Every customer success leader I know is being asked to do more with less. I could go on and on about the macroeconomic factors, the cycle of overhiring and layoffs, and the “new normal” for spending justification that’s causing this, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll just focus on that reality. Being asked to do more with less has turned the concept of digital customer success from a nice-to-have to a must-have. Full stop. It’s no longer a fancy thing, years out on the roadmap, that only highly mature CS organizations are good at. Utilizing technology to automate is now a necessity of an effective c ..read more

This is a guest post by Todd Busler, CEO of Champify.  When companies think about investing in their customer base, they are usually thinking about driving product adoption, reducing churn, or even delivering expansion revenue.  Rarely are teams thinking about the impact on new logo pipeline. This is a missed opportunity.   TrustRadius found that 72% of buyers use their past experiences to inform their buying decisions. Customer success is one of the most impactful teams on the post-sale experience. At Champify, we wanted to understand how previous experience impacted conv ..read more

AI is changing just about everything within the SaaS and technology space. What was once time-consuming and tedious is becoming streamlined and automated, with customer success teams better able to manage their customers proactively.  It’s easier than ever before to map out effective customer journeys with automated milestones and tasks. CSMs can keep better track of customer health and act on potential escalations thanks to the power of AI. And let’s not forget that sending out highly detailed recap emails after customer calls has never been easier.  AI is here to stay and it will ..read more

It’s an exciting time to be in customer success. New technologies, best practices, and strategies, combined with an industry-wide drive for sustainable, profitable growth, have made CS teams the revenue-building stars of every SaaS organization. On the other hand, economic headwinds continue to constrain CS budgets and headcounts. Every investment dollar is harder to obtain, and CS leaders and their teams face more pressure than ever to deliver results. “2024 will continue to see the chief customer officer move into the leadership phase,” predicts ChurnZero CEO and co-founder You Mon Tsang ..read more

Goodbye, growth at all costs. Hello, efficiency, profitability, and getting the most from the resources you have. While a rollercoaster year for SaaS, 2023 saw customer success teams held the line, set new standards and best practices, and evolve CS into a discipline more sophisticated and significant than ever. We’re proud to have played a supporting role in their success. “It was a tough macro year for B2B companies,” says our CEO and co-founder You Mon Tsang, “but ChurnZero managed milestones like first-to-market product innovations, numerous awards, industry analyst accolades, and new par ..read more

Designing a successful post-sale strategy requires choices, says CXology’s Tim Conder. Without making those choices upfront, you’ll find it hard to create a good customer experience and scale it, and you’ll easily fall into the chaotic trap of “doing what it takes”. To make the right choices, however, you need a deep understanding of what your customers need and expect from you. In our webinar, Navigating post-sale chaos: Strategic customer success, Tim outlined a valuable exercise for identifying those customer needs quickly, and how to fulfil them in the “messy middle” of the customer journ ..read more

Barbershops are as American as baseball and apple pie. It’s also a line of business that hasn’t changed much in decades, observed Dave Salvant when he co-founded Squire.  As a young man growing up in Brooklyn, NY, he would do odd jobs at a hair salon run by his aunt. As with any small business, he noticed she often had her hands full juggling duties. One minute she was styling hair; the next, she was answering the phone from customers calling to schedule a haircut.   “Every few minutes she would have to pick up the phone and write in the appointments, and it really disrupted th ..read more

From living and breathing innovation, to questioning the status quo, to relentlessly pursuing customer value and breakthrough results, it takes a lot to become a ChurnHero Award winner. This year, five spectacular customer success teams have joined the list. Each winning team has achieved remarkable results in one of five categories—onboarding, adoption, renewals and expansion, advocacy, and innovation—using smart, digital-first strategies powered by their ChurnZero customer success software. For the fourth year running, we’re delighted to congratulate our churn-fighting, customer-delighting ..read more

Artificial intelligence (AI) has long sparked the human imagination, often in the form of science fiction. Movies about AI becoming sentient and moving to destroy its human makers are plentiful, and mostly follow a familiar storytelling format in which the humans fight back and win. Yet when OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, released its large language model (LLM) to the public, the tone changed. Suddenly, the rise of AI seemed to be more science than fiction, leading to a vigorous debate as to whether or not technology will replace human labor.  At our most recent BIG RYG conference ..read more

ROI is no longer the deciding factor in a customer’s decision to renew. Companies today care more about cash flow and cost efficiency. This tightened focus makes presenting price increases to customers all the trickier, even when they see the product’s value. To get renewals in the door, CSMs need to change their approach, says Adil Dittmer, head of customer success at Testbox. Adil brings a unique perspective on renewals as the former director of customer success at Tropic, where he helped finance, IT, and procurement teams design purchasing workflows for more than 20,000 software purchases ..read more