Building customer success from scratch: A framework for B2B SaaS

Most B2B SaaS companies don’t begin with a dedicated customer success (CS) function. Instead, CS typically develops from chaos, involving reactive support conversations, last-minute outreach for renewals, and customer data spread across various tools and team members' minds.

If you’re the first person in your organization with the task to add structure to this chaos, you likely face familiar challenges: limited budgets, zero CS-specific tools, and almost no product usage data. It’s up to you to create something sustainable that works, all while juggling your daily responsibilities. And this can be the real snag: you were hired to do the job of customer success, to build relationships with customers – you're not an operations hire.

This balance can be testing, but I’ve developed my own approach to building a CS foundation based on experiences across different SaaS companies of various sizes. It’s a practical strategy centered on three key areas that provide immediate value without requiring large budgets or dedicated data teams.

Why most B2B SaaS companies start without customer success

Before diving into solutions, let’s acknowledge the challenges you might be having:

1. Customer interactions mainly occur at two stages: During sales conversations and right before renewal. Everything else is reactive; customers reach out only when something breaks or when they can’t figure something out.

2. Onboarding exists in theory but not in practice. Sure, your customers receive an automated welcome email, and maybe someone attends a kickoff call. However, there’s no documented process, no milestones, and no method to track whether customers are genuinely adopting the product.

3. Your CRM contains customer records, but all other information lives elsewhere. This could be in Slack threads and email chains. To understand a customer’s history, you’ll need to consult three different people and piece together what actually happened. If those people leave, it becomes much more difficult.

4. Feature requests sit in isolation. Customers may ask for new features, and while someone on the call may jot them down, that’s where the request ends. There’s no centralized tracking, no visibility into patterns, and certainly no feedback loop to update customers about what’s being considered or built.

This isn’t a criticism of anyone. It’s simply what occurs when a company prioritizes product development and customer acquisition before formally structuring the post-sale experience.

The constraint of building customer success with limited resources

In many ways, having limited resources can be a lesson in efficiency: it forces you to prioritize. When you can’t do everything, you need to focus on what will have the highest impact for your organization. This constraint, while often frustrating, helps clarify your starting point.

Most companies already have a CRM, usually used by sales or marketing. Rather than investing in a dedicated CS platform before you're ready, extend your existing CRM to handle customer success workflows.

This reduces friction, keeps data in one place, and avoids the integration issues associated with adding new systems. The key is identifying which processes are essential to prevent customer failure and focusing on building those first.

A practical customer success framework for early-stage SaaS

Pillar 1: Build a structured customer success onboarding process

For most B2B SaaS products, the customer's first 90 days determine whether they will stay. Get this wrong, and no amount of relationship management later will save the account.

Start by defining your critical period. Ask yourself, “What needs to happen by day 30, day 60, and day 90 for a customer to be successful? What does ‘going live’ really mean for your product?“

Then create a repeatable playbook. It doesn’t need to be fancy; my first onboarding playbook was just a Word file, which then transformed into a folder of files:

Kickoff

Align on what success looks like for a customer, identify who should be involved, and set clear timelines. This discussion should reveal the customer’s actual goals, rather than what you assume they want. Let them talk about how they see the future.

Implementation

Manage the technical setup, integrations, and security reviews. Document common blockers and solutions. This phase should have clear exit criteria; you can’t move forward until specific configurations are completed. Involve your support team here if your product is technical, and then highlight to the customer that they can use your help whenever they need.

Training

Provide role-based enablement. Different users require different information. Record sessions so customers can refer back to them later, and new stakeholders can get up to speed without needing live time. I tend to do training sessions once in a while since the product usually changes over time. Don’t just speak for an hour; align your session to their goals, priorities, ask follow-up questions and share use-cases that are relevant for them.

Activation

Track meaningful product actions – not just logins, but activities that show real usage, like generating the first report, creating the first automation, or achieving a meaningful outcome. It’s important to do, but sometimes not possible if you don’t have a platform to track these metrics. Usually discussion with the product team can help here to understand how they measure features.

Transition

Conduct a formal review of what you accomplished compared to what you planned. Capture early feedback while it’s fresh. Shift to a meeting cadence based on account value and complexity.

Your playbook should include checklists for each account and clear engagement schedules. Enterprise customers might need weekly check-ins during onboarding, then transition to monthly updates. Mid-market accounts may require bi-weekly meetings during implementation, followed by quarterly check-ins once they stabilize.

This structure changes how customers view you. Instead of seeing you as a vendor, they have to chase for answers; you become a partner guiding them toward their goals.

Pillar 2: Create a simple renewal and customer health process

Without structured renewal management, you have little visibility until 30 days before a contract ends, and by that point, you’re scrambling to determine whether the customer is satisfied and willing to renew.

I’d suggest you start with a simple pipeline instead. If you’re using a CRM like HubSpot or Salesforce, you can add fields relevant to customer success. These can be anything like customer health indicators, champion identification, documented goals, primary use cases, and renewal risk status.

Make sure you create basic stages that reflect your org’s reality:

On track: Customer is engaged, using the product, and has no concerns.
At risk: Usage has declined, key stakeholders have left, or unresolved complaints exist.
Expansion opportunity: Customer sees value, and there’s potential for upselling or cross-selling.

Don’t forget to add a description so when management wants to check it they know what each and every status means.

When you start health scoring, there’s a temptation to try and do too much at once. My advice? Don’t complicate it at first. Start with qualitative assessments based on your interactions. You can refine this later with data. I even recommend starting manually, then changing this status once in a while if you don’t have any complex automations.

Perhaps most importantly, you should get into the habit of establishing regular check-ins that aren’t tied to renewals or problems. Monthly or quarterly business reviews allow you to monitor progress, surface issues early, and reinforce value. A basic agenda could include:

Progress against stated goals
Highlights of product usage
Open issues or blockers
Relevant roadmap updates
Opportunities for deeper adoption

The real breakthrough comes from documenting goals and champions for every important account. Ask explicitly: What does success look like for this company? For this specific stakeholder? Who has the authority to renew or expand?

Recording this information and keeping it updated changes everything. It sharpens discussions, helps prioritize your time, and smooths handoffs when team members change.

Also, set up reminders from your CRM about renewal. I usually prefer to start working on the renewal 60-90 days before, specifically, if you have an upsell opportunity. Keep in mind that each team in a company has their budget, and you need to give them time to allocate their budget to your product.

Pillar 3: Build visible systems for customer feedback and voice

Your customers want to be heard, especially in early-stage companies where they are taking a chance on you. If feedback disappears into a void, trust quickly declines.

Build a feature request process that customers can see and engage with. You don’t need expensive tools; a well-organized spreadsheet or Notion database works at first.

The key is having a place to:

Log every feature request with accompanying context
Link requests to specific accounts
Communicate decisions or timelines
Have cadence with your product team to share these features and transfer them into Epics if they’re important.

Be transparent about features with the customers

Your customers aren’t going to be aware of your company roadmap or vision, and that’s to be expected. But you can still share appropriate updates with your customers. When customers know their input is received and considered (even if not acted upon immediately), satisfaction rises significantly. Product teams also gain better visibility into what customers actually need versus what stakeholders think they need.

Segment your accounts to allocate time effectively. You can’t treat all customers equally with limited resources. Create a simple tiering system based on:

Account value (ARR/MRR)
Strategic importance (logo value, industry leadership)
Complexity (number of users, integration depth)
Growth potential (likelihood of expansion)

This guides practical decisions: how often to check in, how in-depth to go during onboarding, how many stakeholders to engage, and how quickly to respond to requests.

Segmentation doesn’t require sophisticated tools. A basic property in your CRM, along with a Google Sheet view for quick reference, will get you most of the way there.

The minimum tech stack for low-budget customer success teams

Resist the urge to buy dedicated CS platforms initially – they’re worthwhile investments, just ones intended for a slightly maturer CS function. Instead, expand what you already have:

Your existing CRM

Whether it’s HubSpot, Salesforce or another platform, use your current CRM as your single source of truth. You can add custom fields for CS-specific data, like health status, onboarding stage, renewal risk, documented goals, and champion contacts, as well as using the CRM's pipeline or board features to visualize accounts through various stages.

Google Sheets

You can quickly build views for upcoming renewals using the humble and free Google Sheet. I find that Sheets work well for ad-hoc analysis and quick assessments before you have detailed dashboards.

Call recording tools

If your organization already has a license for an AI-powered audio recording platform like Gong, Fireflies, or Fathom for your sales team, ask if they can extend its use to CS. Recorded calls make handoffs smoother, help new team members ramp up quicker, and capture customer language that informs your messaging.

Low-code automation

Make your life easier and automate repetitive tasks, like welcoming new users, syncing data between systems, or triggering follow-up tasks based on customer actions or timelines. Start small – implement one or two workflows that save time.

Support portals

Customers will need a structured place to report issues instead of reaching out to random team members. Simple ticketing systems work well at first. Check if your current CRM has it, most of them have it. The goal is to create clear channels and response expectations.

None of these tools are expensive CS platforms with six-figure annual costs. They’re practical extensions of what many already use for other functions.

What good customer success looks like before you have perfect data

You’ll know you’re making headway when:

Onboarding becomes predictable instead of chaotic

New customers follow a defined journey with clear milestones. They know what to expect and when, and you understand where each account stands without digging through messages

Renewal conversations begin earlier and feel less stressful and more predictable.

You conduct business reviews quarterly or monthly instead of waiting until 30 days (or even less) before renewal, hoping everything is fine. Customers perceive you as partners invested in their success, not just vendors.

Internal visibility improves dramatically

When someone asks about a customer, you can quickly pull up their goals, champions, onboarding status, and recent interactions. Information stops living in people’s minds and starts residing in systems.

Customers feel more empowered to voice their opinions

They submit feature requests through proper channels, participate in feedback sessions, and feel acknowledged. This engagement fosters a cycle where customers help shape the product they rely on.

You can handle more accounts without feeling overwhelmed

Documented playbooks and clear segmentation enable effective prioritization. You’re not constantly firefighting or wondering what to do next. These qualitative improvements come before the quantitative metrics you’ll eventually track. Don’t wait for perfect usage data or complex health scores before acting like a genuine CS function.

How to build customer success from scratch in 5 practical steps

If you’re building a customer success function from scratch with limited resources, don’t try to tackle everything simultaneously, but don’t wait for ideal tools or conditions either.

Start with these five steps:

1. Choose one system as your source of truth

Even if it’s not perfect, commit to using it consistently. Data fragmentation can undermine more CS functions than a lack of features.

2. Outline a basic onboarding journey

Document what needs to happen in the first 90 days for different customer segments. Make it repeatable.

3. Set up a simple renewal pipeline

Track which accounts are renewing, when, their status, and who the key contacts are. Establish regular check-in schedules.

4. Create a visible space for customer feedback

Establish a home for feature requests where customers know their voices are heard and considered.

5. Segment your accounts

Not all customers require the same level of attention. Align your time investment with potential impact.

Strong customer success starts with fundamentals

You can implement health scores, usage analytics, and automation later. What matters most is having someone responsible for the customer journey and developing repeatable processes, even if it begins with just you and a spreadsheet.

Companies that succeed are those with strong fundamentals, not just the fanciest tools. They start with a solid foundation and build systematically from there.

Building customer success from scratch A practical framework for B2B SaaS