Customer success and retention

When should I hire my first customer success person? Earlier than feels comfortable. The usual trigger is two or three customers big enough that losing one would hurt, plus a founder who is spending m... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → What is the difference between customer success and customer support? Support is reactive and ticket shaped: the customer has a problem, you solve it, you close it. Customer success is proactive and outcome shaped: yo... Breaking into GTM 3 resources → I just got handed my first set of accounts. What do I actually do in the first 30 days? Read the deal before you talk to anyone. Find out what the customer was promised, who signed, who will actually use it, and what they said success ... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → What does a good customer onboarding actually look like? Good onboarding is measured in time to first real value, not in how many training sessions you delivered. Pick one observable moment that means the... Breaking into GTM 4 resources → How do I build a customer health score that actually predicts churn? Start with four to six inputs, not twenty. The ones that earn their place are depth of product usage (not logins), breadth across the account, supp... Doing the work 4 resources → How do I run a QBR that the customer does not find a waste of time? Stop opening with your usage dashboard. Open with the outcome they told you they were buying, and show progress against it in their numbers, not yo... Doing the work 4 resources → My champion at a big account just left. What do I do? Move within 48 hours, before someone else defines your product for the new person. Send a short personal note to the incoming contact congratulatin... Doing the work 4 resources → A big account has gone quiet and I think they are going to churn. What do I actually do? Get the honest conversation on the calendar rather than sending another check-in email. Ask directly whether they are still getting what they bough... Doing the work 4 resources → How do I structure a customer success team once one person is not enough? Pick your organising axis on purpose. By segment (enterprise, mid market, SMB) is the default and works when your customers differ mostly in size. ... Leading a GTM team 4 resources → Should my CSMs carry a quota? Eventually yes, but not before your product renews reliably on its own merits. Paying a CSM on expansion when the product is still churning turns t... Leading a GTM team 4 resources → How do I stop the sales to customer success handoff from breaking every time? Two fixes do most of the work. First, bring CS into the deal before the contract is signed, not after, so the customer meets the person who will ru... Leading a GTM team 4 resources → How do I forecast renewals so the number is actually believable? Stop forecasting from CSM sentiment. Build it from a small set of predictive inputs (usage trend, executive engagement, support pattern, open escal... Leading a GTM team 4 resources → GitLab publishes its entire customer success handbook. What is worth copying? Three things. The renewal tracking process, because it shows what a renewal looks like as an operational pipeline with stages and owners rather tha... How the best do it 4 resources → How do the best teams cover a long tail of customers without a CSM per account? They split the book deliberately and then invest properly in the scaled half. Strategic accounts keep named CSMs. Everything below a revenue line g... How the best do it 4 resources → What separates a best-in-class QBR from a status update? Benchmarking and a point of view. The best QBRs tell a customer where they sit relative to comparable customers, then say plainly what the top perf... How the best do it 4 resources → How do the best teams learn from churn instead of just reporting it? They interview the customers who left, properly, with a script that goes past the first answer. 'Too expensive' is almost never the reason, it is t... How the best do it 4 resources →