Customer Success Blog

[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).

Implementing a Customer Success platform will resonate across the business so the CEO should make the ultimate call on where to invest but who else should have oversight of or influence on the decision …

Customer journey modelling and a belief in the efficacy of applying a structured journey to customer engagement through time is deeply ingrained in SaaS culture. That Customer Journeys deliver greater Customer Lifetime value is an article of faith for many.

Why is this? Is it time to look to some other, better way of maintaining long-term relationships and maximizing revenue streams?

Firstly, it’s important to recognize that there are (at least) 2 reasons we are so tied to Customer Journeys:

As a startup you don’t have the luxury of behaving like an Enterprise business and spending months (or longer) on implementing software that is going to be key to your growth, you’re also likely looking for less complex and expensive tools with the agility to match your own.

There are 2 elements to how long it will take that are difficult to estimate as they are 100% under your control. It really is down to the amount of time and effort YOU want to allocate and the complexity of your business model… namely:

1. Audit of your systems and processes to identify which data need to be passed into the Customer Success software application and which CS processes need to be managed, either manually or automatically by your new CS system.
2. Training your users to optimally use the Solution. note: If you’re a Start-up choose something with lots of self-help resources for your Customer Success team. Choose a tool that is intuitive to set up and administer for a non-technical person and one provides a comprehensive user Knowledge base and responsive support. [You can find such solutions, for under $300 per month.]

Once you have done that you’re well on your way. So how long will it take…