Customer success has been an important trending topic for over 5 years. There is no doubt that, as we move increasingly toward a subscription economy, understanding the factors affecting customer success is essential to retain those valuable customers. Here’s how Google Trends reports search growth for the query ‘customer success’ in the USA over the past 5 years.
In order to maximise customer retention practical customer success strategies need to be devised and established that will ensure customer experience remains excellent throughout the customer life-cycle. Luckily there is a wealth of actionable guidance in the blogosphere to help businesses and organisations implement their own customer success initiatives. Here we’ve selected a shortlist of blogs which we like to read and monitor for the best customer success guidance available today.
CustomerSuccessBox.com
Customer Success Box is a customer success management platform which has attracted excellent reviews from early adopters. As well as their actionable customer success platform they provide a widely respected blog. Here are some of our favourite posts from the blog.
- Building the Business Case for Customer Success
- 7 SaaS Customer Success Metrics You Can’t Do Without
- First 90 Days Plan for Customer Success Management
- 5 Best Practices to Enhance your Customer Success Management
- Top Customer Success Resources
- The Ultimate Guide to Building a Customer Success Team
The Customer Success Directory
The Customer Success Directory is provided from the Customer Success Association. Established in 2012 the association now has over 36,000 members. Their goal is to provide access to the most relevant customer success related information and support networking.
Their excellent directory is divided into multiple information categories: knowledge, resources, services and technology. Here are just a few selected articles from this excellent resource.
- The Definition of Customer Success
- The Mission of Customer Success
- Want to be more ‘Human?’ Focus on Users
- Creating Career Paths in Customer Success
- The Power of No
Gainsight.com
Gainsight describe themselves as ‘The Customer Success Company’. It’s therefore not surprising to find some excellent customer success articles on their site. Here are a few of our selected favourites, but we recommend you pay a visit to this excellent resource and read around.
- New Research: Customer Success Is Critical to Growth in the Digital Era
- I’ve Answered Hundreds of Customer Success Questions From SaaS CEOs. Here Are the Top Six
- Why I Moved From Customer Success to Product-led Growth
- The Best Way to Boost Your Customer Success Career
- 4 Ways Product Teams Can Make Customers More Successful
- 3 Ways Customer Success Will Evolve as a Growth Engine in 2019
- 3 Common Customer Success Mistakes That Data Science Can Prevent
- How to Go From Glorified Support to True Customer Success
Natero.com
Natero.com offer a suite of customer success products and services aimed at helping customer success managers focus their attention on accounts that need it. Their system provides real time alerts that can help minimize customer churn and maximise retention. They also offer an excellent blog which presents some great posts. Here are some which we’ve appreciated.
- 4 Mistakes that Customer Success Teams Make
- Customer Success Lessons from the Quality Revolution
- The Challenger Concept for Customer Success
- Why Net Promoter Score Matters for Customer Success
- Customer Success at Scale
UserIQ.com
The UserIQ platform is intended to enable businesses to exceed their customer’s needs in order to drive customer success. The business was established in 2014 and their platform has consistently attracted very positive reviews.
As well as their software platform they offer an excellent blog, publishing some very helpful and informative articles. Here are some which we’ve found useful.
- NPS Guide: Best Practices to Improve SaaS Customer Success
- Top Customer Success Resources of 2018
- Top B2B Customer Success and Customer Experience Events of 2019
- Top 4 Customer Success KPIs
- Top Customer Success Stories of January 2019
Churnzero.net
We particularly enjoy reading the excellent posts published from the Churnzero.net blog. Articles by Cori Pearce are always well researched, beautifully composed and easy to read. Here are a handful which we think you will appreciate.
- ChurnZero Customer Success Professional Spotlight
- ChurnZero’s 10 Customer Success Leaders to Watch in 2019
- Predictions for Customer Success in 2019
- How to Scale Customer Support and Customer Success at Your Startup
- How Customer Success Differs from Customer Service, Experience & Everything Else!
ClientSuccess.com
ClientSuccess is another customer success software platform that helps customer success managers and teams retain and expand their client bases. The site offers an excellent blog publishing posts on a variety of customer success and retention topics alongside webinars and mentor stories. Here are just a few blog posts which we recommend.
- 3 Reasons Why Marketing Needs a Seat at Customer Success Strategy Planning
- Top Customer Success Leadership Characteristics
- Critical Skills of the World’s Most Successful Customer Success Managers and Leaders
- How Customer Success Teams Should Navigate the Complexities of Customer Handoffs
- 5 Pillar Customer Success Strategy Stack
The thinking, research and science regarding customer success is constantly evolving so its a good idea to monitor your favorite blogs and keep up to date.
If you want more feedback from your customers to help drive your Customer Success strategy, give Customer Thermometer a go. You can even send yourself an example here:
