Talking Customer Success in Seattle: Emerging Themes & Challenges
It’s great to be back at in-person events! The ERAS (Expansion, Retention, Adoption, Scale) Roadshow hosted by Gainsight on March 22 in Seattle led to an informative, energizing morning with about 35 customer success leaders.
IcebergIQ CEO Natasha Narayan shared her thoughts along with Ross Fulton, CEO of Valuize, John Thackston, CEO of SOAR Performance, and Todd White, VP of Sales at GUIDEcx, on a panel hosted by Gainsight’s Stephanie Lee, Director of Strategy, PX.
Discussion topics and questions raised by participants included:
Solving for the right skill set. As companies restructure, there is a need for CSMs to become more commercially oriented and technically proficient. The CSM role is also becoming fused with the TAM (Technical Account Manager) role. How can companies create the right skill set to support their customers?
Targeting talent. Participants talked about the challenge of posting a Customer Success role and receiving candidates with experience that may not fit the industry, the company stage, or the product type. How can companies zero in on top talent to find the skill set that meets their needs?
Efficiency opportunities. How can companies help customers self-serve in order to free up CSMs for more value-add activities? Participants talked about the role of community platforms as a valuable resource. Also, technical features like federated search can facilitate self-service across the knowledge base and the LMS training system.
Monetizing Customer Success. Providing professional services as a paid offering is getting traction these days. It creates a new profit center for the org. It can also help adoption by giving customers access to dedicated CSMs. Will this trend continue?
Proving value. CSMs are feeling pressure from customers to show greater proof of value. At the same time, SaaS companies are taking a close look at their CS teams to ensure that activities lead to desired outcomes: adoption, retention, and expansion.
Churn Research Findings
Based on IcebergIQ research and what we hear from clients, Natasha made three recommendations for what mid-market and strategic clients are looking for in customer support:
Executive relationships, i.e., multi-threaded relationships with the vendor.
Shared Slack channels with the vendor, providing a place for communication and problem-solving. Customers expect CSMs to be responsive over Slack.
Opportunity to connect with peers, either industry peers or customers with similar characteristics.
Natasha also noted that IcebergIQ is finding that companies tend to accept a notice of churn, rather than trying for a downsell. Is there room to right-size a partnership rather than lose the customer altogether? Our research will track this theme to see if flexible compromises emerge.
Thanks to Gainsight for being an incredible host for this event. We’ll see you at Pulse!