Do you articulate CSM care in your SaaS contracts

Diane Gordon

All,

If you are in a SaaS business and use CSMs, do your license contracts specify level of CSM care?

Jarren Pinchuck

Hi @Diane Gordon

This is an excellent question.
First off, what is the primary reason you're asking this question within your business? Have you had challenges with customer expectations?

I would say that support-style help should 100% be in your license agreements but it may be risky including CSM care. My main reason for this is because you may evolve your CSM care (onboarding and retention) models as your business evolves. Or it may be slightly different for certain customers.

What I've included in some of our licenses are more around the times they can expect CSMs to be available for training and phone calls. Again a lot of what we built-out evolved over time as we better-understood customer needs and expectations.

Jarren

Diane Gordon

Thanks, jared.  I'm asking b.c. we acquired a company where customers bought professional services (in large amounts), many of which we're now providing as part of CSM service.  Because we want to keep contract values the same, customers are looking for us to articulate the CSM services in the contract, something we are reluctant to do because of likely rev rec issues.  Thoughts?

ANITA GAZICA

Hi Diane, 

in our enterprise contracts we oblige to have first response time in xy period and to have a frequency of contacts with CS or CSM in order to make sure we cover, discover, and prevent issues in our cooperation. We also have a set of services available in each plan and a price for an extra charge of services that are not included. Until now we have never charged an additional service to a client as it serves us as feedback about clients' needs, it gives us solid ground to examine more thoroughly why the extra service is necessary. Hope my reply helped. 

Anita