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Are you ready to revolutionize your approach to customer success? In the first episode of TSIA Takes, a limited series within the TECHtonic podcast, Thomas Lah tackles the crucial question: What is the value of customer success? This pivotal discussion features insights from Jim Roth, President of Customer Success at Salesforce, and explores how this fundamental question reshapes the landscape of customer success organizations.

Thomas and Jim delve into Salesforce’s innovative strategy of integrating customer success, support, and training into a seamless, unified experience. Discover how Salesforce customer success managers (CSMs) act as critical orchestrators, ensuring comprehensive support and driving customer health, adoption, and education through a unified customer success score.

The episode also navigates the financial models behind customer success, debating whether it should be monetized or offered as an integral part of the customer experience. Jim Roth presents a compelling case for viewing customer success as a critical investment rather than a cost center.

Whether you’re a seasoned tech professional or new to the industry, this episode offers valuable insights to elevate your understanding of customer success. Join us in this first episode of the TSIA Takes special podcast series to challenge conventional wisdom and gain a fresh perspective on optimizing your customer success business model.

This blog will cover some of the key topics discussed during this conversation, including:

• The Debate Over Customer Success
• Streamlining Customer Portals
• The Customer Success Score
• The Impact of AI on Customer Success
• Your Key Takeaways

The Debate Over Customer Success

The discussion started concerning Frank Slootman’s book “Amp It Up,” which controversially described customer success as a fad. Slootman suggests that companies do not need a dedicated customer success function, arguing that existing support and account management roles suffice. 

In a recent blog post, we emphasized the importance of customer success in driving adoption and ensuring technology investments deliver value. This blog argues that customer success is essential for maintaining long-term customer relationships and helping customers achieve their desired outcomes.

In our podcast conversation, Jim Roth echoed this sentiment, underscoring the need for a dedicated focus on customer support, training, and success management.

Combining Customer Success With Support and Training

Jim Roth shared Salesforce’s innovative approach of merging customer success with traditional technical support and training. This integration aims to provide a seamless experience for customers, ensuring they do not feel the company’s internal organizational structure. By unifying these functions under one umbrella, Salesforce ensures a more cohesive and efficient service delivery. Roth explained that the combined approach addresses all customer needs throughout their life cycle with Salesforce, from initial implementation to ongoing support and training.

One significant benefit of this integration is eliminating redundant processes and portals, streamlining the customer experience. Customers no longer need to navigate multiple platforms to get their needed help. Instead, they have a single point of contact and a unified portal for all their support, training, and success needs.

“We never want our customers to feel our org chart.”—Jim Roth, President of Customer Success at Salesforce.

The Bimodal Split: Professional Services Versus Customer Success

Roth elaborated on the bimodal service split: professional services (project-based with a start and end date) and customer success services (ongoing support and training). This division helps Salesforce address all customer needs throughout the life cycle of their engagement, from initial implementation to continuous support and training. 

Professional services like software implementation or system integration typically handle projects with clear objectives and timelines. In contrast, customer success focuses on the ongoing relationship, ensuring customers continuously derive value from their investments.

The Role of the Customer Success Manager

A critical aspect of Salesforce’s model is the role of the customer success manager (CSM). CSMs act as quarterbacks, orchestrating both the resolution of technical issues and the journey of customer education and adoption. 

This role ensures that specialized resources are marshaled effectively to address customer needs, whether resolving issues or driving adoption through education. CSMs are pivotal in maintaining a holistic view of the customer and understanding their unique challenges and goals.

For example, a Salesforce CSM might identify a customer not using a feature that could significantly enhance productivity. The CSM would then coordinate with the training team to provide targeted education and resources to help the customer leverage that feature.

“CSMs are the linchpin in our strategy, ensuring that every customer interaction is valuable and focused on their success.” —Jim Roth, President of Customer Success at Salesforce.

Related: Is Customer Success a Fad? Exploring the Controversy

Streamlining Customer Portals

One of the significant changes Salesforce implemented was consolidating multiple customer portals into a single, unified platform. This move eliminated confusion and improved the customer experience by providing a one-stop shop for all customer needs, from support to success and training. The unified portal integrates various services, making it easier for customers to find the necessary information and resolve issues quickly.

This streamlining has not only improved customer satisfaction but also enhanced operational efficiency. Salesforce can now track and analyze customer interactions more effectively, identifying common pain points and areas for improvement.

Driving Adoption Through Education

Roth highlighted the crucial role of education in driving product adoption. By integrating customer success with education services, Salesforce ensures that customers receive continuous learning opportunities, enhancing their product knowledge and usage. This integrated approach helps improve both the implementation’s stability and the adoption of product features. Salesforce’s educational platform, Trailhead, plays a vital role in this strategy, offering various courses and certifications that help customers maximize their use of Salesforce products.

Trailhead’s interactive and gamified learning experience has been instrumental in boosting engagement and completion rates. Customers actively participating in Trailhead courses often report higher satisfaction and greater success in achieving their business goals.

The Customer Success Score

To measure and drive customer health, Salesforce developed the customer success score, a composite metric of three components: 

• Technical health score: Monitors system performance and stability
• Adoption score: Tracks feature utilization
• Expertise score: Measures customer engagement with educational resources

This score helps Salesforce track and improve customer success, ensuring that all teams, from sales to support, are aligned and focused on delivering value to customers. 

By regularly assessing these scores, Salesforce can proactively address potential issues and identify opportunities for further customer education and support. This comprehensive approach helps ensure that customers are consistently achieving their desired outcomes.

Incentivizing Customer Health

Aligning incentives across sales and customer success teams has been crucial in breaking down silos and fostering collaboration. By tying compensation to customer health metrics, Salesforce ensures that all teams work together to drive customer success, ultimately leading to better retention and growth. This alignment has also encouraged a more customer-centric culture within Salesforce, where every team member understands the importance of customer success and is motivated to contribute.

“Creating a common set of metrics that describe customer health that everybody in the company is looking at is a big unlock.”—Jim Roth, President of Customer Success at Salesforce.

Salesforce’s incentive structure rewards new sales, product adoption, and long-term customer satisfaction. This holistic approach ensures that all teams are focused on delivering sustained value.

Related: The KORE Score Framework

The Impact of AI on Customer Success

The conversation also touched on AI’s transformative potential in customer success. Jim Roth mentioned several AI use cases, such as summarization, drafting, transcription, and translation, which enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of customer support and success workflows. AI-powered tools can quickly summarize case histories, draft initial responses, transcribe customer interactions, and translate content, significantly reducing the workload for support and success teams.

“Summarization is a beautiful tool for support engineers and customer success roles.” —Jim Roth, President of Customer Success at Salesforce.

Salesforce also explores using AI to provide proactive recommendations to customers, helping them identify new opportunities to leverage their existing products and services. By analyzing usage patterns and other data, AI can suggest features or modules that customers may not utilize fully, driving further adoption and value.

The podcast conversation with Jim Roth provides valuable insights into the evolving role of customer success in technology companies. By integrating customer success with support and training, leveraging AI, and aligning incentives, Salesforce sets a benchmark for delivering exceptional customer experiences. As technology companies continue to navigate this landscape, the emphasis on customer success will undoubtedly play a pivotal role in their long-term success.

As you reflect on these insights, consider this: Are you prepared to win the debate on the value of customer success in your organization? 

Related: The Business Case for Customer Success: Challenges, Value, and Key Metrics

Your Key Takeaways

• Customer Success Is Not a Fad: Despite some views that customer success is unnecessary, it plays a vital role in driving product adoption and maintaining long-term customer relationships. This dedicated function ensures technology investments deliver real value to customers.
• Integrated Customer Experience: Salesforce’s innovative approach of combining customer success with technical support and training provides a seamless experience for customers. This integration eliminates redundant processes and streamlines customer interactions through a unified portal, enhancing overall satisfaction and efficiency.‍
• Leveraging AI for Efficiency: AI technologies such as summarization, drafting, transcription, and translation revolutionize Salesforce customer success workflows. These tools improve efficiency, reduce workload, and provide proactive recommendations, driving further product adoption and customer value.