Customer Success is a rapidly evolving function, as it has come to the forefront of business discussions in the last few years. Amongst other inquiries, many professionals wonder what the difference is between support and success, and ask how the functions can collaborate. We decided to pose these questions to Mark Pecoraro, who has a 25-year track record of building and leading world-class enterprise customer service operations. He has been CEO at companies like Commerce One & SuccessFactors, as well as a Customer Success leader at Accept Software & Sybase.
How Customer Success Can Team Up With Sales
CS and Sales working together leads to happy customers, upsells, and best of all — high renewal rates. Most organizations go about this in the wrong way in the beginning; they define Customer Success as a role that puts out fires reactively, usually as a result of product or sales failures, and a misalignment between all teams.
The Customer Success Mindset
All smart SaaS business are beginning to invest in Customer Success but it’s not just something you can throw a few dollars and bodies at. Customer Success starts with a mindset, and that mindset has to permeate throughout your entire organization. In this post, we’ll talk about what the Customer Success mindset entails, how it impacts each department, and how Customer Success managers can push this mindset in effective ways.