It is becoming very important to use data to trigger appropriately timed Customer Education. And to show customers new things about your product, and to have strategic meetings with them about new releases/features.

While the CS Ops team needs to Quarterback the function, ultimately many departments need to contribute in their own ways to the “Customer Success” function: Sales + Account Management + Marketing + Product Implementation + Onboarding!

As a company grows, one needs to start moving away from generalists into specialists (the sooner the better). Also it becomes very important to segment your customers and not treat them all the same.

As the CS world evolves at a rapid pace, it is important for tools and solutions to keep up. Hear what Prithwi Dasgupta (CEO, SmartKarrot) has to share when it comes to being a proactive and intelligence driven platform.

Pay attention to the processes which are impacted by the implementation of your solution. What is the data governance around that and what needs to change? What is the change management required to drive that adoption?

Net Revenue Retention is the best predictor of valuations of software companies, it is the number one measure now. Customer Success Managers and Account Managers need to become leaders in driving that NRR for the organization.

Content at the end: To make data-driven decisions, the foundation is to start with a single source of truth, and then to be able to push that out to teams, systems, etc. for everyone to have that same consistent data.

Try to ask during solutions reviews or QBRs: “If you were to renew today, would you?”. Try this when you are 6 or 9 months in. That can really help course correct, and also really make sure that you are aligning with their expectations.

Good Customer Success teams are feeding data to Account Management around up-sells and cross-sells, to marketing teams with their success stories, and roadmap priorities into the product team. They are breaking down silos by disseminating useful data.

One should assess the experience, capacity, and willingness of their prospective customer to have a change effort in place. If they don't have the appetite or the resources for, or the experience to do it well, that's a risk to be considered.