Customer Success

Customer Success Associate, Customer Success Specialist, Customer Success Manager

Customer Success is a proactive role that goes beyond simply offering support to customers when they have a problem, and instead actively works with customers to make sure they are getting value from of a product or service.

These roles have become increasingly popular in recent years in business to business (B2B) software as a service (SaaS) companies, as the relatively high prices B2B SaaS companies charge for their products allows them to spend more per-customer than lower-priced consumer-focused products.

Of course, companies are not hiring customer success teams for purely altruistic reasons.

While they are helping customers obtain the full value of a product, customer success is also expected to improve key KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for the company, like decreasing customer churn (when a customer quits a service) or increasing account expansion (where an existing customer account brings in an increased amount of revenue).

Customer Success also acts as an important link between the customer and the company’s product and design teams, providing them with valuable feedback from the point of view of the product’s users. This feedback can then be used to help prioritize where the product and engineering teams focus their attention in future.

The day-to-day work of a customer success team can include onboarding new customers to a product, answering customer inquiries, creating support documentation, and proactively contacting customers to see if they have any issues or could be using the product more effectively.

The more technically proficient and analytical people in success roles can also look into customer data to see whether customers are making use of a specific feature or are at risk of churning (leaving the product).

Customer success is very communication-heavy, so it’s a good role for those who enjoy building relationships and working directly with other people. While the ultimate goal of customer success is to improve the company’s customer related KPIs, success roles do not normally come with the quotas you’d find in traditional sales roles, which may appeal to some people.

Companies that are looking to hire for entry level customer success positions may expect candidates to have a college or university degree, but they do not normally require any specific customer success training (any previous experience in support or sales would be considered helpful).

It does pay to have a good understanding of technology and software, as this will help when you are working with customers who will expect someone in a success role to understand the technology they are supporting.

Customer success: Salary

Customer Success roles generally pay well, and you would usually expect the salaries to be higher than you find in customer support. The total compensation may be lower than in a similar level tech sales role, where there is the potential to earn large commissions to complement a lower base salary.

Customer Success can be a great choice for people who are enjoying helping others, but are not seeking a pure support or sales role.