Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 24, 2021

If your business is preparing for a new phase of growth, you need to make sure that your support team is set up for success from the outset, and that you’re creating the right support infrastructure to deliver exceptional customer experiences at scale. Are the tools you’re using capable of scaling with you?

Scale 129

Scale Customer Support Scaling Headcount 129

Clouded Judgement

MARCH 22, 2024

At contract expiration these customers either renew (sign another contract with same annual value), expand (sign another contract with higher annual value), contract (sign another contract with lower annual value), or churn (stop being a customer and spend goes to zero). Do you have ARR or ERR?

AI 183

AI Revenue Cloud Technical Advisors 183

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2021

You’ll find that most SaaS companies at scale use a rough metric of 1 Customer Success Manager for every $2m in ARR. At $2m in ARR, budget $200k in headcount for the CSM positions + support. Second, measure Client Success on “net churn”, or total revenue from the customers under management by Client Success.

Sales Hiring 244

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Customer Lifetime Value 244

SaaStr

JANUARY 12, 2024

Now, in 2024, we’re in the age of efficiencies, and we’re rethinking whether we should put more people on it or tolerate more churn and issues because we want to be cash flow positive. As you scale, you hire less people and spend less money. The world has changed. They paused hiring for a year (rather than cut) and got profitable.

Sales Hiring 238

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale AI 238

SaaStr

NOVEMBER 27, 2021

You’ll find that most SaaS companies at scale use a rough metric of 1 Customer Success Manager for every $2m in ARR. At $2m in ARR, budget $200k in headcount for the CSM positions + support. Second, measure Client Success on “net churn”, or total revenue from the customers under management by Client Success.

Sales Hiring 186

Sales Hiring Customer Success Scale Customer Lifetime Value 186

Intercom, Inc.

JULY 11, 2019

If you’re a leader, he says, don’t try to scale your job. Since 2010, he’s helped the company grow to more than 40,000 customers and helped scale the support team to more than 500 employees to assist those users. But where else can you be investing outside of headcount to maintain that customer centricity? Michael: For sure.

Scale 188

Scale Scaling Sales Hiring Underperforming Technical Team 188

Valuize Consulting

MAY 4, 2022

Rally Your Organization Around A Strong CS Scale Strategy. As revenue and customers grow, leaders quickly, and sometimes painfully, learn that they need to adopt a proactive approach to their customer engagement and lifecycle that enables their long tail customers through a powerful Scale strategy. Identify Your North Star Metric.

Scale 52

Scale Customer Success Scaling Strategy 52

Totango

APRIL 6, 2023

Our latest platform enhancements and solutions help you scale without needing to add headcount, and make CS a company-wide initiative that drives predictable revenue growth. These new seat licenses are add-ons to any Totango plan, making CS program visibility very accessible.

Innovation 85

Innovation Scale Revenue Technical Review 85

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 11, 2022

Overall, the industry’s top five measurements of success are NRR, gross revenue retention (GRR), churn rate, logo retention rate and expansion revenue—while “softer” metrics like NPS appear only further down the list. Related: Which Customer Success best practices should you keep or let go in 2023? However, 76.5% of companies.

Leadership 98

Leadership Trends Customer Success Investment 98

Intercom, Inc.

DECEMBER 8, 2020

It can also guide your hiring process if increasing headcount is required to guarantee 24/7 coverage for customers. A disconnect between your tickets opened and tickets completed may indicate a need for better training of support reps, increased headcount, or the introduction of automation to help reduce the strain on your team.

Customer Support 211

Customer Support Metrics Technical Review Scale 211

SaaStr

AUGUST 13, 2021

You need a baked financial model, that includes sales and marketing costs, scaling over time, headcount, and comparison to comps, and when you’ll need the next round(s). Know and Share Your Churn and NRR. Hiring churn doesn’t help. Both bottoms up and tops down. Every public SaaS company now shares its NRR.

Scale 281

Scale Sales Hiring Venture Capital Headcount 281

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 16, 2022

Support teams are facing a critical juncture: business costs and customer expectations continue to grow while resources like headcount and budget are decreasing. In turn, you’ll increase efficiency without increasing your headcount. So, how can it transform your offering into an experience that drives loyalty?

Headcount 118

Headcount Scale Sales Hiring Customer Lifetime Value 118

SaaSX

FEBRUARY 5, 2020

This INCLUDES headcount-related expenses. If you are utilizing Gusto or a similar payroll tool, your headcount expenses are likely coming into your P&L as one (or maybe two) line item(s). these figures are going to be WRONG because you haven’t properly accounted for your headcount costs in Sales & Marketing.

Finance 118

Finance Sales Hiring Headcount Scale 118

Totango

JULY 5, 2022

You need to be able to retain and scale your current customer base efficiently, with the current resources you have rather than adding more. . Customer health scores can help you assess whether your customers are seeing value in your product, determine churn risk and spot opportunities. So, how do you do this? Low usage rates.

Customer Success 97

Customer Success Scale Headcount Churn 97

OpenView Labs

MARCH 10, 2019

But how do organizations make customer success work at scale? Over this time, our headcount has grown by over 10x, and our revenue has grown by over 60x. On the research side, our CX team creates a quarterly “Customer Voice” report which aggregates data from support tickets, NPS, churn surveys, sales calls, CSM calls, etc.

Scale 69

Scale Customer Success Scaling Sales Hiring 69

Intercom, Inc.

AUGUST 26, 2020

In the coming year, 55% of support leaders are increasing their spend on technology to scale their efforts. With more than half (52%) of companies planning to reduce the size of their team as a result of the current economic downturn, support leaders are turning to technology, not headcount, to scale their efforts.

Trends 233

Trends Scale Headcount Technology 233

SaaStr

JUNE 13, 2020

And they have five times the headcount and have raised $25 million. Net Negative Churn is an awesome force. If you don’t build something of real scale and size by then, the team will just get too tired, the journey too taxing. More on that here ). Second, he was almost overwhelmed with The Competition. They’re all over us.”.

Sales Hiring 277

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount SaaS 277

SaaStr

OCTOBER 18, 2019

The real magic from a Wall Street perspective isn’t that Salesforce is “SaaS” and much of, say, Oracle still mostly isn’t … it’s that Salesforce’s revenue, with net negative churn, completely recurs every year. With precise headcount and budget needs. Even in the best of cases, it takes 60 days to scale a rep. This is key.

Sales Hiring 180

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Revenue 180

ChurnZero

JULY 14, 2021

And the good news is this metric is something that Customer Success teams can directly influence during the customer’s journey as they play a critical role in solving customer pain points and delivering value and business outcomes to increase customer loyalty and ultimately reduce churn. How Do You Calculate Customer Lifetime Value?

Customer Lifetime Value 98

Customer Lifetime Value Scale Headcount Churn 98

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 3, 2022

Scaling a support team is challenging enough as it is. You’re investing resources in hiring and training the right people, tracking different metrics at different stages, adding more and more complexity with each increase in headcount, use cases, and customers. The complexities of scaling a support team. Natasha: It really is.

Scale 206

Scale Software Outsourcing Services Sales Hiring 206

The Angel VC

JUNE 25, 2015

An exception are SaaS startups with a no/low-touch sales model and viral growth (see above) and potentially companies which have a massively negative net MRR churn rate and therefore don't have to acquire as many new customers. Input your monthly net MRR churn rate (i.e. click for a larger version).

Sales Hiring 185

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Scale Headcount 185

OPEXEngine

DECEMBER 13, 2022

Most SaaS executives can relate to a friendly debate they’ve had at a board or leadership team meeting about what percentage of revenue should come from “upsells” to existing customers or what is “healthy churn.” There are large-scale potential implications: Reduction in a sales capacity to land new customers.

Benchmarks 52

Benchmarks Scale Headcount Software Review 52

OPEXEngine

NOVEMBER 23, 2020

This INCLUDES headcount-related expenses. If you are utilizing Gusto or a similar payroll tool, your headcount expenses are likely coming into your P&L as one (or maybe two) line item(s). these figures are going to be WRONG because you haven’t properly accounted for your headcount costs in Sales & Marketing.

Finance 52

Finance Sales Hiring Headcount Scale 52

ChurnZero

JANUARY 4, 2024

On the other hand, economic headwinds continue to constrain CS budgets and headcounts. Hiring fractional experts has been a common practice in other industries for decades; in 2024, CS teams will embrace this workforce model in scale while remaining cost-conscious.” Hiring and teams will continue to grow at a steady pace.”

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Trends Sales Hiring Artificial Intelligence 52

Intercom, Inc.

NOVEMBER 30, 2021

Juggling outdated, disjointed tools is a recipe for team burnout, customer dissatisfaction, and ultimately, churn. Powered by a modern business messenger , it scales your ability to answer more questions from more customers without increasing headcount, budget, or hours logged. Integrations and Messenger apps.

Technical Review 249

Technical Review Customer Support Payment Methods Payment Solutions 249

Intercom, Inc.

MARCH 12, 2019

A little over a year ago, I got the opportunity to start a new team within our sales organization – a team of Relationship Managers dedicated to growing our current customers at scale. As part of this shift, we identified thousands of customers whom we believed would benefit from scaled account management , a new sales motion for Intercom.

Sales Hiring 171

Sales Hiring Sales Recruiting Underperforming Technical Team Scale 171

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 29, 2022

There were also a number of customers who turned us into shelfware or essentially churned. Like many early-stage Customer Success teams, I was working with limited resources and did not have any headcount to hire new talent. But we’d need to get clear on team expectations to reach our full potential and scale.

Customer Success 98

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Technical Review Compensation 98

Valuize Consulting

OCTOBER 7, 2021

For example, in Sales, you can take your Annual Revenue Target, divide it by the Projected Revenue Attainment Per Headcount (factoring in some ramp time) and out comes a Headcount projection. How are you scaling your team ? This includes downsells, churn and expansions. The NDR Efficiency Formula & Scale.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success New CTO Scale Headcount 52

ChurnZero

JANUARY 25, 2024

Scaled customer success roles This role is starting to carve out its own space and made a huge splash in 2023. With limited budgets for tools and talent, all companies are looking to identify how to scale their customer success teams. We don’t see that changing in 2024, even as headcount starts to normalize.

Customer Success 52

Customer Success Sales Recruiting Sales Hiring Scale 52

ChurnZero

NOVEMBER 16, 2018

It’s time for #CustomerSuccess to partner with the product team to ensure growth and scale of your company. How to Scale without Scaling Headcount. To ensure you success function scales without scaling your headcount, make sure everyone in the company is bought into the success mindset.

Customer Success 49

Customer Success Scale Headcount Sales Hiring 49

ChurnZero

JANUARY 7, 2020

Scale their processes. The team lacked a way to assign health scores or predict a customer’s likelihood to churn. Become More Proactive in Account Management – The implementation of real-time heath metrics has allowed the team to gauge a customer’s likelihood to churn or renew. . . Identify accounts in need.

Scale 52

Scale Headcount Consulting Customer Success 52

SaaStr

SEPTEMBER 19, 2019

It was a huge growth year from a revenue perspective for us and a huge growth year from an employee headcount perspective. So they would talk about what they were doing and it was very obvious they were copying us and trying to copy somebody else, and their churn was through the roof. Anyway, thank you so much everyone.

Scale 114

Scale Sales Hiring Software Review Scaling 114

Intercom, Inc.

MAY 13, 2021

Although Linda started her career in sales, she has spent the past twelve years scaling post-sales teams and moving hyper-growth companies like Zendesk, Slack, and now Gong upmarket into the enterprise realm. What “customer success” looks like evolves as your company and customers scale upmarket.

Scale 177

Scale Customer Success Strategy Sales Hiring 177

OpenView Labs

FEBRUARY 10, 2020

Sales now accounts for about 7% of the company’s headcount–a similar share of their workforce as marketing or product management. I’d even argue that the company is still under-resourced in sales; sales accounts for only 7% of Atlassian’s headcount compared to 25% of headcount at the average PLG business. This is a good thing.

Sales Hiring 57

Sales Hiring Scale Headcount Sales 57

The Angel VC

DECEMBER 12, 2018

What makes things tricky is, first, the uncertainty of how your CACs will develop at increasing scale and of how your churn rate will develop over time. As I wrote here , trying to forecast what happens to your CACs if you 10x your sales and marketing spend is very difficult.

Sales Recruiting 106

Sales Recruiting SaaS Payments Sales Hiring Scale 106

InsightSquared

MAY 7, 2019

When scaling the business, sales typically averages roughly 30% of revenue, so therefore sales spend is one of the biggest investments a company can make. At the highest level, SaaS companies look at sales expense, headcount, sales productivity and SaaS metrics like: The cost of new customer acquisition (CAC).

Scale 102

Scale Sales Hiring Metrics Sales 102

SaaSX

FEBRUARY 28, 2021

The rule of 40 states that at scale, a company’s revenue growth rate plus its profit margin should be at least 40. It was one of my critical measurements of how efficiently we were scaling. Ideally, as a company scales, headcount doesn’t scale exactly in tandem. Churn Rate.

Payment Solutions 52

Payment Solutions Software Review Software Payments 52