[Case Study] An Optimization Program for Predictive Results
CLIENT OVERVIEW
Aurora Solar’s cloud-based software transforms solar design, sales, and delivery. With just an address and electric bill, Aurora empowers clients to generate a complete, accurate, and customizable design for every customer — and close the deal on the spot. The company helps power thousands of solar projects every week towards our goal of making solar accessible for everyone. Aurora’s products are used by some of the world’s most advanced and respected solar cell manufacturers.
GROWTH OPPORTUNITIES
As the leader in developing and delivering inline process control and yield management solutions for solar cell manufacturers, the Aurora Solar customer success team sought more than a customer success consulting firm. They wanted a partner to work with that would have an impact quickly with training and assessment, but that would help scale the customer experience with technology and quickly. Aurora Solar partnered with Growth Molecules™ in three critical ways:
- Customer Success and Account Manager training and enablement
- Customer Success Assessment to help prioritize customer experience scale programs
- Customer Success Platform Optimization
PART I. Education To Help Protect And Grow Revenue
Holly Brunk
Sr. Director Customer Success and Services
“The engagement immediately helped our CSMs lead customers with a growth mindset and the skills to apply emotional intelligence to client interactions. The engagement created a methodology for the team to follow without feeling scripted. We’ve had multiple cohorts of employees participate in the training as we have quadrupled in size from when we first began the engagement. We look forward to continuing this foundation and advanced proactive approach to managing customers in 2023 and beyond.“
Enabling Customer Success Managers Pays Off.
TRAINING ENGAGEMENT RESULTS:
“We had a fantastic training experience with Growth Molecules, who I now consider our go-to training and development provider for our customer-facing teams. Supercharge your Customer Success and Support roles with a little help like we did.”
Eraj Siddiqui
SVP Customer Success & Services
Aurora Solar
A Growth Molecules assessment aims to understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats internally and externally. Typically taking four to six weeks, this deep dive diagnostic results in prioritized recommendations for the top three to five areas of improvement for the client’s next 12-18 months. Recommendations typically span organizational design, including roles and responsibilities, enhancements in the customer onboarding process, technology recommendations, digital customer success playbooks, and more..
The Aurora customer success team’s assessment with the Growth Molecules™ team accomplished the following:
- Confirmed some of the assumptions made by the organization
- Helped focus and align the leadership team around top priorities as the company expanded quickly and globally
- Suggested an actionable path to scale with playbooks and a customer success platform allowing a customized digital customer experience.
With a clear understanding of the path forward across people, processes, and systems, the Aurora team is looking forward to a bright future ahead.
Customer Success Platform Optimization: “We are set up for success going forward.”
Soon after the assessment readout to the executive team, Aurora Solar aspired further to maximize their use of their customer success platform, Gainsight to achieve three outcomes:
- Predictive revenue forecasting
- Proactive customer relationship management
- Consistent customer touchpoints
- Efficient and consistent team utilization
Aurora Solar called on Growth Molecules to assess, advise, configure, and optimize their Gainsight instance to ensure that they were:
- Leading with reports that were accurate and easily accessible for leadership
- Proactively and predictively identify customer risks and opportunities for mutual growth
- Adopting the platform as a team to proactively manage client conversations
- Leveraging Gainsight to its maximum potential
The Customer Success team also needed an operations guide for the newly minted Operations leaders. Growth Molecules delivered the key outcomes set at the beginning of the project, and they did it within 90 days of kickoff, achieving high-impact goals early and throughout the journey together.
Part III. Gainsight Diagnostic Assessment and Optimization Results
Revenue Performance Visibility: 4+ months earlier than before
- Launched predictive customer health scorecard that resulted in accurate measurement of adoption, client experience (CSAT), and live risk CTAs
- Configured and deployed revenue forecasting dashboard for quick view by the executive team to make informed decisions
- Connected Salesforce opportunity data object to Gainsight, resulting in a view of a single account’s annual recurring revenue (ARR)
Time Savings: 3 hours per week in time savings per CSM via the deployment of operational best practices
- Provided foundational end-user training to 20 learners to support a CSM”s “day in the life” in Gainsight
- Deployed new sandbox environment for the client to test new Gainsight features in the future before deployment
- Trained business operations team with tools and techniques to properly mine and interpret revenue data
- Delivered a Gainsight CSM handbook and operations reference guide customized to the client’s specific technology instance
PART IV. Bringing it all Together
Aurora Solar is positioned to grow dramatically in the coming years as the leader in cloud-based software that transforms solar design, sales, and delivery. Realizing that growth and focusing on the key performance indicators takes time, they called on Growth Molecules™ to help accelerate employee training, optimize technology that helps CSMs effectively lead customers, and to recommend the most impactful way to protect and grow revenue. The partnership is two years strong, and the Growth Molecules™ is proud to have been part of the journey thus far.
Quotes:
Holly Brunk, Senior Director, Customer Success: “We are in a completely different position with Gainsight and how we operate as an organization due to what you provided, helping us to turn the corner in properly utilizing Gainsight. We appreciate it.”
Peter Wooley, Program Manager: “Thanks for helping us get set up with the sandbox and migration tool. It’s the piece we’ve been missing and will help us continue to enhance how we leverage Gainsight. We now have best practices implemented.”
Tommy Johnson, Senior System Administrator: “I feel comfortable taking Gainsight forward. Thank you for the documentation and an extra shout-out for coming to save the day when the migration tool failed. You helped us rebuild and worked with us to improve.”
Growth Molecules™ is a Customer Success Advisory firm, helping companies protect and grow revenue.
We do That in Three Ways:
- We assess your current capabilities: People, Processes, and Systems.
- We implement new solutions: Actionable Playbooks, Technology, and Training.
- We execute them: Fractional Customer Success Leadership, Success, Leadership, and Support Training.
Growth Molecules™ is the ideal partner in revenue growth and customer success management. Our proven methodologies swiftly identify organizational needs, and strategically plan solutions to positively impact business outcomes. Our team of award-winning strategists are former customer success leaders who understand what it takes to increase revenue through customer success. Don’t take it from us, take it from our customers through case studies and G2 Reviews to prove it. Contact us today to get started on your customer success optimization journey.