The most common question I get from fellow CEOs, beyond why I own so much Pittsburgh Steelers-related paraphernalia, is how to structure Customer Success organizationally. Should it report to Sales?  Should it report to Services?  Can’t everyone just hold hands and drive Customer Success together? Dan Steinman, Chief Customer Officer at Gainsight, spoke about the

I’ve learned over the years that there are two ways to make an impact with a presentation (or a blog).  One is to teach your audience something they did not already know.  The other is to reinforce truths that they are already aware of but perhaps haven’t articulated quite the way you do.  This post

It’s no secret that incentives or compensation plans can be a powerful tool for driving desired behavior. This concept is not new – it dates as far back as the Roman Empire, where Julius Caesar developed an incentive plan for his centurions. Dan’s latest post on Executive Compensation in a Customer-Driven Enterprise leaves little to contest, so

My last blog post was about building a Customer Success culture throughout your entire company.  Today’s subject was touched on in that post and is closely tied to the overall culture because the culture of a company is set and driven by the leadership.  So, what incents and motivates the leaders in a company will

There is little to argue with in Dan’s post. It’s all sage advice.  I’d like to expand on a couple of the points that I think are most important. I’ve been running Customer Success at Zuora for about 2 ½ years. We are a B2B SaaS company providing a commerce, billing and finance application to businesses offering

I recently wrote an article for DM News about building a Customer Success practice.  You can read it here.  Step 1 in that process was “Create and enforce a customer-focused philosophy for the whole company.”  It’s step 1 because it’s the foundation for everything you do to build a true Customer Success culture.  Let’s explore some

“Customer Success” is growing.  And not only in buzz.  I see companies investing and building these teams at a fast clip.  When done right, this trend represents a fantastic opportunity for companies to accelerate profitable growth.  But doing it right requires joining two different disciplines that many companies often overlook. First, we need to be

There are a number of ways that software vendors are approaching the space commonly known as Customer Success Management.  Each approach will potentially mesh differently with a Voice of Customer solution. 1. Focusing exclusively on product usage data One of the approaches to Customer Success Management is to focus almost exclusively on product usage data. This

I get asked a lot of questions every day about Customer Success, most of which don’t have a really definitive answer, simply different choices with different pros and cons.  But to this particular question, I have a strong opinion, and it’s “NO.” Let’s define Customer Success before we go any further.  When I use the

You’ve decided to fund a Customer Success Team for your company, and have determined what the model should look like.  Now what? Aside from developing a strawman for the organizational structure of your customer success team, one of the most important things you can do is to develop a candidate profile.  The customer success team will