SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2021

Is your CS team growing as fast as your sales team? If this is your first SaaS company, you may not have ever hired or built a Customer Success team. This one isn’t nearly as risky as a VP of Sales , or a VP of Marketing hire. 3-10 or more years, if that’s your Customer Lifetime Value.

Sales Hiring 242

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Customer Lifetime Value 242

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 14, 2023

If you are a SaaStr reader, you’ll know how passionate I am about Customer Success, since Day 1. For one simple reason: Second Order Revenue. 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. Word-of-Mouth. Champion Change.

Customer Success 263

Customer Success Compensation Churn Enterprise 263

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

Ah, who should Customer Success report to? VP of Sales (once you have one). There are clear Pros and Cons to reporting to a VP of Sales. The Pros are: Usually, a VP of Sales is your best manager. So usually, she can easily also manage Customer Success as well as all her reps. It’s not super simple.

Customer Success 267

Customer Success Scale Churn Finance 267

SaaStr

JANUARY 24, 2019

Many call it “Churn and Burn” or other variants. Your brand and reputation is damaged at least a tiny bit everytime a paying customer churns out because they were mis-sold a feature set. Yes, the rep gets a commission and the company might book a tiny bit of revenue in the short-term. (This and massive discounting.).

Scale 219

Scale Churn Sales Hiring Sales 219

SaaStr

OCTOBER 17, 2023

Customer success is all about outcomes. If you’ve raised venture capital, you know net revenue retention is important. What does NRR have to do with customer success? Anyone looking to grow their customer success team, or rather, drive growth and NRR, will have some valuable takeaways. Everything!

Scale 159

Scale Sales Hiring Customer Success Scaling 159

FastSpring

APRIL 26, 2022

In the language of SaaS, I churned. And the experience got me thinking: Was immediate removal of paid features the best chance to keep me from churning? When did I officially count as “churned”? Did they count me as churned on the day I canceled? In part one, we cover benchmarks and common churn formulas.

Benchmarks 114

Benchmarks Churn Payments SaaS Payments 114

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 15, 2022

E.g., Sales +Marketing Expenses < First Year ACV = Success ? 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. Well — Maybe.

Scale 232

Scale Customer Success Sales Hiring Scaling 232

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 6, 2021

Q: Who Should Our First Head of Customer Success Report To? Ah, who should Customer Success report to. VP of Sales (once you have one). There are clear Pros and Cons to reporting to a VP of Sales. The Pros are: Usually, a VP of Sales is your best manager. A VPS wants to close more revenue.

Customer Success 216

Customer Success Sales Hiring Finance Churn 216

Intercom, Inc.

OCTOBER 26, 2018

Customer success means wildly different things to different companies in the SaaS industry. Many organizations create customer success teams but there’s no clear definition as to how these teams develop long-term value for both the customer and the business. The role of customer success teams.

Sales Hiring 123

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Underperforming Technical Team 123

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2021

Is your CS team growing as fast as your sales team? If this is your first SaaS company, you may not have ever hired or built a Customer Success team. This one isn’t nearly as risky as a VP of Sales , or a VP of Marketing hire. 3-10 or more years, if that’s your Customer Lifetime Value.

Sales Hiring 180

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Customer Lifetime Value 180

Totango

NOVEMBER 27, 2023

We know that sales and customer success (CS) teams must work together to drive revenue growth and expansion. Check out three highlights from the conversation, and listen to the full podcast to gain more insights and tips on how your teams can create a mutually beneficial relationship between CS and sales.

Revenue 71

Revenue Sales Customer Success Churn 71

FastSpring

JANUARY 26, 2024

With years of experience at managing customer success (CS), Jake Dipple knows how important it is to foster collaboration between businesses and their customers. In this episode of Growth Stage, host and CMO of FastSpring David Vogelpohl interviews Jake about his thoughts on: What Customer Success is at a high level.

Customer Success 136

Customer Success VP of Engineering Payments Payment Methods 136

CustomerSuccessBox

APRIL 7, 2022

It’s undeniable that the SaaS model works differently and attracts revenue on a monthly or annual basis, unlike the on-premise software that deals with one-time payments. So, it’s legit to have a customer success team in hand. Stay tuned and read on to incur extra SaaS revenue. Lay a top-notch customer success journey!

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Payments SaaS Payments Revenue 98

Sixteen Ventures

SEPTEMBER 10, 2020

It’s critical to understand why your customers churn, but if you’re relying solely on the reason the customer gives you for that churn, you’re definitely missing the actual reason. It’s easy to just ask a customer why they’re cancelling or not renewing and to leave it at that. Churn: Syntax and Nomenclature.

Churn 131

Churn Customer Success Systems Review Outsourced Development 131

SaaStr

FEBRUARY 17, 2023

While the allure of customer acquisition can pull a founder’s attention, it’s equally important to dedicate resources to fighting churn and expanding revenue from existing customers. They discuss how Fox helped build a churn-fighting, upselling, and cross-selling machine that continues to generate revenue.

Retention 192

Retention Revenue Startup Sales Hiring 192

Totango

JANUARY 22, 2024

In fact, 63% of CAB members said their top 2024 prediction was that businesses would put more strategic and bottom-line emphasis on expansion versus acquisition to drive revenue growth. Additionally, our CAB members are buzzing about AI.

Customer Success 94

Customer Success Generative AI AI Scale 94

Totango

NOVEMBER 27, 2023

This shift presents a compelling opportunity for B2B enterprises to invest in tailor-made tools for their post-sales organizations and customer success (CS) teams. Forrester recognizes the value customer success platforms can provide to B2B companies looking to foster retention, growth, and advocacy.

Trends 91

Trends Customer Success Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence 91

Totango

JANUARY 2, 2024

In an era when customer success (CS) has become pivotal, it’s no longer enough to have a team dedicated to CS. More importantly, you need an organizational strategy that ensures your customers don’t just come to you but stay, thrive, and become your biggest promoters.

Payment Services 99

Payment Services Merchant Services Customer Success Business 99

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 14, 2020

Customer success – 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 customer success: problems to be solved, implementation, product experts, expansion, strategic partners, technical advisors, proactive versus reactive.

Customer Success 249

Customer Success Management Technical Review Onboarding 249

ChurnZero

JUNE 9, 2023

Good sales teams typically get the budget, headcount and tools they desire because the function is tied to revenue. However, that’s not always the case for Customer Success (CS) teams even though they are often responsible for renewals and expansions. To that end, here are the metrics you can use to get started.

Finance 98

Finance Metrics Customer Success Headcount 98

ChurnZero

JULY 22, 2021

By creating healthy boundaries, Customer Success and Sales don’t have to spend their days assessing and arguing over every expansion situation. Your rules of engagement should be based on which team is genuinely the best fit in each scenario and has the greatest likelihood of gaining sales traction. Circle of influence.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Engagement Sales Acquisition 98

ChurnZero

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

We’ve found that, when looking to build a strong team of Customer Success Managers (CSMs), an incentive compensation plan , otherwise called a variable compensation plan , produces the best results. This can be measured by how much they sell, the success of their team, or the success of the organization as a whole.

Compensation 97

Compensation Customer Success Churn Retention 97

CustomerSuccessBox

OCTOBER 21, 2021

Customer Success has become a must for every SaaS business with the advent of the subscription economy. But just having a customer success department does not solve issues with your churn rate, customer lifetime value, retention rate, or MRR/ARR. It starts by understanding why customer success is important.

Payments 52

Payments Customer Success SaaS Payments Revenue 52

Totango

SEPTEMBER 22, 2023

we’re accelerating the motion to customer success-led growth by introducing two new partnerships and nine technology integrations into the Totango software and ecosystem. And, that growth comes from consistently and quickly delivering customer value. Announced during our flagship event, Totango Live!

Enterprise 113

Enterprise Revenue Scale Innovation 113

Sixteen Ventures

AUGUST 14, 2022

The purpose of Customer Success is not to make customers happy. It’s actually not even to make customers successful. In this simplistic view, revenue from any new customers that come in that quarter wouldn’t be included in NRR for that quarter, but would be in the starting amount for next quarter.

Customer Success 97

Customer Success Investment Sales Hiring Retention 97

Totango

AUGUST 16, 2022

Customer Retention Software Cuts Down Client Churn. Customer retention software has become essential for effective SaaS customer success strategies. A winning SaaS business model must prioritize retaining customers, which is far more cost-efficient than acquiring new clients to offset churn.

Payment Solutions 98

Payment Solutions Payment Methods Retention Software Review 98

CustomerSuccessBox

JUNE 24, 2022

Every SaaS business lives and breathes by reducing churn and increasing recurring revenue. Monthly Recurring Revenue is a SaaS metric that you should be tracking in order to see where your SaaS business stands. This blog focuses on the excellent customer success techniques that will help you improve your recurring revenue.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Revenue Onboarding Retention 52

ChurnZero

OCTOBER 1, 2022

Why is it that the need for operations in marketing and sales is never questioned, yet Customer Success isn’t given the same allowance? Even though CSQLs have a lower customer acquisition cost, faster rate of return, and high close-rate, says Tony D’Auria, industry principal at Valuize, a customer lifecycle consultancy.

Scale 97

Scale Customer Success Revenue Retention 97

Kellblog

AUGUST 1, 2019

I think for many sales-aggressive enterprise SaaS startups, a fair amount of churn actually happens at inception. Sales being sales, they found partners willing to do the implementations and simply rode over the objections of our quite qualified PS team. Sales may be in optimistic denial.

Churn 75

Churn Systems Review Customer Success Software Review 75

Totango

APRIL 6, 2023

With budgets being cut, staff being laid off, and sales cycles getting longer, many businesses are feeling the pressure, especially in the tech sector. To survive this tough “do more with less” climate, companies are turning to their customer success (CS) teams to ramp up their customer retention and expansion efforts.

Innovation 85

Innovation Scale Revenue Technical Review 85

ChurnZero

FEBRUARY 14, 2023

Some Customer Success metrics are considered standard but there’s often more than meets the eye. Sales and marketing professionals that geek out on metrics can find themselves in deep philosophical debates about the best numbers to track. There is often more than one way to calculate a given Customer Success metric; Gaming.

Customer Success 94

Customer Success Metrics Software Review Customer Lifetime Value 94

User Pilot

MARCH 23, 2023

What are the reasons for customer churn in SaaS? And how can customer success teams address them to ensure product growth? As a SaaS company, your ultimate goal is to retain customers and keep them happy with your product. However, sometimes things don’t go as planned, and customers churn.

SaaS Payments 98

SaaS Payments Churn Underperforming Technical Team Payment Methods 98

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 17, 2020

This is a guest blog post by Kristen Hayer, Founder & CEO of The Success League. . Oh, Sales and Customer Success, you are my two favorite disciplines! My career started in Sales, or rather, I was slowly talked into a Sales career by a string of managers who knew I had the drive to be a great salesperson.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Sales Compensation Churn 98

ChurnZero

JANUARY 25, 2024

How will customer success jobs, and the skills they require, evolve in 2024? With technology advancing and customer expectations rising, customer success has become an essential force driving business growth and customer loyalty within the SaaS industry.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 52

ChurnZero

MARCH 20, 2023

We put these two questions to respondents in our most recent 2022 Customer Success Leadership Study published late last year. Who owns customer renewals? We defined customer renewals as measured by gross revenue retention (GRR). Here’s how the answers to that question—who owns customer renewals—tallied: 50.2%

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Management Sales Leadership 52

ChurnZero

MARCH 20, 2023

We put these two questions to respondents in our most recent 2022 Customer Success Leadership Study published late last year. Who owns customer renewals? We defined customer renewals as measured by gross revenue retention (GRR). Here’s how the answers to that question—who owns customer renewals—tallied: 50.2%

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Management Sales Leadership 52

ChurnZero

JANUARY 26, 2022

Reducing churn is at the forefront of all marketers’ minds. 82% of marketers say that “active customer retention” is one of the most important objectives for their CRM team , leading many Marketing and Customer Success team members to seek out new ways to understand customer pain points and improve the customer experience.

Scale 97

Scale Churn Scaling Retention 97