Customer SuccessCon East 2018

Customer Success groups are proliferating across the business landscape faster than can be imagined.  The named, designated role of Customer Success Management that began with a software company in 1997 has grown far beyond the software industry.  The numbers of open Customer Success executive positions worldwide continue to skyrocket.  But in all the increase and expansion, key questions remain to be answered.  Is Customer Success a distinct profession?

Strategy: What is the stated definition/mission of your company’s Customer Success team?  What results are you chartered to produce and why?  From that foundation, how is the group’s performance to be measured?   In many companies, neither the mission nor the metrics are clear or aligned, and this unfortunate scenario can have long term effects on the development of the team’s full capabilities.  

The Mission of Customer Success is to increase sustainable proven value for both the customers and the company.  If your mission isn’t what you want it to be, what can/should you do about it?

Process:  What does the operational workflow of the group look like?  Where is the external Point of Engagement with the customers?  Within the overall corporate organizational chart. where are the internal Points of Engagement?  What are the relationships between CS and Sales?  CS and Marketing? Product/Dev?  What authorities and influences should the Customer Success Executive have?  What data should the group be reporting and where?

The Customer Success Blueprint is the result of over 8 years of research conducted by The Customer Success Association.  Senior members of the worldwide Customer Success Community will be present to share their direct personal experiences in the Q&A period and afterward.

When running on all cylinders the Customer Success Team is building relationships with customers, adding value, increasing adoption, reducing churn and identifying opportunities for growth. The CS Team members require processes, information, tools, education, coaching and support to run smoothly, efficiently and productively. Enter CS Operations. The CS Operations function provides the structure and resources so that each CSM can perform at their best and their individual, team and company objectives. Meeting those objectives requires alignment with and support from every other department in the company, which makes uniform communication and collaboration critical. CS Operations is the focal point for that collaboration within the CS group.


In this case study, you will get a checklist for things to keep in mind when building your CS Ops team:

1. Alignment with other departments
   • Product Management/Product Development
   • Technical Support/Engineering
   • Sales and Sales Operations
   • Implementation
   • Finance/Executives
2. Systems
   • CRM
   • CS Technology
   • Finance
   • Project Management
3. Data
   • KPIs
   • Modelling
4. Customer Communications
   • 1:1
   • 1:many

By the end of this case study, you will have a good understanding of the critical role that CS Operations plays in ensuring the success of the CS Team. You will have information on systems and processes used to support the CSM team and the business to drive success. You will have specific examples of critical data points that show the performance of the CS Team and the critical role of the team in the success of the business. Ultimately you will have a checklist and supporting information and ideas that you can take back to your organization to launch, build and/or refine your own CS Operations group.

People: What are the component functions/parts of an optimized Customer Success group?  On-boarding/ProServe?  Support?  Training?  Sales Engineering? Customer Success Operations?  Customer Intelligence?  Advocacy management?  Why should these and others be included in the Customer Success organization?  


What are the key skills and knowledge required for an effective Customer Success group?  What is the case for justifying your staffing requests?


Customer Success Technology:  Currently, only about 25% of all Customer Success groups have a dedicated CSTech application installed.  What are the rest of them doing about systems and technology to support their work?


The Customer Success Blueprint is the result of over 8 years of research conducted by The Customer Success Association.  Senior members of the worldwide Customer Success Community will be present to share their direct personal experiences in the Q&A period and afterward.

The handoff of a new customer between Sales and Customer Success is a critical moment in the customer lifecycle. But for many organizations, this transfer of customer knowledge is a disorganized mess, lacking clear requirements and fraught with tension or even downright distrust between the two teams involved. But it doesn’t need to be this way – and for the sake of your customers, it shouldn’t be this way.

In this session, Abby Hammer and Casey Altieri will share tips to clarify and strengthen your customer handoffs between Sales and Customer Success. While working with Customer Success teams of all types and sizes, Casey and Abby have seen a lot of tactics that work – and a lot of tactics that don’t. They will share their top tips for consistently successful handoffs and building trust between your Sales and CS teams.