Evolving from professional services to scalable customer success

Despite the ever-growing foothold of customer success within the SaaS industry, an estimated 37% of SaaS companies still don’t have a customer success strategy, let alone a team dedicated team to it.

While many of my peers have decades-long careers in customer success, it's worth noting that CS is still a relatively young field compared to traditional professions.

Nevertheless, the whole world has taken a turn towards a subscription-based economy of services and products, and this trend will only grow in strength and momentum in the coming years.

Due to the nature of the subscription model, customer relationships and loyalty will become vital to business sustainability. The result? Customer success will become the cornerstone of healthy companies.

The shift from reactive to proactive

It's worth noting that while many CS teams have recently been downsized or even eliminated, this trend will shift. In time, CS will be as vital to a company's success as marketing or sales.

That being said, it's not as if companies that don't integrate customer success concepts or best practices don't care about their customers at all. Most do care about their customers, wanting them to advocate for their products and return to make additional purchases.

It's no secret that brand value and good customer relationships go hand in hand and need to be nurtured, but these companies' approaches and mindsets are different. They are usually more reactive, more service-oriented, and rely heavily on individuals to manage customer relationships.

So, with this in mind, how do we move from here to a more proactive, outcome-oriented, and data-driven approach?

Change your company mindset

Change is always a complex process, often dreaded but nearly always necessary. As for the aforementioned 37% of SaaS companies without a customer success strategy, they’ll have to adapt if they want to succeed. However, this doesn’t mean they need to immediately establish a dedicated CS team with CSMs. There are several steps to take before that should even be considered.

The first step is to gradually upgrade your company mindset when it comes to customer relationships. The success of your customer needs to become a top concern for management, and it’s essential to guide everyone in the right direction. And when we talk about success here, we’re referring to achieving specific outcomes agreed upon upfront. This is a key concept to highlight.

Everyone thinks they’re working to ensure their customers’ success until they realize that the very definition of success was never clearly agreed upon between them and their customers.

Addressing this gap can already be a significant hurdle, especially in organizations with entrenched structures that have seen little changes in the past years and strong leadership at the helm. Initiating a shift that will ultimately challenge established operational processes is no small feat.

Start by taking an honest look at where you stand. Assess how much everyone truly cares about your customer’s success. There’s likely already some awareness internally, and it’s safe to assume that a degree of “customer care” exists.

However, it may still fall short of what you want to achieve. Sure, we want our customers to be reasonably happy and to buy more from us, but can you be certain they remain with you for reasons other than the inconvenience of switching to a competitor?

Focusing on success will eventually pivot your customers’ loyalty from one of convenience to one of conviction. And this, although sometimes hard to measure, is going to have a tremendous positive impact on many levels.

Steps toward change

Changing an organization’s mindset can be a monumental task. As with any large undertaking, breaking it into smaller pieces makes it more manageable.

One of the first steps you can take is to introduce new KPIs, such as customer satisfaction or customer engagement. To measure is to know. Start small, and keep improving. Soon, you’ll be ready to work with more complex metrics such as customer health scoring.

You also have to start introducing success criteria with some of your customers (not all of them at once, of course). Start with a subset that would benefit most from this approach. Doing so will also generate additional awareness. Surprisingly, we rarely ask ourselves, “Why do our customers use our product?” or “What value do they derive from it?” Addressing these questions will yield valuable insights for both your team and your customers.

Ultimately, success needs to be at the center of everything, in your sales pitch, during onboarding, and even while responding to support tickets. Building internal awareness of this is the first major step.

And, as always, start small. Begin with your team. Promote the concept internally, encourage everyone to talk about it, excite your customers about it, and enjoy the snowball effect.

The beauty of these small steps is that they don’t require new hires or significant investments of time, but their impact can be massive.

Building stakeholder buy-in

These small successes will help you secure buy-in from key stakeholders, particularly your CFO and CEO. They are likely to perceive any changes that don’t directly impact the top line as costs. Convince them of the positive impact your changes are having before starting any cost-related conversations.

Once the data starts coming in and the new mindset begins to settle, it’s time to move to step two: shifting from a reactive approach to a proactive one. Operational services excel at planning, forecasting, and adapting but often struggle with proactivity.

Again, start small. Make minor changes, such as ensuring a good flow of information to your customers. We know we work hard behind the scenes to resolve tickets, upgrade features, or advocate for customer improvements internally – but customers don’t see this.

Keep them informed. Tell them what you’ve been working on without waiting for them to ask for updates. Step one of being proactive is that simple: provide feedback without being prompted.

Preparing for investment

As you lay the groundwork, a bigger challenge awaits. At some point, investment will be necessary. Whether it’s creating a team of customer success managers, purchasing a CS platform, or building a community, some form of investment will be needed to reach the next level.

So far, you’ve been focusing on mindset and gathering data. Now, it’s time to use that to carefully plan the next move.

As mentioned earlier, anything that doesn’t contribute to the top line will be seen as a cost, so it’s critical to demonstrate the value of what you’re building. This is not a straightforward task, and the debate within the CS community continues over what contributions CSM teams should make.

Should they be commercially involved? What should their KPIs be? Should they own churn rates, CSQLs, or GRR? The answer often depends on your company and its specific situation.

Nevertheless, you may have the freedom to choose your own KPIs and targets. Choose wisely – your metrics must be relevant enough to demonstrate the value of these changes. Here are a few pointers to help you navigate this process:

Customer willingness to pay: 64% of companies are willing to pay more for better support. In a nutshell, your CSMs can be billable, easing financial concerns for your finance team.
Impact on churn and revenue: Implementing a customer success plan can reduce churn by 50% and increase cross-sell leads by 10%. This might be a good selling point for your CEO and sales colleagues.
Widely-used metrics: 94% of companies measuring CSM impact rely on GRR or NRR. While these aren’t perfect indicators, they may be metrics you’ll be pushed to adopt regardless, better be prepared.

Driving long-term success

Once you reach this stage, you should already have a good understanding of how to approach your customers.

You’ve worked with success plans, gathered data on outcomes, and gained experience in what works. Your team is proactive in their customer interactions, and your CSAT scores reflect this.

Finally, you’ve taken ownership of meaningful company KPIs, and your C-suite is convinced of your positive impact. If you’ve ticked all these boxes, congratulations – you’re off to an excellent start!

Taking care of your customers’ success ensures your company’s success—quite literally. While challenging the status quo is never easy, the potential impact is immense. If you’re ready to bet on your skills to bring success to your customers, you’re more than capable of doing the same for your company.