Customer Success Blog

As part of Akita's recent re-launch, we have been looking at the channels where potential customers (and the CS community in general) can educate themselves about our solution. G2 crowd is a key player in the review/social proof space and forms an important part of most companies evaluation process when shopping for B2B software. It's clear we need to focus some of our energy on G2.

Before positioning G2 as a core review platform for Akita, we looked at what users were saying about other vendors in our space. It turns out there are 2 reasons for us to be encouraged...

• The vast majority of reviews were positive and demonstrate that CS solutions in general are positioning themselves as core components in the tech stacks of B2B SaaS companies. 👍
• While the feedback is almost universally positive, once you drill down below the ‘stars given’ feature and focus on the ‘What do you dislike?’ section, many limitations with existing platforms become apparent. Often, these are features missing in most platforms but present in Akita!

Below are 20 quotes pulled from the G2.com review site. They relate to [un-named/redacted] Customer Success platforms and identify limitations Akita does not have:

Did you know there are now over 30 dedicated Customer Success platforms! This makes the challenge of evaluating your options quite daunting. If you don’t want to juggle a ton of discovery calls with vendors just to find out what you can or can't afford, this post is for you.

The following is a list of the Customer Success software platforms that publish their FULL pricing online, so you know what you’re getting into when you reach out to them (included is an overview of their pricing and links to their pricing pages).

We recently deployed some exciting improvements to Customer Success Playbooks and Tasks in Akita that will help your team create scalable, repeatable processes and provide better value to your customers.

[Update 7th February 2022 - If you are a quota carrying CSM, check out our FREE tool to help you figure out how to achieve your sales target].

CSMs from over 90 SaaS firms participated in our 2016 Customer Success Managers Survey. Over the next few weeks I will be reflecting on some of the results and asking how the Customer Success community might deal with some of the challenges and issues identified in the survey.

Let’s look at the results that deal with sales commissions and the Customer Success manager.

Here are some of the facts:

tl;dr - In this article we share a FREE tool to help you hit your expansion quota.

There are strongly held views about whether Customer Success Managers should be selling to their customers. Whatever side of the argument you stand on, the fact remains that a lot of companies set their CSMs a sales target. A survey we ran back in 2016 found that over 70% of CSMs have commission as part of their compensation package.

Standing at the start line with a sales quota can be daunting, even for sales veterans, never mind CSMs who may not have huge experience in selling.

tl;dr - You can put together an NPS survey tool with analytics using Google Forms and Google Workspace. Here's the form. Here's the results.

Many SaaS businesses measure their customers’ experiences by sending Net Promoter Score™ surveys. Even if you haven’t heard of an NPS™ survey before, you have likely seen one:

“How likely are you to recommend us to a friend or colleague on a scale from 0 to 10?”

Answer 9 or 10 and you are a “Promoter”. Answer 6 or less and you are a “Detractor”. Subtract the % of responses that are Detractors from the % that are Promoters (that’s the ‘net’ part) and you have your NPS score:

NPS = % Promoters - % Detractors

Or:

NPS = (# Promoters - # Detractors) / # Responses

NPS has its own detractors but it can be a useful tool for quickly gauging customer sentiment. Easy to collect. Easy to interpret.

There are a bunch of great services that allow you to collect and analyze NPS surveys. Delighted, Survey Monkey and our newest integration Beamer are just some of the services that allow you to collect and analyze NPS surveys.

But what if you want to do it yourself?

Managing customers can be all-consuming work. It doesn't help that the online world is conspiring to steal your attention away and cripple your productivity. Below are 5 practical steps you can take to make your days more productive.

Out with the old...

We launched Akita in 2018 with the goal of making effective Customer Success Management software that was affordable for small businesses.

By most measurements, it was a success. We had a rapidly growing customer base (and revenue) and our customers loved us. Despite this, we decided it wasn’t working. At least, not as well as it should be. A couple of reasons:

Whether you are an Enterprise SaaS looking to manage staffing costs or a rocketship startup with a tsunami of customers and few resources to manage them, the automation a Customer Success platform can deliver will ensure you can minimize your hiring while maximizing the value each Customer Success Manager can deliver.

It comes down to applying a strategy of Nuanced Segmentation and Playbook Automation (or the more snappy Set and Forget!)

I've been involved with Customer Success Software for a while now and sometimes I make the mistake of thinking everyone understands what Customer Success is all about 😬. So, to clarify, here is what I think about when I think about Customer Success...

In SaaS, REVENUE COMPOUNDS, this is the 9th wonder of the world (the 8th is compound interest — according to Albert Einstein) i.e. If you keep adding new customers AND retain the existing ones long enough, you will likely see huge growth and profitability. It’s simple (but not easy).