I have to give credit where it’s due. I didn’t come up with that phrase: “We are all customer success”.

That came from one of my favorite former co-workers, Gretchen Lynn. Gretchen is the VP of Customer Experience at Levelset, she was also employee #1.

She’s the backbone of the company culture and she is the loudest voice advocating for the customer. It was only natural that she took it upon herself to regularly remind everyone in the company that in fact we are all customer success.

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But what does that mean?

Who is responsible for making sure the customer is successful? Is it the Customer Success team? What does success mean, anyway?

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SaaS Companies Need a Customer Success team.

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The role of Customer Success came about as customer-facing teams became more specialized in SaaS companies. The old version of sales and support required salespeople, or “account executives”, to find new business and maintain the relationship with that “book of business” throughout the customer lifecycle.

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In this structure, the main point of contact for the customer is the salesperson. This can be beneficial in industries like financial planning or insurance, where the relationship is more important than the product.

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But having salespeople own a book of business doesn’t work well in SaaS for many reasons, here are a few:

1. SaaS is a recurring revenue business. Salespeople who are paid enough commission on their “book” of repeat business are less motivated to find new business. You may find an exception to this rule, but this is usually what happens with salespeople who own a book of business. They grow it to a size that fuels their lifestyle, then they stop growing the book of business.

2. SaaS companies need to grow quickly, especially if they have raised venture capital. If you need to grow quickly, you need to focus on getting new revenue from new customers while also maintaining strong relationships with existing customers. See point #1 above.

3. SaaS customers use a product daily to get value from the product. The users need to be trained on the product. The customer wants to know that the product is delivering value if they are going to keep paying their subscription. This requires a talented relationship manager to ensure the customer is getting the value they paid for.

4. The type of person who is good at hunting and selling is rarely the same type of person who wants to focus on helping the customer realize value from using a product. The hiring profile is different for these two people and forcing one person to do both jobs is not as effective.

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So split your go-to-market team up: let your sellers find new customers and let your relationship managers focus on making those customers successful.

It should be this simple, right?

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There’s more to Customer Success than just having CS team

Once you have established your customer success team, even if you only have one person working on this full-time, you are on the right path but there's more work to do. You need to build a culture around making customers successful, and this involved more than the relationship managers on the team.

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The Customer Success function takes on so much responsibility as the primary point of contact for customers after the sale. They are introduced on the kick-off call. They help the customer navigate through implementation, often coordinating across technical teams and training teams. They are holding the customer’s hand through go-live. They troubleshoot issues from end-users and they manage the contractual relationship at the executive level. They run Quarterly Business Reviews and take the lead on annual renewals. Customer Success is usually the first to know about product issues or competitive intelligence in the market. And on and on and on.

The Customer Success function is like the quarterback of the install-base of customers. And with so much pressure on them, you would think that the rest of the company would recognize and appreciate how challenging this role is, but most teams don’t.

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Even though “success” is in the job title, the Customer Success team is not solely responsible for making sure the customer is successful. The whole team must be committed to delivering a world-class experience for the customer.

Everyone is Responsible for Delivering Value to the Customer

Think about the customer journey end-to-end, from their first interaction with the brand, through sales, through implementation, through go-live, and through the first year of working with your company. So many of these interactions with the team or with the product are outside of the Customer Success team’s hands. That’s why it’s critical that the entire team take responsibility for their part of the customer journey.

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• Product and Engineering are building the interface that customers will use daily. This interface should be built with empathy for what the customer does on a daily basis.
• Marketing positions the product in the customers mind and sets an expectation for what type of experience that customer working with the company.
• Sales is the tip of the spear for customer interactions, usually the first of many individuals that the customer will speak with on their path to becoming a customer. Sales must communicate the value of the product well enough without embellishing to telling half-truths just to get the deal closed.
• Implementation is there to make sure the customer is set up for success as they start the relationship.

Don’t forget legal, people ops, recruiting, and so many more departments. Everyone in the business has an impact on the customer journey.

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It’s time to stop pretending that the Customer Success team is the only one required to think about making the customer successful.

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The Traits of a World Class Customer Success function‍

Even though we are all Customer Success, you should still have a team and function that is dedicated to managing customer relationships.

The best Customer Success teams focus on helping customers get value from the product and most importantly helping the customer see the value that they are getting from the product.

It’s not enough to just have a Customer Success team, you must make sure that team is focused on the right things.

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Here are some of the things that a world-class Customer Success team does:

• Land the go-live
• Run QBRs that are insightful and engaging
• Timely response to urgent issues
• Personal relationship with a deep understanding of the customers’ business
• Proactive outreach to customers to ensure there are no issues (pick up the phone!)
• Driving more 5-star reviews from customers
• Driving more upsell pipeline through identifying opportunities to expand accounts.

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I have written before about why I believe Customer success shouldn’t carry a quota. The Customer Success team should focus on making customers successful. That is relationship management. Giving Customer Success reps a quota or other responsibilities beyond owning the customer relationships is only going to dilute their efforts and make them less effective.

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How to get started with Customer Success

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It starts with a commitment to making your customer successful. This doesn’t have to be a heavy lift for you, even if your team is small or your customer list is small.

Start with one person. Start by picking up the phone and calling your customer.

Ask them about their business. Ask them about how your product is serving their business. Ask theme what you can do to make their business better.

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From there, just listen to what the customer says. They will always tell you how to make them successful.

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And remember: We are all customer success!