“Customer success [needs to understand] the value that a customer is getting, [what is] driving that value, and then ultimately driving growth and having a hand in what the revenue picture looks like for your company long-term.” – Chris Dishman, Senior Vice President of Customer Success, Totango + Catalyst
When the term “customer success” was first coined in the early 2000s, the role wasn’t a clearly-defined concept; it was simply a combination of reactive motions that individuals in roles like customer support or service saw added to their task lists.
Customer complaint? Question? Issue? Onboarding trouble? Reaching their usage limits? Send it to the “Success” team and move on with your day.
Luckily, as an industry and as a community, customer success (CS) has come a long way and most SaaS businesses realize the importance of proactive customer engagement and driving customer outcomes.
Now the profession is changing once more: No longer solely about customer engagement, CS teams are increasingly pushed to drive revenue growth.
Totango + Catalyst’s Senior Vice President of Customer Success Chris Dishman recently joined The Revenue Strategy Podcast for an in-depth conversation about the winding evolution that customer success is making and what the future holds. He shares:
- How understanding your customer’s “why” drives revenue protection and growth
- Why NPS is an outdated metric for customer success—and what CS teams should be prioritizing instead
- How a single source of truth can bolster cross-functional alignment and maximize scale
Here are some highlights from the discussion and check out the full podcast to hear all of Chris’s hot takes and expert insights on the current and future state of CS.
Customer success is not customer satisfaction
At the end of the day, customer success is in the business of helping customers or clients achieve their most desired outcomes. Done well, CS generates not just customer retention but expansion and growth opportunities.
Chris’ hot take: CS is not in the business of making customers happy; CS is in the business of helping to make them successful. CS teams must have a specific and transparent understanding of customers’ business objectives and a process for benchmarking, measuring, and tracking the success in achieving those objectives.
“The customer bought your product for a reason; do you understand what that is? Do you understand what the measure of the KPIs are that they’re trying to achieve and grow to or adjust to?” Chris asked. “The CSM is responsible for that, but then through that process, that should ultimately result in growth protection of that revenue and then growth of the revenue as well.”
NPS can not be the security measure for customer success
In the early days of customer success, net promoter score (NPS) was considered a primary measurement for determining the effectiveness of customer success. However, as the discipline has evolved, NPS, which is often retro-looking, is one piece of data within the overall health of your business and likely not the optimal metric for forecasting revenue growth.
What Chris suggests CS teams measure instead: Focus on value attainment, business outcomes, and strategic priorities, and then use those high quality inputs to predict and drive revenue growth from the customer base with a higher degree of confidence.
“Outcome attainment or value attainment is a North Star for customer success because it can prove value. So then when you come to a renewal discussion, it’s a non-discussion. It’s a non-issue. They’re going to renew because you can show them the value or the ROI of the product that you have and then it’s just a matter of how much more and how much longer they want to continue to get that value,” Chris explained. “Having truly tangible, value-based outcomes that you’re measuring and scoring your customers against and tracking through is the key measurement from my standpoint on customer success.”
A single source of truth makes or breaks cross-functional alignment
Cross-functional collaboration between sales, marketing, product, and CS teams is crucial to supporting the customer journey – from pipeline generation to expansion and retention. Not surprisingly, this is easier said than done, and it requires software as much as company mindset and culture to make it happen.
Chris’ quick tip: Using a customer success software like Totango + Catalyst that enables exceptional cross-functional collaboration with visibility around key metrics at all stages of the relationship—from retention to adoption through renewal and advocacy—thereby, creating a single source of truth for all teams and supporting a strategy that underpins the complete customer journey.
“We’ve got a platform that is specifically designed to help support the technology and infrastructure and alignment of those teams post-sale that help you not just understand and identify where opportunities are, but also how you tap that market and how you help evolve and grow in a way that scales,” he said. “When you can get everybody aligned and in sync on a single source of truth then you can create some significant efficiencies of scale there.”
Driving value and predictable revenue growth is the future of CS
As one of the industry’s most acknowledged leaders in customer success, Chris highlights that one of the most important aspects of being a valuable customer success leader and team member is being an exceptional partner to your customers and your cross-functional partners. Gaining a deep understanding of customers’ needs, business opportunities and the expertise of your internal partners is invaluable. This is how businesses create and differentiate a total customer experience that stands out from others.
To hear more insights from Chris on the evolution of customer success and building an effective CS team, listen to his full conversation on The Revenue Strategy Podcast. You can also learn more about how Totango + Catalyst can help your team create your source of truth for growing and expanding revenue.
