Earlier this week, I spoke to Dave Rosenberg for his CNET Blog ‘Customer success’ VP role: To reduce SaaS churn.
At Totango, we care deeply about customer engagement and customer success. We agree with Dave that with SaaS “it might make just as much sense to focus on retaining (and garnering new revenue from) current customers as it would be to focus on gaining new customers”.
For companies with a zero-touch or low-touch sales model, customer engagement management is about much more than ensuring customer satisfaction. I wrote about that previously in my blog 4 Tips to Increase B2B Sales for example. It doesn’t matter who owns the customer engagement function and many modern sales leaders understand and implement customer success programs. Some B2B sales leaders have split their team into hunters and farmers, with the latter focused on customer success. Others now call themselves “Chief Revenue Officer” (as discussed in a recent blog by Phil Hernandez).
Still, the trend to assign a dedicated executive to manage customer engagement, is promising. Sometimes, you have to put your money (people) where your mouth is.
Some companies which already have a VP Customer Success include: ReputationDefender, Intacct (VP Sales and Customer Success), HubSpot, Salesforce.com, Sendori, Computer Associates, SAP, Marketo, InsideView, Zuberance, Success Factors, Zuora, JIVE Software, and Yammer (VP Customer Engagement).
On this blog, we plan to continue to monitor this trend.
For now, some appointments we have seen in recent months are below.
New VP Customer Success Appointments
Rudy Reyes, VP Customer Success at Alcove9
- On October 17, 2011 Alcove9 appoints Rudy Reyes, Vice President of Customer Success.
- On October 3, 2011 Xignite appoints Cameron Karr as VP Customer Success.
- On September 14, 2011 Jump Technologies announced the appointment of Adam Jacobs as Vice President of Customer Success.
- On August 23, 2011 AtHoc appointed Sanjay Saini as its vice president of global operations and customer success.
- On August 2, 2011 Zenprise Inc. announced it has named Christopher Doell as vice president, customer success.
Congratulations to all!
If you know about a recent Customer Success appointment
please e-mail me at gnirpaz [at] totango [com]
What Do Customer Success Managers Need? | Best Customer Success Blog | Trends & Articles for Enterprise Growth says:
[…] Management Initiative is revealing that while many SaaS/Cloud companies are hiring individual Customer Success Managers, or even establishing entire teams of them, there is a wide range in the understanding the role. […]
Do you Distinguish Your Sales to Hunters and Farmers? | Best Customer Success Blog | Trends & Articles for Enterprise Growth says:
[…] those roles and have each of them focus on their own specialties. As discussed in my post: “Does your SaaS Business have a VP Customer Success?“, Some B2B sales leaders have the farmers focused on customer success. Others now call […]
Subscriber says:
Indeed, customer experience is the top most priority . Here’s a article which talk about the Seven customer retention tips for subscription-based e-commerce businesses https://goo.gl/WuyZaa
What is the Connection between Lifecycle Marketing and Automated Nurturing? says:
[…] also talked in the past about the necessity of the Customer Success role in the SaaS industry new generation […]
CaitlinRoberson says:
Guy, I agree that customer satisfaction is yesterday’s measurement. Customer retention is the new currency for growth and the key to long term profitability. Check out these simple strategies for customer success: http://www.xactlycorp.com/media/2011/12/recap-simple-strategies-for-customer-success-in-2012-6-of-6/
Caitlin Roberson says:
Guy, I agree that customer satisfaction is yesterday’s measurement. Customer retention is the new currency for growth and the key to long term profitability. Check out these simple strategies for customer success: http://www.xactlycorp.com/media/2011/12/recap-simple-strategies-for-customer-success-in-2012-6-of-6/
Caitlin Roberson says:
Guy, I agree that customer satisfaction is yesterday’s measurement. Customer retention is the new currency for growth and the key to long term profitability. Check out these simple strategies for customer success: http://www.xactlycorp.com/media/2011/12/recap-simple-strategies-for-customer-success-in-2012-6-of-6/
What Do Customer Success Managers Need? says:
[…] Management Initiative is revealing that while many SaaS/Cloud companies are hiring individual Customer Success Managers, or even establishing entire teams of them, there is a wide range in the understanding the role. […]
Do you Distinguish Your Sales to Hunters and Farmers? says:
[…] those roles and have each of them focus on their own specialties. As discussed in my post: “Does your SaaS Business have a VP Customer Success?“, Some B2B sales leaders have the farmers focused on customer success. Others now call […]
3 Outright Strategies to Improve SaaS Customer Success says:
[…] struck me most about Outright is it’s commitment to customer success. Making existing customers successful is the highest priority for the company. In my blog on […]
VP Customer Success at Alcove9: On Boarding SaaS Customers says:
[…] I had an opportunity to speak to Rudy Reyes, the newly appointed VP of Customer Success at Alcove9. Alcove9 is a young company with an open source search tool that looks into a […]
Saas It | Computer Blog | Computer Tips and Tricks | Everything you need to know says:
[…] For companies with a zero-touch or low-touch sales model, customer engagement management is about much more than ensuring customer satisfaction. I wrote about that previously in my blog 4 Tips to Increase B2B Sales for example. It doesn’t matter who owns the customer engagement function and many modern sales leaders understand and implement customer success programs. Some B2B sales leaders have split their team into hunters and farmers, with the latter focused on customer success. Others now call themselves ‘Chief Revenue Officer’ (as discussed in a recent blog by Phil Hernandez). Read more on Saas It […]