Customer Success

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Customer Success Jobs-to-be-Done

CS JTBDs are independent of who does them (AE, CSM, product, community, etc.) and the medium through which they are delivered (ex: in a customer-facing EBR/QBR).

Non-Commercial

  • Onboard accounts
    • Technical implementation/configuration (which may require professional services)
    • Mass user onboarding/training
    • Who is well suited to do this job if you do not have CSMs? self-service; dedicated implementation team, often part of the PS team
  • Onboard incremental users (and admins)
    • Provision licenses
    • Train new users
    • Who is well suited to do this job if you do not have CSMs? self-service; digital touch/enablement
  • Drive adoption & engagement/usage/utilization (of existing & new features)
    • Ensure purchases seats have been assigned and assigned seats are being used
    • Educate customers
    • Identify opportunities for expanded use (in part/whole by sharing stories of successful use cases with other customers)
    • Provide deep technical expertise and tailored solutions that are tasks rather than projects (where applicable; this function often called Technical Account Management – TAM – which is also a role)
    • Who is well suited to do this job if you do not have CSMs? digital touch/enablement
  • Measure & communicate value (i.e impact on business goals)
    • Who is well suited to do this job if you do not have CSMs? AE/AM
  • Foster executive alignment
    • Understand key business objectives and map solutions
    • Forge new relationships in the event of executive turnover
    • Who is well suited to do this job if you do not have CSMs? AE/AM
  • Gather and route product feedback
    • Who is well suited to do this job if you do not have CSMs? SE/TAM; product marketing; AE/AM; support
  • Serve as a strategic advisor (very, very rare in SaaS because it requires senior subject matter experts who have deep expertise in the customer’s business/industry)
    • Who is well suited to do this job if you do not have CSMs? CSMs almost never do this. Requires specific SMEs.
  • Capture & route customer support requests (not really CS but very common)
    • Who is well suited to do this job if you do not have CSMs? Automation for ticket deflection/completion or routing to support.
  • React to low NPS/CSAT surveys
    • Who is well suited to do this job if you do not have CSMs? AE/AM; SE/TAM
  • Network execs, admins, and/or users across customers (rare & more of a nice-to-have)
    • Who is well suited to do this job if you do not have CSMs? Just drop this if you don’t have CSMs.

Commercial

A good argument can be made that commercial post-sales JTBDs are really account management and not customer success.

  • Expansion
    • Upsell
      • Reactive (ex: request to add seats)
      • Proactive (ex: selling seats to additional people based on new use cases)
    • Cross-sell
  • Renewal

Best Practices for AE to CSM Handoff

  • Ensure AEs, AMs, and CSMs are clear on their respective post-sale responsiblities
  • Introduce the assigned CSM before the deal closes
  • Create a handoff checklist with the following:
    • Decision Making: Relationship map with key people involved in the deal. Include their roles: economic buyer / decision maker; user buyers; technical buyers; champions & coaches
    • Value: Their pain / needs expressed / use case(s) / value expected. Include metrics / ROI if those were part of the sales process.
    • Challenges encountered during the sales process that can create future roadblocks. This can be people or technical.
    • Contract details especially including any non-standard terms or conditions.
    • Overview of the sales process. Ex: With whom did the prospect meet on your team – executives, product, value/sales engineering?
    • Growth opportunities for upsell/cross-sell
  • Require a meeting between the AE and CSM when the deal closes
  • Include the AE and the CSM in the first post-sale meeting with the prospect. This meeting should be scheduled for a date as soon as possible after the deal is signed.

Another one of my resources on this topic.

Great resource from Gitlab.

Customer Health Scoring

Some best practices for customer health scoring:

  • Start simple with just a handful of measures, a gut-feel points system, and a green/yellow/red output. Over time, you can add machine learning sophistication if needed
  • Empower CSMs with playbooks on how to engage at-risk accounts
  • Get ahead of churn; if you know certain behaviors (ex; # custom integrations) reduce churn, then ensure CSMs proactively engage on these items

Factors to include in a customer health score include:

  • Configuration
    • Implementation time to value (TTV)
    • % of users trained/certified
    • Number of custom integrations
  • Engagement
    • Daily/monthly active users (DAU/MAU)
    • License activation or seat utilization %
    • Volume & depth of usage (incl. usage of high value features)
    • Content consumption (knowledge base; webinars; downloads; digital community participation; live event attendance; etc.)
    • Executive/quarterly business reviews (EBRs/QBRs); success/value plan in place
    • Responsiveness to outreach
    • Executive relationships; participation on customer advisory board (CAB)
  • Satisfaction
    • Net promoter score (NPS)
      Note: Here is a useful and free NPS benchmarking resource
    • Product CSAT; in-product or out-of-product feedback
    • Customer effort score (CES)
    • Response to directly being asked, “If your contract ended today, would you renew with us?”
    • Support:
      • Number of support tickets opened in the last X days
      • Number of open support tickets
      • Average/maximum resolution time
      • Number of escalations
      • Support ticket CSAT
      • Ticket resolution status (esp. if need not met and/or customer unresponsive)
  • Other
    • ARR (total and trend of upgrades/downgrades)
    • CSM health pulse (usually green/yellow/red)
    • Duration as a customer
    • Changes in leadership (esp. economic buyer) or departure of power users/admins
    • Customer financial health (incl. M&A status); Industry health
    • Hard ROI or other verified value outcomes
    • Invoice payment (esp. # days overdue)
    • Recency of case study or testimonial

Customer Success Quarterly Business Reviews (QBRs)

QBR Agenda Template

  • Goals for the QBR
    • Customer Goals
    • Your Goals
  • Review
    • Review customer key strategic objectives from the prior period
    • Value/ROI realized (aka “wins”); especially helpful to provide benchmarks or a maturity assessment
    • Review project plan status, ex. Implementation or professional services (if applicable)
    • Feature usage & user engagement
    • Support & satisfaction (CSAT, CES, NPS) – don’t shy away from obstacles & challenges
  • Educate
    • a. Share case studies & best practices from similar customers
    • b. Review roadmap
    • c. Recommend new features
      • i. Included
      • ii. Add-on
  • Plan
    • Capture customer key strategic objectives & success metrics for the upcoming period
    • Discuss recent changes in key executives
    • Ask: If your renewal were today, how likely would you be to continue with us a partner?
    • Schedule next QBR
    • Summarize next steps & action plan

Changing CSM Account Assignments

In the course of restructuring/re-segmenting, do not give into the temptation to rip the Band-Aid off and move loads of accounts at once. This approach leads to high churn. Instead, facilitate a gradual shift toward your new model moving accounts:

  • Following renewal
  • When a CSM leaves and you’d need to redistribute their accounts anyway

Customer Success Staffing Benchmark

$M Per CSM (by ACV)25th50th75th
Transactional (< $25K)1.83.87.8
Solution ($25K to $75K)1.01.63.2
Consultative (> $75K)2.03.25.7
Source: Insight Partners May 2023

$M Per CSM (by ARR)25th50th75th
$0 to $10M ARR1.42.02.8
$10M to $20M1.22.34.5
$20M to $50M2.23.35.9
$50M to $100M2.45.18.6
Over $100M4.59.024.8
Source: Insight Partners May 2023

Customer Reference Program

  1. Assign a customer reference program manager
  2. Train your team
    • Educate anyone who will leverage the reference program (sales, customer success, marketing, etc.) on how to effectively use the program.
  3. Identify ideal reference customers
    • High customer health score (usage; NPS; etc. — see here)
    • Include a mix of customers by size, industry, geography, use case, and seniority
  4. Secure participation
    • Outline the benefits of participating. In SaaS, these are rarely monetary and generally should not be monetary since this lowers the perceived value of the referral from the perspective of the prospect and cheapens your relationship with your customer. The biggest benefit is likely the opportunity to network with true peers.
    • Outline the scope of their participation, esp. the maximum frequency you will engage them. A good rule of thumb is 1x per quarter maximum.
    • Obtain consent
    • Clearly communicate how customer information will be used and protected.
    • Regularly check-in with references to ensure they remain engaged evangelists
    • Without overburdening them, keep references up to date on your company & product
  5. Match references with prospects
    • Strive to align references and prospects as closely as possible by size, industry, geography, use case, and seniority
    • Brief references thoroughly about each deal you ask them to help on
  6. Manage reference fatigue
    • Track references to ensure you are not exceeding the maximum frequency
  7. Thank & delight references
    • Thank references for each engagement.
    • Follow up with references to let them know the outcome of the deal.
    • Provide benefits similar to what you would offer in a top customer program
    • Deliver benefits at periodic or random times rather than in exchange for each reference
  8. Measure & optimize
    • Measure the program impact
      • Win rate of deals with customer reference
      • NRR of companies where one or more people have served as references
    • Regularly solicit feedback from both your internal teams and the reference customers to identify areas for improvement

Top Customer Program

  • Priority success & support
  • Assigned executive sponsor (for relationships and fast-track escalation)
  • Participation in CAB
    Note: Recommended customer Advisory Board consultant – Mike Gospe
  • Early access (beta) to new features
  • SWAG
  • Featured speakers at events, webinars, etc.
  • Free tickets to events (optionally includes T&E); exclusive experiences at events
  • Executive briefings
  • Joint marketing efforts

Executive Sponsor Program

  • Program management
    • The executive sponsorship program should be all of (or a major part of) one person’s job
    • The program manager should also project manage commitments your executives make to customer
    • Set goals for the program (usually NRR)
    • Run an internal program review annually
  • Identify key accounts
    • High revenue and/or high revenue potential
    • Marquee logos
  • Assign accounts
    • No more than 5 accounts per sponsor executive
    • Strive to match role & level with the customer executive
    • Consider industry expertise and personality fit
    • Do not simply let your sponsor executives pick which accounts they want to engage
    • Maintain long-term relationship continuity
  • Actions
    • Your sponsor executives should offer themselves as a ‘hotline’ for resolving critical issues by providing their mobile number
    • AMs/CSMs (or equivalent) must keep sponsor executives regularly informed about account health and/or major developments
    • Ensure your sponsor executives join executive business reviews (EBRs)
      • EBRs are centered on more strategic conversations than QBRs
      • As with QBRs, failing to follow up on commitments made during EBRs can turn evangelists into extreme detractors
    • Facilitate 1:1 touchpoints – typically 2 to 4 times per year
    • Delight the customer executive’s EA
    • Provide recognition/visibility to customer executives; for example, stage time a your customer conference
    • Optionally convene customer executives into an executive advisory board (EAB) with periodic roundtables for knowledge sharing and/or 1:1 networking opportunities

Resources:

  • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4N_S6JHaMFQ
  • https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7213570496364249089/

MEDDICC for Customer Success

  • Metrics:
    • What quantifiable value have we delivered relative to the KPI improvements the customer sought when purchasing our solution?
    • What is the customer health score?
  • Economic Buyer:
    • Who is the person / are the people with the authority to approve & sign the renewal?
  • Decision Process (may be able to drop)
    • What is the customer’s process for renewing? Who needs to approve?
  • Decision Criteria (may be able to drop)
    • What factors will the customer use when deciding whether to renew?
  • Identified Pain
    • What remaining challenges does the customer have even after implementing your solution?
  • Champion
    • Who has strong influence and is advocating for your solution?
  • Competition
    • Which competitors are active in the account?

Reducing Churn / Increasing GRR/GDR

Customer Success Training Providers

(*) = recommended

Customer Success Communities

Voice of Customer (VoC) & NPS Consultants

(*) = Recommended

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