Case Study: Customer Success Team Creation

The Challenge

Analysis of customer data revealed a troubling pattern: a disproportionate number of new B2B customers were churning within their first 90 days after activation. This early churn represented millions in lost lifetime revenue and created significant inefficiencies as sales teams spent valuable selling time attempting to salvage troubled accounts.

Drilling deeper into the data, I discovered that the root cause wasn't product quality or pricing—it was a fundamental disconnect between the sales promise and the customer experience. Our sales teams were excellent at closing deals but lacked the structure, time, and sometimes expertise to ensure smooth implementation and customer adoption.

No Structured Handoff Process

After signing the contract, customers often felt abandoned, with no clear guidance on next steps or who to contact with questions. Our data showed that nearly 40% of customers who churned early had made at least three support calls in their first 30 days, indicating confusion about basic setup and usage.

Sales Team Time Sink

Sales representatives were spending significant time on post-sale implementation activities rather than selling. This created two problems: sales productivity decreased, and the customer experience was inconsistent since reps lacked specialized onboarding expertise.

Activation and Process Failures

We identified a 25% rate of activation failures, with recurring issues related to ports, promotion fallout, and eSIM setup. These technical problems were causing significant customer frustration and contributing to early churn. Without a dedicated team focusing on these issues, they continued to plague new customers.

No Early Warning System

Without a proactive check-in process, we had no way to identify at-risk customers until they were already calling to cancel. By that point, recovery was difficult and costly, resulting in lost revenue and damaged relationships.

"The sales-to-service handoff was our blind spot. We were fantastic at closing deals and had strong ongoing support, but those critical first 90 days were a vulnerability that was costing us millions in lifetime customer value."

— Paul Takisaki

The Solution

I developed a comprehensive business case for a specialized Customer Success function that would provide structured, white-glove onboarding with five proactive touchpoints over 90 days. This wasn't just about satisfaction—it was about creating customers who would stay, grow, and advocate for us.

Customer Success Journey Map

Based on our analysis, we developed a structured 90-day journey map with specific touchpoints and actions:

Day 0-1

Welcome Call & Deployment Planning

Day 2-5

Equipment Verification & Troubleshooting

Day 5-7

MyBiz Portal Setup & Training

Day 10-14

Digital Onboarding & Solution Consultation

Day 30-45

First Bill Review & Satisfaction Check

Ongoing

Continuous Support & Growth Opportunities

Each touchpoint was carefully designed to address specific pain points we had identified in the customer journey:

Touchpoint 1: Welcome Call (Day 0-1)

A dedicated CS team member would contact the customer within 24 hours of signing to set expectations, confirm equipment delivery timelines, build a deployment plan, validate SPOC details, and establish a clear communication channel for any immediate questions. The CS rep would also confirm solutions, identify trade-in opportunities, and handle promo confirmations.

Touchpoint 2: Equipment Verification (Day 2-5)

The team would follow up with a thank you call, conduct high-spot email checks, perform triage (addressing failed activations, ports, and troubleshooting), and submit ITTS tickets for any lost or stolen equipment. This proactive check prevented the common problem of customers receiving incomplete or incorrect equipment and ensured proper billing and promotion setup.

Touchpoint 3: Digital Tool Training (Day 5-7)

Personalized training on using Verizon's online portal for account management, including sending registration emails, updating/verifying SPOC information, ensuring successful registration, handling additional solutions, and providing Tier 1 troubleshooting support as needed.

Touchpoint 4: Digital Onboarding (Day 10-14)

A comprehensive solution consultation and tutorial on the MyBiz portal customization, scheduling demos with solutions engineers when needed, and helping customers with MDM, FWA, One Talk, and TMP solution selling. This touchpoint also included SE engagement and SAM/customer triage as necessary.

Touchpoint 5: First Bill Review (Day 30-45)

A thorough walkthrough of the first invoice to ensure it matched expectations, with specific focus on bill layout, promo & BIC accuracy, customer touch points, and triage issues. This was critical as billing surprises were a primary driver of early cancellations. The team also reviewed self-service portal usage, provided guided support links, identified pull-through opportunities, and addressed final concerns.

Ongoing Support

Continuous monitoring of customer experience, identifying efficiencies, tracking NPS, facilitating resource alignment across teams (Sales Engineering, GTS, BGCO, PACT, etc.), and providing escalation support when needed. This ongoing relationship maintained the connection and allowed for identification of future growth opportunities.

Beyond these customer touchpoints, I designed the Customer Success Team to serve as a vital feedback loop. Team members would systematically document every issue encountered—from activation failures to billing errors—and feed this information back to relevant departments, creating continuous improvement across the organization.

Implementation Strategy

In a cost-conscious environment, securing budget for a new team required compelling ROI projections and meticulous planning.

Building the Business Case

Securing resources for a new team in our cost-conscious environment required a compelling business case with clear ROI projections. I developed a comprehensive analysis that quantified:

Revenue Protection — Calculated the lifetime value of customers we were losing in the first 90 days and projected retention improvements based on a detailed analysis of 8,479 accounts with Customer Success support versus 13,503 accounts without it.
Operational Savings — Estimated reductions in support calls (25% reduction in call volume), activation failures (25% reduction), and billing disputes (50% reduction in promo correction requests).
Sales Productivity Gains — Quantified the selling time that would be recaptured by relieving reps of post-sale administrative work, showing the CS team could save approximately 2,040 hours per month, equating to $2M in annual SAM payroll.
Customer Experience Improvements — Projected NPS increases and their downstream impact on referral business, with our pilot achieving a perfect 5/5 rating on all customer surveys.

With this analysis in hand, I presented to senior leadership and secured approval for a pilot program with a team structured around geographic support ratios of 1.75 Customer Success Reps for every Mid-Market Director, with a total of 30 CSRs (4 Senior Managers/1 AD) at full scale.

Team Structure and Objectives

With approval secured, I focused on building a team with clear objectives centered around three core pillars:

Efficiency

Reduce friction and free up rep time through reduced non-sales activities, process improvements, and support that enabled reps to focus on selling.

Revenue

Identify additional opportunities through engagement, with focus on new logo growth, reduced churn, fewer customer service calls, and reduced billing errors.

Satisfaction

Drive digital adoption of MyBiz portal, improve NPS scores, generate referrals, and provide a feedback loop to address systemic issues across the organization.

Job Responsibilities Overview

The Customer Success Team was designed with specific responsibilities across multiple service areas, including:

New Customer Onboarding - Onboard new logos (15+ per CSR), manage existing customer ports (15+), handle One Talk (5+), FWA (5+), and mmW (1+) activations
Engagement Flow - Manage communication through SFDC with a defined escalation process
Structured Timeline - Follow the 5-stage journey map from 0-1 day post-sale through 35-40 days with ongoing support as needed

Training was intensive and immersive. Team members shadowed top sales reps to understand the selling process, spent time with technical support to build product knowledge, and received specialized training on identifying at-risk behaviors. The goal was to create a team that could serve as knowledgeable guides through the critical early customer journey.

Most importantly, we established a robust feedback system. Every interaction was documented in our CRM, and weekly team meetings included a structured review of emerging patterns. This allowed us to quickly identify and address systemic issues rather than simply treating symptoms.

The Impact

The Customer Success Team delivered extraordinary results that exceeded even our optimistic projections:

Key Performance Indicators

Our detailed analysis of accounts with and without CS support showed remarkable differences:

Churn Reduction

B2B average monthly churn reduction of 61 bps (8 month average), with R2B customers showing even better results at 114 bps reduction (60 day pilot). The CS team effectively cut customer churn in half.

Opportunity Discovery

43% take rate on opportunity discovery per onboarded case, with 430 opportunities discovered and 100 SE engagements resulting in $40K incremental revenue.

MyBiz Utilization

B2B CS supported accounts showed 47-70% adoption vs 9-20% for non-supported. R2B CS supported customers achieved 93% adoption vs just 1-2% without support. Overall, 72% of completed cases achieved digital usage.

Productivity Gains — The CS team saved approximately 2,040 hours per month for sales reps, equivalent to $2 million in annual payroll savings. Average case handling improved from 17 hours to just 8 hours per customer.
Dramatic Churn Reduction — Analysis comparing CS-engaged accounts (95) vs. non-CS engaged accounts (173) showed dramatically lower churn rates, resulting in an estimated 3,123 saved lines in year one, representing $116,800 in monthly recurring revenue or $14 million in lifetime revenue.
Process Improvements — We documented a 25% reduction in activation failures, 25% reduction in call volume, and 50% reduction in promo correction requests. One-day resolutions increased by more than 50%.
Sales Performance Boost — In 2023, 60% of sales reps participating with at least one CS case showed substantially better results, with those having 6+ CS engagements averaging 116% of their net add target and 479% of their New Logo gross add attainment for the year.
Digital Adoption Boost — Customers who went through our digital tool training used online self-service 47-70% of the time versus 9-20% for those who didn't receive training, further reducing support costs.

"The Customer Success Team fundamentally changed my business. I went from spending 30% of my time dealing with onboarding issues to focusing entirely on new opportunities. My customers are happier, I'm closing more deals, and I'm actually home for dinner. It's been transformative."

— Senior Account Executive, Verizon

The Feedback Loop: A Hidden Benefit

Perhaps the most valuable long-term impact was the systematic feedback mechanism we established. By meticulously documenting every issue encountered, the Customer Success Team became a powerful insights engine that drove improvements across multiple departments:

Product Development — Identified frequent usability challenges that informed product updates and feature priorities.
Operations — Spotted patterns in shipping and activation processes that led to streamlined procedures, including alignment with O+O in BGCO for escalation of failed activations, alignment with BFO for escalations related to promo corrections, and alignment with PACT for port issue escalations.
Sales Enablement — Provided insights on which promises caused downstream satisfaction issues, leading to improved training and messaging.
Resource Alignment — Created clear processes for working across teams including Sales Engineering, GTS, BGCO, PACT, L&D and Operations to solve complex customer issues more effectively.

This feedback loop created a virtuous cycle where the entire customer experience continually improved, not just the onboarding phase. We also identified impactful pilot insights such as One Talk Zero Use reduction (from 32% to 8% through proactive engagement) and better partner alignment—we found 27% of accounts not properly set up were actually working with a partner, allowing us to coordinate support more effectively.

ROI Analysis

The economics of the Customer Success Team were compelling, with a first-year ROI that easily justified the investment:

Costs

Team Salaries (30 FTEs) $2,400,000

Training & Development $150,000

Technology & Tools $250,000

Management Overhead $450,000

Total Investment $3,250,000

Benefits

Revenue Protected $14,000,000

Sales Productivity Gains $2,000,000

Support Call Reduction $850,000

Operational Savings $600,000

Total Return $17,450,000

With a total investment of approximately $3.25 million generating over $17 million in benefits, the program achieved an ROI of more than 5:1 in its first year alone. Based on year two projections of $53 million in protected revenue, this ratio would improve dramatically over time. The initiative was expanded from the pilot team to a nationwide deployment, and eventually became standard practice for B2B customer onboarding across Verizon.

Leadership Takeaways

Core principles from this transformation that can apply across industries and challenges

Data Reveals Hidden Problems

The early-churn pattern was hiding in plain sight within our customer data, but it took deliberate analysis to recognize it as a systemic issue rather than individual customer decisions. By analyzing patterns across thousands of accounts, we identified a fixable structural problem and tracked results with specific metrics that proved the impact.

ROI-Driven Innovation

In a resource-constrained environment, leading with a rigorous business case was critical. By quantifying both the problem cost and solution benefits, I secured buy-in for an innovative approach that might otherwise have been dismissed as a "nice to have" rather than a strategic imperative. Having actual case studies and pilot data further strengthened the business case.

Specialists Outperform Generalists

The sales team wasn't failing at onboarding because they lacked effort or intention—they simply weren't specialized for that function. Creating a dedicated team with focused expertise and clear metrics led to dramatically better outcomes than trying to make everyone good at everything. The structured approach allowed for consistent execution of the customer journey.

Feedback Loops Drive Continuous Improvement

By designing a system that not only fixed immediate issues but captured data for broader improvements, we created value far beyond the initial scope. The most effective solutions address current problems while preventing future ones. Our resource alignment strategy ensured all teams across the organization could collaborate effectively on resolving customer issues.

Customer Success Team: From Concept to Game-Changer

Results at a Glance