The Seven Pillars of Customer Success: A Proven Framework to Drive Impactful Client Outcomes for Your Company

Finally, I have seen CSMs manage the entire renewal process. In addition to their regular responsibilities (such as understanding and driving value, creating operational dependence, nurturing and finding advocates, etc.), they are also responsible for the renewal transaction with the customer. This means upselling, cross-selling, changes to SLAs, a

This company uses a very different method than Salesforce to determine customer health (and it requires a sophisticated understanding of your product and what differentiates it and its features from competitors in the market), but it works all the same.

Customer retention means being continuously focused on the customers’ desired outcomes. It means understanding your customers thoroughly, more than just their goals and desired outcomes. You need to know their personalities. Is the stakeholder driven by ego? Are they altruistic? Recognizing these nuances will change the way you approach an account.

And due to the interconnectivity of both the CSM and renewal manager role, I recommend these two functions live under the same leader (head of customer success or chief customer officer).

I also learned that customer success was much broader than the customer success function itself, because I managed all the internal teams responsible for enabling a successful customer. I learned where customer success needed to integrate and share metrics with other functions within the company to amplify its ability to be effective, impactful, an

Once you approach $100 million in ARR, I highly recommend creating a dedicated renewals team whose sole job is to manage contract renewals. At that point, you have enough revenue to justify role specialization. The number of uses will differ depending on whether

Then you need to bury the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) by making it easy for them to switch. Maybe you provide them with a cheat sheet? Or you could work with marketing to create a video or reference card with training tips that translate easily for the user. Remember, you aren’t

The ability to get a customer to adopt your software is one of the most preeminent components of retention, expansion, and advocacy; through training and certifications, software adoption was the main function of my job.

leading customers to success. (A lot more on this later in this book.)