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Getting things done is a core tenant of any Customer Success professional. A customer calls in with a question? Let's find them an answer. A client's missing opportunities to increase the value they're realizing with our product or service? Let's proactively alert them to it. We have a command of our customer's needs, we partner with them in reaching their desired outcomes, and create innovative solutions when "out of the box" doesn't exist. A fully-realized customer-centric culture requires a relentless pursuit of excellence in these and many other facets, which is difficult to realize without becoming highly efficient in delivering value to our customers. These three tips will help you create a scalable methodology for becoming more effective in getting to all things for your customers:
Educate yourself in the Getting Things Done community. David Allen's five clear steps to apply order to chaos provides a great framework for constructing the most highly effective "you". Capturing what has your attention, understanding what that means, organizing those entities, reviewing them, and then engaging in what needs done will triage your efforts in a scalable manner and keep you focused on the most important matters. The investment in time hear will pay dividends when you deploy what you've learned.
Find 90 minutes a day to spend time on your top priority item. This is as much an exercise in developing good habits as it is in getting things done. Empowering yourself to have meetings, ideation, or documentation time on a singular project gives you space to not only roam but get things done. PRO TIP: spend your initial 30 minutes on ideation, your second 30 minutes on reviewing those strategies in a meeting, and your final 30 minutes documenting the outcomes of those efforts. This workflow assures you've thought your items through before presenting them, received feedback, and have a detailed plan prior to fully taking action.
Allow for 25 minutes of uninterrupted focus session on your top priority. Sometimes the most difficult job in getting started is to start itself. Turning off outside distractions and giving yourself time to work through a problem may not lead to its immediate completion, but it will leave you with greater progress then you started with. Like the 90 minute rule, this is as much about developing the right habits as it is steering you to the best outcomes. Progress is progress, and you can spare 25 minutes for that.
The net sum of all these efforts is disciplined progress towards the most important items facing you. Having a defined and scalable structure to plan ahead and triage for the unexpected will steer you towards more effective and efficient time with your customers.
