Client Success vs. Customer Success?

Darko Kankaras

I've recently been promoted to the Client Success Operation Manager position. After doing some research, I can see that the Customer Success Operations Manager title is a lot more frequent. I also understand that a customer is a one-time transaction where a client is someone that you do repeat business with - which is in line with my new position.

My question is, is there a big difference between Client Success and Customer Success?

gurd3v

To me, not so much. We operate with Customer Success Managers, but we do repeat business with our customers. My assumption is the two titles are interchangeable depending on your organizations preference, but I'm sure someone much more wise than might be able to shed light on the difference! 

Andrey Tirel

Customer Success is definitely more of a SaaS industry standard. "Client" to me feels more like a delivery position.

Kimberly Ross

My opinion is 'Customers' and 'Clients' should be treated one in the same. This is how you build a strong, long-term relationship and become a valued vendor partner vs. an 'order taker' so to speak. There's long been a debate over the use of the term customer vs. client. A client has been thought of as someone a professional provides services, like a lawyer or accountant. Customers were considered people who purchase goods or services. Thus, the conflict. 

Customer or Client Success, whichever you want to call it, should really be a focus on ensuring the alignment of customer/client goals and critical business issues (CBI's) with the services/solutions provided by the organization. An effective CS strategy will also result in a reduction of customer/client churn and increase up/cross-sell opportunities.

Darko Kankaras

Thanks so much for your input, Gurdev!

Shari Srebnick

In my opinion, there isn't a difference; it's more semantics.  Like Kimberly said, the focus should be on ensuring alignment of customer/client goals and driving them towards achieving those with your solution.  

There may always be a difference in job titles/roles are called from org to org, but again, the focus should be on what the function and focus of the job is vs what it's called.

Darko Kankaras

Thank you, Kimberly. I agree that 'Customers' and 'Clients' should be treated the same.

Thomas Seelbinder

In my opinion, there isn't a difference at all. We call our clients, users, accounts - Partners. So we could easily call it Partner Success. 

 

The focus and goals are all the same. 

Kimberly Ross

Thomas I like that term 'Partner Success'! I may have to use it myself, thank you!

Jenny Leman

Kimberly said it perfectly.  Totally agree.  

We have both "client success managers" and "partner success managers."  The difference (for us) is that PSMs work with the parent org in a parent/child hierarchy.   CSMs work with single layered entities/accounts that do not have a parent org.  

Alex Turkovic

Agree with everyone here that the two are largely interchangeable, and shouldn't have an impact into your "why". I also concur with @Andrey Tirel that "Customer" tends to be the standard for the SaaS industry. 

You might consider the individual titles of those on the team. While admittedly a minor aspect of the decision - their title now will have an impact on future opportunities and while 'client' and 'customer' are largely interchangeable - it might be advantageous for the individual if the 'customer' term was used, if only just to stick with industry norms. 

Take it or leave it though.

Darko Kankaras

That's a very good point, @Alex Turkovic. So you think that "Client Success" would be outside of industry norms?

Sanjeev

@Darko Kankaras Client/Customer shouldn't make a difference as long as your work profile is similar to a CSM role (focussed on Adoption & Growth).