A New Chapter for Customer Success Excellence

Hook acquires the Customer Success Excellence awards

Today I am pleased to announce that Customer Success Excellence, the world’s first awards program dedicated to customer success, has been acquired by Hook.??

In 2020, I launched the Customer Success Excellence awards to find the best voices in customer success.? It was clear to me that we needed a better way to more formally recognize true customer success excellence.? There are so many talented customer success professionals who didn’t write blogs, speak on podcasts, or live on the speaker circuit, instead focusing all of their energy on building world-class customer success teams at their own companies. So how could we recognize those exceptional professionals who’s innovation may otherwise go unshared?

We eventually landed on five Customer Success Excellence award categories: Most Innovative Customer Success Initiative, Best Use of Technology in Customer Success, Customer Success Rising Star (in CS for less than two years), CSM of the Year, and Customer Success Leader of the Year.??

When I first put this idea out in the world, I was exceptionally nervous.? I had no clue that it would be over two years before we could gather in person to award our first set of winners due to a global pandemic.? I feared a half empty room and only a handful of nominations.? But the most vibrant and energizing community I know showed up.??

And for that, I want to express my sincere, heartfelt gratitude to the customer success community.

Thank you. Thank you to our sponsors who believed in us when we were just an idea and 10 slides.? Thank you to our 33 judges who generously donated their time and energy reviewing and scoring every single nomination.? Thank you to our rockstar MCs Aaron Thompson, Gemma Cirpiani-Espineira, and Kristi Faltorusso.? And thank you to Brian Pereira for joining me on the journey as an advisor. Thank you to the 500+ nominations, 48 customer success professionals shortlisted, and thank you to our 11 winners across the EMEA and Americas awards programs.?

Our Raison D'Etre

Launching the awards felt especially important to me at the time, due to the state of the customer success profession.? We were heading past a decade of the existence of customer success, yet we still saw conversations in our industry be dominated by theoretical and sometimes shallow “thought leadership.”? About how “CS is not support” or “CS is different to account management.”? There was (and still is) a place for this because as customer success continues to expand, with new companies creating CS teams and new professionals becoming CSMs, we still need the entry level customer success discourse to welcome more people into our profession.??

But I feared that we were letting that drown out the more strategic conversations we needed to have to get our seat at the table.? We needed less “CS is not Support” and more “here’s how I leveraged our digital program to reduce cost and increase NPS” or “blueprints to customer-led growth.”? Without a focus on advancing the conversation and finding new well-qualified participants, I feared our profession might not seize the opportunity to truly get our seat at the table.

Fast forward to 2025 and we still haven’t fully seized the opportunity.? The mass layoffs experienced over the last few years after the ZIRP era are an indication that the customer success function still has some work to do in being seen as an indispensable part of a go to market motion.? Ultimately, we need to pass the CFO test: we generate more value for the business than they cost.??

And I suggest that to do that, customer success must own revenue.? We need a function that delivers value for customers and value back to the business.? And if we call them customer success or account management doesn’t really matter.? I call it Customer Growth.

Customer Growth also mirrors my personal journey.? I spent 10 years in customer success, responsible for renewals and then for both NRR and GRR.? I’ve now taken that one further step forward, recently transitioning from CCO to CRO at Nezasa, responsible for new business, expansion, and churn.? We’ve implemented customer success principles across our entire GTM function, taking the best concepts from a value-based customer success motion and interspersing them to our marketing messaging, sales methodology, and customer journey.

Through this experience, I am more convinced than ever that Customer Growth is the future of customer success.? And it’s even more important that we find the best in Customer Growth, uncovering those voices at the forefront of this transition and recognizing them with a formal, meritocratic awards program.

But the truth is, putting on an international awards event is a lot of work.? And so is my day job.? After our second event - and first in the Americas - it was clear to me that we needed a partner to take this initiative forward who believed in the same raison d'etre we did.?

And that’s where Hook comes in.? Hook is a pioneer in the customer growth space, developing an industry-leading platform to predict churn and uncover expansion opportunities.? They share the same vision we have which is why I am so delighted to partner with them to take this shared mission forward.??

What Comes Next

Together, we’re evolving the Customer Success Excellence awards to become the Customer Growth Awards, recognizing the very best across all Customer Growth functions.? I’ll be staying involved for the next year to help them make the evolved awards an even bigger success.

And you don’t have to wait long!? We are back with the first ever Customer Growth Awards Europe in London on May 1st.? Check out the brand new website at customergrowth.com.

See you on the red carpet!