The Pulse of Customer Success Beats Louder Than Ever

Gainsight’s Pulse Europe 2017 is over after its 3rd and most recent visit to London resulted in near on 1200 Customer Success, SaaS and Venture Capital professionals hearing from a large number of speakers. While nearly 40 countries being represented is impressive, what really hit me from the heatmap presented by Gainsight was how many attendees made the trip from North America even with their very own Pulse in their backyard. This to me really shows that the European based speakers that made up the majority of all speakers have great insight, knowledge and experience that has a demand to be shared from a global perspective.

Customer Success has momentum in Europe and this was reflective of the three days spent at the QEII Centre in the shadows of Big Ben and Parliament. As being an ever-present of all three Pulse Europe events I am well-placed to call out the changes I have seen. While I have spoken about the number of attendees over those three days, it should be pointed out that Pulse Europe has seen near on 100% YoY attendance growth over those three years. The quality and calibre of the speakers continues to improve, the number of senior executives in attendance increases, a wide range of companies were represented from a number of start-ups to the likes of “giants” like Microsoft who sent well over fifty people. All of this alongside recently “adopted” Londoners Dan Steinman and Lauren Olerich building Gainsight’s EMEA presence are all indicative of that growing momentum.
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While the large number of talks I attended on the whole were awesome, the value for me still largely comes from the networking opportunities that arise by being under the same roof as some of the most influential EMEA-based Customer Success leaders around including Rav Dhaliwal, Cyrille Saulnier, Adam Joseph, Steven Lewandowski, Adrian Beck, Kelly Long and more.

In terms of talks, my two favourites were Wednesday’s talk from Slack’s global Customer Success leadership team of Rav Dhaliwal and Christina Kosmowski only just beaten by Sage’s Chris Rauch, a newcomer for me in terms of CS leaders but one I am sure to follow more closely now.

Finally, a huge thanks to the team at Gainsight who have done so much to build this community of Customer Success professionals, or in the words of Nick Mehta this “movement”. So, Dan Steinman, Lauren Olerich and Kevin Shirley specifically thank you for all of your support and efforts. You have raised the bar once again!