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Scaling for Success: Improving Customer Success through Specialization
As a long-time member of the Customer Success family, I've witnessed various approaches to the practice in different environments. The flexibility in defining customer success, its foundation, and the roles of Customer Success Managers has led to differing opinions and responsibilities. However, one constant remains:…
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When is the right time to ask a customer for help?
Peer recommendations are undeniably powerful influencers of software and services purchase decisions. In fact, this word-of-mouth communication style is the “primary factor” in 20 to 50 percent of those consumer decisions (McKinsey), and software companies are privy to this statistic. For that reason, programs at…
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GGR Podcast - Jay Nathan's Take on CS
First aired on Leadership Masterclass on June 4, 2023, Jay Nathan joins Subha Shriniivasan to discuss multiple aspects of Customer Success. Kicking off the episode with a conversation about GGR's past, present, and future, they soon transition over into discussions around some very common questions surrounding CS. CS isn't…
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Are You Considering Those with Non-Traditional Backgrounds for Your Team?
In today’s evolving professional landscape, people from many non-traditional backgrounds are looking to bring their skills and passion to the realm of Customer Success. Their unique blend of transferable skills, dedication, and resilience can be a great benefit to companies who are able to see their value. Much has been…
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Digital Success and the Impact on Human Outcomes
‘Digital customer success’ (DCS) is one of the most talked about themes of ‘23. Despite the attention, the term DCS remains amorphous as it’s tied to various trends including artificial intelligence, cost reduction, support strategies, and customer onboarding. As we all think about how humans and technology work together…
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How to Create an Effective Feedback Loop Between Customer Success and Product Teams
Introduction: In the world of SaaS, the customer success (CS) team plays a critical role in ensuring customer satisfaction, retention, and growth. One of the primary responsibilities of the CS team is to gather feedback from customers and relay it to the product team, which can use this information to make product…
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The CS Leader's Guide to Community Content
Today’s zeitgeist for scale has drawn Customer Success teams’ attention toward customer communities. This is great! When thoughtfully built, community programming pulls all the right levers: Organizations know where to deliver resources; customers know where to find them. Self-sufficiency = scale. Customers know where to…
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The Importance of Post-Sales Discovery
It’s not about your software or solution. When a customer decides to buy your product, it’s not because your software or solution is amazing (even if it is). Customers purchase because they believe your solution can help them solve a specific business challenge or problem more quickly, efficiently, and effectively than…
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How 2023 Has Been for Customer Success So Far
Hey all! Let’s talk about how 2023 and how it’s been for Customer Success. For starters, not great. January and February were rough. It seemed like every day I saw at least 2 or 3 “Open to Work” posts on LinkedIn. Companies were freezing their hiring, especially for CSM roles. With all this came more budget cuts, more…
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Three Practical Ways to Collaborate with Your Product Team
In our previous blog, “Why Customer Success Teams are a Product Manager's Best Friend," Marc did a great job highlighting the importance of Customer Success engaging with Product Managers to create a win-win. Now let’s take it one step further, and look at three ways to put this into practice: #1 Be mutually responsible…