Customer Success KPIs and Metrics for non-SaaS Business

Daryl Colborne
Daryl Colborne Member Posts: 50 Expert
First Anniversary Photogenic Name Dropper First Comment
edited August 2020 in Metrics & Analytics

Hello All,
I'm looking for some advice from this awesome audience :)

The software company I work for, Zerto, offers both a subscription and a perpetual license option to customers. The vast majority of customers purchase perpetual licenses, leaving a very small segment of customers that have purchased a subscription. Subscriptions are renewable at the end of 3 years. Perpetual licensed customers renew their Maintenance & Support contract on a yearly basis.

While the core product is non-SaaS, we do have one SaaS component of our product called Zerto Analytics. This can provide us with some insight into customers' engagement with the product, critical failures that occur, and other alerts/events.

For those of you that have worked/work in these types of businesses, what Customer Success metrics/KPIs did you track?

Thanks,

Daryl

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Comments

  • Emmanuel Malanda
    Emmanuel Malanda Member Posts: 12 Contributor
    First Anniversary
    edited August 2020
    Hi Daryl,

    I mainly concentrate on 4 items:
    1. Churn:
    Despite having perpetual licenses as you know, you could still end up with churn. Through a monthly / quarterly risk review, you can easily get a picture of what sort of potential churn you may have and then action your retention play.
    You may need to spend sometime understanding past trends and how past client how churned. Every time i have had to do this, its taken me roughly 3-6 months to get a clear understanding of what churn looked like and what constituted a risk. 
     
    2. Upsell/ Cross sell:  
    This is everything from the last time they bought something from you, the last time they used your professional services, the last time they did training etc.
     
    3. Positive Relationship Activities:  
    This is everything from the last time the customer participated in a user group, case study, referral, press release, white paper, client video, webinars participation etc

    4. engagement: business/ exec reviews and how the effectiveness of these in understanding the desired business outcome.

    by having a good picture of these 4 for each of your customers, you will quickly start to see the customer that "fit your sweet spot", those that don't  meaning they would churn eventually and the opportunity groups. 

    you may ask yourself, but what about the tickets/ support activity is that not important? it is and for me these are support metrics which compliment the 4 i have mentioned above it is part of the "Experience" and if the Experience is bad then all 4 CSM metrics wont be good.

    hope this helps

    Emmanuel

    ------------------------------
    Emmanuel Malanda
    Global Head-Customer Success
    ------------------------------
    -------------------------------------------
    Original Message:
    Sent: 08-11-2020 14:22
    From: Daryl Colborne
    Subject: Customer Success KPIs and Metrics for non-SaaS Business

    Hello All,
    I'm looking for some advice from this awesome audience :)

    The software company I work for, Zerto, offers both a subscription and a perpetual license option to customers. The vast majority of customers purchase perpetual licenses, leaving a very small segment of customers that have purchased a subscription. Subscriptions are renewable at the end of 3 years. Perpetual licensed customers renew their Maintenance & Support contract on a yearly basis.

    While the core product is non-SaaS, we do have one SaaS component of our product called Zerto Analytics. This can provide us with some insight into customers' engagement with the product, critical failures that occur, and other alerts/events.

    For those of you that have worked/work in these types of businesses, what Customer Success metrics/KPIs did you track?

    Thanks,

    Daryl



    ------------------------------
    Daryl Colborne
    Director, Customer Success
    ------------------------------
  • Daryl Colborne
    Daryl Colborne Member Posts: 50 Expert
    First Anniversary Photogenic Name Dropper First Comment
    edited August 2020
    Very helpful, Emmanuel!

    One thing...when you refer to churn, I'm assuming you're referring to not renewing their M&S contract, correct? As for, the activities/events leading up to possible churn, we will definitely be looking heavily at support ticket and escalation-related data

    Thanks again!
  • Emmanuel Malanda
    Emmanuel Malanda Member Posts: 12 Contributor
    First Anniversary
    edited August 2020
    correct - now i have seen many variations of M&S contracts over the years some with notice periods and others with none and even some where the client can stop payment of M&S and still utilize the product ... bonkers!  Worth looking at /exploring what you guys have got as that will determine how big your risk is in terms of the perpetual stuff. i have found that presenting this information to my Exco has always been received with a great deal of attention. in fact i report on this on a monthly basis now.. they cannot get enough of it.

    ------------------------------
    Emmanuel Malanda
    Global Head-Customer Success
    ------------------------------
    -------------------------------------------
    Original Message:
    Sent: 08-11-2020 17:26
    From: Daryl Colborne
    Subject: Customer Success KPIs and Metrics for non-SaaS Business

    Very helpful, Emmanuel!

    One thing...when you refer to churn, I'm assuming you're referring to not renewing their M&S contract, correct? As for, the activities/events leading up to possible churn, we will definitely be looking heavily at support ticket and escalation-related data

    Thanks again!

    ------------------------------
    Daryl Colborne
    Director, Customer Success
    ------------------------------

    Original Message:
    Sent: 08-11-2020 17:13
    From: Emmanuel Malanda
    Subject: Customer Success KPIs and Metrics for non-SaaS Business

    Hi Daryl,

    I mainly concentrate on 4 items:
    1. Churn:
    Despite having perpetual licenses as you know, you could still end up with churn. Through a monthly / quarterly risk review, you can easily get a picture of what sort of potential churn you may have and then action you retention play.
    You may need to spend sometime understanding past trends and how past client how churned. Every time i have had to do this, its taken me roughly 3-6 months to get a clear understanding of what churn looked like and what constituted a risk. 
     
    2. Upsell/ Cross sell:  
    This is everything from the last time they bought something from you, the last time they used your professional services, the last time they did training etc.
     
    3. Positive Relationship Activities:  
    This is everything from the last time the customer participated in a user group, case study, referral, press release, white paper, client video, webinars participation etc

    4. engagement: business/ exec reviews and how the effectiveness of these in understanding the desired business outcome.

    by having a good picture of these 4 for each of your customers, you will quickly start to see the customer that "fit your sweet spot", those that don't  menaing they would churn eventually and the opportunity groups. 

    you may ask yourself, but what about the tickets/ support activity is that not important? it is and for me these are support metrics which compliment the 4 i have mentioned above it is part of the "Experience" and if the Experience is bad then all 4 CSM metrics wont be good.

    hope this helps

    Emmanuel

    ------------------------------
    Emmanuel Malanda
    Global Head-Customer Success

    Original Message:
    Sent: 08-11-2020 14:22
    From: Daryl Colborne
    Subject: Customer Success KPIs and Metrics for non-SaaS Business

    Hello All,
    I'm looking for some advice from this awesome audience :)

    The software company I work for, Zerto, offers both a subscription and a perpetual license option to customers. The vast majority of customers purchase perpetual licenses, leaving a very small segment of customers that have purchased a subscription. Subscriptions are renewable at the end of 3 years. Perpetual licensed customers renew their Maintenance & Support contract on a yearly basis.

    While the core product is non-SaaS, we do have one SaaS component of our product called Zerto Analytics. This can provide us with some insight into customers' engagement with the product, critical failures that occur, and other alerts/events.

    For those of you that have worked/work in these types of businesses, what Customer Success metrics/KPIs did you track?

    Thanks,

    Daryl



    ------------------------------
    Daryl Colborne
    Director, Customer Success
    ------------------------------