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The evolving and expanding scope of revenue teams! What am I talking about ? How Customer Success. It's Not Just About Closing the Deal (But It Helps!) Remember the days when a sale meant the finish line? Yeah, those days are long gone. In today's competitive landscape, customer success is the new closing handshake. Here's why prioritizing customer success is a win-win for everyone: Happy Customers = Loyal Customers: When you help customers achieve their goals with your product, they're more likely to stick around for the long haul. Think recurring revenue and glowing testimonials! Proactive Problem Solving: By focusing on customer success, you identify issues early on and prevent churn. It's like fixing a leaky roof before it rains cats and dogs (metaphorically speaking, of course). Upselling & Cross-Selling Opportunities: Happy customers are open to exploring other products or services that can further benefit them. It's a natural progression when trust and value are established. But wait, there's more! Here are some ways to elevate your customer success game: Focus on Onboarding: A smooth and personalized onboarding experience sets the stage for long-term success. Think clear communication, helpful resources, and readily available support. Proactive Communication: Don't wait for customers to come to you. Schedule regular check-ins, gather feedback, and proactively address any challenges they might be facing. Become a Customer Advocate: Your customer success team should be the customer's biggest cheerleader within your company. Advocate for their needs and ensure they have a positive experience at every touchpoint. Ready to make customer success a priority? Share your best customer success strategies or favorite customer success tools in the comments...

What Customer Success Is Not vs. What Customer Success Is ❌ Customer Success Is NOT: 1️⃣ 📞 Customer Support: It’s not just solving tickets—it’s proactive, not reactive. 2️⃣ 🔄 Chasing Renewals: It’s not about pressuring customers at renewal time; success is built long before. 3️⃣ ⏳ A One-Time Activity: Success isn’t achieved during onboarding alone—it’s ongoing. 4️⃣ 🚦 Just a Nice-to-Have: It’s not optional—Customer Success drives retention, growth, and loyalty. 5️⃣ 🏢 The Responsibility of One Team: Success isn’t siloed; it’s a company-wide mindset. ✅ Customer Success IS: 1️⃣ 🤝 Proactive Partnership: It’s about understanding customers’ goals and helping them achieve them. 2️⃣ 🏆 Driving Value: Ensuring customers get the maximum benefit from your product or service. 3️⃣ 📣 Advocating for Customers: CS bridges the gap between customer needs and internal teams. 4️⃣ 💡 Retention + Growth: Happy customers stay longer and grow their investment with you. 5️⃣ 🔄 Continuous Engagement: CS is an ongoing journey of listening, adapting, and delivering. 💡 The Best Customer Success Managers Know: Success is about ensuring your customers thrive—not just with your product, but in their broader business goals. What does Customer Success mean to you? Let’s discuss in the comments! #CustomerSuccess #Retention #CustomerAdvocacy #ProactivePartnership #Growth

The Evolution of Customer Success: navigating in the 21st century? Customer support has been embedded in the fabric of business for centuries. Since the dawn of commerce, businesses have always needed to ensure that their customers were satisfied, often relying on the business owners or multitasking employees to provide that support. Advent of phone laid the foundations of present day customer support which was further formalized when in 60s AT&T introduced toll-free telephone number. For decades, customer support was seen as a reactive function, there to handle issues as they arose. Seen by many as a career-starting job and stepping stone to other positions. Customer Success emerged in the early 2000s, led by Salesforce. It shifted the focus to proactive engagement, aiming to guide customers to success and derive maximum value from products, moving beyond issue resolution to fostering long-term relationships. But Has the Industry Matured? While progress has been made in leaps and bounds, there is still a long way to go. Lack of Skills-Based Hiring: Most roles are filled based on general skills. A study by LinkedIn found that only 5% of Customer Success Managers (CSMs) hold certifications specific to the role, reflecting the lack of formalized training pathways for the profession. Multidisciplinary Roles with Limited Specialization: CSMs often juggle tasks like renewals, product adoption, training and relationship management. Over 70% feel overextended, according to a Gainsight report. Learning on the Job: Without formal programs, 65% of companies rely on on-the-job training, leading to inconsistent results, as found in a Totango report. Sparse Leadership Representation: Only 10% of C-suite roles in tech companies are held by Chief Customer Officers (CCOs), compared to CFOs and CMOs, reflecting the discipline's underrepresentation. A Promising Future Despite the challenges, the future of Customer Success is incredibly promising. According to LinkedIn, Customer Success is consistently ranked among the top 10 fastest-growing jobs globally. As companies increasingly focus on customer retention, long-term value, and product adoption, the demand for skilled Customer Success professionals will only continue to rise. Now is an exciting time to be part of this dynamic and evolving discipline.

There are many possible reasons why Customer Success Management fails to create substantial value for customers and companies. - Lack of foundation? - Issues working with customers? - Insufficient team capabilities? - Struggling with the execution? The simple answer: Most SaaS companies have issues at every level. - They have not defined their ICPs and set accurate expectations - CSMs and customers are loosely connected and only collaborate on paper - The team does not have the required mindset, skills, and knowledge  - CSMs are working through their inboxes and check-off items from a list What makes things worse is that the problems are interconnected - Wrong customer → you can’t deliver the right content and services - Lack of customer feedback → You can’t improve the quality of inputs - Insufficient training → you can’t discover customer needs accurately Trying to solve everything at once is a certain way to fail. Instead, follow this process: 1. Audit your customers, team, and processes 2. Determine what works, what does not, and why 3. Quantify the impact of every problem 4. Share relevant insights across GTM teams 5. Create a blueprint for the ideal state of every part 6. Determine the gaps to the status quo 7. Define measures to close these gaps 8. Prioritize and close them based on impact Don’t wait for a miracle, take decisive action. (Post inspired by Pierre Herubel) PS: Join 4.7k+ CS pros and sign up for my Customer-Value-Led-Growth newsletter if you like this post → https://lnkd.in/dtC7MEjP

🌟 The Power of Proactive Support in Customer Success 🌟 As I continue my series on what I consider to be the most vital elements of a successful Customer Success Manager, I've now reached the topic of proactive support - one of the most essential and impactful daily tasks, in my view. In the dynamic world of Customer Success, waiting for issues to arise before addressing them is no longer sufficient. To truly excel, we need to anticipate our customers’ needs and steer conversations towards continuous improvement. Proactive support is key to not just meeting, but exceeding customer expectations. 🔮 Anticipating Needs: By understanding our customers’ goals and challenges, we can proactively anticipate their needs and deliver solutions before issues arise. This forward-thinking approach builds trust and reinforces our commitment to their success. While we can't predict everything, the ability to engage in open, honest conversations with our customers is essential to meeting their evolving needs. 💬 Steering Conversations: - Regular Check-Ins: Scheduled touch-points to discuss not just current usage, but also future needs and potential enhancements. - Feedback Loop: Actively soliciting feedback and using it to guide product or service improvements. - Educational Resources: Providing customers with insights and resources that help them maximise the value of our offerings. 🔄 Continuous Improvement: - Actionable Insights: Leveraging data and customer feedback to make informed decisions about product enhancements. - Collaborative Roadmapping: Involving customers in the roadmap process to ensure that our developments align with their evolving needs. - Innovation Sharing: Regularly sharing new features and improvements and explaining how they can benefit our customers. By adopting a proactive approach, we transform our customer relationships from reactive problem-solving to strategic partnerships focused on continuous growth and improvement. 💡 What About You? Fellow Customer Success professionals, how do you ensure proactive support and drive continuous improvement with your customers? Share your strategies in the comments below and let's elevate our practices together. #CustomerSuccess #ProactiveSupport #ContinuousImprovement #CustomerEngagement #StrategicPartnerships #Innovation

If your customer success strategy is based solely on one-to-one relationships, your customers are at risk. Why? 1. People leave companies. When your CSMs leave or your customer stakeholders leave their companies, your relationships disappear. 2. Your customers aren’t getting exposure to other people that sit in similar seats, have the same goals, and deal with the same challenges. 3. When different people do the same activity dozens of times per week, you have to spend a lot of time managing the quality of the work. And it’s a drag on resources. A new way: Scaled cs community programs. Here are a few tactical ways to get started: - Run a weekly new user onboarding webinar (vs. one-off calls with every new user) - Hold bi-monthly office hours call where customers can come together to talk about strategic topics related to their role. - Publish a bi-weekly newsletter with product updates and helpful content. - Launch a customer community organized by topics and customer journey stage (e.g., onboarding, optimization) where customers can ask questions and get answers from your team, partners, and other customers. Integrate LMS, Support, and knowledge base to create a centralized customer hub. - Allow product idea submission and up-voting in your online community. Work with Product Management to review and disposition ideas quarterly. - Hold topical webinars featuring customers and how they have used your product to solve advanced problems. - Create a knowledge base with bite-sized product guides, including videos and screenshots. Don't cancel *all* of the one-on-one customer calls; customers appreciate having a CSM, but... CSMs, Account Managers, and other customer-facing people need programmatic support to reduce their workload, improve consistency, and make customers feel like they are part of something bigger. How are you planning to scale customer success in 2025?

Retaining and growing customer account is one of the most important aspect of your Saas business. it takes a lot of hard work to draw customers into your company in the first place, so it's important that you work to keep those customers more that satisfied once they actually decide to work with you. Here are five Customer Success secrets you can start implementing. 1. Know your customers goals and KPI's; Understanding your customers inside and outside should be your first step in cultivating a long term, mutually benefited partnership. 2. Set expectations early on; It's important to understand what commitments where made to your customer, what product or services where sold, what timelines where set, and any other promises that where made., 3. Ask for feedbacks and put it to use; One of the best ways you can show your customers you care is by asking them for feedback, really listening to what they have to say, responding to their thoughts, suggestions and adapting accordingly. 4. Be proactive instead of reactive; Most Customer success teams view their role as "preventing defense" their mindset and activities is focused purely on retention, rather than growth. 5.Create a Customer Success culture; For Saas companies, creating a culture of customer success means that every department and every role should have a part of customer success and should feel a portion of ownership, above and beyond the CRM role alone. #customersupport# #customersupport# #lifeofaremoteworker#

Another successful meet up at Connecting Success this morning! Big thanks to Rachel Yockey and Christopher Berry for their leadership in planning these events so that Customer Success professionals can share experiences, network, and learn from each other. There is power in community! One of today’s discussion points posed by Joseph Loria: Is there a consistent approach to predictive, proactive Customer Success? My personal take: I think we can all agree that there should be, but it doesn’t always work out that way. There are a lot of nuances to every org including structure, scale, types of tools, partnership with internal stakeholders, data from the customer - the list goes on. I would argue that one of the most important components to ensuring there is a proactive approach - frequent communication with account teams and excuting a successful warm hand-off for the initial meeting with the customer. That initial call provides a baseline understanding to why they bought the product, their goals, and existing skillset with the software/use cases so that you, the CSM, can create the proactive account plan. That partnership with sales is crucial to start the customer’s onboarding right at purchase. CS professionals - How do you ensure a predictive, proactive approach is taking place with your customers?

🔍 Does Your Subscription Business Really Need a Customer Success Strategy and Organization? The answer is no, unless ...certain conditions are met. Let’s clarify upfront: Customer Support is NOT Customer Success. Customer Support is reactive—think 1-800 numbers, support emails, and ticketing systems. While Customer Support can be a component of a Customer Success strategy, the reverse isn’t true. 📌 Consider these points to determine if a Customer Success organization is right for you: ➡️HIGH COST OF CUSTOMER ACQUISITION If acquiring (or reacquiring) customers are expensive, like with extensive bid and proposal (B&P) work, a Customer Success strategy might be wise. B&P costs alone can absorb up to 10% of revenue in some companies. ➡️LOW CLTV-to-CAC RATIO If your Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is low (e.g., below 3:1), a purposeful Customer Success strategy can increase CLTV and improve overall profitability. ➡️MARKET SHARE DEFENSE For companies in a market share defense phase, Customer Success is crucial for maintaining relationships and delivering value. ➡️SCALE AND COMPLEXITY When a company reaches a scale where Sales can no longer manage ongoing relationships alone, Customer Success can bridge that gap. 🚫 When a Customer Success strategy might NOT make sense: ➡️LOW SWITCHING COSTS For products with minimal switching costs (e.g., some SW segments, standalone APPS, most retail items, hotels, etc), marketing is often a more effective investment than Customer Success ➡️COMPANY GROWTH STAGE If your company is in a growth phase prioritizing market dominance, focusing on aggressive customer acquisition may take precedence over customer success. ➡️LOW AND SABLE CAC COSTS Customer Success might not be necessary if customer acquisition is low-cost and expected to stay that way. Every Company needs Customer Support, but not everyone needs major Customer Success Investments. #CustomerSuccess #SaaS #CustomerRetention

CROs who are neglecting Customer Success Management are no revenue leaders at all.     Because they are neglecting 80-90% of their revenue potential. Customer Success Management gives you access to - long term customer retention - expansions, up- and cross-sells - referrals that close at high rates - repeat customers that buy your product at other employers again - profitable value-based prices and the insights to streamline acquisition and product development. The reason why you barely see any of it happening is that your CSM team lacks the proper education and training to unlock it. What most of them are doing is extended customer support. Instead of delivering, growing, and monetizing customer value they are fighting tooth and nail to keep churn from exploding. They are stuck in reactive work and no amount of doing more of the same will help them to get out. What they need is an operating system that creates value for customers and revenue for the company with precision - repeatedly. Consisting of the 6 core disciplines of customer-centric CSM: 1. Discovering customer needs 2. Creating accurate success plans 3. Building quality education and training programs 4. Tracking customer progress and results 5. Demonstrating value to all stakeholders 6. Monetizing customer value Proactive. Strategic. Creating results. PS: Turn your CSM team into a growth engine --> https://lnkd.in/d5cGMT4R