Customer Success Management is about ensuring customers achieve their ever-evolving Desired Outcome. It’s not about adoption. It’s not about the breadth and depth of use of your product. These are big ideas you need to move past if you want to be successful in your Customer Success initiative. Let’s explore this idea… For context, on […]
Search Results for: customer churn
Customer Success in a B2B2C (Partner / Value Chain) Scenario
Article by Lincoln Murphy
Customer Success is defined as our customers achieving their Desired Outcome through their interactions with our company. Think of that definition of Customer Success as your Operating Philosophy. That philosophy can be extended to the greater value chain or ecosystem you work within. Every entity in the partner/distribution value chain has a Desired Outcome. It’s […]
Determining the Perfect Number of Customer Segments
Article by Lincoln Murphy
In Customer Success, customer segmentation should be logical (take a step back and really think about it) and done from the customer point of view (think: Appropriate Experience segmentation) rather than from an internal-focused view (i.e. ARR, revenue potential, etc.). It’s not about what a customer pays us… it’s about the customer’s appropriate experience. Let’s dig […]
The 5 Fatal Flaws of most Customer Journey Maps
Article by Lincoln Murphy
Customer Journey maps are a favorite tool of Customer Experience (CX) and Customer Success Management (CSM) professionals around the world. Very often, they are elaborate, colorful maps – some look like movie storyboards or even children’s board games – that take the customer on a journey to nowhere. What journey are you mapping? If it’s […]
The Cost of Bad-Fit Customers: How a Simple Sales Mistake Wiped Out $1.2M in Revenue Overnight
Article by Lincoln Murphy
Também disponível em Português por Superlógica Do you need to churn and burn customers to learn? A lot of people in startups think so. In fact, a lot of people in companies of all shapes and sizes think so. Think you need to churn and burn through thousands of customers before it starts to have […]
Customer Success Goals: Cohorts, Metrics, and Prioritization
Article by Lincoln Murphy
Também disponível em Português por Conpass I asked the VP of Customer Success what her goal was for the Customer Success Management (CSM) organization, and she said, “to ensure customers achieve their Desired Outcome through their interactions with our company.” That’s the definition of Customer Success that I developed, so I obviously loved that answer […]
Contents of an Awesome Customer Success Playbook
Article by Lincoln Murphy
Customer Success has been clearly defined and what goes into Customer Success Management has been fully documented. But when it comes to certain aspects of Customer Success Management, there are still a few things that remain a bit mysterious to some. A great example of that is the concept of the Customer Success Playbook, the sports […]
Why You Can’t Offset Churn with Upsells
Article by Lincoln Murphy
If you lose $1 in revenue through churn – either because a customer cancels their subscription or decides to stay but pays you less because of discounts or downsells – you first need to replace that $1 before you can start to grow. Now, you can acquire those churn-offsetting revenue dollars in two ways: by […]
9 Things Customer Success is Not
Article by Lincoln Murphy
The definition of Customer Success has been clearly laid out. What goes into Customer Success Management has been fully documented. But there’s still a chance that you have a misconception or misunderstanding about Customer Success that could keep you from fully embracing this potentially transformative concept. So I want to make sure any preconceived notions […]
Orchestrating Sales and Customer Success Alignment
Article by Lincoln Murphy
If you aren’t familiar with the concept of Customer Success yet, it’s when your customers achieve their Desired Outcome (what they need to achieve, the way they need to achieve it) through their interactions with your company. Customer Success begins at the first interaction with prospects by your sales team, and continues across their entire […]
Success Potential: The Foundation of Customer Success
Article by Lincoln Murphy
Também disponível em Português por Exact Sales Customer Success starts with acquiring customers that have Success Potential. Customers that have Success Potential are said to be good fit customers. This is the opposite of bad-fit customers that cannot get value from a relationship with us now or in the near future. If you knowingly allow […]
Excuses and the Myth of Near-Zero Churn
Article by Lincoln Murphy
Churn is a drag on growth. Churn hurts company valuation. There is no good reason to have churn in your business. I did an “Ask Me Anything” on Slack as part of the build-up for my “Building an Engine of Growth” Workshop and Keynote at SaaStock 2016 in Dublin, Ireland and it was awesome… until […]
Success Vector – a Better Customer Health Score
Article by Lincoln Murphy
Customer Success is a Growth Engine. Investing in Customer Success-driven Growth is an efficient way to drive revenue and company valuation, and we need a metric that is designed to measure that growth. Introducing, Success Vector. Customer Health Score, historically the Key Performance Indicator (KPI) of Customer Success, is too much of a moment-in-time snapshot; […]
Don’t Mix SaaS Free Trial and Churn Metrics
Article by Lincoln Murphy
Any metric that’s not acted on is a vanity metric, right? Sure, but that doesn’t cover every situation. Sometimes we measure things because we’re “supposed to” but honestly don’t know what to do once we have the result (add that to the list of things that are true but few people will admit publicly). It’s […]
Churn is a Symptom, Not a Disease
Article by Lincoln Murphy
Também disponível em Português por Mathias Luz Churn is when customers cancel their account, don’t renew their contract, or remain your customer but pay you less; the latter is referred to as “revenue churn” and includes discounts, down sells, etc. Now, many companies find out about Customer Success when searching for ways to reduce customer […]
7 Ways Customer Success drives Company Valuation
Article by Lincoln Murphy
I’ve been saying for years that Customer Success is transformative; driving exponential value for both the vendor, as well as the customer. In fact, it’s that value growth for the customer that truly drives the value growth for the vendor. What goes around, comes around. And while the following is something I’ve shared with clients, […]
Customer Success: The Difference between Stretch and Bad-Fit Customers
Article by Lincoln Murphy
What are the characteristics of a Bad-Fit Customer for your business? It’s great to know who your Ideal Customer is (my Ideal Customer Profile Framework is constantly updated), but it’s much easier – and I say required – to first identify the types of customers that are a bad fit and the characteristics that make […]
Use Customer Success to Reduce Credit Card Failures
Article by Lincoln Murphy
Customer Success, done correctly, has the potential to impact your business in myriad positive ways; from customer retention to advocacy, and from account expansion to CAC Efficiency. So when I got this question in the comments section of one of my churn rate posts and started to answer, it turned into a post all its […]
Customer Success and Logical Account Expansion
Article by Lincoln Murphy
Customer Success is a powerful growth driver. Sure, in the early days when you’re putting out the fires of churn, Customer Success seems less like a growth driver and more like a stop shrinking driver. But once you move past churn busting – or if you avoid that altogether by being smart about customer acquisition […]
Acceptable Churn Rate for Small Accounts
Article by Lincoln Murphy
What drives a company to focus on Customer Success is changing. In the past, churn (or retention, depending upon how you look at things) was generally the catalyst. Once churn is under control, the catalyst changes to expansion; driving use, consumption, and revenue within existing accounts. And these days, startups are building Customer Success into […]
Lincoln Murphy’s Customer Success Resource Guide
CONFIDENTIAL: FOR SALES HACKER WORKSHOP ATTENDEES ONLY Table of Contents Ideal Customer Profile Customer Success Concepts Sales Hacking Ideas Presentation Slides Connect with Lincoln Ideal Customer Profile Clearly, understanding who your ideal customer is kind of a big deal. Ideal Customer Profile Framework How to Reverse Engineers Sales & Customer Success 4 Customer Success Hacks to […]
Customer Accountability: The Missing Piece in your Customer Success Strategy
Article by Lincoln Murphy
Customer Accountability is the Missing Piece in your Customer Success Strategy
This Customer Acquisition Mistake Can Kill your Growth
Article by Lincoln Murphy
Também disponível em Português por Mathias Luz Can the customers you’re actively going after actually achieve success with your product or through their interactions with your company as things are today? If not, that’s a problem. The reasons they might not achieve success range from their readiness (they don’t have the necessary data or internal […]
Stop Using these Anti-Customer Terms
Article by Lincoln Murphy
Ugh… isn’t dealing with customers that don’t get it and having to hold their hand along the way or check-in with them to make sure they’re okay, annoying? It’s so nice when you can hand ’em off to someone else, right? I hear that all the time from clients, on Clarity calls, and from companies […]
The Seeds of Churn are Planted Early
Article by Lincoln Murphy
“The Seeds of Churn are Planted Early” is a phrase I came up with in early 2013, published shortly thereafter, and have said and used many times since. I wanted to go on record with that – BTW, if you see the term’s use outside of my work or that of Gainsight’s, maybe send them this […]
5 Situations When Massive Churn is Just Fine
Article by Lincoln Murphy
The mantra of “grow at all costs” – that seems to include acquiring wrong-fit customers (those who aren’t your Ideal Customers), churn be damned – has popped up several times lately and my reaction to it is two-fold. First, I immediately thought how stupid this is and how it flies in the face of everything […]
5 Lesser-Known Ways Churn Hurts your Company
Article by Lincoln Murphy
The common refrain by SaaS experts that think business is just a math problem is that if a customer stays long enough to pay back the cost to acquire them (the metric is called Customer Acquisition Cost or CAC), they became a “profitable” customer (“unit economics” don’tcha know) and everything is great. Just do more of […]
Podcast: Getting Inside the Minds of Your SaaS Customers
Article by Lincoln Murphy
How do you define success for your SaaS customers? While it sounds simple, it’s not. Success is only achieved when your customers reach their Desired Outcome by their interactions with your company. But first, you have to understand what it is that your customers want to achieve — and that can take some work. I […]
Customer Success Starts at Sales Done Right
Article by Lincoln Murphy
After getting a demo of their new product from their Chief Data Officer (Luke Deka) while I was in Poland, I was excited to catch-up with Greg Pietruszynski, CEO of Growbots, when I got back to San Francisco. We talked about lots of different topics, but the post that my friend Steli Efti from close.io […]
Lincoln Murphy’s Customer Success Resource Guide
CONFIDENTIAL: FOR CUSTOMER SUCCESS MEETUP ATTENDEES ONLY Table of Contents Ideal Customer Profile Customer Success Presentation Slides Connect with Lincoln Ideal Customer Profile It all starts with your Ideal Customer… Ideal Customer Profile Framework Understanding Your Customer’s “Desired Outcome” Understanding and Bridging the Success Gap How to Reverse Engineers Sales & Customer Success 4 Data-Driven Hacks […]
Popular SaaS Marketing, Growth, & Customer Success Articles
For consultation and advice on effective growth strategies and tactics for your SaaS company, schedule meeting (minimum of 15-mins) with me via Clarity. The Secret to Successful Customer Onboarding Understanding Your Customer’s Desired Outcome Ideal Customer Profile Framework The Success Gap: A HUGE Opportunity You Haven’t Considered 3 Secrets of High-Converting SaaS Free Trials Your SaaS Metrics […]
Your SaaS Metrics Are Wrong if You Include These Customers
Article by Lincoln Murphy
A user is someone that uses your SaaS product, right? Or is it someone that signed-up? Or someone that’s active? Or someone that logged in a few times? Hmm. Okay, so maybe defining a user is hard, but defining a customer is easy, right? A customer is someone that pays you for your product or […]
The Myth of Unavoidable Churn
Article by Lincoln Murphy
When it comes to customer churn, there are two kinds: avoidable and unavoidable. But I guarantee that the amount you label as “unavoidable” is actually much smaller than you think. I know, but… “Most of our churn is out of our control, so it’s unavoidable” “We sell to SMB and in that market churn is inevitable.” Accepting that […]
The Secret to Successful Customer Onboarding
Article by Lincoln Murphy
Também disponível em Português por Mathias Luz Customer onboarding has come up a lot lately, which is great since having a poor onboarding experience for your customers can pretty much kill your growth… if not your business. The first in-app experience your customer has with your product sets the tone for your relationship, and if it’s […]
Ideal Customer Profile Framework
Article by Lincoln Murphy
Having a clear definition of your Ideal Customer is one of the most important things you can do for your business. Your Ideal Customer Profile – ICP – dictates (or should dictate) everything from the features and functionality of your product you build or what makes up your service offering, to the words you use and the emotion […]
4 Sales Mistakes That Lead To High SaaS Churn
Article by Lincoln Murphy
I’ve said many times that the seeds of churn are planted early. Whether it’s in your marketing – both the things you say but also the types of customers you target with your messaging and outreach – to the things you say and do during the sales process, you could be acquiring customers that already […]
Predictions for Customer Success in 2014
Article by Lincoln Murphy
It’s safe to say that 2013 was the year of Customer Success, especially in the SaaS industry. But where do we go from here? What does Customer Success look like in 2014? Luckily, I’m friends with someone who’s job it is to know – or at least attempt to predict – what’s going to happen […]
When Customers Go Dark: Customer Success to fight the Zombies
Article by Lincoln Murphy
So I got this email the other day asking me a SaaS Customer Success question that’s really more about ethics and karma than running a SaaS business. The gist of the email was what to do if a customer has been paying for 6 months but never started using the SaaS product…. these are what […]
Engagement is the key to lowering SaaS Churn
Article by Lincoln Murphy
If you’re dealing with a high SaaS churn rate, a lack of customer engagement could be the reason. Customer retention – or conversely customer churn – is a common struggle for expansion-stage SaaS companies, and while some of it may come as “growing pains,” there may be other causes… customer engagement may be the biggest […]
Who’s your ideal customer?
Article by Lincoln Murphy
Over the years I’ve helped hundreds and hundreds of SaaS providers from around the world rapidly accelerate customer acquisition and reduce their SaaS churn rates. And in just about every instance I found myself asking them the same questions. The fact that these questions were not easily answered or – if they were – that the answers […]
