This article is based on a presentation given by Hamish at our Customer Success Festival, Amsterdam in 2024.

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In recent years, customer success has shifted from a supportive function to a key driver of business growth and profitability. There’s an unfair view of CS as a hand-holding function that gets a client from A to B; that kind of passivity just doesn’t cut the mustard anymore.

As competition intensifies and customer expectations continue to rise, it’s no longer enough to simply deliver a product or service; businesses must build relationships that drive sustained value and demonstrate impact at every stage of the customer journey.

However, the idea of monetizing customer success can often feel uncomfortable. There's a fear of appearing mercenary or transactional, putting a price tag on what should be a collaborative partnership. 

But the reality is that monetizing customer success is often in the best interest of the client. It allows businesses to provide a truly tailored, concierge-level experience, rather than a generic "spray and pray" approach.

As I’ve led the customer success team at GoCardless, I’ve seen how monetizing customer success can transform it from a cost center into a significant revenue stream. Gone are the days of customer success being viewed as a necessary evil – at GoCardless, it's an integral part of our business model that delivers immense value to our clients.

In this article, I’ll explore:

  • The structure of our customer success packages and what makes them valuable
  • The journey of turning customer success into a revenue line
  • Key metrics we track to ensure sustainable growth and impact
  • The critical importance of aligning sales and customer success teams
  • Lessons learned and best practices for integrating customer success into the core of the business

Introduction to GoCardless and our mission

GoCardless is in the business of bank-to-bank payments, a system that skips traditional credit card networks. As our name suggests, we’re “cardless,” focusing solely on direct account-to-account transactions. 

While we’re not a consumer-facing brand like PayPal, we’re building a global network that allows businesses to make and receive payments across borders seamlessly, with reduced costs and greater efficiency.

Our mission is to free individuals and businesses from the constraints and costs of outdated payment methods like cash, checks, and credit cards. Bank-to-bank transactions are our future – and we’re confident they’re the future of payments as well. 

GoCardless was founded in 2011 and now serves over 100,000 customers in 30 markets, including Europe, the UK, North America, Australia, and New Zealand. Some of our customers are also our partners, especially those in accounting and CRM software, which helps us extend our reach and offerings.

Creating value at every stage of the journey

In customer success, our team’s purpose is simple: make it easy for customers to get value from each stage of their journey with our product, GoCardless. This aligns with many companies’ customer success promises, but at GoCardless, we’ve taken it a step further by monetizing this promise. 

We’ve developed success packages that don’t just support customer retention but also drive revenue.

Our customer promise is about delivering value consistently, ensuring that each stage in the customer lifecycle provides benefits and insights. This goal underpins our approach to success packages, which I’ll explore further in the next section. 

These packages have enabled us to put a monetary value on customer success, adding another dimension to the value we provide to our customers.

In the following sections, I’ll break down how we built and monetized these success packages, turning a traditionally supportive function into a strategic revenue driver.

How customer success can drive revenue [Video]
At the Customer Success Festival London, we caught up with Franca-Sofia Fehrenbach, Head of Customer Success at PlanRadar, for an in-depth chat on turning customer love into cold hard cash. We dive into how sales, marketing, and success need to be joined at the hip to truly drive account expansion.
Customer Success CollectiveGrace Gupta