The State of Customer Success 2022
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The first part of our eBook covers 3 predictions for the coming year for Customer Success. We talked with Customer Success leaders from companies such as Oracle, US Bank, Client Success and more!
Do these predictions align with your plans for the coming year?
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Welcome to the State of Customer Success
2022:
In conjunction with Gain Grow Retain, we sat down with some of the most influential Customer Success Leaders out there.
Together, we etched out the State of Customer Success in 2022.
What does it look like? How can you prepare? Is your Customer Success team as prepared as they should be?
This two-part eBook encompasses all the areas of Customer Success set to change this year. Don’t finalize your strategy until you’ve read it!
Where Customer Success Lives within an Organization
We’ve seen the gradual evolution of customer success as a nice-to-have, to an essential aspect of the SaaS company. Now though, where CS sits in an organization needs an overhaul.
The evolution of the customer success engine was in motion pre-pandemic but over the past two years the heft of cs has become more and more apparent.
This year is going to be pivotal for the customer success department; from positioning, to reporting you should be ready for some big changes.
The Digitization of Customer Success
There is a significant shift underway – digital transformation in the customer success space is not just coming - it’s here. You might be on the side of change and ready for the next year and beyond, but you may be one of the many still resisting, and unfortunately for you, that resistance is going to have to end quickly.
There is a myriad of ways that the digitization of customer success is going to not only change the landscape of CS (Customer Success) but is going to improve it.
The Rise of Customer Marketing
Customer marketing is set to become a foundational piece of the customer success pie in 2022. Customers are clients. Satisfied customers on the other hand are so much more; they can be your best salespeople and increase your abilities to upsell, cross-sell, and renew.
Customer success professionals know their customers. They understand them thoroughly and that enables them to build a highly effective customer marketing program. Find out how customer marketing fits in the customer success sphere, and why you should be investing in customer marketing programs now!
Product Led Growth
Focusing primarily on improving the overall user experience through product improvement might sound like it falls to the product team - and of course it does. But when customer success gets involved, you get insights and evolutions that impact your whole organization.
This year, we’re going to see a lot more involvement in product-led growth from the customer success world, and leaders in the space have gotten very much behind it.
Prioritizing Deeper Segmentation
One thing that’s certain this year is that it’s paramount to ensure your segmentation lists are one of your top priorities. Deep diving into your client base and understanding not only which customers differ from the rest, but what makes your customers tick is necessary for your success.
How will deeper segmentation drive impact though, and what are the ways in which you should be reviewing your existing lists to improve them?
Changing Renewal and Upgrade Process
In the SaaS world, we put so much time, energy, and reward into the sales process. Maybe it’s time to balance some of that time and energy with attempts to improve the retention process.
While there are bells rung in honor of the sales folks who sign the deals, the CSMs who manage to renew an existing customer are the unsung heroes of the B2B world. It’s time to enable our CSMs to not only do their jobs better, but to encourage and incentivize them, and to do that, we need to change our renewals and upgrade processes.
“Formalization of our customer advisory boards and localized customer communities outside of a platform to create better relationships is a high priority.”
“There’s a common thought that the only valid interaction is human-to-human but actually, customers appreciate speed and accuracy. They want information that helps them to accomplish something and ultimately, that's the goal of CS.”
"“Building a high engagement model can’t be exclusively human led – to orchestrate effectively and efficiently, we have to implement a digital program to support it.”
“The biggest CS challenge this year is to drive usage rather than reduce churn.”
“In 2022 Customer Success and Marketing become BFFs. CSM and marketing teams will increase collaboration to deploy customer communities, education programs, live (in person!) events, and high-quality thought leadership content generation.”
“What’s in it for our customers?” is the question of the year. It can no longer just be about profit for an organization, there must be profit sharing! "We need to elevate their careers, invest in their success.”
“The GTM strategy needs to align with customer success initiatives as an assumption – not an afterthought but a part of the strategy.”
“Digitization should be used to build relationships with brand and CSM and focus on relationship growth rather than bottom lines. It won’t necessarily cut costs but it should increase net revenue and retention rates.”
Director of Corporate Customer Success, Higher Logic
Director of Customer Success, Higher Logic