The Journey: #60 Efficient but Ineffective

I remember starting at a company a few years back and being told that we needed to “dial in” our processes.

They were not as efficient as they could be, and customers were not hitting milestones in a timely manner.

I was handed a stack of things that needed to be fixed.

So I got to work.

I made a list of each of the processes and programs that needed to be revisited, starting with the Sales to CS handoff, then onboarding, followed by our adoption framework and enablement guide. The list went on.

I broke each task down into internal and external action items. I organized the assets and resources that would support those items and started dialing them in.

I took what I knew and made changes.

I met with internal stakeholders and used their feedback.

I redesigned the programs to make things more efficient internally. I streamlined through tools and systems, cut steps that seemed unnecessary, and focused on the output.

I optimized for our internal metrics because that was how I was being measured.

When I got done, I was feeling really proud of myself.

I called together all of the teams that would be critical to help me deploy these updated systems and put things in place to roll them out.

Now everything was in place, the teams were humming, and customers were having a different experience. So I got to tracking.

The internal gains were obvious. Things felt smoother. Data was flowing. Teams were working better together. It was working.

Until it wasn’t.

Our internal metrics were optimized, but we saw no improvement in customer metrics.

Onboarding didn’t appear to be faster, adoption didn’t seem to be better, and customer sentiment remained flat.

That was exactly what I needed to rethink how I approached program design.

Here’s what I realized:

• My success was measured by efficiency gains, not by optimized customer experience.

• I never consulted with our customers to evaluate what they needed, start, stop, or continue.

• I never went through my own process to see what the entire end-to-end experience actually looked like for customers.

• I didn’t go through our Knowledge Base to see what documentation was outdated or unclear.

It took me building and rolling something out to realize the most important lesson in Customer Success.

You must design for your customers first.

Not for your internal metrics, not for your reporting dashboard, and not for executive optics. For your customers.

I’ve never made that mistake again.

In fact, it’s one of the first things I advise leaders on before they start optimizing their own processes.

So here is my advice for you:

1. Before you fix your handoff, ask your customers where they feel friction.

2. Before you streamline onboarding, go through it yourself as if you were brand new.

3. Before you measure efficiency, define what better actually looks like for the customer.

4. Before you celebrate internal gains, validate external impact.

Because you can build a smoother internal machine and still not move the customer forward.

And that’s the trap.

If you’re in the middle of “dialing in” your processes right now, pause.

Who are you designing for? Your team? Or your customers?