You probably follow Jason Lemkin for broader SaaS/Start-ups insights, but his advice on Customer Success is equally valuable. Here's a compilation of his best posts on the topic:
đ ď¸Â On building and scaling a CS team
1/ Hiring your 1st CSM: when to hire for it, what to expect, and what to measure.
TLDR: as early as you can afford to, ideally within your first 10 employees. And measure on renewal rates and total revenue growth from your customer base.
2/ First 90 days goal for a VP of CS
TLDR: It may take longer than 3 months to see your VP of CS impact upsells and net negative churn (although even there, you should see results in one quarter). But they can improve NPS and CSAT in 90 days.
3/ Find a way to offer CSMs to your smaller accounts
TLDR: make it work if you want NRR of 100%+. Your brand benefits alone will make it worth it. Even if, on paper, the SMB CSMs barely cover their costs.
4/ How to think about accounts/CSM ratio
TLDR: It's crucial to split your team into segments based on deal sizes so they can specialize in their roles. Once you have enough customers in each segment, hire a CSM well before hitting the $2 million mark per segment.
5/ Why CSMs are the great gap fillers in SaaS and how to turn this around
TLDR: when everyone else abandons the customer, CS becomes the go-to for everything customer related (and being great at it!). And that might be fine in the early days, but itâs not enough. A Gap Filler will never really have time to be proactive.
đ§˛Â On Retention and Advocacy
6/ Why you should not cut off your long tail
TLDR: If you have a âlong tailâ of champions singing your praises left and right ⌠thatâs a marketing, PLG, and brand asset to protect at almost all costs. Put a separate team on the smaller customers and long tail, and give them a simplified set of KPIs and goals.
7/ Measure your churn. But even more important, your âAlmost Churnâ
TLDR: whatever your churn rate is, find an equal percent of your customers as At Risk. Once youâve systematically found them (NPS and C-SAT are great sources here), ask your CS team for weekly reports on who the At-Risk customers are and the action plan for them.
8/ Small deals at big companies are always at risk
TLDR: small deals at large customers are almost always just an experiment. Especially if you bypassed the CIOâs office, Procurement, or other gates. What can CS do? Start by assigning a CSM to the potential deal size, not actual account size. And map out the account and penetrate at all levels.
9/ Behavioral vs. Attitudinal Loyalty
TLDR: customers are loyal for one of two reasons: habit, or habit+they love you. And the key difference between the two isnât the churn rate. The difference is the upsell and NRR. Brands we are attitudinally loyalty to, we want to buy more stuff from. Even if they treat us like shit. Like Apple.
10/ Just do your job
TLDR: Founders never get âtoo seniorâ to do the actual work. But many VPs and Directors of Customer Success want to focus more on strategy, and less on meeting customers. Plan to roll up your sleeves for real now. CEOs are going to expect it again.
âď¸Â A bonus one on jets because we all know how much he loves jets
11/ The 5-visits-plus-2-badges rule for Happy customers
TDLR: The 5+2 rule is simple: Every Co-founder including especially the CEO, plus every Customer Success Manager, must (1) meet on-site with 5 Customers a month and (2) get 2 Customer badges every year for a bonus (A real, physical, get-into-the-front door badge). Why? With Enterprise, the personal touch still matters. Showing up still matters.
I do a lot of research for work. Would you like to see more of these compilations?