Back-to-school season has officially arrived, and this year is a big one in our house. My daughter is heading into first grade. She successfully made it through kindergarten, learned an incredible amount, and is walking into this school year with a whole new set of skills. She can read, write, do math, navigate a classroom, and tell me significantly more about the social dynamics of elementary school than I ever thought I needed to know.
So naturally, if you have some calculus homework lying around, send it our way. I'm sure she's ready. While we're at it, maybe she can write your thesis paper, analyze a few complicated data sets, and knock out your taxes before bedtime.
Obviously, none of us would expect that from a first grader. Successfully completing kindergarten means she built the foundation necessary to move on to first grade. It doesn't mean she suddenly possesses every skill she'll need throughout the rest of her education. We understand that learning is a process. Students master the fundamentals, practice new skills, gain confidence, and gradually take on more complex challenges as they're ready for them.
It seems like common sense when we're talking about a six-year-old, but I think there is an interesting comparison to how organizations sometimes approach technology investments.
When a customer begins implementing a new solution or service, a tremendous amount of work goes into getting everything successfully up and running. There are kickoff meetings, project plans, technical configurations, training sessions, testing, milestones, and countless conversations along the way. Eventually, everyone reaches the moment they've been working toward; the implementation is complete, the technology is operational, and the customer is officially live.
That's an important accomplishment and one worth celebrating. However, completing implementation doesn't automatically mean a customer has mastered everything their technology can do. It doesn't guarantee full adoption, complete utilization, or that every business outcome has already been achieved. In many ways, implementation is a lot more like graduating kindergarten than graduating with full knowledge and a degree.
Yet this is sometimes the point where the approach becomes, "Great job! Here's your backpack. Good luck out there." That is exactly why long-term Customer Success matters.
At LRS IT Solutions, we view onboarding and implementation as the foundation of the customer journey, not the completion of it. Early in an engagement, customers may need significant guidance around implementation, training, communication, and adoption. As they become more comfortable with their solution, those needs change, and our conversations should change with them.
Over time, the focus can shift toward deeper utilization, optimization, changing business objectives, and new opportunities. Maybe users aren't adopting a capability as expected. Perhaps the customer's priorities have changed since the original implementation. There may be functionality they are ready to explore now that wouldn't have made sense six months earlier. The goal of Customer Success is to continue understanding where the customer is in their journey and help determine what comes next.
That doesn't mean customers should require the same level of assistance forever. Quite the opposite. Think about how education works. As students gain knowledge and confidence, they're expected to become more independent. Teachers introduce more difficult concepts and encourage students to apply what they've already learned in new ways. The teacher's role evolves because the student's abilities evolve.
Customer Success should work the same way. A customer who has been using a solution for three years shouldn't necessarily need the same conversations they had three months after implementation. Their knowledge should have grown, their utilization should have matured, and their business objectives may look very different. Our role is to evolve alongside them, providing the right level of guidance, resources, and strategic conversation for wherever they are today.
As my daughter heads into first grade, I expect her to become more independent. I expect her teachers to challenge her and build upon everything she learned last year. Eventually, those lessons will become much more complicated, and someday calculus might actually be on the agenda. But we're going to give her a little time.
Technology investments deserve the same long-term perspective. Successful onboarding provides customers with the tools and knowledge they need to begin. Implementation establishes the foundation. What happens afterward determines how much value they ultimately build upon it.
Graduating kindergarten doesn't mean you're ready for calculus, and successfully completing implementation doesn't mean a customer is finished growing. In both cases, it simply means they're ready for what's next.