Growth-oriented Customer Success
Customer Success is not Account Management. This means using traditional Account Management ideas will either limit your (and your customer's) success... or will cause you your Customer Success initiative to fail miserably. The traditional method of … [Continue reading]
On Friday May 5, 2017, I did a Customer Success Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Facebook live. It was awesome. The video is embedded below and while there seems to be an audio/video sync issue, the audio is crisp and listening to this will be time … [Continue reading]
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 … [Continue reading]
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 … [Continue reading]
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 … [Continue reading]
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 … [Continue reading]
What's the best Comp Model for Customer Success Managers (CSM)? How can I create a compensation model that drives the type of behavior we need? What percentage of CSM comp should be variable, and what impact should individual vs. org-level … [Continue reading]
This is otherwise known as, “How to Determine Customer Success Practitioner Coverage Ratios.” Initially, the question was “how many accounts should a Customer Success Manager (CSM) handle?” But people quickly realized that answers like “37 on the low … [Continue reading]
Doing whatever you can, spending whatever you can spend, to acquire any and all customers - whether they’re a good fit long-term or not - is played out. That's not a valid growth strategy anymore (it never really was). Today, Investors, Boards, … [Continue reading]
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 … [Continue reading]
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 … [Continue reading]
Customer Success is when your customers achieve their Desired Outcome through their Interactions with your company. The actual process of moving customers toward their ever-evolving Desired Outcome is called Customer Success Management. It's … [Continue reading]
Customer Success is when your customers achieve their Desired Outcome through their Interactions with your Company. To actually ensure your customers achieve their Desired Outcome - or what they need to achieve, the way they need to achieve it - and … [Continue reading]
Customers that pay more need more human interaction, right? Customers that pay less don't deserve as much human interaction, right? Customers that we give more human interaction should pay more, right? Segmenting customers based on how much they pay … [Continue reading]
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 … [Continue reading]
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 … [Continue reading]
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 … [Continue reading]
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 … [Continue reading]
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 … [Continue reading]
I'm frequently asked about SaaS Free Trial Conversion Rate Benchmarks; after being asked for the 97th time - this week - I decided to publish this post. First, a bit of a disclaimer. Benchmarks are neat... it's cool to see how you stack up against … [Continue reading]
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, … [Continue reading]
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 … [Continue reading]
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 … [Continue reading]
Fairy Tales have happy endings. That's why they're so popular; even if they include scary moments with monsters and evil blended family members, everything is pulled together nicely at the end when the naive protagonist is magically okay. In … [Continue reading]
Churn is the antithesis of growth. When you lose a customer, in order to grow by one customer, you have to first replace that customer you lost, and then add a new customer. And when a customer leaves, they take the revenue they were paying you with … [Continue reading]
When customers churn, that’s a problem. Even if their churn was “unavoidable” it still hurts. Churn hurts on several levels: from lowering revenue to hurting employee morale. And churn means something happened to the customer (out of business, … [Continue reading]
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 … [Continue reading]
In my epic tome, the Pricing Strategy Framework for SaaS Startups, I mentioned that the price testing I recommend will result in some customers paying a different price from what you have now; and that this is okay. Sometimes this "grandfathering" of … [Continue reading]
Pricing doesn't exist in a vacuum and is therefore not something you can tackle on its own. Pricing is a function of marketing and determines, among other things, your market position. It also indicates - or is ideally derived from - the type of … [Continue reading]
I got this set of questions on Twitter: "Is there a certain level of activity during the free trial that is likely to predict conversion from free to paid? Also, how do other companies handle Sales vs. Marketing Qualified Leads (SQL vs. MQL) when it … [Continue reading]
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 … [Continue reading]
What's a reasonable conversion rate from free trial to a paid customer? I get some form of this question from time to time and I've answered it several times over the years. Well, I got it again so it's time to revisit this very simple question. As … [Continue reading]
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, … [Continue reading]
I've talked before about holding customers accountable and how customer success isn't about making customers happy. Sometimes you have to push customers out of their comfort zone and - if you'll allow me to channel my inner Tony Robbins -progress is … [Continue reading]
Picture it, São Paulo, Brazil, October 2015. After one of the sales and customer success workshops I did, a few of us went out for a snack - fried polenta sticks - and to talk shop... and the idea of Success Gaps came up. In particular, we talked … [Continue reading]
Personally, I've always found it difficult to ask for testimonials. It just doesn't come naturally to me. In fact, one of the reasons I like doing calls on Clarity is that the platform closes the loop with the client for me, asking for a star rating … [Continue reading]
I talk about Success Milestones all the time, not just in the context of Customer Success, but in the context of the overall success of my SaaS clients and the companies I work with. The concept of Success Milestones is a relatively simple one to … [Continue reading]
This is the origin story of Joint Accountability, an incredibly powerful concept in Customer Success that you need to be using. A little while ago I introduced the concept of the Success Gap and how customers can use your product to the fullest and … [Continue reading]
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 … [Continue reading]
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 … [Continue reading]
