Welcome to the Back to the Basics blog series, where we take a fresh look at Customer Success from the perspective of a newcomer. Whether you’re just starting out or looking to revisit the fundamentals, this series will guide you through the key concepts and serve as a reminder of why Customer Success is vital for long-term growth and satisfaction.
Now that we have a better understanding of the basics of Customer Success, let’s explore some common challenges. We’ve grouped these into three main categories: Time, Technology, and Budget. Many businesses struggle to carve out time for Customer Success amid their busy schedules, lack the right systems, or struggle to secure adequate funding to support this critical business function at scale. To drive real progress, it’s essential to navigate these common challenges to make meaningful changes to the business and for your customers.
Time: Limited Resources and Available Bandwidth
Time is one of the biggest challenges in Customer Success. Customer Success leaders struggle to find the time to design and deliver new capabilities, process improvements, and technology optimizations needed to scale Customer Success. CSMs struggle to find the time to execute the growing list of tasks and call to actions (CTA’s) needed to drive effective retention and growth with their book of business. With limited available capacity to work on the business, Customer Success is often set up for failure right from the beginning – stuck in reactive, fire-fighting mode, escalation management, and Support 2.0 – leaving significant gaps in customer coverage, with the inability to execute on the vision of a true proactive Customer Success function.
Technology: Outdated or Insufficient Systems
With available time in such short supply, the use of technology is imperative for Customer Success. However many businesses still rely on outdated systems or non-specialized technology, increasing the amount of time spent gathering data from multiple sources, manually executing processes, tracking the wrong metrics and making misinformed decisions. This not only leads to missed opportunities but can also create frustration when efforts don’t yield the expected results. Customer Success has the potential to drive growth and profitability, but without the right systems in place, it becomes much harder to maximize its impact.
Budget: ROI Challenges
Budget is often at the root of both of the challenges mentioned above. If a company lacks the budget to invest in adequate Customer Success resources or upgrade outdated systems, it becomes nearly impossible to implement an effective strategy. Additionally, misalignment between business objectives and Customer Success efforts can prevent companies from tying CS initiatives to tangible business impact and attribution to revenue goals. Without clear KPIs, justifying investment in Customer Success becomes a challenge, and since churn and retention metrics are often lagging indicators, measuring ROI in real time is even harder.
The relationship between Finance and Customer Success has never been more critical. And while the impact of Customer Success may seem obvious and intuitive, the translation gap between these two business functions is where the real problem lies. What used to be a nice to have in Customer Success is now a business requirement for Customer Success leaders.
Recognizing these challenges is the first step toward building a stronger Customer Success strategy. But how do companies actually overcome them? In our next blog, we’ll dive into actionable solutions to help businesses navigate these obstacles and turn CS into a true growth driver. Stay tuned!