The Hotline Magazine
Customer Success Management Research
Contact Center Management Technology
The SaaS & Success Project

Thursday February 23, 2012





Page Two

Subscribe / RSS

CSMI Sponsors

Apptegic

 

Totango

 

JBara Software

 

Sandhill

 


 

 

The HotLine Recommends

For Customer Success/Support Professionals

For SaaS/Cloud CEOs / CxOs

For Support/Success Technology Vendors:


Related Materials
Below Are Excerpts From Articles Related To The One You Are Now Viewing

The Redefinition Challenge

More than ten years ago, Ken Shevock, then the VP of Worldwide Support Operations for Cisco, commented “Nobody is really ‘winning’ at Support. We’re all doing the same things to try to keep up, but to get to the next level, we’re going to have to do something new.”  From the beginning of the technology industry, Support / Service — Customer Care — whatever the name  — has been about reacting to problems reported by customers in their use of technology products. If ever we are to win, we need to

More on page 716

The Metrics of Customer Success Management

Before a SaaS/Cloud vendor establishes a Customer Success Management group, it’s vitally important to set the foundation for winning by clearly defining how the performance of that team is to be measured in both of its purposes.  The first purpose of the CSM group is the real benefit experienced by the customers.  The second is the value brought to the vendor.  To the customer, the success metrics that count are increased productivity and profitability.  How great was the improvement in the effe

More on page 2584

Progress Report: The Customer Success Management Initiative — November 2011

In the past six weeks, there has been a lot of participation in the CSMI Research Surveys, both by companies who have established CSM groups and by those who are planning to do so in the near future. Two new Sponsors, CSM technology vendors ToTango and JBara Software, have come on board to join Apptegic and The HotLine Magazine.  Over on LinkedIn, The Customer Success Management Forum has seen a substantial increase in membership and a couple of very interesting discussions. Early Trends and Ind

More on page 3039

The Mission of a Customer Contact Center

The true mission of a customer contact center  is: Profitability . Stop; read it again. The mission of a customer contact center is its contribution to sustainable corporate profitability. Everything about the center needs to be directly connected to that mission. A customer contact center, be it about service or support, is about generating two kinds of profitability - direct profits from immediate conversion of contacts to additional sales, and indirect profits from the retention of customers

More on page 12

The Broken Customer Support Group

There are vital clues and indications in the search strings that bring readers to The HotLine Magazine from around the world every day.  “What is the Definition of Customer Support?”  “What is the profitability of customer retention?” “Define the SaaS support model.”  “Usual customer retention rate for a SaaS company?”  “How to profit from SaaS support?”   All of these are indicators of the same fundamental problem.  Every so often, an inquiry comes along that goes to the heart of the issue and

More on page 789

Print Print
Comment Comment
Email This Post Email This Post
    By Mikael Blaisdell

    In the course of The SaaS & Support Project research, I began asking companies about two related roles that have been popping up in organizational charts of all sized firms for some time:  Customer Retention and Customer Success.  I’ve found that Customer Retention managers tend for the most part to be “firefighter” positions, called in when a customer is known to be at-risk or has actually announced plans to depart.  Customer Success, on the other hand, is something different — with intriguing possibilities.

    Towards a Definition of Customer Success Management

    CSMI 02 Does Your Company Have a Customer Success Management Group?The Customer Success management (CSM) role is a developing one in the SaaS/Cloud sector.  In a few companies, the title has been used for or within the Implementation team, with staff members acting as technical account managers to see that all goes well with the project.

    In other companies, however, the CSM role is much more senior — it’s the actual owner of the ongoing customer relationship.  In such cases, it’s more than an Account Manager role, for it also includes insuring that the customer is getting real economic value from their investment — and that they know it.  The CSM maps out the customer relationship, and is responsible for moving the customer along and up the profitability chain for both parties.

    Does your company have a Customer Success Management team?  If so, what responsibilities/authorities do they have?  What performance metrics are in use? What were the driving factors that brought the group into being?   What do you look for in recruiting CSM staff?

    The Mission of the Customer Success Group

    no churn Does Your Company Have a Customer Success Management Group?In a previous article about the need to change the role of Support to being about much more than just Break/Fix, I suggested that the new mission for the group in the SaaS/Cloud era should be:

    “We directly contribute to making more sustainable profitability faster/better for your company and ours, and we can prove it! “

    THL mailing list2a 203x300 Does Your Company Have a Customer Success Management Group?That’s not  a bad starting place for developing a mission statement for the Customer Success Management team, but it needs to go even further.  If you have a CSM team, I’d like to talk directly to you about it — off the record, or on.  Please use the message form on the contact page, or send me an email directly.  If you’d like to be kept informed about progress on this subject, please join the mailing list and also consider becoming a basic/subscribing member of The HotLine Magazine.  There is no cost for a Basic Membership.

    Recommended Reading for Customer Success Management

    Series Table of Contents