Customer Success Blog

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We will examine how Customer Success technology can help CSMs move from a complex world of siloed data and manual processes to a place where managing customers is simple.

[TLDR ... You can watch a webinar I gave covering the same ground as this post at the bottom of the page 👇]

It's a scary time for SaaS. 

With continued pressure from investors to grow in the face of plummeting demand and no real understanding of when or how the economy is likely to rebound, the future is uncertain. As new customers become as rare as hens teeth, finding a way to grow is going to become progressively more difficult.

Unfortunately, there is no magic solution … or is there?

In a previous post, we looked at How We Built More Than 100 Customer Success-Integrations between Akita and apps like Hubspot, Salesforce, Intercom and Zendesk. We outlined our 3-step process for keeping data in sync: Schedule, Retrieve, and Process.

The Scheduler kicks everything off and is responsible for determining which data needs retrieving at any given time.

If there is one thing that sets Akita apart from its competitors in Customer Success software, it is our ability to ingest data from virtually any data source a customer may have. This includes:

• Visitor behavior captured by our Javascript SDK or Segment.com;
• Customer data sent to Akita using our RESTful API;
• 3rd-party integrations using publicly available APIs;
• Cloud databases and data warehouses; and
• Even retrieving data from a customers own API.

If the data is out there, Akita can usually import it and use it to transform your Customer Success department into a well oiled machine!

But writing integrations are hard! How do you do it?

It is hard.

We all know that it is important to segment your customer base in Customer Success…

But why?

Like all things in business, the ultimate answer is—to generate more revenue.

But how?

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.