The subscription economy is forcing companies to take a serious look at revenue from existing customers. The success of your business now relies on retaining and growing revenue from your customer base… or in other words, making sure your customers are healthy. But how do you quantify the health of your customers? Today, most companies
How to Add Customer Success to Support: The Wrike Way
Dan had some great comments in his post on Nov. 5 about “Aligning Customer Success and Customer Support.” However, there’s something to be said for many companies who have built a traditional sales/support organizational structure without Customer Success in the original plan. So how does a company get from the traditional Sales & Support model
Gainsight Raises $20 MM To Build The Subscription Yellow Brick Road
“Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.” – Wizard of Oz Today, we announced that we raised $20 billion. Just kidding and checking if you’re reading carefully. But we did announce we raised $20 million (almost as cool), led by our new friends at Bain Capital Ventures with participation from Summit Partners and our existing investor Battery Ventures. The
Aligning Customer Success and Customer Support
Although the title says “aligning”, the most important thing in this particular subject might be “defining”. Because so many Customer Success organizations grow up in the Services part of the enterprise, this means they sit right alongside the Customer Support function. Nothing wrong with that in theory, but in practice the differences can often be
Aligning Customer Success and Sales
Alignment with Sales is a critical component of the long-term success of your Customer Success team. If you assume that Customer Success owns the company retention number, then the combination of Sales and Customer Success drives the total subscription bookings number for the company. That’s interesting to understand because, in many ways, the two organizations
What to Look for in a VP of Customer Success
This should be a pretty easy blog post to write, right? However, I’ve only ever been one and have never hired one, so writing this is forcing me to think about it in a new light. A very interesting exercise. Credit here to my right-hand man, Paul Piazza, for great input on what he appreciates
Diagnosing Churn
It’s typical to think of churn as a leaky bucket. How many customers are you retaining? How many are you losing? How much money are you keeping and how much are you leaking? Instead of a leaky bucket, let’s think of customer churn as something that results in a doctor’s visit, like recurring migraines or
Deliver a Comprehensive Customer Health Analysis in Your Board Meeting
Preparing for a board meeting can be a hassle. But it’s a necessary and beneficial hassle. As recurring revenue companies grow and the renewal and upsell part of the business becomes a larger part of the overall company bookings, the Customer Success update is becoming even more important to the board. So let’s do it
10 Do’s and Don’ts When Preparing Your Customer Success Update for the Board
Board meetings can be scary and stressful. And your company’s relationship with your board may be very different from mine. In other words, take any, or all, of the suggestions in this post with a grain of salt or at least filter them through what you know about your board. First off, if you are
Calculate the ROI of Customer Success Technology
Technology is truly amazing, isn’t it? Saving lives, saving time, saving the world.… or so we would believe if we listened to every claim. Choosing the right solution is hard enough, but measuring the efficacy of a solution before you buy is equally challenging. In the world of Customer Success Management, understanding the need to