Select Page

ELI5: What is Customer Success really?

by | Sep 12, 2019 | Enterprise, SaaS, Strategy | 7,507 comments

My mom would ask me every time I visited her “What do you do again?” She knew she was supposed to know. I explained it many times before. Her voice would go up when she asked and she’d tilt her head and squint her eyes as if finally, this time, she’d get it. “I help companies ensure their customers are happy, ma.” “Oh right! I knew that!” she’d say. My mom used her computer to play Solitaire and fake Mahjong. She needed help logging into Facebook. I wasn’t surprised or disappointed she didn’t remember. 

Sometimes I remember these exchanges with my mom when I’m talking to someone about Customer Success (CS). The person will raise their voice slightly, tilt their head, look me in the eyes and ask, “So, what is Customer Success really?” I can see the person has done research. But for some reason, it’s just not clear. More than 10 years in, I’m not sure if we, the CS community, should be worried. But here’s the answer I’m test-driving these days:

“CS is how businesses turn customers into long-term, vocal, partners.”

If that appears to make sense, I then take them to church and elaborate. 

“CS starts as a company priority, and then becomes a resourced strategy led by a team that uses a rapidly evolving framework.”

But that usually is the start of an engaging conversation. To help this process, I’m sharing this post…

Customer Success starts as a company priority

You don’t hire a CSM to launch your CS program. It starts as a C-suite initiative to ensure the company is focused on delivering value to the customer and staying in tune with their needs. Typically such initiatives include having a cultural value or pillar stating “customer first”, or showcasing a quarterly goal that demonstrates how teams are working across departments to achieve the goal. 

A high NPS, for example, requires the efforts of many teams in a company and can be a meaningful company-level goal. Customers are far more likely to recommend your product if it is useful (i.e. it helps them achieve their business goals), has few bugs, and is always available. This requires Product to define features that are useful and indeed utilized; Engineering and QA to ensure that releases are of high quality; Operations to meet availability targets; for Marketing and Sales to find the right customers who can benefit from the solution; and a CS team that onboards the customer effectively and ensures value is being realized. These are all responsibilities that require cross-team collaboration, which is driven by an engaged C-Suite.

Customer Success is a strategy 

A CS initiative is most impactful when it becomes a resourced strategy. Michael D Watkins’ definition of business strategy can be used to craft an effective, 1-page CS strategy: “A good strategy provides a clear roadmap, consisting of a set of guiding principles or rules, that defines the actions people in the business should take (and not take) and the things they should prioritize (and not prioritize) to achieve desired goals.”  

Here are some guiding principles for an example strategy for a young CS organization whose mission is to ensure all enterprise customers realize value repeatedly and can evangelize their success to their peers.

  • Product: Design products that solve problems and that customers use. Don’t surprise the customer with unannounced changes or deprecations. 
  • Engineering: Continually deliver a high-quality product with zero major regressions.
  • DevOps: Ensure availability SLAs are met and that customers are continually informed of the status of the service. 
  • Support: Answer questions quickly and manage bug resolutions efficiently to maintain customer satisfaction levels.
  • Marketing: Capture customer’s success and be their advocate. 
  • Customer Success: Customize a success plan for each customer, onboard them quickly and effectively, make sure they realize value, and can socialize it to management and peers.
  • Sales: Prepare the customer for success by selling exactly what they need within a package they can use. 
  • Finance: Agree to bill the customer appropriately and in an easy-to-understand manner.

Each guiding principle can be decomposed into measurable outcomes or KPIs to ensure the strategy is implemented properly and getting results. A CS strategy can be defined and revisited yearly and is typically the responsibility of the Chief Customer Officer or CS leader.  

Customer Success is a team

CS is commonly led by a team that has all or many of the post-Sales functions needed to deliver on commitments and ensure the customer realizes value. Professional Services, Onboarding, Account Management, Support, and Training are some of the key functions that comprise a mature CS function.

Organizationally, in younger companies, you see the Customer Success team report directly to the CEO. Reporting to a CRO or COO is common these days for organizations adding CS later in their evolution. Many configurations seem to work. My own bias is that as buyers get more sophisticated and discerning, their sourcing and purchasing teams will rank vendors with highly positioned CS leaders as more favorable. 

Customer Success is a framework

A CS framework comprises people, best practices, processes, programs, and tools for implementing an effective value realization journey for each customer tier. 

  • People: CSMs, Success Engineers, Account Manager are just a few of the roles that power CS. In its blog, LinkedIn ranked Customer Success a top profession based on the number of companies looking for people with the CSM skillset. 
  • Best Practices: Best practices include onboarding a customer promptly after sign-up, having a success plan template that can be customized per customer or tier, or having a health-monitoring function–just to name a few. 
  • Processes: CSMs use many processes but a few common examples include onboarding a customer, conducting a business review, and managing an upsell opportunity.
  • Programs: Programs include power user identification and development, customer advisory groups, user conferences, feedback, NPS, and many more. While a customer may spend less than an hour a day in your product, they can spend many more hours enjoying the features of your programs. 
  • Solutions/tools: A few years ago, there were fewer icons in this G2Crowd chart; now there are many vendors selling CS solutions that provide features to manage customers, monitor health, and actively lead and engage customers through a journey. 

A CS leader will have experience with this framework, sourcing the right people to leverage it, as well as choosing the right solutions to power your processes and programs. 

Getting help

Customer Kaizen helps SaaS and non-SaaS B2B companies develop an actionable CS strategy to achieve the critical outcomes your business needs to grow. Contact me today on LinkedIn, or book an initial no-obligation consultation, to see how we can start reducing churn and growing LTV.

7,507 Comments

  5. waterfallmagazine.com on July 6, 2021 at 10:27 am

    https://yoga-world.org
    Spot on with this write-up, I absolutely feel this
    amazing site needs a lot more attention. I’ll probably be returning to read more, thanks for
    the information!

  6. Davidfug on July 7, 2021 at 4:04 am

    ivermectin where to buy stromectol – stromectol south africa

  9. PeterPaice on July 16, 2021 at 8:33 pm

    buying viagra online buying viagra online – viagra from india

  11. PeterPaice on July 18, 2021 at 10:53 am

    viagra amazon blue pill viagra – viagra from india

  12. WayneOmige on July 19, 2021 at 6:11 pm

    buy cialis 36 hour online original cialis low price – monthly cost of cialis without insurance

  18. MarioThall on July 25, 2021 at 8:40 am

    plaquenil purchase online plaquenil – hydroxychloroquine buy uk

  20. Irwin on July 26, 2021 at 11:11 am

    Keep on writing, great job!

  23. wieliczko.eu on July 30, 2021 at 2:39 am

    http://wieliczko.eu Advertising Your Photo Book – This is a one-day workshop being hung on Saturday, July 22nd in L.a.

  47. Ronalditala on August 15, 2021 at 12:29 pm

    stromectol covid 19 ivermectin for humans – buy stromectol pills

  55. Audrey Johnson on August 21, 2021 at 7:04 am

    Ahaa, its fastidious dialogue concerning this piece of writing
    at this place at this web site, I have read all that, so now
    me also commenting at this place.

  57. ThomasTug on August 21, 2021 at 10:48 am

    ivermectin human ivermectin – ivermectin 3mg

  58. Evelyn Esposito on August 21, 2021 at 7:18 pm

    I will right away clutch your rss feed as I can’t in finding your
    email subscription link or newsletter service.
    Do you have any? Please permit me know so that I may just subscribe.
    Thanks.

  62. Leilani on August 24, 2021 at 6:00 am

    It’s an amazing paragraph for all the web visitors; they will take advantage from it I am sure.

  67. Gerardomaw on August 26, 2021 at 8:10 pm

    brand cialis cialis discounts – cialis ebay

  73. Gerardomaw on August 28, 2021 at 6:15 pm

    viagra 100mg price sildenafil – cheap viagra online

  79. Mauricemaivy on August 30, 2021 at 11:36 pm

    ivermectin canada ivermectin – ivermectin 3 mg tablet dosage

  80. William Smith on August 31, 2021 at 11:12 am

    coreg dosage coreg dosage claritin metoprolol

  86. Mauricemaivy on September 4, 2021 at 5:39 am

    propecia prices propecia buy – buy propecia without prescription

  97. TerryAbazy on September 8, 2021 at 12:28 am

    п»їviagra pills viagra pills – viagra 100mg price

  99. türk takipçi satın al on September 8, 2021 at 2:13 pm

    Friends, I logged into this site yesterday, but my followers came after 12 hours, not 2 or 3 hours, I guess everyone is different??

  112. TerryAbazy on September 13, 2021 at 7:58 am

    ivermectin nz buy ivermectin online – ivermectin 3 mg tabs

  396. JerryLox on September 18, 2021 at 9:25 am

    viagra vs cialis bodybuilding ed drugs – ed meds online canada

  569. JerryLox on September 20, 2021 at 3:31 pm

    what is the best ed pill ed drug prices – erectional dysfunction

  711. Zithromax on September 22, 2021 at 12:56 pm

    Acheter Viagra Prix

  799. Peterror on September 23, 2021 at 12:55 pm

    tadalafil free shipping tadalafil mexico – tadalafil tablets 20 mg buy

  1021. instagram tAKipçi satın AL on September 29, 2021 at 7:45 pm

    Hello, Neat post. There’s an issue along with your web site in internet explorer,
    would check this? IE still is the market chief and a big portion of
    other folks will omit your fantastic writing due to this problem.

  1127. JerryExpog on October 3, 2021 at 11:15 pm

    stromectol usa buy ivermectin – ivermectin 1% cream generic