Evolving Value of Customer Success

Shaun Porcar

A few years ago, Jason Lemkin famously asserted that Customer Success is worth about 6X the initial Annual Contract Value over its lifetime. This was a powerful statement underscoring the value Customer Success can bring to a company. But is this still true today? The SaaS landscape has evolved significantly, and it's worth exploring whether the value of Customer Success has increased, decreased, or remained the same.

Given the restructuring and layoffs that have impacted Customer Success at organizations of all sizes over the past 24 months, I thought it would be helpful to share some brief success stories or discuss the challenges many leadership teams have been facing.

How do you measure the impact of Customer Success in your organization? What metrics or KPIs are most indicative of its value?

How has your Customer Success strategy led to tangible business outcomes, such as reduced churn, increased revenues, and improved customer satisfaction?

What challenges have you faced demonstrating sufficient justification to maintain headcount and resources for your Customer Success team or organization? What data stories have found most effective in overcoming them?

Is ownership of retention AND contributing to revenue growth via upsell or cross-sell now table stakes (in addition to the appropriate onboarding, advocacy, and engagement metrics for your product/market fit)? I’m seeing this more frequently, especially in the Seed through Series C companies that I generally focus on. Personally, I’ve always found stability in some form of revenue accountability since I started my career in sales before focusing exclusively on Customer Success over the past 10 years.

Let's discuss how we quantify and demonstrate the impact of Customer Success in our companies today. I look forward to our collective insights and experiences helping to shape a better understanding of the evolving value of Customer Success.