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Dear SaaStr: How Should Founders Build Their First CustomerSuccess Team? Building a CustomerSuccess (CS) team early is critical for SaaS startups. Here’s how early-stage founders should approach it: Hire Early, Even Before It Feels Necessary Don’t wait until churn becomes a problem. But expansion can wait.
Dear SaaStr: What Should I Know As a First-Time CustomerSuccess Manager? Customers will look to you as the expert, and your ability to guide them will directly impact their satisfaction and retention. Focus on Metrics : CustomerSuccess is all about the numbers. Learn it better than anyone else.
Dear SaaStr: What Is the Playbook for a SuccessfulCustomerSuccess Team? A good playbook for customersuccess is all about driving retention, expansion, and customer happiness while making it scalable: Hire Truly Product-Savvy CustomerSuccess Managers at First Focus on hiring people who customer-focused product nerds to start.
Dear SaaStr: We Have More Than 20% Churn Our First Month. And even where you don’t see 20% churn the first month with SMBs, it often lurks, because most B2B apps in SaaS don’t even get 80% of their SMBs activation the first month. Make sure every customer is fully set up and using the product ASAP. What Should We Do?
The evolution of every high-functioning, effective customersuccess strategy centers around three C’s: connected experiences, an engaging customer journey, and a culture built on customer-centricity. Develop an effective customer health scoring model to mitigate churn and identify opportunities across your customer base.
Dear SaaStr: What “Quotas” Should My VP of CustomerSuccess and VP of Product Have? For a VP of CustomerSuccess (VPCS), their “quota” or ownership should revolve around two key metrics: Net Revenue Retention (NRR) and Gross Retention Rate (GRR). Without them, youre flying blind.
So we’ve been proponents of customersuccess at SaaStr since the earliest days, since our first SaaStr posts in 2012. CustomerSuccess has in many cases turned into a weaponized arm of sales, and has stopped being the champion of the customer. And it will make things better.
“Churn” is a term we all use in SaaS as a core metric, but its roots, as near as I remember and can tell, come from our B2C colleagues. Folks churn out of their Verizon plan, their Netflix subscription, etc. And sometimes they’ll churn even just for a modestly better deal. 120%+ for your Larger Customers.
Workato’s SVP of Embedded Sales and Director of Solutions Marketing joined us at SaaStr Annual to talk about how to nurture customers — a great topic in general, but especially for embedded sales and APIs that can take a while to scale. CustomerSuccess. Don’t wait until you’re forced to fix churn.
A successfulcustomer onboarding process improves efficiency, increases capacity and decreases churn. This playbook features tips from industry leaders and outlines all the steps needed to create a best-in-class onboarding experience.
Nick Mehta, CEO of CustomerSuccess leader Gainsight, recently did a short post above on his Top 7 takeaways talking with customersuccess leader for the first time in-person in a long time. I love having NRR be the #1 metric for CustomerSuccess. I love having NRR be the #1 metric for CustomerSuccess.
We’ve talked on SaaStr about leaning in on CustomerSuccess as much as possible. the revenue ultimately generated or supported by CustomerSuccess) is the key to growing a SaaS business. We’ve talked about how all the Second Timers are hiring in customersuccess way early , ahead of sales, ahead of revenue.
We put out a call on Twitter the other day for folks’ best tips on what has really lowered churn for them this year. Customers care about relationships, and nothing replaces a human available to help whenever you need something.” Are you segmenting churn? High usage can still mask churn. If not, start ASAP.
Q: What can you do to lower your customerschurn rate? A few basic thoughts: Have every customer have a named customersuccess rep. Every customer. If every customer knows “Casey” is her rep, and who she can turn to … churn will go down. Segment your CustomerSuccess — and Sales — teams.
As the eyes and ears of an organization, CustomerSuccess can drive acquisition, expansion, and retention. But without a clear understanding of a product’s capability, or the value it creates for customers, churn is unavoidable.
If a sales rep closed a deal, A customersuccess manager should take it over. An open question around smaller customers is how do you staff up CustomerSuccess for them — if at all. Many founders wrestle with the question of if they can really afford customersuccess professionals for their smaller customers.
Your customersuccess team should be experimenting with AI-powered sentiment analysis and churn prediction. The customersuccess manager who discovers a prompt that cuts response time in half. Offer $5K for an AI solution that reduces customerchurn by 2%. The same applies to AI today.
Having said that, if you have a steady stream of leads and customers, you really can’t hire a great VP of Demand Gen / Growth too early. CustomerSuccess and Support : You can hire 1-2 individual contributors to handle onboarding and support, but its still very hands-on. More on that here. A head of Product.
So ChurnZero put out a great new report surveying 1,037 customersuccess professionals. Churn-and-burn deals help no one except the AE getting a commission. #4. 58% of SaaS companies surveyed have a real Customer Marketing function. More on Customer Marketing here. Grab it here. Some good data on this split.
The good news today, is there are tons of customersuccess veterans out there. Even just a few years ago, there weren’t enough folks when enough experience to be your first “head of customersuccess.” How often should we visit, and check-in, with which customers? View original question on quora.
Here’s the best-practice way to calculate it: Start with your Beginning ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) : This is the ARR from your existing customers at the start of the period you’re measuring. Subtract Churned ARR : This is the revenue lost from customers who canceled their subscriptions during the period.
A Top CustomerSuccess Hack: Driving Up Activation Rates, ASAP. The post The Silent, Lurking Churn: Activation Rates Less Than 90% appeared first on SaaStr. While B2C can be different, for a B2B app, why should it be less? And then make sure you have clear action plans for the other 10%.
Churn is a paramount topic in SaaS , as we all know. If every dollar of ARR is worth $6+ in the long term, including upsells and second order revenue … then of course, by the same token, for every dollar of ARR that churns … you’re losing $6 of notional ARR. Lose a $100k customer? As Almost Churn.
Q: Who Should Our First Head of CustomerSuccess Report To? Ah, who should CustomerSuccess report to. So usually, she can easily also manage CustomerSuccess as well as all her reps. She’ll be better able to hit your ARR end-of-year goal if she’s also in charge of churn, and all upsell.
If you are a SaaStr reader, you’ll know how passionate I am about CustomerSuccess, since Day 1. What it all means is that if you do it right, you’ll make 6x or more the revenue from your customers after the sale itself. Churn, upsells, renewals, and all that, and compensating against it. Word-of-Mouth.
Ah, who should CustomerSuccess report to? So usually, she can easily also manage CustomerSuccess as well as all her reps. And Sales and CustomerSuccess are of course connected. Your VP of Sales may be better able to hit your ARR end-of-year goal if they are also in charge of churn and all upsell.
Instead, build your projections bottom-up: How many customers can you realistically acquire? What’s your churn rate? Be Transparent About Assumptions Every projection is based on assumptions—conversion rates, sales cycles, customer acquisition costs, etc. That’s lazy. What’s your average deal size?
How do you leverage your customersuccess team to drive revenue growth? Hook’s Head of Customer, Natasha Evans, took the stage at SaaStr Europa to discuss the three things leaders should focus on to fuel revenue growth. Historically, customersuccess teams have been pretty data-poor.
Let’s review everything your customersuccess team has to do in the absence of any customersuccess tools. Collect customer data to calculate complex formulas for tracking metrics, monitor customer health scores, and resolve support tickets while continuously trying to improve retention and expansion.
The landscape of customersuccess has been evolving rapidly. So much so that we seem to be releasing new content on customersuccess just about every week. Today we’re focusing on actionable insights you can use to drive down churn with customersuccess in today’s new era of SaaS efficiency.
Reducing churn in SaaS, along with increasing new ARR is the backbone to growing your business. In this guide, Andrea Webb, the SVP of CustomerSuccess & Retention at Solarwinds , and Tim Willey, the SVP of Commercial Strategy & Operations at ForgeRock , share their tips for understanding and combating churn. .
The other day Nick Mehta CEO of Gainsight invited me to talk about the latest trends in CustomerSuccess. A few points we dove in on: Should your VP of CS be most focused on NRR or Churn? Every SaaS startup now has 2-10 public SaaS companies that are somewhat similar in customer make-up and product. Aim for 140%.
Your top customers will grow with you. Downgrades are not churn. It may be time to segment your “churn” into lost customers vs. downgrades. A positive customer experience, even for a customer that leaves, is a new brand ambassador for your product. And A Downgrade is Not Churn.
The average churn rate for the software industry as a whole is 14%. Thats actually one of the lowest churn rates across all industries. That said, industry experts agree that your SaaS companys goal churn should be below 2%. TL;DR The average software industry churn rate is 14%, but SaaS companies should aim for under 2%.
Is it the end of an era for customersuccess in SaaS? We just wrote up how some of the biggest changes of SaaS are now coming, specifically in CustomerSuccess and Sales. CustomerSuccess Is Vulnerable to Cuts Jason shared that he didn’t realize how vulnerable customersuccess was to cuts until 2023.
Dear SaaStr: How Do I Best Prevent Churn? You can’t eliminate churn. You can hide churn (e.g., My top suggestion is: Measure churn carefully, and consistently. Usually, your smallest customers will churn at the highest rate. And set a big annual goal to drive churn down say 20%. Each quarter.
As a VP of sales at early stage SaaS companies, what’s your best advice for reducing churn rate? A few things that always work to drive down churn in the early days — and later: Make sure you have a strong Head of CustomerSuccess … whose #1 goal is reducing churn. And lead to unnecessary churn.
Churn and Expansion : For existing customers, analyze churn rates, upsell/cross-sell performance, and NRR (Net Revenue Retention). AI can help predict churn and identify expansion opportunities. Alignment Across Teams : Ensure alignment between sales, marketing, and customersuccess. If so, why?
Customersuccess – every business wants to invest in it but only a few know what it actually entails or how to do it well. There are a lot of words that get thrown around with customersuccess: problems to be solved, implementation, product experts, expansion, strategic partners, technical advisors, proactive versus reactive.
This is a positive trajectory, but it presents a challenge for your customersuccess efforts: How can you scale your support and CS while still delivering a memorable, quality customer experience? Latest Customer Learnings From New Research. Today’s Critical Challenges For CustomerSuccess .
If this is your first SaaS company, you may not have ever hired or built a CustomerSuccess team. If you hire a great, experienced Client Success leader as your first hire here, and you like him/her, and the experience is on point — my guess is you’ll be fine. If not, are you sure your have this right?
Best case, your happy customers buy more from you. Worst case, they still use it and are happy, and churn less. And perhaps most important, move on from mediocre customersuccess folks. You need the team sharp to retain your customers in 2025. Force yourself to at least grow +20% more than your NRR. #5.
If this is your first SaaS company, you may not have ever hired or built a CustomerSuccess team. If you hire a great, experienced Client Success leader as your first hire here, and you like him/her, and the experience is on point — my guess is you’ll be fine. If not, are you sure your have this right?
if Churn > 2% = Bad, Just Terrible. And even in the enterprise, losing one big customer can swamp you here in the early days. What most matters is that churn is going down , rather than the core absolute value, IMHO. What most matters is that churn is going down , rather than the core absolute value, IMHO.
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