Born to Run: Customer Success 2.0

As musical genius and philosopher of our time, Taylor Swift, once sang: “These things will change. Can you feel it now?” But my first love of music started with the 80s rock artist ‘The Boss,’ Bruce Springsteen, who sang about being “Born to Run”— to know what to do in the face of that change.

Change has been a big theme in the Customer Success world, whether it’s developing durable growth strategies or proving ROI to investors. We’ve deemed this new wave of CS “Customer Success 2.0.” If you go back in the history books, Salesforce pioneered the first iteration of CS, where a department was created to solve churn on its own. While that isolationist mentality worked for a while, it was never a long term solution.

Customer Success 2.0 is about making CS an enterprise-wide priority. Every person in a company needs to be aligned around the customer, whether you’re in Sales, Marketing, or CS. At the end of the day, its value that matters—not churn. Value is the thing that mitigates churn and drives Net Dollar Retention.

Vendor consolidation is one of those strategies that can help CS reach this northstar. In the video below, I talk about the old days of CS—when it worked in a silo and created fractured touchpoints that could overwhelm a customer. The Gainsight Platform is our iteration of Customer Success 2.0, combining product experience, community-based initiatives, customer education, and more into one value-providing touchpoint. Check out the video below to also learn more about how the Gainsight Platform embraces this CS 2.0 mindset, and let me know what you think.

?? Learn how the Gainsight Platform embraces this CS 2.0 mindset.

How to Prove the ROI of Customer Success to Your Leadership Team

A common question from Customer Success executives (and leaders in general) is "how do I get my CEO and leadership team to buy into what I'm doing?" Another way to put it is "they're asking for the ROI of Customer Success."

Now to many of us, that's like asking "does gravity exist?" But for the less-informed, it's a legitimate question.

I've learned that the most effective answer is a combination of data and anecdotes. You need both, because you have to appeal to the mind AND the heart. Often, executives fail to get sponsorship because they only do one or the other.

Some examples for the Mind / Data side:

"Here's an example of our retention rate before and after our CS program" (concern is around conflating variables at the same time like product changes)

"Here's a study on the customers touched by CSMs and those not touched in terms of impact on adoption and NPS?" (how do you know there isn't sample bias - e.g., customers touched are ones more engaged; also how do you know adoption and NPS correlate to financial metrics?)

"Here's an A/B test with a Randomized Control Trial of similar cohorts and having one with CS motions and one (control) without." (most effective / scientific but not always possible)

Some examples of the ?? Heart / Anecdotes side:

• "Here are some quotes from customers about the impact of CS"
• "Here is a testimonial from a sales rep who talked about an expansion that wouldn't be possible without CS"

Combine data and anecdotes and you will win minds and hearts.

You can check out other leaders’ comments in the original LinkedIn post here .

DON’T WALK — RUN! PULSE ENCORE IS COMING TO A CITY NEAR YOU

Can’t wait to see you in New York City, NY on September 28, 2023, or Austin, Texas on October 19, 2023, or both!

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