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

Thursday February 23, 2012





Through the Lens

Does Your Company Have a Customer Success Management Group?

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

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    Mikael Blaisdell & Associates Inc. have been conducting specific research projects for a variety of clients for all of the company’s history.  In every Assessment engagement, we include carefully designed conversations with the client’s customers.  One of our first major commissioned research projects was in the mid-1980’s, when we were asked to conduct an extensive study of the community built around a particular computer operating system, analyzing the needs, interests and motivations of its business users, VARs, ISVs, hardware manufacturers and distributors.  Our tracking and analysis of the contact center management technology sector has been continual from its inception.  As new players arrive, and existing ones merge or depart, keeping up to date with what is technologically possible and authentically available is a key aspect of our practice.

    A New Focus

    microscope 02 ResearchIn the spring of 2006, we recognized that the advent of what has come to be known as the Software As A Service business model represented a tectonic shift in the high technology industry.  Microsoft’s Bill Gates described the change as a tsunami, a tidal wave that had the potential to sweep away old fundamental concepts and approaches to software.  (If anything, his perception was an understatement.)  Since then, we have refocused our ongoing research and analysis program on the SaaS ecosystem, zeroing in on the needs of the ISV sector as it continues to develop.

    Contact Center Management Technology

    There have been a number of significant transitions in the CCTECH community since the early days of its beginning, and we are now entering another one.  By January of 2008, a number of software companies were beginning to offer technologies for the customer contact center market that were SaaS-based.  We conducted a specific evaluation to determine the status of the change in this sector, with particular attention to the availability of enabling technologies for the authentic operation of a contact center on a P&L basis.

    The SaaS & Support Project

    TSSP print 300x150 ResearchCustomer acquisition is only the beginning of success in the on-demand world.  Winning requires customer retention and increasing profitability — and the key to both is found in mastering Customer Retention.  The purpose of The SaaS & Support Project was to begin to build a foundation of knowledge about the best practices of Service & Support in the on-demand sector, and then to use that insight and data to design the future of the profession of customer relationship management  Click here for more information about The SaaS & Support Project.

    The Redefinition of Customer Support

    TRCS print V2 SM 300x134 ResearchMikael Blaisdell & Associates have been at the forefront of advocating a complete redefinition of the profession, role and practice of Customer Support since the late 1980′s.  In published articles in the technology industry trade press and in delivering  professional conference presentations, the case for the necessity of change has been consistently made.  Break/Fix support offers no real economic value to either company or customer; it never has, and never will.  Unfortunately, the traditional product-centric perpetual-license business model of the software industry has largely been resistant to the idea that Support could play a strategic corporate role.  The emergence of the SaaS/Cloud business model, however, has opened the door for something new.

    The coming shift in the profession of Support will be a sea-change, touching every aspect of strategy, process, people and technology.

    Published: August 29, 2009

    Revised: November 3, 2011