Customer education professionals often find themselves operating in a small team that would ideally be bigger. Some even operate as a team of one. If that’s you, you’re not alone! More importantly, you can still produce quality content and make a real difference for your customers!  However, you’ll soon encounter the next challenge: how to scale your customer education program. If you’re good at your role, and your work attracts the attention of other teams, your output will be in demand. This is good, but it requires a smart approach. You won’t succeed simply by working twice as hard; i ..read more

Think fast – what’s the first thing that pops into your head when I say digital customer success? I’m willing to bet that you just conjured images of automated customer-facing communications. Regardless of any positive, negative, or indifferent emotions the term triggers for you, it’s likely where your thoughts jumped to first. That’s an absolutely fair and logical thought pattern. Digital CS is most often focused in exactly that direction, automating messaging that helps you more effectively and efficiently communicate with your customers.  But right now, I want to turn instead to one o ..read more

In early 2024, ChurnZero and SuccessCOACHING launched a confidential survey asking customer success managers (CSMs) to give in-depth insights on their roles and how they feel supported on a daily basis. This report was geared to help CS leaders understand what their teams are struggling with, and how to help CSMs succeed.  You can view the 2024 CSM Confidential Report and its findings here. I wanted to give my perspective on this report. I have been in customer success since 2018 and have seen the profession mature and evolve in a relatively short amount of time. What was once a more rea ..read more

Does your customer success team own and drive expansion revenue? You should, because upsell and cross-sell are key drivers of the sustainable  growth your company needs, and yet only 43% of CS teams do. What’s holding customer success back on driving expansion? After all, CS has the customer relationships and insights to drive expansion thoughtfully, the health scores and product usage data to spot opportunities, the best understanding of customer needs, and the customer trust earned through coaching and partnership. All too frequently, says HelloCCO Rod Cherkas, it comes down to th ..read more

As SaaS products become more powerful and sophisticated, customer education grows ever more essential to your company’s success. The more complex your product, the more skills your customers need, and they expect the tools to learn them. If you’re not already providing a customer education program, this is the time to start, says Darren O’Connor, director of client advocacy at Absorb Software. Recently, Darren hosted a ChurnZero webinar on how to create a program that boosts product usage and adoption, builds customer loyalty, streamlines support requests, and unlocks new revenue streams ..read more

Customer education is essential for the success of your product. If your customers don’t understand your product, they will not use it. However, not all companies have roles dedicated to customer education, and when customer education does become a priority, it can feel overwhelming to build a customer education program from scratch.   It doesn’t have to be. Setting up a customer education program isn’t simple, but it doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing initiative. It can be gradual, and at any step of the way, it makes a big difference in your customer’s learning journey.  1 ..read more

I find that saying the term “digital customer success” in our industry almost always garners one of two responses from CS professionals. And that response is immediately visible in their eyes; either their eyes roll (yikes!) or their eyes light up. No surprise, the eyes lighting up is the response I’m hoping for – mostly because that’s how talking about it makes me feel. On the other hand, if this term makes you feel like rolling your eyes, I often find that’s the case for folks who have a rather narrow view of what “digital CS” actually means – for those who really just hear it as “customer ..read more

Most CSMs are struggling to hit their goals this year, according to new research. In a poll of CSMs conducted by ChurnZero and SuccessCOACHING, only 41% of CSMs said they could achieve their goals without working extra hours on evenings or weekends, and just 40% said their goals are realistic. Given the last two years of RIFs and pre-emptive job moves, and higher workloads for the CSMs who’ve stayed in place, that’s not entirely surprising. Yet, the data suggests, there’s something else at play: a lack of operational leadership experience within our survey respondents’ teams. We asked CSMs to ..read more

“You need to be proactive, not reactive.” “Our team needs to do more with less.” “We need to make things more scalable.” As a CSM, you hear these truths all the time, says customer success coach Ryan Johansen—and they never get easier to hear. After all, it’s not like you don’t want to talk to your customers more often. What’s hurting your customer success outreach is that you manage a lot of customers, some are noisier than others, and you have limited time. The bottom line, though, is that failing to talk to customers regularly creates an uphill battle. Time flies, accounts fall through the ..read more

The 2024 B2B SaaS Benchmarking Survey by SaaS Capital is the most comprehensive and up-to-date source of its kind for SaaS and customer success leaders who want to know where they stand compared to peers and competitors. Last month, ChurnZero CEO You Mon Tsang and SaaS Capital managing director Rob Belcher dug into the findings of the latest survey—now in its 13th year—to unpack its data and what it means for CS teams. You can watch the webinar in full here, or scroll on to discover four essential insights from this year’s survey. This year, the SaaS industry faces a unique set of trends: th ..read more