7 Lessons learned as Head of Customer Success in a Startup

Introducing Customer Success (CS) into a (SaaS) startup is challenging.  The software is still evolving (and not to stable), Customers want new features (yesterday), employees have 3 different jobs, field staff is limited (to non-existent), and the ones that are onboard are spread around the country away from the core development team.  Lots of fun, but challenging.  

Based on my experience in this environment, I have listed the top 7 lessons learned with the hope that it will help others.  Some of these points may be skewed by the nature of the startups where I have worked: companies that deliver a complex product/service (e.g., a data analytics platform) to Fortune 500 customers (demanding),  requiring significant integration with other technical products, all of which are also experiencing significant change and rapid evolution.  

Here are the 7 points in roughly the importance as I see it: 

 1. As head of Customer Success,  you must ensure you and the other senior leaders agree on what Customer Success is and how it will be rolled out in the company.  No matter how it is rolled out, The CEO must be on board and must make it very clear to all that this is a key initiative in the company since much of the revenue and growth of this SaaS company depends on it... because it does. 

2. Sales and Customer Success must know how they are working together with the customer.  Definition should be based on the functions that are performed with the customer such as quarterly reviews, Escalation contact, etc. (Note: the Sales person may not be the top dog in the account after the sale is complete.) 

3. All customer facing teams (e.g., CS, sales, Support) must balance the needs and wants of the customer with the skills and availability of the supporting teams (e.g., engineering, prof. services, etc.)  We can’t say yes to everything the customer asks for.  (This is probably more about the nature of a startup vs. Customer Success.)

4. You as the Senior CS executive must spend time with the internal teams to ensure alignment and buyin.  Ideally face to face, or if not, significant time on the phone. And, to be respected and accepted, you may need to be more technical than you had expected.  

5. In startups there are a lot of feature requests that come from customers.  There must be a way to track these requests, ensure the development team is applying the proper weight to these requests,  and regular communication with the customer on the status of their requests. 

6. Executive Metrics must be appropriate for the maturity of the product and the company, e.g., Early stage companies will typically need to focus on Adoption and Retention, where as a more stable product or companies that offer multiple offerings will focus more on Expansion. 

7. Keep the customer processes as simple as possible - they can be scaled up in complexity when the situation warrants it.   Get a process out there early, get feedback from the customers and adjust as quickly as possible. Improvement will help the customer stick with you as a vendor and keep them happy(er). 

Do you have other lessons to share as one of the first CS people in the company? 

Who "owns" the customer relationship?

I had an interesting conversation this week with an Account Executive (Sales) at a SaaS company.   We were talking about how, in many companies, the Account Executive "owns" the customer relationship. However, in his current company the post-sale team owns the relationship and it makes his job more challenging with existing customers.  So, the question is, who should "own" the customer relationship in a SaaS company? The answer to this question dictates how the internal processes are executed. Everyone brings different skillsets to the table, and all are needed at different times in the customer's "life" with your company.   Does one particular organization (e.g., Customer Success) need to own the customer relationship or is a different model appropriate in a SaaS company?

First, I am really talking about SaaS companies that have high-touch services that require ongoing involvement of the vendor with the customer. If your company has many customers and the relationship post-sale is low-touch, this probably doesn't apply nearly as much.  In this case the "face" of the company is the indirect interactions such as your email pushes and texts.  It also includes all the interactions where the customer contacts you for things such as customer support, re-orders, etc.   To the extent you can personalize that, the better. So, for example, I interact with a person when I have an issue and I have a phone call or a chat session with the company and I talk with "Joe" or "Mary" from customer support.

In a high-touch SaaS company it is different.  From the customer's point of view, multiple vendor people/functions interact with them and the customer should never have to think about who they are dealing with - Customer Success Manager, Sales Exec, Customer Support.  Each should be handling the need of the customer flawlessly. That should be the goal of a SaaS company, so the question is not what does the customer need;  the question what does the SaaS company need to be most successful.  If the Sales Exec doesn't hear about a potential need in the customer's organization, will an incremental sale be made, or will it be passed up? If the Sales team owns the relationship, will the customer go to them first when they should be going to a Customer Success Manager?

I have some thoughts on this that I will post as a follow up.  What are your thoughts on this? How should the customer relationship be managed in a high-touch, SaaS company? What should the responsibilities be?  What technology can be used as part of the solution?