weekly customer visit plan template

How to Plan the Perfect Customer Visit [+ Agenda Template]

Published: August 02, 2021

Now that the world is opening back up, it’s time to get out there and meet your customers face-to-face. For many newer customers, this might be their first time getting to spend time with you — especially as conferences have moved online.

Creating that connection is invaluable. But before you book that plane ticket, it’s essential to create a plan. Planning the perfect customer visit will ensure that you meet your goals and that your customer meeting will be successful. Here’s a look at how you get there.

Why plan a customer visit?

Jason Lemkin, the founder of SaaStr and EchoSign, has said “ I never lost a customer I actually visited. ” That’s a bold statement — one that's worth taking note of. But why? What is it about customer visits that has such a big impact on customer loyalty?

First of all, you get to make a stronger impression with your customers. No matter what you sell, you aren’t just selling a product — you’re also selling the people behind it.

Your vision, your passion, your knowledge are all play into the perceived value of your product or service. All of these elements come across more strongly when you visit in person. A Zoom call just isn’t enough time to go deep.

Secondly, you get to see how your customers are using your product in person. Are they constantly printing out reports to pin up on a wall? Are you seeing teams walk across the sales floor to point out something on a screen? What kind of working environment and equipment do they have? What other types of software are they using?

Everything happening behind the scenes paints a much clearer picture of who your customers are. And when it comes time to renew or jump on that next customer success call, you’ll have a lot more knowledge ready to draw on.

Finally, meeting your customers in person is a huge motivational boost! When you’re behind a screen for so long, it can start to feel like what you do doesn’t matter — or that you’re not making any real connections. But a visit to a customer’s office can change all that, and really light up your idea of “why” you do this at all.

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5 Potential Goals of Your Customer Visit

Going into a customer visit with goals in mind will help you get the most out of your time there. Here are five goals to consider when planning a customer visit:

1. Understanding Their Business Goals

If you’re visiting a client, you’re likely hoping for a long term relationship. Understanding what their future goals are can help align your product with their needs. These in-depth conversations would rarely come up over a quick phone call.

2. Gathering Feedback

Customer visits provide a unique opportunity to gather honest and in-the-moment insight into what your customers need and want. When you sit next to someone who uses your product in their daily work, there’s a lot more space to have this feedback arise. And documenting it for future sales opportunities and your product team is one of the more productive actions you can take during a customer visit.

3. Referrals

In-person visits are a great time to ask for and give referrals. Ask, “Are there any other companies that you work with that you could see our product being helpful for?” Alternatively, if a pain point is mentioned by the client and you know the perfect company to help solve it, don’t be afraid to build that connection. It’s just another way you can bring value to your customers.

4. Uncovering Opportunities for Cross-Selling or Upselling

While your primary objective shouldn’t be pitching your offering at every opportunity, you might uncover a problem that your product or service can help solve. Noting these potential value-adds can make for more effective, thoughtfully targeted upsell and cross-sell conversations.

5. Testimonials and Case Studies

Customer visits can be a unique source of sales content, including pictures for case studies, video testimonials, and strong evidence-based customer stories. If you plan on making this one of your primary goals, consider asking your client to set the stage for these kinds of materials before you visit so you already know who you’ll be speaking to, before coming onsite.

How to Plan an Onsite Customer Meeting

By putting more effort in before you go, you’ll have a much better chance of achieving your goals and impressing your clients. Here are some key actions to consider when planning your customer meeting.

Thoroughly prepare before the visit.

Before you arrive, make sure you’re up to date on the state of the customer's account. Who are they usually talking to at your company? What customer service tickets have they raised lately? Are there outstanding issues that need to be addressed? These will come up during your visit.

Secondly, understand the current ecosystem your customer is working within. Is your customer in the news? What’s happening in their industry? What threats and opportunities are arising in their business? Being prepared and knowledgeable about their inner workings will make a better impression than coming in blind.

Decide who you’re meeting with.

Start by setting up a meeting with relevant company leadership. That could be the CEO, the founders, or the VP of the functional team you're working with — depending on the company's scale. Bear in mind, while this contact might be the "reason" for your visit, they're probably not who you'll be spending the most time with.

Once you have a meeting scheduled with the company's leadership, plan the rest of your day around meeting with the team leaders and employees using your product — as well as any teams that are open to signing up or expanding the current seat count or contract scope.

Make dinner reservations for you and your clients.

Traditionally, a customer visit includes taking your client out for a nice dinner as a token of appreciation. It also offers a chance for you to get to know each other outside of the limits of the work environment and form stronger relationships.

That being said, this is not a social visit. Keep your goals in mind — even outside of work hours. If you’re familiar with the restaurants in the area, choose a place that has options for every diet and has a good atmosphere for conversations. If you’re not familiar with the available options, ask the client where they’d recommend.

Complete the wrap-up report.

After the visit is over, you still have work to do. Create a wrap-up report for your internal teams back at the office. It should cover key elements of the visit like any confidentiality agreements put in place and who at your company you can share contact information or sales figures with.

Identify any action items that came up during the visit. Include any positive highlights during the meeting as well as any risks or opportunities that arose. Create a copy of the report for your client as well, to show that you were listening to their concerns and that you’re going to follow up with them.

Customer Visit Agenda Template

Use this sample agenda to plan your own customer visit.

10 am: Welcome/Office Tour (30 minutes, w/ Stacy, Raul)

• Get settled, set up a desk or boardroom for the day

11 am: Executive Meeting (1 hour, w/ Stacy, Thomas, Ankit, Shireen)

• Overview of status, product usage, any updates
• Add any bullet points you need to cover here
• Upcoming changes or challenges for the business
• New Opportunities
• Areas of concern

12pm: Lunch

1pm: User Meetings (4 hours, rotating through Marketing teams)

• Overview of new features
• Gather feedback from users
• Sit with teams to review workflow

5pm: Wrap Up meeting (30 minutes)

• Process or configuration change recommendations
• General questions and answers
• Items to be addressed as part of maintenance
• Enhancement opportunities

6:30pm: Dinner at Restaurant

Internal Notes

• At the bottom of your agenda, include internal notes that are meant to be shared with your team only.

Plan for success

It’s time to get back out there and meet your clients face-to-face. By planning your customer visit ahead of time, you’re sure to achieve your goals and come out with a stronger understanding of what your clients need.

Don't forget to share this post!

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Free email, survey, and buyer persona templates to help you engage and delight your customers.

Powerful and easy-to-use sales software that drives productivity, enables customer connection, and supports growing sales orgs

How to Plan the Perfect Customer Visit [+ Docket Template]

Publish: August 02, 2021

Now that the world is opening behind up, it’s time to get out there and meet your customers face-to-face. For many newer consumers, these might will their first time getting to spend time through you — especially as conferences have moved online.

Creating that joining is invaluable. But before you book that plane ticket, it’s essential to create an schedule. Planning of perfecting customer visit will ensure that you meet thine goals and that your customer meeting will be successful. Here’s a take at how you geting where. Employee Visit Plan - Preset - Vesta EVV

Why plan a customer visit?

Jason Lemkin, the founder of SaaStr and EchoSign, has said “ I almost lost a customer I actually visited. ” That’s a bold statement — one that's worth taking note of. But why? What is it about customer visits that can such a big impact upon customer loyalty?

First of any, yourself get to make a stronger impression with your customers. No matter about you sale, you aren’t just selling a product — you’re other selling the people go it.

Your vision, my passion, your knowledge are all play into the perceived value of our product or service. All of these elements come across more strongly when you visit in person. AMPERE Zoom call just isn’t plenty time at go deep. Planning the perfecting customer visit will ensure that she meet my goals and is your customer meeting will be triumphant. Here’s one look at how you get there.

Next, you get to check how your customers represent using your outcome in person. Are they constantly printing out reports up pin up on a bulwark? Is you seeing teams walk across the sell floor to point out something on a screen? What kind of working surround and equipment how people do? What extra gender of add-on are people after?

Everything happening behind the scenes paints a much clearer picture of any your customers are. And when it comes time to renew or jump on that next customer success call, you’ll can a lot get knowledge finishing to draw on.

Finally, meeting owner clientele in person is a immense motivational turbo! When you’re behind a screen for so long, to can launching to feel like what you do doesn’t matter — or that you’re don making any real connections. But a visit to a customer’s your can change all that, and really light up your featured of “why” you do this at all.

5 Potentially Goals of Your Customer Visit

Going into a customer visit with goals includes mind will help you got the most out of your time there. Here are five objects to consider when planning a custom visit:

1. Understanding Their Business Goals

If you’re visit a client, you’re likely hopping for one long term relative. Understanding what their future goals are can help align your product for you needs. That in-depth conversations want rarely come up over a quick phone call. customer visits.pdf

2. Gathering Feedback

Customer visits provide a unique opportunity to gather honest and in-the-moment insight into what your client needed and want. Wenn you sit next to someone who types your product in their daily work, there’s a land more space on have this feedbacks arise. And documenting computer for future sales opportunities and thine product team is one of an more productive promotions you able take during a your visit.

3. Referral

In-person tours are a great time to ask for and enter referrals. Question, “Are there any other business that you my with that you could see our product being helpful for?” Alternatively, if adenine pain point is mentioned by the client and you know the perfect company to help solve it, don’t be afraid to build that termination. It’s just additional way you can bring value to your customers.

4. Uncovering Company for Cross-Selling or Upselling

While your primary target shouldn’t be pitching your offering at every opportune, you might unmask adenine trouble that your product button service can helped decipher. Noting these potential value-adds can make for more effective, thoughtfully targeted upsell and cross-sell conversations.

5. Testimonials and Case Studies

Customer visits can be ampere unique source of sales index, including pictures for situation studies, video testimonials, and strong evidence-based customer stories. If you plan on production those one the your primary goals, consider asking your client to set the stage in these kinds on materials before you visit so you already knowledge who you’ll be word to, before coming onsite.

How to Plan to Onsite Customer Meeting

For putting read attempt in before you hinfahren, you’ll have ampere much better chance of achieving your our and impressing get clients. Here am some key actions to consider when planning get customer meeting. Customer Visit Scheme Presentation | Sequent Learning

Thoroughly prepare front one visit.

Before you arrive, make sure you’re up to date on the state is the customer's view. Who what they usually talking up the your group? Thing customer service tickets may they raised lately? Are there outstanding issues ensure necessity to be addressed? These will come up during your visit.

Secondly, understand the current ecosystem your customer is how within. Is your customer in the news? What’s happening in theirs industry? What threats and opportunities are arising in their business-related? Being prepared and knowledgeable regarding their in working will make a better impression than arrival in blind. Purpose: To develop a win/win user visit strategy that will encompass hint points beyond Total! ▫ Procedure: Walk durch varieties of visits, look among.

Decide who you’re meeting with.

Start by setting up a meeting with relevant company business. That could be the CEO, one founders, or which VP of the functional team you're working with — depending on the company's scale. Bear in mind, while such contact may be the "reason" for our visit, they're probably not who you'll may spending aforementioned most time with.

Once you have a meeting scheduled with the company's leadership, plan the rest of get day about meeting with of teams top and employees using your product — as well as any teams that are get to signing up or expanding that current seat count or contract scope.

Make dinner reservations to you and your clients.

Classic, a your visit incorporate taking thine client out for an beautiful getting as one token of appreciation. I also offers ampere chance for thou to get to know each diverse outside of the limits for of labor environment and form stronger verbindungen. Customer Travel Plan - PDF Templates | Jotform

That beings said, this shall not adenine social visit. Keep your goals in heed — even outsides of work hours. If you’re everyday with who restaurants in the area, choose a site that has options for every diet and has a good atmosphere for conversations. If you’re not familiar with the available options, ask the client where they’d recommend. 16 Conferences Daily Example & Free Templates

Completes the wrap-up report.

After the visit be over, you stills have work to accomplish. Creation a wrap-up report used your domestic teams back at the branch. It should top key elements of the visit like whatsoever confidentiality agreements put includes place and who under the company you can share make information or sales pictures with. As to Plan the Perfect Patron Visit [+ Agenda Template]

Identify any action element that came up during the visited. Include any positive highlights during and meeting than well-being as any risks or opportunities that arose. Produce ampere duplicate of the report for get client as well, the prove that you were listening to their concerns and such you’re passing to continue up with them.

Patron Vist Agenda Template

Utilize such random agenda to plant yours own customer visit.

10 my: Welcome/Office Tour (30 minutes, w/ Stasi, Raul)

• Get settled, set up a desk or boardroom for the day

11 i: Executive Meeting (1 hour, w/ Merge, Thomas, Ankit, Shireen)

• Quick of status, product usage, any updates
• Add any bullet points you need to cover here
• Upcoming revisions oder problems for the business
• New Opportunities
• Areas away concern

12pm: Lunch

1pm: Consumer Meetings (4 daily, twisting driven Marketing teams)

• Overview of new features
• Add any ball points you need to cover here
• Collecting feedback from users
• Sit with teams to review workflow

5pm: Winding Up meeting (30 minutes)

• Process conversely configuration change recommendations
• General questions and answers
• Line to be addressed as parts of maintenance
• Expansion opportunities

6:30pm: Evening at Restaurant

Internal Remarks

• At the bottom of your agenda, include internal tips that what meant to be sharing with your team only.

Plan fork success

It’s time to get support out there and meet your client face-to-face. By planning autochthonous customer visit moving are time, you’re sure to achieve your goals and come out with a stronger understanding of how your clients need.

Don't forget to share this post!

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The Art of the Customer Visit: How to Plan One + Why You Should

When was the last time you visited a customer? Customer visits might seem extravagant and unnecessary on the surface.

Why not just get on a phone call or Zoom meeting? Or follow up with them via email? You could just send them a survey, or even dig into your product analytics to surface insights.

That said, if I’m talking to another entrepreneur and say something like, "It's super crucial you physically visit your customers", they all look at me as if I just said the most obvious thing in the universe.

And we’re not excluding ourselves here: We launched Close in January of 2013, but our first customer visit was more than a year later!

Some businesses put off visiting customers because it takes time, and it’s easy to push down on your long to-do list. Or, it may seem more urgent to focus on getting new customers to sign on, rather than visiting existing customers.

If this sounds like you, let’s discuss the benefits of visiting your customers, and how you can set up successful customer visits.

What Are the Benefits of Visiting Your Customers in Person?

It’s true: COVID has permanently altered the way B2B sales works. Studies by McKinsey show that companies have reduced their in-person efforts as a go-to-market strategy by more than 50 percent since the pandemic started.

That said, a decent number of B2B buyers still prefer in-person contact during the customer journey.

And this is exactly where the opportunity lies—fewer companies are vying for your customer’s attention in person. This opens the playing field for your company to perform more customer visits.

And trust me—it’s worth the effort. Here's a quick rundown of the value we got from our first customer visits.

Motivate Your Team to Serve Customers Better

Seeing real people use your product is incredibly inspiring. It energizes you. It recharges your batteries. It gives you a visceral sense of how your work actually impacts the life of your users, rather than just an intellectual understanding. It's like pouring gasoline on the fire that fuels your engine.

Everybody on your team—from the CEO to the intern—should visit a customer, for this reason alone.

It is different from hearing customers tell you how much they love your product or how great they think it is. You just have to experience customer satisfaction happening in real-time. You need to see real human beings depending on what you built. You need to witness how your product helps them to operate better, to be better at what they are doing.

The impact you make on other people's lives is a much stronger driver than any number on a spreadsheet can ever be. Do not underestimate how much this affects you. It's powerful.

Build Better Customer Relationships

Meeting someone in person adds another dimension to your relationship with your customer. You can do a lot of relationship-building via email, chat, phone, and Zoom, but nothing has the same effect as meeting someone in person. It creates a human bond between the two of you.

Jason Lemkin of SaaStr says he never lost a customer whom he had personally visited while he was CEO of EchoSign. Spending time with your customers transforms a transactional relationship into a partnership. It builds empathy on both sides, which ultimately leads to better business.

In-person customer visits are one of the best ways to build customer intimacy . It deepens the commitment on both sides. If one of the people we met needs help one day, we'll be more eager to support them. And I'm pretty sure they'll be more forgiving if there's ever an issue with Close and be more loyal to our product.

Get In-depth Product Feedback on the Customer Experience

Your customers are more than the sum of all their clicks on your product. Yes, you might be monitoring product usage and reading all the feedback people send you via email or even tell you on the phone, but you're missing a lot of crucial context if you can't see your customers using your product within their work environment.

• How exactly are they using your product?
• What's happening around them?
• What else is on their screen?
• What's competing for their attention?
• What's their workspace like?

When you visit your customers, you get to see the environment in which they use your software. You experience your product embedded into a user's workday and get a sense of the entire puzzle, rather than just a single piece of it.

And it's little things, like...

• What kind of headsets /chairs/desks are they using?
• What other software/apps are they using during their day?
• Which little hacks did they come up with to make them more productive and efficient?
• What makes them smile, and what makes them frown when interacting with your web or mobile app ?

It just gives you a better picture of what's working and what's not.

Here’s a real example: during one customer visit, we saw that the customer was using a TV to display our reporting in Close . But at the time, our reporting page wasn’t optimized for full-screen display—it looked crappy.

I remembered that one of our engineers had worked on a quick fix that would make this look better, but we had never released it. I sent a message to the team, and within an hour, this feature was released by our VP of Engineering, Phil Freo . It looked fantastic, and our customers loved it.

While visiting customers, you can gather more in-depth feedback about how they’re using your product and where they would like to see improvements in the customer experience. Product managers can then use this information to build out improvements.

Find Opportunities to Upsell

Years ago, during one customer visit, we found the customer was on a basic plan that didn’t include a specific feature. Instead, they were using a third-party provider to get this feature for their sales team.

Talking with the founder, we faced some resistance to upgrading their plan. But we gained an internal champion during that customer visit by chatting with the sales team manager. We gave him everything he needed to make the transition happen, and they soon upgraded their plan to start using this feature again.

This is the power of in-person visits—not only did the extra revenue help us, but by upgrading their plan, the customer’s success with our product was significantly increased.

Create New Case Studies and Customer Stories

Using case studies and real-life examples of how your customers use your product is an excellent digital marketing strategy and one that will help build trust in your brand.

When planning customer visits, think about the customers you may want to interview for video testimonials or case studies on your website. Having these real customer stories also helps build better marketing alignment with your ideal customers and their needs.

All of these are examples of the kinds of benefits you can get from visiting your customers. You can't predict which benefits precisely you'll get—but you will always get value from a customer visit!

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How to Plan a Client Visit That Boosts Customer Loyalty in 7 Steps

By now, you should be sufficiently motivated to actually visit your customers. But what do you say and do? How do you get the most value out of these visits? How do you prepare for them? How do you wrap them up? How do you get started when you visit their office?

1. Identify Which Customers to Visit

Whether you have 10 customers or 10,000, it’s probably not feasible to visit everyone. So, which customers should you visit?

To start, make a list of the customers who already have a good rapport with you—your partners, advocates, and overall best customers.

Next, include customers who are using your product or purchasing from you on a regular basis. Learning about how they use your products and services, or why they keep coming back to you, will be great for your team.

Finally, make sure to include the customers who consistently give you critical feedback. These customers are already pushing your team to do better, and they will likely have super valuable insights to share with you when you visit in person.

2. Decide Who You’re Meeting With

Once you know which companies you’ll visit, decide which individuals inside the company you’ll need to meet with.

First of all, you set up a meeting with the founders or CEO. That's the person you'll be officially meeting. But it's not necessarily the person you'll spend most of the time with.

For SaaS companies, focus on the person managing the team that's using your product, as well as the end-users. If you’re a service-based business, talk to the people who are mainly affected by using your services.

3. Spend Time Getting to Know the Business Beforehand

Just like when prospecting, spend time doing research before the meeting—whether that’s on social media sites like LinkedIn, on the company’s website, or in B2B databases like Crunchbase.

When you walk into that client visit, you should know exactly who you’re talking to, what kind of business they are, which customers they serve, and how your product or service fits into that workflow.

4. Prepare and Share an Agenda

Having a clear agenda for your customer visit is essential to get the most out of the time you spend with your customers.

Start by setting out the agenda for your main meetings with the C-suite and with the managers of the teams that use your product. Set up talking points: such as updates to your product pricing, or upcoming feature launches in your product. Also, leave room in the agenda for their team to add any questions or comments. Leave a clear space for them to give you feedback.

Once your customer visit agenda is prepared, share it with their team. Let them have editing access so they can include their ideas. Make sure that expectations between you and your customer are aligned before you start asking them a lot of questions. Create a setting that encourages them to discuss and share their concerns openly.

Also, make sure to discuss confidentiality. If you plan to report back to your team after your customer visit, explicitly ask them if they're fine with you sharing their business processes, revenue numbers, etc, with your team. (If not, that's fine too—you can still share the learnings, without actual specifics, with your team.)

That way, both teams will be ready to get started when the day comes.

5. Learn About the Customer Experience in Real Time

So, the day of your customer visit has finally arrived! Start by talking in general, broad terms about their business and your business. Then, progress to more specific topics and product use cases.

Be both a student and a mentor. Learn as much as you can about your customers, and look for opportunities to help them. Learn about their workflows, and your product fits into those workflows.

Here are some questions you might ask during a client visit:

• How often do you use our product?
• Which team members use our product the most? How often do they use it?
• Are there secondary users that only use our product occasionally? If so, for what? How often?
• What are your business goals?
• How do you implement our product in your daily workflow?
• What bugs have you encountered?
• What features are you missing within our product?
• What do you like most about our product?
• What do you hate about our product? Which limitations do you find particularly frustrating?
• Which metrics does your team track within our product? (Or which KPIs does our product impact for your team?)
• If our product ceased to exist tomorrow, what alternatives would you consider to replace us?
• Are there any trends or changes in the industry that could affect the way you use our product in the future?

These questions and others like them will give you a clearer picture of how your customers use your product, and how it impacts their business.

6. Ask for and Give Referrals

Visiting customers is a great opportunity to get referrals . And to refer them to others as well. Don't just limit referrals to potential customers—any reason to put them in touch with other people is fair game, as long as you can see potential value for both parties.

Sometimes we see companies serving the same audience with complementary services—that's potential for a co-marketing initiative. If you introduce two happy customers to each other, and they collaborate together, and both get a ton of value out of it, you generate a lot of goodwill, and oftentimes very vocal brand advocates.

If you have a partner program set up, try to see if the customer you’re visiting would be a good candidate for that program, and help them understand how it works and the benefits they could get.

7. Create a Customer Visit Report for Your Team

If you do conduct a customer visit, make sure to document your learnings and take note of memorable moments. Then, you can share these insights with your team.

It's important that all the insights you gain during a customer visit actually become organizational knowledge—otherwise, your customer visits are basically useless.

So, set up a structured customer visit report that your team can peruse and learn from, both now and in the future. Inside this document, note specific items that will be of interest to the different teams in your company—for example, product feedback that your product managers may want to look at, customer journey insights that the marketing team should keep in mind, or product knowledge gaps that the customer success team may need to address.

To make sure everyone in the company benefits from customer visits, we try to share some pictures or highlights from our customer visits in Slack, and then during our weekly team meeting, a team member might give a quick 2-minute summary of their customer visit.

How Often Should You Plan Customer Visits?

There's no one-size-fits-all formula. It depends on your startup, but in general: you should meet them more often than you're meeting them now.

Jason Lemkin recommends every co-founder, CEO, and Customer Success Manager should meet on-site with five customers a month.

Being able to see the environment in which your customers use your product, the atmosphere at their workplace, and talking with the people who use your product daily is always an insightful experience.

Customer visits have been a crucial market research method for traditional businesses for many decades—but they're even more crucial for startups and SMBs . Your most powerful asset when you're in a market with established, large companies is your ability to understand your customers better and focus on their needs better than a large corporation can.

Michael Seibel, Managing Director at Y Combinator, said : "If you look around the startup ecosystem, you can find too many founders who believe that famous investors + lots of employees = winning. I bet most of our VC-backed competitors feel this way, and you can use this to defeat them (they aren't talking to customers nearly enough).”

Want more insights on talking to your customers? Get my book and learn more about building customer intimacy.

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4 Customer Success Plan Templates and How to Use Them

Customer success is an incredibly impactful function when it comes to the longevity and happiness of your customers. Unlike customer support, there are often identical moving pieces in each customer's life cycle that make it easy to predict what kind of success interactions your customers will need. Creating reproducible plans can be a great way to ensure the success of both your team and your customers.

When you document customer success managers' actions, it makes it easier to guarantee that every customer has the same excellent experience. We've gathered some customer success plan templates that you can use to get started with a more defined customer success experience, along with tons of information about what customer success plans are, why they are valuable, and how to create them.

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What is a customer success plan?

A customer success plan is an actionable list of items that lays out what customer success looks like and what a customer or customer success manager (CSM) can do to get to it. It serves as a guide for CSMs to ensure that every necessary action gets accomplished and every customer receives the same fantastic experience.

Having a customer success plan in place can also ensure that every customer gets the outcome you intend from your actions. When you create a customer success plan, you usually do so with a customer success metric. That means that the value and impact of the plan can be easily trackable and that you can change the plan if you aren't hitting your goals.

Using a CRM, you may have your customer success plans built out to assign tasks to your CSMs automatically. If you aren't quite there yet, a documented checklist will do just fine (more on this later).

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How to Improve Customer Loyalty With Customer Effort Score

What's the difference between customer success and customer service.

Customer service is typically reactive in response, whereas customer success is more proactive. While there will always be exceptions to this rule, the responsibility of customer service most often lies in responding to customer inquiries that come through a queue via email, live chat, or phone. Most customer service representatives aren't reaching out to customers proactively when they notice something has gone amiss with a customer's usage.

It is the responsibility of a CSM to ensure that customers are using the product as expected and meeting their goals. They routinely check customer engagement and health to reach out proactively with helpful tips and information to guide the customer in their usage. 

Customer Experience vs. Customer Success: Explained

Why should you create a customer success plan.

Customer success plans are helpful for your customers and your team members in that they ensure that specific, essential objectives get met. A good customer success plan should do the following:

Take the guesswork out of CSMs’ jobs

Having prebuilt customer success plans for specific, everyday things within the customer journey makes things more straightforward for your CSMs. Given that plans help standardize actions, the customer responses should be more predictable than with a customer success plan entirely of the CSM's making. Having a plan for your CSMs is like giving them a map before a road trip rather than driving without direction.

Create consistency

Inevitably your CSMs and others working on your team will have different personalities. While that may mean that some of their general approaches to working with customers may be different, there should still be a level of uniformity across experiences. Your customers will be more comfortable if they can know what to expect, and customer success plans do that by creating repeatable processes.

Boost revenue, expansion, and product usage

Customer success plans are custom-designed using company metrics and data. You build them to ensure specific outcomes, sometimes around expansion, revenue, or even product usage. Creating customer success plans around those actions helps to generate attention and focus. The more attention everyone pays to a unified thing, the more effective you will be when working toward it. 

Track changes and maximize efficacy

Having a documented process put in place makes it easy to track changes and how they affect key metrics. With customer success plans, you can know exactly when you made changes, what they were, and what impact they had.

This knowledge has power: You can measure what impact your customer success team has at the business level and also understand precisely what levers you had to pull to make it happen. This understanding is beneficial for your team, who can use this learning to change other aspects of the customer experience, and for your company, which now knows how to move the needle for other teams.

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How to create a customer success plan.

The process for creating a customer success plan will differ slightly depending on what tools your team has access to. For instance, if you have a CRM, you may want to build your processes there. If your team isn't yet investing in a CRM, you may just have a list of documents in your Confluence, Help Scout, Notion, or Google Drive folders.

 In our examples, we'll create customer success plan templates that you can use without a CRM. That said, no matter where you're creating it, the things you will need to think about will be the same. Let's look at how to create a customer success plan.

1. Understand what success looks like for your customers

Take some time to work cross-functionally and understand what activities successful customers need to undertake on their journeys. This process should consider the perspectives of every team — product, marketing, sales, engineering, customer experience, etc. — and the customer. Sometimes what a company wants a customer to do with their product is different from what the customer actually does.

Create a list of everything that a customer needs to accomplish to be successful, including everything from "open an account" to "turn on [x] feature" and "pay a monthly subscription."

2. Create a customer journey map

After you list all of the activities your customers need to take, begin to map them out on a timeline. When supplemented with data around customer touchpoints, this timeline will serve as the basis of your customer journey map.

A customer journey map is a visual representation of everything a customer goes through during their life cycle. Your CSMs should use this map as a data source when structuring your customer success plans and determining when they need to come into play.

3. Identify the highest impact, most replicable activities

It might not make sense to create customer success plans for every activity — having too many to go through can hinder rather than help your team's progress. So, look over your journey map and consider which actions would have the most impact if turned into customer success plans.

These should be activities that yield a high customer engagement orrevenue — for example, setting up conversations around renewal or getting a customer's team onboarded to your project. 

The activities should also be reasonably high frequency to requirea customer success plan. If it's not something you are frequently doing, your team probably doesn't need to have a customer success plan for it.

4. Set metrics and benchmarks

As with almost anything you do in business, it's essential to have a way to measure the effectiveness of what you're implementing. With every SaaS customer success plan that you implement, identify the metric you are trying to shift. When you have a metric determined, take note of where that metric currently stands to understand what impact you have as time goes on and your team makes use of the plans you create.

Never be afraid of change. While creating a customer success plan is a significant first step, you should plan to visit and update it on a regular basis. Depending on the cadence of your product releases and updates, this may need to be more or less frequent (we think quarterly us a good rhythm to start at). After all, you don't want to add a fantastic new feature to your product and have it left out of conversations that your CSMs are having with customers. Even if your customer success plans don't mention specific features, it's still good to regularly revisit and update anything public-facing that may affect your customers.

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Customer success plan templates.

While every company is different, there are often a few key components of the customer life cycle that remain the same. The following customer success strategy templates will be helpful to kick-start your processes and give your team some ideas about where to start when working with new customers.

Handoff from sales to customer success

If a sales team primarily drives your revenue, the customer will likely already have a relationship with them. A handoff from sales to customer success ensures that the customer feels taken care of and the customer success team feels prepared with any information that the sales team gleaned during the sales process. Here's what this SaaS customer success plan might look like:

Schedule an internal handoff meeting. Your sales team should come prepared to talk about the customer's critical reasons for buying, any concerns they had, and what they are most looking forward to using.

Review other internal customer notes. See if the customer reached out to your support team, talked to your marketing team over social, or had any different touchpoints that you can review.

Email the customer to schedule an external handoff meeting. This meeting should be similar to the internal handoff but more customer-centric. Your sales team should explain the difference now with the engagement, what the customer can expect from customer success, and how they'll be stepping down.

Schedule the customer kickoff. This step involves emailing the customer and letting them know what the kickoff will entail and giving them the option to schedule a meeting at a time that works for them.

Copy template slides and create the deck. If you don't already have a slide template for kickoff calls, it may be helpful to create one.

Follow up if the customer hasn't responded to the request to schedule a kickoff.

Conduct the customer kickoff and present the product plan.

Send a wrap-up email. This email should include notes on any questions the customer asked and what their answers were.

Update customer notes. If you have a CRM or a central place where you keep customer information, update your notes on this customer after the call.

Customer has gone quiet

If a customer is not responding to your CSM's requests for contact or meetings, it may signify that something is amiss. Use this customer success plan template to get your customer to reconnect: 

Check customer notes. Review them for any extra contact outside of customer success, like if they have reached out to customer support, have any active bugs logged that are waiting for resolution, or are in talks with your sales team.

Verify the existence of a power user. Ensure that the person you are emailing is still at the company and is still the person that you should be in contact with.

Email the power user to follow up. This email should either be the new power user you have identified or the existing power user you've already been in contact with.

Email the executive or business sponsor. If you do not receive a response from the power user, loop in the executive or business sponsor.

Conduct a review. If able to get a meeting scheduled, review any open or challenging areas on the call with the customer. If unable to get an appointment scheduled, conduct a review of any open, problematic areas and try to move toward resolution.

Communicate any challenges conveyed by the customer internally.

Review usage patterns. Ensure that the company is still using the product and that usage hasn't dropped off. Usage drop-off is a sign that the customer is heading toward churn.

Continue trying to connect with the power user/business sponsor if you still haven't gotten a response.

Send a wrap-up email and address feedback. After you have made contact, write up a summary of your conversations and address any feedback that the customer brought up in your discussions.

Update customer notes. Continually update the customer notes after conversations to ensure that everyone internally is on the same page.

In some companies, customer success will be responsible for managing renewals. This responsibility will often fall to sales or a specific renewals team in larger companies. There are substantial benefits to both options. When customer success handles the renewal process, there is a lot more trust from the customer. When another team takes the renewal process, it's less likely that you will erode trust by bringing money into the conversation.

If you are choosing to have your customer success team handle renewals, here is a customer success plan template that you can modify and use:

Check customer notes to see if any open support conversations, bug logs, or other company contacts with other teams still need to be resolved.

Check if the renewal has already occurred automatically. If not, proceed.

Resolve any issues that showed up in step 1.

Prepare the renewal paperwork, including any options for expansion or upgrade.

Reach out to the business sponsor to schedule a meeting.

Meet to talk about the renewal process and continue the conversation about any upgrades or expansions that you have positioned.

Confirm expectations with the business sponsor.

Send renewal paperwork.

After receiving the signed renewal paperwork, update any customer notes and internal systems to reflect the change.

Customer success quarterly business review

Some customer success teams find it helpful to do a regular quarterly revisit with their customers, also known as a quarterly business review (QBR). In these meetings, the CSM reviews trends and metrics with the customer and covers how the customer progresses toward the goals they initially set in their kickoff. 

Even if you don't plan to have your team execute QBRs, this is an excellent customer success plan template for standing meetings where your CSMs review progress.

Review the customer’s health score and health score trend. Is it going up? Going down? What aspects of the health score have the most significant impact on its shifting?

Review any customer notes, including anything other teams add, such as marketing, product, or sales.

Review support tickets. Look at both currently open conversations and the ones that have been closed over the last quarter.

Check on open feature requests. Try to give them updates on anything that they've asked about.

Email the customer to set up the meeting.

Meet with the customer and review all of your findings from the previous steps.

Send a write-up of notes from the meeting to the customers and any attendees within your company.

Conduct an internal debrief on any action items that came from the meeting. For instance, give updates on the specific needs related to a feature request or feedback about how a support interaction went.

Schedule your next touchpoint; perhaps it’s not a QBR but a follow-up to address anything that came out of this meeting.

Use customer success plan templates for everyone's success

Planning never hurts anyone. Creating customer success plans ensures that your CSMs are well-prepared to be the best representatives of your company. It also means that they have the tools to help your customers be successful. 

Use our templates to create plans that work for your needs within your team — remember, no two companies are alike!

Like what you see? Share with a friend.

Mercer smith.

Mercer is the VP of CX Insights & Community at PartnerHero, a yoga fanatic, and strives to make the world a little bit happier one customer at a time. You can find her at mercenator.com and on Twitter .

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How to plan the perfect customer visit [+ agenda template].

Home » News, Insights & Trends » HubSpot » How to Plan the Perfect Customer Visit [+ Agenda Template]

Now that the world is opening back up, it’s time to get out there and meet your customers face-to-face. For many newer customers, this might be their first time getting to spend time with you — especially as conferences have moved online. Creating that connection is invaluable. But before you book that plane ticket, it’s essential to create a plan. Planning the perfect customer visit will ensure that you meet your goals and that your customer meeting will be successful. Here’s a look at how you get there.

Why plan a customer visit? Jason Lemkin, the founder of …

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Customer Visit Plan Template for Product Managers

Get started with our free product management template today.

• First Name *
• Last Name *
• Company Name *
• Job Title *
• Phone Number *

This Customer Visit Plan is designed for Product Managers and will help you define:

• Objective or purpose – Why is this visit being carried out? What do you want to learn? etc.
• Customer ‘segments’ to be visited
• Guidelines and ground rules to set
• Team members who are attending
• Agenda and structure
• Debrief (and more!)

This template is discussed in depth in our Product Management Essentials Workshop.

Product Management Training

We make it easy for your team to take their learning back to the office with product management and product strategy templates that are based on our frameworks, books, and workshops. Our templates and tool kits are also included in our corresponding product management and product training programs. They are included in our product management workshops.

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How to Conduct the Perfect Customer Visit

By Natsha Ness

Customers are the lifeblood of any organization. Whether you have the ability to meet with them face-to-face, or are required to so over Zoom due to our ever-changing reality, customer visits require intentionality. They also provide a golden opportunity to make your customers the North Star they should be – and improve literally everything about your organization as a result. Why a Customer Visit is Worth Its Weight … in Actual Gold

How do we know a customer visit is critical to success? In 2019, we conducted research into sales and marketing alignment, in partnership with DRIFT . In it, we found a significant correlation between the most aligned sales and marketing teams (which were also the most revenue-generating teams) and their focus, not only around customers-centric metrics, but also regular visits with customers.

Planning Customer Visits is Key

Sometimes customer visits are inexpensive (like when they happen on Zoom ). Still, just because you’re  remote doesn’t mean the interaction has to feel inexpensive. In fact, you can still invest in the same sorts of things you did on-site. Think about buying lunch with an UberEats code. Or sending your customers a box with a bunch of goodies for the meeting. In other words, think about how you can make the “visit” an experience.

If someone falls into your target account list, and is likely to have a strong lifetime value in your business, they’re worth visiting. But you have to first make sure there’s mutual agreement around the desired outcome of such a meeting. In other words, why are you getting together?

There could be plenty of possibilities, but three main reasons almost always necessitate a customer visit:

• You’re close to creating a proposal. If you’re about to put together a proposal, a customer visit will help you achieve the tight alignment you need to make sure what you’re offering is a good fit with what the customer needs. This will likely come after multiple discovery calls and deep dives. You’ve figured out which challenge you want to solve, and have had conversations with various people that lead you to believe it’s time to create an official proposal.
• You recently created a proposal. (My recommendation is to make the customer visit happen before the creation of the proposal, but it’s better to go after than not at all).
• Upsell. An often underutilized function of customer visits are to the folks who already invested with you, but of course, this can be leveraged to further the relationship and ensure it stays. It can also be used to uncover additional insights into other products or services that may fit additional, previously undiscovered, challenges. You can also work to prevent customer churn by conducting a customer visit.

Who should be involved in a client visit?

After the “why” comes the “who.” Who needs to attend your customer visit to achieve your desired outcome? There could be a wide variety of internal stakeholders that you want to include. You might have people from business development, marketing, analytics, general managers or directors and/or someone from the C-Suite. There should only be people there who have direct input into and/or influence over the subject matter at hand; no one extra. Once you figure out who should be there, think about each of their differing priorities. If you’re unsure of someone’s priorities, ask them in advance. This will help you show up prepared.

Then consider who should be there from your side. Again, don’t bring anyone who doesn’t have a clear role. There’s no dedicated team that should go to customer visits; it varies based on the goal and the customer. You should know what the customer cares about before you head there. This helps you decide whether you need your CEO present or whether the principal on the account is sufficient.

Before the Visit 

One of the best tips I can give you is to get all the skeletons out of the closet before you get in front of someone. For example, if your customer’s marketing leader beams about his 600 pieces of content, but the business development group complains they are out of date and impossible to find, do you want the first time the marketing leader hears that to be real-time, while you’re onsite? Trust me; you don’t. The whole meeting could go downhill fast. You can work through potential issues by asking if there will be multiple budget stakeholders in the room. If so, as it relates to this project, find out whether they will be contributing some of their budget to the meeting’s desired outcome. If so, what does that look like? These questions can help you spot any areas of potential friction before you’re ever in the room.

Preparation is Prince

The content of your meeting is king, but preparing properly to share that content is certainly a strong runner up. Make sure each attendee has a very specific role, and then prepare the right presentation. Consider the following question to guide your preparation:

• Are you sharing a slideshow? Audio? Video?
• What assets will you use before the meeting, during the meeting and after the meeting?
• How will you leverage small, breakout rooms to facilitate conversations vs. all-together, large group dynamics?
• Do you need slides, overheads, pens, markers, etc.? If so, it’s a good idea to send these ahead!
• Do you need a backup plan? For instance, what if your computers don’t work; do you have a hard copy of your presentation?

Then, it’s time to rehearse. Spend time with your team actually going through the presentation before heading to the customer. Talk about who will cover which slides, and how the flow will go. Make sure you’re bringing value to the customer and the tone of the meeting will be what they’re expecting. Finally, send over a message summarizing the purpose of getting together. I like to call this the DOGMA – Details Outlining Goals & Meeting Agenda. I tell them this is what we agreed to, and offer them a chance to come back and add to it or edit what I’ve sent.

During the Client Visit

Here are a few tips for the meeting itself:

• Watch for signs of misalignment. This often looks like one person repeatedly whispering to another, or in Zoom world, obviously Slacking. If someone is smiling during your presentation and you’re being serious, they’re probably talking about something else with someone on their computer. Even if you notice this, don’t mention it in front of the whole group. Instead, note it for later.
• What you can explore directly and immediately are the subtle expressions that indicate someone doesn’t buy into what’s being presented. If these things happen, try to draw it out so it can be addressed in the room. Don’t be afraid to just say, “Sally, it looks like you might have something to share.” If there are corporate politics involved and you can’t draw out the issue, try to have a conversation privately in person or via  a private Zoom chat. But stay in tune with all parties as much as you can by reading body language, tone of voice and so on.

Note: This insinuates that when on Zoom everyone has their camera on. Everyone should have their camera on.

• Record the meeting. Some people get weird about recordings, but having your meeting recorded can go a long way in helping you clarify issues later or capture something that even the best notetaker might miss. If you think someone might not like the idea, have a colleague dial into the meeting and record the call. You can say something like, “Peter couldn’t be here in person, but he wanted to call in.” It’s an easy, subtle way to get a recording to happen without making anyone feel uncomfortable. Enlist a dedicated note taker, but ask all attendees to take notes.
• Leverage a “Parking Lot.” If someone brings up an idea or thought that isn’t perfectly relevant to where you are in the agenda, jot it down in a “Parking Lot” that you can revisit at the end of the meeting – or afterward.
• Don’t leave the room without recapping what went on, with details and next steps. “This was our desired outcome and here are the five things we discussed. Numbers one through four have been hashed out, but we need to spend more time on number five so let’s set up a call ASAP to flesh that out more.” Make sure to spell out who owns what, and the agreed upon timeline so you set the expectation for accountability.

After the Visit

You had your meeting.  Now what? This is where you make or break the trust and credibility you worked so hard to create. I suggest sending a quick email to all involved parties, again reiterating what was discussed and the next steps. But take it a step further and get a handwritten thank-you note in the mail that same day. The content should be different – make it personal and send it out fast, and you’ll blow your customer’s socks off. Really.

After you’ve sent the customer a summary, create a customer visit report for your internal teams. A customer visit report should include:

• Action items
• Positive highlights
• Risks and opportunities
• Any other key observations and notes

Customer visit reports can also be given to clients, or sent in lieu of the email suggested above. After you’ve written up the most important information, it’s time to start taking action.

Take the lead by holding up your end of the bargain. Take care of any items for which you’re responsible, and set up any follow-up meetings that were discussed immediately. The power of a customer visit can quickly be deflated by distraction – and a lack of action – when it’s over.

How We Can Help Your Client Visit Planning

So, which customers or prospects deserve your time and attention onsite? Make a list, and get to scheduling. It’s the step you’ve been missing toward better alignment and better results too. Need support with any of these tactics? Shift Paradigm is a full-service partner for any organization that wants to stay agile in the current digital landscape. Our customer engagement services provide the complete package to keep your customers invested in your products and organization. Interested? Contact Shift Paradigm today!

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Client Visit Meeting Agenda Template

• Great for beginners
• Ready-to-use, fully customizable Doc
• Get started in seconds

When it comes to client visits, preparation is key. To make sure you're on the same page and make the most out of every meeting, having a structured agenda is essential. That's where ClickUp's Client Visit Meeting Agenda Template comes in!

This template helps sales teams like yours plan and execute successful client visits by:

• Providing a clear and organized outline of the topics to be covered
• Allocating dedicated time for each agenda item to ensure efficient use of everyone's time
• Facilitating effective communication with clients to achieve your sales objectives

Whether you're meeting a potential client for the first time or catching up with a long-term customer, this template will help you stay organized and make the most out of your client visits. Start using it today and see the difference it makes!

Benefits of Client Visit Meeting Agenda Template

When using the Client Visit Meeting Agenda Template, you can:

• Maintain a structured and organized discussion with clients, ensuring all important topics are covered
• Allocate specific time for each agenda item, preventing discussions from going off track and ensuring a productive meeting
• Provide a clear and professional overview of the meeting topics, setting expectations for both the sales team and the client
• Improve communication with clients, leading to a better understanding of their needs and increased chances of meeting sales objectives

Main Elements of Client Visit Meeting Agenda Template

ClickUp's Client Visit Meeting Agenda template is the perfect tool to plan and execute successful client meetings. Here are the main elements of this template:

• Document Structure: Use ClickUp's Doc template to create a well-structured meeting agenda that includes sections for objectives, discussion points, action items, and follow-up tasks.
• Custom Fields: Customize the template with relevant custom fields such as client name, meeting date, meeting location, and attendee list to ensure all necessary information is captured and easily accessible.
• Collaborative Editing: Collaborate with your team in real-time by using ClickUp's Docs feature, allowing multiple team members to contribute, edit, and make comments simultaneously.
• Task Management: Convert agenda items into actionable tasks directly within the document, assign tasks to team members, set due dates, and track progress to ensure follow-up actions are completed.
• Different Views: Utilize different views such as the Board view to visually track the progress of agenda items, the Table view to get a comprehensive overview of all meeting details, and the Calendar view to schedule and manage upcoming client meetings.

How to Use Meeting Agenda for Client Visit

When preparing for a client visit meeting, it’s important to have a well-structured agenda to ensure that all necessary topics are covered. Here are four steps to follow when using the Client Visit Meeting Agenda Template:

1. Determine meeting objectives

Start by identifying the main objectives of the client visit meeting. What specific goals do you hope to achieve? Whether it’s discussing project updates, addressing any concerns, or exploring new opportunities, clearly defining the meeting objectives will help guide the conversation and keep everyone focused.

Use the Goals feature in ClickUp to outline the objectives for the client visit meeting.

2. Outline the agenda

Once you have established the meeting objectives, create an agenda that outlines the topics to be discussed during the client visit. Start with a warm welcome and introduction, followed by sections for each topic or discussion point. Be sure to allocate enough time for each item to avoid rushing through important discussions.

Use the Board view in ClickUp to create cards for each agenda item and easily rearrange them as needed.

3. Assign responsibilities

To ensure a smooth and productive meeting, assign responsibilities to team members or stakeholders for each agenda item. This will help ensure that everyone is prepared and accountable for their designated topics. Assigning responsibilities also allows for more efficient time management during the meeting.

Utilize the Assignments feature in ClickUp to assign responsibilities to team members for each agenda item.

4. Share and review the agenda

Before the client visit meeting, share the agenda with all relevant participants. This gives everyone an opportunity to review the topics and come prepared with any necessary information or materials. Encourage participants to provide feedback or suggest additional items to be included in the agenda to ensure that all relevant topics are covered.

Use the Email feature in ClickUp to easily share the agenda with all meeting participants and gather their feedback.

By following these four steps and utilizing the Client Visit Meeting Agenda Template in ClickUp, you can ensure that your client visit meetings are well-organized, productive, and focused on achieving your objectives.

Get Started with ClickUp’s Client Visit Meeting Agenda Template

Sales teams can use the Client Visit Meeting Agenda Template to streamline their client meetings and ensure a focused and productive discussion.

First, hit “Add Template” to sign up for ClickUp and add the template to your Workspace. Make sure you designate which Space or location in your Workspace you’d like this template applied.

Next, invite relevant members or guests to your Workspace to start collaborating.

Now you can take advantage of the full potential of this template to plan and execute successful client meetings:

• Start by creating a new project for each client visit meeting
• Use the Agenda View to outline the topics to be covered and allocate time for each agenda item
• The Client Information View will help you gather and organize all the necessary details about the client
• The Action Items View will allow you to assign tasks to team members and track their progress
• Customize the statuses to reflect the different stages of the meeting, such as Preparing, In Progress, Completed
• Collaborate with your team to brainstorm ideas and create compelling presentations
• Utilize the Notes section to capture important takeaways and action points from the meeting
• Monitor and analyze the progress of each client visit meeting to ensure successful outcomes.

Related Templates

• Benefits Administrators Meeting Agenda Template
• Mobile Designers Meeting Agenda Template
• Jewelers Meeting Agenda Template
• Conference Template Meeting Agenda Template
• Brick-and-Mortar Businesses Meeting Agenda Template

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8 Proven Best Practices For An Effective Customer Visit

Customer visits are an excellent means of handling disputes, improving sales opportunities, and building customer relationships. Here are 8 tips to prepare for a customer visit:

• Set the date and time for the visit strategically:  Nothing's worse than going at their busiest time. Maybe they have a seasonality, or it's a quarter-end. You don't want them to be distracted. When you're on the visit, you want to spend time with them. So, plan it strategically.
• Send discussion documents or work papers in advance:  It could be that you're reconciling a high volume of invoices that they are refusing to pay. Or there are deductions that you just can't unravel. Always send all the documents in advance so that the customer has sufficient time to prepare as well.
• Determine who from your company should attend to address any concerns:  It could be your sales rep or someone from your staff who's been working on a particular issue and meeting with the customer to resolve it. Anticipate what issues or concerns the customer could have. Plan ahead and include the people who can address their issues.
• Inform the customer well in advance who you want to meet:  Get a nod on your customer's availability and whether they are prepared for the time you want to spend with them.
• Take time to understand the customer's business before the meeting:  You can ask probing questions that will help you understand the real challenge. When you're on-site, assess their business needs, understand their customer base, competitors, and industry trends. This way you can anticipate if there's going to be higher demand requiring a review of their credit line.
• Communicate the purpose of the visit to key stakeholders:  It could be your senior management or owner. It could be a sales or a product manager. It could be somebody in customer service or operations. If there are some logistics issues or any other kind of problem that they can help you with, they should be aware that you're going to this meeting and who you're going to meet with.
• What if it's a negotiation:  If so, define the roles and the talking points in advance. Sometimes it's a better strategy just to walk away than to make too much of a compromise. Always try to leave the opportunity for further discussion.

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• Customer Visit Report Template

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Report template bundle, 6 steps for creating a customer report, 6+ customer visit report templates, 1. customer visit report template, 2. customer service report template, 3. customer return report template, 4. customer call report template, 5. customer non-conformance report template, 6. customer visit report template, 7. customer experience survey report, report templates, 6+ customer report templates.

Whenever a customer visits an establishment due to important business-related matters, you will most likely be required to make a detailed account regarding what took place. This is when you will have to make a customer visit report and this article will provide you with the information on how to make one. You may see report samples .

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Create An Excel Schedule Template in Minutes

By Kate Eby | February 3, 2016

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A schedule is important for every aspect of your life. It not only helps you manage your time, it can also reduce stress, help you evaluate progress as you work, and prepare you for the unexpected. 

From organizing your to-do list to planning an event, a schedule will keep you on track and make sure you never miss a thing.

Using a template is the easiest way to make a schedule. In this article, you’ll find the best daily, weekly, and monthly schedule templates in Excel. We’ll give you step-by-step instructions for finding the best schedule template for your needs and tell you how to customize these Excel templates.

Additionally, we've provided customizable schedule templates in Smartsheet, a work execution platform that empowers you to better manage tasks, timelines, and due dates with real-time collaboration and process automation.

Download Daily, Weekly, and Monthly Schedule Templates for Excel

You can find a variety of schedule templates in Excel, ranging from monthly schedules, weekday displays, and schedules with notes. There templates are pre-made and formatted, ready for you to add your own information.

With so many available schedule templates, how do you know which one is the easiest to use? We’ve sorted through them all and found the best daily, weekly, and monthly schedule templates for Excel.

Weekly Schedule Template in Excel

‌ Download Free Work Week Schedule Excel Template (Mon-Fri)

‌ Download Free Full Week Schedule Excel Template (Sun-Sat)

In a weekly Excel schedule template, each day is broken up into morning, afternoon, and evening, and you can adjust how much space you would like for each block of the day. 

Common uses:

• College class schedule : Get a high-level view of all your classes for the week with a class schedule. You can quickly fill in their course information, like class name, location, and time, and better manage your time during the week.
• Housekeeping/chore schedule : Organize your housekeeping and chore list by printing out a weekly schedule template and filling in the task for each day, like vacuuming, sweeping, dusting, etc., and assigning each task. It’s an easy way to see all the housekeeping planned for the week and who is doing what.
• Employee shift schedule : Make sure the right people are working at the right times with an employee shift schedule. Assign shifts to each person and indicate their position (manager, cashier, front desk, support, etc). You could even add a column with total weekly hours to track employee workload.
• Travel itinerary : Never miss a flight, train, or bus again. Track departure cities, arrival cities, flight numbers, airport locations, hotel reservations and more with a weekly travel itinerary. All your important information will be in one place, keeping you on time and informed.
• Project schedule : Coordinate tasks, deliverables, due dates, owners, and more with a project schedule. Ensure your project meets deadlines and manage resource allocation over your workweek.

Daily Schedule Template in Excel

Free Daily Template:   Excel | Smartsheet

A daily schedule template usually spans Sunday-Saturday and includes duration in hours, with 30 minute increments. This kind of schedule will give you the most granular level of detail, letting you track even the smallest tasks during the day.

• Personal appointment/meeting planner : Manage all your personal appointments and meetings on a daily, hour-by-hour basis. Print out the daily schedule and put it in your purse, bag, or wallet so it’s always accessible. Or, even better, access it on your phone so you can easily add, delete, or edit items.
• To-do list planner : Instead of writing all your to-do items in a never-ending list, break them out and distribute them during the week so you know exactly what you have to achieve each day. Organize your to-dos by time of day and cross them out when you’ve completed each one.
• Baby feeding schedule : Record the exact times you nurse throughout the day to make sure you’re sticking with the appropriate feeding schedule. You can also track how long you nurse for and the number of total feeds per day.

Monthly Schedule Template in Excel

‌ Download Free Monthly Excel Template

A monthly schedule template provides a high-level view of the entire month. Each of the 12 months in 2016 are typically a different tab in the Excel file. 

• Seasonal maintenance : Remind yourself to change your HVAC filters, clean the gutters, winterize the air conditioning system and more with a monthly seasonal maintenance schedule. Add all the items you need to track at the beginning of the calendar year and display the schedule in your garage or on the fridge. 
• Monthly menu planner : Plan out your meals for the entire month with a menu planner. Include breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack ideas for each calendar day and print out the planner when you go grocery shopping for a ready-made list.
• Event planning schedule : Use a monthly event planning schedule to coordinate the hundreds of activities and tasks that need to happen before the big day. Add due dates and owners to ensure you meet deadlines.

Weekly Schedule Templates in Smartsheet

Weekly Meal Planner House Cleaning Schedule Travel Itinerary Class Schedule Work Schedule Simple Weekly Schedule

These weekly schedule templates span the entire week, from Monday-Sunday. Many of the templates use hierarchy to organize information, with collapsible rows so you can hide or display certain dates or tasks. 

All these templates highlight Smartsheet’s collaboration features. For example, in the weekly class schedule, you can color-code your courses so you can quickly visualize your schedule for the week. In the meal planner template, you can easily attach links to your favorite recipes for easy access. And, in the house cleaning schedule, you can assign chores to certain people to hold your family accountable.

Shift Schedule:   Excel | Smartsheet

Daily Schedule Templates in Smartsheet

Daily Work Schedule

Daily To-Do List

Daily Meetings & Appointments Schedule

Smartsheet’s daily schedules are organized by 30-minute increments, from 7am-9pm. If you want the schedule to span more or less time, just right-click on a cell and select Delete Row or Insert Row. Use the star symbols in the daily to-do list to designate priority and set reminders for your daily meetings and appointments, and daily work so you never miss a beat.

Monthly Schedule Templates in Smartsheet

Event Planning Schedule

These monthly schedules include every month of the year for 2017, and you can adjust how much space you want to designate for each month by adding or delete rows. If you want to change any of the dates in the schedule (like if you need to change the year), simply enter the first couples date by hand, then select these cells and drag the bottom right-hand corner all the way down to autofill the rest.

Have comments directly in the project schedule template to unclog your inbox, automatically create dynamic Gantt charts, and use symbols to quickly convey status, priority, and progress.

Gantt Chart Project Schedule:   Excel | Smartsheet

Sports Roster & Schedule

Project Schedule Template

Which Schedule Template to Use?

Once you decide on a daily, weekly, or monthly template, you then need to choose a layout, duration type (do you want Monday-Friday or Sunday-Saturday?), the sharing capabilities, and printing options. With all these factors to consider, it can be difficult to know which schedule template to use. 

Here are some things to consider as you’re searching for a schedule template:

1. What is your timeframe or duration?

You first need to figure out if you need a daily, weekly, or monthly template. The daily schedule is the only template that has duration in hours (with 30 minute increments), the weekly schedule’s duration is broken up into morning, afternoon, and evening, and the monthly template has the least amount of granularity, with duration in days. 

The events, tasks, or projects that you need to track on the schedule will dictate what kind of template you need. If you need to organize to-dos or appointments, the daily schedule will work the best. If you need to track longer term tasks or repeating events, consider a template that spans more time.

2. How many people will be using it?

Think about who you need to share your schedule with. Is this a personal document that you will to track your own tasks and to-dos? Is this a family housekeeping/chore schedule that you need to print out and tape on the fridge or email to your spouse and children? Or, will you be using this schedule at work, collaborating and editing it with colleagues and external collaborators? 

As a general tip, if you need to share your schedule with more than one person, you should look for an online version of the template so you can share, collaborate, and edit it in real time. If it will be a personal schedule, then make sure you have robust customization and printing capabilities to make sure it fits all your needs.

3. How many events or projects need to be tracked?

While you can choose the level of granularity in duration of your schedule, you also need to identify the level of detail you need to add to your template and the number of items you want to include. 

To get a sense of the complexity of your events or projects, jot down one or two items you anticipate adding to your schedule. Write down all the details you need to include (item name, item details, assigned to, due date, location, contact information, etc). This exercise will give you a sense of the amount of space you need on your schedule. If you are sticking with a high-level view of the details, you could use the monthly schedule. If you are tracking multiple tasks per day, you may want to look at the daily schedule template.

How to Customize Your Excel Template

It’s easy to customize your daily, weekly, or monthly schedule template in Excel. You can color-code certain items, like appointments or birthdays, or change font size and type. You can even add a logo to the calendar if you’re using it for work or with clients.

1. Format Fonts

• To change the font size of the headers, first highlight all the headers. In the Home tab, you can format the font type and size. 
• To format the date or time markers, highlight the entire column or all the date boxes. In the Home tab, you can adjust the font type and size. 

2. Change Colors

You can change the font colors or the background colors in your schedule. Color-coding may be especially helpful for labeling certain types of events or tasks. 

• To change the background color of a header, highlight the whole row, click the paint bucket icon, and select the fill color. 
• To color code an event, type a task or appointment into a date box. Then, select the text, click the paint bucket icon, and select the appropriate fill color.

3. Add a Photo

Customize your schedule by adding images, like your company logo.

• In the Insert tab, click Pictures . Upload the picture you would like to use. 
• The image will be added to your spreadsheet and you can drag it anywhere in the sheet. 

If you would like to add your logo or picture to the top of the schedule, you may need to add extra space so the image can fit. 

• Right-click the first row of the whole spreadsheet and select Insert. 
• Click Entire Row . 
• Repeat depending on how many extra rows you’d like. 
• To make the background of the new rows white, highlight the new rows, click the paint bucket icon, and select white. 
• To remove the grid line above the title row, select the title row, click the grid icon, and click the options with the removed gridlines.

Now you have extra white space to drag your image to the top.

Printable vs Online Schedule Templates

In addition to finding the best schedule template for your needs, you’ll also have to think about printing and online collaboration capabilities. 

Many people print out their schedules and put them on a fridge or wall. Or, for schedules like the to-do list planner or personal appointment/meeting planner, some put them in their purse or wallet for easy access. 

While it can be helpful to print out and display the schedule for everyone to see, a paper calendar can actually make your life more chaotic and disorganized. If you forget or misplace the schedule, you have to start over from scratch. If someone wants to edit or add something, you won’t know who did it, unless you can recognize their handwriting. And, with limited space, your calendar can quickly get cluttered and messy with multiple edits and additions.

To have guaranteed, 24/7 access to your schedule, look for a cloud-based, collaborative solution. You want to be able to view and edit your schedule wherever you are, on a smartphone or on a desktop. 

And, you’ll save a ton of paper by moving your schedule online. If you are sharing your calendar with multiple people, an online tool will streamline communication and changes. You can track edits and control permission levels, choosing whether someone is a viewer, editor, or admin.

And, many online tools have collaboration features to bring your schedule to the next level. You can have comments directly in the tool, set reminders or notifications, switch between a normal view, a Gantt view, or a calendar view, or add attachments.

Create Easier, Collaborative Schedules with Smartsheet

Smartsheet is a spreadsheet-inspired work management tool with robust collaboration and communication features. With dozens of pre-built templates and sharing capabilities, Smartsheet is perfect for simple to-do list planners or more complex project schedules. And it’s easy to customize the templates -- simply right-click on any column to rename the column headers and double-click on any cell to add your own information. You can also change the colors, fonts, and switch between grid view, Gantt view, or calendar view.

Improve Scheduling Efforts with Real-Time Task Management in Smartsheet

Tracking schedules, documenting deadlines, and staying up-to-date on daily, weekly, and monthly schedules is the key to making sure day-to-day operations run smoothly. Having the right tool to keep everyone in sync ensures that all projects and processes stay on track and all critical deadlines are met.

One such tool is Smartsheet, an enterprise work execution platform that is fundamentally changing the way businesses and teams work. Over 74,000 brands and millions of information workers trust Smartsheet as the best way to plan, track, automate, and report on schedules and timelines.

The familiar Smartsheet interface that is designed for how people actually work leads to rapid and broad adoption across your organization. Use Smartsheet to gain real-time visibility into task lists and schedules, and then access and manage them from anywhere, at any time. Share schedules with an unlimited number of internal and external team members, to improve collaboration and ensure that deadlines are met.

Try Smartsheet to discover how you can maximize your scheduling efforts, today.

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Additional Resources

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Daily schedule templates to plan you day and manage your time

Stay on track with these daily templates. From making to-do lists to employee schedules, these are perfect for every personal and business situation.

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Discover a collaborative, real-time way to manage schedules.

Make scheduling a breeze by using a template to allocate visits to the best-suited care professionals

Please note : The following feature is available as part of Birdie’s Starter, Core, Advanced, Plus, Care Management and Advanced Care Management packages (Previously known as Care Management & Rostering, Care Management, Rostering & Finance, Premium, Entry and Essentials) Please get in touch if interested in more information on this feature!

You can create and use scheduling templates within the birdie platform to easily replicate your preferred scheduling rota every week in a few quick steps.

You would use the template feature when starting to plan the roster for a week from scratch. When the template is applied the birdie platform will allocate the regular carer to a care recipient's visit schedule.

How do I create a template for my visits?

To create a template for your rota, you must first set up regular carers for your care recipient's visit schedules. Read how to do this here. Once you have done this you can follow the below steps. ​ ​ Please note: You can assign multiple regular care professionals to each visit. However, as a general rule of thumb, the fewer care professionals you assign as regular for every visit, the more repeatable your templates will be.

How to apply a template to your visits

Start by going to the Roster tab, and click on Plan rota , a drop-down menu will appear, and click on Apply template.

Once you have clicked on Apply template the system will now allocate all the regular carers to their visits. This will be in draft form, allowing you to still make changes. You will see a Preparing your template modal pop-up.

Once you are happy with the template click Push changes .

Shifts and the template

If you are using Shifts, the template will assign visits to them as normal, as long as you have set regular carers up and have not declined the Care Professional from visiting.

For more information on Shifts, please see this article here - How to create Shifts using Birdie rostering [beta] .

What to do if you still have unallocated visits

If visits are not allocated once the template has been applied it is due to the below reasons, please check these are rectified before applying the template again:

Birdie will not assign regular carers if they are not available for the visit or the whole run

Birdie will not split runs between multiple carers

Birdie does not assign overlapping visits, unless they are part of the same run

Birdie will never assign declined caregivers

Birdie will never assign people that are not part of the same Group. If a run contains a Care Recipient in a Group that is different from the group of the regular carer, we will not assign this run and it will remain unallocated.

If multiple regular carers are assigned to a visit/run and they are available, we will select the carers in a way to maximise the number of visits we can assign (meaning if one of the carers is also regular for another visit, we will try to assign both visits)

How to make changes once the template has been applied

You can also make changes after confirming the template by using the Find an alternative carer tool for a visit if you have changed your mind.

If you do this, we recommend updating the regular carer for the visit, so you don't have to update it next time!

Troubleshooting

If you are experiencing issues templating your rota, please read this article How to troubleshoot when templating your rota

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