A lot of things in life are not black and white, but I want to chat about one thing that at least in my mind is. It’s the matter of whether to include Customer Success Managers in introductions and onboarding when a Professional Services team is involved and responsible for implementation.   I’ve recently been part of a number of discussions that ask whether CSMs should be introduced before or after a Professional Services team completes their implementation. I am also often asked how to manage the Sales to Customer Success handoff when Professional Services is involved as well. I’ve…

One of the core focuses of Customer Success is enabling customers to be successful in their use of products and services. But what about enabling Customer Success Managers? How do we ensure that we are equipping our CSMs with the knowledge, tools, and skills they need to be successful in their roles? All too often CSMs are sent into a proverbial battle of fighting customer churn and low product adoption without being equipped with the tools to help them be successful. One of those tools is proper Customer Success training. While there is an important element of on the job training…

In our last post, we talked about the reasons why customers churn. A point that was raised a few times was product adoption (or lack thereof). It’s a point that begs further discussion. When you look at the majority of factors on why customers churn it boils down to lack of product adoption. However, segmenting churn reasons with a label of ‘low product adoption’ isn’t enough for understanding the drivers of churn. The next immediate question should be ‘why did they not adopt our product?’. You can read a number of possible reasons why on our previous post. For the…

Churn. It’s a number that can help make or break your company. That may sound dramatic but it’s true and you are better off facing the cold hard reality of a high churn rate before it’s too late. While churn is a fact of life in SaaS and it's inevitable that some customers will leave your company at some point, it does not mean that it's a metric to be taken for granted. A seemingly low percentage of churn can have a detrimental impact on your company over the long haul. On the flip side, an acceptable churn level, or…