Totango Blog: Your Guide to Managing the Customer Journey

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What is Customer Health Score?

Customer Health Score takes multiple dimensions of customer data measures and consolidates them into a single representation of green, yellow or red. It is a consolidation all the information the company has about the customer, from all probes, people and systems, past and current.

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True Customer Obsession – I agree with Jeff Bezos

True customer obsession is a key principle that keeps companies relevant, competitive, and growing. Without it, companies stagnate, become irrelevant, decline, and die. I was inspired by Jeff Bezos, Amazon CEO, when reading his 2016 Letter to Amazon Shareholders. In this year’s …

Why We Chose Slack as Zoe’s First Integration

We’re thrilled to introduce Zoe, an intelligent, conversational chatbot available now in Slack, the collaborative work environment, and via email. Slack is making team collaboration effective and fun, which is the reason that we at Totango chose Slack as the …

AI for Customer Success: Introducing Zoe

Back in the ‘90s, we were told that CRM software was the solution to customer centricity. Even just few years ago, Salesforce, undoubtedly the leader of CRM, changed their tagline to Customer Company (which they “borrowed” from IBM by the …

Who’s in customer success?

The focus in growth and attention of customer success within an organization is definitely a very positive trend. Many companies, including very large enterprises, are remodeling their businesses to support customer centric organizational structures. They actively fund, staff and resource …

2016 In Review: A Letter from CEO and Co-Founder Guy Nirpaz

As we look into the future of 2017, it’s a good opportunity to share with you a few moments from 2016 that I’m grateful for. I’m thrilled with the positive response to my book, Farm Don’t Hunt, and how it’s helping …

Announcing the 2017 Customer Success Summit – A Letter from Totango CEO and Cofounder Guy Nirpaz

Dear Customer Success Champions, I’m happy to announce that the 5th Annual Customer Success Summit is coming to downtown San Francisco February 27-28, 2017, at the Marriott Marquis. Since its inception in 2013, the Customer Success Summit has been known for …

The CRM Ecosystem Necessary for Recurring Revenue Businesses

As we hang out at the 13th annual Dreamforce 2016 this week, companies will be talking about all things CRM. For recurring revenue businesses, the CRM ecosystem has definitely changed in the last several years. In the Subscription Economy, customers spend more …

Totango Takes On The Enterprise Market With Strategic Investment & New Chairman

I’m very excited to announce a new round of financing for Totango today, as well as the addition of Eric Benhamou, founder and general partner of Benhamou Global Ventures (BGV) as Totango’s new chairman of the board. Eric is the …

Don’t be the Next Leader in Customer Success to Get Fired

Professionals around the world are often told to “under promise and over deliver,” but it seems that so far in 2016 and in 2015 many customer success leaders chose to ignore that popular advice. Based on Totango’s industry insights from …

Understanding Early Warning Systems for Customer Success

Early warning systems are at the heart of any modern Customer Success platform. An Early Warning System (EWS) is comprised of four different components: sensors, event detection, decision support, and customer engagement. With an EWS, customer success teams can use low-level …

2016 Customer Success Salary Survey & State of the Profession Report

Customer success is no longer a new revenue opportunity, it has become a requirement for any subscription business looking to remain competitive. As new teams are built and programs are scaled, we also see more established teams maturing their practices …

Introducing “Farm Don’t Hunt: The Definitive Guide to Customer Success”

I am very proud to share more on the publication of my new book, Farm Don’t Hunt: The Definitive Guide to Customer Success. I’ve written this book as a very practical guide to business and team leaders who deal with …

The Business of Customer Success

Customer Success is a brand new profession. Its origin is based on the need for subscription and lifetime focused business to retain and grow their existing customers (customer base). I would like to offer a business perspective to organizations and …

Customer Success Predictions for 2015

2014 has come to an end and it’s amazing to look back and see the phenomenal growth we experienced in the customer success industry last year. Working with hundreds of SaaS companies, I personally saw customer success elevated as a …

Prix-fixe no more: Why à la carte is the future of software delivery

Recently I wrote an article about à la carte software delivery for VentureBeat , I’m reposting here: Facebook users have been vocal about Messenger, an app now required in addition to the social network’s main mobile application to send messages. What …

It’s Time to Start Monitoring Customer Health

Do you know the health status of each of your customers? How confident are you that your “green accounts” are actually healthy and happy? Do you know when a customer needs help (and why) so you can proactively engage with …

Where Do Customer Success Teams Belong?

Recently I was interviewed by Tom Murphy for an article about Customer Success organizations and I’d like to repost my answer for you here. The question he posed to leaders of Customer Success software companies was: Should a customer success team be part of the …

Box’s S-1: The Customer Success Perspective

Since Box filed its S-1, there has been a lot of debate online about the health and viability of its business. Last week, Tien Tzuo of Zuora penned a strong defense of Box’s founder Aaron Levie, which I think is …

Zuora’s Customer Success Blueprint

One of the most engaging sessions at the Customer Success Summit 2014 was given by Tien Tzuo, founder and CEO of Zuora (the subscription billing company). Tien brilliantly described the process Zuora went through as a company by identifying customer …

6 Customer Success Secrets

In the 2nd annual customer success summit last month in San Francisco, I’ve introduced the Customer Success Manifesto. If you are familiar with the agile software development manifesto will see a similar presentation style (visuals are updated to 2014 though). The Customer Success …

Totango Lands $15.5 Million to Empower Customer Success Officers with the ‘Truth’

I have some exciting news to share with you. Today we’re announcing a major milestone for Totango. We’ve just completed a series B round of financing of $15.5M led by Canvas and InterWest with participation from our existing investors. You …

We’re hiring: Technical Customer Support Representative

Have you ever kicked yourself because you did not take that job at that start-up that became the next big thing? Well I think that opportunity is presenting itself again. Come aboard to help our customers with their technical and …

Guest blog: A KPI Dashboard for early stage SaaS startups

Note from Guy Nirpaz, Totango CEO: Helping SaaS companies figure out the key metrics that matter is something we at Totango consider part of our mission. Over the last couple of years, I’ve had the pleasure of getting to know …

Why I think the “Internet of Customers” resonates better than Benioff’s previous “Customer Company”

The holy grail of the “internet of customers” is knowing which customer needs your attention and why. Back in March during Salesforce’s Customer Company Tour, I had posted that Marc Benioff got it wrong, it’s not a customer company. This week,…

Join us at the Customer Lounge and DreamCharge Station at Dreamforce 2013

We are so excited to announce the Customer Lounge and DreamCharge Station at Dreamforce this year! We are joined by other pro-customer companies, FinancialForce, KnowledgeTree, and Avangate, to deliver a truly customer-focused experience. What can you expect? complimentary hor d’oeuvres, coffee/tea, wifi,…

Top 6 Customer Success books every CSM should read

In a recent online customer success discussion, a CSM team manager was interested in the top thought-provoking reads out there for customer success. Here’s a roundup of the Top 6 picks that are a must-read for any customer-focused organization (and …

Should there be a divide between proactive and reactive approaches with your customers?

In this recent article by Jason Lemkin he discusses that scaling your customer success team in $2 million ARR batches is the way to go. He illustrates how you can switchover from a reactive to proactive approach based on the …

Totango: Newly released usage stream visualization feature

Check out this new usage stream visualization we’ve just released today. Now it’s very easy to simply scan you users and customers and see immediately how they’re using your app, such as last module used and activities performed. This new …

Public Service Announcement: Totango Critical Functions Temporarily Disabled

Edit: 8/23/13 3:19pm PT Post Mortem Analysis What happened? We had database hiccups over the weekend prior to a major sub-system upgrade. This resulted in inaccurate data reporting of several sub-systems that influenced critical system functionalities. In more detail: We …

Welcoming Kaiser!

Today, I’m happy to announce a new significant addition to the Totango management team. Kaiser Mulla-Feroze has joined Totango as Chief Marketing Officer. Kaiser joins our team after spending the last 12 years at Salesforce.com. Kaiser joined Salesforce around the …

Keys to the Customer Kingdom (a joint webinar with Marketo)

The explosion of cloud, social, and mobile has given the buyer an abundance of information, shifting the balance of power. Customers today learn about a product long before opening their wallet to buy. This paradigm shift requires a change in how …

Jeff Bezos is the new and improved Steve Jobs

Where Steve Jobs was fanatical about product design, Jeff Bezos, Founder and CEO of Amazon, is fanatical about customer experience. I was really inspired by Jeff’s recent letter to his shareholders. He stresses more than ever before that business should …

They’ve got it wrong, it’s not “Customer Company”

Salesforce has got it wrong, there’s a reason why most companies are not customer centric yet (not that they don’t know they need to be). Tomorrow, Marc Benioff is streaming a live broadcast from Boston on “How to become a customer …

Becoming a customer company…wait, that’s not news!

In his recent keynote, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff talked about “Becoming a customer company”. His message resonates with Totango’s beliefs on customer centricity and our driving force for organizing the Customer Success Summit. For years now, we’ve all heard “The …

8 easy techniques to convert more customers today

Before we get started here are a few facts: A boost to your conversion rates will have a multiplied effect on your final profit. This means that even a small increase in conversion rates can mean the difference between small …

2012 Looking Back: Totango, a year of immense growth

Now that we’re certain the world hasn’t ended…happy holidays from Totango! It’s been quite a year for us. We finally came out from beta towards the end of January and in September, Forbes reported on our amazing growth: 100 customers and …

Engaged Employees Do The Right Thing Because It’s The Right Thing To Do

I love the title and content of this great blog post. “Europcar focused on creating a customer-centric culture because the company can’t script every interaction. Therefore employees need to be able to make the right judgment calls on their own …

How Dropbox messed up conversion rates but had a secret weapon

Many people are intrigued as to what makes a software product or service go viral and get total control of its market, while other similar competitors are left with nothing but the scraps. In this article I will tell you …

SaaS University Boston Presentation: Powering the Customer Era

For your convenience, please find below my presentation from SaaS University in Boston this year. From the level of discussion and the attendance, it’s clear that the SaaS market matures at rapid pace. Hard to believe how many new Customer …