This post was co-authored by Tal Tsfany. Synopsis The evolution of the Customer Success (CS) profession is reaching an inflection point. What started with a few innovative companies and executives looking for ways to support the unique needs of vendors and customers in the SaaS world has evolved in the past few years into a

There is nothing more important to retaining customers than understanding why they renew. In 2015, we unveiled our Risk Management Framework, which helped us to establish a common view of customer risks. Since then, we have successfully used this framework to track customer health and address early warning signs. But we weren’t totally sure that

For the past 3 years, I’ve met many Customer Success evangelists. You know who you are. You go to all the Customer Success meet-ups. You’re well-versed in best practices for EBRs. You can talk all day about automated emails for your long tail of small business customers. I know what you’re thinking about, because I’m

FirstFuel Software is a pureplay SaaS company specializing in cloud-based business customer engagement for energy providers in North America and Europe. Their software helps over 30 energy providers improve customer satisfaction, increase revenues and decrease service costs by transforming complex data into actionable insights. As Vice President of Customer Success, Domenic Armano leads FirstFuel’s companywide

How GE is leading the industrial marketplace in customer-centricity As a part of the continuous history of a 124-year-old company, I’m constantly reminded of the massive technological changes that have occurred during this relatively microscopic blip of time in the grand scope of the human species. GE has already existed through two waves of Industrial

As Chief Customer Officer, I consider it a fundamental part of my job to work with Sales to ensure that we don’t sell to customers that aren’t ready for our product. We’ve obsessed over our pre-sales readiness process and even dedicated a Customer Health Scorecard Measure to track its effectiveness. Our VP of Sales is

The enterprise software industry is in the midst of a transformation that is redefining licensing models, time to value expectations, and the delivery of services. The shift to subscription based licensing and SaaS has transferred the risk of adoption, optimization, renewal and expansion to the vendor. This change has led to an entirely new discipline,

Dan Steinman is the Chief Customer Evangelist, EMEA at Gainsight. I have been in Europe now for six months preaching the gospel of Customer Success, networking with anyone who would let me buy them a cup of coffee, and listening, listening, listening. I’ve learned a lot, validated many assumptions about EMEA, and changed my mind

This blog post was co-authored by Allison Pickens and Chris Doell. Allison Pickens is Chief Customer Officer at Gainsight. Chris Doell leads Customer Success for Cisco’s Cloud Security Division. Many thanks to Kelli Kirwin, now Director, Offer Monetization Office at Cisco, for her pioneering work in the area of Customer Success in the channel and

I had to have an ACL replacement last year. I somehow managed to hike out of the Grand Canyon on a fully torn knee ligament! I don’t recommend it. But when I finally arrived in the operating room, there was no account executive to meet me offering a menu of ACLs, anaesthesia options, rehabilitation packages,