If you're a CEO, you need to take "Customer Success" as seriously as marketing, sales or product development.

1. Customer Success Is Your Core Growth Driver

All great companies' customers come from one main source - Word-of-Mouth…whether the lead comes via referral directly, or whether new customers are closed with case studies, references or testimonials.

This is much more measurable in recurring revenue models, where we can track renewal rates, upsell amounts & referrals.

2. Customer Success Is 5x More Important Than Sales

Yes - sales is critical. But sales is only there at the very start of the relationship. And to repeatedly close new customers, sales needs Customer Success resources - like references.

Generally, founders do a good job of doing whatever it takes to get a big deal closed - but often a poor job of everything after that, because they're off to help with the next fire, drama or Big Deal.

CEOs and founders - don't focus on getting new customers in so much that you ignore your current customers. Get on planes to visit customers as well as prospects.

3. Start Early, Hire Early

In Saas companies, a rule of thumb is having one Customer Success Manager per $2m in revenue - hired in advance of that revenue, not after you have it.

Silicon Valley companies with enough funding often now invest big at the beginning, with 2-4 people on the team right away.

Remember, a Customer Success person, like a salesperson or marketing budget, is an investment that should make you (a lot) of money, not just a cost to be put off as long as possible.

4. Visit Customers In Person

Unhappy customers don't (always) complain before they leave. In-person visits can make all the difference in surfacing problems and in changing their attitudes.

Jason's 5+2 rule on this:

* Every cofounder, the CEO, plus every Customer Success Manager,

* Must meet onsite with 5 customers a month (that's 60 per year), and

* Get 2 customer badges every year as a bonus (that is - you visit so often to warrant a badge.)

A phone call is not a meeting. By visiting in person, regularly, your company will learn more about what's really working and not, earn more trust, and those customers will (almost) never churn. It's much harder to tell a friend you're leaving them than some faceless company.

What if I have nothing to say? Just show them your roadmap, and ask for feedback on it, and on issues they are having today. That alone will fill the meeting.

5. Customer Success Needs Financial Responsibility & Metrics

When your Customer Success function doesn't have financial goals, it's value can get muddled.

One bad assumption is that "a great product will automatically create happy customers," and you won't need to hire people to actively work with your customers.

However easy or incredible your product is, you need humans talking to select categories of your customers.

The whole point of Customer Success is to increase "Net Negative Churn," so you need tools & processes to measure and improve the function, including how the people on your team perform.

To justify investment (such as in headcount or tools) by a company, plus create the hunger a Customer Success leader and team need to deliver measurable results, Customer Success needs to own some financial results: usually at least a) retention rates & perhaps even b) upsell revenue.

For example, at Gild (a case study coming on Page 27) Customer Success owns:

1. "90 Day Adoption"
2. Feeding usage data & customer feedback into the product roadmap
3. Renewals
4. Upsells

And it makes it easy for the executive team and board to see exactly how the Customer Success function's contributing to Gild.

6. Evolve Customer Success Goals & Metrics As You Grow (Source: Gainsight)

i. Traction ($0-$1m) - What do customers want, and what do they do with our product?

ii. Adoption ($1m-$5m) - Why and how should customers include our product in their daily business?

iii. Retention ($5-$20m) - Why do customers need to keep on using our product after the honeymoon?

iv. Expansion ($20m-$100m) - Why should customers expand to more seats, more features?

v. Optimization ($100m+) - Automation & improvements driven by data.