The true value in every professional conference or event is found in the opportunity to interact freely with other members of the community, to exchange insights, ideas and especially good questions. This networking is vitally important to the success of individuals and their companies as well — and to the furtherance of the profession itself.
The conversation here at The HotLine Magazine may appear to be mostly one way, from site to reader, but there is much more to it than that. The ideas, concepts and practices here come out of many individual and group interactions at various conferences, events and online discussions. Articles published here are the subject of continuing exchanges in our group networking area hosted on LinkedIn.com.
The Customer Success Management Forum
Founded in early 2009 as The SaaS & Support Forum, the LinkedIn group has since been renamed The Customer Success Management Forum to serve the needs of an emerging and fast-growing new profession of its own. The members are from all over the world, and range from CEOs and CxOs to practicing customer success managers.
For more information about The Customer Success Management Initiative research, or to participate yourself, please click here.
The discussions about SaaS & Support have not gone away, however. The work of The SaaS & Support Project is continuing, exploring the significant changes in the definition and practice of customer support in the SaaS/Cloud era.
To access the Customer Success Management Forum, you will need to have a LinkedIn profile. There is no charge for creating an individual profile, and there are many benefits from having and maintaining one. To reach the Forum, click here, or login to your LinkedIn account and then search the Groups area for “Customer Success Management.” Participation in the CSM Forum is open to all interested professionals.
The Forum
While the online world is available worldwide and around the clock, there is still a lot of value in face to face meetings. The HotLine Magazine is working with a number of technology companies to prepare and present specific events in key local areas. If you are interested in being a part of this effort, please contact Mikael Blaisdell. To receive invitations to specific events, please join The HotLine Magazine at the Basic (free) level, and sign up for either The Customer Success Management List or The SaaS & Support List. Announcements of upcoming events will also be posted in The Customer Success Management Forum on LinkedIn.
Among the topics to be discussed in The Forum events will be the results of the ongoing research into the development of Customer Success Management as a profession and the changes brought to the definition and practice of Customer Support in the SaaS/Cloud era.
About Membership in The HotLine Magazine
Access to The Customer Success Management Forum on LinkedIn
Sign up for The HotLine Magazine‘s Monthly Mailing Lists
To be notified of Forum events and to receive brief monthly news alerts/summaries about research developments for The Customer Success Management Initiative and/or The SaaS & Support Project, please sign up for a free Basic Membership in The HotLine Magazine. (You may unsubscribe at any time if your interests should change at some later date.)
Revised: January 10, 2012









The shape and color of the Cloud formations have a dark tinge out at the farther edges. The market for Software As A Service applications seems headed into a commoditized future. As more and more software companies offer SaaS products, the swelling competition will exert ever-growing pressure on pricing. Sound familiar? It should, for increasing power and availability of choices coupled with decreasing price has been the reality of the PC market for many years. But that dark future is not inevitable for SaaS. Consider the example of a company that still consistently gets premium prices for a premium product family in the midst of the PC sameness. Even better, a company who enjoys continuing levels of customer loyalty its competitors can only helplessly envy. SaaS vendors who want more than subsistence, take note: Who will be the Apple of the SaaS community?
I’ve been a Mac user for nearly 20 years. My iPod handles the music that is a constant companion, and my iPhone goes everywhere with me. (I wish that I had far more than the few shares of APPL in my IRA holdings.) I enjoy my trips to the Apple store, and the thought that maybe there might be cheaper prices to be found elsewhere holds no allure. While I’ve only had to call for Support a bare handful of times over the years, each occasion has been effective and pleasant.
Saying “it just works” is only the beginning part of the reason I keep buying from Apple. There is a consistent experience of delight inherent in the products themselves, in their use, and in interacting with the people of the company that is not accidental; it’s all the result of the company’s relentless insistence on excellence of design and execution. That insistence works for the company as well as the customers.
The single source for all of the product’s components is a key aspect that SaaS vendors wishing to emulate Apple’s success need to recognize. The seamless linkage between my computer, phone and music player wouldn’t be possible if all three came from different vendors and the burden of tying them together was on me. I have no interest in learning about technology, I just want to use it. I realize that Apple doesn’t make all of the components of their products themselves — but I have only one number to call when I have a question. And I almost never need to call that number.


