June 23rd, 2016

In Or Out? The Customer Success Manager

So on the day when the UK population determine their response to being “In or Out” to the EU, the SaaS industry has been asking the question “In or Out” to the role of the Customer Success Manager for several years now.

For as far back as I can remember there has always been a role in companies that provided the single point of contact for all support, non-commercial questions and issues. I look back at my own career history and the variety of job titles in this space tell us the journey we have been on: Account Manager, Client Support Executive, Customer Support Consultant and Support Account Manager to name but a few. The goal of these roles have been the same; minimise risk of non-renewal and increase adoption of that product, service or solution. So why now are we experiencing the boom around the role of the Customer Success Manager to the point where it’s an industry in itself, it has multiple global events around the role and the relevant skills needed, and where a number of companies have determined it is singularly the most vital role in their organisation?

We are now in the era of customer-centricity: putting the customer at the very heart of everything we do. So instead of just being an account manager delivering on a reactive basis a series of services and activities, we are a Customer Success Manager ensuring we deliver a highly personal, proactive series of activities with the aim of empowering our customer to meet their business goals through the successful adoption of our product or service. Within the SaaS industry there is a further reason to the increased value of the CSM. It is not enough anymore to just sell the software and expect the customer to use the product and then expect a renewal 12 months or 3 years down the line. To ensure renewal and reduce risk of “churn” the CSM plays a vital role in driving the adoption of the software, tying it to their customer’s business goals and ultimately ensuring the customer sees a value in their investment. I give you the role of the CSM.

So at my own company Autodesk we are making this shift now, and although the role of the Support Account Manager has existed for over 5 years now and arguably has played the role of the traditional, industry standardized CSM it is only now with our Business Model Transformation that we are tying this role to the required and increased adoption of subscriptions. With this acknowledgement we have born the role of the Customer Success Manager (aligned with the industry standard) and a whole new series of processes, behaviours and culture.

What we do at Autodesk with our vast array of design software can be quite complex, and without support both reactive and proactive we are at risk of our users at best not using the software to its full capability and at worst binning it totally in exchange for a competitor’s alternative. So with the complexity of our software plus the need to install and implement it, and then to drive usage consistently the role of the CSM is critical in ensuring our customer sees a value and an RoI both in their software purchase, and that of the premium support contract.

So to the answer of my own question: I am most definitely “in”. These are exciting times for both the customer success industry overall and my own company as we look to further establish the role of the CSM and increase a wider acceptance to the value of the role. Increased customer loyalty, deeply penetrative relationships, higher c-sat scores, adoption of our software, execution on business goals and increasingly engaged employees, why would any company or individual not be “in”?