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10 Laws of Customer Success

The document outlines ten laws of customer success, emphasizing the need for a company-wide commitment to prioritize customer outcomes over products and sales. It highlights that understanding customer expectations, measuring and managing customer health, and developing metrics-driven customer success teams are essential for reducing churn and enhancing retention. Additionally, it stresses the importance of selecting the right customers and maintaining a focus on product quality to ensure long-term success.

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Related topics:
Enhancing Customer Experience•Customer Success Insights•Customer Service Insights•
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©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Child-like Joy The 10 Laws of Customer Success ©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved.
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Child-like Joy ©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Dan Steinman Chief Customer Officer dsteinman@gainsight.com Scott Golden Customer Strategy sgolden@gainsight.com
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. It’s a top-down, company-wide commitment 3
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Law #1: It’s a top-down, company-wide commitment Customer Success involves shifting the orientation of your company from your product or your sales to your customers’ success. •  Product: Which feature will truly help our clients achieve their goals with our solution (versus being demo-ware)? •  Sales: Which clients are really likely to be good fits for our solution (versus ones that will leave us quickly)? •  Marketing: What messages authentically align with the success and value we deliver? (versus being buzzwords) •  Finance: Which metrics reflect real success and value for our clients? (versus just new sales)
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Sell to the right 
 customer 5
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Law #2: Sell to the Right Customer Customer Success is responsible for the complete customer journey. •  Revenue is important but Product Marketing Fit is equally important. Product teams need to balance customer needs with product development •  The Right Customers will help mature and your company’s PMF and innovation. •  The Wrong Customers will put constraints on every aspect of your company’s go-to-market motion.
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. The natural tendency for customers is towards churn 7
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Law #3: Customer’s Natural Tendency is to Churn Customer’s tendency, uninterrupted, is to drift away from their vendor. •  Changes in product, people, and business models all attribute to customer churn. •  Long-term SaaS health is directly tied to churn and retention strategy •  Churn increases as the size of your customer base increases which makes it incredibly difficult to overcome.
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Your customers’ initial desire and expectation is to be wildly successful with your product 9
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Law #4: Customer’s initial expectation is to be wildly successful with your product.
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Law #4: Customer’s initial expectation is to be wildly successful with your product.
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Law #4: Customer’s initial expectation is to be wildly successful with your product. •  In order to help your customers be wildly successful, the first thing you need to understand is what success means to them. •  ROI isn’t a concept, it’s an equation •  Get on a cadence and track your progress •  Success isn’t a destination; it’s a journey
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. You must relentlessly measure and manage your customers 13
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Law #5: Relentlessly Measure and Manage your Customers Relentlessly monitor and manage CUSTOMER HEALTH Relentlessly monitor and MANAGE customer health Relentlessly MONITOR and manage customer health RELENTLESSLY monitor and manage customer health
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. You can no longer build loyalty through relationship 15
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Law #6: You can no Longer Build Loyalty through Relationships You have to figure out how to deliver love and value to these customers without much 1:1 interaction. This will bring out the best and the worst in your product and your company as you learn whether customers will be loyal because of the value they get from your product, not the relationship they have with an individual. •  Segment your customers by a particular metric that works for your business •  Define a customer coverage model based on segmentation •  Create customer interaction categories based on your coverage model •  Establish a cadence for interacting with customers •  Help connect customers building a strong and loyal community •  Create a customer feedback loop
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Product has 
 to be priority #1 17
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Law #7: Product has to be Priority #1
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Obsessively improve time-to-value 19
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Law #8: Obsessively improve time-to-conversion The faster you can convey your customer’s time-to-value, the sooner they will become loyal advocates of your product. The best way to refine your time-to-value strategy: •  Work with the customer to establish concrete success measures. •  Implement iteratively, achieving the simplest measure first, and •  focusing on the others later. •  Adjust in real time, springing into action the very moment you realize expected value is at risk.
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Deeply understand 
 the details of churn and retention 21
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Law #9: Deeply understand the details of churn In order to successfully run a long-term SaaS business, it is crucial to completely understand the intricacies of churn and retention. The earlier you understand churn and retention, the sooner your company can solve the problem. There are 5 Steps to understanding Churn: Step 1: Define what you are measuring and components of CMRR Step 2: Define period of measurement and frequency Step 3: Determine expected CMRR and categories of churn Step 4: Determine how to identify suspected/at risk churn Step 5: Align with executive leadership to develop a set of standard definitions and reports for churn/retention
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Customer Success teams MUST become metrics-driven 23
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Law #10: CSM Teams must become metrics-driven You’ve delivered an outstanding customer success experience to your customer, but how can you repeat that process time and time again? Tracking metrics and measuring the success of you actions allows to you to have repeatable processes with predictable outcomes. Some key metrics to monitor are: Customer Behavior: •  Net Promoter Scores •  Logins / Logouts •  Usage of specific product features /platforms (web, mobile, API) CSM Behavior: •  Frequency of Interaction QBRs, email updates, phone calls) •  Support ticket volume handled by CSMs (rather than your Support team) •  Timeliness of risk identification •  Effectiveness of risk mitigation efforts
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Law #10: CSM Teams must become metrics-driven Business Outcomes: •  Frequency of Interaction QBRs, email updates, phone calls) •  Support ticket volume handled by CSMs (rather than your Support team) •  Timeliness of risk identification •  Effectiveness of risk mitigation efforts
©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Child-like Joy ©2015 Gainsight. All Rights Reserved. Dan Steinman Chief Customer Officer dsteinman@gainsight.com Scott Golden Customer Strategy sgolden@gainsight.com Questions?