Implementing Customer Success in non-SaaS Businesses
You’ve likely heard that Customer Success was born out of the subscription economy, and new market needs of subscription customers. This is 100% true. This also means that CS is primarily referenced with some level of connection to SaaS. But just because CS originated within SaaS does not mean that it only applies to businesses […]
read moreScaling with Digital Customer Success
One of the biggest challenges facing Customer Success leaders is how to effectively scale. This is nearly impossible without incorporating Digital Customer Success into your overall CS strategy. By thoughtfully layering digital on top of the one-to-one interactions that CSMs are already having with customers, you can reduce your cost to serve and remove tedious […]
read moreApplying MVP to CS: The Why
Since its 2009 introduction by Eric Ries in his NY Times bestseller, The Lean Startup, the concept of Minimum Viable Product (MVP) has been applied by numerous startups to engage in new product and service offering developments. Well-known companies such as Groupon, Zappos, Dropbox, and Uber have used MVPs to not only determine and modify […]
read moreCustomer Experience: What B2B Can Learn from B2C
In the B2B world, your roster of customers may appear as just a list of company names – a long list of logos won by your sales team. And kudos to sales – they worked hard for those wins! But behind every Corp., Inc., and Ltd. on that list is a living, breathing human being […]
read moreCustomer Experience Starts with Personas
The term ‘buyer persona’ may be everyday nomenclature for marketers and sales professionals, but in some organizations, those on the post-sales side of the business may not realize that understanding and developing buyer personas is not just for marketing and selling, but can also make a dent in your goal of improving customer experience. Although […]
read moreRevenue Optimization and Customer Success
One of the biggest business lessons of the last decade has been that keeping your current customers is just as important as acquiring new customers. In the age of SaaS, this is an indisputable fact. But there’s more to the success of your business than just retaining customers. You also have to think long-term, ensuring […]
read moreAccount Management vs Customer Success: 4 Major Differences
As the gospel of Customer Success is spreading like wildfire in the corporate world, executives are realizing that they need to act fast to incorporate it into their organizational structure. But to their own detriment, some of these executives aren’t fully committing to the importance of Customer Success. Instead, they’re simply “rebranding” their Account Managers […]
read moreMore than a Buzzword: Why Committing to Customer Success Is Essential
In 1975, Kodak engineer Steve Sasson built the first ever digital camera, but Kodak’s management just didn’t see the appeal. After all, profit margins were far higher on film than on the cameras themselves, and this was filmless photography. In Sasson’s words, “management’s reaction was, ‘that’s cute, but don’t tell anyone about it.’” This was […]
read moreCS100 Rundown: The Latest and Greatest in Customer Success
Each year, the CS100 Summit brings together the best and brightest minds in the industry to beautiful Sundance, Utah to learn and collaborate in an atmosphere of inspiration, ideation, strategy, and real-world application around Customer Success. This year, for the first time, ESG was proud to not just attend the event, but join it as […]
read moreFundamentals: Basic Leading and Lagging Indicators in Customer Success
Leading and lagging indicators provide useful ways to look at the cause and effect relationship among various KPIs. It can get a bit complicated the deeper you dive. To keep things simple, think about breaking things down to an ACTIONS=RESULT equation, where leading indicators represent the action and lagging indicators the result. To apply this, […]
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