When building a customer success team and making your case for more investment in the initiative, the most striking misunderstanding you may have come across is that a customer success team is a cost center and just providesreallygood customer support. Let's set the record straight -a customer success team does provide excellent customer support, but it's also a powerfulrevenue engine.
According to Gainsight, companies with a dedicated customer success team -focused on identifying at-risk customers and getting them back on track -see a 24% lower churn rate than companies without one. Reducing churn is key to growing the bottom line.
In addition to reducing churn, a customer success team increases the lifetime value of an account. Over time, account revenue can grow to be many times larger than the customer's year 1 value. As a customer success team increases customer lifetime value, they can actually produce as much or more revenue than the sales team over the lifetime of the customer.
So, you had them atrevenue engine. Management wants you to build a customer success team.
Once everyone is on-board and understands the benefits of investing in a customer success team and the impact they can make on the organization, make sure you spend your dollars wisely to build a profitable practice. Since customer success is a relatively new discipline, there is still some debate on the best way to structure a team and the skillset required for a customer success manager. When interviewing candidates to fill out your customer success team, keep these things in mind:
Want to learn more about building a winning customer success team?