How to Automatically Identify Expansion Opportunities

About this Blueprint

‍Blueprints are a collection of Vitally best practices and use cases brought to you by today's Customer Success thought leaders.

Securing expansion revenue is an important component of Customer Success. The ability to see and act on product usage data saves teams time and effort and can be a powerful tool for growth and retention.

With Playbook Templates, Customer Success teams can automatically detect expansion opportunities and follow up with customers to secure the deal.

Ben Francis, the Head of Customer Success at Salesmsg, uses this Expansion Blueprint to quickly identify expansion opportunities, automate his team’s outreach, and ensure his book of business is optimized at scale.

Preview of Blueprint

‍When to use an Expansion Blueprint

You can use this Blueprint to automatically identify when you have expansion opportunities within your business. This "Auto-Recharge" Playbook automatically fires when accounts match certain criteria (‘Credits Purchased’ and ‘First Date with Revenue’). When a customer purchases additional software credits more than once, this is a clear indicator to Ben that they may need an upgraded plan.

Ben’s template includes actions such as creating an Expansion Task for the account, creating an Opportunity Indicator, and branching logic to split the Conversation path depending on if the team has had a recent interaction with the customer or not.

This Expansion Blueprint is ideal for teams who operate with a Tech Touch or Low Touch Customer Success model, where there is 1 CSM dedicated to many accounts, and you need a way to automate many of your workflows and outreach efforts.

‍KPIs Impacted‍

• Net Revenue Retention (NRR) Rate
• Expansion Revenue

What data points or information will you need to complete or add?

You will need to adjust the Playbook triggers in this Expansion Blueprint to match your own parameters (such as customer segmentation, revenue data, product usage data, etc.).

You will also need to adjust the Conversation content to fit your specific product (take a deeper look at Salesmsg’s email template for expansions here). You can use this Blueprint as a starting point, and simply fill in the details and build on the automation flows to match your team’s needs.

‍How can you customize this for other use cases?

This Expansion Blueprint uses Vitally Tasks, Conversation Templates, and Opportunity Indicators. All of these elements are customizable and can be edited to fit your particular use case and industry. 

For example, you could schedule an additional follow up email depending on if the previous one was replied to or not. Conversely, if product usage has declined, you might want to fire a Risk Indicator on the account instead. In addition to this, you could add more Playbook branches to support a variety of outcomes.

Tip: Create a table View in Vitally of all your Expansion Tasks, so that you can easily see which customers you need to prioritize at a glance.

‍About Salesmsg

Salesmsg is a two-way text messaging and calling platform that helps businesses send and receive messages and make phone calls online or on the go.

They are on a mission to help tens of thousands of businesses use SMS text messaging to connect, engage, and grow their businesses. Voted as one of Florida's Fastest Growing Companies, Salesmsg is poised to disrupt the business messaging & calling industry.