#8-references
Thread
For those of you who manage references for sales an/or CS what is your SLAs for sourcing a customer and why?
as long as it takes because you're lucky i'm helping you ...
kidding!! I get them a reco within 24 hours but don't guarantee that customer will respond in that time. I'd say 48 hours to get a response
No seriously!!!
I think this really depends on your customer base! In an ideal world, Amanda's SLAs are spot on. In a lot of the worlds I work in ... my SLAs from the time the request is submitted to when we have something booked is 10 business days. It normally takes me at minimum 3 days to get a customer response.
BUT if you have a super responsive customer base, then this SLA doesn't map. I think a lot of it has to do with the personas you're working with and the value prop you have with your reference request!
These are all helpful, thank you so much for sharing everyone!
We say 2 business days to provide a list of target customers. That is the only SLA. Beyond that we says it is up to how long the communication takes. After sales says who from our target list they want to pursue we start reaching out to those account teams. We want our account teams to approve these requests (ensure the customer is in good standing + ripe for taking a reference call). Then once they approve asking their account they then send the ask out to them. Then as mentioned above, we need to wait for the customer to respond. Lots of the room for the process to be held up, but our sales people understand.
We use Deeto so the account managers can self-serve but if they can't find what they need (we have a varied customer base w/ lots of products and modules/SKUs) then that requires research plus time to qualify that the reference targets are happy and in a good place to take a call, then outreach - so I've started saying it's minimum 2-3 days and could take up to 2 weeks realistically - because I've had super complex requests that are so challenging and I needed a way to protect myself. Since I've been up front about how long it takes to do it the "manual way," the sellers are more motivated to at least attempt to self-serve and find options since we have over 300 customers in Deeto who have said they'll take a call.