Over five thousand Customer Success professionals from fifty-three countries made their way to San Mateo this week to attend Pulse 2018.
The two-day event offered a plethora of sessions (like this one!) that participants could attend to increase their knowledge of Customer Success.
And attend they did!
In addition to getting attendees All Fired Up about the profession, the conference offered practical, take away suggestions that people can try out back at the office.
If the packed sessions are any indication of what is yet to come when things are practiced, then it will be another exciting year for the advancement of the profession.
A consistent source of information from various perspectives, I appreciate the Customer Success Trends opening session the most – a reinforcement of the insights that I have been advocating for years.
Here is a summary of the top five Customer Success trends for 2018.
Crossing the chasm: CS = CX + CO has become the mainstream way to define Customer Success. Getting customers to their desired outcomes (CO = Customer Outcomes) while having a great experience (CX = Customer Experience) is no longer something we need to explain, rather it is something we need to mature in how we execute, not only within our companies but as an industry as well.
CS > CSM: Customer Success is more than the activities of the CSM team alone. It is the sum of the company’s efforts to drive successful customers. Align your company to the customer journey to drive cross-functional effectiveness.
Outside In: Companies are reengineering their thinking to change the journey, and the corresponding activities to support it, to become customer centric and hence, truly about the customer. Start quantitatively reporting on customer metrics, not just internal Customer Success metrics (such as Churn, NPS, etc.).
Career Success: We cannot be successful as companies if our employees are not successful. The Customer Success Manager (CSM) is the top fifth fastest growing role. As we look to advance the profession, we have to be about helping our teams get better and in helping individual CSMs with their identity and improving.
Prescriptive Customer Success: Customers are unique but they also have many things in common. As Customer Success matures, it should become more prescriptive about how it drives customers through the changes they are required to make to become successful. As it does, Customer Success will see increases to gross retention and expansion as it matures.
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