The Ultimate List of Customer Success Resources For 2021

As we embark on the New Year, now is the perfect time to catch up on Gainsight’s Customer Success resources from 2020.

We compiled our best Customer Success resources from last year, from blogs to ebooks to webinars and podcasts. Bookmark this list and get through it bit by bit. It may seem daunting at first, but small daily rituals can lead to big results. Read a blog daily, set a weekly time slot on your calendar to watch a webinar, or listen to a podcast episode while doing chores. Before you know it, you’ll have sped through this list!

Here are over 65 Customer Success resources to catch up on and get you ready for the New Year.

Want to get to the good stuff? Click the relevant header below!
Launching Customer Success
Customer Success Team Management
Customer Success Career Advice
Customer Success Leadership
Retention, Renewal, and Upsell Strategies
Customer Onboarding: From Implementation to Time to Value
Churn and Risk Management
Customer Experience
Scaling Customer Success
Managing Customer Relationships

Launching Customer Success

• How To Do a Quick Customer Success Platform Launch
• Creating the Complete Customer Success Team (Listen to the podcast episode)
• Strategizing Customer Success Spend for 2021: 5 Takeaways From Our Survey On Customer Success Budgeting
• The 5 Most Common Pitfalls In Launching A CSM Team

Customer Success Team Management

• Changing the Wheels on a Moving Car: 4 Keys to Managing CSM Transitions
• Gainsight’s Ultimate “Work From Anywhere” Guide
• 10 Tips For Operating A Virtual Customer Success Organization
• The Team You Create: Lessons from Joe Theismann
• Customer Success And The New “Remote Reality” (Listen to the podcast episode)

Customer Success Career Advice

• Lessons in Customer Success: Multitasking, Delegating, and Asking “Why?” (Listen to the podcast episode)
• The Number One Quality For Success As A Customer Success Manager
• How to Master Presentations in Customer Success (Listen to the podcast episode)
• 5 Ways To Become A Human First CSM
• Customer Success and Mental Health (Listen to the podcast episode – Part One and Part Two)
• How Customer Success Leaders Can Become More Strategic

Customer Success Leadership

• 5 Tips To Be An Effective CSM Leader In Difficult Times
• 5 Things I learned from Discussing Customer Success with 5 Public Company Executive Teams
• 5 Things I do to Stay on Top of Our 700 Clients As A CEO
• 10 Key Points for A Strong Retention Board Presentation
• The Hardest Question SaaS CEOs and Leaders Have to Face Now
• The Essential Guide for the SaaS Executive During COVID-19
• Why Customer Success Is Existential During A Downturn
• 5 Positive Things SaaS CEOs and leaders Should Do To Get Through COVID-19

Retention, Renewal, and Upsell Strategies

• How Conversica Optimized Their Renewal Management Process Using Gainsight
• Driving Sales through a Downturn: How the CROs of Dropbox and Flexera are Adapting (Watch the webinar recording)
• 3 Steps to Creating a Renewal Process and Retention in Your Customer Base
• Who Should Own Renewals and Upsells: Sales or Customer Success?
• 4 Strategies to Help Close Every Renewal During a Slowdown
• Retention Attention: Metrics and Best Practices That Up Your Retention Game
• The Expansion Experts: How the Gamechangers at Mitek Fuel Customer Growth (Watch the webinar recording)
• 3 Things CROs Do to Double Down on Expansion During A Downturn
• Customer Love Book Club: The Expansion Sale (Watch the webinar recording)
• Customer Visibility Drives Success For Plex Systems
• How ADP’s GameChangers Get a Complete Picture Watch the webinar recording or read the blog summary
• 6 Things We Learned from Our Second COVID-19 SaaS Retention Survey

Customer Onboarding: From Implementation to Time to Value

• How We Decreased Time to Value At Gainsight By 66%
• 5 Step Playbook for Nailing Pre to Post-sales Outcomes Handoff
• How D&B Built a Personalized, Point-of-Consumption Customer Training Program That Drove Results (Watch the webinar recording)
• User Onboarding Strategies To Develop An Effective Retention Strategy
• 3 Tips for Onboarding New Users Quickly in a Crisis

Churn and Risk Management

• Retention Revolutionaries: Vonage’s GameChanging Approach to Mitigating Risk (Watch the webinar recording)
• Managing Churn in SaaS Business With A Focus On Customer Success
• Risk Management in the Age of COVID-19 (Watch the webinar recording)
• Managing Churn During COVID-19 (Watch the webinar recording)
• 5 Questions CFOs Should Be Asking About Churn During COVID-19
• 10 Steps to Minimize SaaS Churn Through A Downturn

Customer Experience

• Driving a Unified Experience with your Customer Success Team
• Great CX Starts With a Multi-Channel Approach to Customer Success
• How the UKG GameChangers Streamline Experience
• 3 Common Customer Experience Mistakes and How CX Center Can Solve Them
• Spotlight on ServiceChannel: Lessons As They Garner a 50% NPS Response Rate
• 6 Experts Share How They Use Customer Feedback To Build A Better Product

Scaling customer success

• Lessons from GitLab: Implementing Customer Success Operations At Scale
• Secrets to CS Scale from the Gamechangers at Intellishift
• How Commvault transformed from Reactive Support to Proactive Customer Success
• 5 Tips To Do More With Less In Customer Success During COVID-19
• How to Provide A High-Touch Product Experience While Social Distancing
• How Anodot Went From High-Touch to Tech-Touch and Preserved A Fantastic Experience
• Five Questions To Ask When Creating Your First Tech Touch Customer Segment
• Successful Tech Touch Onboarding in 3 Steps

Managing Customer Relationships

• Stakeholder Alignment: 3 Tips Manage Stakeholder Relationships and Improve Retention
• Mastering Difficult Conversations (Watch the webinar recording)
• 4 Step Playbook for Establishing A New Normal With Customers
• 5 Best Practices For Crisis Communication During COVID-19
• Meeting 500 customers a year as a CEO (Watch the webinar recording) 
• Customer Success In A Pure Virtual World (Watch the webinar recording)

If you enjoyed the resources roundup from 2020, wait till you see what we have in store for 2021. Subscribe to our email newsletter, and you’ll be the first to get our insights on Customer Success strategies, access to events, webinars, articles, ebooks, and more.