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Recommendation Calls & Success Plans

Diego Ayón
Updated

A recommendation call is generally about 30 minutes, you meet with the customer, you bring with you a success plan that you've already created, and you deliver that to the customer. You just walk through your plan with the customer, tell them all your recommendations, and open it for the customer to ask questions. Try to schedule this call after finishing the discovery call so a date is set. 

For this recommendation calls we also do pre-call preparation, it is all about making the success plan. We research good recommendations that align with customer goals, and bring value to the customers. And then, after the call we need to follow up with the customer, make sure that they understand the recommendations and in case they have questions. 

 

Strategies for an effective recommendations call: 

  • Clear agenda
    • have an agenda, because it'll keep you on topic when you need to discuss have a series of topics you're going to talk about regarding your success plan, you should try to stay on topic. Stay focused.
  • Tailored recommendations
    • prepare personalized, data-driven suggestions that align with the customer's objectives. customize the wording and the flavor to match that customer.
  • Comprehensive resources
    • don't just give them the answer, give them the article that aligns with the answer, so that they can take that article with them, and they can answer the question in the future

 

Success Plan Decks: 

  • Scaled Playbook (all internal workflows that we have go into your cockpit, elements of a CTA)
  • Scaled Slides (Deck for Success plans, broken down into topics and are product specific)
  • Frequently Used Slides (CSM-specific ideas, when introducing ourselves to the customer)

 

Success plans, what do they do for our customers:

  • Builds trusts
    • Demonstrates strategic partnership and aligns with executive priorities, positioning you as trusted advisor and focuses on how Zendesk supports their goals.
  • helps address risk and opportunities
    • Proactively addresses customer goals and tracking progress reduces churn risk while reinforcing long-term value
  • proves value
    • Translates customer goals into measurable outcomes, turning abstract success into a clear roadmap. Serves as proof of value and sets the stage for smooth renewals and potential growth opportunities.

We can deliver success plans in a call or through mail in case the customer has been pushing back the meeting for too long. Always try to have the success plan within a week for the customers. 

 

Common meeting types: 

  1. The New Admin – Net new customer OR newly inherited instance. Admin doesn’t know where to start and wants to know what to do.
  2. The Technician – Customer encountering an issue with the product or needs to focus on a specific part of implementation; No success with Advocacy.
  3. The Challenger  – Adamant about seeing proof of ROI and the features that Zendesk has to offer.
  4. The Stubborn One  – Customer is struggling with Support or Renewals issues, and refuses to move forward with Success engagement until they are resolved.
  5. Hyper-focused  – Customer focused on a specific feature or product – Explore, Guide, AI-obsessed, etc. 

 

Challenges when building a Success Plan: 

  • The AE led the conversation, focusing mostly on expansion/commercial topics. Customer Success topics were secondary.
    • Approach by align with the AE before the call
  • The customer uses the call mostly for troubleshooting and operational questions, not for strategic planning.
    • address immediate issues, contact with advocacy
  • The customer is achieving strong KPIs and actively using Zendesk products across teams and almost all features.
    • focus on what is next? add best practices
  • Customer's priority is a defined initiative (e.g., AI agents, workspace migration)
    • Client's goals are priorities, Gradually expand the conversation to broader success outcomes once trust is built.
  • Professional Services team is leading the engagement; CS role can seem secondary.
    • Align Success Plan to complement PS efforts
  • Sometimes a customer just needs to say how they feel and they take up much of the time in your discovery call.
    • If needed, do additional discovery separately.

 

You can also use AI, here is the prompt: 

I want you to take the persona of being a Customer Success Manager at Zendesk who is an expert on the product and has a strategic mindset. This conversation will be used for building Success Plans for customer engagements that I've had.
There are 5 key components for the Success Plan:
Objective: 2-3 line Summary noting the customer’s current state of the business, overall challenges, and desired outcome following a completed Success Plan. What needs to happen for this customer to be more successful with Zendesk?
Goals: High-level CX Goals which align with the proposed strategy and outcome. these will start with a verb and describe the goal in less than 10 words
Strategies: Personalized and actionable steps the customer is recommended to take to achieve their desired outcome. Ideally this is 2-3 bullet points.
Resources: Links to content which will help advise the customer on the strategies being proposed. Could be Help Center/Community content or personalized videos. You can just place a list of search terms for me to use here, with this format "Zendesk help center article: ______"
Outcomes & Timeline: Specific and personalized outcome with an estimated date of completion. This is a specific task w/ an estimated completion date. this should be a single sentence, starting with a verb, describing the strategies of the goal succinctly. at the bottom should be "[TBD]" this is a placeholder I'll edit after.
The Blueprint is as follows: Objective is at the top. Then there are 3 rows. Each row is composed of 4 columns. The columns in order are: CX Goal, Strategies, Resources, Outcomes & Timeline.
What I need you to do: I'm going to either provide a {{transcript of a call}} and or {{my meeting notes}}. I want you to build a personalized success plan for the customer. I might also give you the {{main strategies}} and have you use that plus the transcript to create the success plan draft. The main strategies section is going to be the goals I want you to use. Feel free to title them as I'd mention before with that same convention.
Very important: Also, before you create the plan at all, ask me 1. if I'd like to add anything and 2. ask me for the powerpoint document that holds all other success plans I've ever made. you need to match my writing style as closely as you can by learning from my past work. Please do not create the plan until we have had this dialogue.

 

 

Resources: 

Workshop: 

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