We are lucky to have had such levels of internet connectivity, mobile devices and business-ready collaboration tools in 2020. Obviously, it was a big loss for the first provider. Is It Better To Lease Or Buy A Car In Summer 2022? From the first contact through onboarding, adoption and expansion, there needs to be a coordinated effort between all departments. The shift towards a holistic flywheel approach that supports expansion and advocacy for driving customer and business growth is becoming more apparent. This idea is for support teams to develop more meaningful customer relationships. Where CS was once a matter of dedicated success managers fielding phone calls, now the cutting edge of CS involves AI platforms delivering automated support at scale supplemented by human help as needed. And well look at how Totangos AI bot Zoe uses artificial intelligence to facilitate customer success management, pointing toward the future of CS. The study also showed that companies with data-driven CS strategies gain 40% greater year-over-year growth in their annual revenue through hyper-personalizing interactions across each stage of the customer lifecycle. As Customer Success becomes more important to organizations, we are seeing an increase in new titles, so weve included the salaries of a few new roles this year, including Customer Success Operations. Companies are realizing the importance of customer outcomes over traditional business outcomes and are understanding that this shift requires the best talent available. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. This type of automation handles standard processes efficiently, saving high-touch customer success managers from having to attend to large volumes of routine requests and freeing up their time to assist customers who truly need manual attention. As a result, we are seeing a shift in the CSM to account ratio. This maximizes the likelihood that clients renew their spend with the business and share their positive experiences with their friends, family and colleagues. CS managers can organize teams into groups aligned with company organizational structure and set success goals for CS teams just as you would for customers. However, CRM is focused solely on customers and is not just a software category. According to this years survey respondents, 76% of Customer Success teams consist of more than 10 members, which is up 27% from 2020. The SaaS industry largely saw a massive surge in adoption, as customers rapidly accelerated their technology implementation to support remote and distributed working. The Customer Success industry has grown and matured rapidly over the past few years, but due to the impacts of COVID-19, shelter-in-place orders and the increase in remote workers in 2020, the industrys momentum accelerated exponentially. When we first started this survey eight years ago, this role was little more than a small function of an organization, but now, it has infused itself into all aspects of business and its not slowing down any time soon. At one time, customer success technology revolved around using the phone, supplemented by email. Monitoring key performance indicators such as license activations, usage frequency and time spent in-app can alert you to whether customers are actively using your product or specific product features. Join us for Customer Success Summit: Teams in Miami Beach on September 14-16, Defining Customer Success Throughout the Customer Journey, Farm, Dont Hunt (the Customer Success Mantra), The Essentials of Digital-first Customer Success Strategies, How Digital-First Customer Success Can Improve Your Customer Success Management Process, Digital-First Customer Success vs. The flywheel re-envisions the customers experience to emphasize the continuity between the pre-sale and post-sale experience and between the way successful customer retention sets the stage for brand advocacy and the recruitment of new prospects. To achieve this end, its critical to ensure customer success teams are collaborating closely with sales and product teams to create these personalized customer solutions. The range of salaries for this role was between $130K-300K. Its a challenge to change the nature of the products and services delivered and take a much longer-term view, but the rewards are a much "stickier" relationship and a revenue pipeline extending for multiples longer than a one-and-done approach. There was also a greater focus on protecting strategic accounts and enabling efficiency through automation in order to scale, which meant a digital-first approach to CS became a necessity. When asked about the goals of their CS teams, respondents rated churn reduction (94%), renewals (87%), and product adoption (86%) as their top high and medium priority goals. To reach a desired outcome, the team must become more aligned and must plan and execute together. They are currently building on the growth and success of the past few months as the world has pivoted from the physical to the virtual, and the trend will be for more services to go online as in-person experiences decline. The digital-first approach to customer success can be applied throughout every stage of the customer journey, from onboarding through adoption to renewal, expansion, and advocacy. Totangos Zoe, which can integrate with SuccessTeams, offers a preview of the future of artificial intelligence. SaaS providers happen to be leading in some of these areas right now, but the customer success approach is just in its infancy and promises to be an exciting and demanding model for high-performing organizations from many different industries to follow. Companies are starting to realize that Customer Success is a growth driver. Half of all respondents stated that their CS team had been in operation for 3 or more years, while the number of respondents who said their organizations had a CS team for a year or less dropped significantly this year to just 9% vs 15% in 2020. We were approached by a competitor who was able to convince us to switch. There was also a jump in collaboration efforts with service and support teams with 56% of respondents saying they spend more than 50% of their time working with these teams. When we didnt know if or when we would be able to secure new customers, we realized just how important our current customers were. In private companies, we are seeing CS professionals being further encouraged to help grow the business by offering them stock options, reflecting the understanding that the health and happiness of a customer is tied to how much revenue can be generated from that customer. As CS becomes more infused into organizations, increasing collaboration between CS and Marketing, Sales, and other teams will be necessary as these teams will be required to access and act on the customer data in the same way that the CS team is doing using digital technologies. These as-a-service companies, particularly SaaS, are in a strong position. For example, when a customer reaches out for help with a common issue, they might receive an automated email recommending a video tutorial with the solution, along with an invitation to contact a support agent if they need additional help. My business used to subscribe to a very costly SaaS application, and as part of our journey, we had a customer service manager (CSM) assigned to our account. Doing that will entail changes, and one of the most interesting ways SaaS firms must do this revolves around their approach to customer success. When we first began our survey eight years ago, Customer Success was just a small, solo team. Because CS is increasingly touching more and more departments, it is crucial for organizations to take an outside-in view of the customer journey. Customer Success teams are growing in size alongside coverage models that scale to cover a broad base of customers. You may opt-out by. This approach is not for all businesses its a huge investment in time and energy but those striving to lead their industries and win awards and those who see earned reputation as a great marketing tool are looking to customer success as a long-term strategy in future-proofing their businesses. They are in it together for the long-haul. Its no longer efficient or necessary to pull data together from multiple platforms to try to form a 360-view of the customer and figure out what steps to take next. This year, we had more respondents to our survey than ever before. It can also be used to increase the efficiency of support when escalation issues arise. These tools can be applied across every customer engagement model and tier, so team members are freed from handling repetitive work and can focus on handling tasks that are better suited to a human touch or engagement while managing more accounts. Technology can also help you manage your customer success teams more efficiently in order to deliver your customers better CS support. The average salary for this role has continually increased over the past several years, and we expect this trend to endure as organizations shift their focus to providing more value to customers and expanding product adoption and customer advocacy. While we can thank the pandemic for forcing us to make these transitions so quickly, they were transitions that we were likely going to have to make anyway albeit at a more relaxed pace. The COVID-19 pandemic and remote work mandates highlighted the need for, and value of, a digital-first Customer Success approach. The range of salaries for this role, however, reached between $48,500-170,000, with CSMs in large metropolitan areas in California and New York as well as those with over 10 years of tenure in larger enterprises seeing the high-end of the salary range. However, when a Customer Success platform is implemented, teams are able to pull in key customer metrics from across all of these various data platforms into one single dashboard in order to gain a holistic understanding of customers and seamlessly integrate customer and operational insights. Others have done very well. It's vital that progress can be measured and that it is not subjective. This approach aims to deliver ongoing deep relationships with customers based on transforming their success into shared success. However, as more teams are working together and engaging the customer throughout their journey, organizations need to break down the departmental silos and enable a holistic, orchestrated experience for the customer from the first-touch through purchase, onboarding, adoption and advocacy. During the onboarding phase, customer success depends on achieving outcomes such as: The process of achieving these outcomes can be automated by establishing best practices and setting up digital workflows and monitoring tools which implement them when customers reach appropriate milestones in their onboarding journey. As collaboration efforts increase, organizations must eliminate these data, team and communication silos, and instead, facilitate cross-functional workflows. Customer Success teams are continuing to grow rapidly, and due to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the team sizes grew even larger and faster than in previous years. Essentially, when a customer sees value from a product, they will want to continue to increase that value by purchasing more products and becoming loyal repeat buyers who advocate for the brand, thus increasing overall revenue for the business. The Totango Increase Customer Adoption SuccessBLOC includes out-of-the-box KPIs, dashboards and workflows to help you monitor customer behavior and assist customers with unlocking the full value of your product. Exceeding this limit tended to overwhelm CS teams and dilute support quality. With this approach, the bulk of customer success is handled automatically, with manual one-on-one support triggered only when human help is needed. One of Zoes many features is an AI-powered chatbot that allows customer success team members to ask questions in natural language and receive answers from the teams knowledge base. We also expect that bonus structures will continue to be more tied to customer value, through factors like account health and customer advocacy. This is up from 34% over 2020. This year, 75% of respondents stated that each CSM in their organizations handled between 16-200 accounts, which is up from 27% in 2020. Totango surveyed close to 500 professionals and analyzed more than 10,000 data points for its 2019 State of the Customer Success Industry and Salary Report. You can streamline escalation management by combining digital monitoring and automated support workflows with digital support tools such as knowledge bases which give customers the answers they need to frequently asked questions. We talked with Customer Success professionals before and during the pandemic to understand what has happened over the past year, and especially the last few months, to provide you with a view into where our industry is going and what opportunities exist for CS professionals. As CS evolved, the CS team began working more with Customer Support, handling customer questions, tickets, etc. In previous years, the focus of CS teams has been mainly on retaining customers and decreasing churn. Compensation structures have evolved to align with the increasing importance of customer success, reflecting a shift in revenue responsibility. 2022 Forbes Media LLC. This report not only breaks down what Customer Success Teams are trying to achieve and obstacles they face, but what resources they are employing to better integrate CS into their organizations and be more customer focused. Sales teams are there to help them on their journey to success. Organizations are often forced to use rigid, function-specific software and disconnected tools that prevent them from operating productively and effortlessly, and delivering a consistent, holistic customer experience. This new digital-first paradigm permeates the way CS is handled, at every phase of the customer journey from onboarding through escalation, renewal and beyond. While great strides have been made in both recognition of the industry as well as the more widespread implementation of customer success software and best practices, there is still more room for growth in the customer success space. Sales success and customer retention are natural outcomes of this sales and support evolution. With the right best practices and automated systems in place, a single agent can field thousands of clients efficiently, just like Zoom did. Then establish KPIs and other deliverables. CS teams are also becoming more responsible for hitting revenue targets with 78% of respondents reporting their teams were held responsible for reaching these targets. There were significant increases this year in the amount of time that CSMs spent collaborating with Marketing, Operations, and Sales, reflecting a greater emphasis on customer advocacy. More than 1,500 Customer Success professionals from around the world participated in the 2021 State of the Customer Success Industry and Salary Survey. Zoe interfaces with other collaboration tools teams are already using, such as Slack. It is true that a great many industries and businesses have suffered tremendous hardship during the pandemic to date. Teams with these technology systems in place also reported being able to more proactively engage with their customers than those without this technology. Another CSM introduced himself and followed the playbook of seeking problems to help us solve. CS teams are being tasked with owning more revenue-generating activities that make an impact on organizations bottom lines, as well as activities that improve product stickiness - like feature adoption - which decrease churn and increase renewals. This growth cycle can drive increased expansion within the customer base as well as new logo customers as advocates who promote their successes through customer testimonials, referrals and other channels that help drive awareness and new business growth. If you don't find and solve them, your competitor will. The range of salaries for this role is between $70K-90K, reflecting the importance of this role to the CS team and the company. With a great sales process, strong customer support and well-maintained relationships, you may even increase recommendations for your own business. This year, we also included a choice for stock or equity options and 37% of respondents stated that they received these as part of their overall compensation structure. With the right solution backing up the team, AI may be used at many or all steps of the customer's journey with their support teams. Technology adoption still needs to mature to enable a customer success mindset, although the digital transformation is imminent. Businesses are embracing the idea that CS is a company-wide effort to ensure customers attain value from their products and services, so that those customers will continue to renew their subscriptions, expand their product adoption, and become advocates for the brand. Customer Success salaries are continuing to trend upward as the industry matures and businesses are placing more value on the expertise and responsibilities of these CS professionals. Sergei Anikin is Chief Technical Officer atPipedrive, a global sales CRM. CRS is an extension of CRM tools and existing processes. As the world shifted, our business models shifted as well. But there was no follow-up, and after some time, the CSM changed again but without follow-up or resolution improvement. The pandemic created a new sense of urgency around protecting and nurturing customers by highlighting the fact that customers truly are the core of every business. As a result, compensation structures have evolved in recent years to be more heavily focused on bonuses and other incentives like stock or equity options. He was our proactive advocate, seeking problems to help us solve. This became even more important when COVID hit, as many companies did not know when or if they would be able to secure new customers, so they had to focus on generating advocacy and revenue from their current customers. In recent years, organizations have been trending away from trying to simply gain as many customers as possible and focusing more on how to retain and expand revenue from each individual customer. When we no longer had the option to drop by our clients offices or meet with them at industry events, we had to figure out how to form and keep connections and stay up-to-date on the health of their businesses, all while remaining socially distant. This makes it easy for team members to quickly retrieve customer data and knowledge base information needed to provide solutions. A greater emphasis on the importance of providing value to the customer was also reflected by the weight of factors like feature adoption (66%) and account health (65%). The importance of the customer is reflected in the Customer Success bonus structure. This report provides valuable insights into trends in the CS profession; industry benchmarks for CS compensation, growth and maturity; and guidelines for how to adapt to a digital experience in an increasingly virtual world. Start with a benchmark for sales activity. However, over the past 12 months and especially with the COVID-19 pandemic, that growth has been even more significant. By utilizing data-driven CS technologies, teams are able to gain a holistic view of each customer account, provide hyper-personalized interactions, automate repetitive tasks, and efficiently scale their businesses without having to scale their teams. And since factors like renewals, expansion and account health were listed as top components affecting respondents bonus structures, visibility and proactivity can also play a role in a CSMs overall salary. 75% of respondents stated that each CSM in their organizations handled between 16-200 accounts, which is up from 27% in 2020. 78% of respondents reported that their team's were held responsible for revenue targets. The evolution of CS platforms is enabling this holistic view of the business, making it easy to integrate data-driven tools and empower all employees to work with more agility, increasing operational efficiency and delivering amazing customer experiences.