Transforming Manufacturing: The Power of Customer Lifecycle Management and RevOps

In recent blogs, we’ve been discussing how imperative Revenue Operations (RevOps), or the practice of aligning and optimizing communications, processes, technology, and data across sales, marketing, and customer service departments, has become for manufacturers to succeed in today's competitive marketplace. RevOps is critical due to its focus on improving efficiency, effectiveness, and collaboration across every customer-facing department in a business. This focus is paramount to maximizing the customer experience (CX).

Equally important in this context is Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM). CLM, which manages the CX from initial contact through conversion to becoming a loyal advocate, merges with the RevOps roadmap to amplify business growth, refine operations, and boost customer value. CLM focuses on building a strong and lasting relationship between the customer and a brand. Together, CLM and RevOps create a powerful synergy that drives both operational excellence and superior customer satisfaction.

Why CX is Vital for B2B Today

Customer experience is critical for B2B organizations, and here’s why:

• On average, brands risk losing 9.5% of their revenue as a result of a bad customer experience.
• B2B and B2C brands that use innovative CX strategies are three times as likely to significantly outperform financial goals.
• Companies that focus on CX see a 1.6 times higher customer lifetime value than those that don’t.

In essence, a positive CX leads to increased customer lifetime value, a key component of any manufacturer's longevity. In this blog, we'll explore how CLM and RevOps intersect and their role in today's manufacturing landscape. 

Customer Lifecycle vs. Buyer Journey

Let’s first uncover the subtle difference between the traditional buyer journey and today’s customer lifecycle. According to HubSpot, the customer lifecycle is "the process of prospects (leads) becoming aware of a product, making a purchase from a brand, and ideally becoming a company's longtime customer.”

While the customer lifecycle is similar to the buyer's journey, the customer lifecycle considers the customer's experience or what happens after the individual makes a purchase. The customer lifecycle is also company-centric. It highlights a brand's unique approach to getting leads and customers. It also covers onboarding and engaging with customers after conversion.

The buyer's journey is customer-centric, highlighting how a lead may discover, consider, and purchase a brand. Both viewpoints are critical for developing a positive customer experience. For more information about the new manufacturing buyer's journey, download our eBook. 

What is Customer Lifecycle Management?

Customer Lifecycle Management (CLM) is a series of actions and strategies designed to manage the customer experience from the initial contact to becoming a loyal advocate. The focus is on the CX after conversion, yet customer data and insights collected during pre-conversion stages are critical to CX success. Effective CLM requires continuous engagement, tracking, and improvement at each customer lifecycle stage. Each stage focuses on personalized and proactive interactions, making customers feel supported and valued throughout their engagement. Now, let's explore the practical benefits of integrating CLM within a RevOps framework. 

The Benefits of Integrating CLM within RevOps

RevOps uses data-driven decision-making and strategic planning to enrich the customer lifecycle. When CLM is integrated into a RevOps roadmap, the combined strategies help you achieve these essential benefits:

Enhanced Customer Insights

By centralizing data from all customer touchpoints, RevOps provides a holistic view of the current customer lifecycle. This integration helps find customer needs, preferences, and pain points. It does so at each stage of their engagement with a brand.

Aligned Goals and Metrics

When CLM is integrated within RevOps, sales, marketing, and customer service teams are working towards common goals and performance metrics, enhancing collaboration. It ensures that each team focuses on CX and revenue growth.

Streamlined Processes

Integrating CLM with RevOps helps streamline processes across departments. For example, the transition from sales to customer onboarding becomes seamless, reducing friction and building customer satisfaction.

Data-Driven Decision Making

RevOps leverages data analytics to provide actionable insights into the customer lifecycle. Based on real-time data, you’ll make informed decisions on product development, marketing strategies, and customer service enhancements.

Revenue Growth

Heightened customer experiences lead to higher satisfaction and repeat business, directly impacting revenue growth. Companies viewing CX as a value center achieve 3.5 times more revenue growth than those perceiving service entirely as a cost center.

Competitive Advantage

A well-integrated CLM and RevOps approach sets a company apart by providing superior customer engagement. Consistent and personalized interactions and a proactive approach to customer needs build brand loyalty and positive word-of-mouth, making it easier to attract and retain customers in a competitive market.

Improved Customer Retention

A unified approach to CLM and RevOps enables practical management of customer relationships. By anticipating customer needs and addressing issues promptly, you’ll improve retention rates and strengthen long-term loyalty. Focusing on the entire customer journey, from acquisition to advocacy, shapes more loyal customers and increases customer lifetime value.

CLM, when integrated within RevOps, provides a powerful framework to drive growth, enhance satisfaction, and achieve operational excellence throughout the customer experience. Let's define the stages of the customer lifecycle. 

Stages of the Customer Lifecycle

Understanding and managing the stages of the customer lifecycle is crucial to optimize customer-facing operations and maximize customer satisfaction. Each stage represents a critical touchpoint influencing a customer's overall experience and lifetime value. Let's briefly define these stages and explore how RevOps plays a vital role in ensuring seamless transitions between them.

Lead Generation

While CLM focuses on the customer experience after conversion, the stages before conversion are important to consider because they set the tone for customer expectations and offer insights into customer needs and preferences. Lead generation involves attracting and identifying customers most interested in a company's products or services. This stage focuses on creating awareness and capturing the attention of likely customers through marketing campaigns, trade shows, online content, and other outreach efforts.

RevOps aligns marketing and sales teams to create cohesive and effective lead generation strategies. By leveraging shared data and unified goals, RevOps ensures that marketing efforts are targeted and leads are ready to purchase.  A cohesive lead generation strategy also ensures a positive pre-purchase experience, building a relationship that can be further developed through the lifecycle.

Customer Acquisition/Pre-Onboarding

Customer acquisition is the process of converting prospects into customers. This is a critical transition point in the customer lifecycle, where a lead becomes a customer. This stage involves engaging with qualified leads, addressing their needs, and persuading them to purchase a product or service. It’s helpful to think of this stage as the pre-onboarding stage.

RevOps facilitates smooth communication and collaboration between marketing and sales during acquisition. This involves clear internal communications between teams regarding new customers, collecting and entering customer data into CRM for warranties, service level agreements, and other product information, and automations for billing. Ensuring each team has  comprehensive customer data and insights helps tailor pre-onboarding interactions to meet each customer's specific needs.

Onboarding

Onboarding is welcoming new customers and ensuring they understand how to use the purchased products or services effectively. This stage is critical for setting the foundation for a positive and ongoing customer relationship.
RevOps ensures that the handoff from sales to customer service is seamless. RevOps provides customer service teams with the necessary information about the customer’s purchase and expectations, enabling a personalized and efficient onboarding.

Engagement and Education

Engagement involves ongoing communication and customer interaction to keep them informed, supported, and satisfied. This includes continuous education about your company’s products and services. Your customers may not know all of your company’s offerings. The engagement stage is your opportunity to ensure they do. This stage focuses on building a strong relationship with your  customer through regular updates, education, support, and value-added services. 
RevOps integrates customer data across all departments to provide a 360-degree view of the customer. This approach allows CX teams to proactively engage with customers, address their concerns, and offer timely solutions.

Upselling/Cross Selling

As customers make initial and subsequent purchases, targeted upsell and cross-sell suggestions increase the value of their transactions. Positive CX  leads to higher customer engagement, satisfaction, and loyalty, prompting further interactions and additional data collection. This, in turn, refines your CX team’s future recommendations, creating a feedback loop that perpetually optimizes your CLM efforts. Integrating upselling and cross-selling , maximizes lifetime customer value and nurtures those all-important long-term customer relationships.

Retention and Loyalty

The retention and loyalty phase focuses on keeping existing customers satisfied and encouraging repeat business. This stage aims to turn customers into brand advocates.

RevOps plays a crucial role in retention and loyalty by analyzing customer behavior and feedback to identify areas for improvement. Using data-driven insights, CX teams can tailor retention strategies to specific customers' needs and preferences. Additionally, RevOps ensures that all teams provide exceptional CX, fostering loyalty and long-term satisfaction.

Ensuring Seamless Transitions with RevOps

RevOps supports seamless transitions between each stage of the customer lifecycle by centralizing marketing, sales, and customer service data, providing a comprehensive view of the customer journey. This unified data enables informed decision-making at each stage, reducing friction and enhancing collaboration. Consistent communication and proactive issue identification further ensure positive customer engagement throughout the lifecycle.

The Customer is the Point

The State of B2B CX Management, 2023 revealed that improving CX is a “significant or critical priority”  for many (65%) forward-thinking B2B leaders. Another survey found that 43% of American B2B marketers prioritize expanding customer retention strategies to improve their companies' CX. These leaders clearly understand that the road to longevity and sustainability is through a customer-focused RevOps roadmap. 

Looking Ahead

In an upcoming blog, we’ll review best practices to leverage CLM through a RevOps framework at every stage of the customer lifecycle. SyncShow collaborates with manufacturers and other B2B businesses to optimize their marketing, sales, and customer service functions through a transparent and integrated RevOps roadmap that enhances CX. Want to learn more? Connect with us today.