2014 has come to an end and it’s amazing to look back and see the phenomenal growth we experienced in the customer success industry last year. Working with hundreds of SaaS companies, I personally saw customer success elevated as a top priority, not only at the departmental level but also at the board and executive levels.
Last year we saw Salesforce throw its hat in the ring and coverage from top-tier analyst firms like Forrester, all pointing to the emergence of Customer Success as a critical philosophy and discipline within SaaS organizations. The continued growth of SaaS offerings in what have long been considered “traditional software” markets — as well as the transformation that software is bringing about in “non-software” industries — has further expanded the relevance and reach of Customer Success.
As we kick off 2015, I see Customer Success truly coming into its own. Here are my top 3 predictions for the coming year:
More priority given to existing customers
The statistics around customer retention have been widely touted. Gartner suggests 80% of a company’s future revenue will come from just 20% of their existing customers. Despite this well known argument, in our recent SaaS Metrics Report we found that most SaaS companies still prioritize new customer acquisition over customer retention. On the positive side, the same study suggests that in 2015 more companies will start focusing on metrics around customer retention including customer lifetime value, revenue per user, product adoption, and customer health.
Executive standing on par with both sales and marketing
We’re excited about the growth we’ve seen in customer success over the last couple of years, and I think 2015 is the year it will take its rightful place at the executive table — on par with both sales and marketing — as a key driver for the business. While customer success still sits within many different departments inside the organization, even more companies are choosing to have a Chief Customer Officer (CCO) reporting directly to the CEO and I see this trend picking up momentum next year.
Customer success as more than just a function
Next year I think we’ll see another interesting and ground-breaking shift: customer success beginning to move outside its departmental boundary. With this shift, we’ll see a broader adoption of the customer success philosophy throughout the entire organization, touching all customer-facing functions including marketing, sales, and customer support. The way we do business and engage with customers has fundamentally changed, requiring a transformation across the entire organization. Understanding how customers are interacting with a product or service as well as what is needed to drive their success will become a critical element that all parts of the organization will begin to leverage.
As one of the earliest proponents of customer success, we at Totango are thrilled with the incredible growth we’ve seen in the industry over the past five years. We look to 2015 with even more excitement and can’t wait to see where this growth will take us. To kick off the year, we’ll be hosting our 3rd Annual Customer Success Summit, bringing together hundreds of customer success professionals — along with their colleagues from sales, marketing, customer support, operations, and product/technology — to discuss best practices that will help define the industry moving forward. No matter whether you’ve been doing customer success for years or are just getting started, we hope you’ll join us March 23-24 in San Francisco for the customer success event of the year.
