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2023 Customer Success Year in Review – News, Resources & Trends

Updated on October 15, 2024 20 minutes read

Summary points:

Here we are, at last, the end of 2023!

And what a year it’s been. We’ve seen the first major economic downturn since Customer Success became a popular kid on the block.

The effects of this slowdown ranged from puzzling to surprising, shocking, and downright “apocalyptic” as one CS leader put it below.

While silently concerned about tightening budgets, industry analysts last year were optimistic. Most CS leaders predicted another year of growth and expansion, but what we’ve seen couldn’t be farther from that.

So what happened?

We asked that question of some top voices in the CS community. Let’s look at their responses, before moving on to review industry must-reads, this year’s top CS people, where Custify stands, and what we’re expecting for 2024.

2023 Changes, News, & Shifts in the Customer Success Industry

1. An evolving landscape of tools, solutions, and AIs that help streamline customer success

One of the first things that comes to mind, that I would definitely pay close attention to, is the impact of AI on customer success and the amount of startups that are now available and tools to really help teams to be more productive. So I think if I were to start the year all over again I would definitely want to make sure that I was paying attention to all of the trends and really take a look at the tools that are available, cause I think 2023 is definitely the year of efficiency and doing less with more, so I think a lot of these options that are out there would be great to explore to be able to set the year up for the team in the most effective way possible.

Eleni VorvisMastering CS – Candid Leader Insights – Ep 7

2. Revival through resilience in the face of constant changes in customer success

If I could choose a movie title, it’s a little bit heavy, but I think that I would choose Revival through Resilience. The reason for that is because this year has been a difficult one for, I would say, SaaS in general, but especially as customer success managers. We’ve seen just a significant amount of organizations not really know what to do with the function. Ultimately and what that’s done is just require the customer success managers to navigate all kinds of changes and really meet these demands around retention and navigating customer relationships in spite of the fact that at a more macro level a lot of these organizations are are struggling to keep up with some of the boom that we saw around the pandemic time.

So I think it’s just really been mission-critical for customer success managers to be especially resilient and adaptable over the last year or so. And just navigating a lot of ambiguity and variables and ultimately though I think the revival is on the horizon. Whether or not that’s directly in 2024, we’ll see.

Sadie Shepard – Mastering CS – Candid Leader Insights – Ep 9

3. Customer success in 2023 was an apocalyptic, unforeseeable disaster that will bloom into a bright and beautiful community

I would consider customer success this year for a lot of us has been like an apocalyptic film. Something where there was this unforeseeable disaster that we all were thrust into and we’ve all literally developed these communities from a survival standpoint and I would love to unpack a lot of that but it’s been a bit apocalyptic for a lot of us. But what I love about it is, if you’ve seen a lot of those films or read any of those books, there’s always this scene at the end where they all come to their community and it’s bright and it’s beautiful and I think that’s what’s gonna happen to us in 2024.

De’Edra Williams – Mastering CS – Candid Leader Insights – Ep 10

4. A perfect storm with tightening revenues and budgets, layoffs, burnout, and lack of clarity

I really think we’re gonna look back on this year as a pretty significant inflection point for customer success. It’s a combination of a number of factors. I think it’s a bit of a perfect storm out there right now. So obviously with the economy coming down that’s tightening revenues, it’s tightening budgets, it’s putting a lot of pressure on those post sales teams.

Then you add in the layoffs, you add in what I think is a very real problem within customer success which is burnout – I think there are a lot of teams that are over-stressed and having a hard time managing all the balls that they’re carrying. I think really one of the big things that I’ve noticed is that there’s a real challenge and that there’s a lack of a consensus definition on what customer success actually is.

Parker Chase-Corwin – Mastering CS – Candid Leader Insights – Ep 11

5. A big emphasis on flexibility amidst tumultuous changes – try, pivot, try again

I think for this year, there’s really been a big emphasis on flexibility. There’s been so many things that are changing in the broad landscape and even from, you know, Q1 to Q4 – trying to understand what the most important metric is with all the noise and kind of macro environment, just really making sure the team is comfortable with the changes and that it’s okay to try something and pivot and try again, so that’s been really the big emphasis for this year.

Matt Kelso – Mastering CS – Candid Leader Insights – Ep 13

6. The tailwinds of COVID, or 2020 and 2021

If I were to look back and reflect, I think the start of 2023 was a lot of what we were experiencing of the tailwinds of COVID or 2020 and 2021, which was “grow at all costs”. We were really ramping up and preparing for the SaaS rollercoaster to continue to succeed and grow. And, you know, much like we didn’t expect to be in lockdown or COVID, we didn’t really expect 2023 to be where we ended up—where we needed to really watch our budgets, how we’re growing, where we’re investing, and what we’re doing in customer success.

Anika Zubair2023 Unwrapped: CS Insights and Forecasts for a Game-changing 2024 | Webinar

2023 Customer Success Must-Reads: The Best Articles, eBooks, and Studies

1. Articles

1. Developing customer success through a culture of trust | Fastcompany

In a brilliant review of what trust means within an organization, Gabrielle Lukianchuk, CMO of ABBYY, highlights how CSMs need more trust from their managers to develop and nurture customer relationships. It’s all part of a culture of trust and transparency that encourages customers to do business with you.

2. The Silent Architect: How Customer Success Influences Product Roadmaps | Custify Blog

Throughout our research in CS, one truth stands out as essential and evergreen – that Customer Success and Product need to work together in an efficient manner, and that all boils down to the Product Roadmap and how CS insights can influence it.

3. Customer Success Is Broken. Here’s How to Fix It. | a16z

A fantastic as well as fantastically-practical review of why many think CS is dying. Mark Regan, Joe Morrissey, and Abbas Haider Ali go in depth on specific, present-day issues in CS and what you can do to fix them if you find yourself in that situation. A bold take which feels like a splash of cold water for many who feel stuck in their CS roles.

4. What if Customer Success Writes Other Teams’ Goals? | The Success League

In a fresh take on what it means to hold a CS function in a large organization, Russell Bourne starts from goal achievement and leads a discussion on how cross-departmental collaboration can work efficiently. From goal achievement to churn mitigation, CS-alignment can have wide-ranging positive effects on any company.

5. Empathy and Alignment: How to Support CSMs and Prevent Quiet Quitting | GainGrowRetain

In a follow-up to the study we did on Quiet Quitting, Irina Vatafu, our own Head of CS, explored what companies can do to support their CSMs and prevent job dissatisfaction from taking hold. Spoiler alert: it’s all about treating people right, optimizing CS alignment, and helping CSMs succeed in their goals so CS overall remains a growth center.

6. Why Is No One Responding To Your Customer Success Managers? | Custify Blog

One of the questions that always top-of-mind for CSMs – why aren’t they answering? Well, we took that seriously and reviewed a bunch of reasons why that might be. And we also surveyed some top voices in CS to hear their take on how to effectively reengage customers who ghost you.

7. 5 Reasons Why Customer Success Isn’t Just for SaaS | GainGrowRetain

In the years since customer success started, we’ve seen it become more and more SaaS-centric. This article argues it’s high time CS became a function for other companies beyond SaaS, as it improves communication, boosts products, and helps keep everyone and their KPIs in sync with what customers actually want.

8. How Customer Success Pros Can Thrive in Every Circumstance | Built In Chicago

We can talk all day about how personalized experiences, tailored solutions, and more communication are the top trends of CS this year. But maybe it’s better to hear it from someone who’s experienced the current economic turmoil and come to the same conclusion.

9. Value Realization Framework in SaaS: A Strategy to Exceed Customer Expectations | Custify Blog

A key trend even amidst a tumultuous year – value realization and TTV reduction seem to be at the forefront of not just CS but also their bosses – C-suite execs now acknowledge the fact that value delivery optimizations can and do drive business long term.

10. Customer Outcomes – Unlock the Future-proof Measure of Customer Success | Custify Blog

Adding value to customers is all well and good, but if they don’t accomplish their initial or main goal in your business relationship, they’ll still churn. That’s why prioritizing customers’ desired outcomes should be a leading tactic for your 2024 in CS.

11. How to Help Your Customer Success Team Become a Strategic Growth Lever | CMSWIRE

Danny Cruz, Head of CS at Calendly, put out this fresh take on how to build a CS team that turns CS into a growth center – something everyone predicted would happen across the board this year, yet somehow it never did – at least not at the scale we envisioned. Yet this article argues it can still happen, even amidst an economic downturn, and outlines specific ways towards that goal.

12. Special Mention: The Customer Success Career Path Guide | Custify

Discover your path in the dynamic world of customer success with this comprehensive CS Career Hub. This resource is your gateway to understanding the various roles and opportunities in customer success, offering detailed job descriptions for 16 positions, ranging from entry-level to senior roles. You’ll gain insights into job responsibilities, qualifications, expected salaries, and more. Additionally, the hub provides practical advice for advancing your career, whether you’re just starting or seeking to elevate your current role. It also features educational materials from industry experts on customer success strategies and tools.

2. Most Debated Articles On The Custify Blog

1. Quiet Quitting: Are CSMs Responsible For Too Many Things & Overworked? | Custify Blog

Few would have foreseen the results of our Quiet Quitting in CS survey back in February. Nonetheless the numbers spoke for themselves – with some of the most worrisome stats indicating CS was still responsible for customer support as well as adoption, renewal, upsells, and many more. In fact, we found that 48% of CSMs were responsible for 10 or more major job activities. Yikes indeed.

2. How to Prioritize Customer Needs and Stick to Your Budget | Custify Blog

This one made the rounds online as the topic resonated with many industry professionals. In a year like 2023, none of that is surprising. But the most interesting parts of our deep dive on customer needs prioritization were the responses we got from the CS community on how they handle it.

3. Top Customer Success OKRs to Use + OKR Spreadsheet Template | Custify Blog

Never did we think this would be controversial – but many CS voices were up in arms against the selected OKRs for our poll, OKRs suggested by the CS community itself. What does that tell us? Well, Shawn Riedel summarized it perfectly:

We still have a lot of work to do! 🙂

Shawn Riedel, in response to the top OKRs mentioned by CSMs

4. Why Is No One Responding To Your Customer Success Managers? | Custify Blog

Our review of why customers are unresponsive also caught the attention of many of our readers, with some interesting debates appearing as a result.

5. Most Important Questions CSMs Should Ask Their Customers | Custify Blog

If we talked about why customers are unresponsive, we naturally had to cover what questions CSMs should ask their customers to drive engagement and help them reach a better understanding of customer success and how it can help them reach their goals.

3. Guides & Studies

1. The State of Customer Success: 2023 | TSIA

A great resource to start your year with, the State of Customer Success by TSIA is an annual report on the CS industry from a holistic perspective, analyzing profitability, expansion, and more benchmark data. We’re eagerly waiting to see what 2024 has in store!

2. The State of Customer Success 2023 | Customer Success Collective

On the other hand, we have the State of Customer Success from the Customer Success Collective, which zooms in a bit more on industry trends in an extensive 83-page report. One such fascinating stat is that 66% of CS professionals haven’t yet adopted AI solutions in their current roles.

3. 2023 Quiet Quitting and Employee Satisfaction in Customer Success Study | Custify Blog

Our research was a wakeup call for many CS leaders in the industry. Nobody would’ve believed that CSMs are in danger of quiet quitting prior to our survey on CS employee satisfaction, which revealed that 86% of CSMs want to quit.

4. Founder’s Cheat Sheet to SaaS Pricing Models and Strategies | Custify Blog

Potentially one of the most useful materials we put out this year, from the perspective of a SaaS founder who needs to pick their pricing strategy. This point of inflection is vital in SaaS, as picking the wrong price will lead to a long payback period and panic among investors. So having a cheat sheet has been helpful, even for us who wrote it!

5. The 2023 State of Customer Onboarding | Rocketlane

Towards the start of 2023, we got this very insightful review of Onboarding stats from Rocketlane. It revealed some surprising stats – like the fact that 40% of their respondents charged for implementation, while and extra 20% were about to do so – a surprisingly common practice if you’ve been in CS long enough. We’re eager to see a follow up on this one!

6. SaaS Customer Onboarding Guide: Navigating Challenges and Driving Success | Custify Blog

Sticking to the topic of onboarding, our guide to this vital stage in the SaaS customer journey came out this year – full of everything you need to cover to master onboarding and kickstart your customers’ success.

7. The State of Personalization Report 2023 | Twilio Segment

2023 was a year of increased personalization and 2024’s going to be even more so – we’re seeing signs everywhere. Such as in this report from Twilio, now Segment, which revealed just how much personalization begets more personalization, as newer generations start to expect tailored experiences – with 49% of Gen Z respondents saying they’re “less likely to make a purchase,” while 27% would “stop shopping with the brand” if they encounter an impersonal experience.

8. How to Improve Your Customer Journey with a Customer Success Platform | Custify Blog

Over the years, we’ve noticed many who don’t really know how to make the most out of their CSP. So we turned all our know-how into an actionable guide to improving customer journeys via your customer success platform.

9. The State of Customer Messaging in 2023 | OneSignal

Maybe this report might explain some of what happened in CS in 2023. As the a15z article above argues, the issue isn’t with CS itself, but with configuring a CS org correctly for post-sales momentum. With 42.9% of businesses focused on acquisition, compared to 28.5% on retention, we begin to see why post-sales momentum wasn’t really possible for a lot of organizations. What’s more, this report by OneSignal has even more alarming stats for you to uncover.

10. State of Customer Churn 2023 | Customer Success Collective

Another illuminating report from the Customer Success Collective, the State of Customer Churn brings us an extensive overview of why churn reduction tactics don’t produce the expected results: from 72.9% of CS teams who don’t have a win-back campaign to 50% who don’t have discounts prepared for at-risk customers at the point of renewal.

11. CX Trends 2023 | Zendesk

92 pages of stats from Zendesk on the evolution of CX amidst an economic downturn and the rise of AI. Some fascinating, if at times clashing numbers come to light, such as that 67% of business leaders expect to boost AI use in the following year, while 58% of customer service agents still don’t have enough customer data to do their jobs right. Will the rise of AI finally convince such businesses to take a serious swipe at data governance and hygiene? Only time will tell.

12. Cross-selling and upselling – the ultimate guide for SaaS | Custify Blog

Last but not least, we put out our complete guide to upselling and cross-selling. In a year when few actually had the budgets to prioritize expansion, but we firmly believe it’s the best way to recoup losses and turn that Net MRR churn negative.

4. Books

1. Customer Communities: Engage and Retain Customers to Build the Future of Your Business, by Nick Mehta and Robin Van Lieshout

Top Review:

“Outstanding resource for scaling companies–the secret sauce to driving customer engagement and NRR

Fantastic resource for company operators who need to future-proof their businesses by engaging and retaining their customer bases. Authors Mehta and Van Lieshout provide a generous, practical guidebook for putting customers at the heart of your business growth strategy.

The book includes insights into how to effectively increase net revenue retention (NRR), tips for getting started, stories from being “in the trenches” with customers, pitfalls to avoid, and more. The most resilient and popular products rely on communities of enthusiastic evangelists to tout their benefits, spread positive word-of-mouth, and drive reliable growth.”

– Sarah Brown on Amazon.com

2. Customer Success Manifesto: How to Get Clients to Stay Longer, Feel Happy and Achieve Better Results, by Jay Goncalves and Ben McLellan

Top Review:

“A MUST read for customer success!

I loved that this book talked about relationships at scale as it’s such a KEY part of customer success that I think we miss. It also gave some super super helpful frameworks to easily understand the concepts inside the book and that I could use to evaluate our own customer success.
This is PACKED with valuable information and shares examples of how other businesses are doing which I really appreciate.
Highly highly recommend reading it. Ben & Jay are paving the way to better customer success.”

– Sarah Moloney on Amazon.com

3. The Chief Customer Officer Playbook: 8 Strategies that Will Accelerate Your Career and Win You a Seat at the Executive Table, by Rod Cherkas

Top Review:

“Add to your 2023 LIST!! A must read for anyone in Customer Success
I have been in Customer Success for over 10+ years and wish I had had this resource when I started my CS career journey. This book is a roadmap for anyone in Customer Success from IC to CCO- as it explores the crucial fundamentals of a CS leadership role, how CS is evolving, and how the business must mature to meet the challenges ahead. You will take away where to focus, how to prepare, roadblocks, and possible solutions to explore. When you finish this book, you will wish it had come around sooner!”

– Holly B on Amazon.com

2023 Top Influencers in the Customer Success Space

2023 Custify Year In Review: New Features, Awards, & Achievements

New Features

In-app Surveys

We added the ability to conduct CSAT & Promoter Score surveys directly with Custify by simply sending them to your customers by company, segment, or at the individual user level. Say goodbye to outdated and expensive third party solutions. With Custify, you can do it all in one place!

Calendar Connector

Now your Google and Outlook360 integrations within Custify are even more powerful! Our calendar connector allows you to import meetings into Custify directly from Gmail & Outlook calendars.

Advanced Default Reports

Reporting is one of our most powerful tools in Cusitfy, but making sense of all that customer data can be confusing and difficult. To make it easier for you, especially if you’re new to Custify, we’ve added some Advanced Default Reports which you can use as-is, with just some basic setup required:

  • Churn Reporting
  • Retention Reporting
  • Cohort Analysis
  • Cashflow Forecasting

Customer Portal

This year saw the launch of a highly-requested feature: the Customer Portal. It’s one we’re particularly proud of since it combines all other Custify features into easy-to-read customer dashboards that show you the right info, at the right time, with total transparency and visibility across your team.

Clustered Health Scores

Clustered Health Scores allow you to combine multiple health scores into a single, comprehensive metric. You can choose from three types of Clustered Health Scores: Impact Based, Custom Impact, and Point System. Each type has its own advantages and disadvantages, depending on your needs and preferences. Clustered Health Scores can help you monitor and improve the health of your customers, products, or services. They can also have an individual impact on the Global Health Score, which is a summary of all your health scores.

AI-Generated Playbooks

Do you want to create playbooks for your customer success strategies, but don’t know where to start? Custify’s new feature is a great solution to this. With AI-generated playbooks, you can simply enter a description of the playbook you need, and let the AI generate the steps for you. You can choose from tasks, emails, and notifications, and customize them as you wish. AI-generated playbooks are designed to simplify the process creation journey and provide you with ideas and inspiration for building effective playbooks.

Signals (Automated health scores and usage notifications)

Signals empower you to create notifications driven by customer interactions, enabling you to proactively monitor shifts in customer behavior and gain insights into trends and behavioral patterns. Select the critical events that should trigger notifications and ensure that your CSMs stay informed of any changes without the need for manual checks on metrics or health scores.

New Integrations

Next, we added a whole bunch of integrations this year, expanding the ways you can make use of Custify:

MariaDB, Aircall, BigQuery, Azure Synapse, Snowflake, AWS Redshift, MongoDB, MySQL, Postgres, Mixpanel, Pendo

Awards

Customer Success Today: A Review of News & Trends for 2024

1. Customer Success 4.0 Fab Four: Customer-Led Growth, Moving from COGS to PNL, Focusing on TTV, Employee Experience

I’m calling it Customer Success 4.0 Fab 4. So there’s four things that I really think that we need to be focusing on in 2024, which puts it into Fab 4 for 2024:

  1. First and foremost, we need to move to a customer-led model. Right now so many companies are focusing on product-led growth and that’s fine, you can still have that within a company, particularly for startups because they’re developing a product market fit. But for more mature companies, we need to be leading with the customer. So for 2024, the first thing we need to start focusing on is customer-led growth or CLG. And you can partner with you know, product lead growth, but lead with the customer and you will reap tremendous rewards.
  2. The second thing I’m looking at is moving from being a part of COGS or a cost center and moving into owning revenue or PNL – that is really going to be a driver for us in 2024, and it shows that we add value to the organization.
  3. The third thing is really Time to Value metrics because again that first thing is if we’re being led by the customer for our growth perspective, from a revenue perspective we need to increase our ability to get them to value as fast as possible and to continue that value throughout the customer lifecycle so TTV is the third third of the Fab Four.
  4. And then fourth, and this one is more important to me than almost all of them – customer success is one of the most challenging jobs in the industry, we are that face of the customer, we are that trusted advisor, and we really need the ability to have the tools, we need to get the data and also get the support from our leadership to successfully meet the needs of our customer. So for me the fourth of the four fives is employee experience or what they’re calling EX. That is the next metric for the future.

De’Edra Williams – Mastering CS – Candid Leader Insights – Ep 11

2. A Year for Defining, Delivering and Measuring Customer Outcomes

Daphne Costa Lopez brought us a surprise holiday gift this season with her eBook, Customer Success Trends ‘24, an extensive and data-led research into what we can expect from CS next year. Here is a fragment of her summary:

There’s no bigger challenge or opportunity for CS teams in 2024 than defining, delivering and measuring customer outcomes. Every program, system and process must be geared towards driving customers towards their desired results. That’s how we scale and drive NRR and GRR sustainably.

3. A Year for Evaluating, Scrutinizing, and Reassessing the Effectiveness of Your CS Efforts

Now is the perfect time of the year to start planning for what are the investments that customer success teams are looking to make and what are the processes that we have in place today that may no longer suit us. I think it’s a great opportunity to reflect on “we rolled out this type of process or this workflow – is it working?” And really getting that feedback from the customer success team, from the CSMs, but also from the departments that we work closely with.

Eleni Vorvis – Mastering CS – Candid Leader Insights – Ep 7

4. Customer success is still an art, but becoming a science, and TTV is essential

I do think – highest level – customer success is still maturing, as it is, remember as you pointed out at the beginning of this session, maybe 10 years old as a discipline, right? So it’s still maturing. Maybe at times it’s still more art than science, right? I’d encourage everyone to look for ways you can make it more of that repeatable science, that structured process for things. There’s also, you know, there’s a lot of great learnings out there from a lot of great leaders, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel – someone’s already solved the problem. So, you know, it’s just a matter of researching to see what could work for you.

I do think, especially with some areas of the world in different economic conditions and struggling in some areas – time to first value is critical. How do you really make that your priority on your roadmap so that that customer sees that value? You may not even have to fully deliver that value upfront, but if you can get the customer recognizing they’re on at least the path to value, not only will they continue to engage with you, they may even be open to expansion. So always focus on value.

And I think the other trend I guess if you want to call it and I mentioned a bit early with some communications, but I have my marketing colleagues all going off account based marketing – ABM – this is what we’re doing. we’re gonna get really tailored, really specific, we got better data now, we can really target potential prospects. I would argue don’t forget about that for your customers.

Michael BoydMastering CS – Candid Leader Insights – Ep 8

5. AI and More Specialization and an Impetus on Commercial Ability and Sales Aptitude

I think that for 2024 we’re gonna continue to see tons of hype around AI, so you know, there’s that in itself as a whole separate saga. But ultimately, 2024, I think CS will be impacted by AI, which is great in a lot of ways if you can, you know, leverage it to make your day to day more efficient. I think that we’ll also continue to see more specialization and needs for specialization in customer success.

And then the last thing that I would add to that is just the impetus on commercial ability and overall, you know, sales aptitude. It’s not just being buddies with the customer and having those soft skills, but we’re gonna see organizations really start to invest in customer success managers being commercially equipped.

Sadie Shepard – Mastering CS – Candid Leader Insights – Ep 9

You need to make sure that you’re leveraging your sales skills in a way because it’s going to be a very important metric. And it is—I mean, it’s been for 2023, and it’s going to continue to be an important metric for 2024. The more that we get comfortable with that selling piece, the better we’ll do for next year.

Erika Villarreal – 2023 Unwrapped: CS Insights and Forecasts for a Game-changing 2024 | Webinar

Yeah, on Erika’s point, someone needs to trust you in order to purchase from you. And people in the organization are most likely going to trust the CSM. Selling is about selling the right product to the right person at the right time. In the pre-sales motion, these three elements don’t always have to be aligned because they have more time, and they can find the right person, discuss the right product, or move on if it’s not the right time, and nurture it to come back later. When it’s the CSM, you are the one who is most likely to understand who the right person is, and it is incumbent upon you to know who that person is. You need to know if it’s the right time, and you need to know what the right product is. You are the one in the organization that’s most likely to know all three of those things.

Jan Young2023 Unwrapped: CS Insights and Forecasts for a Game-changing 2024 | Webinar

6. The pressure on CS teams is increasing and renewal conversations will become more difficult

I think 2024 is gonna be a very challenging year for renewals in particular, and then as a result on the customer success team. So again, going back to that perfect storm we were talking about at the beginning, I think there’s a lot of pressure on CS teams right now. I think there’s a lot of pressure on, in particular, point products that have not demonstrated a very clear ROI, so the advice I would give to leaders right now is that they should very urgently be working with their teams to prepare for very tough renewal conversations over the next year, because I think that tools are gonna get consolidated.

I think that companies are gonna get very careful about where they’re spending their money and as a result, this is again kind of the first time customer success has really been through a long economic downturn. We just don’t really have a lot of the skills in preparation, I think, ready for that. So we’ve managed customers in pretty good times for the last decade or so, this is definitely one of those points of time where customers are gonna be a lot harder to renew.

Parker Chase-Corwin – Mastering CS – Candid Leader Insights – Ep 11

7. The level of scrutiny for keeping your product on another company’s balance sheet is higher than it’s ever been

I think 2024 is gonna be a really interesting year, you know, you read through the predictions there’s everything from “we’re back to the office” to, you know, “customer success is dead” and “SaaS is never gonna make it out of the first quarter.” But I think, you know, as I look through the conversations within my team and just chatting with other leaders, the big piece is the change in the buying motion that we’re seeing across software and the conversations that we were having in terms of renewals and expansion, you know a year ago or even two or three years ago, look entirely different as we go into 2024.

CS teams need to be comfortable communicating with CFOs or procurement directors and the level of scrutiny that’s gonna go into keeping your product on another company’s balance sheet is higher than it’s ever been and it’s probable the bar is probably only going to go up in 2024.

So I think the nature of those conversations will continue to evolve, CSMs are gonna need to be better equipped to have really executive level conversations about return on investment and how your software impacts their business and then with that we’re seeing a lot more kind of third party contract negotiations so now you have a whole new kind of vertical of companies that are basically selling their services as contract negotiators. So now you know in customer success teams, you might not have as a direct line of communication as you even thought you were going to, because now there’s another person that’s asking “why does this cost so much?” or “where does this plug in?” or “how do we change that cost?” and they’ve never even used your product or interacted with that product before.

Matt Kelso – Mastering CS – Candid Leader Insights – Ep 11

8. Customer success will bridge the gap between customer outcomes and company revenue

I personally believe customer success is the bridge between customer outcomes and company revenue. I think the way that bridge is built, what we need to measure to get there, and how we get our teams there is up to the leaders of today. And I don’t just mean Customer Success leaders. You don’t have to have a leadership title in your role to do that; you can be a CSM, but you need to be that translator between customer outcomes and business revenue. And I think if I could give advice going into 2024, it would be to figure out what that means for your business and try to apply that to how you work as a CSM day in and day out. So that’s my piece of advice.

Anika Zubair2023 Unwrapped: CS Insights and Forecasts for a Game-changing 2024 | Webinar

Summing Up

Well, I don’t know about you, but after Anika’s advice, we’re really excited for what 2024 will bring and hope you’ll join us at Custify – in our platform, on our blog, in the email replies, on our socials – everywhere you want – as we begin another amazing journey and new year in Customer Success. Good luck!

Victor Antiu

Written by Victor Antiu

Victor Antiu is the Marketing Manager at Custify. With nearly 10 years experience, his focus is product marketing and B2B inbound strategy. When he’s not trying to fix websites and automate processes, he’s traveling and sailing around the world.

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Within SaaS, there’s almost always a natural divide between CS and Sales. Take an average Salesperson and ask …

Customer Success

2024 Customer Success Industry Market Statistics, Salaries, and Growth

The impact last year had on the customer success industry was a significant one. Tech startups and SaaS …

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