This article originates from Edward's presentation at the virtual Customer Success Festival in 2022. Catch up on this presentation, and others, using our OnDemand service. For more exclusive content, visit your membership dashboard.
Before we get into what the future of customer success looks like, let me ask you a few questions:
🤑 Does your company, and its executives, still treat customer success as a cost center?
🤐 Do you feel like you're at the head of the table, or still in the corner of the room somewhere?
🧐 Is your team being asked to bridge the gap and do a lot more since your sales team's been struggling to close new logos?
I speak with customer success professionals all the time, and the general consensus is that there are a lot of questions now being asked about the existing customer base from all leaders and departments. And in all honesty, it’s wonderful because it shows that people are starting to dial in on what actually matters.
But can you – with absolute certainty – accurately present trended data across health, adoption, and metrics for all of your customers?
Now that everyone is suddenly very interested in CS, ask yourself this: do you have a tactical workflow that makes customer success a unified mission across your entire company, which allows every function to generate revenue growth together?
Customer success only works when we have every department around us helping us achieve our goals. When that happens, it's no longer just about retention. We’ll actually drive revenue growth, which is what CS is all about. Customer retention is just the baseline of what people think we do. It's time to change that narrative, change our focus, and bring the value of customer success to the entire organization.
Why am I so passionate about all of this? Like you, I've done the job before.
I built a customer success org from the ground up in a company where most people were engineers and had no clue what I did. I've been in your shoes when the CEO was asking me a bunch of questions that I wished I had answers to. I've had to beg engineering teams to get me the data that I need, and then, after waiting months to get it, I had no clue what to do with it or how to piece it together!
I've been in situations where the customer success team was generally only considered as an afterthought when it came to major launches and initiatives. I've been in a world where sales would sell something, but there was no consistent flow into what CS and implementation were supposed to deliver, so the story that was sold didn't add up and ultimately ruined the customer experience.
But now that customer success is this stunning butterfly that nobody can take their eyes off, we are soaring. 🦋
Let's talk about how we capitalize on that...
