit data by industry. 

If you make a product or service used by other businesses, these figures can help you understand the financial health of the broad customer base you’re targeting.

Federal Reserve

The Federal Reserve publishes various financial reports, such as consumer credit and spending statistics , as well as the health of banks. 

This data can give you important context about the financial health of your customers, which could help you determine pricing strategies—like whether you should offer flexible payment plans.

Industry associations

There are thousands of private sector industry associations in the United States alone. These organizations not only advocate for the businesses in their field. They provide members with a wealth of helpful information, such as “state of the industry” reports and business surveys. 

You should leverage customer data from these peer organizations as a business owner.

Academic institutions

Many university business schools make their research publicly available online. Scholars make a career out of researching market and industry trends, and much of their work is available through online searches. 

2. Review customer feedback

One of the most direct ways to show an understanding of your customers in your analysis is by reviewing their feedback.

If you’re a new business without direct customer feedback yet, that’s OK. Instead, look around at what people are saying about your competitors . You might find common complaints from customers in your industry about the products available. 

You can then reach out and interview potential customers to better understand their needs.

If you have an existing business, there may already be reviews of your company on Google or social media sites like LinkedIn. Doing so can help you determine if customers are struggling to use your product or have suggestions for improvements. 

Read as many reviews as possible, and use them to show an understanding of your customers’ needs in your analysis.

3. Use third-party data

So far, we’ve discussed free, publicly available sources to find information about your customers. 

But for those willing to dig deeper, third-party data providers can help you uncover information that’s truly unique to your business and your customers.

Google Analytics

Third-party data providers like Google track the activity of users across numerous websites. Google has its own tool, Google Analytics , which makes that information available on your company’s website.

This data is a gold mine for understanding your customers. Besides giving you a demographic and geographic breakdown of your visitors, it can tell if they view your site on a desktop or smartphone, what pages they’re clicking, navigating around your site, and much more.

For new business owners, Google Trends is a powerful tool to discover what people are searching for online. 

For the environmentally friendly cleaning products business we’ve used as an example—you could see how many people are searching on Google for information about products like floor cleaners or dishwasher detergents.

Social media metrics

If your business uses social media, there are plenty of tools to help you understand your audience on these platforms. 

Many social media companies make their data available to businesses at a cost. For instance, the Facebook Audience Insights platform gives you information about the types of people who visit your page or interact with your posts.

There are also third-party tools like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, and Buffer, which track various metrics across social media platforms.

Wherever you find the data, including social media metrics in your customer analysis provides instant feedback about how customers interact with your business.

Specialty tools

Software companies have created numerous tools that collect and analyze customer data from various online sources. 

Audience research tools like SparkToro and FullStory analyze large amounts of data online and spot trends—such as the topics people discuss online and which websites or social media accounts those audiences visit. 

These are insights that would be incredibly time-consuming to get directly from customers. However, understanding where potential customers spend time online and what they talk about can easily turn your analysis into a targeted marketing campaign that addresses their needs.

4. Create a customer persona

After gathering and analyzing all this data, you should have plenty of information about your customers. The next step is to create a customer persona . In case you need a refresher, the customer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on your collected data.

For example, a customer persona for that environmentally friendly cleaning products business will reflect that audience’s demographics, behaviors, and needs. 

In addition to being an effective tool to focus your marketing efforts, creating this persona can help determine the size of your customer base and how to prioritize your time and resources to attract them to your business. It’s also helpful to show potential investors you know your target audience.

5. Connect to your problem/solution statement

Many business plans include a problem and solution statement as early as the introduction. It’s a reasonable way to start, considering that successful businesses identify a problem and provide a solution. 

So as you put your customer analysis together, ensure the research is grounded in the problems they’re experiencing. Doing so will keep you accountable by making you validate your product or service as the solution they need.

• Get started with your business plan template

A customer analysis is a key part of any business plan. But it’s just one piece. At Bplans, we take some of the pain out of business planning. 

We’ve developed a free business planning template to help reduce entrepreneurs’ time to create a full, lender-ready business plan.

Bplans has also collected over 550 free sample business plans across numerous industries. Find one that fits your industry to get inspiration and guidance when writing your plan.

See why 1.2 million entrepreneurs have written their business plans with LivePlan

Elon is a marketing specialist at Palo Alto Software, working with consultants, accountants, business instructors and others who use LivePlan at scale. He has a bachelor's degree in journalism and an MBA from the University of Oregon.

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How to Write the Customer Analysis Section of Your Business Plan

Written by Dave Lavinsky

What is a Customer Analysis?

The customer analysis section which incorporates the essential steps of writing a business plan step-by-step is a key component of your business plan and assesses the customer segments your company serves. The objective of the customer analysis is to justify your market choice, identify differentiators, and prioritize the segments you are targeting.

Components of a Customer Analysis

A complete customer analysis contains 3 primary sections:

• Identify your target customers
• Convey the needs of these customers
• Show how your products and/or services satisfy these needs

Download our Ultimate Business Plan Template here

Why Conduct a Customer Analysis?

A thorough customer analysis provides the following benefits:

• Supports your market choice and helps you avoid entering too broad a market
• Helps you focus on serving current customers rather than trying to find new ones
• Enables you to determine which segments to prioritize and how much effort to put into each one
• Helps you craft a strategic marketing plan and platform to reach these customer segments

How to Write Your Customer Analysis

The first step of the customer analysis is to define exactly which customers the company is serving. This requires specificity. It is not adequate to say the company is targeting small businesses, for example, because there are several million of these types of customers. Rather, an expert business plan writer must identify precisely the customers it is serving, such as small businesses with 10 to 50 employees based in large metropolitan cities on the West Coast.

When defining your target market, be sure to identify the following:

• The market segment you are choosing to serve (i.e., age range, annual income, etc.)
• The geographic location of these customers (i.e., city, region, state)
• What is the average revenues/income of these customers?

Once the plan has clearly identified and defined the company’s target customers and the customer demographics, it is necessary to determine the size of your target market: How many potential customers fit the given definition and is this customer base growing or decreasing?

Next, the business plan must detail these customers’ needs. Conveying customer needs could take the form of past actions (X% have purchased a similar product in the past), future projections (when interviewed, X% said that they would purchase product/service Y), and/or implications (because X% use a product/service which our product/service enhances/replaces, then X% need our product/service).

Prioritize the needs of your target customer according to how critical they are, and include a description of each in your customer analysis. Be sure to answer questions such as: 

• What pain points do these customers have? How is their current situation lacking? 
• What will your product/service do to help solve these problems?

The business plan customer analysis must also detail the drivers of customer decision-making. Sample questions to answer include:

• Do the customers find price to be more important than the quality of the product or service?
• Are customers looking for the highest level of reliability, or will they have their own support and just seek a basic level of service?
• Why will customers purchase your product and/or service rather than look for cheaper alternatives?

Prioritize the benefits of your products and services according to how much difference they make for customers and include a description of each in your customer analysis. Be sure to answer questions such as:

• What does your product do? How is it unique or better than other similar products?
• What type of customer could benefit the most from this feature/benefit and why?

Be sure to also show an understanding of the actual decision-making process. Examples of questions to be answered here include:

• Will the customer consult others in their organization/family before making a decision?
• Will the customer seek multiple bids?
• Will the product/service require significant operational changes (e.g., will the customer have to invest time to learn new technologies, and will the product/service cause other members within the organization to lose their jobs? etc.)

Finally, identify each segment you are targeting and how much effort you will put into reaching them. Be sure to answer questions such as:

• How many customers are in each segment and how much revenue will they generate?
• What percentage of total industry sales does this represent?
• What market potential did we estimate for each segment and how does that compare with actual sales? Include the number of leads converted and average deal size.

Example Customer Analysis Template for a Candle Making Company

The needs of this customer segment are that they are looking for high-quality candles that are made with all-natural ingredients. The benefits of their product that are most important to them are that the candles are vegan, eco-friendly, and made with essential oils. Drivers of customer purchase decisions include quality, price, and unique offerings. The company’s target market size is 750,000 people which represent a significant portion of the candle industry. They will put effort into reaching these customers through online advertising, social media posts, and word-of-mouth.

It is essential to truly understand customers to develop a successful business and marketing plan. That’s why including a customer analysis in your business plan is so crucial. Likewise, sophisticated investors require comprehensive profiles of a company’s target customers. By spending the time researching and analyzing customers in your target market, you will develop both enhance your business strategy and funding success.

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How to Write a Great Business Plan Executive Summary How to Expertly Write the Company Description in Your Business Plan How to Write the Market Analysis Section of a Business Plan Completing the Competitive Analysis Section of Your Business Plan The Management Team Section of Your Business Plan Financial Assumptions and Your Business Plan How to Create Financial Projections for Your Business Plan Best Business Plan Software Everything You Need to Know about the Business Plan Appendix Business Plan Conclusion: Summary & Recap

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How to Write a Customer Analysis Section for Your Business Plan

Free Customer Analysis Template

Ayush Jalan

• February 12, 2024

A successful business idea equips customers with the tools necessary to help them reach their goals and fulfill their needs—professional or personal. To create such products and services that meet (and exceed) your customers’ expectations, you need to study their personas via customer analysis.

Customer analysis is a vital part of your business plan that helps you identify, define, and understand your customer base. Analyzing your customers is also crucial for creating a successful marketing plan, as it helps you communicate better with your customers.

In this article, you will learn how to conduct a customer analysis section for your business plan paired with a customer analysis example to help you create customer personas to study their personality traits, goals, challenges they face, and more.

What Is Customer Analysis?

Customer analysis is a comprehensive understanding of your customer base. It helps identify and describe your ideal customer. Through this in-depth analysis, you determine their needs, challenges, goals, and other important considerations. Given this info, it then helps you understand how effectively your products cater to them.

It further helps you optimize your strategic marketing process to create targeted advertisements, customize and prioritize specific features during product development, and make adjustments in your current business plan to align with your customer’s ever-changing demands.

How to Write a Customer Analysis Section

Writing a customer analysis includes extensive research and collecting data from various sources. This data consists of qualitative and quantitative aspects which help you write an accurate customer analysis for your business plan.

Writing a customer analysis has four main steps:

Step 1: Identify your customers

The primary step is to identify your potential customers and define their specific characteristics about them. The attained factual information is segmented into the following categories:

• Demographic: Age, gender, income
• Geographic: Location, type of area (Rural, suburban, urban)
• Psychographic: Values, interests, beliefs, personality, lifestyle, social class
• Technographic: Type of technology the buyer is using; tech-savviness
• Behavioral: Habits, frequent actions, buying patterns
• Industry (For B2B): Based on the industry a company belongs to.
• Business size (For B2B): Size of the company

To obtain the above data, a great place to start for established businesses is your customer database. If you aim to expand this information, you can use your existing communication channels to gather further details through surveys.

If you are a startup, conducting an audience analysis  might seem impossible as you don’t have an existing customer base. Fortunately, there are numerous ways through which you can study your potential customers. A few of them are:

• Identifying who would benefit from your product/service
• Analyzing your competitors to understand their target customers
• Using social media to prompt potential buyers to answer questionnaires

Want to create a Customer Persona in Easy Steps?

Generate valuable customer insights in minutes with Free Customer Persona Generator .

Step 2: Define the needs of your Customers

Now that you have identified your customers, the next step is to understand and specify their needs and challenges. This is the step where you need to go hands-on with your research. Getting to know your customers’ needs helps you determine whether or not your product or service hits the mark.

To understand the needs of your customers, you can adopt the following approaches:

1. Engage directly with potential Customers

A very reliable way to get to know your customers is to simply ask them, either in person or on a call. You can reach out to your customers, conduct one-on-one interviews, create focus groups, and invite buyers to test your new products. You can collect an ample amount of data through these techniques.

However, we recommend prioritizing accuracy over the quantity of data.

A technique that can help you get a deeper insight into your customer’s needs and opinions is the five whys technique . While practicing so, be mindful of the way you conduct the interview. It is essential to keep the customers in a comfortable and conversational environment to attain accurate answers.

2. Collect data from your Customer support

Customer support is the place where you can find feedback and criticism given by your customers. Analyzing this data helps you understand the pain points of your customers. You can further elaborate on this data by interacting with the customers who had issues with your products.

3. Run surveys and mention statistics

Talking to your customers helps you get qualitative information that you can use to alter your product or services according to your customers. The next part is to attain quantitative information, in other words, presenting numbers to support the previous data.

Conducting surveys is one of the commonly used methods for quantifying information. You can conduct in-app surveys, post-purchase surveys, or link surveys in email and apps, etc.

The second method is by collecting statistical data to support your conclusions from the interviews. These include stating studies related to customer choices, results from popular surveys, etc.

Step 3: Create a Customer Persona

Now, it’s time you present the information using a customer persona. A customer persona is a representation of a segment of customers with similar traits. Creating customer personas helps you process the data more efficiently.

You can use customer persona templates that are available online. To help get you started, we have created a customer persona example.

Customer Persona Example

Customer profile example of an internet service provider:

• About: A lot of customers remain at home and have a minimal and easy-going lifestyle. They need high-speed, interruption-free internet access.
• Demographics: Age is between 30 and 40, has a laid-back lifestyle, lives in suburban areas, and the income range is between $10,000 to $40,000.
• Professional role: Shop owners, employees, freelancers, etc.
• Identifiers/Personality traits: Introverts, like routines, makes schedules prefer online shopping, and stick with the companies they trust.
• Goals: Wants easily available service, and 24×7 customer support, prefers self-service technologies and chatbots over interacting with representatives.
• Challenges: Fluctuating internet connection while working or consuming media. Not enough signal coverage.

Step 4: Explain the product alignment to the Customer’s Needs

You’ve gathered info and created customer personas. The final step is to explain how your product or service caters to the needs of your customers. Here, you specify the solution you offer to your customers to tackle the challenges they face.

Mention the USPs of your product and its features, and they benefit the customer. Here, you also mention how your offerings make your customers’ lives better.

Create Better Solutions with Customer Analysis

Understanding your customers inside out helps you assist them better in solving their problems while also achieving success. Analyze your customers as often as required to stay updated about their ever-changing needs.

This helps you create better offerings to consistently fulfill their expectations. As a result, this builds up loyalty over time with each success.

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About the Author

Ayush is a writer with an academic background in business and marketing. Being a tech-enthusiast, he likes to keep a sharp eye on the latest tech gadgets and innovations. When he's not working, you can find him writing poetry, gaming, playing the ukulele, catching up with friends, and indulging in creative philosophies.

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How to Write a Customer Analysis for a Business Plan

• March 21, 2024
• Business Plan , How to Write

Understanding your customers is essential for any business striving for success. A customer analysis provides valuable insights into the demographics, preferences, behaviors, and needs of your target audience .

This guide will walk you through the process of writing a thorough customer analysis, enabling you to tailor your products, services, and marketing strategies to meet the needs of your customers effectively.

Define Your Target Audience

Begin by clearly defining your target audience : the specific group of people you aim to serve with your products or services.

Consider factors such as age, gender, income level, geographic location, and psychographic traits (e.g., lifestyle, values, interests). Understanding who your customers are is the first step in building a successful business strategy.

• Example for a Coffee Shop : Your target audience might include young professionals aged 25-40, living in urban areas, who value high-quality coffee and a relaxed atmosphere for socializing or remote work.

Gather Data on Your Customers

Next, gather data on your customers through various sources, including market research surveys, interviews, focus groups, and customer feedback.

Analyze both quantitative data (e.g., demographics, purchase history) and qualitative data (e.g., customer feedback, testimonials) to gain a holistic understanding of your customers’ needs and preferences.

• Example for a Coffee Shop : Conduct surveys or interviews with your target audience to gather insights into their coffee preferences, frequency of visits to coffee shops, and reasons for choosing one coffee shop over another.

Segment Your Customers

Segment your customers into distinct groups based on common characteristics or behaviors.

This segmentation allows you to tailor your marketing efforts and product offerings to better meet the specific needs of each segment. Common segmentation criteria include demographics, psychographics, behavior, and purchasing patterns.

• Example for a Coffee Shop : Segment your customers based on their coffee preferences (e.g., espresso lovers, latte enthusiasts), frequency of visits (e.g., daily customers, occasional visitors), and reasons for visiting (e.g., socializing, work meetings).

Analyze Customer Needs and Preferences

Analyze the needs, preferences, and pain points of each customer segment to identify opportunities for product or service improvement.

Consider factors such as price sensitivity, convenience, quality expectations, and brand loyalty. This analysis will help you tailor your offerings to better align with customer expectations.

• Example for a Coffee Shop : Analyze customer feedback to identify common preferences in coffee flavors, brewing methods, and food options. Use this information to adjust your menu offerings and pricing strategies accordingly.

Assess Customer Behavior

Examine how customers interact with your business at each stage of the buying process, from awareness to purchase and post-purchase.

Identify patterns in customer behavior, such as browsing habits, purchase frequency, and loyalty. This analysis will help you optimize the customer experience and maximize customer satisfaction and retention.

• Example for a Coffee Shop : Track customer traffic patterns, peak hours, and popular menu items to optimize staffing levels, inventory management, and promotional strategies.

Identify Growth Opportunities

Based on your customer analysis, identify growth opportunities for your business. This could involve expanding into new customer segments, introducing new products or services, or entering new geographic markets.

By understanding your customers’ needs and preferences, you can better position your business for long-term success.

• Example for a Coffee Shop : Identify opportunities to expand your customer base by offering specialty coffee subscriptions for remote workers or partnering with local businesses to host networking events.

Privacy Overview

Crafting the Customer Analysis in Business Plan: A Comprehensive Guide

In today’s competitive business environment, understanding your customers is the key to success. Customer analysis in business plans plays a crucial role in driving business growth and providing a competitive edge.

Imagine unlocking the hidden potential within your customer base, tailoring marketing strategies, and developing products that resonate with their needs and preferences. This comprehensive guide will explore the ins and outs of customer analysis in a business plan and how to leverage it for maximum impact on your business.

Short Summary

• Customer analysis is an essential part of any business plan, allowing businesses to understand their target customers and create tailored products/services.
• It involves identifying a market, assessing demographics & analyzing customer behavior in order to inform marketing strategies.
• Utilizing insights from customer analysis can help optimize marketing campaigns & product offerings for maximum return on investment.

The Essence of Customer Analysis

Customer analysis is an essential element of any business plan, emphasizing the comprehension of target customers, their requirements, and how your product or service fulfills those requirements. By performing customer analysis, businesses can better tailor their products and services to their target audience , ultimately leading to increased sales and a thriving business.

Understanding the needs of your target customers is key to success. Knowing who your customers are

Purpose of Customer Analysis

The primary objective of customer analysis is to recognize potential customers, prioritize customer segments, and provide guidance for marketing and product development strategies. Understanding your customers’ wants, needs, pain points, and objectives is crucial to creating targeted marketing campaigns and product offerings that resonate with them.

By closely monitoring customer feedback and support requests (Voice of Customer analysis), businesses can gain insight into customer pain points and preferences and even discover unexpected uses for their products.

Key Components of Customer Analysis

The essential elements of customer analysis encompass target market identification, demographic analysis, and behavioral analysis. Demographic analysis provides insights into factors such as age, income, and location, which can be used to create targeted marketing strategies.

Behavioral analysis, on the other hand, entails comprehending the customer’s decision-making process for the purchase, including the steps taken, information sources consulted, and who has the authority to make the final decision. By understanding these components, businesses can better cater to their customer’s needs and preferences, ultimately leading to success.

Conducting an Effective Customer Analysis

An effective customer analysis involves a thorough research process that focuses on customer pain points, goals, and insights on what influences their buying decisions. This process begins with identifying your target market, which is crucial in ensuring a successful business.

By analyzing customer demographics and examining customer behavior and purchasing patterns, businesses can tailor their marketing strategies and product offerings to address the specific needs and preferences of their target customers.

Identifying Your Target Market

Identifying your target market is the first step in conducting a comprehensive customer analysis. By precisely defining the target customer your company is serving, you can focus your marketing efforts and resources on the most profitable customer segments.

Small businesses with 10 to 50 employees located in large metropolitan cities on the West Coast can benefit from having a business plan. This plan should provide clear guidance and instructions for the successful execution of tasks, including target market analysis.

With a clear understanding of your target market, you’ll be better equipped to develop a targeted marketing strategy that resonates with your audience and drives sales.

Analyzing Customer Demographics

Analyzing customer demographics is crucial for tailoring marketing strategies to specific customer groups. By examining your current customer base, you can determine which demographics to focus on for future marketing efforts. Demographic information, such as:

• education levels

A comprehensive view of the messaging that is most likely to appeal to customers and the marketing channels that are most effective in reaching them can be achieved when customers seek multiple bids, as it provides valuable insights into their preferences and decision-making process.

By constructing a marketing strategy around the types of people who have already made a purchase, you can maximize the return on investment of your marketing budget.

Examining Customer Behavior and Purchasing Patterns

Analyzing customer behavior and purchasing patterns can yield valuable insights through customer behavior analysis. By monitoring customer interactions with your products and services, such as website visits, purchases, and customer reviews, you can identify customer needs and preferences and devise strategies to enhance customer retention and loyalty.

Additionally, understanding the drivers of customer decision-making is crucial for creating targeted marketing campaigns and product offerings that resonate with your target audience.

Utilizing Customer Analysis Results

Customer analysis results can be leveraged to enhance marketing strategies, drive product development and innovation, and strengthen customer retention and loyalty. By recognizing customer feedback and customer support requests, businesses can acquire advantageous insights into customer behavior and preferences, which can be utilized to provide direction to marketing and product development strategies.

In this section, we will explore how customer analysis results can be utilized to improve various aspects of your business.

Enhancing Marketing Strategies

Customer analysis results, including customer segmentation analysis, can inform targeted marketing strategies that lead to increased sales and revenue. By leveraging insights from customer demographics and behavior, businesses can create personalized marketing campaigns that resonate with their target audience. For example, a company catering to young professionals may focus its marketing efforts on social media platforms, while a company targeting older adults may prioritize direct mail or email campaigns.

By tailoring marketing strategies based on customer analysis, businesses can optimize their marketing efforts and achieve greater success.

Driving Product Development and Innovation

Insights from customer analysis can guide product development and innovation, ensuring that products and services meet customer needs and preferences. By understanding customer pain points and objectives, businesses can create new products and services that address these needs, resulting in increased customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Additionally, existing customer feedback can be utilized to refine existing products and services, making them more appealing to the target audience and driving business growth .

Strengthening Customer Retention and Loyalty

Understanding customer needs and preferences through customer analysis can help businesses improve customer retention and loyalty. By tailoring products and services to the specific needs and preferences of your target audience, you can enhance customer satisfaction and encourage repeat business.

Furthermore, by identifying gaps in the customer experience and optimizing touchpoints, businesses can improve the overall customer journey and nurture long-lasting relationships with their customers.

Tools and Techniques for Customer Analysis

To effectively conduct customer analysis, businesses can employ various tools and techniques, including data collection and analysis, creating buyer personas, and customer journey mapping. These methods enable businesses to gain a deeper understanding of their customers and make informed decisions regarding their products, services, and promotional activities.

In this section, we will explore the different tools and techniques that can be used in customer analysis.

Data Collection and Analysis

Data collection and analysis play a critical role in customer analysis, as they involve gathering information on customer interactions, demographics, and purchasing patterns. Businesses can utilize various methods for data collection, such as surveys, focus groups, and interviews, as well as analytics tools to track customer behavior online.

By analyzing this data through market research, businesses can identify trends, patterns, and areas for improvement, ultimately informing their marketing strategies and product development efforts.

Creating Buyer Personas

Creating buyer personas is an essential technique in customer analysis, as it helps businesses visualize their ideal customers and tailor marketing and product development strategies accordingly.

Buyer personas are fictional representations of major customer segments, taking into account factors such as:

• demographics
• professional status
• purchasing habits

By developing accurate and detailed buyer personas, businesses can ensure that their marketing campaigns and product offerings resonate with their target audience, leading to increased sales and customer loyalty.

Customer Journey Mapping

Customer journey mapping is an invaluable tool in customer analysis, as it enables businesses to identify gaps in the customer experience and optimize touchpoints to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. A customer journey map is a visual representation of the stages a customer goes through when interacting with a business, from initial awareness to loyalty.

By understanding the customer journey and identifying areas for improvement, businesses can enhance the overall customer experience and nurture long-lasting relationships with their customers.

Case Study: Successful Customer Analysis in Action

A prime example of successful customer analysis in action is the Buxton case study. Buxton, a leading provider of customer analytics and consulting services, utilized customer analysis techniques to help businesses expand, grow, and market themselves more efficiently. Through a combination of data collection, buyer persona creation, and customer journey mapping, Buxton was able to gain a deep understanding of their client’s customers and develop targeted marketing campaigns that resonated with their audience.

As a result, their current customers experienced increased sales, customer loyalty, and overall business growth and success.

In conclusion, customer analysis is a powerful tool that can drive business growth and success by helping companies understand their target customers, tailor their marketing strategies, and develop products and services that meet customer needs and preferences.

By utilizing tools and techniques such as data collection and analysis, buyer persona creation, and customer journey mapping, businesses can gain valuable insights into their customers and make informed decisions that lead to increased sales, customer loyalty, and overall business success. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to unlock your business’s full potential – start conducting customer analysis today and reap the rewards.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a customer analysis in a business plan.

A customer analysis is an essential part of a business plan, which identifies target customers and outlines how a product or service meets their needs.

It helps businesses understand their customers better, so they can create marketing strategies that are tailored to their target audience. It also helps them identify potential opportunities and threats in the market.

By understanding their customers, businesses can better serve their customers.

What is an example of customer analysis?

Customer analysis involves understanding consumers’ behaviors through observation and measurement of analytics, analyzing brand recognition and awareness, understanding how customers feel about the competition, and testing different customer acquisition approaches.

This process helps businesses better understand their target audience and develop strategies to reach them. It also helps to identify potential opportunities for growth and improvement. By understanding customer behavior, businesses can create more effective marketing campaigns and better serve their customers.

What should be included in a customer analysis?

A customer analysis should include details on the customer’s demographics, professional status, purchasing habits, values and goals, influences, and challenges. It should also assess their buying patterns, product usage history, spending habits, loyalty metrics, and more to gain an understanding of their wants, needs, pain points, and objectives.

What is the primary objective of customer analysis?

The primary objective of customer analysis is to recognize potential customers, prioritize customer segments, and inform marketing and product development strategies.

By understanding customer needs and preferences, businesses can create targeted marketing campaigns and product offerings that are tailored to the needs of their target audience. This helps to ensure that the company is reaching the right people.

How can customer analysis help improve marketing strategies?

Customer analysis provides valuable insights into customer’s needs and preferences, enabling businesses to create tailored marketing strategies that drive sales. It is an essential tool for effective marketing.

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Recognizing Your Customer’s Purpose is Key to Growth

• Gene Cornfield

Define, design, and deliver purpose-led customer experiences.

Growth strategies that are purpose-led, customer-centric, experience-driven, data/AI-enabled, and technology-scaled require new mindsets far more than new toolsets or skillsets. This transformation — of culture, operations, and outcomes — begins with a broader consideration of three levels of customer purpose. First, big-P purpose describes the company’s role in the world. Second, medium-P purpose depicts its role in the lives of customers. Finally, small-p encompasses all the intents, needs, questions, or desired outcomes that might compel a customer to engage your company. The author offers four ways to define, design, and deliver purpose-led experiences.

Many organizations spent 2020 scrambling to catch up on decades-old trends, such as working from home, online commerce, and virtual events. What had long been a priority had suddenly become the priority, and too many businesses found themselves unprepared. As things open up in 2021, other pre-pandemic trends are revealing their importance to post-pandemic success, including purpose, customer experience, and their combined role in driving growth.

It now seems every month a company previously known for dispassionate dedication to profit and efficiency launches a new and emotive purpose statement. Though these meticulously crafted declarations are on-trend with stakeholder capitalism , companies that don’t go beyond inspiring oohs and aahs of solidarity among customers, employees, and shareholders may be setting themselves up for a negative backlash — and missing their most significant transformational growth opportunity.

Besides being laudable and increasingly necessary, traditional approaches to profit through purpose — such as Patagonia’s 1% for the planet and Toms Shoes’ buy-a-pair-give-a-pair — have proven to be a good place to start for many. Consider Bank of the West, a subsidiary of BNP Paribas (full disclosure: both Bank of the West and BNP Paribas are Accenture clients). In 2018, the leadership team committed to un-funding industries like fracking, coal, arctic drilling, and tobacco; prioritized funding of renewable energy; and directly connected their financial products to specific causes. In the eight months that followed, according to company CMO Ben Stuart, they saw new customer growth of 37% — the strongest in their history — and sustained growth of 25% or greater.

Opportunities for Midsize Businesses in 2021

But to fully harness purpose-fueled growth, it’s important to consider purpose more broadly than adopting social or environmental causes, sustainability practices, or pithy purpose statements. Companies significantly outperform competitors on growth, profitability, differentiation, category leadership, and long-term loyalty of customers and employees by considering three levels of purpose — company, brand, and customer purpose — and then optimizing their products, people, processes, policies, technology, operations, and metrics to deliver experiences aligned with those purposes. Here’s how to start.

Consider Three Levels of Purpose

Big-p purpose (company).

Big-P purpose describes the company’s role in the world. Communications giant Verizon’s purpose is, “We create the networks that move the world forward.” (Verizon is also an Accenture client.) These nine words describe not just what Verizon does, but why they do it. Employees can see the higher impact of their work, and customers can see a reason to choose Verizon.

Company purposes best galvanize customers when the stated purpose reflects one the company shares with them, not just what the company does for them. For example, my firm, Accenture’s, purpose is “to deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity.” This describes what our people and clients do together every day. It helps guide the decisions and actions of millions of employees (ours and our clients’) around the globe.

Medium-P Purpose (Brand)

Whereas big-P purpose depicts a company’s role in the world, medium-P purpose depicts its role in the lives of customers . Companies with only one brand may opt for company and brand purpose to be one and the same. Or they may opt to have distinct company and brand purposes, especially if they have multiple divisions serving different customer needs.

For example, Kimberly-Clark (also an Accenture client) has a distinct purpose for Huggies , its baby diaper brand: “Helping to navigate the unknowns of babyhood.” This statement perfectly reflects the unmet, perhaps unarticulated, needs of Huggies’ customers, which go beyond just diapers. And with this statement, first-time parents might feel Huggies understands them, leading to their confidence in — and ultimately choosing — Huggies. But this purpose would not fit Kimberly-Clark’s other brands like Kleenex, Cottonelle, Depends, or Kotex because those brands play a different role in the lives of customers.

Importantly, purpose statements like those above that elevate a company’s motives also elevate customer expectations. Purposes stated are promises made. So if a company doesn’t change how it operates to align with its stated purpose, it leaves itself vulnerable to accusations of virtue-signaling, green-washing, or generally being full of it if their actions don’t live up to their words. And with the velocity and reach of social media, company leaders can find themselves fighting a PR firestorm before they even know what caused it.

Many have learned this the hard way, including airlines, banks, drug companies, retailers, and social media companies themselves. Not only did their share prices and revenue suffer — which could be made up in future quarters — they also lost customer trust, brand equity, credibility, and future revenue potential, which might never be fully regained. Such injuries might have been avoided if those companies better aligned their practices and policies with their purposes and promises.

Small-P Purpose (Customer)

Despite its name, small-p purpose has by far the biggest impact on business performance and market leadership. Customer purposes are all the intents, needs, questions, or desired outcomes that might compel a customer to engage your company. Think anything that starts with something like, “I need…,” “I want…,” “How can I…,” or “Can you…”

These many needs comprise your customer purpose portfolio . It’s more important that teams have a deep understanding of your customer purpose portfolio than they do of your company’s product portfolio. Why? Because every time customers achieve their purpose, they generate value for whichever company enabled them to do so. That value may be in the form of revenue, share of spend, loyalty, advocacy, lifetime value, etc.

Every purpose in your customer purpose portfolio is the endpoint of a modern customer journey . Every purpose is the thing around which an experience is designed. Every purpose reflects an outcome that, every time it’s achieved by a customer, generates value for your business. A growing number of companies measure how well they’re enabling customers to achieve purposes — and increasing performance on business KPIs as a result — using Customer Performance Indicators (CPIs).

Define, Design, and Deliver Purpose-Led Experiences

Like purpose, another poorly defined business trend of rapidly growing importance is customer experience. Ask most leaders to describe what that means, and odds are “look and feel” will be mentioned. But experience isn’t how websites or apps or stores look and feel; experience is how customers react and feel when pursuing a purpose important to them.

If the company has done a good job of understanding a customer purpose and is making it easy for them to achieve it, customers will experience something like excitement, anticipation, joy, confidence, peace of mind, or satisfaction. If the company is not making it easy for customers to achieve their purpose, they’ll experience something like confusion, frustration, exasperation, or anger.

The veneer of pixels applied across digital touchpoints or printed on physical items — no matter how pretty — has little influence on what customers experience. What counts is whether customers can easily achieve their intended purpose.

Because your organization’s growth and success ultimately rely on customers achieving their purposes, start by understanding what matters most to them — in the world, in their lives, and in the specific context of what you provide — using exploratory ethnographic research (individual open-ended discussions, observation sessions, or customer journaling). Insights from that research will inform the creation of your company purpose, brand purpose, customer purpose portfolio, and CPIs, as well as new products and experiences.

Come Up with and Prioritize New Experience Concepts

Use the customer purpose portfolio you identified through research to come up with new experience concepts that enable customers to achieve their priority purposes. Generate as many ideas as possible, deferring judgement until you have at least 20–100 concepts to consider. Evaluate each individually based on potential impact for customers (CPIs) and for your business (KPIs).

Then identify the capabilities or dependencies each concept requires (data, technical, operational, organizational, regulatory, etc.) relative to your company’s current state. Many concepts will rely on the same capabilities or dependencies. So analyze the collective customer/business impact and the cost/complexity of realizing multiple concepts with shared capabilities/dependencies in order to prioritize them. (The most innovative and valuable concepts are often the most difficult or expensive; considering them with others that share the same dependencies helps rationalize the business case for them all.)

This generates several important outputs, including:

• New customer journeys designed around customer purpose, which are differentiated by the experience concepts they include.
• A future-state experience blueprint, a master view that synthesizes your new customer journeys, top experience concepts, required capabilities, CPI/KPI impact, and other key attributes all in the context of a future customer lifecycle aligned to customer purpose and business value.
• A staged investment and realization plan that provides a roadmap of when each concept and capability will be implemented (that balances impact and costs) and optimizes how internal groups across functions will orchestrate work over time to iteratively realize the future state.

These and related artifacts help focus employees and investments on what matters most to customers and the business. They enable initial value to be generated quickly and then successively each quarter as new capabilities and concepts are launched. This continually increases company differentiation and value generation — for customers, shareholders, communities, and any causes with which you’re aligned.

Align Employee Roles and Goals

The job of every team and employee and how their day-to-day work aligns with your stated purposes should be documented, communicated, and reflected in training, ongoing operating practices, and policies. Teams and employees should also be accountable for one or more metrics that reflect how their work has contributed to the realization of those purposes (CPIs can help here).

While employees often bristle at rigidly defined job descriptions or having their performance measured, seeing their work as something more than generating company profits or their own paycheck provides a greater sense of meaning that impacts employee retention and customer perceptions, as well as metrics like satisfaction, loyalty, and lifetime value.

Assemble Teams to Deliver on Customer Purposes

Organizing work by function (marketing, sales, service, etc.) or channels (web, email, search, stores, call centers, etc.) will get in the way of success. Instead, assemble teams around specific customer purposes or expressive customer segments . Have people from product marketing (potentially from multiple products that align to the same customer purpose or segment), sales, and service join experience designers and developers; content architects and authors; experts in digital media, email, and ecommerce; and representatives from other areas like stores or third-party distribution to operate as a single team.

Each cross-functional team owns the outcome represented by the purpose/customer around which they’ve aligned and is accountable for the relevant CPIs and KPIs. They develop a deep expertise in the purpose and customer segment(s) that share it and the similarities and differences among them. Teams define customer journeys that transcend channels and organizational boundaries as needed. They collaborate using agile methods to design, build, operate, and optimize experiences and content to enable as many customers as possible to complete their journeys and achieve their purpose — generating value for the business.

Transform Operations for Delivering New Experiences

Most company operations are optimized for efficiency, which often causes friction with customers or inhibits employees from delivering better experiences — all to the detriment of growth. You’ll need to rewire operating processes and technology platforms to scale your systems’ and employees’ ability to deliver the experiences on your blueprint.

Use data and artificial intelligence to tailor and personalize journeys and experiences to each customer’s preferences at scale. Accelerate progress and reduce cost through “headless” technology architectures and cloud platforms. So rather than being optimized for efficiency at the expense of growth, you’ll be optimized for growth as efficiently as possible.

Growth strategies that are purpose-led, customer-centric, experience-driven, data/AI-enabled, and technology-scaled require new mindsets far more than new toolsets or skillsets. But this transformation — of culture, operations, and outcomes — begins with a broader consideration of purpose. One that focuses not only on why you do business, but how . When you do that, customers will be happy to be your growth engine.

• Gene Cornfield is Global Lead for the High-Tech Industry at Accenture Interactive. He also leads Accenture’s global cross-industry Chief Marketing Officer peer group.

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Table of contents

How to create a customer success plan (templates & examples).

Picture this: you have a strategic and comprehensive blueprint explaining how to organize personalized customer onboarding, provide continuous support, and plan for regular feature updates based on client feedback. This doesn’t just help you win clients but also helps maintain deep, lasting partnerships with them. This blueprint is nothing but a well-crafted customer success plan. 

In businesses, particularly SaaS/B2B businesses, merely offering a top-notch product or service isn’t enough. The real differentiator is the quality of support and the value-added experiences you provide your clients. A robust customer success plan is essential in this landscape. It goes beyond mere transactional interactions and cultivates genuine and meaningful relationships with your clients.

Thus, whether you’re a small business owner, a manager in a large corporation, or somewhere in between, understanding how to develop an effective customer success plan is crucial. And that’s precisely what we’re going to explore in this blog. 

We’ll cover all you need to create a plan that resonates with your customers and aligns with your business goals. So let’s dive in. 

Table of Contents

What is a customer success plan.

A customer success plan is essentially a detailed plan designed to ensure that your customers not only achieve their desired outcomes using your product/service but also receive a consistently positive experience throughout their journey with your business. This plan is crucial in building and nurturing customer relationships.

For example, imagine a cloud service provider working with a mid-sized e-commerce company. In their customer success plan, the customer success manager (CSM) of the SaaS vender identifies that the e-commerce company aims to improve its website’s loading speed and data security. The cloud provider then works closely with them to implement a customized solution: optimizing server configurations for faster response times and integrating advanced security protocols to protect customer data. This targeted approach not only helps the e-commerce company achieve its specific goals but also solidifies the cloud provider’s role as a vital partner in their business growth.

So, a comprehensive customer success plan typically includes the following elements:

Needless to say, it’s not just about having these elements in place but about weaving them seamlessly into interactions with your customers. The customer success plan should be a living document, adaptable to each customer’s journey. For instance, if a software company notices a client struggling with a new feature, their plan might include proactive outreach with additional training resources, thereby preventing frustration and enhancing the user experience.

Recommended read: Why Customer Success is a Crucial Function For Your SaaS Startup

Why Should You Create A Customer Success Plan?

Creating a customer success plan is a smart move for any business looking to flourish. It’s much more than just pushing sales; it’s about crafting a journey where customers feel valued and supported at every step. Here’s why it’s so important:

Keep Customers Coming Back: With an effective customer success plan, you’re more likely to see your customers return . It’s similar to how you might feel at a café where the staff remembers your favorite order. This personal touch makes you more inclined to keep returning. Similarly, when a business understands and meets its clients’ needs, these clients are more likely to stick around.

Increases Customer Satisfaction: Imagine you buy a new smartphone, and the company helps you set it up and shows you some useful features (through in-product notifications) you didn’t know about. This extra help can make you really happy with your purchase. That’s what a customer success plan does – it helps your customers feel valued and satisfied.

Builds Stronger Customer Loyalty: When customers feel taken care of, they’re not just happy; they become loyal users. For example, if a fitness app not only tracks your workouts but also offers personalized fitness tips, you’re  more likely to recommend it to your friends.

Reduces Customer Churn: If customers leave your service or stop buying your products, a strong customer success plan can identify why this is happening and address it. For instance, an online learning platform notices that students are dropping out. A good customer success plan would give direction to the customer success team to take feedback from these students to understand the reason for dropping out. Through this, they may find out that students want more personalized courses. Then, the business can reach out with more tailored learning support to keep them engaged .

How To Create A Customer Success Plan?

Creating an effective customer success plan can be a game-changer for any business. Here’s a step-by-step guide to creating one suited for your business:

Step 1: Identify Customer Goals

Start by having conversations with your customers to understand their expectations and aspirations.  For example, if you’re a digital marketing agency, your client’s goal could be increasing their online sales. You can also collect this information by sending out surveys, asking them about their target audience, desired growth metrics (like website traffic or conversion rates),and specific campaign goals.

Step 2: Map Out Customer Journeys

Break down the customer experience into stages such as – discovery, purchase, onboarding, and ongoing usage. For example, for a subscription service like a streaming platform, this would involve understanding how users discover shows, sign up, navigate the platform, and interact with various other elements on the app. Identify the potential pain points and opportunities to enhance the experience at each stage.

Recommended read: A Detailed Guide to Customer Journey Mapping

Step 3: Set Actionable Objectives

Based on the customer journey, set specific and measurable objectives. For instance, for a fitness tracker software, this might mean ensuring that atleast 90% of new customers receive a personalized workout plan within 24 hours of purchasing the tracker. They can additionally aim for atleast  75% customer engagement with these plans.

Step 4: Tailor Plans to Different Customers

Segment your customers based on factors like industry, purchase power, or usage patterns and create offerings accordingly. A cloud storage provider, for instance, might have different offerings for individual users versus corporate clients, with tailored communication and support offerings for each group.

Step 5: Regular Review and Adaptation

Establish a regular schedule for reviewing the customer success plan’s effectiveness using feedback, usage data, and performance metrics. For example, a boutique hotel might analyze guest feedback and booking patterns every quarter to adjust its services and offerings, ensuring they continually meet or exceed guest expectations.

7 Customer Success Plan Templates

Here are seven customer success plan templates tailored for different business scenarios:

1. High-Value Client Onboarding

Onboarding high-value clients smoothly is key to establishing a strong, long-lasting business relationship. This process not only sets the tone for your engagement but also impacts how quickly and successfully your client can use your services. 

Here’s a focused approach to ensure premium clients have a seamless and satisfying start:

Objective: Smooth onboarding for premium clients. Goals : Client satisfaction with the onboarding process, rapid adoption of services by the clients. KPIs: Client feedback scores, duration to complete onboarding. Engagement Strategies: Customized onboarding plans, dedicated support, regular progress check-ins. Process: 1. Create a Personalized Onboarding Plan: Develop a unique plan for each high-value client, tailored to their specific needs and goals. Identify the goals during the initial calls and before the onboarding process.  2. Assign a Dedicated Account Manager: Provide each premium client with a dedicated point of contact. This account manager should be knowledgeable about the client’s business and needs. 3. Schedule Regular Check-Ins and Progress Updates: Set up frequent meetings or calls to take updates on the client’s onboarding progress and address any concerns. 4. Provide Customized Training and Resources: Offer training sessions and resources that are customized to the client’s business to help them get the most out of the product/service. 

By carefully executing these steps, you can ensure that your high-value clients are onboarded effectively, leading to a more satisfied and engaged client base.

2. Enhancing the Customer Support Experience

Providing exceptional customer support throughout the customer lifecycle is an important element. When done correctly, It can significantly improve customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.

Here’s a framework to enhance your business’s customer support experience:

Objective: Elevate the customer support experience. Goals: Reduce response time, increase resolution efficiency. KPIs: Average response time, customer satisfaction score post-support, customer effort score Engagement Strategies: Streamlined support processes, regular training for support staff, implementing customer feedback. Process: 1. Optimize Support Channels: Provide multi-channel support to your customers via email, chat, or phone so that they can easily reach out to you. 2. Make use of a shared inbox: A shared inbox gives complete visibility into customer queries and their statuses. Agents can also easily collaborate on queries to resolve them faster. 3. Train Support Team: Regularly train your support team on product features and soft skills. 4. Implement Customer Feedback: Use customer feedback to improve the support experience continually. 5. Monitor Support Performance: Keep track of support metrics and make necessary adjustments to improve service quality.

By focusing on these key areas in your customer support, you can ensure customers get a prompt resolution whenever they reach out to you for help.

3. Handling Negative Feedback

Handling negative feedback effectively is crucial for maintaining customer trust and improving your services. Here’s a detailed template to manage such feedback:

Objective: Effectively resolve complaints. Goals: Improve resolution rate, restore customer trust. KPIs: Time taken to resolve issues, customer satisfaction post-resolution. Engagement Strategies: Empathetic and timely responses, offering resolutions or compensations. Process: 1. Establish a Clear Process for Receiving and Responding to Feedback: Implement a system where feedback is easily submitted and tracked, like a dedicated email address or a feedback form on your website. 2. Train Staff in Conflict Resolution and Customer Empathy: Conduct regular training sessions for your team to handle complaints empathetically and effectively. Include role-plays and discussions of real-life scenarios to make the sessions enriching. 3. Offer Solutions or Compensation Where Appropriate: Develop guidelines for offering solutions or compensation to dissatisfied customers. This could be a refund, a discount on future purchases, or a free service. 4. Learn from Feedback to Prevent Future Issues: Analyze the feedback to identify any recurring problems or areas for improvement. Use this information to make changes in your operations or service. 

By following these steps, you can turn negative feedback into an opportunity for growth and enhance your customers’ overall experience with your brand.

4. Cross-Selling to Existing Customers

Cross-selling or upselling to existing customers is an effective strategy to enhance sales and deepen customer relationships. It involves identifying additional products or services that your current customers might need or enjoy. 

Here’s how you can implement this customer success strategy:

Objective: Increase sales through cross-selling by [X]% Goals: Enhance customer purchase frequency and variety. KPIs: Cross-sell conversion rate, average customer lifetime value. Engagement Strategies: Personalized marketing campaigns, analyzing customer purchase history for targeted offers. Process:Analyze 1. Customer Purchase History and Preferences: Examine conversation history and past purchases to understand customer preferences. This becomes relatively easy if you have a centralized hub that stores all your customer information. 2. Identify Products or Services That Pair Well: Look for items that naturally complement what the customer has already bought. A gardening supplies store, for example, could suggest garden tools to someone who already purchased flower seeds from their store. 3. Create Targeted Marketing Campaigns : Develop marketing campaigns that target these customers with personalized suggestions. This could be in the form of targeted newsletters or SMS to your customers. 4. Measure Success and Adjust Strategy as Needed: Track the performance of your cross-selling efforts and make adjustments based on customer response. 

By following these steps, businesses can effectively increase sales while providing value to their customers through relevant and thoughtful product suggestions.

5. Improving Customer Retention

Retaining customers is crucial for sustainable business growth. It involves understanding and addressing your existing customers’ needs to keep them engaged and satisfied with your services.

Here’s a detailed strategy playbook that could work for your business:

Objective: Increase customer retention rate by [X]%. Goals : Boost customer satisfaction and loyalty. KPIs: Customer retention rate, repeat purchase rate. Engagement Strategies: Regular customer satisfaction surveys, loyalty programs, and personalized offers. Process: 1. Gather Customer Feedback Regularly: Use surveys and feedback tools to understand customer satisfaction and areas for improvement. You can also collect NPS score from your clients during annual or quarterly business review. 2. Offer Tailored Rewards: Create loyalty programs or special offers based on customer purchase history or preferences. 3. Engage Through Personalized Communication: Keep in touch with customers through personalized emails, newsletters, or social media updates. 4. Evaluate and Adapt: Continuously monitor retention metrics and adjust strategies to improve customer loyalty.

Implementing these steps in your customer retention strategy can significantly elevate your business’s ability to keep customers engaged and satisfied.

6. Recovering from a Service Outage or Product Issue:

Effective management of a service outage or product issue is crucial to maintain trust and minimize the impact on customer satisfaction.

Objective: Successfully manage and recover from a service outage or product issue. Goals: Minimize customer inconvenience, maintain trust and transparency. KPIs: resolution time, customer satisfaction post-issue resolution. Engagement Strategies: Timely communication, direct outreach to affected customers, compensation offers where appropriate. Process: 1. Immediate Notification: Inform affected customers as soon as possible about the issue and expected resolution time. 2. Provide Regular Updates: Keep customers informed about the progress in resolving the issue. 3. Offer Compensation or Benefits: Depending on the severity of the issue, offer appropriate compensation, such as discounts, extended service, or refunds. 4. Gather Feedback Post-Resolution: After resolving the issue, seek customer feedback to understand their experience and to improve future incident handling.

This scenario focuses on how businesses can effectively address and navigate through service disruptions or product issues, ensuring customer trust and satisfaction are maintained.

7. Handling Seasonal Demand Peaks in Retail

Retail businesses often experience seasonal peaks, and managing these effectively is crucial for maximizing sales and customer satisfaction.

Objective: Efficiently manage increased customer demand during peak seasons. Goals: Optimize inventory, maintain customer service quality. KPIs: Sales volume during peak seasons, customer wait times, inventory turnover rate. Engagement Strategies: Timely promotions, staff training for peak seasons, improved inventory management. Process: 1. Forecast Demand: Analyze sales data from previous years to predict inventory needs. 2. Train Additional Staff: Hire and train temporary staff especially in sales team in advance to handle the increased workload. 3. Launch Timely Promotions: Plan and execute marketing campaigns and promotions well in advance of the peak season. 4. Monitor and Adapt: Continuously monitor sales and customer feedback during the season to make quick adjustments as needed.

This template focuses on strategic planning and execution required to handle the influx of customers and sales effectively during the busiest times of the retail calendar.

Top 3 Customer Success Plan Examples

Here are some real-life examples of successful customer success plans from different industries, showcasing various strategies and outcomes:

1. Amazon Web Services (AWS) – Cloud Platform

AWS has been instrumental in helping numerous businesses increase agility, reduce costs, and accelerate innovation through its cloud-based services. 

By offering a range of services , including computing, storage, and databases, AWS has demonstrated how cloud platforms can be tailored to meet the diverse needs of businesses, aiding their growth and technological advancement. 

AWS’s approach focuses on providing comprehensive cloud solutions that cater to the varied needs of different businesses. Their plan typically includes:

2. Apple – Product Company

Apple’s success can be attributed to its innovative approach and customer-centric products like the iPhone and iPad, which have revolutionized the tech industry. 

Their customer success plan is built around creating high-quality, user-friendly products and complementing them with effective marketing strategies and innovation. This approach has made Apple one of the most valuable companies globally.

Apple’s customer success plan is rooted in several key strategies that focus on customer satisfaction and loyalty:

3. Kiwi.com – Online Travel Agency

Kiwi.com, a Czech online travel agency, has become one of the top five online sellers of flight tickets in Europe. Their operations heavily rely on support operations like email communication, especially for consolidating ticket availability and prices from various partners, including airlines and travel agencies.

Their customer success plan focuses on a strong customer support strategy. Kiwi.com has been able to maintain a 100% Service Level Agreement (SLA) success rate.

Here’s how Kiwi.com’s action plan ensures a strong customer support strategy:

Read more about how Kiwi.com manages their support operations. 

Final Words

Creating a customer success plan is essential for any business focused on long-term growth. Each part of the plan –  from getting to know what your customers need, and customizing your services for them to regularly updating your strategies, plays a crucial role. These steps make sure that your customers have a positive and rewarding experience with your brand.

Another important aspect of your customer success plan is the tools you invest in. For instance, if you plan to optimize your customer service interactions, you might want to consider Hiver. 

Hiver works right inside your Gmail inbox, making it easier to manage support emails. It comes with powerful collaborative features, helping your agents work as a team and resolve issues faster. With Hiver, you can quickly assign emails, track them, and ensure that no customer query is missed. This helps in providing top-notch customer service, a vital element of any customer success plan.

Sign up for a free trial to check out its features.

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Customer Success Vs. Customer Support: A Detailed Explanation

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How to Write a Market Analysis for a Business Plan

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A lot of preparation goes into starting a business before you can open your doors to the public or launch your online store. One of your first steps should be to write a business plan . A business plan will serve as your roadmap when building your business.

Within your business plan, there’s an important section you should pay careful attention to: your market analysis. Your market analysis helps you understand your target market and how you can thrive within it.

Simply put, your market analysis shows that you’ve done your research. It also contributes to your marketing strategy by defining your target customer and researching their buying habits. Overall, a market analysis will yield invaluable data if you have limited knowledge about your market, the market has fierce competition, and if you require a business loan. In this guide, we'll explore how to conduct your own market analysis.

How to conduct a market analysis: A step-by-step guide

In your market analysis, you can expect to cover the following:

Industry outlook

Target market

Market value

Competition

Barriers to entry

Let’s dive into an in-depth look into each section:

Step 1: Define your objective

Before you begin your market analysis, it’s important to define your objective for writing a market analysis. Are you writing it for internal purposes or for external purposes?

If you were doing a market analysis for internal purposes, you might be brainstorming new products to launch or adjusting your marketing tactics. An example of an external purpose might be that you need a market analysis to get approved for a business loan .

The comprehensiveness of your market analysis will depend on your objective. If you’re preparing for a new product launch, you might focus more heavily on researching the competition. A market analysis for a loan approval would require heavy data and research into market size and growth, share potential, and pricing.

Step 2: Provide an industry outlook

An industry outlook is a general direction of where your industry is heading. Lenders want to know whether you’re targeting a growing industry or declining industry. For example, if you’re looking to sell VCRs in 2020, it’s unlikely that your business will succeed.

Starting your market analysis with an industry outlook offers a preliminary view of the market and what to expect in your market analysis. When writing this section, you'll want to include:

Market size

Are you chasing big markets or are you targeting very niche markets? If you’re targeting a niche market, are there enough customers to support your business and buy your product?

Product life cycle

If you develop a product, what will its life cycle look like? Lenders want an overview of how your product will come into fruition after it’s developed and launched. In this section, you can discuss your product’s:

Research and development

Projected growth

How do you see your company performing over time? Calculating your year-over-year growth will help you and lenders see how your business has grown thus far. Calculating your projected growth shows how your business will fare in future projected market conditions.

Step 3: Determine your target market

This section of your market analysis is dedicated to your potential customer. Who is your ideal target customer? How can you cater your product to serve them specifically?

Don’t make the mistake of wanting to sell your product to everybody. Your target customer should be specific. For example, if you’re selling mittens, you wouldn’t want to market to warmer climates like Hawaii. You should target customers who live in colder regions. The more nuanced your target market is, the more information you’ll have to inform your business and marketing strategy.

With that in mind, your target market section should include the following points:

Demographics

This is where you leave nothing to mystery about your ideal customer. You want to know every aspect of your customer so you can best serve them. Dedicate time to researching the following demographics:

Income level

Create a customer persona

Creating a customer persona can help you better understand your customer. It can be easier to market to a person than data on paper. You can give this persona a name, background, and job. Mold this persona into your target customer.

What are your customer’s pain points? How do these pain points influence how they buy products? What matters most to them? Why do they choose one brand over another?

Research and supporting material

Information without data are just claims. To add credibility to your market analysis, you need to include data. Some methods for collecting data include:

Target group surveys

Focus groups

Reading reviews

Feedback surveys

You can also consult resources online. For example, the U.S. Census Bureau can help you find demographics in calculating your market share. The U.S. Department of Commerce and the U.S. Small Business Administration also offer general data that can help you research your target industry.

Step 4: Calculate market value

You can use either top-down analysis or bottom-up analysis to calculate an estimate of your market value.

A top-down analysis tends to be the easier option of the two. It requires for you to calculate the entire market and then estimate how much of a share you expect your business to get. For example, let’s assume your target market consists of 100,000 people. If you’re optimistic and manage to get 1% of that market, you can expect to make 1,000 sales.

A bottom-up analysis is more data-driven and requires more research. You calculate the individual factors of your business and then estimate how high you can scale them to arrive at a projected market share. Some factors to consider when doing a bottom-up analysis include:

Where products are sold

Who your competition is

The price per unit

How many consumers you expect to reach

The average amount a customer would buy over time

While a bottom-up analysis requires more data than a top-down analysis, you can usually arrive at a more accurate calculation.

Step 5: Get to know your competition

Before you start a business, you need to research the level of competition within your market. Are there certain companies getting the lion’s share of the market? How can you position yourself to stand out from the competition?

There are two types of competitors that you should be aware of: direct competitors and indirect competitors.

Direct competitors are other businesses who sell the same product as you. If you and the company across town both sell apples, you are direct competitors.

An indirect competitor sells a different but similar product to yours. If that company across town sells oranges instead, they are an indirect competitor. Apples and oranges are different but they still target a similar market: people who eat fruits.

Also, here are some questions you want to answer when writing this section of your market analysis:

What are your competitor’s strengths?

What are your competitor’s weaknesses?

How can you cover your competitor’s weaknesses in your own business?

How can you solve the same problems better or differently than your competitors?

How can you leverage technology to better serve your customers?

How big of a threat are your competitors if you open your business?

Step 6: Identify your barriers

Writing a market analysis can help you identify some glaring barriers to starting your business. Researching these barriers will help you avoid any costly legal or business mistakes down the line. Some entry barriers to address in your marketing analysis include:

Technology: How rapid is technology advancing and can it render your product obsolete within the next five years?

Branding: You need to establish your brand identity to stand out in a saturated market.

Cost of entry: Startup costs, like renting a space and hiring employees, are expensive. Also, specialty equipment often comes with hefty price tags. (Consider researching equipment financing to help finance these purchases.)

Location: You need to secure a prime location if you’re opening a physical store.

Competition: A market with fierce competition can be a steep uphill battle (like attempting to go toe-to-toe with Apple or Amazon).

Step 7: Know the regulations

When starting a business, it’s your responsibility to research governmental and state business regulations within your market. Some regulations to keep in mind include (but aren’t limited to):

Employment and labor laws

Advertising

Environmental regulations

If you’re a newer entrepreneur and this is your first business, this part can be daunting so you might want to consult with a business attorney. A legal professional will help you identify the legal requirements specific to your business. You can also check online legal help sites like LegalZoom or Rocket Lawyer.

Tips when writing your market analysis

We wouldn’t be surprised if you feel overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information needed in a market analysis. Keep in mind, though, this research is key to launching a successful business. You don’t want to cut corners, but here are a few tips to help you out when writing your market analysis:

Use visual aids

Nobody likes 30 pages of nothing but text. Using visual aids can break up those text blocks, making your market analysis more visually appealing. When discussing statistics and metrics, charts and graphs will help you better communicate your data.

Include a summary

If you’ve ever read an article from an academic journal, you’ll notice that writers include an abstract that offers the reader a preview.

Use this same tactic when writing your market analysis. It will prime the reader of your market highlights before they dive into the hard data.

Get to the point

It’s better to keep your market analysis concise than to stuff it with fluff and repetition. You’ll want to present your data, analyze it, and then tie it back into how your business can thrive within your target market.

Revisit your market analysis regularly

Markets are always changing and it's important that your business changes with your target market. Revisiting your market analysis ensures that your business operations align with changing market conditions. The best businesses are the ones that can adapt.

Why should you write a market analysis?

Your market analysis helps you look at factors within your market to determine if it’s a good fit for your business model. A market analysis will help you:

1. Learn how to analyze the market need

Markets are always shifting and it’s a good idea to identify current and projected market conditions. These trends will help you understand the size of your market and whether there are paying customers waiting for you. Doing a market analysis helps you confirm that your target market is a lucrative market.

2. Learn about your customers

The best way to serve your customer is to understand them. A market analysis will examine your customer’s buying habits, pain points, and desires. This information will aid you in developing a business that addresses those points.

3. Get approved for a business loan

Starting a business, especially if it’s your first one, requires startup funding. A good first step is to apply for a business loan with your bank or other financial institution.

A thorough market analysis shows that you’re professional, prepared, and worth the investment from lenders. This preparation inspires confidence within the lender that you can build a business and repay the loan.

4. Beat the competition

Your research will offer valuable insight and certain advantages that the competition might not have. For example, thoroughly understanding your customer’s pain points and desires will help you develop a superior product or service than your competitors. If your business is already up and running, an updated market analysis can upgrade your marketing strategy or help you launch a new product.

Final thoughts

There is a saying that the first step to cutting down a tree is to sharpen an axe. In other words, preparation is the key to success. In business, preparation increases the chances that your business will succeed, even in a competitive market.

The market analysis section of your business plan separates the entrepreneurs who have done their homework from those who haven’t. Now that you’ve learned how to write a market analysis, it’s time for you to sharpen your axe and grow a successful business. And keep in mind, if you need help crafting your business plan, you can always turn to business plan software or a free template to help you stay organized.

This article originally appeared on JustBusiness, a subsidiary of NerdWallet.

On a similar note...

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Customer success plan templates, share this article.

The profitability and longevity of your business depend largely on your customers being able to achieve their goals with your product. To help them do that, you have to anticipate their questions and challenges, and offer answers and solutions. This is known as customer success. 

Unlike customer support which aims to resolve customers’ short-term issues, customer success caters to customers for the long term. This involves identifying the identical elements in each customer’s lifecycle, which makes it easy to predict your customers’ needs and take a preventative approach to ensure successful product usage. 

Customer success, while essential, can be hard to do, especially if you have many customers. However, documenting the steps your customer success reps/managers make helps you ensure that each customer derives value from your product. 

In this article, we’ve created some customer success plan templates you can use to get started. You’ll also learn why structured planning is important in customer success, the best practices for using customer success plan templates, and some additional resources/tools for customer success planning. 

Skip ahead:

​Understanding customer success plan templates

​types of customer success plan templates, ​best practices for using customer success plan templates, ​additional resources and tools for customer success planning, ​boost customer satisfaction with customer success plan templates .

Structured planning in customer success is the systematic and organized approach you can take to anticipate, meet, and exceed customer needs and expectations. It involves developing a clear roadmap to ensure that customers derive maximum value from your product or service throughout their entire journey.

This roadmap is called a customer success plan — a tool that outlines the actions your customer success reps/manager has to take to develop long-term relationships with your customers and help them reach their goals. 

Customer success plans play a pivotal role in ensuring customer satisfaction, building long-term relationships, reducing churn, increasing upsell and cross-sell opportunities, and boosting net revenue generation . Documenting customer success actions in these plans helps:

• Customer success reps understand the customers’ journeys, preferences, and unique challenges. This understanding is crucial for providing personalized and effective support;
• Prevent the loss of critical institutional information when employees leave or move to different roles;
• Maintain consistency in customer interactions. When different reps handle the same customer or similar issues, having a documented history ensures that the approach and information shared are consistent;
• Team members collaborate smoothly with one another. If multiple reps are working with the same customer, a documented history allows for seamless handovers and ensures that everyone is on the same page;
• Ensure that the customer success team can efficiently manage a larger number of accounts without sacrificing the quality of interactions;
• Provide new customer success hires with insights into how previous situations were handled and offer a foundation for developing their own customer interaction skills;
• CSMs assess how effectively reps are addressing customer needs, meeting goals, and adhering to established processes; 
• CSMs identify patterns, common issues, and areas for improvement. This allows them to refine processes, update training materials, and enhance overall customer success strategies.

Customer success plans are applicable to many business instances, including customer onboarding/offboarding, customer reactivation, and product renewals, to mention a few. Using customer success plan templates makes it easy to customize a plan for each unique scenario. With templates, you can:

• Clearly define your customers’ goals and objectives in using your product or service; 
• Identify specific milestones that indicate progress toward achieving your customers’ goals; 
• Define success criteria to measure the effectiveness of your product or service;
• Outline the specific actions your customer success team will take to reach the defined milestones;
• Establish a communication plan that helps you check in regularly with your customers to address their concerns and gather insights;
• Define key performance indicators (KPIs) to track and measure success;
• Monitor metrics related to customer satisfaction, product usage, and other relevant factors.

Here’s a breakdown of the different types of customer success plan templates you can use to help your customers derive maximum value from your product/service: 

Quarterly Business Review (QBR) meeting template

A Quarterly Business Review (QBR) template is a structured outline that helps you conduct comprehensive reviews of your performance, goals, and strategies on a quarterly basis. A well-structured QBR meeting template contains components like: 

• Client/customer information; 
• Performance metrics; 
• Challenges and solutions; 
• Next quarter objectives;
• Action steps, etc. 

In a typical QBR, the CSM:

• Assesses the company’s overall performance against established goals and metrics;
• Reviews and adjusts strategic plans based on market changes and business performance;
• Analyzes customer feedback and discusses strategies for enhancing customer satisfaction; 
• Reviews both open and closed support tickets over the last quarter;
• Evaluates financial health, revenue growth, and cost management;
• Recognizes and celebrates individual and team achievements; 
• Set clear and measurable goals for the upcoming quarter that align with the company’s vision;
• Ensure alignment and coordination between different departments and teams;
• Discuss employee feedback and strategies for enhancing team engagement and morale.

Quarterly success plan template

A quarterly success plan template is a structured document that outlines the goals, activities, and strategies you plan to implement over a span of three months to ensure the satisfaction and success of your customers. A good quarterly success plan template includes components like:

• Customers’ goals and objectives; 
• Key milestones (with deadlines) that indicate progress toward customers’ goals;
• Action plans to help you reach defined milestones;
• KPIs and metrics to track and measure success;
• Resources needed to help customers succeed, etc.

Here are some tips to use the quarterly success plan template effectively: 

• Tailor the template to each customer’s unique goals and needs;
• Involve key stakeholders, including the customer(s) and your team, in the creation of the success plan to ensure alignment;
• Use the plan as a living document and encourage regular updates as needed throughout the quarter;
• Regularly monitor progress and analyze metrics to assess the effectiveness of your strategies;
• Acknowledge and celebrate achievements and milestones with the customer, fostering a positive and collaborative relationship;
• Conduct a thorough review at the end of the quarter to assess overall success, identify areas for improvement, and inform future planning.

​Annual customer success plan template

An annual customer success plan template is a comprehensive document that outlines the strategies you plan to implement over the course of a year to ensure that your customers get maximum value from your product and achieve their goals. 

This template provides a structured framework for both you and your customers to collaboratively work towards achieving long-term objectives. It also helps you align yearly objectives with your overall business strategy. 

The key components of an annual customer success plan include: 

• Your broad objectives for the year;
• The long-term goals your customers aim to achieve over the course of a year;
• The strategies you’ll implement to achieve these goals and objectives; 
• The resources you’ll need to help the customer succeed;
• Your check-in dates (they could be quarterly or bi-annual), etc.

Long-term planning is important for customer success because it: 

• Ensures that customer success efforts are aligned with the broader strategic goals of both your company and your customers; 
• Allows you to maximize the long-term value that customers derive from your product or service; 
• Enables you to identify potential issues or challenges in advance, allowing for proactive resolution and risk mitigation; 
• Helps you foster stronger relationships with customers as you demonstrate a commitment to their long-term success; 
• Provides opportunities for continuous improvement as you’re able to learn from successes and failures over an extended period; 
• Helps reduce churn, increase customer retention rates , and build customer loyalty as you address issues and ensure ongoing value; 
• Allows for better resource planning and allocation, ensuring that the necessary support is available to customers when needed;
• Allows for the collection and analysis of data over a longer timeframe, which helps you make data-driven decisions; 
• Contributes to upselling and cross-selling opportunities , which drives revenue growth from existing customers.

Weekly success plan template

A weekly success plan template allows you to outline the goals, tasks, and priorities for an individual rep or a team on a weekly basis. This template serves as a proactive tool to help you plan and organize smaller activities, track progress, and ensure that short-term goals/objectives are met within a specified timeframe. 

The components of a weekly success plan template include: 

• The goals you want to achieve during the week;
• The main tasks to do to achieve the aforementioned goals;
• The priority levels for each of the tasks;
• A section to track progress on each task throughout the week;
• A section to schedule and document any important meetings, appointments, or deadlines;
• A daily schedule to allocate time blocks for different tasks and activities, etc.

 Organizing your weekly customer success plans has many benefits. It: 

• Provides clarity on weekly objectives, ensuring that efforts are focused on high-priority tasks; 
• Helps you allocate time effectively by creating a schedule and setting realistic deadlines; 
• Ensures that weekly goals align with broader company/customer objectives; 
• Facilitates better communication within teams  by aligning everyone on weekly priorities;
• Reduces stress as you break down tasks into manageable steps and provide a clear action plan.

​​Client onboarding success plan template

A client (or customer) onboarding success plan template shows the process involved in onboarding a new client successfully. It helps businesses ensure a smooth and effective transition for clients/customers from the initial stages of engagement to becoming fully integrated and satisfied with the product. 

The key components of a client onboarding success plan template include:

• An overview of the onboarding process; 
• Details about the client, including key contacts, industry, and specific business needs;
• Clearly defined goals for the onboarding process;
• Key milestones and deadlines for each phase or stage of the onboarding process; 
• KPIs to measure the success of the onboarding process, etc. 

Using a client onboarding success plan template ensures that: 

• There’s a standardized and consistent onboarding process for all clients;
• Clients know what to expect during the onboarding process;
• Clients have the knowledge, resources, and support they need to effectively use the product or service;
• Clients start realizing value from the product or service more quickly (i.e. low time to value );
• There’s a scalable framework for onboarding as the business grows, making it easier to manage increased client volume;
• The likelihood of client dissatisfaction or frustration is reduced, which results in lower churn rates .

Customizable fillable templates

The five templates outlined above aren’t the only kinds of customer success plan templates there are. Because so much goes into ensuring that customers reach their goals, there are other templates you can personalize for specific needs. 

The features of customizable templates include: 

• Editable content. You can modify content according to your needs, including text, images, and other elements. 
• Flexible structure. You can add, remove, or reposition sections based on your needs, allowing you to tailor a template to different purposes. 
• Placeholder elements. Customizable templates may have placeholder elements that guide you on where to insert specific content. You can replace these placeholders with your own text or media. 
• Customizable color schemes and fonts . You can change the color scheme, fonts, and overall style of the template the match your brand colors, fonts, and style. 
• Export formats. Customizable templates typically support various export formats, including PDF, Word, or image files, which give you flexibility in how the final content is shared or distributed.

Here are some situations where you can use customizable fillable templates: 

• Sales-to-success handoffs. If your sales team is the first to speak to prospective customers, it will likely have a relationship with them before customer success takes over. A customizable success plan template allows the sales team to document all they’ve learned from your customers, which makes it easier for the customer success team to take over.

A sales-to-success handoff template should include the customer’s basic information, their main objective(s), their budget, how they heard about the company, their preferred communication method, follow-up actions, and KPIs to measure the performance of the product. 

• Customer reactivation. Sometimes, your customers may stop using your product abruptly, especially if you’re a subscription-based SaaS business. In this case, you need a specified process to reactivate them. 

You can outline this process in a customer reactivation template, with steps like checking for unresolved issues, reviewing the customer’s usage contact, verifying the customer’s contact, following up with the customer to find out why they went silent, reviewing any issues or challenges the customer has, sending a follow-up email, and a simple reboarding process. 

• Customer renewals. While renewals are an automatic process for subscription-based SaaS companies, some companies let their customer success teams handle renewals, especially if the customer is an enterprise or if they’re hiring for a service. If that’s you, you can use a customizable template to outline a simple renewal process with steps like checking for (and resolving) any open issues, setting up a meeting with the customer to confirm expectations and discuss new product features, if any, and the filling of renewal paperwork. 
• Customer offboarding. A customer leaving your company can offer a valuable learning experience and an opportunity to part ways without burning bridges. Your customer success team will need a documented process to identify why the customer doesn’t want to do business with you anymore and use that data to decrease churn in the future.  

A customer offboarding template should cover things like the reason(s) the customer is leaving, what your company could do better, the parts of the contract that were broken by either party (if applicable), incentive(s) to retain the customer, collection of last payment, and a final thank-you to the customer for working with your company. 

Here are a few practical tips for using customer success plan templates: 

• Set SMART goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Timebound. When setting goals for your customer success processes, be it for client onboarding/offboarding, reactivation, renewals, or quarterly business reviews, ensure that your goals meet these criteria. This clarity will make it easier to track progress.
• Communicate and collaborate clearly. As you fill in your customer success plan templates, communicate and collaborate with relevant stakeholders from both your team and the customer’s organization (if applicable). This transparency builds trust, ensures alignment, and helps manage expectations. 
• Define actionable steps. Break down your goals into actionable steps and tasks. This makes it easy for both your team and your customer to understand what needs to be done. If any challenges arise, clearly outline the strategies for addressing them.  
• Do regular reviews and updates. Schedule regular reviews of your customer success plans to ensure that they’re still relevant. Update the plans based on changes in your customers’ business, goals, or market conditions. 
• Collect feedback from your customers. Feedback mechanisms like Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) and Net Promoter Score (NPS) can help you understand what’s working and what isn’t. You can also collect in-app feedback or conduct 1-on-1 interviews with your customers to get feedback on the efficacy of your processes. 
• Quantify success metrics. Clearly define the customer success metrics and KPIs you’ll use to measure progress. Quantifiable data makes it easier to assess success.

Customer success plan templates are just one tool to help you give your customers the best experience you possibly can. Here are some additional resources and tools you can use to improve your efforts:

Customer education platforms

Customer education platforms allow you to create an online academy filled with structured, accessible learning resources for your customers. These courses enhance their understanding of and proficiency with your product or service, leading to increased customer satisfaction. 

An online academy also cultivates a continuous learning environment, allowing customers to stay updated on product updates, new features, and best practices. This ongoing education contributes to customer retention and loyalty, as users feel supported and engaged with your product. 

A great example of an online academy is Hootsuite Academy . 

This academy offers several certification courses taught by industry experts to help customers improve their social media skills, grow their audience, run successful ad campaigns, and use the Hootsuite platform like a pro. 

Another example is Chargebee’s Subscription Academy , which has online courses that aim to teach customers all things SaaS — from pricing and analytics to BillingOps and churn. 

Both of these online academies were created with Thinkific Plus , a powerful tool with robust features that allow you to create and ship specialized training programs for your customers. With Thinkific Plus, you can create online courses, microlessons, and even cohort classes, to help your customers get more familiar with your product and the industry at large — which, in turn, improves customer satisfaction and retention.

Customer relationship management systems

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms provide an organized and unified system for managing customer interactions, data, and relationships. In this dynamic hub, customer success teams can store, track, and analyze customer information, from contact details to historical interactions and preferences. 

By centralizing customer data, CRM platforms break down silos and facilitate communication among sales, marketing, and support teams. This cross-functional collaboration ensures that every touchpoint in the customer lifecycle is well-coordinated and aligned with overarching business objectives.

With features like automated workflows and customer segmentation, CRM platforms enable customer success teams to tailor their strategies, anticipate needs, and provide a more personalized and proactive approach to customer support. 

Examples of CRM platforms include: 

• Salesforce  

Customer feedback and survey tools 

Customer feedback and survey tools allow customer success teams to communicate directly with customers, and capture valuable insights regarding customer pain points, product or service satisfaction, and overall expectations. 

By gathering quantitative metrics such as Net Promoter Scores (NPS) and Customer Satisfaction (CSAT), alongside qualitative feedback, customer success teams get a better understanding of customer sentiment. This, in turn, makes it easier to address specific pain points, identify areas for improvement, and tailor strategies to align with the evolving needs and preferences of their customer base.

Customer feedback and survey tools include: 

• SurveyMonkey

Project management tools

Project management tools provide a structured and organized framework for customer success teams to efficiently execute and manage initiatives that contribute to customer satisfaction. These tools offer a centralized platform where customer success teams can plan, track, and collaborate on various tasks and projects related to customer onboarding, support, and engagement.

With features like task assignment, deadlines, and progress tracking, project management tools enable clear communication and collaboration among team members, ensuring that everyone is aligned on goals and timelines. This transparency not only enhances internal coordination but also allows for proactive communication with customers, providing them with visibility into the status of ongoing projects and reinforcing a sense of partnership. 

Examples of project management tools include:

Collaboration platforms

Collaboration tools foster seamless communication and collaboration among team members and clients. For example, Slack has real-time messaging and collaboration features, which enable instant communication, file sharing, and the creation of dedicated channels for specific projects or client interactions. This ensures that customer success professionals can quickly address queries, share insights, and coordinate efforts, leading to swift issue resolution and a more agile response to customer needs.

Another example of a collaboration platform is Zoom, a video conferencing platform that facilitates face-to-face meetings, webinars, and training sessions. Zoom allows customer success teams to conduct personalized and interactive sessions with clients, fostering a stronger connection and understanding.

Collaboration platforms that help customer success teams  communicate with one another and work seamlessly together include: 

Customer journey mapping tools 

Customer journey mapping tools provide a visual representation of the entire customer experience, from initial contact through post-purchase engagement. This allows businesses to understand and empathize with the customer’s perspective, uncover pain points, and identify opportunities for improvement at each touchpoint in the journey. 

By identifying critical moments in the customer journey, teams can implement targeted strategies to address potential issues, enhance satisfaction, and guide customers toward successful outcomes. 

The visual representation of customers’ journeys also fosters cross-departmental collaboration, aligning sales, marketing, and support teams toward a unified goal of delivering a positive and cohesive customer experience. 

Examples of customer journey mapping tools include:

Email marketing platforms

Email marketing platforms are a powerful tool for personalized communication, engagement, and relationship-building throughout the customer lifecycle. These platforms enable your customer success team to deliver targeted and relevant content (product updates, special offers, and valuable resources) directly to customers’ inboxes, facilitating ongoing communication and relationship-building. 

Email marketing tools also allow customer success teams to design automated email sequences that guide customers through onboarding processes, provide educational content, and offer timely support. This ensures that customers receive the right information at the right time, enhancing their understanding of your products/services and encouraging active engagement. 

By tailoring messages based on customer preferences, behavior, and lifecycle stage, email marketing platforms help build a more personalized and meaningful connection, which results in enhanced customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Email marketing platforms include: 

• ActiveCampaign

Knowledge base platforms

Knowledge base platforms can help you create a centralized and accessible repository of information, resources, and self-service tools that empower customers to find answers and solutions independently. With these tools, you can provide a comprehensive library of articles, tutorials, FAQs, and guides on your website for customers seeking information about your products, services, or common issues.

Knowledge base platforms also play a huge role in customer education and onboarding as they provide a structured and scalable way to deliver training materials, product documentation, and best practices, ensuring that customers have the resources they need to maximize the value of their purchase. 

By enabling customers to self-serve and troubleshoot, knowledge base platforms facilitate faster issue resolution, reducing the need for direct support interactions and enhancing the overall customer experience.

Examples of knowledge base platforms include: 

• Help Scout 
• Gainsight (formerly Insided)
• Zendesk Guide

The templates in this blog post provide a structured framework for customer success teams to navigate the intricacies of each unique customer journey. With these templates, your team can proactively address challenges and deliver personalized experiences that resonate with the diverse needs of your customer base. 

Consider Thinkific Plus to create an online academy for your customers and streamline your customer success. 

It’s a powerful, yet easy-to-use, platform that helps you attract new customers and retain existing ones through customer education. 

With Thinkific Plus, you can deliver comprehensive learning experiences that teach your customers how to derive value from your product or service. Not only does this platform have advanced analytics and reporting features to help you track your impact, but it’s also designed to scale with you as your customer education programs evolve. 

Book a call with a Thinkific Plus expert today .

Althea Storm is a B2B SaaS writer who specializes in creating data-driven content that drives traffic and increases conversions for businesses. She has worked with top companies like AdEspresso, HubSpot, Aura, and Thinkific. When she's not writing web content, she's curled up in a chair reading a crime thriller or solving a Rubik's cube.

• The Ultimate Guide to Customer Success
• Best Customer Success Software, Platforms, and Tools.
• Customer Success Metrics and KPIs
• Customer Retention Program Examples (+ Retention Plan Template)
• The Best Customer Onboarding Software & Tools for 2023

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How to Create a Customer Success Plan: Strategies and a Template

The concept of a customer success plan has emerged as a beacon of growth and sustainability. But what exactly is a customer success plan?

Simply put, it’s a strategic blueprint designed by a customer success team to ensure the long-term success of their clients. This plan goes beyond traditional sales and support; it’s about fostering a deep, ongoing relationship that benefits both your customer and your organization.

The importance of a robust customer success plan cannot be overstated. In today’s competitive landscape, the role of the customer success team extends far beyond mere customer service. It’s about building customer loyalty, ensuring customer retention, and creating customer and product advocates.

A well-crafted customer success plan lays the groundwork for achieving these goals, ultimately leading to sustained business growth and a thriving customer base.

Table of Contents

The Foundation of Customer Success Planning

Exploring the Definition and Key Components of a Customer Success Plan

A customer success plan is not a one-size-fits-all solution; it’s a tailored approach that addresses the unique needs and goals of each customer. The plan is often spearheaded by a dedicated customer success manager or team, who work closely with customers to understand their journey, from onboarding through the entire customer lifecycle.

Key components of a successful plan include understanding customer goals, monitoring customer health scores, and aligning with the customer’s expectations and desired outcomes.

The Three Pillars of Customer Success

At the heart of customer success planning are three pillars: customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and customer retention. These pillars represent the core objectives that every customer success team strives to achieve.

By focusing on these areas, customer success managers and their teams can ensure that they are consistently meeting and exceeding customers’ expectations.

What Does a Good Customer Success Plan Look Like?

A good customer success plan is a comprehensive roadmap that guides both your team and your customer towards mutual success. It includes a detailed customer journey map, clearly defined success metrics, and a strategy for regularly reviewing and updating these elements. The plan should be dynamic, adapting to the evolving needs of the customer and the market.

Effective customer success plans are not just about reacting to customer inquiries or issues. They are proactive, leveraging customer data and insights to anticipate needs and create opportunities for growth. These plans require close collaboration across teams, such as sales, marketing, and support, to ensure everyone works towards the same goals.

In summary, creating a customer success plan is a vital strategy for any organization looking to thrive in the modern business landscape. Understanding customer needs, aligning with them, and continuous improvement are key. Having a well-executed customer success plan can exceed customer expectations, driving long-term success and fostering loyalty.

Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Your Customer Success Plan

How to Create a Customer Success Plan: A Step-by-Step Approach

Creating a customer success plan is not just a task; it’s a journey towards building a sustainable and rewarding relationship with your customers. Begin by gathering your customer success team and setting clear objectives. A successful plan is more than a document; it’s a commitment to your customers’ success.

First, assemble all necessary customer data and insights. This is where your customer success managers play a pivotal role. They should understand the customer journey inside out, from the initial sales process to ongoing engagement. This knowledge forms the bedrock of your plan.

Identifying and Prioritizing Customer Needs: The Top 3-5 Priorities

The next crucial step is to identify and prioritize your customers’ needs. This isn’t about guessing but about engaging in meaningful dialogue with your customers. Conduct quarterly business reviews or surveys to gather customer feedback. Remember, the customer’s expectations set the direction for your plan.

Typically, the top priorities include customer satisfaction, product adoption, and customer retention. Align your team’s efforts towards these goals. Ensure every member of the customer success team understands these priorities and how their role contributes to achieving them.

Structuring Customer Success Team: Key Elements and Strategies

Structuring your customer success team is about more than roles and responsibilities; it’s about creating a synergy that aligns with your customer success strategy . Effective customer success plans incorporate key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure success and customer health scores to gauge ongoing customer relationships.

Develop a customer journey map that details every stage of the customer lifecycle. This map should be the guiding light for your team, ensuring that every interaction with the customer is purposeful and aligned with the overall success plan.

Writing a Success Plan: What to Include and Why

When it comes to writing your customer success plan, clarity and comprehensiveness are key. Your plan should include:

Customer Goals and Outcomes : Outline what success looks like for your customer. Align these goals with your team’s actions.

Success Metrics and KPIs : Define clear metrics to measure progress. These could include customer retention rates, customer health scores, or Net Promoter Scores (NPS).

Customer Journey Map : This should detail each touchpoint with the customer, from onboarding to advocacy.

Action Plan for Each Stage : Develop specific strategies for different stages of the customer lifecycle, like onboarding, product training, and support.

Feedback and Adjustment Mechanism : It is important to regularly collect and address customer feedback so that your team can continually improve and adapt the plan.

Expansion Strategy : Plan for future growth with the customer, including upselling and cross-selling opportunities.

Remember, a customer success plan is not static. It should evolve with your customer’s needs and your team’s learning. It is important to review and update the plan on a regular basis to ensure that it stays relevant and effective. Make sure to check it frequently to make necessary changes and improvements.

In conclusion, developing a customer success plan is crucial for ensuring customer satisfaction and longevity. It’s about putting your customers at the heart of your business and aligning your team’s efforts with their success . With a clear, actionable, and adaptive customer success plan, you’re not just aiming for customer satisfaction; you’re striving for customer delight and loyalty.

Essential Strategies for Effective Customer Success Plans

The Role of Client Success Planning in Business Growth

In business growth, client success planning is not just an option; it’s a necessity. A well-crafted customer success plan is a testament to your commitment to your customers’ achievements and your own. It’s about creating a partnership where both your customer and your business grow together.

This synergy is achieved when the customer success team focuses on aligning customer goals with your business objectives. A customer’s success should be seen as a cornerstone of your company’s growth strategy .

Every successful interaction, every resolved inquiry, and every piece of customer feedback brings invaluable insights that can drive innovation and improvement.

Building a Strong Customer Success Strategy

Creating a successful customer experience requires a comprehensive approach that covers the entire customer journey, rather than just addressing customer inquiries. This strategy should be crafted by customer success managers and their teams, focusing on customer satisfaction, retention, and loyalty.

It’s important to have a clear understanding of the customer journey, defined success metrics, and their expectations and pain points.

Your strategy should include plans for regular customer contact, such as quarterly business reviews, to ensure that you’re consistently aligned with customer needs and can demonstrate progress.

The 4 Models of Succession Planning in Customer Success

Succession planning in customer success is crucial for maintaining continuity and service excellence. There are four main models to consider:

The Hierarchical Model : Focusing on developing leaders within the customer success team for future roles.

The Specialization Model : Encouraging team members to specialize in specific areas of customer success.

The Rotation Model : Offering team members the chance to work in different roles within the team, fostering a more holistic understanding of customer success.

The Mentoring Model : Pairing less experienced team members with seasoned customer success managers for guidance and knowledge transfer.

Each of these models plays a vital role in ensuring that your customer success team remains robust, versatile, and ready to face future challenges.

Developing and Implementing an Account Success Plan

An account success plan is your blueprint for individual customer engagement. It’s about understanding the unique needs and goals of each customer and how your product or service fits into their success story. This plan should be tailored to each customer, taking into account their customer data, feedback, and health score. It is crucial to establish precise key performance indicators (KPIs) and success metrics that are regularly evaluated. This will help in better understanding the progress being made towards achieving the desired goals and objectives.

Close collaboration between customer success, sales, and marketing teams is essential in developing an account success plan. This ensures a unified approach and helps in aligning the expectations of all stakeholders involved. The goal is to create processes that not only address feedback but also proactively identify opportunities for customer expansion and success.

In order to ensure effective customer success, it is necessary to establish and maintain a strong and mutually beneficial relationship with your customers. It’s about being proactive, responsive, and constantly evolving to meet and exceed customer expectations. By focusing on these essential strategies , you’re not just working towards reducing customer churn; you’re building a foundation for lasting customer loyalty and continuous business growth.

Remember, in customer success, every small step taken is a leap towards achieving monumental success for both your customers and your business.

Templates and Tools for Crafting Your Plan

Customer Success Plan Templates: A Practical Resource

Embarking on the creation of a customer success plan can feel daunting. However, with the right templates at your disposal, this journey becomes more navigable and efficient.

Customer success plan templates serve as a valuable resource, providing a structured framework to build upon. These templates include key sections like customer goals, strategies for onboarding new customers, customer health score tracking, and quarterly business reviews. They guide customer success teams to cover all necessary aspects, ensuring that no critical element is overlooked.

Remember, these templates are not set in stone but are starting points to be tailored to each customer’s unique journey.

Template example

Now, let’s dive into a practical example of what a customer success plan template might look like. Remember, this template is a starting point, a framework to build upon and customize according to the unique needs of your customers and your business . A well-designed customer success plan template is a powerful tool in your arsenal, guiding you towards achieving success for your customers and your company.

1. Customer Overview

Customer Name:

Business Sponsor:

Key Stakeholders:

Customer Goals:

2. Customer Onboarding

Onboarding Process:

Key Milestones:

Assigned Customer Success Manager:

3. Quarterly Business Review Plan

Review Dates:

Objectives:

Success Metrics:

4. Sales Process and New Customer Acquisition

Sales to Success Transition:

New Customer Welcome Strategy:

5. Customer Health Score Monitoring

Key Metrics for Health Score:

Regular Monitoring Schedule:

Action Plan for Health Score Improvement:

6. Customer Experience and Engagement

Regular Check-ins Schedule:

Customer Feedback Mechanisms:

Customer Advocacy Opportunities:

7. Expansion and Renewal Strategy

Up-sell/Cross-sell Opportunities:

Renewal Milestones and Strategy:

8. Notes and Observations

Customer Feedback Highlights:

Team Observations and Insights:

This customer success plan template serves as a roadmap to guide you and your customer through the journey of collaboration and growth. It ensures that you stay organized, aligned with customer expectations, and deliver an exceptional experience. From the initial onboarding process to regular quarterly business reviews, this template empowers you to create customer success plans that are both effective and dynamic.

Remember, the key to a successful customer success plan lies in its adaptability and alignment with your customer’s evolving needs. Use this template as a foundation to build upon, tailoring it to fit the unique circumstances and goals of each customer.

With this approach, you’re not just creating a plan; you’re forging a path to help your customers achieve their goals, nurturing a relationship that leads to mutual growth and success.

Tools and Software for Organizing and Implementing Your Plan

Leveraging the right tools and software is crucial for implementing an effective customer success plan. These tools help organize customer data, track key metrics, monitor customer health scores, and facilitate communication within the team and with customers. They enable customer success teams to stay on the same page, align expectations, and reduce churn effectively.

Utilize software that integrates with your sales process, allowing for a seamless transition of customer contact information and insights from the sales teams to the customer success team.

How to Stay Organized as a Customer Success Manager

Being an effective customer success manager requires a key skill of staying organized. It involves not just managing customer notes and feedback but also aligning with the broader customer success strategy and team goals. Regularly update and review customer outcomes, confirm expectations, and create processes to address feedback.

Organizing quarterly business reviews with customers is also vital to demonstrate progress, reassess goals, and align strategies for continued success.

Summarizing the Importance of a Well-Structured Customer Success Plan

As we conclude, let’s reemphasize the pivotal role of a well-structured customer success plan. It’s more than a document; it’s the backbone of a thriving business, a strategic blueprint that guides customer success teams in nurturing and sustaining productive relationships with customers. This plan is crucial in ensuring your customers’ success, which in turn, becomes your success.

It meticulously addresses every facet of the customer’s journey, from onboarding to ongoing engagement, and anticipates their evolving needs, paving the way for effective product adoption and fostering customer advocacy.

A good customer success plan, exemplified by a comprehensive customer success plan template, does not leave customer satisfaction to chance. It strategically maps out the sales process, ensures smooth onboarding of new customers, and creates customer success plans that are tailored to meet specific needs.

This approach results in a dynamic interaction where customers don’t just feel heard, but genuinely understood.

Encouraging Continuous Improvement and Adaptation in Customer Success Strategies

In customer relations, continuous improvement and adaptation are not just beneficial; they are imperative. Your customer success plan must be a living document, one that evolves with customer feedback, shifts in market trends, and fresh customer insights.

Regularly engaging in quarterly business reviews offers a platform to reassess and realign strategies with your customer’s expectations and goals.

It is essential to foster a culture where every member of the customer success team, from the frontline managers to the business sponsors, is committed to this ethos of continuous improvement. Create and update customer success plans regularly to track progress and identify areas for improvement.

Encourage your team to stay proactive, not just in managing current customer relationships but also in anticipating future needs and opportunities.

In essence, a successful customer success plan is a collaborative effort that requires the involvement and commitment of the entire team. From the initial stages of creating a customer success plan to the continuous process of adapting and improving it, every step is crucial. It’s about aligning your team around a shared vision of customer success, where the success of your customers equates to the success of your business.

In conclusion, as you embark on this journey of creating and refining your customer success plans, remember that at the core of every strategy , every decision, and every action is your customer. Your dedication to their success is what will ultimately drive your business forward.

Here’s to building robust, lasting relationships, achieving remarkable outcomes together, and celebrating each milestone of success along the way!

What is a Marketing Plan & How to Write One [+Examples]

Published: December 27, 2023

For a while now, you've been spearheading your organization's content marketing efforts, and your team's performance has convinced management to adopt the content marketing strategies you’ve suggested.

Now, your boss wants you to write and present a content marketing plan, but you‘ve never done something like that before. You don't even know where to start.

Fortunately, we've curated the best content marketing plans to help you write a concrete plan that's rooted in data and produces results. But first, we'll discuss what a marketing plan is and how some of the best marketing plans include strategies that serve their respective businesses.

What is a marketing plan?

A marketing plan is a strategic roadmap that businesses use to organize, execute, and track their marketing strategy over a given period. Marketing plans can include different marketing strategies for various marketing teams across the company, all working toward the same business goals.

The purpose of a marketing plan is to write down strategies in an organized manner. This will help keep you on track and measure the success of your campaigns.

Writing a marketing plan will help you think of each campaign‘s mission, buyer personas, budget, tactics, and deliverables. With all this information in one place, you’ll have an easier time staying on track with a campaign. You'll also discover what works and what doesn't. Thus, measuring the success of your strategy.

Featured Resource: Free Marketing Plan Template

Looking to develop a marketing plan for your business? Click here to download HubSpot's free Marketing Plan Template to get started .

To learn more about how to create your marketing plan, keep reading or jump to the section you’re looking for:

How to Write a Marketing Plan

Types of marketing plans, marketing plan examples, marketing plan faqs, sample marketing plan.

If you're pressed for time or resources, you might not be thinking about a marketing plan. However, a marketing plan is an important part of your business plan.

Marketing Plan vs. Business Plan

A marketing plan is a strategic document that outlines marketing objectives, strategies, and tactics.

A business plan is also a strategic document. But this plan covers all aspects of a company's operations, including finance, operations, and more. It can also help your business decide how to distribute resources and make decisions as your business grows.

I like to think of a marketing plan as a subset of a business plan; it shows how marketing strategies and objectives can support overall business goals.

Keep in mind that there's a difference between a marketing plan and a marketing strategy.

Free Marketing Plan Template

Outline your company's marketing strategy in one simple, coherent plan.

• Pre-Sectioned Template
• Completely Customizable
• Example Prompts
• Professionally Designed

You're all set!

Click this link to access this resource at any time.

Marketing Strategy vs. Marketing Plan

A marketing strategy describes how a business will accomplish a particular goal or mission. This includes which campaigns, content, channels, and marketing software they'll use to execute that mission and track its success.

For example, while a greater plan or department might handle social media marketing, you might consider your work on Facebook as an individual marketing strategy.

A marketing plan contains one or more marketing strategies. It's the framework from which all of your marketing strategies are created and helps you connect each strategy back to a larger marketing operation and business goal.

For example, suppose your company is launching a new software product, and it wants customers to sign up. The marketing department needs to develop a marketing plan that'll help introduce this product to the industry and drive the desired signups.

The department decides to launch a blog dedicated to this industry, a new YouTube video series to establish expertise, and an account on Twitter to join the conversation around this subject. All this serves to attract an audience and convert this audience into software users.

To summarize, the business's marketing plan is dedicated to introducing a new software product to the marketplace and driving signups for that product. The business will execute that plan with three marketing strategies : a new industry blog, a YouTube video series, and a Twitter account.

Of course, the business might consider these three things as one giant marketing strategy, each with its specific content strategies. How granular you want your marketing plan to get is up to you. Nonetheless, every marketing plan goes through a particular set of steps in its creation.

Learn what they are below.

• State your business's mission.
• Determine the KPIs for this mission.
• Identify your buyer personas.
• Describe your content initiatives and strategies.
• Clearly define your plan's omissions.
• Define your marketing budget.
• Identify your competition.
• Outline your plan's contributors and their responsibilities.

1. State your business's mission.

Your first step in writing a marketing plan is to state your mission. Although this mission is specific to your marketing department, it should serve your business‘s main mission statement.

From my experience, you want to be specific, but not too specific. You have plenty of space left in this marketing plan to elaborate on how you'll acquire new customers and accomplish this mission.

Need help building your mission statement? Download this guide for examples and templates and write the ideal mission statement.

2. Determine the KPIs for this mission.

Every good marketing plan describes how the department will track its mission‘s progress. To do so, you need to decide on your key performance indicators (KPIs) .

KPIs are individual metrics that measure the various elements of a marketing campaign. These units help you establish short-term goals within your mission and communicate your progress to business leaders.

Let's take our example of a marketing mission from the above step. If part of our mission is “to attract an audience of travelers,” we might track website visits using organic page views. In this case, “organic page views” is one KPI, and we can see our number of page views grow over time.

These KPIs will come into the conversation again in step 4.

3. Identify your buyer personas.

A buyer persona is a description of who you want to attract. This can include age, sex, location, family size, and job title. Each buyer persona should directly reflect your business's current and potential customers. So, all business leaders must agree on your buyer personas.

Create your buyer personas with this free guide and set of buyer persona templates.

4. Describe your content initiatives and strategies.

Here's where you'll include the main points of your marketing and content strategy. Because there's a laundry list of content types and channels available to you today, you must choose wisely and explain how you'll use your content and channels in this section of your marketing plan.

When I write this section , I like to stipulate:

• Which types of content I'll create. These might include blog posts, YouTube videos, infographics, and ebooks.
• How much of it I'll create. I typically describe content volume in daily, weekly, monthly, or even quarterly intervals. It all depends on my workflow and the short-term goals for my content.
• The goals (and KPIs) I'll use to track each type. KPIs can include organic traffic, social media traffic, email traffic, and referral traffic. Your goals should also include which pages you want to drive that traffic to, such as product pages, blog pages, or landing pages.
• The channels on which I'll distribute my content. Popular channels include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram.
• Any paid advertising that will take place on these channels.

Build out your marketing plan with this free template.

Fill out this form to access the template., 5. clearly define your plan's omissions..

A marketing plan explains the marketing team's focus. It also explains what the marketing team will not focus on.

If there are other aspects of your business that you aren't serving in this particular plan, include them in this section. These omissions help to justify your mission, buyer personas, KPIs, and content. You can’t please everyone in a single marketing campaign, and if your team isn't on the hook for something, you need to make it known.

In my experience, this section is particularly important for stakeholders to help them understand why certain decisions were made.

6. Define your marketing budget.

Whether it's freelance fees, sponsorships, or a new full-time marketing hire, use these costs to develop a marketing budget and outline each expense in this section of your marketing plan.

You can establish your marketing budget with this kit of 8 free marketing budget templates .

7. Identify your competition.

Part of marketing is knowing whom you're marketing against. Research the key players in your industry and consider profiling each one.

Keep in mind not every competitor will pose the same challenges to your business. For example, while one competitor might be ranking highly on search engines for keywords you want your website to rank for, another competitor might have a heavy footprint on a social network where you plan to launch an account.

Easily track and analyze your competitors with t his collection of ten free competitive analysis templates .

8. Outline your plan's contributors and their responsibilities.

With your marketing plan fully fleshed out, it's time to explain who’s doing what. I don't like to delve too deeply into my employees’ day-to-day projects, but I know which teams and team leaders are in charge of specific content types, channels, KPIs, and more.

Now that you know why you need to build an effective marketing plan, it’s time to get to work. Starting a plan from scratch can be overwhelming if you haven't done it before. That’s why there are many helpful resources that can support your first steps. We’ll share some of the best guides and templates that can help you build effective results-driven plans for your marketing strategies.

Ready to make your own marketing plan? Get started using this free template.

Depending on the company you work with, you might want to create various marketing plans. We compiled different samples to suit your needs:

1. Quarterly or Annual Marketing Plans

These plans highlight the strategies or campaigns you'll take on in a certain period.

Forbes published a marketing plan template that has amassed almost 4 million views. To help you sculpt a marketing roadmap with true vision, their template will teach you how to fill out the 15 key sections of a marketing plan, which are:

• Executive Summary
• Target Customers
• Unique Selling Proposition
• Pricing & Positioning Strategy
• Distribution Plan
• Your Offers
• Marketing Materials
• Promotions Strategy
• Online Marketing Strategy
• Conversion Strategy
• Joint Ventures & Partnerships
• Referral Strategy
• Strategy for Increasing Transaction Prices
• Retention Strategy
• Financial Projections

If you're truly lost on where to start with a marketing plan, I highly recommend using this guide to help you define your target audience, figure out how to reach them, and ensure that audience becomes loyal customers.

2. Social Media Marketing Plan

This type of plan highlights the channels, tactics, and campaigns you intend to accomplish specifically on social media. A specific subtype is a paid marketing plan, which highlights paid strategies, such as native advertising, PPC, or paid social media promotions.

Shane Snow's Marketing Plan for His Book Dream Team is a great example of a social media marketing plan:

When Shane Snow started promoting his new book, "Dream Team," he knew he had to leverage a data-driven content strategy framework. So, he chose his favorite one: the content strategy waterfall. The content strategy waterfall is defined by Economic Times as a model used to create a system with a linear and sequential approach.

Snow wrote a blog post about how the waterfall‘s content strategy helped him launch his new book successfully. After reading it, you can use his tactics to inform your own marketing plan. More specifically, you’ll learn how he:

• Applied his business objectives to decide which marketing metrics to track.
• Used his ultimate business goal of earning $200,000 in sales or 10,000 purchases to estimate the conversion rate of each stage of his funnel.
• Created buyer personas to figure out which channels his audience would prefer to consume his content.
• Used his average post view on each of his marketing channels to estimate how much content he had to create and how often he had to post on social media.
• Calculated how much earned and paid media could cut down the amount of content he had to create and post.
• Designed his process and workflow, built his team, and assigned members to tasks.
• Analyzed content performance metrics to refine his overall content strategy.

I use Snow's marketing plan to think more creatively about my content promotion and distribution plan. I like that it's linear and builds on the step before it, creating an air-tight strategy that doesn't leave any details out.

3. Content Marketing Plan

This plan could highlight different strategies, tactics, and campaigns in which you'll use content to promote your business or product.

HubSpot's Comprehensive Guide for Content Marketing Strategy is a strong example of a content marketing plan:

At HubSpot, we‘ve built our marketing team from two business school graduates working from a coffee table to a powerhouse of hundreds of employees. Along the way, we’ve learned countless lessons that shaped our current content marketing strategy. So, we decided to illustrate our insights in a blog post to teach marketers how to develop a successful content marketing strategy, regardless of their team's size.

In this comprehensive guide for modern marketers, you'll learn:

• What exactly content marketing is.
• Why your business needs a content marketing strategy.
• Who should lead your content marketing efforts?
• How to structure your content marketing team based on your company's size.
• How to hire the right people for each role on your team.
• What marketing tools and technology you'll need to succeed.
• What type of content your team should create, and which employees should be responsible for creating them.
• The importance of distributing your content through search engines, social media, email, and paid ads.
• And finally, the recommended metrics each of your teams should measure and report to optimize your content marketing program.

This is a fantastic resource for content teams of any size — whether you're a team of one or 100. It includes how to hire and structure a content marketing team, what marketing tools you'll need, what type of content you should create, and even recommends what metrics to track for analyzing campaigns. If you're aiming to establish or boost your online presence, leveraging tools like HubSpot's drag-and-drop website builder can be extremely beneficial. It helps you create a captivating digital footprint that sets the foundation for your content marketing endeavors.

4. New Product Launch Marketing Plan

This will be a roadmap for the strategies and tactics you‘ll implement to promote a new product. And if you’re searching for an example, look no further than Chief Outsiders' Go-To-Market Plan for a New Product :

After reading this plan, you'll learn how to:

• Validate a product
• Write strategic objectives
• Identify your market
• Compile a competitive landscape
• Create a value proposition for a new product
• Consider sales and service in your marketing plan

If you're looking for a marketing plan for a new product, the Chief Outsiders template is a great place to start. Marketing plans for a new product will be more specific because they target one product versus its entire marketing strategy.

5. Growth Marketing Plan

Growth marketing plans use experimentation and data to drive results, like we see in Venture Harbour’s Growth Marketing Plan Template :

Venture Harbour's growth marketing plan is a data-driven and experiment-led alternative to the more traditional marketing plan. Their template has five steps intended for refinement with every test-measure-learn cycle. The five steps are:

• Experiments

I recommend this plan if you want to experiment with different platforms and campaigns. Experimentation always feels risky and unfamiliar, but this plan creates a framework for accountability and strategy.

• Louisville Tourism
• University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• Visit Oxnard
• Safe Haven Family Shelter
• Wright County Economic Development
• The Cultural Council of Palm Beach County
• Cabarrus County Convention and Visitors Bureau
• Visit Billings

1. Louisville Tourism

It also divides its target market into growth and seed categories to allow for more focused strategies. For example, the plan recognizes Millennials in Chicago, Atlanta, and Nashville as the core of it's growth market, whereas people in Boston, Austin, and New York represent seed markets where potential growth opportunities exist. Then, the plan outlines objectives and tactics for reaching each market.

Why This Marketing Plan Works

• The plan starts with a letter from the President & CEO of the company, who sets the stage for the plan by providing a high-level preview of the incoming developments for Louisville's tourism industry
• The focus on Louisville as "Bourbon City" effectively leverages its unique cultural and culinary attributes to present a strong brand
• Incorporates a variety of data points from Google Analytics, Arrivalist, and visitor profiles to to define their target audience with a data-informed approach

2. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

For example, students who become prospects as freshman and sophomore will receive emails that focus on getting the most out of high school and college prep classes. Once these students become juniors and seniors — thus entering the consideration stage — the emails will focus more on the college application process and other exploratory content.

• The plan incorporates competitive analysis, evaluation surveys, and other research to determine the makeup of its target audience
• The plan lists each marketing program (e.g., direct mail, social media, email etc.) and supplements it with examples on the next page
• Each marketing program has its own objectives, tactics, and KPIs for measuring success

3. Visit Oxnard

This marketing plan by Visit Oxnard, a convention and visitors bureau, is packed with all the information one needs in a marketing plan: target markets, key performance indicators, selling points, personas, marketing tactics by channel, and much more.

It also articulates the organization’s strategic plans for the upcoming fiscal year, especially as it grapples with the aftereffects of the pandemic. Lastly, it has impeccable visual appeal, with color-coded sections and strong branding elements.

• States clear and actionable goals for the coming year
• Includes data and other research that shows how their team made their decisions
• Outlines how the team will measure the success of their plan

4. Safe Haven Family Shelter

This marketing plan by a nonprofit organization is an excellent example to follow if your plan will be presented to internal stakeholders at all levels of your organization. It includes SMART marketing goals , deadlines, action steps, long-term objectives, target audiences, core marketing messages , and metrics.

The plan is detailed, yet scannable. By the end of it, one can walk away with a strong understanding of the organization’s strategic direction for its upcoming marketing efforts.

• Confirms ongoing marketing strategies and objectives while introducing new initiatives
• Uses colors, fonts, and formatting to emphasize key parts of the plan
• Closes with long-term goals, key themes, and other overarching topics to set the stage for the future

5. Wright County Economic Development

Wright County Economic Development’s plan drew our attention because of its simplicity, making it good inspiration for those who’d like to outline their plan in broad strokes without frills or filler.

It includes key information such as marketing partners, goals, initiatives, and costs. The sections are easy to scan and contain plenty of information for those who’d like to dig into the details. Most important, it includes a detailed breakdown of projected costs per marketing initiative — which is critical information to include for upper-level managers and other stakeholders.

• Begins with a quick paragraph stating why the recommended changes are important
• Uses clear graphics and bullet points to emphasize key points
• Includes specific budget data to support decision-making

6. The Cultural Council of Palm Beach County

This marketing plan presentation by a cultural council is a great example of how to effectively use data in your plan, address audiences who are new to the industry, and offer extensive detail into specific marketing strategies.

For instance, an entire slide is dedicated to the county’s cultural tourism trends, and at the beginning of the presentation, the organization explains what an arts and culture agency is in the first place.

That’s a critical piece of information to include for those who might not know. If you’re addressing audiences outside your industry, consider defining terms at the beginning, like this organization did.

• Uses quality design and images to support the goals and priorities in the text
• Separate pages for each big idea or new strategy
• Includes sections for awards and accomplishments to show how the marketing plan supports wider business goals
• Defines strategies and tactics for each channel for easy skimming

7. Cabarrus County Convention & Visitors Bureau

Cabarrus County’s convention and visitors bureau takes a slightly different approach with its marketing plan, formatting it like a magazine for stakeholders to flip through. It offers information on the county’s target audience, channels, goals, KPIs, and public relations strategies and initiatives.

We especially love that the plan includes contact information for the bureau’s staff members, so that it’s easy for stakeholders to contact the appropriate person for a specific query.

• Uses infographics to expand on specific concepts, like how visitors benefit a community
• Highlights the team members responsible for each initiative with a photo to emphasize accountability and community
• Closes with an event calendar for transparency into key dates for events

8. Visit Billings

Visit Billing’s comprehensive marketing plan is like Cabarrus County’s in that it follows a magazine format. With sections for each planned strategy, it offers a wealth of information and depth for internal stakeholders and potential investors.

We especially love its content strategy section, where it details the organization’s prior efforts and current objectives for each content platform.

At the end, it includes strategic goals and budgets — a good move to imitate if your primary audience would not need this information highlighted at the forefront.

• Includes a section on the buyer journey, which offers clarity on the reasoning for marketing plan decisions
• Design includes call-outs for special topics that could impact the marketing audience, such as safety concerns or "staycations"
• Clear headings make it easy to scan this comprehensive report and make note of sections a reader may want to return to for more detail

What is a typical marketing plan?

In my experience, most marketing plans outline the following aspects of a business's marketing:

• Target audience

Each marketing plan should include one or more goals, the path your team will take to meet those goals, and how you plan to measure success.

For example, if I were a tech startup that's launching a new mobile app, my marketing plan would include:

• Target audience or buyer personas for the app
• Outline of how app features meet audience needs
• Competitive analysis
• Goals for conversion funnel and user acquisition
• Marketing strategies and tactics for user acquisition

Featured resource : Free Marketing Plan Template

What should a good marketing plan include?

A good marketing plan will create a clear roadmap for your unique marketing team. This means that the best marketing plan for your business will be distinct to your team and business needs.

That said, most marketing plans will include sections for one or more of the following:

• Clear analysis of the target market
• A detailed description of the product or service
• Strategic marketing mix details (such as product, price, place, promotion)
• Measurable goals with defined timelines

This can help you build the best marketing plan for your business.

A good marketing plan should also include a product or service's unique value proposition, a comprehensive marketing strategy including online and offline channels, and a defined budget.

Featured resource : Value Proposition Templates

What are the most important parts of a marketing plan?

When you‘re planning a road trip, you need a map to help define your route, step-by-step directions, and an estimate of the time it will take to get to your destination. It’s literally how you get there that matters.

Like a road map, a marketing plan is only useful if it helps you get to where you want to go. So, no one part is more than the other.

That said, you can use the list below to make sure that you've added or at least considered each of the following in your marketing plan:

• Marketing goals
• Executive summary
• Target market analysis
• Marketing strategies

What questions should I ask when making a marketing plan?

Questions are a useful tool for when you‘re stuck or want to make sure you’ve included important details.

Try using one or more of these questions as a starting point when you create your marketing plan:

• Who is my target audience?
• What are their needs, motivations, and pain points?
• How does our product or service solve their problems?
• How will I reach and engage them?
• Who are my competitors? Are they direct or indirect competitors?
• What are the unique selling points of my product or service?
• What marketing channels are best for the brand?
• What is our budget and timeline?
• How will I measure the success of marketing efforts?

How much does a marketing plan cost?

Creating a marketing plan is mostly free. But the cost of executing a marketing plan will depend on your specific plan.

Marketing plan costs vary by business, industry, and plan scope. Whether your team handles marketing in-house or hires external consultants can also make a difference. Total costs can range from a few thousand dollars to tens of thousands. This is why most marketing plans will include a budget.

Featured resource : Free Marketing Budget Templates

What is a marketing plan template?

A marketing plan template is a pre-designed structure or framework that helps you outline your marketing plan.

It offers a starting point that you can customize for your specific business needs and goals. For example, our template includes easy-to-edit sections for:

• Business summary
• Business initiatives
• Target market
• Market strategy
• Marketing channels
• Marketing technology

Let’s create a sample plan together, step by step.

Follow along with HubSpot's free Marketing Plan Template .

1. Create an overview or primary objective.

Our business mission is to provide [service, product, solution] to help [audience] reach their [financial, educational, business related] goals without compromising their [your audience’s valuable asset: free time, mental health, budget, etc.]. We want to improve our social media presence while nurturing our relationships with collaborators and clients.

For example, if I wanted to focus on social media growth, my KPIs might look like this:

We want to achieve a minimum of [followers] with an engagement rate of [X] on [social media platform].

The goal is to achieve an increase of [Y] on recurring clients and new meaningful connections outside the platform by the end of the year.

Use the following categories to create a target audience for your campaign.

• Profession:
• Background:
• Pain points:
• Social media platforms that they use:
• Streaming platforms that they prefer:

For more useful strategies, consider creating a buyer persona in our Make My Persona tool .

Our content pillars will be: [X, Y, Z].

Content pillars should be based on topics your audience needs to know. If your ideal clients are female entrepreneurs, then your content pillars can be: marketing, being a woman in business, remote working, and productivity hacks for entrepreneurs.

Then, determine any omissions.

This marketing plan won’t be focusing on the following areas of improvement: [A, B, C].

5. Define your marketing budget.

Our marketing strategy will use a total of [Y] monthly. This will include anything from freelance collaborations to advertising.

6. Identify your competitors.

I like to work through the following questions to clearly indicate who my competitors are:

• Which platforms do they use the most?
• How does their branding differentiate?
• How do they talk to their audiences?
• What valuable assets do customers talk about? And if they are receiving any negative feedback, what is it about?

7. Outline your plan's contributors and their responsibilities.

Create responsible parties for each portion of the plan.

Marketing will manage the content plan, implementation, and community interaction to reach the KPIs.

• Social media manager: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]
• Content strategist: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]
• Community manager: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]

Sales will follow the line of the marketing work while creating and implementing an outreach strategy.

• Sales strategists: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]
• Sales executives: [hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations]

Customer Service will nurture clients’ relationships to ensure that they have what they want. [Hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations].

Project Managers will track the progress and team communication during the project. [Hours per week dedicated to the project, responsibilities, team communication requirements, expectations].

Get started on your marketing plan.

These marketing plans serve as initial resources to get your content marketing plan started. But, to truly deliver what your audience wants and needs, you'll likely need to test some different ideas out, measure their success, and then refine your goals as you go.

Editor's Note: This post was originally published in April 2019, but was updated for comprehensiveness. This article was written by a human, but our team uses AI in our editorial process. Check out our full disclosure t o learn more about how we use AI.

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4 Customer Success Plan Templates and How to Use Them

Customer success is an incredibly impactful function when it comes to the longevity and happiness of your customers. Unlike customer support, there are often identical moving pieces in each customer's life cycle that make it easy to predict what kind of success interactions your customers will need. Creating reproducible plans can be a great way to ensure the success of both your team and your customers.

When you document customer success managers' actions, it makes it easier to guarantee that every customer has the same excellent experience. We've gathered some customer success plan templates that you can use to get started with a more defined customer success experience, along with tons of information about what customer success plans are, why they are valuable, and how to create them.

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What is a customer success plan?

A customer success plan is an actionable list of items that lays out what customer success looks like and what a customer or customer success manager (CSM) can do to get to it. It serves as a guide for CSMs to ensure that every necessary action gets accomplished and every customer receives the same fantastic experience.

Having a customer success plan in place can also ensure that every customer gets the outcome you intend from your actions. When you create a customer success plan, you usually do so with a customer success metric. That means that the value and impact of the plan can be easily trackable and that you can change the plan if you aren't hitting your goals.

Using a CRM, you may have your customer success plans built out to assign tasks to your CSMs automatically. If you aren't quite there yet, a documented checklist will do just fine (more on this later).

Recommended Reading

How to Improve Customer Loyalty With Customer Effort Score

What's the difference between customer success and customer service.

Customer service is typically reactive in response, whereas customer success is more proactive. While there will always be exceptions to this rule, the responsibility of customer service most often lies in responding to customer inquiries that come through a queue via email, live chat, or phone. Most customer service representatives aren't reaching out to customers proactively when they notice something has gone amiss with a customer's usage.

It is the responsibility of a CSM to ensure that customers are using the product as expected and meeting their goals. They routinely check customer engagement and health to reach out proactively with helpful tips and information to guide the customer in their usage. 

Customer Experience vs. Customer Success: Explained

Why should you create a customer success plan.

Customer success plans are helpful for your customers and your team members in that they ensure that specific, essential objectives get met. A good customer success plan should do the following:

Take the guesswork out of CSMs’ jobs

Having prebuilt customer success plans for specific, everyday things within the customer journey makes things more straightforward for your CSMs. Given that plans help standardize actions, the customer responses should be more predictable than with a customer success plan entirely of the CSM's making. Having a plan for your CSMs is like giving them a map before a road trip rather than driving without direction.

Create consistency

Inevitably your CSMs and others working on your team will have different personalities. While that may mean that some of their general approaches to working with customers may be different, there should still be a level of uniformity across experiences. Your customers will be more comfortable if they can know what to expect, and customer success plans do that by creating repeatable processes.

Boost revenue, expansion, and product usage

Customer success plans are custom-designed using company metrics and data. You build them to ensure specific outcomes, sometimes around expansion, revenue, or even product usage. Creating customer success plans around those actions helps to generate attention and focus. The more attention everyone pays to a unified thing, the more effective you will be when working toward it. 

Track changes and maximize efficacy

Having a documented process put in place makes it easy to track changes and how they affect key metrics. With customer success plans, you can know exactly when you made changes, what they were, and what impact they had.

This knowledge has power: You can measure what impact your customer success team has at the business level and also understand precisely what levers you had to pull to make it happen. This understanding is beneficial for your team, who can use this learning to change other aspects of the customer experience, and for your company, which now knows how to move the needle for other teams.

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26 Customer Service Interview Questions (+ Interview Tips)

How to create a customer success plan.

The process for creating a customer success plan will differ slightly depending on what tools your team has access to. For instance, if you have a CRM, you may want to build your processes there. If your team isn't yet investing in a CRM, you may just have a list of documents in your Confluence, Help Scout, Notion, or Google Drive folders.

 In our examples, we'll create customer success plan templates that you can use without a CRM. That said, no matter where you're creating it, the things you will need to think about will be the same. Let's look at how to create a customer success plan.

1. Understand what success looks like for your customers

Take some time to work cross-functionally and understand what activities successful customers need to undertake on their journeys. This process should consider the perspectives of every team — product, marketing, sales, engineering, customer experience, etc. — and the customer. Sometimes what a company wants a customer to do with their product is different from what the customer actually does.

Create a list of everything that a customer needs to accomplish to be successful, including everything from "open an account" to "turn on [x] feature" and "pay a monthly subscription."

2. Create a customer journey map

After you list all of the activities your customers need to take, begin to map them out on a timeline. When supplemented with data around customer touchpoints, this timeline will serve as the basis of your customer journey map.

A customer journey map is a visual representation of everything a customer goes through during their life cycle. Your CSMs should use this map as a data source when structuring your customer success plans and determining when they need to come into play.

3. Identify the highest impact, most replicable activities

It might not make sense to create customer success plans for every activity — having too many to go through can hinder rather than help your team's progress. So, look over your journey map and consider which actions would have the most impact if turned into customer success plans.

These should be activities that yield a high customer engagement orrevenue — for example, setting up conversations around renewal or getting a customer's team onboarded to your project. 

The activities should also be reasonably high frequency to requirea customer success plan. If it's not something you are frequently doing, your team probably doesn't need to have a customer success plan for it.

4. Set metrics and benchmarks

As with almost anything you do in business, it's essential to have a way to measure the effectiveness of what you're implementing. With every SaaS customer success plan that you implement, identify the metric you are trying to shift. When you have a metric determined, take note of where that metric currently stands to understand what impact you have as time goes on and your team makes use of the plans you create.

Never be afraid of change. While creating a customer success plan is a significant first step, you should plan to visit and update it on a regular basis. Depending on the cadence of your product releases and updates, this may need to be more or less frequent (we think quarterly us a good rhythm to start at). After all, you don't want to add a fantastic new feature to your product and have it left out of conversations that your CSMs are having with customers. Even if your customer success plans don't mention specific features, it's still good to regularly revisit and update anything public-facing that may affect your customers.

Customer Feedback: Why It’s Important + 7 Ways to Collect It

How to Create a Customer Feedback Loop That Works

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Customer success plan templates.

While every company is different, there are often a few key components of the customer life cycle that remain the same. The following customer success strategy templates will be helpful to kick-start your processes and give your team some ideas about where to start when working with new customers.

Handoff from sales to customer success

If a sales team primarily drives your revenue, the customer will likely already have a relationship with them. A handoff from sales to customer success ensures that the customer feels taken care of and the customer success team feels prepared with any information that the sales team gleaned during the sales process. Here's what this SaaS customer success plan might look like:

Schedule an internal handoff meeting. Your sales team should come prepared to talk about the customer's critical reasons for buying, any concerns they had, and what they are most looking forward to using.

Review other internal customer notes. See if the customer reached out to your support team, talked to your marketing team over social, or had any different touchpoints that you can review.

Email the customer to schedule an external handoff meeting. This meeting should be similar to the internal handoff but more customer-centric. Your sales team should explain the difference now with the engagement, what the customer can expect from customer success, and how they'll be stepping down.

Schedule the customer kickoff. This step involves emailing the customer and letting them know what the kickoff will entail and giving them the option to schedule a meeting at a time that works for them.

Copy template slides and create the deck. If you don't already have a slide template for kickoff calls, it may be helpful to create one.

Follow up if the customer hasn't responded to the request to schedule a kickoff.

Conduct the customer kickoff and present the product plan.

Send a wrap-up email. This email should include notes on any questions the customer asked and what their answers were.

Update customer notes. If you have a CRM or a central place where you keep customer information, update your notes on this customer after the call.

Customer has gone quiet

If a customer is not responding to your CSM's requests for contact or meetings, it may signify that something is amiss. Use this customer success plan template to get your customer to reconnect: 

Check customer notes. Review them for any extra contact outside of customer success, like if they have reached out to customer support, have any active bugs logged that are waiting for resolution, or are in talks with your sales team.

Verify the existence of a power user. Ensure that the person you are emailing is still at the company and is still the person that you should be in contact with.

Email the power user to follow up. This email should either be the new power user you have identified or the existing power user you've already been in contact with.

Email the executive or business sponsor. If you do not receive a response from the power user, loop in the executive or business sponsor.

Conduct a review. If able to get a meeting scheduled, review any open or challenging areas on the call with the customer. If unable to get an appointment scheduled, conduct a review of any open, problematic areas and try to move toward resolution.

Communicate any challenges conveyed by the customer internally.

Review usage patterns. Ensure that the company is still using the product and that usage hasn't dropped off. Usage drop-off is a sign that the customer is heading toward churn.

Continue trying to connect with the power user/business sponsor if you still haven't gotten a response.

Send a wrap-up email and address feedback. After you have made contact, write up a summary of your conversations and address any feedback that the customer brought up in your discussions.

Update customer notes. Continually update the customer notes after conversations to ensure that everyone internally is on the same page.

In some companies, customer success will be responsible for managing renewals. This responsibility will often fall to sales or a specific renewals team in larger companies. There are substantial benefits to both options. When customer success handles the renewal process, there is a lot more trust from the customer. When another team takes the renewal process, it's less likely that you will erode trust by bringing money into the conversation.

If you are choosing to have your customer success team handle renewals, here is a customer success plan template that you can modify and use:

Check customer notes to see if any open support conversations, bug logs, or other company contacts with other teams still need to be resolved.

Check if the renewal has already occurred automatically. If not, proceed.

Resolve any issues that showed up in step 1.

Prepare the renewal paperwork, including any options for expansion or upgrade.

Reach out to the business sponsor to schedule a meeting.

Meet to talk about the renewal process and continue the conversation about any upgrades or expansions that you have positioned.

Confirm expectations with the business sponsor.

Send renewal paperwork.

After receiving the signed renewal paperwork, update any customer notes and internal systems to reflect the change.

Customer success quarterly business review

Some customer success teams find it helpful to do a regular quarterly revisit with their customers, also known as a quarterly business review (QBR). In these meetings, the CSM reviews trends and metrics with the customer and covers how the customer progresses toward the goals they initially set in their kickoff. 

Even if you don't plan to have your team execute QBRs, this is an excellent customer success plan template for standing meetings where your CSMs review progress.

Review the customer’s health score and health score trend. Is it going up? Going down? What aspects of the health score have the most significant impact on its shifting?

Review any customer notes, including anything other teams add, such as marketing, product, or sales.

Review support tickets. Look at both currently open conversations and the ones that have been closed over the last quarter.

Check on open feature requests. Try to give them updates on anything that they've asked about.

Email the customer to set up the meeting.

Meet with the customer and review all of your findings from the previous steps.

Send a write-up of notes from the meeting to the customers and any attendees within your company.

Conduct an internal debrief on any action items that came from the meeting. For instance, give updates on the specific needs related to a feature request or feedback about how a support interaction went.

Schedule your next touchpoint; perhaps it’s not a QBR but a follow-up to address anything that came out of this meeting.

Use customer success plan templates for everyone's success

Planning never hurts anyone. Creating customer success plans ensures that your CSMs are well-prepared to be the best representatives of your company. It also means that they have the tools to help your customers be successful. 

Use our templates to create plans that work for your needs within your team — remember, no two companies are alike!

Like what you see? Share with a friend.

Mercer smith.

Mercer is the VP of CX Insights & Community at PartnerHero, a yoga fanatic, and strives to make the world a little bit happier one customer at a time. You can find her at mercenator.com and on Twitter .

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