Customer Success Managers as Churn Busters.
There has been a lot of debate around charging for the customer success manager function in the industry of late. This question is related to why I chose to work in customer success and this relates to the value of customer success to renewals and churn.
Before moving into Customer Success I ran an APAC renewals team with a renewals book of $200M. Previous to this, I managed a small sales territory with a renewal book of $30M. In the territory role, I managed 400+ client renewals per year with an ACV/ARR between $50 and $1M.
I learned fairly early on in the territory renewals role that there are a number of objections that impact the client purchasing the renewal and by proxy, expanding.
Turn up: The client says they haven’t heard from anyone in the organization since the last renewal.
Features: The client says they need the product to do X. The client does not know that the product has been able to do X for the last six months
Tactical: The client says after a discussion about the product, "We purchased the product to do ABC. We hadn’t thought about using it to do XYZ."
As a renewals leader, I saw these problems come up again and again so I moved into customer success so I could solve these problems while reducing churn, improving satisfaction, and enhancing advocacy.
A customer success manager defends the vendor against these three objections and through the work they perform moves towards expansion.
Turn up: The CSM turns up regularly and delivers value to the client on a regular basis.
Features: Knowing the client's current and future needs & showing them how other clients use the product keeps the product fresh and exciting.
Tactical: Showing the client that the tactical solution can be expanded to add value to the wider organization as a strategic solution.
Back to the title of this short article "Customer Success Managers, as churn busters" - the value of the Customer Success organization is to defend and expand the base revenue. If organizations don't address these three simple issues churn will go up.
What are your top three churn busters?
#customersuccess #customervaluecreation #saas #netdollarretention #churn
