Buying guide
Choosing how to grow revenue with your existing customer base
You've got customers, product data, and some way of tracking accounts. Something should get better: more accounts activated, more of them expanding, more of your accounts measured and understood. This is a guide for deciding how to get that work done.
Three questions before any shortlist
What work is actually missing?
There are four different jobs, and they get confused with each other:
- Talking to customers.
- Working out which accounts need which move.
- Building the plumbing: data, CRM, the workflows between them.
- Measuring whether a move worked.
A customer-facing hire fixes the first. A tool mostly fixes the third. Name which one you're short of before you shortlist anything.
Who owns it over time?
Someone defines what a successful customer looks like, keeps account information current, prepares the moves, reviews what changed, and adjusts when the product or the pricing shifts. An internal owner is a fine answer if they have the hours every week – not just this quarter.
What scale does it need to hold?
How many accounts, how varied they are, how often things change, and how many of your accounts you need to understand. If you have under a hundred accounts, you can do that work by hand, and you should. Volume alone doesn't prove you need outside help.
The ways to do it
Keep doing it by hand.
If it's a small customer base with one owner who knows every account, you carry everything.
Important question: What breaks when the customer base doubles, or that person leaves?
Build it yourself.
Use a sheet, a warehouse model, or CRM workflows. This fits a team with an internal owner and funded analyst or engineering time. You carry the maintenance and the interpretation.
Important question: Who updates the criteria after a product release, and who reads every account each week?
Hire someone.
A customer-facing hire adds conversations. An analyst or operations hire adds the reading of your accounts. These solve different shortages – be clear which one you have. Agree whether the hire builds the criteria and the workflows or works from what already exists.
Important question: What do they inherit on day one, or are they building from scratch?
Bring in an agency or a consultancy.
This fits when you want outside expertise or delivery under an agreed scope. Some will talk to your customers, some won't. Some build the plumbing, some run the program. You carry whatever's outside the scope of their work.
Important question: What is the deliverable, in writing, who owns it when the engagement ends, and who contacts your customers?
Buy a CS platform.
This fits a team that can configure it, maintain it, and read it every week. You carry the setup and the interpretation.
Important question: Can you see your own checks run on your own data, and who is the person who reads the findings each week?
Accoil.
A customer-success consultancy with our own tooling. We define what good looks like with you, check every account in a segment weekly, put the recommended move on the account in your CRM, and review it periodically with you. You carry the decisions and every customer conversation. This fits a team with product-usage data and a CRM, more accounts than anyone can read by hand, and someone operating your post-sales motion or a hire on the way. This is not a fit if you have under a hundred accounts, no product-usage data, or nobody to drive the conversations.
Of course, you can combine these. If you hire someone, they can work from a platform. If you work with an agency, they can build the plumbing and someone on your team can run it. Each route can cover the work with the right people and scope. Accoil is one consultancy option: compare what we take responsibility for with what your team would own.
Side by side
| Question | By hand | Build it | Hire | Agency | CS platform | Accoil |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Who defines what good looks like | The owner | Your team | The hire, with leadership | Depends on the scope | Your team, in the tool's configuration | With you, per segment. You approve it |
| Who checks every account, every week | The owner, with time set aside for it | Your assigned owner, using the checks your team builds | The analyst or operations hire, if it's in the role | The provider, if it's in scope | The tool runs the checks; your team maintains and reads them | We do, with our tooling |
| Who recommends moves and reviews results | The owner | Your assigned owner | The hire, if it's in the role | The provider, if it's in scope | Your team, using the tool | We recommend and review with you; you decide and act |
| Who talks to your customers | Your team | Your team | Your customer-facing team, or a customer-facing hire | Your team, or the agency if in scope | Your team | Your team. Nobody from Accoil |
| What you keep if it ends | Everything | Everything | Their work, as documented | What the contract says | Your data and what you can export, under the product's terms | Playbook, benchmark and analysis, in your systems |
Who defines what good looks like
- By hand
- The owner
- Build it
- Your team
- Hire
- The hire, with leadership
- Agency
- Depends on the scope
- CS platform
- Your team, in the tool's configuration
- Accoil
- With you, per segment. You approve it
Who checks every account, every week
- By hand
- The owner, with time set aside for it
- Build it
- Your assigned owner, using the checks your team builds
- Hire
- The analyst or operations hire, if it's in the role
- Agency
- The provider, if it's in scope
- CS platform
- The tool runs the checks; your team maintains and reads them
- Accoil
- We do, with our tooling
Who recommends moves and reviews results
- By hand
- The owner
- Build it
- Your assigned owner
- Hire
- The hire, if it's in the role
- Agency
- The provider, if it's in scope
- CS platform
- Your team, using the tool
- Accoil
- We recommend and review with you; you decide and act
Who talks to your customers
- By hand
- Your team
- Build it
- Your team
- Hire
- Your customer-facing team, or a customer-facing hire
- Agency
- Your team, or the agency if in scope
- CS platform
- Your team
- Accoil
- Your team. Nobody from Accoil
What you keep if it ends
- By hand
- Everything
- Build it
- Everything
- Hire
- Their work, as documented
- Agency
- What the contract says
- CS platform
- Your data and what you can export, under the product's terms
- Accoil
- Playbook, benchmark and analysis, in your systems
Questions to ask anyone, including us
Show me one account from the evidence to the recommended move and the message you'd send.
Who sets the benchmark, who updates it, and what happens when we disagree with it?
How do you tell what changed because of the move from what changed anyway?
Who owns this week to week, what does my team have to do, and what happens after a release or a price change?
What does it cost, what's in scope, and what do we keep if it ends?
If the answers point to doing it yourself, do that. If they point to a hire, decide what that role should inherit and what it should build. If any of this is unclear, come and talk to us and we'll give you a steer.
Not sure? Talk to a team with decades of experience.
Get thirty minutes with an Accoil founder. We'll talk about what a successful customer looks like, how to find the gaps, and whether there's work worth doing this quarter. Our aim is to make the call as valuable as possible for you. Ready to chat?