How to best transition the CSM team for SaaS move

Amir

Hey All,

I would greatly appreciate getting support and best practices on how to best transition a CSM and Support team into Saas, as our company is in the process of doing so.  Aura Air offers software that goes hand in hand with our patented air purifier, to bring indoor air quality data for everyone to see.  Our main customers are B2B companies and private companies.  
I have already started defining the different tier levels of customers according to their ACV, hours spent per customer, and support tiers. 

Any additional help and insights are greatly appreciated, 

Brian O'Keeffe

Start with CSops. Get that team ready first then add the CSM team. The biggest problem is doing it in reverse. Another big issue is conflating support with CS. It is NOT THE SAME THING. 

Sarah Patel

Also - as a CSM team I'd be super excited about all the wonderful data & insights that would be (eventually) coming my way due to customer's moving from on premise to SaaS: usage, solution adoption - module & feature usage, sticky features, etc.. Are you working with your Product teams to tune or add product functionalities to provide those insights?

Amir

Thank you both for the feedback.  The first thing I did in the company was to educate the company on the difference between Support and CSM. 
And yes, I am working closely with our product team to differentiate and build a structure that can add valuable insights when new features are enabled on active accounts. 

Besides these steps, any other insights that I should be aware of? 

Thank you both again, 

Sarah Patel

I would want to consider how the relationships with your customers will change with this progression, and what role will your CS team play in this (& how will other teams also adjust or need to adjust)

• How will you encourage / mandate that your customers move from on premise to SaaS? (if this is relevant). Will there be targets for introducing the topic? logging a CS qualified lead? getting a switch signed? 
• How will your customers move from on premise to SaaS? Billable services? Onboarding? Will they need to consider removing customisations? upgrade? change always brings pain & uncertainty, how will you guide them? How long is it going to take?
• How will your relationships with your customers change once they are a SaaS customer? Now if the system goes down that's a you problem. On the other hand I'm sure the change will bring many benefits: how will you evidence this? How will their expectations of the service shift? How are you going to adjust your service?
• What are you going to be accountable for contractually? What additional risk do you need to consider? ie business continuity, maybe office/contact/support hours? SLAs?